Fujitsu Working on the Development of 'Venus' Processor

Fujitsu has just announced that it is currently working on the development of an eight-core chip entitled Sparc64 VIIIfx that is expected to become the world's fastest central processing unit. According to available details, the processor, codenamed 'Venus', is expected to be capable of delivering a performance equal to 128 billion calculations per second, which will make it 2.5 times faster than any of Intel's current high-end chips, the company says.

According to Fujitsu, the Venus processor has been designed to take advantage of the company's 45nm CMOS technology and is to be 2.5 times faster than what Intel currently has to offer. In addition, the upcoming processor will be 3 times faster than the chip maker's current SPARC64 VII, designed as a quad-core CPU on a 65nm process technology.

The chip, which is expected to power some of the upcoming supercomputers, is capable of the reported performances thanks to the use of the new 45nm technology, which has enabled Fujitsu to incorporate double the number of cores that are available on the processor itself. In addition, the same technology cuts down the power requirements of the Venus chip by a considerable amount. This enables Fujitsu to claim that the Venus design is capable of providing a reduction of the power requirements by as much as one third of the current levels.

Although there haven't been any released details regarding the estimated release date of the new Sparc CPU, Fujitsu showcased four Venus chips installed in a system that was able to provide 521GFLOPs of computing power.

For the time being, Intel is still the number one processor vendor on the market and, thanks to its latest Nehalem architecture, the company can also pride itself for having the fastest processor out there. However, with the upcoming Venus, Fujitsu could give Intel's Nehalem chip a run for its money.