Intel Launches German R&D Center To Advance Multicore Effort

PORTLAND, Ore. — Intel GmbH has opened an R&D center in Braunschweig, Germany, complementing its manufacturing operations there. Focusing on the company’s Tera-Scale Computing Research program, the Intel Germany Research Center’s 100 engineers and technicians will integrate hundreds of processor cores with parallel-processing software to propel microprocessors to teraflops performance while lowering power requirements.

“Our researchers and engineers in Braunschweig will help us deliver platforms that are more capable, powerful and energy-efficient," said Intel chief technology officer Justin Rattner. "Their expertise will play a central role in our plans for multicore processor architectures."

The research center will work on projects designed to bear commercial fruit five to 10 years down the road, Rattner said. The center will also cooperate with the nearby Technical University of Braunschweig.

Intel's Braunschweig location was already its largest chip research center operation in Europe, specializing in the development and marketing of optical communications components. The chips designed there to date house as many as 100 million transistors and handle data streams running at up to 10 Gbits/second.