After having recently announced that they won't be focusing on just doubling the number of cores in the current CPUs, Intel demoed the first processor to pack 80 cores at a public trade show.

Consuming only 78 watts of electricity, the 80 core CPU is capable of delivering 1 Teraflop at a clock speed of 3.13GHz. Similarly to how modern cars shut down some of the engine's cylinders when power is not needed in order to conserve energy, Intel's new CPU is capable of shutting down nearly all of its cores and downclock to 780MHz. At this speed, the CPU would be consuming only 12.4 watts of electricity.

Opposite to saving power, the CPU can be overclocked to 6GHz, which would have it deliver 2 Teraflops; the energy consumption of the overclocked CPU would be nearly 5 times as high, at a massive 355 watts.

The CPU is not expected to hit the market in fewer than 5 years, however the 16, 32 and 64 core powered Intel CPUs might show up in the market in just a couple of years. These processors are more likely to first show up in affordable supercomputers, such as the Cray CX1. The CPU doesn't require special cooling and it's nearly the same size as any other desktop processor, making it a great fit in a tower-size supercomputer for small and mid size businesses.

Intel is working with software partners and academic institutions to research parallel computing so that applications can take full advantage of this large number of cores.