Dr Ian Cutress projects that by 2050 we could have a processor with up to 1024 cores

Do you remember when Intel launched the Core i7-7700K with 4 cores and 8 threads in Q1 2017 ? Three years later, that number seems ridiculous thanks to AMD and its Ryzen 9 3950X . Intel has also joined the processor core craze and is expected to launch the Core i3-10100 with 4 cores and 8 threads this year.

Perhaps the ultimate example of madness is the Threadripper 3990X , which offers 64 cores and can be bought by 'anyone'. The thing is, Dr. Ian Cutress, Senior Editor at Anandtech, has conducted a curious analysis. He created a scale predicting that by 2050 we'll have a 1024-core processor, which is a complete absurdity.

1024-core processor by 2050

In just three years, we have quadrupled the number of cores in desktop gaming processors. An increase, which although it seems interesting, is completely meaningless. There are no games that take advantage, not by chance, of the presence of so many cores. But the forecast of a future where a computer can have up to 1024 cores is aberrant.

Mark Papermaster, CTO of AMD, in an interview in December last year spoke about the limit number of cores in a processor. I indicate that there really is no real limit, but that they should exercise caution in this increase. He noted that uploading them like crazy can waste resources, since no matter how many cores you have, the software must be able to take advantage of them.

If we have the 9-core Ryzen 3900 16X and the 3990-core Threadripper 64X, we could think of 2050 as a 256-core desktop computer. While it sounds interesting, it seems pretty unlikely that this will end up being a reality. Today there are few software that take advantage of the 64 cores of the Threadripper and even operating systems do not know how to handle them.

Source: Anandtech