Tests suggest it is six times faster than other comparable processors.
As society’s insatiable demand for computing power continues to grow, so too does the need for more efficient processors. A group of researchers in Switzerland has devised a new processor design that may help meet our computational-intensive needs. It is physically small and computationally agile—and aptly named Snitch. (Harry Potter fans will get the reference.)
Florian Zaruba, a postdoc at the Integrated Systems Laboratory at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) in Zürich—and a researcher involved in the creation of Snitch—notes that there’s a trend with commercial, general-purpose cores, which are relying on larger and more energy-hungry processors. “Snitch is the opposite,” he says.