Fujitsu beats Intel at its own game

Intel loses the fastest processor crown!

When it rains, it pours for Intel, it seems, with Chipzilla receiving bad news not only on the legal front but also on the tech front as well this week, as Fujitsu has just unveiled a new CPU thought to be the world's fastest yet.

The Japanese firm revealed its latest supercomputer CPU offering at "Fujitsu Forum 2009." It claimed the chip is capable of crunching through an astounding 128 Billion computations per second, 2.5 times faster than Intel's current best performer. This makes Fujitsu the first Japanese firm in a decade to snatch the lead in raw CPU performance.

The little beauty has aptly been dubbed "Venus," a much sexier name than its rather more nerdy technical moniker "SPARC64 VIIIfx."

Fujitsu says its prototype still in development is fabbed on 45nm process technology and has eight cores plus an integrated memory controller spread across just two square centimetres.

Fujitsu, not content with blowing past Intel speed wise, also says its new chip boasts a power consumption advantage, consuming just a third of the juice Chipzilla's prize CPU guzzles.

Apparently it will take several years for Fujitsu to come up with practical applications for Venus, but Fujitsu says the CPU shows promise in the fields of pharmaceutical research, astronomy, weather prediction, scientific research and more.

The Japanese electronics giant also says it hasn't ruled out adapting its CPU from one used only by the supercomputer industry to one more suited to mainstream computing applications available to mass market consumers.