Intel plans to launch its first Many Integrated Core (MIC) using its upcoming 22nm process technology. Chipzilla said that it also expects to have more than 100 developer sites for MIC by the end of 2011.

The add-on accelerators Intel MIC micro-architecture provides are  expected to be used for highly parallel applications in high performance computing segments such as scientific exploration and research and weather modeling. But like AMD FireStream or Nvidia Tesla, Intel does not want its technology to replace processors  but be used to speed up certain applications.

Intel insists that x86 compatibility with x86 will give MIC  unique advantages. Kirk Skaugen, vice president of the Intel architecture group and general manager of Intel's data center group, during his keynote at the Intel Developer Forum (IDF) said that a MIC would be like a co-processor where you can use the same compilers, the same tools, the same VTunesthat power around 90 per cent of the Top 500 computers.

The next generation you run the compiler, it will optimise the workloads for the Intel cores, that are in the Xeon CPUs, and it will optimize on these new PCI Express cards that will have more than 50 cores and be on our 22nm process technology. So it will automatically balance that workload for the highest-parallel workloads on the planet, he promised.

So far Intel has supplied code-named Knights Ferry MIC test platform to select developers and plans to expand the number of developers, who can have the hardware, to one hundred by the end of 2011.