Scottish scientists have created an ultra-fast 1000-core processor that has the potential to run 20 times faster than those found in the existing PCs.

Currently available processors feature 2, 4, and sometimes sixteen cores, but Dr. Wim Vanderbauwhede and his team members at the University of Glasgow have now created a processor that effectively contains over a thousand cores on a single chip.

To create the ultra-fast processor, the scientists made use of a chip called FPGA (Field Programmable Gate Array) that like all microchips holds millions of transistors. The scientists were able to make the processor faster by giving each core a definite amount of dedicated memory.

The processor runs 20 times faster than today's processors, but consumes less power. However, Dr. Vanderbauwhede said that FPGAs are hard to be used within standard computers as they are difficult to program.

Speaking on the FPGAs, he said, "Their processing power is huge while their energy consumption is very small because they are so much quicker - so they are also a greener option."

The 1000-core processor can process 5-gigabytes of data per second.

Dr. Vanderbauwhede has plans to present his research at the International Symposium on Applied Reconfigurable Computing that will take place in March 2011.