72 cores, eh?
Appearing in mobile phone in, what? 6 months?
It is not just difficult to design and manufacture a chip for workloads that will be run many years in the future, it is damned near impossible. This is because so many shifting alternative technologies will materialize between the time you make your plan and when it is executed. Any chipmaker has to be both flexible and patient …
I have been an ARM user since 1987 when I bought my Archimedes 305.
I design and manufacture embedded hardware using ARM chips for preference.
I follow ARM developments keenly and know their strengths well.
Here though, we're talking about Tilera's implementation which will undoubtedly be memory bandwidth-constrained with 72 cores in a single package.
Unless, perhaps, the problems are suited to a shared-code multiple data approach, in which case a GPU offers far more cores per chip.
Like Nvidia's latest chip the GK110 with 2,688 CUDA cores - as used in Titan http://www.olcf.ornl.gov/titan/
This Tilera chip seems an ill-conceived design to me, but all we have to do is wait and see what happens.