ClearSpeed Technologies has announced a new high-performance, low-power, floating-point parallel processor capable of performing 25 gigaflops/second.

According to the company, the chip has the potential to bring supercomputer performance to the desktop. An ordinary desktop PC outfitted with six PCI cards, each containing four of the chips, would perform at about 600 gigaflops (or more than half a teraflop).

At this level of performance, the PC would qualify as one of the 500 most powerful supercomputers in the world and at a cost of cost about $25,000, compared to millions of dollars for current supercomputers.

Mike Calise, ClearSpeed’s president, said server manufacturers are looking at the chip with a view to building petaflop machines.