At the International Supercomputer Conference (ISC) in Hamburg earlier this year, Intel and SGI announced that they are collaborating to build an Exascale system by 2018, which is an impressive goal. However, Intel has made a number of statements about its plans for developing components to drive Exascale systems that were received with scepticism by some in the HPC community. Intel seemed to be saying, ‘Trust us, we’ll take you to Exascale,’ but without explaining how the many technical challenges were going to be addressed.