IBM to Launch Power6 Chip Next Month

Breitbart.com ^ | 21 May 2007 | JORDAN ROBERTSON

[Dr.Zoidberg]

Don’t know how the crap I hit an A for an O in “more”.

I need to get another cup of coffee.

[Psycho_Bunny]

and cycles at a speed 25 million times as fast as the flap of hummingbird wings

What?  Someone has an associative consciousness in dire need of professional analysis.

[ShadowAce]

LOL!

[pctech]

We already get that.

Oh blast, now everyone knows. Darn it!

[SlowBoat407]

Don’t know how the crap I hit an A for an O in “more”.

Too much horsing around.

[mj1234]

I wonder if -Breitbart.com - will post anything

about Sun’s T2 chip? or Rock ?(later this year)

by the way -Sun had a blow out on T2000 servers-1.2GHZ
8 core -32 thread(acts like 32 processors)-32gig memory for
$13K thinkIBM will be close to this price?

[Vince Ferrer]

... which operates at 4.7 gigahertz

An even 1,000 times the speed of the original Intel 8086 which powered the first IBM pc.

[martin_fierro]

The dramatic performance boost comes as the semiconductor industry has largely shifted its focus away from pure performance measurements—overheating becomes a major problem as transistors shrink and operate at breakneck speeds—and instead has become more concerned with a balance of performance and power consumption.

Not among the speed freaks I hang out with.

[ShadowAce]

I knew there was something familiar about that number! Thanks!

[MainFrame65]

Don’t forget the “Barn” as the measure of nuclear cross-section. Barn, as in “hit the broadside of a barn.”

[chilepepper]

just think... if they run Vista on it, it'll be as fast as my Pentium 133 running Linux!

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

From marketwatch:

IBM Unleashes World's Fastest Chip in Powerful New Computer

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The POWER6 Chip: a Convention-Shattering Design

The POWER6 chip in the new IBM System p(TM) 570 server owns a number of industry "firsts." It is the first UNIX microprocessor able to calculate decimal floating point arithmetic in hardware. Until now, calculations involving decimal numbers with floating decimal points were done using software. The built-in decimal floating point capability gives tremendous advantage to enterprises running complex tax, financial and ERP programs.

The POWER6 processor is built using IBM's state-of-the-art 65 nanometer process technology. Coming at a time when some experts have predicted an end to Moore's Law, which holds that processor speed doubles every 18 months, the IBM breakthrough is driven by a host of technical achievements scored during the five-year research and development effort to develop the POWER6 chip. These include:

--  A dramatic improvement in the way instructions are executed inside the
    chip. IBM scientists increased chip performance by keeping static the
    number of pipeline stages -- the chunks of operations that must be
    completed in a single cycle of clock time -- but making each stage faster,
    removing unnecessary work and doing more in parallel. As a result,
    execution time is cut in half or energy consumption is reduced.

--  Separating circuits that can't support low voltage operation onto
    their own power supply "rails," allowing IBM to dramatically reduce power
    for the rest of the chip.

--  Voltage/frequency "slewing," enabling the chip to lower electricity
    consumption by up to 50 percent, with minimal performance impact.

--  A new method of chip design that enables POWER6 to operate at low
    voltages, allowing the same chip to be used in low power blade environments
    as well as large, high-performance symmetric multiprocessing machines. The
    chip has configurable bandwidth, enabling customers to choose maximum
    performance or minimal cost.

The POWER6 chip includes additional techniques to conserve power and reduce heat generated by POWER6 processor-based servers. Processor clocks can be dynamically turned off when there is no useful work to be done and turned back on when there are instructions to be executed.

Power saving is also realized when the memory is not fully utilized, as power to parts of the memory not being utilized is dynamically turned off and then turned back on when needed. In cases where an over-temperature condition is detected, the POWER6 chip can reduce the rate of instruction execution to remain within an acceptable, user-defined temperature envelope.

IBM plans to introduce the POWER6 chip throughout the System p and System i server lines.

World's first UNIX server with active virtual machine mobility

Also announced today, IBM is unveiling an industry-first with a new feature that provides customers with the ability to move live virtual machines from one physical UNIX server to another while maintaining continuous availability. Coined the POWER6 Live Partition Mobility function, this technology -- currently in beta, with general availability planned for later this year -- enables customers to move active virtualized partitions without temporarily suspending them. While competing offerings require a disruptive reboot of the UNIX system and software stack, IBM is the first vendor to help clients optimize resource utilization on a broader scale by allowing administrators to think of large groups of servers as a fluid resource rather than focusing on each server as a single entity with a dedicated purpose.

[tubebender]

Cave Drawings were community forums before string and tin cans were invented...

[Red Badger]

Can’t you just picture a Mrs. Cavewoman pointing to the deer and elk drawings and then to the stick figures with spears and then pointing to Mr. Caveman and saying “Don’t come back here without one of these!”.............

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

ROFL!

[gondramB]

>>just think... if they run Vista on it, it’ll be as fast as my Pentium 133 running Linux!<<

Hey, that’s not fair... Games for Windows (magazine recently purchased by Microsoft) recently rated Vista as a B minus. They wouldn’t have given it such a high grade if it wasn’t fast... :)

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

IBM's Power6 spotted bashing Oracle at 4.7GHz

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The Register has spotted four 4.7GHz - yep, you read that right - Power6 chips cranking on Oracle 11i. The speedy chips confirm IBM's boasting that Power6 would arrive near 5GHz. They also show that IBM's customers have a lot to look forward to in terms of raw performance.

With 4.7GHz chips (4MB of L2 and 32MB of L3 cache), an IBM p570 server showed an average response time of .625 seconds when handling requests from 2,100 users. That compares to a p570 with 2.2GHz Power5+ chips that had a response time of .983 seconds for 2,000 users.

You can catch all the benchmarks here until Oracle notices this story (Update: Oracle has removed the results). We've also taken the liberty of copying a PDF report on the results for you here.

[Erasmus]

Pay-per-view.

Just to think only a few years ago it was paper view!

< }B^)

[Erasmus]

I thought you were making a valid point about the evolution of horses.