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.
