New IBM chip breaks barriers to double speed

FT ^

[Centurion2000]

Great ... .what software will be using the new speeds?

[Revolting cat!]

Uh, oh, Apple's going back to IBM!

[LesbianThespianGymnasticMidget]

There’s some speculation that this cpu will be the general purpose CPU in all 3 server lines (z,p,i)

[Clump]

I am not a techno geek, but this sounds fast.

[TSgt]

You can no longer judge a processor's performance by speed but this is fast.

It probably runs on 220V and requires its own chiller.

[Frenetic]

"Great ... .what software will be using the new speeds?"

- Don't know...but I do know for certain that the advanced scientific and engineering breakthrough wasn't accomplished by muslims. Nothing of importance rarely is.

[LesbianThespianGymnasticMidget]

(Will run Linux) The Power chip roadmaps from a few years ago caused some confusion in that they indicated that IBM would be using a 65 nanometer process for these chips, due in 2006 and 2007, and could be ramping clock speeds up as high as 6 GHz. The roadmap characterized the clock speeds on the Power6 chips as "ultra high frequency," and unlike the Power4, Power5, and Power5+ chips on the roadmap, the Power6 item did not show two cores, but simply an area that said "cores," plural. It also said "L2 caches," and said "Advanced System Features" instead of the distributed switch that occupies two sides of every Power4, Power4+, Power5, and Power5+ chip. This distributed switch is the high-speed interconnection that allows four dual-core Power chips to be lashed together into an eight-way SMP server inside a multichip module (MCM), which is a single piece of electronics that is about as big as the palm of your hand. This MCM also contains the L3 caches. To make a big SMP box, like the 64-way Squadron i5 595 and p5 595 machines, you put eight of these eight-core MCMs on cell boards (which IBM calls books) and you have made a big, bad box.

[SteveMcKing]

IBM was purposely screwing Apple and holding them hostage by limiting supply. Chances are they wouldn't have delivered this new chip to Apple in sufficient quantities - and on time - even if Apple had stayed, nor if they tried to go back now.

[Paul C. Jesup]

Uh, oh, Apple's going back to IBM!

Looks like Apple chose the wrong horse. And about MS, with the planned DMR on Vista, the 4 or 5 ghz chip will run like a 2 Ghz chip.

[usmcobra]

And I just bought two new computers for work......

[ArrogantBustard]

Great ... .what software will be using the new speeds?

I'm sure I will find it useful for:

1) Editing high definition video
2) Manipulating double-digit megapixel images
3) Compressing 7-channel audio
and
4) The number-crunching I do at work.

Large amounts of fast memory will also be useful for these tasks.

What, did you thing you had some kind of "Gotcha" question?

[Andonius_99]

They ought to be able to run Word fairly successfully :-)

[ShadowAce]

[ArrogantBustard]

Word and PowerPointless will still be painful.

[null and void]

And designing nukes...

[ArrogantBustard]

That's not the number-crunching I do at work ...

[antiRepublicrat]

If you read the article, notice it mentions software as a necessity for the power, and probably performance gains. IBM's POWER chips are tied closely to the OS, which is something you can't really do for a desktop. For example, much of the POWER5's SMT is implemented in software, not hardware as Intel did with "hyperthreading."

This really is a server chip. We couldn't expect even a scaled-down desktop version like the PPC970 until quite a bit after this thing is in production.

[null and void]

That's why I said AND designing nukes, not SUCH AS designing nukes.

;^P

[Methinks thou doth protest a wee bit too much]