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IBM Plans Collaboration On Power Architecture
TheInternet writes "According to CNET News, IBM has made a series of announcements regarding the opening-up of the Power chip architecture. The story lacks technical details, but apparently, IBM is going to divulge more information about Power/PowerPC, and expects collaboration from the industry on the future of the chip. Nick Donofrio is quoted as saying: 'We will free electronics manufacturers from the limitations of proprietary microprocessor architectures', and Red Hat and Sony are two companies listed as taking part. Power5 was also shown, as was the Blue Gene/L supercomputer, using 32 500MHz processors to achieve 128 gigaflops."
Another interesting .
link at the Inquirer
Seems IBM is courting third party mobo makers to make PowerPC boards.
Their emracing linux and opening up their hardware platform. Sound Like
their getting their troops in line for THE desktop battle.
I, for one, would love to be running Debian Linux on a ATX PowerPC board. Of
course, they would have to sell enough of them to get the price down.
Good luck to 'em.
I, for one, welcome our OpenPowerPC overlords.
No, seriously, I think this is a great step. When we get to control the functionality and content of our silicon, and contribute to the specs, I think a LOT of creative people will come forward and throw out some truly awe-inspiring ideas. Look what happened with Linux, *BSD, countless GNU projects. The list goes on, people. I think this could be a stepping stone towards getting some really new chip technology on a roll.
Lets just hope this is a sincere effort on IBM's behalf.
straight from the
Hm. 128GFLOPS/32CPUS*500MHZ=8 fp ops per second or 4 MACs per second. Not impossible for a bigger processor with low clockrate that focusses more on ipc.
HI O WISE PRINCE. WHT TOOK U SO DAM LONG?
You can always recompile for whatever architecture you want. No waiting for some monopolist to decide if/when to do the porting.
As you all know, the costs of developing new chip architectures is escalating. However, once designed, chips can be replicated at relatively low cost (at least by comptent fabs like IBMs). So, to maximize profits despite the high upfront costs, what is one to do?
Design a kick-ass chip, sign up a lot of partners to establish street credibility, maintain processor improvement momentum, deliver chips on time, then sell as many chips as possible, of course! AMD performed in some, but certainly not all of these aspects, hence their current standing in the chip industry. Don't even get me started on the slow train wreck called Motorola.
The power architecture was always meant to be flexible, ranging from the $10,000+ quad-core uber-chip Power5's on down... So it's only logical that we will find stripped-down versions of the Power5 architecture in everything from Apple Desktops to next-gen consoles from Sony and MS.
As I see it, this is a great PR step by IBM to get some mindshare from the growing Linux camp. When you combine the incredible performance, lower prices, etc. of the 970 architecture, folks like Intel will have to take notice sooner or later, particularly when it hits their most profitable processor lines. However, Apple may not be happy to face competition in a market segment that it has had to itself for now.
As for MS and their PowerPC line of NT or whatever, who cares. If they need to make the switch, they'll find a way. In the meantime, it's the Linux/Unix folks who'll benefit the most from no longer being squeezed between SPARC and XEON pricing.
I wonder if Microsoft has kept that old NT version which runs on PowerPC in anyways up to date?
Rumor has it that the first XBox2 development kits ran on Macs (PowerPC) running a custom port of WinNT.
I know this is mostly aimed at embedded devices
Don't forget that WinCE has supported PowerPC chips for ages. It's not like Microsoft is incapable of supporting PPC, there's just never been any demand for it on the desktop or server side.
If MS were to release it's server line for the Power5 or somesuch, how quickly would intel scramble to stay in Microsofts' good graces?
Considering that Microsoft would probably only get about 2 customers for such an operating system, I don't think Intel would be too worried. People who buy IBM Power5 systems are looking at the seriously high-end. They are looking for a complete package of hardware, software and support, so they are not going to go off and install Windows on the thing!
Well, there are _still_ some bottlenecks here. It looks like IBM isn't really Open Sourcing the chip design-just trying to license it on reasonable terms. I suspect they'll have to go further to make this _really_ take off(i.e. have a design that is available with no royalty charges). If there is a truly open source design that is really cheap, I suspect we'll see this combined with the market Sun is developing at Walmart to imply $100 PC's.
Now, I think this goes beyond a 80's application delivery platform. With $100 PC's, we can start to seriously look at things like a PC on every students desk in elementary schools-and a PC as an interface to just about every machine in creation
The work in making a clone or custom mac is not in the design of the cpu, but in getting all the rest of the hardware integrated with the OS. Add in the thrill of device drivers, and potentially having to reverse engineer any custom Apple HW, and you get a pretty much clone-free market. Opening up the cpu will not change that.
It does mean that the architecture might be used in more places than it now is. Next generation video games might move to the Power architecture if they see a benefit. Similarly, good Linux offerings will make scientists consider clustering PPC boxes rather than x86 boxes for high performance numerical computing.
If these events happen, then new support, and new understanding of the architecture will hit the streets in a way that will benefit Apple. For example, if serious money goes into optimizing gcc by someone other than Apple, releases of OS X will get better without Apple effort. Similarly, more money from other hardware purchasers gives IBM incentive to advance the architecture.
Scott
--- scott_ellsworth@alumni.hmc.edu Java, Databases, and Software Magic
Reminds me of Sun's SPARC archetecture. This was supposed to be used in everything from the top-end processors to little embedded thingies, using different performance silicon but a common instruction set. And it was supposed to be open.
You don't hear much about that either, do you?
The difference here is that Power/PowerPC is already being used in everything from the top-end processors to little embedded thingies. IBM has a pre-established market with an interest in their technology. Other than a few half-hearted SPARC based Sun clones, Sun never had anything besides high hopes for the SPARC technology.
Progressivism: Parasites helping parasites to help themselves - to other people's stuff.
not in the desktop market, but PPC (also ARM and MIPS) outsells x86 in the embedded market and is a pretty strong force on servers.
the problem with the desktop market is/was that when the PPC came out, the x86 was already established as the dominant platform in an environment where closed source applications got distributed in binary form only, which makes it pretty hard to get marketshare, since programs either won't run at all or extremely slow (on an emulator). and since the marketshare is so small it's almost impossible to get anyone to port his/her programs to the new architecture. combine that with microsoft's tendency and ability to sabotage such ports (e.g. by buying the company and dropping the port "for lack of demand" as they have done several times when OS/2 started to gain some popularity), and you can understand why its hard for a new architecture to take off (could that be the reason for IBM getting behind open source?)
in terms of performance
until pretty recently (until intel started to riscify the x86) RISC style CPU were performance leaders, and the G5 seems to hold up pretty good.
all three of the major video game consoles in the next generation (GC2, PS3 and XBox) will be using some workalike of the PPC chip
just an example of the embedded market
This seems like a smart buisness move by IBM that will end up benefiting everyone. IBM probably believes that they will controll most of the manufacturing, because the only company with the fab capacity to make many is Intel, and i doubt they'd want to jeopardize thier probably higher profit margin pentium market share by making a power chip. At the same time, small fabs will be able to make the chips and keep the price reasonable. Also, i'd have to assume that IBM expects to provide most of the service and support for the chips. So the result will be a better designed chip because more people are working on it, oppritunities for small fabs to make this excelent chip, and profits for IBM because if the chip design is improved, market share will rise, with IBM reaping a good part of the profits. Bottom line in this optomistic scenario is a cheap, high preformance chip, and added profits for everyone but Intel. Everyone wins.
You can sum it easily up.
No early adopters who can build their own PowerPC based PCs. The PowerPC and related boards are no commodity hardware you can get for affordable prices.
Many early adopters love to build their own computers, they basically are locked out.
That basically means no early adopters, no long term mass market. What is left is only niche markets like Apple, who is not too unhappy not to have commodity hardware in their machine (high prices)
PowerPC is strong in many areas but as long as you cant get PowerPC ATX boards and processors at the same prices as their x86 counterparts, and the DRM lock in on the x86 side is not very strong yet, people still will buy x86.