2005 Good Year for Power Architecture

An anonymous reader wrote to mention an IBM article looking back on what the piece calls the best year ever for the Power Architecture. From the article: "While IBM is considered by many to be an 800lb. gorilla, in the microelectronics space, it is actually very small -- last year IBM was way down at number 21 on the iSuppli list of the top 25 semiconductor suppliers worldwide. Now, that isn't necessarily a bad thing: for instance, it means that IBM Semiconductor solutions is small and nimble and competitive -- and this agility (coupled with the fact that we do get to share Research and some other resources with the parts of IBM that are 800lb. gorillas) has led some to predict that the IBM chips division will be named the fastest growing semiconductor supplier of 2005. In fact, there is a very good chance that IBM may regain the coveted #18 spot on iSuppli's list this year!"

Comments

Printers

[Flying pig]

A lot of printers use Power architecture (there's one near me, with a 600MHz processor, right now, and the speed with which it renders a full color A4 PDF is quite impressive.) Power is very good wherever there isn't a load of dead weight to keep supporting, which is why it seems to do so well in the embedded or non-"PC" market. As for Apple's decision - well, I fortunately don't have any shares in Apple. I'm not convinced that they will be able to make the world's best X86 portables, and that is the task they seem to have set themselves. I have an attic full of old Macs, and I now have no reason at all to acquire another one.

It was a pretty good year for Sparc too...

[hutchike]

How come IBM gets free Slashdot publicity? And where exactly is the news in this article? Surely the IBM/Sony/Toshiba Cell chip more newsworthy than the Power architecture?

Personally I thought it was a particularly good year for Sun's Sparc processors - see this Forrester research article for example. Here are some recent Sun SPECjbb performance benchmarks against IBM's Power P5.

But since Sun isn't a leading Linux advocate, I don't expect them to get Slashdot front page coverage like IBM seems to...