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IBM's New Processors To Exceed 5Ghz
Jordin Normisky writes to mention the news, via ZDNet Asia, that IBM's new Power6 processor will be unveiled next month at a conference in San Francisco. They're also planning to announce a second-generation Cell, both of which are expected to run faster than 5GHz. From the article: "In addition, the [Power6] chip 'consumes under 100 watts in power-sensitive applications,' a power range comparable to mainstream 95-watt AMD Opteron chips and 80-watt Intel Xeon chips. Power6 has 700 million transistors and measures 341 square millimeters, according to the program. The smaller that a chip's surface area is, the more that can be carved out of a single silicon wafer, reducing per-chip manufacturing costs and therefore making a computer more competitive. Power6, like the second-generation Cell, is built with a manufacturing process with 65-nanometer circuitry elements, letting more electronics be squeezed onto a given surface area. "
In a race to see who can move all the water from one basin to another...
"I carry a 1 gallon bucket and run around in circles 5,000,000 times a second. I'm faster!"
"I carry two 1 gallon buckets and run around in circles 2,500,000 times a second. I'm faster!"
-- 'The' Lord and Master Bitman On High, Master Of All
Yes, but the complex x86 instructions (and many simpler ones as well) take more than one cycle to execute. The relevant measure isn't the number of instructions required to accomplish a task, but the number of cycles required. You can easily concoct examples for which x86 requires fewer instructions but more cycles.
You do realize that the CURRENT generation of POWER5+ CPU's are already quad-core, right? Honestly, guys, you all need to read up on what makes POWER different from PowerPC. One is a server or workstation class chip, the other is a desktop class one.
CPU GHz specint2000 specint/Ghz specfp2000 specfp/Ghz
Opteron 3.0 2119 706.3 2365 788.3
Intel P4 3.8 1834 483.4 2091 550.2
Intel Core2 2.66 2848 1070.6 2673 1004.8
IBM Power5 2.1 1747 831.9 3324 1582.8
I gave myself a headache trying to read your table, I hope you don't mind. I also apparently missed the 3GHz Opteron launch in '06...but things still don't look good for AMD.
I may make you feel, but I can't make you think.
Avoid Missing Ball for High Score
Look at it this way. To design a high end chip...
* software for synthesis, implementation, timing/physical/formal verification, OPC, power/temp analysis and all the other stuff runs in the millions of dollars.
* 20 engineers working for 3 years + benefits/managers/other overhead ~10 million dollars.
* mask costs 100's of thousands of dollars.
so getting to the first chip runs at least 15-20 million dollars and for something like the core2 duo it's closer to 500 -1000 million.
the next wafer only costs a measly 10k
-------
1. Enjoy your job
2. Make lots of money
3. Work within the law
Choose any two.
I haven't checked the information yet, but here's an abstract on the rest, found through google:
c essor-Trashes-Competition-with-6-GHz-17765.shtml1 606194731
The Power6 processor will run between 4GHz and 5GHz and it has been proven to chew away data at a speed of 6GHz in the lab.
IBM see things a little differently and they decided to raise the frequency in both cores of the processor.
For high-end models, four POWER6 MPUs will be packaged in a single multi-chip module, along with four L3 victim caches, each 32MB.
On the management side, IBM is also improving their virtualization capabilities in the POWER6. In particular products, a single processor may be able to host 2-300 virtual instances, although theoretically up to 1024 VMs are possible. Memory partitioning and migration have been added as well, which reduces system down time for repairs.
IBM is claiming a factor of two performance increase, which would be consistent with the vastly higher clockspeeds and increases in raw system bandwidth.
IBM's roadmaps currently include the POWER6+, which is presumably a 45nm derivative product. Judging by past practices, the POWER6+ will debut in the second half of 2008, probably just in time to dash the hopes of rivals.
The Power and PowerPC lines will grow one step closer together with Power6, which incorporates the AltiVec instruction set that speeds up many multimedia tasks. AltiVec, also known as VMX, increases efficiency by letting a single processing instruction be applied to multiple data elements. That's helpful for video and audio tasks on desktop machines, but servers will benefit as well in, for example, high-performance computing tasks such as genetic data processing, McCredie said
Where Power5 can transfer data on and off the chip at a rate of 150 gigabytes per second, Power6 can do so at 300GBps, McCredie said.
Oh, and it is also good for BCD's (binary coded decimals) which obviously points to the expected customers (high end financial firms, presumably).
Sources:
http://news.softpedia.com/news/New-Power6-IBM-Pro
http://realworldtech.com/page.cfm?ArticleID=RWT10
http://news.zdnet.com/2100-9584_22-6124451.html