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. "

Comments

Re:And here I thought...

[dreddnott]

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.