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4.7GHz IBM Power6 Spotted

Posted by kdawson on from the more-power-to-ya dept.

Ilgaz notes that The Register has posted benchmark results from Oracle 11i running on four 4.7GHz Power6 chips. Quoting: "The speedy chips confirm IBM's boasting that Power6 would arrive near 5GHz. They also show that IBM's customers have a lot to look forward to in terms of raw performance." Rumor has it that the Power6 chips will be announced on Tuesday.

11 of 296 comments (clear)

  1. Did Apple make a mistake? by Whiney+Mac+Fanboy · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Power6 sounds like it's going to be pretty damn cool - Perhaps Apple made a mistake jumping to intel so soon...

    *sighs* I for one yearn for the days of smugly ending any performance argument with some PC user with "Well, we've got Altivec & Altivec is magic."

    --
    There are shills on slashdot. Apparently, I'm one of them.
    1. Re:Did Apple make a mistake? by mrchaotica · · Score: 5, Interesting

      What I don't understand is, since Mac software has to be Universal nowadays anyway, why Apple doesn't just permanently keep its lineup as a mix of PPC and x86, picking whichever chip suits the particular machine they're designing at the time? Power6 Xserves along side Core 2 laptops... it sounds good to me!

      --

      "[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz

    2. Re:Did Apple make a mistake? by Cadallin · · Score: 2, Interesting
      I'm going to give the very uncommon answer: Yes. Definitely.

      Why? If they were going to switch to x86, they waited way too long to do it. By the time the first Intel Macbooks shipped, IBM had had low power G5's available for months. These could have absolutely been user for a Powerbook G5. The desktops, of course would have been shipping POWER5 parts, what would have been the G6 (By the time these POWER6 machines made into Macs, they would have been the G7). The correct solution to many of the other problems was to pressure Nvidia to make CUDA multiplatform. This could have been Altivec^2. Apple would have had the expertise to really leverage modern GPUs as Stream Processors for Media use. This would have been amazing. What we got instead was x86, which gave us Windows legacy support. Useful, definitly, but nowhere near as exotic or sexy.

    3. Re:Did Apple make a mistake? by solios · · Score: 2, Interesting

      UBs are the new Fat Binaries - Apple dropped the 68k as soon as they were able but Fat Binary soft that could run on both 68k and PPC was around for quite a long while thanks to the big install base of 68ks. Now history's repeating itself - the only reason we have UBs is because of the hugehugehuge (proportionately speaking) PPC install base.

      Apple has no reason to go back to the PPC. The profit margin on intel kit is much higher..... and if you don't think it's about profit, ask yourself why all of the low end PPC machines had okay ATI or NVidia graphics, while all of the new low end intel machines have totally bullshit Intel GMA graphics?

      Apple : Not Passing The Savings On To The Consumer since.... what, 1984?

    4. Re:Did Apple make a mistake? by jhol13 · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Had he recommended Java there would have been zillions "write once test everywhere" comments.

      But apparently Apples "universal" binary does not require any testing whatsoever ...

    5. Re:Did Apple make a mistake? by solios · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Try running, say..... Maya. Or Motion.

      Ultimately, the point I'm aiming at is that paying premium prices for bargain basement video really chafes my ass - if I'm going to lay down for kit that's twice the price of an equivalently powered wintel box, I'd like some name brand video and user access to all of the system memory.

  2. 4.7? sounds familiar by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

    This shit does as many cycles per second as there are bytes on a single-layer dvd.

  3. Re:Power isn't PPC by DreadSpoon · · Score: 2, Interesting

    "IBM's Power line are not PPC chips and aren't suited for desktop use"

    Yes, yes they are PPC chips. In terms of core instruction set, they're the same. The PPC970 that Apple used for a short while were derived directly from the Power design, as I recall.

    The PC in PowerPC doesn't mean "Personal Computer." It means "Performance Computing." PPC is an instruction set, and Power is an IBM brand/product name. Many companies make PPC chips besides IBM, and the majority of those chips are embedded chips not at all designed for usage in a PC.

  4. Re:Power isn't PPC by 1lus10n · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I'm still waiting on the 128 way Intel/AMD ... or anything greater than 16 way that can keep up with the RISC, Sparc or POWER based systems.

    When your running apache it doesnt make a difference. If you can get onto Oracle RAC then it will matter less, but for right now there is still a ton of business to be done on the high end of things. Sun's T1 chip is also a metric fuckton better and running web apps. Especially java. 32 threads, low power and so on.

    x86 has always been designed for mass use, and as such will usually lose to specialized chips. (see: cell, power6, niagra/t1 and so on)

    --
    "Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I'm not sure about the the universe." --Albert Einstein
  5. Re:OS X Server = PPC/Intel, OS X = Intel by Amiga+Trombone · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I think that you basically mentioned the only real place where there's a market for PPC: on servers. Although I've always been a big fan of the Power architecture (I have a dual-G5 spaceheater sitting under my desk that I'm writing this on, right now), I don't think that offering G5 PowerMacs along side Intel PowerMacs would really do anything besides confuse customers and potentially make the platform less appealing for developers who don't realize how easy Universal code is to produce. So I think that's a non-starter.

    I'd agree with that assessment. Also, consider that desktop/laptop CPU's have different requirements than server CPU's. One of the reasons Apple dumped PPC was that IBM wasn't earning enough on chips optimized for desktops to invest in the necessary R&D to keep them competitive with x86.

    That is not an issue with servers, however, Power6 is already optimized for that purpose. Apple could probably offer a very attractive XServe indeed based on that chip. It would give them an offering that would outperform anything based on x86, making OS X a more attractive and versatile platform in general. I'd like to see them go for it.

  6. Why Apple/Intel was the right move by zerofoo · · Score: 2, Interesting

    The shop I work in right now is a mix of Dell and Apple hardware. We now buy all our Desktop machines from Apple - why?

    Intel CPUs.

    We can now run Windows and Mac OS on the exact same hardware. Dell has lost all our desktop business as the result of Apple's move to Intel. One hardware platform is very nice from a purchasing and management perspective.

    I'm sure we aren't the only shop with that strategy - and that's why Apple's conversion to x86 was a good decision.

    -ted