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IBM Unveils New Power4 CPU
Climbing out from under my mountain of spagetti code and strange bugs (I think I'm finally on top of it actually) to post linkage to a pretty interesting looking new IBM CPU.
The Power4 processor puts 2 processors and an L2 cache on the same die. Clock speed over a gigahertz and bus speed over 500mhz.
Now you've gone and gotten the resident RS/6000 pimp and guru involved.
First off; 500MHz bus is so incredibly easy for IBM to achieve, it's not funny. The problem is that they don't have a matching processor to use 500MHz bus. And 500/2 is NOT 262MHz. And you can't cleanly get 340MHz out of it either. Those speeds correspond to the RS64-II processors housed inside the RS/6000 S70 Advanced Server and the RS/6000 H70, two of the fastest single-system computers in the world.
IBM can do it. They've been doing all that for ages, save for the twin-die. In case all of you have forgotten, IBM/Motorola are now in bed together again. This is a very good thing, seeing as they share the CopperGold patents which are used in the production of all of IBM's PowerPC processors. I suspect it's also used in the motherboard manufacturing process.
Let's do a quick lookover of the RS/6000's I mentioned above; the S70 Advanced Server and the H70 in basic single processor configurations.
SPECint95: N.A. 144
SPECfp95: N.A. 182
OLTP Perf: 46.0 16.7
(N.A. denotes 'Not Available' - The S70AS does not have SPECint/SPECfp results publically available.)
How about handling the web?
In their max configurations.. the S70 Advanced Server with 12 RS64-II's at 262MHz achieves a SPECweb96 ops/sec score of an astounding 20,200.
The H70, with 4 processors, achievs an astounding score of 11,774. Now let's jump ship on the more 'typical' RS/6000's and look at where IBM will more than likely stick this processor first.
The legendary SP2, otherwise known as Deep Thought. Yes, that's right. Deep Thought is available for *retail* sale, and eats no less than 60 spaces on the top 500 supercomputer list, in it's many retail configurations.
A *single* Type 9076 Wide node with dual POWER3 processors running at just 200MHz achieves the unbelievable SPECint95 of 222 and SPECfp95 of 468.
Keep in mind this; these processors are running at just 200MHz. *DEAD* slow for you Intel weenies. Ancient technology, some would say.
Yet they achieve higher SPECint95 and SPECfp95 scores than pIII-Xeon 550's. By far. The single processor configuration achieves int95 of 111 and fp95 of 243. Now, cram 16 of those into a single computer known as the SP2, which is really just an active backplanar chassis. Realize the performance increase is a 'pure' curve; each wide node added is worth a SPECint95 score of 111 and a SPECfp95 score of 243. 16 of those give you an overall SPECint95 score of 1776 and an overall SPECfp95 score of 3888. That's 16 200MHz processors with 256M of memory per processor and 4M of L2.
IBM can do it, and deliver on it by the end of December if they wanted to! IBM knows what they're doing, and knows what they're saying. IBM doesn't do vaporware. They said OS/2 Warp 5 was going into beta months ago. Two weeks after they said that, I recieved my beta CDs. When they say they'll have a fix for an AIX problem within a week, you have it within a week.
IBM doesn't deliver vaporware; they deliver promises. Clouds with a silver lining, if you will, since this means that Motorola also gets access to this technology. (Assuming I understand their current pact correctly.) Who wants to jump the x86 ship with me now?
-RISCy Business | Rabid System Administrator and BOFH
your company here.
shelby != ford
That should be on the horizon for consumer type people soon, if it hasn't happened already in a manner of speaking. Right now things such as 3D now and other SIMD extensions are additional processing power and are quite close to having an additional processor on the same die. They accelerate a sub genus of instructions much like math coprocessors did in the 80's to early 90's. They've of course been assimilated into the main core for quite some time now as well.
If Moore's law holds out by 2010 we'll have approximately 8 times the number of transistors in a socket as we do presently. So instead of ~20 million it'll be around ~160 million. That's a lot of transistors. More massive onchip cache will be one of the first improvements and maybe a moderate bump in bus width. I say only a moderate increase because more density on a motherboard is expensive and isn't scaling at the same speed as circuit density. Chances are you'll see 2 or 4 way SMP on consumer processors instead. You also might see true system integration: RAM, ROM, CPU and graphics subsystems etc, this would be for what is now the sub 1000 dollar market.
First rule of responsible journalism: Don't provide free advertising by printing a press release as a real story.
/. itself) could do to salvage the situation is to print "IBM claims that..." before stories like this and track them all with hit/miss stats given. That way there would be less "free advertising" incentive because if they over-promised and under-delivered they'd be caught out.
Example: "The processor will be used in both the AS400 and RS/6000 server families, which are slated to hit the market in 2001."
In other words: "Even in our wildest dreams this product won't be available for at least 18 months and that's real time, not Internet time."
That's not an "exciting new product", that's a load of crap. I used to watch Beyond 2000 and other programs that "showcase new technology" until I realized that the promises of "you'll see it in 3-5 years" never came true. Same thing here.
What this fellow (not to mention
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