February 7, 2006
IBM said today its upcoming Power6 microprocessor chips will run at very fast
speeds and are directly aimed at the server market. The new Power6 CPU chips are
also designed to run cooler, while saving energy at the same time.
For many years, microprocessor manufacturers have improved computer performance
by shrinking the size of transistors, squeezing more of them into smaller spaces
and increasing the speed at which they process instructions.
However, the benefits have since diminished as the chips' power requirements
and temperatures have risen accordingly.
To get around the problem, the semiconductor
industry has resorted to building two or more computing engines known as "cores" on
a single chip, while at the same time reducing the clock speed to prevent a silicon
meltdown.
As a result, performance does increase — but it does not double, even with two
computing cores.
IBM's upcoming Power6, which is multicore and designed for higher-end servers
running the Unix operating system, was crafted from the ground up to run fast without
major losses in power efficiency, said Bernard Meyerson, chief technologist of
IBM's Systems and Technology Group.
"In Power6, we basically combined everything we could (throw) at it in terms of fundamental atoms and molecules all the way out to what we knew would be the software that would run on top of that system," he said.
Power6 is expected to run between 4 and 5 gigahertz. Intel Corp.'s Itanium 2 server processor today tops out at 1.66 gigahertz. The Pentium 4 for desktops currently reaches speeds of 3.8 gigahertz.
"Despite the speeds, it will have a lower power density than in some chips found in today's desktops," Meyerson said.
Details of the chip, which is scheduled to be available next year, were being presented at the International Solid-State Circuits Conference in San Francisco. The conference runs through Friday.
Source: MSNBC
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