Wednesday, February 15, 2006

What is in IBM's new P6

There is a new hype about IBM's P6. Recently we were discussing about why Industrial Automation controllers are not catching up microprocessor technology updates.

So following is the update that ISA published about IBM's P6

For years, chipmakers have improved computer performance by shrinking the size of transistors, squeezing more of them into smaller spaces, and ratcheting up the speed at which they process instructions. Recently, the benefits have diminished as the chips’ power requirements and temperatures have risen.

To get around the problem, the industry has resorted to building two or more computing engines known as "cores" on a single chip and throttling back 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 claims its 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.

Power6 is expected to run somewhere between four and five gigahertz.

Can someone focus on it and post what is special with IBM's P6

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