“IBM will unveil a new processor on Tuesday that will be twice as fast as those of competitors such as Sun, Intel and AMD when it appears in 2007, according to the group,” Chris Nuttall reports for The Financial Times. “IBM’s Power6 chip is a radical departure from the trend among microprocessor makers to produce more energy-efficient chips after their race to increase speeds created overheating problems. IBM said it had broken through energy and heat barriers with the Power6 to achieve speeds of between 4 and 5 gigahertz – more than double the performance of the next generation of Intel’s Itanium chip, planned at less than 2GHz. The processor will give IBM an edge in the high-end server market, operating faster in the same ‘power envelope’ as its rivals.”
“Richard Doherty, analyst with Envisioneering, a consultancy, said IBM achieved frequencies of 6GHz in their labs. ‘It’s our belief that this is going to be the fastest computing chip and family in the world for some time. A lot of people will be surprised by this. It will cause a lot of companies to go back to the drawing board,’ he said. IBM will make its disclosures about the Power6 at the International Solid State Circuits Conference in San Francisco,” Nuttall reports.
Full article here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews reader “Karl” for the link.]
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apple must have known this was coming so it probably isn’t as good as it would appear or they wouldn’t have done the intelswitch
Let the second-guessing….commence!
MW: “hot” As in, how hot do these things get? And I can I use them as a replacement for my Foreman Grill?
In other news, Steve was quoted today in regard to the Intel switch after hearing this news: “Ooops!”
Hmmm, implications for Apple…? Perhaps those universal binaries will be good to have around for a while!
If this is true, did SJ know before he jumped ship?
Hmmmm…forgive me if I’m a bit dubious IBM, but you see, we’re still waiting on that mythical 3 ghz G5 that we were promised back in 2003. When you deliver that, I’ll be a lot more interested in what you have coming in 2007.
Don’t be so sure, Emil. This is awhile after Steve J. made the announcement that Apple was switching.
thats whats so cool about universal binary and the route aple has taken, it can pretty much play all processor manufacturers against each other, its just broadening its horizons
I wonder if Apple will keep the IBM processors for its servers.
IBM make very fast processors, but historically their idea of “energy efficient” varies from that held by other manufactureres.
yeah, Apple actually has the best of both worlds nw with the universal binaries, theoretically they could use Intell for all the consumer level machines and use IBM for the pro level. That would be cool.
This is all wonderful for IBM, I’m still waiting for the Power 5 “lite” for the mac…. and waiting….and waiting…zzzzzzzz z zzzzz zzzzzzzzzz
Wonder if Steve is making up some new bad words?
Too bad the f#$@ers couldn’t have done this eight or nine months ago…
..and Universal Apps give Apple the ability to switch back to Power6s as soon as they’re released.
Because an Xbox360 spanking a Mac Pro is just wrong on so many levels.
Promises and $1.07 will buy a cup of coffee.
Perhaps the Quad G5 will now become the Octo G6….
It’ll be so slick that it’ll be renamed to “OctoPussy”
Put dat in your pipe and smoke it!
PowerBook G6!
Woo Hoo!
What if Apple decides to use BOTH platforms???
Keeps their options wide open.
UB’s give Apple plenty of leverage.
“The Power6 Series are slated to also b the hottest processors on earth for quite some time. ‘We’ve tested it in our labs,’ Dhoerty says, ‘and found that just one of these processors will generate enough heat to simulate earth’s core temperature, and possibly even surpass that!'”
SJ said they’ve seen IBM’s roadmap for the next few years (keyword: years), si I think he knew that they were going to go for this already, but didn’t because he was already unsatisfied with them.
It’s a very hot server chip.
All Universal apps run natively on Intel and PowerPC chips, so if there were a cool desktop version of the Power6, which there isn’t, Apple could easily use it if they choose to.
Apple with Universal apps can have the best of both worlds.
Lay off the FUD.
This is the Power architecture that PowerPC follows. I have thought for years that Apple should have been making servers from the Power4 and Power5 architectures. I believe apple should continue to make servers based on PowerPC and even Power CPU’s to get the performance and to force people to keep making universal binaries so they always have the choice to move back and forth as market conditions warrant it.
4, 5 and 6Ghz are all more than 3Ghz right?
colour me skeptical.
So?
This changes nothing about the Intel switch. Apple needs an ENTIRE family of chips for its computers, not ONE big server chip. In order for Apple to be able to use these chips, IBM would have to develop many different variations with different power consumption/ performance ratios. As history has shown us, IBM likes to develop single designs (like the xBox CPU and then manufacture them in large quantities. They are not interested in spending a lot of R&D to develop some chips which will only see limited use throughout their lifespan. If Apple wanted a family of chips based on this chip, the would have to contribute heavily in the cost of development. Also, how long would it be before IBM would have both cosumer and professional derivatives ready based on the Power6 design? Would you be willing to wait that long and see your friends with powerful processors while you are still stuck with aging G5’s, which will never reach 3 Ghz anyhow? Would IBM be able to turn this server chip properly into dedicated consumer chips and not like that stopgap approach that they used for the G5? Too many questions, too few answers. Both Intel and AMD offer consumer-oriented chips for various uses, so this still seems to me a logical choice. Whether Steve knew is a different matter, I do not know what the impact of these chips would be on the so-called performance per watt graph. In any case, I don’t think it will be for long before Intel and AMD either license this technology, come up with something similar or develop something else that does the same thing. Now the barrier has been broken, we might see new chips in the future that once again climb the ladder of Mhz speed without losing performance as much as the Pentium IV did.
who cares aboot mhz ?
it’s multi-core that matters now
i’d rather have a quad core intel @ 2 ghz that’s virtually silent and fanless than a overheating G6 @ 5 ghz , that needs a radiator from a car to cool it down
ibm are crap , good riddance , intel are the way forward
GHz ≠ performance
IBM POWER ≠ PowerPC
Server ≠ desktop
IBM’s server and gaming chips will go on to great things, but the desktop market was too small for them to bother with. They followed the money, and are no longer relevant to us.