IBM Ships Fastest CPU on Earth 410
HockeyPuck writes "The 5-billion-instructions-per second Power6 processor from IBM would beat such rivals as the 3.73 gigahertz Pentium Extreme and the 2.4 gigahertz UltraSparc T2 from Sun. 'It's hard to make the average person understand just how fast this is,' said IBM Chief Technology Officer Bernard Meyerson, offering an example meant to explain his company's baby that still leaves the listener awed with the speediness of the two laggards. 'Hold your index finger out in front of your face,' Meyerson said in a telephone interview from IBM headquarters in New York. 'In less time than it would take a beam of light to travel from your knuckle to your fingertip, the new IBM chip would complete one task and start looking for the next, he said.'"
Re:It's the uses, stupid! (Score:5, Informative)
I'd guess anything that runs on the Power archicture. Here's a list of the various OSs [wikipedia.org] that have been supported on various iterations of the Power architecture at one time or another.
Re:Sour grapes or a real arguement (Score:1, Informative)
Yes it does (Score:1, Informative)
And no, it is not socket compatible to my understanding with the G5 (PowerPC 970).
YES! (Score:4, Informative)
(mod me down if you must - but I just HAD to...)
5GHz != 5 billion instructions/sec (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Worst analogy EVAR! (Score:2, Informative)
Re:It's the uses, stupid! (Score:3, Informative)
Linux
AIX
and i5/OS
Applications?
DB2, Oracle, SAP, and goodness knows how many super advanced and mega expensive packages for specific industries that the average person never knows about.
In other words it isn't wasted on Office, Vista, and other low end applications.
Re:I use the new sun chips at work (Score:2, Informative)
If the work you wish to do can be parallelized -- that is, broken into smaller pieces and then either reassembled when all the pieces are complete or, even, better, no assembly required -- and, more importanlty, your application is written to take advantage of parallelization then you will most certainly benefit from a CPU that can handle simultaneous threads.
OTOH, if your tasks can't be parallelized -- one task depends much on the other, than you should focus more on clock speed and less on simultaneous threads.
The bottom line is that the best CPU for you, as always, depends on what you're doing and how you're doing it. And there's usually more than one way to skin a cat, so
Re:Sour grapes or a real arguement (Score:5, Informative)
If, on the other hand what you're doing is not easily threaded then IBM probably have the upper hand. Say you're doing some mathematical analysis, where you have to do everything in sequence. IBM's faster processor can complete each stage quicker, moving on to the next part and delivering the result faster than a chip with more threads but slower speed.
Power6 architecture: it's different (Score:5, Informative)
Other than the lack of out-of-order, on paper it looks pretty strong. Dual core, lots of bandwidth, up to 7 IPC (5 in one thread, 2 in the other), big GHz, voltage & frequency slewing, and yes it has AltiVec.
p.s. No, it would not be good for Macs. POWER chips are all made for big iron.
Re:I use the new sun chips at work (Score:4, Informative)
Re:National Lampoon Radio Hour (Score:2, Informative)
A quick google search turns up a couple references, such as this one: http://www.nzlistener.co.nz/issue/3483/columnists/8092/great_greater_greatest.html;jsessionid=F86BAF04332CA229F91CA1A92B340560 [nzlistener.co.nz]
Re:Sour grapes or a real arguement (Score:5, Informative)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/POWER6 [wikipedia.org]
I think IBM is doing taking the NetBurst approach - a long pipeline to get to high frequencies. Plus it's a server chip only used in their servers so they can design for a much higher TDP than Intel or AMD and rely on water cooling.
I think this guy is spot on
http://aceshardware.freeforums.org/praising-the-power-6-design-t426.html [freeforums.org]
it will likely easily outperform the 65 nm SOI CMOS Power6 on the
benchmarks of most interest to buyers of business critical servers
despite running at less than half its clock frequency and having
less than half its socket level bandwidth. IBM might have created
a better product and closer competitor to Tukwila better if Power6
had been a quad design based on a Power5 core worked over to
improve performance/power but then its wouldn't have the mega-
giga for headlines in the WSJ and given IBM Micro a measure of
bragging rights to help justify its continued existence.
Re:I use the new sun chips at work (Score:3, Informative)
The T2000 (for example) has one die clocked at 1.2 or 1.4 Ghz. On that die are 8 processor cores. Each of these has 4 CMT threads (sort of what Intel used to call hyper-threading). 32 "virtual" cpus, 2U form factor. $6,995 base
The M-series, lets take the M5000 is built by Fujitsu. That has 8 processing elements, each clocked at 2.1 Ghz, with each dual-core. 16 "virtual" cpus. $47,000 base. 10U form factor.
The 5220 has 8 cores, 8 CMT per core, for 64 virtual cpus, 1.4 Ghz. $10,995 base. 2U,
The issue here is that all of this threading doesn't help "straight line" programs. The Power6 does much better (at 5 Ghz)! For "straight line" code, the best machine here (of SUNs offerings) is the M5000 -- machines (more or less) selected randomly from SUNs catalog. Only 16 virtual CPUs, but boy does it cook! (and, its 5 times the size, and 5 times the price).
Re:Worst analogy EVAR! (Score:3, Informative)
I do believe that's a (rather poorly executed) reference to Admiral Grace Hopper [wikipedia.org] and her "nanoseconds".
Re:I use the new sun chips at work (Score:1, Informative)
Re:Worst analogy EVAR! (Score:1, Informative)
Re:I use the new sun chips at work (Score:2, Informative)
But I think you are correct. Java has synchronisation primitives built into the language and the standard libraries have lots of concurrent save types (e.g. a Vector can be used like a thread safe ArrayList). Compared to other languages where the concurrency is a bolt on (sorry pthreads), this really does make it easy to thread an app and get the synchronisation correct. Sun's tutorial goes into more depth:
http://java.sun.com/docs/books/tutorial/essential/concurrency/locksync.html [sun.com]
Re:Worst analogy EVAR! (Score:2, Informative)
He should have said "width of your hand" instead. Mod -1 Poorly Chosen Analogy Due To Innumeracy
Re:Worst analogy EVAR! (Score:2, Informative)
I have found that "Inside the Machine" by Jon Stokes is a great book for explaining the inner workings of processors to non-hardware engineers. Not too heavy, but not all fluff either.
Re:Sour grapes or a real arguement (Score:3, Informative)
Financial institutions are required by law to perform financial calculations on a computer as they would on paper, so a chip that can do these calculations natively have a built-in market that is willing to pay the extra for the features. This is a special-purpose processor. There have been and will continue to be purpose-built calculating machines, so it's really not fair to say that IBM is simply trying to dazzle us to justify their existence. As long as no one else makes these machines, their existence is justified.
Re:Water cooled? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:And in 25 year's time... (Score:3, Informative)