http://www.osnews.com/story/19604/IBM_Smacks_Rivals_with_5_0GHz_Power6_Beast Exploring the Future of Computing en-us Copyright 2001-2009, David Adams adam+nospam@osnews.com Tue, 10 Nov 2009 10:46:59 GMT http://www.osnews.com/images/osnews.gif http://www.osnews.com http://osnews.com/thread?308921 http://osnews.com/thread?308921 Does this mean we now can play Crysis? Thu, 10 Apr 2008 00:49:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Bitterman) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?308926 http://osnews.com/thread?308926 Where is the 5Ghz Intel CPU?

Will Apple switch back and use Power6 CPU?

I can only imagine the cooling required for this CPU. Forget about the Macbook Air!! Thu, 10 Apr 2008 02:11:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (truckweb) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?308929 http://osnews.com/thread?308929 lol, thats what I was thinking of. I dont think apple will switch back, but it does look short sighted of them. Who knows though, maybe the chip is like a c7 running at 5Ghz, and isnt worth the time of day that a p4 at 4Ghz was worth. Thu, 10 Apr 2008 03:22:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (sc3252) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?308930 http://osnews.com/thread?308930 32 dual-core 5GHz procs. Wow. If only the architecture was x86, IBM would have been first-to-market with a truly Vista-capable system.

Maybe.

:DEdited 2008-04-10 04:01 UTC Thu, 10 Apr 2008 03:58:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (elsewhere) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?308931 http://osnews.com/thread?308931 Where one could put in up to 4 Boards in one Cube. I always like that idea of being able to expand your own cube.

Too bad we don't have such capabilities with a replaceable backplane in the consumer space. Thu, 10 Apr 2008 04:43:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (tyrione) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?308938 http://osnews.com/thread?308938 now there you go.... too bad they don't have a diagram of the system layout. Would be curious to see how the memory bandwidth of the beast works...

If course there is always the high density water cooled one.... that wouldn't be so bad... 256GB of ram would be enough for most things.... Thu, 10 Apr 2008 07:39:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (xophere) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?308939 http://osnews.com/thread?308939 As far as I know, the 64 core version will run @ 4.2 GHz. That is what I am told from IBM engineers. But I don't think anyone cares about some 800Mhz...after all that thing has hardware FPU, and will probably kick the ass of few other vendors. Thu, 10 Apr 2008 07:43:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (joshuah) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?308940 http://osnews.com/thread?308940 that is a very impressive machine, i' d like to play for a few: how much will cost?

on other hand i wonder if ibm plan to make a low cost low level server power6 based. Thu, 10 Apr 2008 08:13:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (gelosilente) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?308943 http://osnews.com/thread?308943 There is a Power 520 Express (entry level) server available running 1, 2 or 4 POWER6 processors, can be found at: http://www-03.ibm.com/systems/power/hardware/520/specs.html

Mind you they still cost an arm and a leg. Thu, 10 Apr 2008 09:06:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (SReilly) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?308956 http://osnews.com/thread?308956 How many cores does their Power 6 support? How much power does it draw? Intel had reached this speed 4 years ago but was still being embarrassed by AMD running at half the clock speed. Why does IBM think the game is still a ghz game? I am far more interested in this product: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rock_processor Thu, 10 Apr 2008 11:28:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Don T. Bothers) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?308957 http://osnews.com/thread?308957 I doubt apple is short-sighted, because probably Apple had roadmaps of this CPU before they switched to intel.

Don't people realize that IBM is not making desktop/laptop-oriented CPUs anymore? Did you noticed what kind of cooling has this CPU? Watercooling. Yeah, it's without doubt the best CPU you can choose for Apple's desktop and laptops. Thu, 10 Apr 2008 11:36:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (diegocg) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?308960 http://osnews.com/thread?308960 Well, Microsoft could use Virtual PC to run Vista on it. Thu, 10 Apr 2008 12:40:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Johann Chua) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?308967 http://osnews.com/thread?308967 They switched because it was no longer possible to make notebooks using the POWER series without melting the notebook. Thu, 10 Apr 2008 14:11:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (atriq) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?308968 http://osnews.com/thread?308968 the power architecture was screwing the apple laptops.... regardless of how good the architecture was itself, heat was spiraling out of control... THAT was why apple barely upped the ghz when everybody else seemed to.

If apple hadnt switched then I dont think they'd be doing nearly as well now as a company. Maybe its a shame they didnt keep the pros and xserves as PPC (shit I still love my ppc 1mb cache G4 cube)

After Apple announced the switch to go to intel and suggestions of the core2duo chips... IBM then announced the 2 core ppcs.. in an effort I believe to draw them back... but

What must have been irking apple however is that IBM was too busy chasing ALL 3 console manufacturers for business... compared to that Apple was just a 2nd rate small fry customer.

On hindsight, macs would still not run windows, and would still not have any decent games...

I really thought that once macs ran windows they would just become another high tier commodity platform (such as alienware and sony vaio) but one thing that seems to have prevailed is that people seem to far prefer using OSX and then windows on top of that, or at the most using Windows in a dual boot environment.

That is one reason why I dont think we'll see OSX on generic machines, and also the sting apple got last time they tried to license their os to 3rd parties. Thu, 10 Apr 2008 14:12:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Nossie) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?308982 http://osnews.com/thread?308982 IBM is not playing the "ghz game". If you knew anything about these systems you'd know that they put just as much, if not more, effort into designing a well-balanced, high I/O throughput platform to host the processor. The 5Ghz chip is just the cherry on top.

Yeah, "Rock" looks neat. Unfortunately, it's all hype at this point. Let me know when you can actually buy a server with one in it. Thu, 10 Apr 2008 15:23:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (chicklin) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?308983 http://osnews.com/thread?308983 ufff... no real loss. This (power6) would not run/it is not designed for Apple. So even if apple would be still using Power processors, they would not be able to use this one.

It seems however that soon to be released intel's Tukwila
will outperform Power6 even at much lower clock speed.
(reference: http://aceshardware.freeforums.org/praising-the-power-6-design-t426...
detailed (first his) post by Paul DeMone)
Not to mention compiler problems Thu, 10 Apr 2008 15:27:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (broch) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?308997 http://osnews.com/thread?308997 Even if Apple had stuck with IBM's CPUs, there would not have been Apple systems with Power6 CPUs (except by a big stretch possibly one of their server models). Just like it cannot be expected for a low end workstation to have a Sun T2 CPU in it. Power6 is for IBM's big iron. Thu, 10 Apr 2008 17:32:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (PunchCardGuy) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?308999 http://osnews.com/thread?308999 It seems however that soon to be released intel's Tukwila
will outperform Power6 even at much lower clock speed.
Unlikely. Itaniums are on par with top x86 parts.
Second SMT thread doubles performance of p6.
1 Power6 core = 2 x86 cores.

Not to mention compiler problems
Since when Power compilers become a problem?Edited 2008-04-10 17:40 UTC Thu, 10 Apr 2008 17:40:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (viton) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?309003 http://osnews.com/thread?309003 since IBM scarified out-of-order design for an in-order design, which will require re-compilation of software.
in-order execution requires very well tuned compilers.
So it does not mean that there is a problem with IBM compiler, but it means more work. Thu, 10 Apr 2008 18:12:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (broch) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?309009 http://osnews.com/thread?309009 Boy now I want to see how mac sells those xserver blades... like 2x performance like 4 x performance.. Go IBM.. Only if u can make an x86 emulator on that it would make hte world a bettter place for me to run vista or xp.. Cos I like Playing BattleField 2 ad I dont want to be a rocket scientist to compile binaries to run it. .. I will say i am lazy cos i want to play not build rockets.. hehehe

And hey what is that ... Hmm i guess Apple can now wonder
Hey one more thing what ever is happening to the cell! or is this cell!????Edited 2008-04-10 19:46 UTC Thu, 10 Apr 2008 19:45:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (ritesh_nair) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?309044 http://osnews.com/thread?309044 I dont know why I'm bothering but the POWER architecture was the bigger brother of the POWERPC (PPC) architecture used by Apple.

Lets put this in a perspective you might comprehend... the wii and xbox 360 use modified PPC architecture... still wanting to bitch about apple now? The PS3 uses the cell architecture which was also worked on by IBM.

Laughing at apple for not switching away from PPC is like laughing at HP for investing in Itanium.

Both are big iron processors... the main difference is that POWER is still respected ... and well, Intels Itanium sunk like the Titanic.Edited 2008-04-10 22:52 UTC Thu, 10 Apr 2008 22:50:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Nossie) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?309135 http://osnews.com/thread?309135 Ive seen Intel studies that shows a normal ordinary x86 server, idles 50-60% of their time under full load. That is due to cache misses. So, even under full load, it waits 50% of the time for data. This is a problem chip makers have struggled with for a long time; larger cache, komplex cache logic to prefetch data, etc. But this is a ugly truth no one speaks of. No one has been able to solve the problem. I expect IBM's power CPU to have the same problem, but more maginified because memory is too slow - much slower than such a fast CPU - the problem worsens, the ratio is larger than normal. Maybe the Power CPU works 40% of the time, resulting ~2GHz cpu speed full work.




SUN has solved this ancient problem with their new revolutionizing T1 Niagara CPU, they claim. T1 has 8 core and 64 threads and it has no complicated prefetch, very simple prefetch. When a thread stalls - which WILL happen no matter what you do, unless the CPU has esp - the T1 cpu switches to another thread in ONE cycle. No other CPU can switch thread in one cycle. That means T1 will continue to run another thread without waiting. This way it can run without idling at all (ive heard numbers on 5% idling). T1 does work 95% of it's cycles - outclassing faster CPU's on threaded work. If it is single threaded work, T1 sucks.

T1 works 95% of it's time at 1.4GHz resulting in ~1.4Ghz full work. Compare that to a Power CPU working full at 2GHz. That is not big difference, and IBM costs much much more (millions?) than Sun T1 for 10.000 USD(?). And, T1 beats Power cpu easily on some workloads. At a much lower price, and lower Wattage.Edited 2008-04-11 09:46 UTC Fri, 11 Apr 2008 09:44:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Kebabbert) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?309163 http://osnews.com/thread?309163 16 4.7GHz dual-cores at 600 Gflops = 37.5 Gflops / 4.7GHz dual-core. I don't know what the current Intels does? I found a post from 17 may 2005 regarding PS3 specs saying:

total floating point performance: 218 GFLOPS
(jmf Pentium 4~25-30 GFLOPS, pacman anm)

So if a P4 back when ran at 25-30 Gflops it's not very impressive. Maybe it doesn't scale perfectly but anyway. Fri, 11 Apr 2008 12:56:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (aliquis) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?309168 http://osnews.com/thread?309168 "On hindsight, macs would still not run windows, and would still not have any decent games... "

I don't want to run Windows on my mac, and macs still don't have any decent games, and ship with shitty gfx for gaming aswell. Fri, 11 Apr 2008 13:23:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (aliquis) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?309188 http://osnews.com/thread?309188 I can only imagine the cooling required for this CPU. Forget about the Macbook Air!!

According to internal Apple sources, the Macbook Air will be replaced by the Macbook Fan, with dual 5GHz Power6 processors. Fri, 11 Apr 2008 15:09:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (sb56637) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?309190 http://osnews.com/thread?309190 There are several partial solutions to the memory wall: massive caches (like 128MB), massive memory bandwidth (128 channels?), and SMT aka Hyperthreading. Fortunately, Power6 implements all of them. Thanks to a more balanced (and more expensive) system architecture, you can get more performance out of a Power6 system than an x86 system. Fri, 11 Apr 2008 15:40:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Wes Felter) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?309197 http://osnews.com/thread?309197 You mean Macbook Jet. The fans needed to cool that thing will require you to chase it around the room. Fri, 11 Apr 2008 16:05:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Arun) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?309289 http://osnews.com/thread?309289 still better than what you had before... which was sweet f--k all.

The windows thing is still there as an option... which, again, is more than you had before!

Personally I wish we could move away from x86 architecture in general... but I doubt microsofts iron hand and market share will allow that for a while yet.

Remember, this is not about me and you.. I dont even play games that much anymore. Its about general acceptance, and without that companies wont find it worth their while to do your geeky shit. Sat, 12 Apr 2008 11:16:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Nossie) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?309324 http://osnews.com/thread?309324 While the rest of the world is going multi-core, IBM realizes that this provides limited benefits to problems that aren't inherently parallelizable. Pumping the clock speed up and making efficient use of power is important. Sat, 12 Apr 2008 17:22:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (rdean400) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?309328 http://osnews.com/thread?309328 Huh? I hope you're joking...

AFAIK Virtual PC is incapable of running under Unix - and even if it did, the performance penalty of emulating x86/x86_64 on Power would have been prohibiting.

- Gilboa Sat, 12 Apr 2008 17:44:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (gilboa) Comments