IBM finally took the wraps off its much anticipated Power6 microprocessor, which company executives said will double the clock speed of its current Power5 chip, without stretching the power envelope. The Power6 processor, unveiled at an event on May 21 in London, is a dual-core chip with a top clock speed of 4.7GHz, double the 2.3GHz of the Power5+ processors. The new chip also includes 8MB of L2 cache - four times as large as the current Power5 offering - and an internal bandwidth of 300GB per second. Ars' John 'Hannibal' Stokes obviously also has his say.
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Member since:2007-04-17
"these are not a high performance parts."
This is completely misunderstanding of argument and purpose of those chips. Those cpus are excellent performers. Not in absolute speed of code when compared to something like Power6. But at problems they solve and within constraints of usage of those cpus (limited design budget, low power budget and amount of transistors, and cheaper to purchase than shoelace) it is impossible to design x86 chip (or any CISC for that matter) capable of delivering even comparable amount of performances. So there are usages where risc clearly brings better performances. Thats the point.
"Not everything, but to all appearances (unfortunately) high-performance ARMs will be kicked out of complex gadgets in a matter of several years."
I agree. There will be one architecture to rule them all. 
Edited 2007-05-23 21:54
Member since:2005-08-09
This is completely misunderstanding of argument and purpose of those chips.
I know, but my original statement only apply to PPC and SPARC as the last survived top-performance RISCs.
But at problems they solve and within constraints of usage of those cpus
True, but that doesn't mean ARM can replace, say, Power970.
ARM is not a processor of that caliber 
Edited 2007-05-23 22:10
Member since:2005-07-06
"Not everything, but to all appearances (unfortunately) high-performance ARMs will be kicked out of complex gadgets in a matter of several years."
ARM processors sell in quantities which dwarf the x86 world, I don't think it's ARM which is likely to get kicked out of anything. x86 processors rule the desktop world and part of the server world but they don't even count in the embedded world.
I agree. There will be one architecture to rule them all.
That's looking less and less likely, while x86 did manage to kill of some of the RISC competition the opposite is now happening with very high performance exotic processors appearing (GPUs, Cell, Niagara), all of which are RISC and all are in-order. The day of a architecture type ruling everything is coming to an end.
Member since:
2005-08-09
SuperH, ARM Thumb or MIPS-16
These are not a high performance parts.
I like ARM and actually i have some ARM7 asm coding experince.
But even if you take more common RISC designs
ARM is the most common RISC design =)
There are only 1.5 "big" RISCs left - Power and SPARC.
X86 is king of hill. One day everything else will be based around it.
Not everything, but to all appearances (unfortunately) high-performance ARMs will be kicked out of complex gadgets in a matter of several years.