IBM cranks up speed of Power6 to 5.0GHz
IBM plans to crank up the speed on its Power6 server chip to 5.0GHz, far higher than competing processors from Intel and Sun Microsystems. Despite its high frequency, the chip will avoid overheating through its small, 65-nanometer process geometry, high-bandwidth buses running as fast as 75GBps, and voltage thresholds as low as 0.8 volts, IBM said.
When it ships the chip in mid-2007, IBM will target users running powerful servers with two to 64 processors, said Brad McCredie, IBM’s chief engineer for Power6. He shared details on the chip at the Fall Microprocessor Forum in San Jose, California. The company hopes the Power6 will help it reach new customers in commercial database and transaction processing, in addition to typical users of its Power5 chip in financial and high-performance computing such as airplane design and automotive crash simulation, McCredie said. To win that business, IBM will have to compete with chips like Intel’s “Montecito” Itanium 2 and Sun’s high-end Sparc processors.
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