IBM's Power6 Processor - AfroChat - African American

Gorilla · April 10th, 2008, 02:20 PM

IBM Corp. began shipping high-end computers Tuesday built around the fastest chip on Earth, a microprocessor that can carry out up to 5 billion instructions per second, surpassing the speediest competing processors built by rivals like Intel or Sun Microsystems.

The new IBM processor, called the Power6, was designed to run big-ticket, water-cooled machines that drive corporations or tackle scientific problems, but slower versions of this same family of chips are already being used in inexpensive, consumer devices like the Nintendo Wii, Microsoft Xbox and Sony PlayStation.

Cranking up the speed is only one way to improve overall system performance, say chip experts from Intel and Sun, which have evolved different ways to coax more work from chips - and therefore stay competitive in the never-ending race to sell computers that do more and cost less.

But if a stopwatch were the only ranking system, 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.

Light would presumably have to travel more than a finger's length to get each task done on the slower processors from Intel and Sun - and at billions-of-cycles per second, slow is a bit of a misnomer.

Then why don't Intel and Sun just crank up the speed? Well, just as is the case with cars, the faster chips run, the hotter they get, and IBM has created water-cooling systems akin to the radiators in cars to keep its processors from overheating. Not doing so, Meyerson quipped, "results in setting fire to the user, which is bad."

Intel spokesman George Alfs said his company, which sells millions upon millions of processors for all sorts of stuff like laptops, where lugging around a water jug would be a chore, said there's no technical reason why Intel chips can't run faster.

In fact, Alfs said, sophisticated game enthusiasts buy water-cooling kits that they fit into desktop PCs, then use software tricks inside the Windows operating system to crank up their own speeds into the 5 gigahertz range.

"But that can void your warranty," Alfs said.

Sun spokesman Mark Richardson took umbrage at the focus on speed. "It's an easier marketing message to deliver to say that faster gigahertz means a faster processor," he said. His colleague, chip expert Fadi Azhari, explained how the Mountain View firm uses a different technical trick, called multithreading, to make a computer faster but not hotter.

Imagine a long line of airport passengers waiting for the ticket agent to check them in, Azhari said. The IBM speed trick would have that ticket agent working faster and faster - with maybe a blower overhead to cool the agent down. But multithreading would be like putting two or more ticket agents on duty, which is another less-heat-intensive approach to processing, he said.

Source:
IBM chip is fastest on Earth

Terminal Server · April 18th, 2008, 04:25 PM

The ever changing CPU computing power is amazing. But the average person will never need nor utilize this type of processing power. It's like loading 4 gig of RAM on your laptop so that you can create documents, surf the internet and send e-mail. Duhhhhh...???? Oh well, I'm sticking with AMD anyway......

s8loud · April 18th, 2008, 07:39 PM

While neat in and of itself, IMO this is one of those "yeah, so?" articles in that, as the article states, processor speed is only part of the performance equation in consumer computing. Nonetheless, I wouldn't mind seeing a demo.

Gorilla · April 18th, 2008, 10:00 PM

The design isnt aimed at personal computing. I wonder how interesting the architecture is though and how close to the rest of the Power Family. I heard for this one they've gone in-order processing with this one. I hope these land in the pSeries midframes.

Found an okay write up:
IBM RD 51-6 | IBM POWER6 microarchitecture

Still looking for something that lays out everything.

Terminal Server · April 18th, 2008, 11:20 PM

I'm sure these chips will serve a purpose for applications and situations that can utilize this increase in number crunching power and such. But to the average consumer, it will barely be noticed. It's like driving a $600,000 Lamborghini to work.....when you live four residential blocks away.

Gorilla · April 19th, 2008, 12:57 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Terminal Server

I'm sure these chips will serve a purpose for applications and situations that can utilize this increase in number crunching power and such. But to the average consumer, it will barely be noticed. It's like driving a $600,000 Lamborghini to work.....when you live four residential blocks away.

The design was never intended for consumer level computing.

Istlota · April 20th, 2008, 04:09 AM

For those of us who use computers to create music, there is never too much RAM and CPU speed. Modern DAWs [Digital Audio Workstations] allow you to stack as many audio plugins as your computer can handle and it is not unusual to group 3 or more plugins together for each of several tracks in a song that might have 16 or so tracks. For instance, maybe you want to group an old school Moog bass tone with a bass violin and a bassoon to get a deep, dark rumble at the bottom of a hip-hop beat.

I have read about movie soundtrack composers who had to rack together tens of computers to be able to synthesize a realistic sounding full orchestra.

Terminal Server · April 20th, 2008, 04:52 PM

I have read about movie soundtrack composers who had to rack together tens of computers to be able to synthesize a realistic sounding full orchestra.

Nice info. These super Intel chips would be the go to hardware for such applications. Question...Are you guys doing any thing with Linux? So many distros to choose from. I'm in the process of doing some experimentation. I tried using my laptop with the Live Cds/DVD's but I continue to have some hardware compatibility problems. Knoppix works like a charm but the others....well...not too much luck. I'll openly admit I'm very weak on the installation magic and recognition of the install failure indications. And I don't have a good source at this time to reference.

I did take one of my laptops and the disks to a Linux group meeting but they weren't much help. But then again, I had very little time since they were about to close out (they had to vacant the premise -very strict rules about user group usage of the schools class rooms) I'm going to get the CRU Data Ports (I have a stack of hard drives to experiment with) and try an workstation install instead. Any suggestions...????

Istlota · April 21st, 2008, 07:05 AM

Microsoft has gotten so larcenous with what they charge for a full version of Windows. It doesn't take a math major to figure out that MS is charging personal consumers way more for Windows OS than their cobbled together antiquated OS is worth. In light of that, I played around a bit with a few Linux distros [distributions] two or three years ago. But, I eventually had to give up that dream for the same reason you mentioned --- hardware compatibility which, specifically, means the lack of device drivers for Linux. All hardware comes with Windows drivers, and a lot comes with MAC drivers, but the support for other OSes is extremely limited. If some Linux hacker has not written a pseudo-generic driver that will recognize your hardware, and CRU Dataports has not written linux device drivers, you are probably out of luck.

I just took a quick look at CRU's support page, but the only driver I found there was for Win98. For everybody else, they say go to MS or Apple's web site for USB drivers. Not a good sign for you, my friend.

CRU-DataPort :: Technical Support - Downloads

Gorilla · April 21st, 2008, 03:13 PM

Linux hardware support has really come quite a long way. Tons of drivers come with most Linux distros by default, making the Linux hardware experience a lot nicer in a lot of respects. There are still some rough spots (sane scanners, some wifi card chipsets, etc). But overall, my hardware has been well behaved more so than in windows. I don't hunt around for hardware installation discs anymore or deal with all of those annoying wizards with multiple restarts. The only thing I've had problems with is a scanner type which is poorly supported. I purchased it without really doing proper research.

Linux is my main operating system. The only other box I use personally now is a macbook.

There is a pretty good outlook for the future. A lot of vendors are wising up and starting to produce drivers themselves or open up a bit so others can.

April 10th, 2008, 02:20 PM	#1 (permalink)
Gorilla Afro Resident Join Date: Jan 2005 Gender: Posts: 929 Thanks: 42 Thanked 92 Times in 67 Posts Rep Power: 26 Credits: 7,437	IBM's Power6 Processor IBM Corp. began shipping high-end computers Tuesday built around the fastest chip on Earth, a microprocessor that can carry out up to 5 billion instructions per second, surpassing the speediest competing processors built by rivals like Intel or Sun Microsystems. The new IBM processor, called the Power6, was designed to run big-ticket, water-cooled machines that drive corporations or tackle scientific problems, but slower versions of this same family of chips are already being used in inexpensive, consumer devices like the Nintendo Wii, Microsoft Xbox and Sony PlayStation. Cranking up the speed is only one way to improve overall system performance, say chip experts from Intel and Sun, which have evolved different ways to coax more work from chips - and therefore stay competitive in the never-ending race to sell computers that do more and cost less. But if a stopwatch were the only ranking system, 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. Light would presumably have to travel more than a finger's length to get each task done on the slower processors from Intel and Sun - and at billions-of-cycles per second, slow is a bit of a misnomer. Then why don't Intel and Sun just crank up the speed? Well, just as is the case with cars, the faster chips run, the hotter they get, and IBM has created water-cooling systems akin to the radiators in cars to keep its processors from overheating. Not doing so, Meyerson quipped, "results in setting fire to the user, which is bad." Intel spokesman George Alfs said his company, which sells millions upon millions of processors for all sorts of stuff like laptops, where lugging around a water jug would be a chore, said there's no technical reason why Intel chips can't run faster. In fact, Alfs said, sophisticated game enthusiasts buy water-cooling kits that they fit into desktop PCs, then use software tricks inside the Windows operating system to crank up their own speeds into the 5 gigahertz range. "But that can void your warranty," Alfs said. Sun spokesman Mark Richardson took umbrage at the focus on speed. "It's an easier marketing message to deliver to say that faster gigahertz means a faster processor," he said. His colleague, chip expert Fadi Azhari, explained how the Mountain View firm uses a different technical trick, called multithreading, to make a computer faster but not hotter. Imagine a long line of airport passengers waiting for the ticket agent to check them in, Azhari said. The IBM speed trick would have that ticket agent working faster and faster - with maybe a blower overhead to cool the agent down. But multithreading would be like putting two or more ticket agents on duty, which is another less-heat-intensive approach to processing, he said. Source: IBM chip is fastest on Earth

April 18th, 2008, 07:39 PM	#3 (permalink)
s8loud Afro Resident Resident Join Date: Nov 2007 Location: Los Angeles Gender: Posts: 159 Thanks: 0 Thanked 43 Times in 30 Posts Rep Power: 7 Credits: 1,036	While neat in and of itself, IMO this is one of those "yeah, so?" articles in that, as the article states, processor speed is only part of the performance equation in consumer computing. Nonetheless, I wouldn't mind seeing a demo. __________________ "The power of truth is final." - John Africa

April 18th, 2008, 10:00 PM	#4 (permalink)
Gorilla Afro Resident Join Date: Jan 2005 Gender: Posts: 929 Thanks: 42 Thanked 92 Times in 67 Posts Rep Power: 26 Credits: 7,437	The design isnt aimed at personal computing. I wonder how interesting the architecture is though and how close to the rest of the Power Family. I heard for this one they've gone in-order processing with this one. I hope these land in the pSeries midframes. Found an okay write up: IBM RD 51-6 \| IBM POWER6 microarchitecture Still looking for something that lays out everything. Last edited by Gorilla : April 18th, 2008 at 10:36 PM. Reason: adding link

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April 18th, 2008, 04:25 PM	#2 (permalink)
Terminal Server Banished Join Date: Jul 2007 Location: San Diego Gender: Posts: 219 Thanks: 0 Thanked 35 Times in 24 Posts Rep Power: 0 Credits: 1,358	The ever changing CPU computing power is amazing. But the average person will never need nor utilize this type of processing power. It's like loading 4 gig of RAM on your laptop so that you can create documents, surf the internet and send e-mail. Duhhhhh...???? Oh well, I'm sticking with AMD anyway......

April 18th, 2008, 11:20 PM	#5 (permalink)
Terminal Server Banished Join Date: Jul 2007 Location: San Diego Gender: Posts: 219 Thanks: 0 Thanked 35 Times in 24 Posts Rep Power: 0 Credits: 1,358	I'm sure these chips will serve a purpose for applications and situations that can utilize this increase in number crunching power and such. But to the average consumer, it will barely be noticed. It's like driving a $600,000 Lamborghini to work.....when you live four residential blocks away.

April 20th, 2008, 04:09 AM	#7 (permalink)
Istlota Afro Resident Join Date: Dec 2006 Location: Florida Gender: Posts: 810 Thanks: 109 Thanked 354 Times in 223 Posts Rep Power: 46 Credits: 6,241	For those of us who use computers to create music, there is never too much RAM and CPU speed. Modern DAWs [Digital Audio Workstations] allow you to stack as many audio plugins as your computer can handle and it is not unusual to group 3 or more plugins together for each of several tracks in a song that might have 16 or so tracks. For instance, maybe you want to group an old school Moog bass tone with a bass violin and a bassoon to get a deep, dark rumble at the bottom of a hip-hop beat. I have read about movie soundtrack composers who had to rack together tens of computers to be able to synthesize a realistic sounding full orchestra.

April 20th, 2008, 04:52 PM	#8 (permalink)
Terminal Server Banished Join Date: Jul 2007 Location: San Diego Gender: Posts: 219 Thanks: 0 Thanked 35 Times in 24 Posts Rep Power: 0 Credits: 1,358	I have read about movie soundtrack composers who had to rack together tens of computers to be able to synthesize a realistic sounding full orchestra. Nice info. These super Intel chips would be the go to hardware for such applications. Question...Are you guys doing any thing with Linux? So many distros to choose from. I'm in the process of doing some experimentation. I tried using my laptop with the Live Cds/DVD's but I continue to have some hardware compatibility problems. Knoppix works like a charm but the others....well...not too much luck. I'll openly admit I'm very weak on the installation magic and recognition of the install failure indications. And I don't have a good source at this time to reference. I did take one of my laptops and the disks to a Linux group meeting but they weren't much help. But then again, I had very little time since they were about to close out (they had to vacant the premise -very strict rules about user group usage of the schools class rooms) I'm going to get the CRU Data Ports (I have a stack of hard drives to experiment with) and try an workstation install instead. Any suggestions...????

April 21st, 2008, 07:05 AM	#9 (permalink)
Istlota Afro Resident Join Date: Dec 2006 Location: Florida Gender: Posts: 810 Thanks: 109 Thanked 354 Times in 223 Posts Rep Power: 46 Credits: 6,241	Microsoft has gotten so larcenous with what they charge for a full version of Windows. It doesn't take a math major to figure out that MS is charging personal consumers way more for Windows OS than their cobbled together antiquated OS is worth. In light of that, I played around a bit with a few Linux distros [distributions] two or three years ago. But, I eventually had to give up that dream for the same reason you mentioned --- hardware compatibility which, specifically, means the lack of device drivers for Linux. All hardware comes with Windows drivers, and a lot comes with MAC drivers, but the support for other OSes is extremely limited. If some Linux hacker has not written a pseudo-generic driver that will recognize your hardware, and CRU Dataports has not written linux device drivers, you are probably out of luck. I just took a quick look at CRU's support page, but the only driver I found there was for Win98. For everybody else, they say go to MS or Apple's web site for USB drivers. Not a good sign for you, my friend. CRU-DataPort :: Technical Support - Downloads

April 21st, 2008, 03:13 PM	#10 (permalink)
Gorilla Afro Resident Join Date: Jan 2005 Gender: Posts: 929 Thanks: 42 Thanked 92 Times in 67 Posts Rep Power: 26 Credits: 7,437	Linux hardware support has really come quite a long way. Tons of drivers come with most Linux distros by default, making the Linux hardware experience a lot nicer in a lot of respects. There are still some rough spots (sane scanners, some wifi card chipsets, etc). But overall, my hardware has been well behaved more so than in windows. I don't hunt around for hardware installation discs anymore or deal with all of those annoying wizards with multiple restarts. The only thing I've had problems with is a scanner type which is poorly supported. I purchased it without really doing proper research. Linux is my main operating system. The only other box I use personally now is a macbook. There is a pretty good outlook for the future. A lot of vendors are wising up and starting to produce drivers themselves or open up a bit so others can.