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The 5GHz "G6" CPU...

Lord Blackadder

Lord Blackadder

macrumors P6
Original poster
May 7, 2004
15,682
5,514
Sod off
...That might have been; IBM released some info on the POWER6 CPU this week. These days Intel is adding cores to increase performance, but IBM has instead doubled the clockspeed over the 970 CPUs...kind of. Not quite 5GHz but well over four according to the article.

I'm actually very happy with the Intel transition - Intel is much better prepared to serve the PC market, whereas the POWER architecture was a server chip first and a Mac CPU second. Apple made the right choice by going with x86. Still, it's interesting to follow Apple's former chip supplier. The POWER architecture is still far from dead.
 
You're right. It is interesting. A lot of money goes into the development of these chips... but do IBM make as much money from them? Is the POWER server market big? If so, which sector (government?).
 
Isn't the 970 (G5) based on the POWER4 processor?

The the "G6" was going to come from the POWER5, the POWER6 was a long way off.

What happened to the POWER5?
 
Chundles said:
Isn't the 970 (G5) based on the POWER4 processor?

The the "G6" was going to come from the POWER5, the POWER6 was a long way off.

What happened to the POWER5?
Click to expand...

Yes, yep, and it seems to be in their p servers and some of the intellistations (POWER5 and POWER5+).
 
I know that "G5" chip production overlapped with POWER5, even though the "G5" was originally based on the POWER4. But the POWER5 was dual core. I think the dual-core 970GX "G5" is a POWER5 chip. But don't quote me there. ;)
 
everyone is talking more speed, but did you ever wonder why intel moved just about everything over to dual core?

2 1GHZ processors, are faster the 1 2GHZ processor, because they can multitask better!

Not to mention, a lot of your speed is from the speed of your HDD!

IBM needs to work on the heat issues, and start moving over to multi (core)processors, not more speed!
 
FF_productions said:
How much cooling would be required in a 5 ghz G6?
Click to expand...

Liquid nitrogen me thinks. ;) :D


FF_productions said:
How is it possible that they suddenly have jumped up to such a high clock speed when they couldn't deliver 3 ghz only a year or 2 ago?
Click to expand...

Good question, I would imagine that it would have something to do with the Power6's architecture- much like how the architecture of the Core 2 Duo allows it to run much cooler than say the Pentium D. :)
 
Me1000 said:
2 1GHZ processors, are faster the 1 2GHZ processor, because they can multitask better!
Click to expand...

Er, no. A single 2GHz processor is typically quite a bit faster than 2 1GHz processors. Multi-threading is complex and outside of specialized benchmarks you almost never get anything like the full potential of both CPUs at once. (e.g., when Blender went multi-threaded, its performance went up 50%, not 100%.) The overhead for multitasking doesn't amount to much, and adding more CPU cores doesn't do a thing to alleviate that anyway.

The primary reason for going multiple cores is because of hitting a wall on increasing speed. That's what Apple did when G4s weren't getting any faster back in the day. That's what Intel is doing too. The significantly increased complexity of multi-threading compared to the smaller gains you get by doing so, not to mention greater expense, means that it's a less desirable path than simply increasing the speed of a single core.

However, the laws of physics being what they are (immutable ;) ), you do what you have to when you reach the point of not being able to pump up the MHz any more (at least without serious downsides like massive amounts of heat). Let's not try spinning that into something "better" though.

Not to mention, a lot of your speed is from the speed of your HDD!
Click to expand...

Er, no. That's only an issue for launching programs or if you're running out of memory and are constantly swapping to the HDD.

--Eric
 
SpaceMagic said:
You're right. It is interesting. A lot of money goes into the development of these chips... but do IBM make as much money from them? Is the POWER server market big? If so, which sector (government?).
Click to expand...

Here is your answer: http://search400.techtarget.com/originalContent/0,289142,sid3_gci1131804,00.html

A bit old, but still fairly new. Total unix revenue was $4.2bn for Q2/05 with IBM taking 31% of that. So in terms of IBM Hardware UNIX revenues (PSeries), it was $1.3bn/qtr. It would be higher this year since IBM just announced a 10% increase in their pSeries line sales compared to last year.

IBM also uses POWER chips in some of their Linux servers as well as their Entire AS/400 nee iSeries servers (and storage servers as well).

All told, I would estimate approx $7-8bn sales from IBM Power based servers per year, just for hardware. Of course, there's also the related consulting and software IBM makes associated with these sales ..
 
Lord Blackadder said:
I know that "G5" chip production overlapped with POWER5, even though the "G5" was originally based on the POWER4. But the POWER5 was dual core. I think the dual-core 970GX "G5" is a POWER5 chip. But don't quote me there. ;)
Click to expand...

Nope, the dual core 970 (970MP) is not a POWER5 chip.

Main changes from Power4 -> 5 was:
- Reduced memory latency through use of on-die memory controller
- Increased memory and cache bandwidths
- Introduction of SMT (this did actually increase performance by ~30%, unlike Intel's Hyperthreading).

The 970MP does not have any of these features
 
FF_productions said:
How much cooling would be required in a 5 ghz G6?

How is it possible that they suddenly have jumped up to such a high clock speed when they couldn't deliver 3 ghz only a year or 2 ago?
Click to expand...

That's my thought... wasn't the main issue with the G5 that it required massive amounts of cooling, and that's why they never got it into a laptop. So if you double its clockspeed, won't that require far more cooling than even the original G5?
 
comictimes said:
That's my thought... wasn't the main issue with the G5 that it required massive amounts of cooling, and that's why they never got it into a laptop. So if you double its clockspeed, won't that require far more cooling than even the original G5?
Click to expand...

The article mentions Power6 will be in the same thermal envelope as Power5+ devices (not G5), despite doubling the clock speed.
 
FF_productions said:
How much cooling would be required in a 5 ghz G6?

How is it possible that they suddenly have jumped up to such a high clock speed when they couldn't deliver 3 ghz only a year or 2 ago?
Click to expand...

IBM recently clocked a processor to something like 500Ghz, but that was at around -270 degrees celcius:eek:
 
Me1000 said:
2 1GHZ processors, are faster the 1 2GHZ processor, because they can multitask better!
Click to expand...
the last time i checked, that statement is false, please someone correct me if i'm wrong and post a link

2 of 1 GHz processors is much slower than 1 of 2GHz processor, 2 of 1GHz processors have speed of maybe 1.6~1.7 of 1GHz processor... which means assuming a 2GHz processor is 2 times faster than the a 1GHz processor, 2 of 1GHz processors is about .8 of a 2GHz processor

and that is provided a given application can utilize more than 1 processor. most apps cannot do that.

the only reason people go for more than 1 processor is because achieving higher clock speed is more difficult than adding another core
but 2 GHz processor does produce more than 2x of than 1GHz processor under similar condition

EDIT: i guess i'm a bit late :D
 
FF_productions said:
How is it possible that they suddenly have jumped up to such a high clock speed when they couldn't deliver 3 ghz only a year or 2 ago?
Click to expand...

I'm still looking for an intelligent detailed answer to this.

My wild guess is that it does much less work per clock (shorter pipelines) and less branch prediction (creating wasted work/ heat like the P4) than the G5.

But then I'm not a chip expert.

EDIT: Wikipedia is your friend:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/POWER5
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/POWER6
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/POWER7

Seems I was right on the pipeline thing, at least for the POWER5.

Can anyone else interpret more from the links?
 
dextertangocci said:
IBM recently clocked a processor to something like 500Ghz, but that was at around -270 degrees celcius:eek:
Click to expand...
Umm, no, that was a single transisitor. They would need to add a few hundred million more to make it a processor
 
People tend to forget that IBM also has the CELL processor. And no, it's not a specialized processor, and no it's not only for consoles.

http://www.lbl.gov/Science-Articles/Archive/sabl/2006/Jul/CellProcessorPotential.pdf
http://www.blachford.info/computer/Cell/Cell0_v2.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cell_(microprocessor)

Cell is very power efficient compared to the performance it can generate, it does require a whoel new approach to programming but we are moving into multicore direction anyway so it won't be such a problem in the near future. Also of interesting note is the article I found (http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx?i=2379&p=12) about how Intel will produce a Cell-like processor in .... 2010-2012. Again, advanced/superior technology ahead of it's time that will probably get swallowed by the marketing power of Intel.
 
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