IBM’s “green” PowerPC Power6 processor launched
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IBM unvieled its Power6, part of the famed PowerPC range of processors. IBM’s claim includes that it is “green”, which in IBMspeak means it consumes only as much power as a normal processor. Also, they claim it is the fastest processor upto date, upto twice as much faster as its predecessor.
The Power6 has a speed of 4.7 GHz, which is considered a landmark by many. Sometime back, when gigahertz race was the in-thing, 4GHz was considered the holy grail. Now, PowerPC has crossed it comfortably, with a multi-core processor!
For IBM, the “green” identity of Power6 is very important. They want to be the leader in the segment.
Power6 has 8MB Level2 cache, nearly 800 million transistors crammed into a slab of silicon. It is constructed using the latest process, ie. 65nm. The available bandwidth of the processor is nearly 300GB per second.
Statistically, Power6 is a mammoth. However, when it comes to real world tests, its performance will depend largely on the operating system and hardware’s ability to feed the mammoth constantly, and bring out optimum performance.
IBM aims to bring Power6 to market in about two-weeks time.
Poor Apple
Apple Inc. must be feeling pretty silly now. Some time back, Apple had famously ditched their traditional processor provider, IBM, to jump aboard the Intel bandwagon, which had launched its Core2Duo range of processors. Core2Duo offered performance and monetary benefits over IBM’s PowerPC range, then.
IBM soon hit back with the Cell BroadBand processor, popular for its inclusion in Sony’s PlayStation 3 console. Experts had predicted that Apple must be resenting over its decision to ditch IBM.
And to add insult to injury, IBM has just launched the world’s fastest processor. Pity, pity, Apple 
