POWER6 is fastest micro yet
1 min read
IBM has launched what it claims is the fastest microprocessor yet built. The POWER6 chip is a 64bit dual core device running at 4.7GHz. According to IBM, the chip features 790million transistors and 8Mbyte of L2 cache.
The company says the chip is the first Unix microprocessor able to calculate decimal floating point arithmetic in hardware.
Built on IBM’s 65nm process, POWER6 chip is said to offer a ‘dramatic improvement’ in the way instructions are executed. Performance has been boosted by keeping the number of pipeline stages static, but making each stage faster, removing unnecessary work and doing more in parallel. As a result, execution time is halved or energy consumption reduced.
Meanwhile, circuits that can’t operate at low voltages have been segregated onto their own power supply rails, allowing power consumption for the rest of the chip to be reduced.
Processor clocks can be turned off dynamically when there is no useful work to be done and turned back on when there are instructions to be executed.
Power savings also accrue by turning parts of the memory not being used off and back on when needed.
