IBM unleashes World's Fastest Chip

IBM today simultaneously launched the fastest microprocessor ever built and an ultra-powerful new computer server that leverages the chip’s many breakthroughs in energy conservation and virtualization technology. The new server is the first ever to hold all four major benchmark speed records for business and technical performance. At 4.7 GHz, the dual-core POWER6 processor doubles the speed of the previous generation POWER5 while using nearly the same amount of electricity to run and cool it. This means customers can use the new processor to either increase their performance by 100 percent or cut their power consumption virtually in half.

IBM’s new 2- to 16-core server also offers three times the performance per core of the HP Superdome machine, based on the key TPC-C benchmark. The processor speed of the POWER6 chip is nearly three times faster than the latest HP Itanium processor that runs HP’s server line. Even more impressive, the processor bandwidth of the POWER6 chip – 300 gigabytes per second -- could download the entire iTunes catalog in about 60 seconds – 30 times faster than HP’s Itanium.

But the new server offers more than just raw performance – it is the world’s most powerful midrange consolidation machine, containing special hardware and software that allows it to create many “virtual” servers on a single box.

IBM calculates that 30 SunFire v890s can be consolidated into a single rack of the new IBM machine, saving more than US$100,000 per year on energy costs. According to IDC, IBM has gained 10.4 points of UNIX revenue share in the past five years -- versus HP’s loss of 5.3 points and Sun’s loss of 1.4 points. IBM will use the new machine to target customers with less-efficient HP, Sun and Dell servers.

Benchmark Grand Slam

Demonstrating its remarkable versatility, the new IBM System p 570, running the POWER6 processor, claims the No.1 spots in the four most widely used performance benchmarks for Unix servers – SPECint2006 (measuring integer-calculating throughput common in business applications), SPECfp2006 (measuring floating point-calculating throughput required for scientific applications), SPECjbb2005 (measuring Java performance in business operations per second) and TPC-C (measuring transaction processing capability). This is the first time that a single system has owned all four categories. The new System p 570 now holds 25 benchmark records across a broad portfolio of business and technical applications.

The performance leadership is largely attributed the system’s balanced design. Unlike competing servers, IBM succeeded in scaling the new server’s processor performance and system design (cache sizes and bandwidth) in a balanced way. The POWER6 chip has a total cache size of 8MB per chip – four times the POWER5 chip – to keep pace with the awesome processor bandwidth. By contrast, many other servers concentrate mainly on processor performance, at the expense of the server’s ability to feed data to the chip at a rate that takes advantage of the processor’s speed.

“Like the victory of IBM’s Deep Blue chess-playing supercomputer 10 years ago this month, the debut of POWER6 processor-based systems proves that relentless innovation brings ‘impossible’ goals within reach,” said Bill Zeitler, senior vice president, IBM Systems and Technology Group. “The POWER6 processor forges blazing performance and energy conservation technologies into a single piece of silicon, driving unprecedented business value for our customers.”

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