14 DAY TRIAL // IMB is expected to unveil the new Power6 processor on Tuesday, which "will be twice as fast as those of competitors such as Sun, Intel and AMD when it appears in 2007, according to the group," Chris Nuttall reports for The Financial Times.
This new chip represents a new approach, different from that of other microprocessor makers, which are manufacturing energy-efficient chips after the speed increase race gave birth to overheating problems. IBM said it has broken through the energy -heat barrier with the Power6, achieving speeds between 4 and 5 gigahertz, which it boasts is more than double the performance of the Itanium, Intel's next generation chip, which is planned at less than 2GHz. This new chip will give IBM an edge in the high-end server market, by being faster and still in the same 'power envelope' as its rivals."
Richard Doherty, analyst with Envisioneering, a consultancy, said IBM achieved frequencies of 6GHz in their labs. "It's our belief that this is going to be the fastest computing chip and family in the world for some time. A lot of people will be surprised by this. It will cause a lot of companies to go back to the drawing board," he said.
Many will raise an eyebrow over Apple's switch to Intel? To clarify, the Power6 is not the PowerPC 6, or G6. The G5 was a derivative of the Power4 processor. There was supposed to be a derivative of the Power5 that was supposed to be in the works in 2003, and here by now. There was supposed to be a G5 version that was cool enough and energy efficient enough to be usable in a laptop, but it never came.
The Power6 might be all that plus a bag of chips, but it is a high-end server chip, that will operate in the same 'power envelope' as other high-end server chips. It is not a desktop or portable friendly chip. The reasons that motivated Apple's move to Intel were sound, and nothing is changed. If you think Apple could have waited a little bit more and stay with the PowerPC processors, you have to think about the present. If this new chip will appear in 2007, and you add the time it would take to derive a PowerPC version, you are looking at 2009 at the very least. Even if IBM derived a PowerPC version by the time the Power6 comes out, that is still in 2007. What was Apple supposed to do until then?