IBM Cranks Up Its Server Chip

IBM plans to crank up the speed on its Power6 server chip to 5.0GHz, far higher than competing processors from Intel and Sun Microsystems.

Despite its high frequency, the chip will avoid overheating through its small, 65-nanometer process geometry, high-bandwidth buses running as fast as 75GB per second, and voltage thresholds as low as 0.8 volts, IBM said.

When it ships the chip in mid-2007, IBM will target users running powerful servers with two to 64 processors, said Brad McCredie, IBM's chief engineer for Power6. He shared details on the chip at the Fall Microprocessor Forum in San Jose, California.

Different Approach

By doubling the frequency of its current Power5 design, IBM is swimming against the current of recent chip designs that sacrifice frequency for power efficiency. Instead, IBM cut its power draw by making the chip more efficient, with improvements like computing floating point decimals in hardware instead of software, he said.

The company hopes the Power6 will help it reach new customers in commercial database and transaction processing, in addition to typical users of its Power5 chip in financial and high-performance computing such as airplane design and automotive crash simulation, McCredie said. To win that business, IBM will have to compete with chips like Intel's 'Montecito' Itanium 2 and Sun's high-end SPARC processors.

Server Competition

If this chip works as promised, IBM could be successful in that effort, analysts say. IBM is one of the few remaining alternatives to Intel in the market for 'big iron' servers used in high-end jobs like scientific computing, image processing, weather prediction and defense, said Jim Turley, principal analyst at Silicon Insider, in Pacific Grove, California.

IBM upgraded its current midrange Unix servers in February from 1.9GHz to 2.2GHz Power5+ processors, targeting users of large databases, ERP (enterprise resource planning) and CRM (customer relationship management). The company will ship several versions of the Power6 chip, ranging from 4.0GHz to 5.0GHz in frequency.