IBM's power6 65nm cpu has been supposedly going above 5ghz! The previous power5 core with 90nm using the same technology as amd couldn't get only half those speeds. According to overclockers.com, this could mean big news for amd, and that they might actually have a shot at beating conroe (amd's value chip @ 5ghz vs e6300 @ 3.5ghz, you do the math)

Here is the link:
http://www.overclockers.com/tips01085/

Any thoughts?

Seems like a whole lotta "what-if" to me. While AMD amd IBM share the SOI technology, I'm sure IBM kept a few aces up their core architectural sleeve to push their chip tp 5+GHz. Doubt that AMD could hit 5GHz given the differences between their uArch and the Power uArch; although I'd love to see them try. It certainly explores some possibilities for AMD and SOI. Interesting find!

Happy New Year!

well see, if amd does go with it, they will aplly it to k8l, their best arch they are boasting about, the current 65nm will at best give a tiny bit more oc than the 90nm, they will just run cooler.

The thing is, amd has to find a way to keep their old performance per clock, but also find a way to get their cpus up to 5ghz to compete with intel. Even if the manage to get a cpu to run @ 2ghz that beats the e6600, if they can only get that cpu to 3/3.4ghz maz, they won't be able to compete with an extreme or e6700 running @ 5ghz. So I think amd really has no choice, but to go IBM's way. I think the main problem comes with ht instead of fsb. It allows performance per clock, but not high clocks unless they find a better arch that isn't solely based off ht.

Sounds like a nice chip to get your hands on.
I don’t know about the architecture but will research a little to further.
As for competing with core2??
Who knows at this point in time? It may just be a very good dual core chip more compatible with the Intel D 9XXX with better thermals.
At 5GHz that would stand a chance beating the E6300 but like I said the architecture is unknown to me.
Maybe jumping jack will shed some light on the subject

Pentium d 9xx? No, they were killed even by the 939 athlons

I agree that we will have to wait a bit on this to truly see how things perform. If amd can get performance per clock back, then I am definately buying one of those at any cost. If I can replacing my 4000 with a cpu that runs @ 2ghz, but can out perform most conroes except the extreme and e6700 and run at 5ghz for only a few hundred, that's the chip for me

I hope you do get this chip.
I know you will do a follow up to show its potential.

Happy New Year

I think the information is unfounded and has little merit.

From an actual report where they tested it they had major problems overclocking the x2 4800 @ 2.5 ghz more than 2.838GHz at 1.5625V!

Look under the notes section

http://www.firingsquad.com/hardwar [...] page11.asp

heres a link with a little more info
http://realworldtech.com/page.cfm? [...] 1606194731

No, you have it all wrong, of course the brisbanes are going to perform horribly, they are a new test subject for amd same way the preslers failed. I think that this technology will be probably applied to k8l, as there is no way they can revise the brisbanes in time for the actual release in stores

Whereas this sounds very promising, this kind of announcement is usually (a bit) sugar-coated.

Here's a quote from IBM on this:

The link to the article from IBM: (dated 10-18-2006)
Archaeology 101: Digging into the POWER6

After reading the link I provided I don’t think this is a plug in for you my friend
I do remember reading about this now but didn’t pay attention to its function in the mainstream marketplace

It seems like apples to oranges. The power6 is a non x86 server chip, wonder how much is due to the lack of x86 extensions.
What I think is rather interesting is the move to AMDs socket for the power7 chips. If AMD shares this socket with there decktop pc will may be able to run power7[ others have singed on to like sun] and k10 side by side in a dual socket mobo.
http://www.amd.com/us-en/Corporate [...] 80,00.html
It's stuff like this that will keep AMD around even if Intel has the best desktop cpu.

No According to me this it's difficult for Amd reaching 5 ghz now as the frequency that a processor can reach is highly dependent on it's architecture , the higher the speed the longer the pipeline has to be and the longer the processor pipeline become the diffcult it is to control its efficiency.

Both the intel core and the current Amd k8 base micro architectures are nt designed to reach very high clock speed for a five ghz chip on will have to use an entirely different design approch i don't see atleast Amd reching 5 Ghz for now cause the k8l is just an incremental upgrade over the current k8 design.

If IBM announces such a chip the power 6 architecture must have been designed for that.

AMD don't sell PowerPC based CPU's, they sell AMD K8 and K8L based micro-architecture ones.

The patents involved could be licenced to Intel, AMD, and others though.

Expect consumer CPUs to sit between 2 and 3.6 GHz for quite some time though, it is far more performance / die space effective to make an architecture as wide as it is long [finding the optimal square], instead of making the pipeline as long as possible.


Heck, even Apple don't sell PowerPC based machines anymore either. :?


IBM will be using these chips to regain lost market share in the heavy iron space before they share any secrets.

Their 'trick' only works when the core sizes are very small and efficient (transistor count wise), which PowerPC and IA-64 share, especially so at advanced 65nm or 45nm (or smaller) die sizes.

The 2nd advantage to this is as the cores are smaller, you can fit more on a chip, and/or have more room left over for cache or other features.

It is extremely unlikely that a x86/x64 (AMD64) processor core would be able to benefit from this technology - they are simply to large/complex a core.

What's better ?
- Quad-core AMD64 K8/K8L at X MHz
- Quad-core Xeon 5300 at 78% of X MHz
- 6 to 12** core PowerPC / IA-64 at 200% (double) X MHz,
**(with more cache if the core count is lower)

whatever, you guys seem to shut my idea down