Yes, that's true IBM unveal the most powerfull server processor ever made!

It's proven by 25 processor and application benchmarks in which Power 6 really really shines. Let's say outperforms everything else.

So, we've got in Power Architecture:
- The most powerful server processor ( Power6 )
- The most powerful processor for embedded devices (Freescale MPC8xxx)
- The most efficient processor for portable device/computer ( PWRFiscient processors)
- The most powerful processor for games(Cell)
- A very efficient SOC for thin client(EFIKA)
- And so many great stuff based on this wonderful ISA and architecture.

And... style no midrange Power desktop machine!! :evil:

What's the problem ?

The only problem is price. Otherwise you will not tell you don't have any power desktop machine choice, but would go and purchase one of these:

http://www-03.ibm.com/servers/intellistation/power/

Two two-cores P5+ isn't it nice? :-)

Karel

Hi Christian, AMCC just came out with the Titan. Perhaps, the answer is there.

We will post more here later.

R&B 8)

_________________
http://bbrv.blogspot.com

yes, the Titan looks nice, and should be less expensive than the PA Semi chip. A solid base for a Pegasos sequel ?

Yes, Titan is nice, but it's PPC 440 compatible, which might also means no AltiVec. Woulnd't this be a show-stopper for some AltiVec folks here? Otherwise I consider this to be great network equipment processor. 5W power consumption in this power range is really excellent!

Karel

Yes, those machines are really great. But, it doesn't look like something I could call a mid-range desktop machine. It looks like high-end machine.

But, why it there still no Power machine around $1000-$1500. Of course it would be more expensive than a PC, but I don't care paying more for much more.

:-)

Christian, the answer is production volume. When you build motherboards at a rate of several 10k's/month, you can drive the components prices down. While PPC remain low volume, they have a hard time competing. And I don't even mention support. From an industrial perspective, you would look for second sources and the x86 platforms are the de-facto standard: there are nearly 10 main manufacturers that you can swap happily as they tend to use the same chipsets.

When it comes to performance, PPC had the edge... but the Intel marketing machine was stronger. See Apple... snif javascript:emoticon('')

That being said, I think the Efika is really great value for money and deserves a byte in the pie. I wish I could convince my boss that you don't need a 3GHz Pentium4 to read your emails... ;-)

My cent worth
Cheers
Olivier

Indeed, but Apple now starts to propagate x86:
http://www.apple.com/macpro/performance.html -- do you see how they use lower performance PPC as a base for the comparison just to show PPC is _always_ slower? See especially Photoshops benchmarks... IMHO quite dirty marketing practise. Indeed! Efika is very nice and IMHO it's success. I'm also personally looking forward to see some success behind AMCC Titan, Freescale 8641D or P.A. Semi processors. Also Cell is very interesting from the programming point of view, just a pity that Sony's PS3 provides only 256MB RAM. I've seen benchmarks of Cell which looks like its PPC is equivalent to 1.6GHz G5 which is IMHO not that bad at all...

Cheers,
Karel

Performance per watt anyone? :-D
https://www.ppcnux.de/?q=node/7019

Performance anyone? ;-D
http://dl.alphaworks.ibm.com/technologi ... epaper.pdf

Personally if I needed altivec badly enough I'd have a CellBE installed in some fashion.

(could possibly send the price out of range though)
((and the Cell has an in-bilt PPE anyway)

kcg:
"Indeed, but Apple now starts to propagate x86"

Gee, what did Apple do when they used PowerPC? Suddenly a
G4 at 500 MHz was faster than a 1 GHz P3.. To make this trust-
worthy they talked about Pipelines, which noone had a clue
what it was, just that it sounded cool..

Apple wants to make money. Why would they markettheir
solutions as bad?

Apple's step to x86 was natural considering that everything
is about Dual-core technology today. In the PowerPC-world
there is only one readily available dual-core CPU, and that
is the 970MP which consumes a few hundred Watts per CPU.

I have three Macs:
PowerBook 1.5 GHz G4 (512 MB RAM)
Mac Mini 1.66 GHz CoreDuo (Upgraded to 2 GB RAM)
MacBook 2.13 GHz Core2Duo (1 GB RAM)

With 512 MB RAM in my Mac Mini it was still at least twice
as fast as the G4. No shock there since it has two cores..
With 2 GB RAM the Rosetta-emulation is faster than my
PowerBook running PowerPC native..

The MacBook is *alot* faster than my Mac Mini with 2 GB
RAM, and multiple times faster than the PowerBook.

It's still about the cores.. Steve Jobs saw that Freescale
didn't have anything to come up with to match Intel's
dual-core offerings, so he had no choice but to switch
architecture.

P.A. Semi's offering are interesting, but still not available.

The lack of dual-core technology keeps the PowerPC from
evolving from embedded applications. The PowerPC isn't
even interested in the data center. The POWER is perfect
there, but very, very expensive and power consuming. :(

Still false. The reason why the Powerbook G5 didn't appear wasn't the CPU, it was the memory controller ... and the memory controller was designed by Apple Computer Inc.

If the 970MP isn't too power-hungry for a laptop..

Why was it water-cooled again? The 970 and 970MP
are processors on steroids and they are consuming a
few hundred Watts..

Super-fast and super-hot.

check your IBM source ...

marketing stuff, i own two dual-core machines :

PC with Core2Duo@2,4Ghz (overclocked to 3Ghz)
MacBookPro with Core2Duo@2,33Ghz

and the sad thing is that both machine use only ONE core most of the time. I'm still waiting for some real dual core applications.
They sell the hardware, making you believe you need it when there's almost no software to use it properly.
Just another way to hide that they reached their limits regarding frequencies and power. We can't make a faster proc ? right ! we'll put dozens of them in your machine. useless.