IBM raised the speed of Power6 chip to 5.0GHz

The processor (processor) for the Big Blue's latest server has a speed far behind competing CPUs from Intel and Sun. IBM said that despite its high frequency, the chip would avoid being too hot because it was small, manufactured using a 65nm process, had high-bandwidth tape buses running at 75Gbps, low voltage thresholds of only 0, 8V.

At Fall Microprocessor Forum in San Jose, California (USA), chief engineer Brad McCredie in charge of IBM Power6 said, when it was launched in mid-2007, IBM would target chips for users of powerful servers with 2 64 bit processors. With twice the frequency of Power5, Power6 saves energy with improvements such as calculating decimal floating point in hardware instead of software like today.

In addition to traditional customers in the fields of high-performance finance and computing (such as designing aircraft, crashing automobile simulations, scientific calculations, image processing, weather forecasts, defense), IBM hopes Power6 will help them acquire new customers in areas such as commercial databases, transaction processing, McCredie said. To do this, Power6 will have to compete with chips like "Montecito" Itanium 2 from Intel and Sparc of Sun.

If Power6 works as promised, IBM could succeed in this effort, said analyst Jim Turley of Pacific Insider in Pacific Grove, California.