BM Ups Its Processor Power to 7

“IBM today released its Power7 processor and unveiled a wide
range of new servers running the chip, giving the company a
response to both Intel’s new “Tukwila” Itanium 9300 processor and
Oracle’s UltraSparc chips, which Oracle CEO Larry Ellison has
repeatedly compared against IBM systems.

“During an event late last month celebrating the completion of
Oracle’s merger with Sun, the company’s outspoken chief executive
took repeated shots at IBM (NYSE: IBM), saying that Big Blue’s
systems couldn’t scale.

“IBM now says otherwise. Its older Power6 chips were dual-core,
single-threaded processors, while the Power7 is an eight-core
design with four threads per core per chip. For high-purpose
workloads that require computing intensity instead of lots of
threads, TurboCore mode brings just four cores to bear, running at
a higher clock speed, throwing cycles instead of threads at the
problem. It’s an approach similar to Intel’s (NASDAQ: INTC) Turbo
Boost.”

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