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IBM opens up Power chips, ARM-style, to take on Chipzilla

theregister.co.uk

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Re: IBM opens up Power chips, ARM-style, to take on Chipzilla

#31

Post by scholia »

Symmetry wrote: post #26
bluedino wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All of the RISC chips were dying anyway. Intel was starting to build steam with the Pentium Pro and Pentium II, Wintel servers were getting cheaper and more common, Windows was becoming 'good enough' and Linux started to push the expensive traditional Linuxes off the table.

That's really just the standard Innovator's Dilemma effect where low-cost, high-volume products often tend to eat their way up the market. Now that the semi-RISC ARM processor is attacking Intel from the low end it's having the same sort of success as x86 did over MIPS, etc.

Cheap Mips and other RISC chips were supposed to replace all the clunky old x86 style processors, so it's one case where the Innovator's Dilemma effect turned out to be wrong.

Re: IBM opens up Power chips, ARM-style, to take on Chipzilla

#33

Post by wcfields »

trafficlight wrote: post #22
bluedino wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Big in avionics for some reason too. Wasn't it the F/22 which received an upgraded PPC that was in the news a while back?

A bit of research says that the F-22 uses a pair of Raytheon CIPs, which are PowerPC based. http://www.raytheon.com/capabilities/products/f22_cip/

Power Architecture is used in spacecrafts as well:

The [PowerPC] 603e processors also power all 66 satellites in the Iridium satellite phone fleet. The satellites each contain seven Motorola/Freescale PowerPC 603e processors running at roughly 200 MHz each.[1]

There is a radiation hardened version called "RHPPC" based on PowerPC 603e made by Honeywell & Freescale. RHPPC is equivalent to the commercial PowerPC 603e processor with the minor exceptions of the phase locked loop (PLL) and the processor version register (PVR). [2]

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PowerPC_600#PowerPC_603e_and_60...

[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RHPPC

Re: IBM opens up Power chips, ARM-style, to take on Chipzilla

#34

Post by scholia »

joenathan wrote: post #6
tommi wrote: post #2

"With its embedded Power chip business under assault from makers of ARM and x86 processors" I didn't know Power chip business still existed.

The Xbox 360, Wii, Wii U, and the PS3 all use Power PC chips.

That's PowerPC-based chips, not actual off-the-shelf PowerPC CPUs. Big difference.

Also, the main thing with the PS3 was the Cell architecture which was going to appear in every type of device from TVs to mainframes and make the rest of the processor industry obsolete.

Re: IBM opens up Power chips, ARM-style, to take on Chipzilla

#35

Post by whatusername »

syncopate wrote: post #28
Millennium wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All three of the PS3/XBox360/Wii generation consoles used POWER-derived chips: very different chips, of course, but POWER all the same. The Wii U uses a POWER chip too. POWER stalled in the performance/watt category around the time of the Power Mac G5: unfortunate, since this was around the time that performance/watt was starting to be considered a real thing. That hurt the architecture's standing terribly. But it's…

Any ideas why PowerPCs stalled in performance? Is PowerPC really an architectural dead end?

I think it's truer to say that PowerPC stalled in performance per watt. The high end Power7/Power8 chips are massively powerful but that comes with Power and Cooling requirements that aren't going to work in a laptop.

Re: IBM opens up Power chips, ARM-style, to take on Chipzilla

#36

Post by zerohp »

Groxx wrote: post #14
spatulon wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I work in automotive software, and PowerPC CPUs (albeit from Freescale and STMicroelectronics, not IBM) are more popular than ever. It's a very common choice for powertrain ECUs.

any particular reason? error rate, power use, ?

General Motors was a big user of Motorola 68k variants. Workstations and personal computers that used the 680x0 series switched to the Power series, maybe the developers just find them easier to migrate to.

Re: IBM opens up Power chips, ARM-style, to take on Chipzilla

#37

Post by marshray »

xradionut wrote: post #30
wmf wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reading between the lines, it sounds like a Tyan whitebox with Power8 processors, Nvidia GPUs, and Mellanox NICs running Linux. Might be good for HPC.

Probably will cost $50,000 and run as fast a new smartphone...

Don't forget the $30000 every year thereafter for the maintenance contract.

Re: IBM opens up Power chips, ARM-style, to take on Chipzilla

#38

Post by Nelson69 »

supergauntlet wrote: post #8
joenathan wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Xbox 360, Wii, Wii U, and the PS3 all use Power PC chips.

Right, but the Xbox One and PS4 are x86. PowerPC isn't nearly as dominant in the console market as it once was.

It's completely dominant in the console market. That is going to change with the new generation though but if you go buy a console today, you're buying and IBM PowerPC.

Re: IBM opens up Power chips, ARM-style, to take on Chipzilla

#39

Post by gsnedders »

whatusername wrote: post #35
syncopate wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Any ideas why PowerPCs stalled in performance? Is PowerPC really an architectural dead end?

I think it's truer to say that PowerPC stalled in performance per watt. The high end Power7/Power8 chips are massively powerful but that comes with Power and Cooling requirements that aren't going to work in a laptop.

The high end POWER stuff always had crazy cooling, though.

Re: IBM opens up Power chips, ARM-style, to take on Chipzilla

#40

Post by ArbitraryLimits »

tommi wrote: post #2

"With its embedded Power chip business under assault from makers of ARM and x86 processors" I didn't know Power chip business still existed.

ARM chips outsell x86 chips by at least a factor of two, and I'm pretty sure more than that. For each Intel desktop/laptop there are twenty ARM chips in microwaves, cars and airplanes.

In the beginning it had a lot to do with toolchain support, these days I think it's a combination of force of habit and the fact that you can fry an egg on an x86 floating point unit.

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