IBM Brings 90-Nanometer Bump to PowerPC
Big Blue has shifted its chip manufacturing to a 90-nanometer process by leveraging multiple unique innovations its researchers have developed over the past several years. The 64-bit PowerPC 970FX will be the first IBM microprocessor to be manufactured under the new process.
A 2.5GHz PowerPC processor is expected to debut next week, compared to current 2GHz chips produced on a 130-nanometer process.
A compilation of silicon-on-insulator (SOI) technology, strained silicon, and copper wiring has allowed IBM to increase performance while not sacrificing energy consumption. When combined, these techniques speed up the flow of electrons through transistors while insulating silicon to reduce the amount of wasted electricity.
"Our decades-long commitment to pursuing and rapidly implementing technology breakthroughs like SOI and strained silicon is paving the way for a new generation of power savvy chips," said Bernard S. Meyerson, IBM Fellow and chief technologist, IBM Systems and Technology Group. "With this fusion of IBM-pioneered technologies, customers no longer have to sacrifice performance to achieve the power savings they increasingly demand."
Energy use is also kept in check through system-wide tuning and the controlling of processor frequency and voltage. More details on this technique will be disclosed at the International Solid-State Circuit Conference (ISSCC) in San Francisco on February 16.
IBM has stated that its next generation Power 5 processor will further augment total system performance by 40 percent over the PowerPC 970.
To accomplish this boost in performance, IBM incorporated simultaneous multi-threading into Power 5. As a result, each Power 5 chip appears to software applications as a four-way symmetric multiprocessing unit, Joel Tendler, IBM's Director of Technology, told BetaNews in an August 2003 interview.
Applications specially written for the chip will be able to assign thread priority, while self diagnosing dynamic feedback –- or autonomic capabilities -- will monitor thread performance and allocate power as it is needed. This means that high demand processing jobs will be accommodated, but cycles will not be wasted when demand tapers off.
IBM isn't the only vendor innovating system architecture. Earlier this week, Intel revealed that its researchers devised a way to build fiber optic modulators out of standard silicon.
These advanced photonic devices promise to usher in ultra-fast high bandwidth connections between PCs and servers, while eventually making their way inside the personal computers to boost data transmission speeds, eliminate machine-side bottlenecks and reduce latency.