Could IBM's Power6 tech be used in GPUs?

A tray of IBM's POWER6 processors: Yoink!

IBM recently released what it calls "the fastest microprocessor ever built," which is no small claim. It dubs the 4.7GHz processor the 'POWER6,' the next in a line of server processors.

This is no x86 processor that'll find its way onto the desktop, but the big news is that IBM has worked so hard on energy conservation with this chip that it consumes only half the power of the previous POWER5 processors.

Beams IBM, "This means customers can use the new processor to either increase their performance by 100 percent or cut their power consumption virtually in half."

It says it separated the "circuits that can't support low voltage operation onto their own power supply 'rails,' allowing IBM to dramatically reduce power for the rest of the chip."

POWER6 also uses another power efficiency method IBM calls voltage/frequency slewing. This, it says, enables "the chip to lower electricity consumption by up to 50 percent, with minimal performance impact."

The chip's clocks can even turn off when not in use. "Processor clocks can be dynamically turned off when there is no useful work to be done and turned back on when there are instructions to be executed," says IBM.

The POWER6 is also quite fast and full of ownage, it says, proclaiming the chip "owns a number of industry 'firsts.'"

This includes "the first time that a single system has owned" in four particular UNIX performance benchmarks. These measure calculations with integers, floating-points, Java performance, and 'transaction processing capability.' Business stuff.

Die shot of the POWER6: Complex and shiny.

Aside from its powerful processing abilities, the dip in power is wonderful news. CPU power requirements are already dropping like dead men, and this is IBM whipping out the slaughter machine. There is a demand in this area, of course, particularly when this technology slashes, according to IBM, $100k or so from one's electricity bill -- think data-centres.

Unfortunately the same can't be said for graphics cards, at least the high performance ones, as energy efficiency is pretty much the last concept in said card's deck. Nonetheless, their power demands are punching holes through the roof -- not only to power the hungry processor, but also in a bid to keep the hot bastards chilly.

Here's hoping the graphics card powers that be can pull something out of IBM's ingenious collection of power saving technologies.

We may not have to wait too long for more efficient graphics processors, considering the powerful concept of stream processing on GPGPUs is slowly picking up interest in the enterprise arena. And that market is all about performance per watt.

These processors, however, will likely be designed specifically for enterprise use and we'll still be doomed with our insanely thirsty graphics cards.

Apparently, we'll have one other thing to lust after. IBM claims "the processor bandwidth of the POWER6 chip -- 300 gigabytes per second -- could download the entire iTunes catalog in about 60 seconds," which is tasty, a tad expensive, and terrifically pseudo-statistical.

Seriously, IBM, can we borrow your internet for a day?