APPLICATIONS

At a Power Everywhere forum in Tokyo yesterday, IBM announced new products, partners and initiatives around its Power Architecture technology, signaling continued momentum for the IBM POWER microprocessor family around the world. At the forum in Tokyo, IBM was joined by Power.org members, Business Partners and customers. IBM announced at the forum that three additional companies have agreed to join Power.org: • Denali Software Inc. - a leading supplier of EDA and IP product solutions for design, integration and verification of standard interfaces • HCL Technologies Ltd. - a leading global IT and Engineering Services provider • Xilinx, Inc. - develops, manufactures, and markets a broad line of advanced integrated circuits, software design tools and intellectual property. “The momentum and promotional benefits of the Power.org collaboration are important factors in advancing the adoption of PowerPC technology as a standard in the industry,” stated Mark Aaldering, vice president of the IP and Embedded Processing Divisions at Xilinx. “We see our participation as a means to continue expanding our PowerPC embedded solution into new and developing economies by maximizing the work of an entire community.” Power.org is a community of leading companies dedicated to promoting IBM Power Architecture technology as a preferred open-standard hardware-development platform for electronic systems for consumer electronics, networking, storage, military and automotive customers. "We consider it a great privilege to be working collaboratively with IBM and the members of Power.org in shaping and impacting the future of Power Architecture technology," said Shiv Nadar, Founder HCL and Chairman & CEO HCL Technologies Ltd. "The Power.org movement will allow us to dynamically influence this architecture and shorten our time to market with our design offerings and enhancements for various Power Architecture platforms." "With momentum building around the world, we welcome these innovative companies as they embark on research and development on the Power Architecture technology," said Nigel Beck, vice president technology marketing, IBM. “IBM’s technology investments announced today and the continued momentum of the Power.org community further position Power Architecture technology as a leader in this new era of computing." New products IBM announced the newest member of the Power Architecture family of microprocessors – the PowerPC 970MP. The new processor is a dual-core version of IBM’s award winning PowerPC 970FX, targeted for clients who desire a low-cost, high-performance, 64-bit, symmetric multiprocessing (SMP)-capable system in a small package with ranges from 1.4 to 2.5 GHz. The microprocessor also provides power-saving features that system architects can use to dynamically control the system power. The IBM PowerPC 970MP microprocessor builds on the proven 64-bit IBM Power Architecture family and is designed for entry level servers as well as to provide new levels of performance and power management for the embedded marketplace. The increased computing density of the PowerPC 970MP brings a new level of performance to a variety of applications, from HPC clusters to demanding embedded system applications such as high performance storage, single board computer and high performance networking applications. Each of the two 64-bit PowerPC 970MP cores has its own dedicated 1MB L2 cache, resulting in performance more than double that of the PowerPC 970FX. This design provides clients with a wide range of performance and power operating points that can be selected dynamically to match system processing needs. The frequency and voltage of both cores can be scaled downward to reduce the power during periods of reduced workload. For further power savings, each core can be independently placed in a power-saving state called doze, while the other core continues operation. Finally, one of the cores can be completely de-powered during periods of less stringent performance requirements. IBM also announced new low-power extensions to its award-winning PowerPC 970FX offering. This newest offering is targeted for clients who desire a low-cost 64-bit processor featuring high-performance, a sub-20 Watt power envelope and SMP. The new offering is targeted to provide an operating power of 13W at 1.4 GHz and 16W at 1.6GHz under typical workloads. The microprocessor also provides power-saving features that system architects can use to dynamically control the system power. The 64-bitPowerPC 970FX microprocessor builds on the proven 64-bit IBM Power Architecture family and is suited to embedded applications including imaging and networking, and provides new levels of performance and power management for the embedded marketplace. Designed to run at frequencies up to 2.7 GHz, the PowerPC 970FX includes a 512KB L2 cache, provides native 64-bit and 32-bit application compatibility and uses a high bandwidth processor bus capable of delivering up to 7.1 GB/s to keep the processor core and the SIMD/Vector engine fed with data. The processor core can dispatch five instructions per cycle, and issue one instruction per cycle to each of its ten execution units, including two fixed point, two floating point, two load store, two vector and two system units. The L1 instruction cache holds 64 KB, the L1 data cache holds 32 KB, and each processor has its own dedicated 1MB L2 cache. New Initiatives At the forum in Tokyo, IBM announced an expansion of an open network of IT professionals and developers within the Linux community, called the OpenPower Project. The initiative gives Linux developers and enthusiasts an opportunity to test POWER5™ processor-based OpenPower servers via the Internet. The effort marks the first time that the Linux community has been able to test the impressive performance of OpenPower systems in an open, collaborative online forum. The OpenPower Project also hosts a comprehensive set of tools and resources for Linux on Power Architecture technology. The OpenPower Project can be accessed at www.openpowerproject.org.