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Article

Title: IBM Chip is Fastest on Earth

Author: Abate, Tom Article Type: Product Analysis
Source: San Francisco Chronicle, pC1(2) Publication Date: Apr 9, 2008
URL of Publication: http://www.sfgate.com

In April IBM began shipping computers fitted with its new processor, the Power6, the fastest chip on earth. The processor is capable of carrying out five billion instructions a second, and was designed to run 'big-ticket, water-cooled machines' used for solving scientific problems and to drive corporations. Slower versions, however, are already being used in consumer electronics like the Sony PlayStation 3. In terms of speed, the new chip outperforms the 3.73 gigahertz Pentium Extreme and the 2.4 gigahertz UltraSparc T2 from Sun Microsystems. These competitors continue to struggle to figure out how to create chips that reach the speeds attained by the Intel chip without generating excess heat. Intel has created water-cooling systems to deal with the challenge. Intel also insists that there is no reason its chips cannot be even faster in the future. Sun responded by pointing out that faster gigahertz do not necessarily translate to faster processors. Sun also notes that rather than water-cooling it employs a technique called multithreading to cool their computers. Sun likened Intel's approach to having one ticket clerk work faster and faster, and its own technique to simply opening more ticket windows.

Companies:
IBM Corp Intel Corp
Sony Computer Entertainment America Sun Microsystems Inc

Products:
Pentium Extreme Edition PlayStation 3
Power6 UltraSPARC T2

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