After also Apple as one of the last manufacturers of consumer equipment more equips no products for quite some time with processors from IBM, it had become quite quiet to the CPUs of the company. Now there is still to announce news, because come new “POWER6″ processors and the second “cell” generation.

The Argenda now supplies a small technological view on these two new products from the home of IBM to the stattfindenen in February 2007 International Solid State Circuits Conference(ISSCC_2007), who already is in the description of the presentations received more detail on the specifications of the POWER6 architecture and also on the second generation of the so-called cell processors, whose first Vertreter is currently found in the PlayStation 3 from Sony.

That seems by Intel a few years ago with the introduction of “NetBurst” architecture of the “Pentium 4″ to be still not pretty over processor launched gigahertz race. Because apparently there are plans to IBM to operate new processors based on POWER6 architecture with over 5 GHz. You want to deliver normal models only with clock frequencies between 4 and 5 GHz; the above more than 5 GHz should be granted only to certain exceptions.

IBM would like to manufacture on the basis of the new core processors mainly, which are suitable for use in server systems. It further indicates that this dual-core CPUs are consist from approximately 700 million transistors and have a die area of 341 mm². Despite the high clock frequencies, could you keep rather low the power consumption of new CPUs according to manufacturer’s and indicates that this is not more than 100 Watts will consume. So, one moves on a similar level as the Opterons by AMD and the Xeons from Intel, which absorb 95 and 80 watts according to manufacturer’s specifications. The new POWER6 processors in 65 nm wide structures are manufactured.

The second generation of the cell processor, its first Inkarnation currently in Sony’s PlayStation 3 is used and in many places regarded as new miracle CPU is produced in the same structure width. This should then bring it to a maximum clock frequency of up to 6 GHz and assign their predecessors well in its place, finally made this only up to 4 GHz. In addition you will miss apparently a second power supply unit of the new cell CPU, to increase speed of memory. Also expected on the ISSCC more precise details.

What is the effect of the start of a retreaded cell CPU on Sony and the PlayStation 3 could have, is still uncertain. So one could imagine it but, that you could – use the new cell processor in the PlayStation 3 course heruntergetaktet to the level of the currently there installed cell unit. In this way a lower current consumption could be probably realize, because the first cell is made known in the 90-nm process. This progress could therefore cause that Sony could the elaborate cooling devices of the console something smaller and save so money.

Intel is however not idly around and looks what done so all IBM. As the world’s largest semiconductor company also will present some new features on the ISSCC. So, we will disclose more details of the prototype of a CPU with a total of 80 seeds, which you presented for the first time in September of last year. In addition will show its progress in the development of this processor and apparently imagine a faster model, that can run now 1.28 trillion floating-point operations per second. The prototype from the September gave it only a trillion operations.

Meanwhile it announced already that the die surface of this chip will be approximately 275 mm square and to use 100 million transistors to produce such a unit. Measures intended to have the core monster with 4 GHz and a power consumption of 98 Watts. We summed already forum last September for more details about this new processor in our reporting to the Intel Developer.