Power6難道是超高時脈的單核心？

在NERSC的某份文件中，透露了LCS-2的概觀，其中也提到了Power6的資料：

LCS-2 is a Power6 system with eight single-core CPUs per node, running at [proprietary information deleted] GHz ([proprietary information deleted] Gigaflop/s). It has [proprietary information deleted] nodes, for a total of [proprietary information deleted] processors, with a total of 42 TB of main memory and 1.6 petabytes (PB) of shared global disk. The system will feature 210 Tflop/s peak and 50 Tflop/s average sustained performance.

The Power6-based LCS-2 system will have an impressive memory performance of [proprietary information deleted] bytes/flop ([proprietary information deleted] GB/s per processor), allowing increased sustained performance across a broad spectrum of leading scientific applications.

The LCS-2 network will be based on [proprietary information deleted]. The aggregate bandwidth of the full bisection network achieves 31.5 TB/s, allowing for efficient execution of large-scale applications with global communication requirements.

LCS-2 will have the same basic file system and software as LCS-1, with improvements.

那些[proprietary information deleted]的部分，就依據之前的數據，請自行把「5GHz」、「20Gflops」、「3.75 bytes」和「75GB/s」填上去吧。

更重要的在後面：IBM最近一份Application Driven Supercomputing: An IBM Perspective的文件中，進一步的提到Power6的細節，分別是：

˙Total Virtualization
˙Mainframe RAS
˙Larger SMPs
˙Blade Optimized
˙4X Perf of Power5



說來也蠻感慨的，1999年IBM首度發表Power4時，那時一堆毫無sense、被x86 CPU牽著鼻子跑、滿腦子只有時脈至上論的諸多媒體，紛紛對雙核心抱持否定態度，直到去年才「大夢初醒」，反過頭來拼命鼓吹雙核心和多核心的偉大，講得高時脈是多麼活該該死的東西。如果IBM真的改弦易轍，而且事後證明IBM的觀點是正確的，我看到時候又不怕沒笑話可以看了。