Posted on Saturday, September 15 2007 @ 0:10 CEST by Thomas De Maesschalck
Sun's new Niagara processors can run 64 software threads but IBM is trying to beat this with their upcoming Q7 server processors. According to
The Reg the Q7 CPU will be able to run 128 threads at the same time.
According to information obtained by El Reg, IBM's processor boffins have been exploring something known as Q7. This processor was a possible follow on to today's Power6 and included support for up to 128 software threads. IBM considered Q7 a type of radical take on Power7, since the product centered more on many low-power cores rather than fewer more powerful cores.
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In the end, IBM decided that Q7 would not deliver the mainstream performance needed by most of its Unix server customers. So, the vendor has set to work on a Power7 design that should arrive around 2010 with, oh, four to eight cores. The design work remains in process, making those figures very fluid. (We've heard chatter about each core supporting up to four threads.)
