by Michael Feldman, HPCwire
The latest and greatest chippery was on exhibit earlier this week at the Hot Chips conference, an IEEE-sponsored event that encourages microprocessor vendors to talk about their next generation silicon. The emphasis is on high performance chips, so a lot of the products and technology presented at the conference eventually end up in the hands of supercomputing users.
The star of the show this year was the upcoming Power7 processor being developed by IBM. This is the chip that will be powering NCSA’s “Blue Waters” supercomputer, a 10-petaflop machine slated for deployment in 2011. Blue Waters will be the first production deployment of IBM PERCS, a set of technologies that is being partially funded by DARPA under its High Productivity Computing Systems (HPCS) program. For more pedestrian uses, the Power7 will also be used in IBM’s Power 5xx server line. The new chips should show up in IBM gear sometime in 2010.
