IBM previews its 1 GHz Power4 chip

IBM gave a sneak preview of its new chip, the Power4, at the Hot Chips conference in Silicon Valley this week.

The chip has been tested at clock speeds of 1 GHz in laboratories, according to the company.

The CPU, which is slated to be on the market in the second half of 2001, will be used in both the AS/400 and RS/6000 server families.

Because clock speed is only one component in determining server performance, IBM has developed "synchronous wave pipeline interface," which is a complementary technology which will allow for bus speeds of more than 500 MHz for the Power4, according to Frank Ferraiolo, senior engineer at IBM.

The Power4 chip will be made using copper wires, unlike the Power3 which uses aluminium wires, and will be manufactured using an advanced silicon-on-insulator technology on a .018 micron process. The chip will be optimised to set up 32-way systems.

IBM intends its new chip to be used for running ecommerce applications, in powerful Web servers and for complicated technical and engineering applications that the scientific community uses.