World’s Fastest Processor – IBM 5.2Ghz

IBM  has been working on it for 3 long years, and spent neat $1.5billion to produce what argumentally may become world’s Fastest Processor.

All the work was done under the secret research lab aimed to improve the performance of its existing mainframe systems. The new Fastest processor would become the heart of IBM’s new zEnterprise clocked at 5.2GHz. Although, overclockers can challenge the “Fastest” processor with Liquid Nitrogen cooled systems, But, IBM’s processor is all about at native room temperatures with no special cooling requirements.

This 5.2GHz chip is not about generic x86 PC’s but designed to run on IBM’s mainframes and some unix based AIX systems that barely run UI or any of your hardcore graphics games.

IBM is targeting September 10th for the launch of speedy processor for serious business stakeholders. The system will be suited for heavy workloads that meets the requirements of  banks and Realtime transactional systems and ever increasing Data hungry networks.

The heart of the system is z196 processor Quad core processor  that comfortably integrates 1.4 billion transistors on a 512-square millimeter (mm) die, which is much smaller than a coin (sized at 2.2 x 2.2 cm).

The brilliance has been fabricated using the IBM’s 45 nanometer (nm) SOI processor technology, and it makes use of IBM’s patented embedded DRAM (eDRAM) technology, which allows IBM to place dense DRAM caches, or components, on the same chips as high-speed microprocessors, resulting in improved performance. Adding DRAM on the processor dies has significant benefits. By reducing the effective distance every electrical signal has to travel, the new architecture is able to save time in 10s of nanoseconds, giving it a performance uplift of multiple folds of any x86 processor even when run at same clock

IBM has bravely built a system that incoporates a large number of such processors into a Mainframe. As per what IBM claims, the core server in the zEnterprise System — called zEnterprise 196 — contains 96 of the world’s fastest, most powerful microprocessors, capable of executing more than 50 billion instructions per second. That’s roughly 17,000 times more instructions than the Model 91, the high-end of IBM’s popular System/360 family, could execute in 1970.”

What would it cost? Definitely something sky high, after all it’s comfortably world’s fastest.

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