Chip sets new power efficiency standards
P.A. Semi is a startup chip company which has announced a power-efficient processor it has been developing for three years. The claims are amazing. This is a dual-core, 64-bit processor uses only 5 watts to 13 watts of electricity running at 2GHz. That is three or four times more power-efficient than the same sort of processor from Intel or AMD.
Dan Dobberpuhl, co-founder and chief executive officer said P.A. Semi is making its romantically named PA6T-1682M PWRficient processor available to companies that will test it for possible use as an embedded processor so do not expect one in a PC at your local shop in the near future.
The chip is based on IBM’s Power Architecture technology which the company licences. Yet it also claims that its chip has a better performance-per-watt rating than an IBM 670MP processor. Or, indeed, an Athlon 64×2 processor from AMD or the Core 2 Duo from Intel. However, it is not intended initially for the PC or server markets but its design might push the big companies into producing less power-hungry chips which will mean cooler computers which is a good thing.
Note these are claims by P.A. Semi which have not yet been put to independent testing although it all seems very probable.
Dan Dobberpuhl said P.A. Semi has improved power efficiency through advanced dynamic power supply regulation. In other words instead of the power being always on it has a processor block to start and stop the flow as needed, a process also called ‘clock gating.’ This clock gating is not at the block level, but at the registry level within a block which should give it extra efficiency.
Dan Dobberpuhl said, ‘That level of fine grain clock gating inside the block, no one else has really done. In our chips we have more than 25,000 gated clocks; most chips that do block level clock gating have maybe a few hundred.’
Richard Wawrzyniak, senior market analyst with Semico Research, said, ‘For all the people who are concerned with their power budget, or they have run out of power budget, and they are trying to figure out some way to increase their performance, this makes a lot of sense.’
Engineering samples of the 1682M sell for $700 apiece while an evaluation kit is $8,500.
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