RISC microprocessor

[Manish Chopra]

I have often wondered about the progress of RISC based microprocessors, and this is in context to HP-PARISC and IBM-POWER.

PARISC runs at a max. 1.2 Ghz speed, while the POWER 6 processor has gone beyond the 4 Ghz mark.

The question is, why the development of POWER based systems is continuing and POWER 7 is in pipeline. Why is it that the same could not be incorporated on PA-RISC and that it has become obsolete now, paving way for the Itanium processor.

If anyone could provide a link and/or explanation on this, it would be enlightening.

[SoorajCleris]

Hi Manish,

I also wonder the same!!..

I think it is because of considering the cost effectiveness. Currently HP is moving to Blade servers rather than the cell based one.

It seems there will be a Blade superdome. And the new Itanium processor which will be released is quad core ( the name is Tukwila).

It seems the next version of HP-UX 11i v4 will support only this architecture not PA-RISC

PA-RISC support will be stopped 2013 (wiki).

Regards,
Sooraj

[Dennis Handly]

>Why is it that the same could not be incorporated on PA-RISC?

It became too costly and HP decided to go with EPIC instead of RISC.

[Hakki Aydin Ucar]

>PA-RISC and that it has become obsolete now, paving way for the Itanium

Check these links:

http://www.amigau.com/aig/riscisc.html
http://h71028.www7.hp.com/ERC/downloads/EPIC_WP.pdf
http://bnrg.eecs.berkeley.edu/~randy/Berkeley_talk.doc

[Manish Chopra]

Thanks for your replies and links, that are informative indeed.

But the primary concern is, why IBM has pushed a RISC processor(POWER chip) to beyond 4 Ghz speed whereas HP has'nt opted for doing the same for PA-RISC.

Yes, cost certainly is one factor, so does that mean that IBM can sustain the growth of POWER developments. IBM does'nt really seemed to have looked at "greener" processing !

[marsh_1]

hi,

it does all come down to cost, remember that ibm fabs it's own chips as well as having had a clear roadmap for the power chips for some time. digital/compaq made the same decision about alpha as hp did about pa-risc , looking ahead even though ev8 (dual core) and ev9 (multi core vector chip , power 7 rival) were down on paper, they could see diminishing returns trying to compete with intel/ibm et al.
much more cost effective to partner with intel and have them do the majority of the development and manufacture.

fwiw