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Desktops, notebooks, tablets: Just five years ago, those three words defined three distinct classes of products. Now consumers are being asked to choose among all-in-ones, two-in-ones, convertibles, minitablets, ultraportables, and [...]

The soft-error resilience of the IBM PO WER6[TM] processor I/0 (input/output) subsystem was measured using proton beam irradiation to accelerate the effect of single-event upsets. Test programs exercised each of the adapters on the chip. Error rates were measured for various cases ranging from idle to high I/O bandwidth and utilization. The PO WER6 processor and I/O hub subsystem work together to maintain resiliency even under strenuous irradiation conditions.

The error detection and correction capability of the IBM POWER6-[TM] processor enables high tolerance to single-event upsets. The soft-error resilience was tested with proton beam- and neutron beam-induced fault injection. Additionally, statistical fault injection was performed on a hardware-emulated POWER6 processor simulation model. The error resiliency is described in terms of the proportion of latch upset events that result in vanished errors, corrected errors, checkstops, and incorrect architected states.

The Cell Broadband Engine[TM] (Cell/B.E.) processor was developed by Sony, Toshiba, and IBM engineers to deliver a high-speed, high-performance, multicore processor that brings supercomputer performance via a custom system-on-a-chip (SoC) implementation. To achieve its goals, the Cell/B.E. processor uses an innovative architecture, new circuit design styles, and hierarchical integration and verification techniques. The Cell/B.E. processor design point was also targeted at high-volume manufacturing. To meet high-volume manufacturing requirements, the chip was designed so that it could be completely tested in less than 26 seconds. In addition to the above items, the Cell/B.E. processor was designed with the "'triple design constraints" of maximizing performance while minimizing area and power consumed. The initial application was targeted at real-time systems that require high-speed data movement for both on-chip and off-chip transfers. This application also required very high speed compute and real-time response processes.

As mainframes evolve and deliver higher performance, technologists are focusing less on processor speed and more on overall system performance to create optimized systems. One important area of focus for performance improvement involves chip-to-chip interconnects, with their associated bandwidths and latencies. IBM and related computer manufacturers are optimizing the characteristics of interconnects between processors as well as between processors and their supporting chip sets (local cache, memory, I/O bridge). This paper describes the IBM proprietary high-speed interface known as Elastic Interface (EI), which is used for nearly all chip-to-chip communication in the IBM System z9[TM]. In particular, EI is a generic high-speed, source-synchronous interface used to transfer addresses, controls, and data between CPUs, L2 caches, memory subsystems, switches, and I/O hubs. The EI has single-ended data lines, resulting in twice the performance (bandwidth per pin) of similar buses operating with two differential lines per signal.

The details of the latest products that are going to be developed by Intel, which include quad core server processor and dual-core processor for desktop personal computers, are presented.

The details of the latest products that are going to be developed by Intel, which include quad core server processor and dual-core processor for desktop personal computers, are presented.

Intel's third generation of the Centrino brand (codenamed Napa) ushers in a new era for mobile computing, an era in which notebooks will become more powerful and more efficient users […]

It's been a bad year for Intel. The company has canceled two microprocessors, Tejas and Jayhawk, and has pushed back its 4-gigahertz Pentium 4 until next year. CEO Craig Barrett […]

AMONG my friends (both of them, including my chiropodist), I'm known familiarly as Budget Bob, the Frugal Freelancer,, the Commodore of Cheap, the Prince of Penny-Pinchers. If there's a bargain […]

If there's one thing constant in the field of digital video, it's that you can never have too much processing power. 'When was the last time you heard someone say, […]

AMD Because the performance of these motherboards was so close we realised the only way to differentiate between them was in terms of their features. So we scored items like […]

A big advantage of modern fieldbus systems such as Profibus is that it allows different manufacturers' field instruments, controllers and remote I/O systems to work with each other as if […]

Three graphics accelerator products with different levels of performance are based on varying combinations of five custom integrated circuits. In addition, these products are the first ones from Hewlett-Packard to […]

It's possible to pinpoint the moment it became clear NT machines would become 3D machines: Autofact, November 1994 where AccelGraphics (Milpitas, CA) demonstrated Parametric Technology Inc's ProEngineer running on its […]

The Cyrix 6x86MX is a great value for budget-conscious users running mainstream business applications, but its performance may not satisfy some gamers or high-end buyers. Cyrix Corp.'s latest microprocessor, the […]

Computer system performance has been improving recently at a rate of 40 to 60 percent per year. This growth rate has been fueled by several factors. Advancements in integrated circuit […]

The HP PA 8000 and PA 8200 PA-RISC CPUs are the first implementations of a new generation of microprocessors from Hewlett-Packard. The PA 8000[1-3] is among the world's most powerful […]

The increasing demands for greater processor performance to remain competitive in today's computer market necessitate careful attention to the methods used in designing processors to achieve these performance goals. Processor […]

While Intel still has a performance edge, AMD's K6 provides impressive bang for the buck. For more than a decade, AMD has been Intel's biggest competitor, but always with chips […]

Crank up your MAC units: The 1996 DSP directory is here. This directory describes more than 28 DSP architectures and provides concise, useful information to help you select a DSP [...]

To guarantee a high-quality product the HP PA 7200 CPU chip was subjected to functional and electrical verification. Th's article describes the testing methods, the debugging tools and approaches, and […]

The PA 7200 processor chip is specifically designed to give enhanced performance in a four-way multiprocessor system without additional interface circuits. It has a new data cache organization, a prefetching […]

As pressure for higher performance and higher integration drives integrated circuit design towards increasing complexity, IC designers need an ever-broadening set of analysis and debugging tools and methodologies for tracking […]

Traditionally, computers have improved productivity by helping people compute faster and more accurately. Today, computers can further improve productivity by helping people communicate better and more naturally. Towards this end, […]