Newsgroups: comp.arch,comp.sys.super,comp.parallel,comp.sys.powerpc
From: nmm1@cus.cam.ac.uk (Nick Maclaren)
Subject: Re: Is IBM planning to discontinue POWER2 development?
Organization: U of Cambridge, England
Date: Fri, 6 Jan 1995 15:57:20 GMT
Message-ID: <3ej69t$b24@lyra.csx.cam.ac.uk>

In article <3e29t9$br3@monalisa.usc.edu>, zxu@monalisa.usc.edu (Zhiwei Xu) writes:
|> 
|> Is there any truth in this rumor? If so, it would be a pity. We really like
|> POWER2's performance. We were able to achieve 136 sustained, single-precision 
|> MFLOPS and 199 double-precision MFLOPS, which is more than 50% of the peak 266
|> MFLOPS on one POWER2 processor. 

Yes, but don't worry!  IBM intend to integrate the PowerPC and
PowerParallel lines (e.g. PReP and all that), and will produce
the 620 chip as the first of the latter line.  This is smaller,
cooler etc. compared to the Power2 chips.  Subsequent chips in
the series will add performance.  This is an executive summary,
so those in the know should not flame me for over-simplifying.

Nick Maclaren,
University of Cambridge Computer Laboratory,
New Museums Site, Pembroke Street, Cambridge CB2 3QG, England.
Email:  nmm1@cus.cam.ac.uk
Tel.:  +44 1223 334761    Fax:  +44 1223 334679


