Since not many people know about any of the Power Architecture processors, I'll explain.

The POWER architecture was born around the 1970s by IBM in hopes of introducing RISC to the world. POWER stands for Performance Optimisation With Enhanced RISC.

POWER has been powering many servers and computers throughout the world since then. Some famous POWER processor includes the PowerPC family found in pre-2006 Apple Macintoshes (G3 - G5). POWER processors can also be found in XBOX 360 (Xenon, 970-based), Wii (G4 based) and the PS3 (Cell BE, 970-based).

Now, P.A Semi, a partner of IBM has created a truly powerful processor yet, very energy efficient. It even breaks the most efficient x86-based architecture. To date, that would be the Intel Core 2 architecture.

The PWRfficient processor's power usage is clocked at 25 Watts (TDP). While Core 2 processor's (desktop version) power usage is clocked at 65 Watts (TDP).

Both chips are Dual Core chips that are clocked at least 2 GHz each. However due to the fact that P.A Semi's processor is based on the POWER-architecture, it can achieve better computational power than x86 processors at the same clock speed.

For more information, take a look here: http://pasemi.com/processors/pwr1682M.html!

Intel data provided by Wikipedia.

EDIT: Updated on second page.

xboxrulz

Woah that sounds like a fairly big difference, so to sum that up, less power usages and more computational power in general to play with?

I like the sound of that! Even though you get the less power usage, it only helps when you either running your computer all the time and a small change in power usage would dramatically change power usage.

Though, on laptops that could be rather useful. A change in power usage like that could mean dramatic changes in power consumption and therefore, longer battery life.

This sounds good!
-jimmy

Usually more performance = more power usage but not, that same performance require less power than before.

Therefore, for instance, your machine (Core 2 Duo) is 2.5 GHz, it will use 65W TDP. However, the PWRfficient processors at 2.0 GHz will only use, at worst 25W.

The performance for both chips are identical (although the clock speed is different), thus saves energy. Mainly due to the fact the ethernet, PCI-X and the memory controllers are all built in the same chip. Therefore eliminating chip-to-chip hops. Thus reduces latency and power usage.

Since the PWRfficient was ideally built for server-space, and designed especially for clusters, we can use the Intel Xeon Sossaman vs. P.A Semi's PWRfficient processor:


Source: http://pasemi.com/downloads/PA_Semi_High_P...omputing_WP.pdf


xboxrulz

This is all very good. figure 5 from the pdf like that you gave us before, is a great example of what this processor can do! and with everything built into the same chip everything can run faster!

So that's one of the ways they cutback eh.

Yeah it makes sense to pull everything in closer in order to save on wasted energy of travel I suppose. But wouldn't this help the area heat up faster than usual?

Less Power = Less Heat
Less Heat = More Overclockability (if there is a word for it)
More Overclockability = More Fun

lol, less power to push things through sure, but the closer you have these components, won't it generate more heat?

There is less room for the heat to dissipate and flow through.

I suppose there's work around for that (maybe not more heat, but more concentrated in a smaller space).

This may not be true. I took a CS class on processors, gates, etc and my teacher said that the more you overclock, the larger chance you have of data collision. This usually does not have that big of an effect, but if you drastically overclock it, like you suggest, you run a very large risk of messing up data signals.

Lots of Overclocking -> lots of data signal collision
lots of data signal collision -> messed up computations
messed up computations -> computer lock-up or even data corruption (that's no good)

This architecture sounds too good to be true, so I would have to assume that they are doing something else to keep the processing power up with the lower power intake (overclocking anyone?).

well overclocking is really a lot of risk, not only that you will fry your chip or any hardware but also the fact that
it will have as what you have said data collision. or in laymans term error on your data, sometimes the usual
indication for this is when you have a blue screen or your system just restarts on its own.

that is why it is imperative that you dont only overclock your processor but also your memory, its timing and its
speed. as what they say overclocking is an art. a very risky art (",)