Mainframes have long history of unloading tasks

Since mainframes have a long history of unloading tasks to auxillary components, this doesn't suprise me in the least. CPUs with multiple FPUs are old hat, and the Cell fits that bill just fine, doesn't it? Unix machines have been ofloading tasks to multiple hardware for 20 years. Of course IBM is going to be producing some really fun kits.

It may be a bit premature to comment on optical chip interconnects, though. You could be talking about three years instead of two to get some of the problems ironed out.

yeah, but did they .....

yeah, but dud they inprove the Alitvec Unit ;)

the x86 boxes are finally almost catching up, its about time they improved the Alivec and put this upgraded tech into the SOC units,for the likes of Efika 2/3 use sometime soon, a generic and cheap ,yet powerful, multi PPC CPU SOC with internal FPG'a for video codecs on the fly at the very least.

the worlds about the very small as well as the very big, why do they ignore the Altivec unit just because its served them so well without an update for many a year...

make it and they will come, mass market PPC SOC based wireless routers and in car AVC decoding at the very least could use an update for todays markets and beyond, wake up please or we will have x86 +FPGA in that space too....

Kind of unfair

In the real world things like optical interconnects are hard to pull off only marketing (said with a sneer and a spit) would make statements about it without a working model so I take the silence for what it is caution.Meanwhile what is Intel doing I doubt they are sitting around waiting for IBM to kill them on the high end.

Re: And a new version of AIX for Power7?

Yes IBM have a recent history of releasing new CPU's and a new version of the OS (AIX) simultaneously but you only actually need the new version of AIX if you want to leverage the CPU for some of it's more advanced features.

Running older versions of AIX on newer chips would always enhance or rather augment the performance/price point you just wouldn;t get the advanced fetures, this is where you would need the OS Upgrade, but then you are making a business decision, unless of course you just want to play.

I'd speculate the other way

Seems to me if he says they looked at optical for Power6, decided against it, but are looking at it again for Power7... that means exactly that. Maybe this time Power7 will have optical, but only if this time it's worth doing, so to me that seems like it's just an off chance.