POWER CPU

(Performance Optimization With Enhanced RISC CPU) A family of RISC-based CPUs that use the Power Architecture from IBM. The heart of IBM's midrange computer line (see Power Systems), as well as the Watson supercomputer, POWER chips are also used by Google and others. They share a common instruction set with PowerPC CPUs, which were developed by IBM, Apple and Motorola. Following is the evolution of POWER chips. See RISC, Watson, PowerPC and OpenPOWER Foundation.

 Word Tran- Number Size sistors ofModel Year (bits) (million) Cores POWER10 2020 est. POWER9 2017 est. POWER8 2014 64 4200 8/12 POWER7+ 2012 64 2100 4/6/8 POWER7 2010 64 1200 4/6/8 POWER6 2007 64 790 2 POWER5 2004 64 276 2 POWER4+ 2002 64 180 2 POWER4 2001 64 174 2 POWER3-II 2000 64 23 1 POWER3 1998 64 15 1 POWER2 1993 32 15 1 POWER1 1990 32 .8 1

An Eight-Core POWER Chip

In 2010, IBM debuted its POWER7 generation with up to eight processing cores. Providing four threads per core, a 32-chip POWER7 computer processes 1,024 simultaneous instruction streams. (Image courtesy of IBM.)