Chips clock up new approach

Meyerson, who heads research and development efforts for Big Blue's semiconductor group, says processor chip speed is old news. Instead, he's focusing IBM's work on other areas, such as on-the-fly reconfiguration that will let chips automatically adapt to different jobs. He's also proposing a new, more open way for IBM to interact with its customers.

The open approach will involve IBM disclosing more technical information than before about its chips, and it will also mean that the company will rely more heavily on the hardware and software development skills of third parties. But if the approach is successful, it will enable IBM to create a much bigger ecosystem around its Power processors. It also may boost prospects for the company's chip operations. ZDNet UK sister site CNET News.com recently spoke with Meyerson.

Q: IBM is attempting to make the Power processor architecture more open. What exactly does that mean?
A: What IBM is doing here is addressing a fundamental shift in the landscape of technology, making changes in Power, making changes in our strategy. Over the last one or two years, we have begun to see a significant shift in what I call the trajectory of basic technology. Basic technology simply is not driving performance at the rate it did previously.

Does that mean performance stops?
It means that the rate of performance enhancement is becoming impacted. We simply made transistors so small that as we continue to attempt to make them smaller, it requires a huge amount of innovation to get added performance. If you were getting an improvement in technology of perhaps 30 percent a year, and suddenly that rate drops to half, the rate at which your systems improve would also drop by that amount. We revealed a strategy for the coming generations (of IBM Power) which is very, very different from the typical strategy in this industry. We applied techniques we learned through all the years of working in solutions to the area of systems and the underlying hardware and software.

Just so that we are clear, what do you mean by "solutions"?
The end result that people care about. When a system is purchased, and people are looking at transaction processing capabilities, that is an end result. They are not looking at whether the clock frequency of the microprocessor is 8 percent higher. Where you might previously have announced simply a higher clock frequency, that, frankly, is not going to be the major driver of performance. What we have done is to say, "we will allow the optimisation of all aspects of the system simultaneously," which is what I refer to as holistic design.