Submitted via IRC for takyon
IBM to use Samsung 7nm EUV for Next-Gen POWER and z CPUs
IBM has announced it has signed an agreement with Samsung Foundry to produce its next-generation processors. This includes processors for IBM Power Systems, IBM z, and LinuxONE systems, all using Samsung’s 7 nm fabrication process that uses extreme ultraviolet lithography (EUVL). The decision comes as no surprise as GlobalFoundries, IBM’s manufacturing partner for CPUs, decided to abandon development of 7 nm and more advanced technologies. IBM and Globalfroundies manufacturing agreement, whereby fabs, IP, and $$ were given to GlobalFoundries to make IBM's CPUs, ends this month.
IBM and Samsung have collaborated for 15 years researching and developing various semiconductor production materials and technologies as part of IBM’s Research Alliance. Considering the fact that Samsung’s and GlobalFoundries’ fabrication processes rely on R&D conducted internally and as part of IBM’s Research Alliance, IBM developers know what to expect from these technologies. IBM said that under the current agreement, the two companies will expand and extend the strategic partnership, but did not elaborate whether this means development of a custom version of Samsung’s 7LPP manufacturing process for IBM. At present, the companies call the tech to be used for IBM’s chips as “7 nm EUV”.
(Score: 2) by bzipitidoo on Tuesday December 25 2018, @02:22PM (3 children)
Seriously, when IBM neglected the PC market, that was a lot of name recognition they walked away from. Admittedly, their PCs were lame. Didn't have a reset button, couldn't skip the POST, and most of all, they only ran at 2/3rds the speed of a good clone.
They slipped back in with their Thinkpad Laptops. I've used Thinkpads. They're nothing particularly special. About all IBM does to differentiate is give them more capacity. They can support more RAM.
Then there was that DeskStar (aka DeathStar) hard drive fiasco. And, OS/2. OS/2 should have done better, but the idiots packaged it up as crippleware. Networking was not included, had to pay extra for that. I don't recall what browser they had, if any. Netscape for OS/2?
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Tuesday December 25 2018, @04:20PM (2 children)
You've, um, apparently fallen into a time warp set for 20 years ago...?
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 2) by bzipitidoo on Tuesday December 25 2018, @05:58PM (1 child)
20 years? Yeah, could be about that long since IBM sold product to end users. ThinkPads are now Lenovo products. Looking at the Marketplace on ibm.com, I see nothing for end users. It's all big iron and services for big business. Well, perhaps they always were oriented towards institutional customers, and their venture into personal computers was the aberration.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Tuesday December 25 2018, @06:03PM
AFAICT, WD/HGST still sells Deskstar-branded drives as of 2017, but they may have switched completely to the "Ultrastar" branding [westerndigital.com] by now.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by crafoo on Tuesday December 25 2018, @05:02PM (2 children)
The Talos Power 9 dual-CPU and mainboard combo is, what, $3k? Still pretty high. Interesting system, and really nice CPUs. I'm kind of stuck in the past though. I still do HD video editing on one of those dual-CPU aluminum powermacs from ~2008. $150 from ebay. Makes a pretty decent system for other tasks too. I ended up liking Mac OS X 10 more than I thought I would.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 25 2018, @06:59PM (1 child)
Raptor has released a second, lower-cost motherboard called the Blackbird (the previous Talos Lite was a Talos II board the was either not fully populated or had defects that were deactivated, if I recall correctly) Link: https://secure.raptorcs.com/content/BK1B01/intro.html [raptorcs.com]
While still expensive, it takes it down to reasonable gaming PC build prices. Still no where near a Mac Pro, but about the same as the only other PowerPC option, the AmigaOne X5000. Link: http://amigaonthelake.com/amigaone-x5000-system/ [amigaonthelake.com]
Oh well, such is the price of operarting outside the monopoly.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 25 2018, @08:27PM
Unlike a "reasonable gaming PC," this won't run anything except through WINE. Gamers will never buy this. Which leaves paranoid-schizophrenic autistic freetards as the only target market for the low-end board.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 26 2018, @12:15AM (1 child)
PPC was a great architecture, would love to have it back for us 'regular folk'.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 26 2018, @04:26PM
i would like to see reasonably competitive openPOWER/PPC based consumer boards with full and open linux support, as well