Varied chip diet is good for IT

IBM’s upcoming Power6 chip, if it delivers on the 4GHz to 5GHz promise, will outperform all other processors in terms of speed, power consumption, and thermals. Martin Banks’ suggestion that it is an irrelevance is wide of the mark (IBM should ease off the hard stuff, 7 May).

Most applications today are still written as single-thread apps, so clockspeed remains important for many workloads. IBM’s innovation will put pressure on other chip makers to continue their efforts.

It is important that competition remains because if the industry consolidates down to just the x86 architecture, as Banks suggests, innovation will be stifled and we will all suffer.

David Andreson