Hot Chips - POWER8 discussed

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At the recent Hot Chips conference (hotchips.org), IBM presented some details on the upcoming POWER8 processor.  Jeff Stuecheli presented some intriguing details on the next generation POWER microprocessor.    The Register posted a summary of Jeff's presentation with many of the new features being discussed.

With the OpenPower Consortium announcement, KVM on Power plans, and a new microprocessor under development, there's plenty of things to anticipate and prepare for around Linux and POWER systems.

The Power Instruction Set Architecture has been re-published (Version 2.07) with many of the POWER8 features expected, allowing infrastructure products and teams to begin early preparations for the next generation microprocessor.   

IBM's Advance Toolchain has just been updated with a new GCC version and the enabling of the new POWER8 instructions.   New instructions can be coded and compiled with the Advance Toolchain (Version 7.0).

New links on Wikipedia:

• POWER8
• OpenPOWER Consortium

Additional links to the Hot Chips conference include..

• The Linley Group (a gated community): Power8 muscles up for servers
• PC World - IBM's Power8 opens up to component makers
• PC World - IBM's Watson could get even smarter with Power8 chip