IBM's POWER7 processors stand out on a number of counts, not the least of which is their complexity. But beyond the 1.2 billion transistors, up to eight processing cores, SRAM and eDRAM, and clock speeds of 4Ghz, the processor family is unique for a very different reason. It was the pioneer for a new approach to complex chip design within IBM that leverages high-performance computing (HPC) capabilities in the cloud to bring scalability, cost efficiencies, and flexibility to a global development effort.
The complex POWER7 processor has 1.2 billion transistors and up to eight processing cores.
Source: IBM Power Systems
Source: IBM Power Systems
