Order of the Butterfly
Posts: 365 from 2003/3/28
Quote:
Now tell me, who needs these monster cpus and the accompanying cooling systems? Gamers? Coprorate database? Special effects houses (render farms)? Weather/bio simulations? The CIA? The military? Illegal drug rings?
I think you just answered your own question!
Actually I've heard a bit more about that monster heat sink, all is not what it seems...
It is an active heatsink - it includes a pait of electronic cooling devices which themselves use 40Watts each. The CPU itself *only* uses 100Watts. This is very clever as the CPU itself is running fairy cool despite pouring off 100W - cooler than G3 users in fact.
Without the forced cooling the leakage would increase by a very large amount (it increases with temperature) and the CPU would end up putting out 175 Watts. By putting the extra Watts into the cooling they keep the CPU a lot cooler and it actually uses less power as a result.
Very clever stuff, told you the Alpha team would come up with something interesting...
In other news another nice warm (and *very* fast) CPU - the IBM POWER5 - has been released in 4Way Linux servers for $5000 a pop, this'll be interesting as montecito is going to be incredibly expensive to manufacture whereas POWER5 is a lot cheaper, by then (2006) of course it'll be up against the even smaller POWER6.
