IBM RS 6000

1. IBM RS 6000 Greg Young, Nathan Einsig, Rich Zizik, Ben Noble

2. IBM History • IBM began in the state of New York on June 15, 1911 • Computing-Tabulating-Recording Company • Thomas Watson joins company in 1914 • Defines a new way of running a company • Preached a positive outlook, and his favorite slogan, "THINK," became a mantra for C-T-R's employees. • Company grew during great depression while the rest of the economy declined • As far back as 1932 IBM was target for antitrust actions due to its enormous success

3. RS 6000 History • RS stands for RISC system • RISC was produced in early 1974 for a telephone switching network • Project terminated, but design was implemented with miniprocessors • First machine to use RISC was the 801 • RISC was inexpensive, but had high performance • Separates data and instruction caches allowing high bandwidth between memory and CPU • Simplified pipeline allows faster processing

4. RS 6000 History • RS 6000 used for the famous Deep Blue system • May 1997 Deep Blue defeats World Chess Champion Garry Kasparov in a six game match • Provoked a world debate debate on how close computers could come to approximating human intelligence

5. Role in Marketplace • The RS 6000 is IBM’s flagship processor • The RS 6000 chip is used in many of IBM’s servers and workstation platforms • Ability to systematically explore vast numbers of variables lends itself to heavy processing tasks

6. Role in Marketplace • As shown in Deep Blue the chip is capable of closely simulating human intelligence • Capable of running complex autonomous programs • Ideal for systems that are used for agent design and implementation • Highly capable for running agent software such as Artificial Neural Networks

7. Role in Marketplace • Used in: • air traffic control • modeling of financial data • development of new drug therapy • forecasting weather • NASA satellites • beating the worlds best chess player

8. Form of RISC Architecture • Predominantly RISC • Some more complex instructions are performed via software • Second-generation RISC engine based on the new IBM POWER architecture

9. Superscalar Architecture Divides work among different functional units operating in parallel Benefit • Improves Cycles/instruction • Higher Performance achieved

10. Superscalar Architecture Drawback • Can Require Substantial Hardware • more than can fit on one chip in the available CMOS technology Solution • They use a compiler that delivers maximum performance out of minimum hardware • Assigned registers to functional units

11. RS-6000 Processor • Three Main Units • Fixed-Point Unit • Floating-Point Unit • Branch Unit • Each unit has its own register set • Units Operate In Parallel • Synchronization signals passed between Fixed-Point and Floating-Point Units

12. Fixed-Point Unit • Performs data-address computations • For itself and the Floating-Point Unit • Schedules Data Movement • For itself and the Floating-Point Unit • Checks for Interrupt • Signals passed to Floating-Point Unit • The two units operate in overlap manner

13. Floating-Point Unit • Not a Coprocessor • design allows for enhanced floating-point arithmetic • Loads and Stores for Unit • done by Fixed-Point Unit • 64 bit Multiply-Add Instruction • accomplishes (A * B) + C in one cycle

14. Branch Unit • Overall Controller of Units • insures the integrity of program execution

15. Instruction Set • Adapted Instruction Set of IBM 801 • Added more complex instruction • VLSI allowed for more complex instructions • All Instructions are 32 bits long • Simple register oriented instruction set