New PowerPC 970FX, 24.5 Watts at 2GHz.

[minator]

According to IBM the new 90um die shrink of the PowerPC 970 (new revision is called 970FX) cuts the power consumption pretty severely. Previously the 1.8GHz 970 used 51 Watts whereas now the 2.0GHz 970FX uses only 24.5 Watts.

At 1.4GHz it's only 12.3 Watts, I can see a Powerbook upgrade pretty soon...

Another change in the 970FX the bus speed which has risen to 1.1GHz from 1.0GHz (giving 8.8 GigaBytes per second).

Intel on the other hand are having the opposite problem, their die shrink is sending power consumption UP.  The major difference seems to be IBMs use of SOI (Silicon On Insulator) which is preventing transistor current leakage, Intel are not using SOI so are suffering as a result, not that they appear to care.

According to rumours a while back the 970FX could go to 3GHz now if IBM wanted it to, the older 970 can go up to 2.5GHz but sucks something like 90W in the process.  I'd guess the new revision could do 3GHz but it's power useage will be something in the same region.

Future is looking good for the PowerPC.

...as is overclockability!

[minator]

Those are typical power usage. Intel and AMD use TDP- Therman Design Power. The absolute maximum power they can draw.

No, TDP and absolute maximum are two diferent figures, the absolute maximum is usually quite a bit (up to 30 Watts) higher and is virtually impossible to find, at least from Intel.  Absolute maximum is a theoritical figure which may be impossible to reach in any case.

They all quote some form of average figure.

[minator]

Intel and AMD have a different definition of TDP IIRC, as Intel quotes the maximum power usage when using a power virus,

Not according to Intel...

Thermal Design Power, Ptdp
Maximum sustained power, across a set of realistic applications, drawn under normal operating conditions, nominal Vcc and realistic ambient (use) temperature.

Maximum Power, Pmax
Maximum power drawn under normal operating conditions, worst case (Vcc,T) corner, executing worst case (synthetic) instruction set.

[minator]

Is the power consumption related to the clock speed?
If so then IMHO it would be good if the OS could manage this so that if the user is doing wordprocessing or accessing the www then power and clock speed are kept low but then if more speed  is needed then the power/clockrate can ramp up.

Like I said just an idiots idea

Must be a lot of idiots working at Intel, AMD and IBM then.
They do exactly what you said...