In the race for the fastest and most energy-efficient processor the main actors until now have been Santa Clara-based Intel and Sunnyvale, CA-based AMD. But what the world forgot is that the “good old” IBM is not yet out of the business.

Today, IBM announced the debut of the world’s most powerful chip and a new type of computer server that includes and at the same time leverages the chip’s advancements in energy conservation and virtualization capabilities.

The microprocessor’s speed reaches a jaw-dropping 4.7 GHz for each of its two cores, more than doubling the speed of the previous generation of Power CPUs. However, the astounding increase in performance has been achieved with almost the same amount of energy as the previous edition, making it probably one of the best hardware investments ever.

IBM said that the new Power6 holds some of the industry’s most craved records, including the fact that it’s the first UNIX microprocessor able to calculate decimal floating point arithmetic in hardware (until now, calculations involving decimal numbers with floating decimal points were done using software) and the ability to move live virtual machines from one physical UNIX server to another while maintaining continuous availability.

“Like the victory of IBM’s Deep Blue chess-playing supercomputer 10 years ago this month, the debut of POWER6 processor-based systems proves that relentless innovation brings ‘impossible’ goals within reach,” said Bill Zeitler, senior vice president, IBM Systems and Technology Group. “The POWER6 processor forges blazing performance and energy conservation technologies into a single piece of silicon, driving unprecedented business value for our customers.”

IBM's new POWER6 chip is a 64 bit, dual-core processor with 790 million transistors running at up to 4.7 GHz and eight megabytes of on chip Level 2 cache. It has already set 25 performance benchmark records across a broad range of business and technical applications.