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Apple Moving To G5s Next Year?
Rand Race writes: "Lowend Mac is reporting here that Apple is considering dropping the G4 on most of its line in favor of IBM's Altivec-less G5. The G5 would appear in early 2001 at speeds from 700Mhz to 1Ghz in single, dual, and quad setups. Speeds up to 2Ghz should be reached by 2002. Updated G3s (750Cx/G3e) at 533-666Mhz will be used in iMacs and iBooks (maybe a 666Mhz G5 iMac SE), Dual and Quad G4-500s in midrange machines, and G5s in high end machines (733,866, & 1Ghz), Powerbooks (733 & 850), and Cubes (866 & 1Ghz). Disclaimer; this is a rumour and we all know about Apple rumors..."
Update: 08/18 09:04 PM by CT : Several people noted that this is more then a rumor, its a blatant lie... they got very worked up about it too ;)
Have you ever seen a program does REQUIRED MMX, SSE, 3DNow? The truth is aside from Photoshop and some other special applications, no one uses Altivec that much because they want to remain compatible with G3s. Having the G5 (which is used in IBM workstations and servers) gives Apple an edge in server applications where Altivec isn't really that useful.
(Emphasis added by me)
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
have a look at http://lowendmac.com/rumormill/about.shtml:
i hate it when i see something like this, but there's already a hundred posts going on about where are the numbers? and who is the source?
- Entertaining Bits from the Ancient Kernel Tree
Good afternoon, Slashdot, and thanks for liking to my delightful PowerPC G5 rumor hoax. If you'd read the whole article, seen my other articles, and read the Rumor Mill about page, maybe you wouldn't have linked. OTOH, as my publisher notes, it's remarkably easy to create a plausible rumor with absolutely no basis in reality. I've loved your discussion, though, especially the 666 observations. I'll have to put in for a bonus after getting Slashdotted. ;-)
What are you talking about?? The G4's (other than the cube) all come with PCI slots, a 2x AGP slot and firewire.... plus room to add new internal components...
and speed is their biggest problem... they've been held at 500 MHz for almost a year now.
sin(6cos(r)+5A)
>But looking at the Wintel market, where Altivec and 128 bit register are unheard off, Speech Recognition software is much further ahead of anything available on the Mac
True, but I think that has more to do with the historical apple-version-lag than the usefulness of Altivec in speech recognition.
just my blog and pix
With that aside what ARE the alternative CPU options for Apple?
This is a completely serious question because I honestly do not know much about Crusoe. Would a Transmeta processor be plausible here, being that their architecture is supposed to emulate other processors well?
Apple is using it in it's consumer boxes, IBM in servers, & Motorola is suplying Apple while focusing on the embedded market.
BTW: IBM also has been manufacturing PowerPCS for Apple for the past several months, and is apparently doing a much better job of it than Motorola.
- Scott
------
Scott Stevenson
Scott Stevenson
Tree House Ideas
Meanwhile, PPC can trash 1.1GHz x86s in some tests... So can 600MHz Alphas. Clock speed isn't everything.
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
Why'd they put a less-capable, albeit faster, processor in a HIGHER end machine?
...
Marketing! Megahertz sells & Joe Q. Public doesn't know what Altivec is. All he reads is the numbers
Alison
"It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education." - Albert Einstein
No, Mac OS X Server is actually a dead piece of software. Mac OS X will be server and consumer in one, depending on what you install. And no, they didn't drop Multiproc. support from OS X. Why else would they have released new dual G4 PowerMacs that supplant their single proc line.
It's only when we've lost everything, that we are free to do anything...
I am a huge mac fan, but Slashdot keeps on posting news about macs from non-reputable sites. These sites include this post, and MacOS Rumors. The Altivec chipset is great, and I find that when supported it gives great performance. I have a G4 450MP and when encoding cd's into 192Kbit stereo mp3, it chugs at about 12x completing a cd in 6mins. Apple, Motorolla and IBM need to sit down and work out the whole processor mess. They created the PowerPC processor together, keep it going!
I'll keep this succinct.
.35 micron process, and I think the newest ones are still .25. However, I don't think they have 1GHz Alphas in production. What's the holdup?
.18 micron process. Given what Digital did with the .35process, would it surpise anyone if they hit 1.5GHz with a .18? However, what I want to see is an Alpha on IBM .01 micron process. Drool...
A) Why can't the RISC chips keep up? I thought RISC was supposed to help INCREASE clock speeds. Is it really that Intel and AMD have that much better manufacturing technology? Or is it some other part of the architecture that's holding it back. I mean the Alpha used to be the king of clock-speed, they hit 500MHz at the
B) Why the hell would Apple ditch Altivec? It's a GOOD idea. It's not just x86 that dabbles in these instruction extensions, the Alpha has something similar to Altivec and SSE. Given the fact that 3D is going to be so big, why ditch Altivec. It's perfect for multiplying matricies, which is basically what bottles 3D at the CPU end. Not to mention all the physics stuff that uses this. Seeing as SSE boosts performance by 70% in some cases, I don't think it is a good idea to dump SSE in favor of more clock speed. Also, Altivec shouldn't really affect clock-speed, should it? I mean the Alpha got to 700+MHz with it's vector instruction set, so why not the PPC.
C) Wouldn't an Alpha using IBM process technology be cool? Imagine a 1.5+GHz Alpha running on a
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
Interesting thing about the POWER series. Apple will never be able to ship one. As I remember, the POWER2s were the size of Polaroid prints. 4096mm^2. It wouldn't fit in that cute little cube.
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
The chip IBM demoed was VERY limited. It only implemented a subset of the PPC instructions, didn't do FP, and instructions had to be "injected" into the chip via a special probe that manipulated leads on the chip. There was a joke about that. It went, "MS may make you go through hell to install software, be even THEY wouldn't go that far!"
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
I have secretly always wanted an Apple.
:)
I might have to put my dreams for a dual athlon on the back burner for a quad G5.
But as the people at work asked me when I announced this... what would you compute on this?
I smiled and said "Netscape."
And after some thought... I added "ripping mp3s".
See... a machine like this will not be wasted.
-I just work here... how am I supposed to know?
Actually, Altivec handles integer math quite nicely. Altivec vectors can consist of the following:
4 32-bit FP numbers
4 32 bit integers
8 16 bit integers
8 16 bit "pixels" (see below)
16 8 bit integers
I believe most if not all operations are orthogonal, meaning that an operation that you can perform on one of the above data types can be expected to be able to be performed on the others as well. The pixel data type is one gears towards video processing. It's a 16 bit number containing 5 bits for each of 3 colors and one alpha bit. The difference is that overflow and underflow is handled by color. If you are adding two pixels together, and there is overflow in one or more of the color values, you don't want wraparound or bits floating over into the next field. You want the color in question to max out.
Altivec is not really FP biased at all.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
First I think it's strange that AIM switched to Altivec on a RISC chip because, I thought that the point of RISC was to reduce the number of instructions in order to pack more transistors onto the chip and increase performance, but then to ADD more instructions seems counter productive. Actually, that's a common misconception -- or at least a bit of idealism that is somewhat different from the actual reality of RISC processors. The idea of RISC is to reduce complexity. RISC instruction architectures often have more instructions than many CISC architectures, but the instructions are often orthogonal replications of another instruction on a different data type. The end result is a lot of simplicity in processor design. This is why even the x86 family uses a microcode engine to convert complex and no-longer supported in silicon instructions to RISC-like instructions which are the ones actually executed -- sort of an ironic throwback to the big daddy of all CISC designs, the old 2000 instruction VAX systems. Altivec is basically a dedicated DSP unit. That's why Motorola loves it. IBM however, doesn't see the need for it in high end servers, which really aren't focused on parallel number crunching. So, they don't add it to the die so that they can ramp up the clock speed. Their current weird approach to increased speed seems to be multiple CPU cores on a single die. Witness the POWER4 chip. 1 GHz clock speed with support for a 500 MHz system bus and 2 CPU cores on a single die. Too bad it's a 64-bit PPC implementation, and thus unsuitable for the 32-bit Mac OS.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
dumbass, finish sarcasm school before you post next time
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
For info on the G3/G4/G5 roadmap look here:
m ap.pdf
:) )
http://www.maccentral.com/news/9909/24.g5.shtml
http://www.mot.com/SPS/PowerPC/overview/newroad
As you'll notice, NOWHERE does it say that Motorola is removing Altivec in future chips.
The lag in processor speed is due to several factors. First, the G4 chip is not very scalable mhz-wise due to its shallow pipeline. IBM seems to have overcome this, however legal agreements are preventing IBM from producing the chip without Motorola's blessing. Future PPC designs include deeper pipelines to make scaling to higher mhz easier.
At first, IBM was refusing to add altivec, wanting to focus on mhz instead with the ppc line. What has resulted is that IBM is simply more prepared to produce faster chips that Motorola right now.
In all, its really a shame that this fiasco has occured. The PPC has a much cleaner design than the x86 based chips. Its a marketing miracle that Apple hasn't been held back by this. (What looks faster? Bodini blue or beige?
Know what I like about atheists? I've yet to meet one that believes God is on their side.
Heh, More points to add to your comment.
No marketing department in the Christian(and maybe elsewhere) world would *EVER* market a processor as 666 Mhz.
Fsck cluebie moderators. I'll say what I want, offtopic or not. And fsck having to qualify every bloody statement just
But the home game users are still PC people too. Maybe this will be resolved as well. Maybe Apple will try to reclaim some of that market by somehow jumping into the 3D gaming world and making an entry into serious competition. Let's see them try and win a benchmark test using Quake 3 (granted, Linux would probably have to be the testing ground due to Quake's current standings in Mac OS)
Now IANAMU, but I am pretty sure that the gaming market for the Mac is just about dead. The only really good Mac gaming company (Bungie) sold to Microsoft to develop for the X-box instead. I would not get a Mac unless I had a specific purpose and a PC cannot do it.
Doubtful. Apple seems to have a differnt market focus for many things. Being in big time corporate America doesn't seem to be it. Do you know of many corporations that like having translucent colored objects?
Apple's success in the 3D gaming market will rest largely on how ATI's 3D cards perform. That's been the bottleneck in the past. The Radeon looks good but obviously ATI and Apple are on thin ice right now.
I've never had a problem with them in terms of hardware or compatibility. I never had to do much tinkering with the networking and worked just fine as a workstation in a heterogenous environment (Win/Mac/*ix). I never had to make them work in en environment larger than 20 computers however. I do despise their OS though. OS X looks promissing if they can speed it up a ton.
Fsck cluebie moderators. I'll say what I want, offtopic or not. And fsck having to qualify every bloody statement just
I bet that is one EULA agreement you would have a devil of a time getting out of. I think one has and he has a gold fiddle to show for it.
What color do you expect the box to come in?
Charred black?
Red-hot?
Melted-skin pink?
And the tag line for the machine...
Where would you like to go... for eterinity?
Next thing ya know, they will have that little FreeBSD imp as a mascot.
-I just work here... how am I supposed to know?
Will the new 666 Apple Special Edition be available in black with flames? will the cost show up on the invoice as:
(1) soul + 4.95 shipping?
And everyone gives Microsoft/Intel crap for being evil?
-----
Planning to be moderated ± 1: Bad Pun.
Your list left out HP -- they were the original company to introduce "multimedia extension", SIMD-type instructions to their architecture.
I forget which PA-RISC they first did this with, but they redesigned parts of the integer unit so that it could do packed arithmetic (a la MMX) at a 0% increase in die size. They literally squeezed the extra logic into the corners of the existing die frame. Pretty impressive. Sure, it only sped up a few functions (MPEG decompression was the biggie), but they essentially got it for free. Conservative, but a definite win.
On the opposite extreme lies Alti-Vec. Alti-Vec is basically an entire vector processor sitting next to the original PowerPC core. It added 50% to the die size of the G4. 50%! It's certainly more capable than what HP or the others implemented, but Motorola paid the price. It's quite possible that they have decided the multimedia unit wasn't worth that much silicon, and have gone a different route with their next generation.
For the curious, Intel's original MMX unit increased the die size of the classic Pentium by about 5%. They're more recent extensions no doubt add more, but I think you can see that HP and Intel took a more conservative approach to "accelerating" multimedia with specialized SIMD units.
--Lenny
A: See if Apple sues.
Mr. Ska
My impression always was that the speed problem with the G4 was due to Motorola, not any inherent problems with AltiVec.
I use a G4 at work, and AltiVec is *very* nice for certain tasks. SoundJam MP takes advantage of it, and can encode MP3s at up t 10x (haven't verified that myself). AltiVec is also used for some of the cool effects in Aqua (like maybe the "Genie" effect).
IANAHE (I Am Not A Hardware Engineer), but I don't see why a few vector processing units would prevent a chip from reaching speeds > 500 MHz. If only IBM and Motorola would pool their technology, we might see 1GHz G5s with AltiVec soon... Maybe Jobs will kick their respective asses a bit, and it will happen...
Altivec can make huge diffrence for applications that it was designed for. ie, vetor based performance and large SIMD instructions (OSX's pdf thingy might take advantage of it). Things like FFTs and such should get a huge boost out of it. It's is also how the G4s have stayed 'up there' in terms of benchmarking.
But as others have mentioned you need to have compiled for it or hand tweaked the assembly. Not a big deal. They are good chips and Altivec would appear to blow the snot out of Intels SIMD offerings.
So yes, Altivec is a good move. It's definately a performance enhancer. Unless they keep switching the architecture every year it can't hurt them.
Fsck cluebie moderators. I'll say what I want, offtopic or not. And fsck having to qualify every bloody statement just
In other news, Taco353 writes: "Computer maker Trinity57 announced 2day that the new P505 will be marketed as the Q505 and feature P7 chips running at 111/222/333/444/555MHz, as well as 112/223/334/445MHz but up 2 3GHz. From 9:00 a.m. 2 3:00 p.m. you can get Q505 with P7's at 333MHz but at 3:01 p.m. Q505/P7's at 445MHz will come out. Then at 4:05 p.m. Q505/P7's at 3GHz will provide a high end (733, 1033, 10:45) machine for SE users. This will be a 24/7 sale with 300 employees, 300 computers, 300 mice, etc. Lasting until 20/20/2000 at 11:59 a.m. UDT (NIST--IP: 192.43.244.18) the sale will also have C3PO chips at 0.52KHz with 92 bytes RAM for $52.92. Special versions at 1.1/2.2/3.3KHz will also be available. Sounds good to me. What do you all think?
--
Have fun: Join D.N.A. (National Dyslexics Association)
While this is true, it's not the only consideration. You can also do altivec optimization at the OS level. From what I've read, many of the beautiful (and probably annoying) animations in OS X are much, much faster on a G4, probably owing to AltiVec. My guess is Apple is busy optimizing the low-level graphics routines to take advantage of AltiVec, and so all apps will get a speed boost when on a G4 Mac since much of an apps time is spent on graphics anyway.
As for whether AltiVec was a bad decision, I'm not an expert on the subject but the impression I've gotten is more that Moto is incompetent than that AltiVec fundamentally limits clock speeds. There are rumors that IBM could produce faster G4's if they wanted to but their contracts with Moto prevents them from doing so without Moto's permission. This is touched on briefly in the article. If this rumor is true, it my represent a problem of petty bickering rather than a technological failing of AltiVec.
You're right, but the article mentions it as 666. Just another thing piece of info that a legitimate source would not have said.
*sigh* I don't know what constitutes as trolling anymore. bummer. (in response to my previous post's moderation).
Fsck cluebie moderators. I'll say what I want, offtopic or not. And fsck having to qualify every bloody statement just
This is interesting, if true. I've seen many Mac pundits claim that Altivec was the next best thing since sliced bread. I've only had a bit of hand's on time with G4's, being an x86 or SPARC type of guy, so I'm definitely not an expert on the G4. Does anyone have any first hand experience with whether or not Altivec was a bad move?
Borg Sue Apple Over Cube
With that aside what ARE the alternative CPU options for Apple?
PowerPC is doing OK as an architecture. Apple is using it in it's consumer boxes, IBM in servers, & Motorola is suplying Apple while focusing on the embedded market.
Unfortunately there are strains on the relationship. Apple honked-off Motorola by shelving the 3rd party Mac licensing program abruptly and stiffing Motorola with a many-million dollar inventory of unusable motherboards(Apple had good reason to shelve the program ASAP but it still screwed Motorola.) On the other hand they committed to Motorola as their supplier when Motorola developed the AltiVec material. IBM politely said no-thank-you to licensing the AltiVec as it really doesn't apply to their products and would likely just get in the way of their own evolution plans for PowerPC. They've all committed to continuing the collaboration and at that level it seems to be doing well though the PowerPC "vision" seems to have succumbed to more pragmatic goals.
The problem for Apple is that the PowerPC + AltiVec from Motorola is having trouble ramping up in speed. Apple has tried to fight the percieved speed discrepancy by pointing out that a PowerPC at some speed actually equals an x86 running at a some greater speed. All agree this is more or less true but the same as the Millenium doesn't start 'till next year no-one cares: they want comparable CPU speeds.
Apple finally replied by shipping multiple CPU's. These work fine under MacOS 9 and will do great under MacOS X when it ships but while saying 2x500 = 1000 it still isn't really the same when it comes to bragging.
What makes the whole thing even more ironic for all of the psuedo-knowledgable's pointing out that two CPUs aren't really twice as fast they're all ignoring there are far more fundamental issues like bus bandwidth & memory architecture that hobble Apple, at least until it's next-gen UMA2 motherboard series finally ship in a presumed few months.
So, what are the other choices?
Well, there have been rumors forever of Apple's MacOS-v7/8-on-x86 inhouse projects (claimed name "StarTrek".) With the move to MacOS X these now are realistic as NextStep has run on several platforms already including x86. Indeed the aborted Rhapsody strategy was actually released on x86 and the MacOS-core Darwin project is freely downloadable for x86. It wouldn't be terribly difficult for Apple to move all of MacOS X over to x86 though it would likely require abandoning all of the backwards MacOS compatability (unless something could be salvaged from the rumored "StarTrek" project.)
Of course at that point Apple would only be selling a custom version of Unix on custom x86 boxes to the consumer market and it's doubtefull Apple could make much of a go of that in today's market.
Next choice? Well, go to a third horse. Compaq now has the Alpha processor and it's still a speed demon and shows no signs of slowing down. There are rumors of Apple having an internal team tracking MacOS X but on Alpha. NextStep ran on Alpha so this sounds reasonable and certainly gives Apple some leverage with Motorola. The advantage of Alpha would be a screaming processor but not x86 as so to differentiate themselves.
This would put Apple in the position of selling a custom version of Unix on custom Alpha boxes to the consumer market and this might be doable, particularly if Apple pursues a strategy of selling PowerPC or Alpha CPU's in their boxes.
Now, there is an interesting rumor to discuss.
I don't read ACs: If a post isn't worth so much as a nom de plume to its author then I wont bother either.
The fascinating thing about the 666Mhz G5 iMac SEvil, is that it actually runs infinitely faster than computers running at much higher clock speeds, but also infinitely hotter (Optimal operating temperature is 3 million Degrees F). The downside is that "Eternal Damnation" clause in the EULA, and when running Linux the Daemons can occasionally get a little out of control, spawning evil child processes, and attempting to take over the world.
But hey, its Insanely Different(tm)..
air and light and time and space
IBM's G5 processor is not a PowerPC microprocessor. It is the silicon used to drive the S/390 mainframes: a serious hunk of electronics to complex for a single chip. It's more along the lines of a super-CISC design, optimized for speed and throughput above portability.
IBM -does- have some sexy successors to the 750 processor (the "G3" in Apple marketing speak) and these will probably make it into future iMacs and Powerbooks. I'm more interested in their upcoming "7500+" line, which is a G4 that can be produced with a clock of 750mhz and 1ghz...we'll still have to wait until MacWorld San Francisco to see them tho.
SoupIsGood Food
Does anyone have any first hand experience with whether or not Altivec was a bad move?
... did I just describe the industries Macs dominate? Weird. You'd think Apple was actually trying to serve the needs of their core market, or something silly like that.
Well, take a look at how much more efficient it is on Intel's own DSP benchmarks. Also check out the inimitable David Every's pretty good review of AltiVec vs. KNI.
Boils down to, you want to do DSP stuff, AltiVec kicks serious ass, especially if you go to the trouble to understand how to restructure your algorithms to take advantage of it. You don't, well, it's not of any real great use then.
For Photoshop users, video compressors, sound filterers, stuff like that, it's a pretty damned big win. Errrr
He's talking about MP3 ripping and encoding, which is accelerated by Altivec. Altivec is basically vector math processing, which allows you to perform a number of (certain types of) math operations simultaneously. Granted the main use for this is graphics operations which are CPU intensive, but there are other things (like MP3 encoding) which Altivec can also help.
Where Altivec doesn't help is in straightforward integer operations or logic operations, such as the code behind a device driver. And of course it doesn't help with programs that haven't been compiled for Altivec...
Dan Knight (the operator of Low End Mac) makes no claims of truth about his "rumors". I fact he freely admits that his rumors are made up. Please if you are going to post about Mac related stuff, hire a Maccie who can filter this crap out.
Burn Hollywood Burn
The reason the chip would be Altivec-less is because it's from IBM. Motorolla makes the G4's with Altivec and I believe owns the rights to the technology. According to rumor however, IBM has had much better luck getting higher clock rates than Motorolla.
Apple's in a sticky situation... they want Altivec because it speeds things up, but they need higher clock rates to compete with AMD and Intel. Motorolla hasn't been able to get high clock rates and the G4 has been stuck at 500 MHz for a year.
It's too bad because the G4 looked so promising, but Moto has been able to deliver to all the hype.
This rumor was posted on LEM by "Anne Onymus". If you bothered to check the other "rumors" from the same writer, you would have noticed that Low End Mac's "Rumor Mill" is a PARODY SITE!!!
Dan Knight, publisher of LEM, does not take Apple rumors seriously, and under the name Anne Onymous he pokes fun at the rumor sites on a fairly regular basis.
In other words, YHBT YHL HAND.
In yer face, Slashdot editors! (Hehehe)
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
I have dual feelings on Altivec. First I think it's strange that AIM switched to Altivec on a RISC chip because, I thought that the point of RISC was to reduce the number of instructions in order to pack more transistors onto the chip and increase performance, but then to ADD more instructions seems counter productive.
On the other hand my distributed net keyrate jumped when I switched one of the clients from a G3/400 to a G4/400 with altivec. The DNEC client has a portion that was written in assembly for Altivec.
I don't know if it's a good idea or not, but unless I learn of a performance impedement I don't have a problem with it.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
For those of you that have fogotten, IBM demonstrated a PowerPC chip running at 1 Ghz way back in 1998 (the chip ran at 1 GHz when cooled to 25 degrees Celcius, at room temperature it ran just at just under 500 MHz). Check out CNET's take on the event: IBM joins the 1,000-MHz club.
The 1 Ghz PowerPC IBM demonstrated way back in 1998 was partially hand tooled. This chip broke many of the processes IBM uses to automate production of the PowerPC. Check outwhat the EE Times said about the chip at the time: IBM's 1-GHz processor taxes current EDA tools.
More recently, TechWeb states some of IBM's plans for the PowerPC: IBM Preps SOI-Based PowerPCs.
To see what is available today, and what is coming in the short term future, look at IBM's product page for the PowerPC at: http://www.chips.ibm.com/products/powerp c/.
IBM intends to have out 700MHz PowerPCs for its RS/6000 line by early next year for its RS/6000 line. It would make very little sense for Apple to not start shoving these into new Macs when they become available.
IBM has had very little trouble scaling the PPC up as it needs to for its line of servers. I really wonder why Motorola seems to be having so much trouble in the MHz race.
OTOH, I remember 3rd party benchmarks that showed a Motorola PPC at 350 MHz smoking an Intel x86 at 500 MHz at Photoshop. And this was back in the day when x86 had MMX and PPC had no Alti-vec. FYI, the MMX instructions allowed the Intel box (running NT) to perform one or two tests slightly faster than the Apple box running Mac OS. Given this type of history, I can see Motorola being arrogant enough to think it doesn't need to keep up the MHz. But its time for Motorola to wake up and smell the coffee.
On a related note, there is a rumor that Palm is going to drop the 68k Motorola series in favor of the StrongARM series mostly because of the MHz.
Motorola better get some MHz action in a hurry. Despite an overall faster chip, eventually a double/triple clock speed advantage will catch up. I doubt a 1GHz T-Bird does much slower than a .5 GHz PPC, especially given Apple's slower bus.
It's "you're" - short for "you are" - not "your". You wrote:
"Hey, your in America..." which, in the context of a grammar correction message, is just sad.
dinosaur comics
Whilst we know that Apple rumour sites are usually pretty lame, this does have a string of credibility to it.
Apple have been unable to keep up in the MHz race. Whilst those of us in the know can preach that it's not a real comparison to go on about MHz, the lay-person sees these numbers and really does equate these with speed - meaning that Apple starts to lose out in the consumer market because Joe Consumer thinks that a 500Mhz G4 is slower than say, a 600Mhz Pentium (which isn't the case).
Sales of iMacs (apparently) have started to flag, and Apple has received criticism that it isn't updating the processors in the range quick enough, which is indeed true. Some haven't been updated for about nine months. The production problems behind Motorolas G4, and the fact they can't seem to increase the speed that quickly have really been problematic - no doubt spurring on the decision by Apple to plump for IBM, who seem to have much better processor fabrication techniques.
So - what we'll probably see is a bit of spin from an Apple show about how they've put a funky newer processor in the iMacs and that they've nearly doubled the clock speed. Those in the know again will realise that this doesn't mean the machine is running twice as quick, but the consumer will be bought over... and iMac sales will probably pick up again. Apple has to do it to stop it's flagship machine (i.e. the machine that picked it up out of the gutter) from falling off it's mast.
M.