Slashdot Mirror
IBM to Release 64-Bit, 1.8GHz Processor in 2003
Professor_Quail writes "A Forbes article supposed to be released tomorrow gives some details about the new PowerPC processor that IBM and Apple have been working together on; the chip is slated to be introduced at the end of next year. The introduction of this chip should put to rest any speculation that Apple is moving to an Intel platform."
Many people doing CAD, circuit simulation, or editing large images need more than 4 gigs of ram now. 4 gigs is all you can get with 32 bits. On intel, using evil segments, you can use 36 bit. Win2k Enterprise does this...
Also, do not forget about Moore's Law. CPU's keep getting faster. Problem is hard disks are not. So more RAM for caching will be the solution.
Checking pricewatch I see that 2 gig pc100 dimms are less than $500 each.
The law is a weapon of the government, not a protection for the likes of you. Surely you understand that.
Hrm, intel/AMD will be at what then, 4ghz? :P
:P
64 bit is nice, but I doubt the chip will be more powerful then an x86 chip at twice speed.
Keep in mind that 64 bit chips do not simply work at twice the speed that 32 bit chips do, unless they are working on 64 bit integer numbers (in which case, they will actually work faster then 2x the speed of a 32 bit chip). Unlike the move from 16 bit to 32 bit, where 16 bit integers (either -32k to 32k or 0 64k values) were to small for lots of work, especially work with memory addresses on machines with >64k of ram
Nowadays, most CPUs (including x86) have 64bit floating point coprocessors to handle most mathematical code, so 64bit CPUs won't give you much of an improvement there either.
on machines with >4gb of ram, it will be a big improvement, but with advances in virtual memory it won't be as much of an advance, since programs can work in their own 4gig memory space on systems with more then 4 gigs of ram, and the virtual memory hardware can use more then 32 bits for mapping addresses.
Anyone, one only has to look at the difference between a Nintendo 64 (64 bit CPU) and a PC (32bit CPU) to see that CPU speed (and graphics accelerators!) has a much greater impact on performance then the bit width of the CPU.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
This is just confirmation of threads folks on appleinsider.com and other mac websites have been following for quite some time.
Based on all the rumor and innuendo that is swirling around for the last 3 months, it is highly likely that this is indeed the chip Apple will be migrating to, and that it will be out at some point in 2003...probably the fall, though opinions on that vary.
At the Microprocessor Forum on the 15th (Tuesday) IBM will be giving a long talk on the nature of this chip, and that's the talk Mac enthusiasts have been waiting for to see what's what with the particulars...so stay tund for that to receive more information than the Forbes article had.
I've seen several. Try here for starters.
How to solve most of our problems: 1.Lots of nuclear plants. 2.Cure aging.
36 != 64, but just because CPUs with Intel's PAE can address 64GB of RAM (2^36 = 64GB) does not make them 36-bit processors. They can only actually address 4GB at any one time, which is why any single process can use no more than 4GB of RAM (actually, 3.5GB with Linux and 3GB with Windows)
Computer Science is no more about computers than astronomy is about telescopes. --E. W. Dijkstra
Where can you get a PC comparable to the iMac for $650? Or comparable to the iBook for $600? The price difference is not as much as you think, and can easily be made up for by ease of maintenance, lack of viruses and spyware, and better security.
How to solve most of our problems: 1.Lots of nuclear plants. 2.Cure aging.
At least, not necessarily.
Just because these new chips will be 64-bit does not mean they will be fast. 64-bit processors require more cache and main memory (because all of the memory pointers are 64-bits rather than 32) and cannot necessarily do most common computations faster.
Say you are doing a multiply operation. Very common. The numbers are, say, 500,000 and 42. Both of those numbers are occupying a full 64-bit register, even though they could be stored in 32-bit registers easily. The multiply operation still takes the same amound of time to complete, because the register size doesn't matter unless the numbers cannot fit.
Now, software doing math with numbers greater than ~4.3 billion (what will fit in a 32-bit register) will be able to perform those calculations more quickly, but rarely are such large numbers used. Certain operations, such as encryption and advanced mathematics, will be able to calculate up to 4 times faster, but again, this will not matter much for most applications (though perhaps folding@home and SETI@home will see a speed up).
Additionally, the increased code size caused by the larger memory pointers (about 5%) can actually slow code, because the cache hit rate will drop by that same 5%.
The Opteron processor's early benchmarks (which show that it simply kicks ass) are misleading because the Opteron has other tweaks to improve speed: Twice as many registers, an integrated low-latency memory controller, probably a better branch prediction unit, and a few other minor tweaks. The speed increase is not caused by the larger registers.
That said, IBM makes some very nice processors, and if they incorporate many of their ideas into this new CPU, Apple will hopefully be very competitive. (though those 1.8GHz better have a great IPC to compete with the Clawhammer and 3+GHz P4!)
64-bits is very nice in that Apples can now address >4GB RAM per process, but few people are finding the 4GB memory barrier to be all that restrictive, less professionals working on very high-end tasks such as gargantuan 3D models with staggeringly huge textures.
I'm all for Apple every since OSX was released, but let's not succumb to the 64-bit myth anymore than we should the MHz myth.
Computer Science is no more about computers than astronomy is about telescopes. --E. W. Dijkstra
I think its time Apple start calling anything based on the power PC architecture twice its clock speed, and anyhting thats both powerPC and 64 bits at 4 times its clock speed. After all, the processor does twice as much as a 32 bit processor in a given clock.
No it does not. Do you think bits are some sort of speed measurement? Like, "bits per second"? 64-bit means the chip has 64-bit registers. Basically what that means is it can work with larger numbers and - more importantly - larger memory addresses. It will take exactly the same time as a 32-bit chip to do a specific operation (ex., add two bytes, jump to a new address in a program, etc.). The speed at which operations are done depends on the chip's design and clock speed.
So calling this new PowerPC that runs at "1.8GHz" a "7.4GHz PowerPC" is just as legitimate as Intel calling their pentiums 2.8GHz, etc. (Cause they don't really actually run at 2.8GHz. That's just one clock rate that exists at some point on the processor. Processor clocking is far more complicated than that.)
What? Of course they run at 2.8 GHz. That's the clock speed; they can't help but run at 2.8 GHz. Even if they have absolutely nothing to do, they still go through 2.8 billion cycles each second. There are clockless chips (that work at a variable speed), but the P4 is not one of them.
RMN
~~~
Did you know that a P4 takes 20 clock cycles to perform a multiply?
:) )
Did you know that you are an idiot? the p4 has a 20 stage pipeline, which means the process of excecuting instructions is seperated into 20 peices, and the hardware used to do each one of those pecies works on part of a diffrent instruction at the same time. So while a multiply might take 20 clock cycles to come out of the other side of the CPU, if all you have is a program with one multiply instruction followed by a hlt or something.
Most programs, of course, have more then one instruction. With a 20 stage pipline one instruction takes 20 cycles to run, but you can also perform 19 other instructions along with it... depending on how many excicution units you have along with it.
The p4 has two ALUs, each running at twice the clock speed of the rest of the CPU. (in contrast, the athlon has 4 regular speed ALUs). So in actualy, you'd be able to run 80 or so instructions in that 20 clock cycles.
Integer multiplies are actualy performed by the floating point system, IIRC, rather then by the ALU, so they won't be as fast as addition and subtraction.
The chip IBM is making is a mips based chip, and takes fewer cycles to perform all its instructions. It also has a _ton_ more registers, which means you can perform significant operations without going to or from memory.
IBM is not making a mips chip, moron. They are making a Power PC chip. the p4 has only 8 general purpose 32 bit registers, but in addition has 8 80 bit floating point registers, 8 64bit integer SIMD registers and 8 128 bit floating point/vector SMID registers.
MIPS only has 32 general purpose registers, and although they can be used however you want, several of them are 'reserved' for the stack, and things like that. Also the first register is always zero, and you can't store anything in it. So in actuality, MIPS chips have fewer registers then Intel chips. PPC chips on the other hand do actually have more registers then Intel chips though, with 32 general-purpose registers, 32 floating (64 bit?) point registers, and 32 128 bit vector SMID registers.
This doesn't really help your argument, though: Reading or writing a number to memory is about 100 times slower than an arithmatic instruction.
it's true that reading from memory takes a long time, and that's why modern CPUs don't do it very often. They use these things called "caches" you know? The vast, vast majority of memory access doesn't actually need to hit ram.
But to use those coprocessors, you have to go into modes like mmx. And bolted on extra instructions like mmx have restrictions on them, like not being to do mmx and floating point math at the same time.
No, I was talking about using floating point math for integers larger then 32 bits, rather then splitting 64 bit ints up into 32 bit chunks and adding them with carry (which takes more then two instructions). MMX doesn't allow 64bit int math, as far as I know, but rather allows you to sacrifice floating-point math for accelerated 8, 16, and 32 bit math. It's always interesting in that Mac fans seem to think that Intel chips suddenly lost the ability to do integer math and floating point math at the same time when they gained MMX.
Anyway, that's really beside the point due to the fact that, as you can see, MMX no longer uses the floating-point registers.
For the future, 64-bit is the way to go, and x86 is not. I think one of these IBM processors will be the ideal linux machine. (It'll be low power too, so I won't need a hairdrier-loud fan like I do with my athlon
since when are those separate things?
Might not hurt to learn a thing or two about how computers work before opening your mouth.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
Sure there are. Sun Ultrasparc IIe's are consumer priced and fully 64-bit. You can pick up a full system for just around $1k. They're not the speediest things on the planet, but you just said 64-bit consumer level processor.