ohmygod2 wrote to us with a story from
SF Gate that Apple, unsurprisingly, is going to be one of the purchasers of IBM's PowerPC 970. At this time, though, it's unclear where Apple is going to actually *use* said chip.
Update: 10/14 15:53 GMT by
H : Follow-up to Tim's
story.
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... I guess that's the end of the rumours about Mac OS X on PC hardware. Good thing too.
its used in the IBM z series servers and these servers can serve up like 100,000 pages per second its insane. this chip is only second to the dec alpha in FPU processing! macs running on these are going to be smokin``
Critics -- notably Intel -- argue that most desktop users have no need for 64-bit processing.
then to be redundant, Intel should face up to the fact that most users have no need for 2.8 Ghz processors.
Clock speed does not measure processor speed. These chips running at 1.8 ghz are faster than P4's running at twice that speed. IBMs Power4 has a huge die and processes tons more information per cycle than a P4. So, if clock speed did measure speed a 100 ghz chip that does 1 operation per second would be 10x fast than a 100 mhz 486!!! right?
sure they could but it is unlikely that masses of people are going to move to the 64bit platform. Apple still lacks the software base that MS has (unfortunatly I suppose) and the hardware will be out of the price range that most people will be looking to spend (I just purchased a second PC for $500 including monitor, I have no desire to pay as much as the PPC platform will cost).
:)
.02
Dreams in this case will most likely remain just that (no matter how bad I want them to come true
Just my worthless
The 970 is a derivative of the Power 4 chip (with what I assume to be the Altivec extensions) Altivec is just the Motorola marketing name for a set of SIMD extensions, Apple markets it under the name "Velocity Engine". IBM's chip will supposedly contain similar extensions to take advantage of the same thing, Apple could simply just swap them and still retain the Velocity Engine moniker. BTW, from what I read, OSX's underpinnings were designed with 64bit in mind, doesn't sound like it would be too big of a development job to convert over.
Okay, actually read the stories. "According to industry sources..." is what it says. Nowhere is there confirmation from Apple or IBM that Apple has comitted to purchasing them. This is not new, this is just the same news as the last story, only centered on one specific rumor, instead of the main story.
As soon as Apple or IBM officially states that Apple has committed to purchasing these processors, don't title the story 'Apple is Buyer...' since we still aren't sure.
Yeah, I'll admit, I've been expecting it since IBM announced the chip, and I fully expect that Apple will be the main customer. BUT, my belief (or the belief of any 'industry source', without hard proof) doesn't make it a fact.
I'm not asking that you not to rumormonger on it, I'm just asking that it not be presented as fact when it is still just rumor.
(Bah, and now I've forfietted three of my moderator points by posting in a thread I moderated in... :-( It just got me pissed off when I finally noticed that there still isn't any proof.)
Another non-functioning site was "uncertainty.microsoft.com."
The purpose of that site was not known.
It's like he never even thought about what he wrote. Someone conveys the thought that marketing hype may be costing you money, but let's ignore that and perpetuate the marketing hype.
On the other hand, the "Megahertz Myth" is marketing hype aimed at opposed marketing hype, so who really cares what either Apple or Intel offer as the "fastest"?
My PowerBook G3 runs just fine, my Pentium III runs just fine. If you need the power, go for it, but if you don't, go refurbished.
Just my opinion.
If they put it into one of those sexy Titanium Powerbooks, they got themselves a convert. Woot! I would love to be able to afford one
More likely they will start in the Xserve. The server crowd is much more likely to be able to use 64-bit and much more likely to be able to afford the new chip.
I'm wondering though.
I remember part of the reason apple went with motorla G4's was for the altivec engine. Back when Motorala and IBM split they forked the powerpc chip (the then G3), when this happened the definition for the chips changed slightly.
Motorola's definition of the G4 was a faster chip with the altivec engine. This is what allows for superfast processing during high floating point calculations (similar to MMX only phatter). This was also the part Apple was talking about when they used to advertise "twice as fast as pentium pc" because during those moments of super-intense number crunching, they were. IBM's definition of the G4 was a chip made with copper, shorter pipelines things like that. How is the switch to an IBM chip going to affect altivec? Since it's motorola technology I think it's safe to assume it won't be on the IBM chip. Will the IBM chip suffer at all during those slowdowns? Or will the extra 32 bit data path, in conjunction with copper, etc... be more than enough to make up the difference?
/* oops I accidentally made a comment, sorry */
People often don't mention the effect that processor pipeline length (and effective branch prediction rate) has on performance.
Let us assume that the PowerPC 970 (AKA GPUL) will have a 10-stage pipe (AFAIK). "Average code" is 20% branch instructions, and a good branch prediction unit can give 90% correct predictions. So this leads us to need a pipeline flush every 45 instructions (on average). We then need to add the pipeline length to this number to get the number of cycles that the chip needs to be fully ready for the 46th instruction.
So:
PPC970 = 56
G4 = 53
P3 = 56
P4 = 66
On the first run of a piece of code the branch prediction unit will only get a 50% prediction rate (i believe). This prediction rate would also be the case if the cpu was running complex code that had random branching. The string of instructions before a pipeline flush would then be 10 instructions.
In this case the numbers look a little different and the g4/p3/PPC970 camp looks really good:
PPC970 = 20
G4 = 17
P3 = 20
P4 = 30
So to run this code at the same speed, the P4 would have to run 50% faster then the P3/PPC970 and 75% faster then the G4. Remember, when you are doing serious multi-tasking, the branch prediction unit will not get a 90% prediction rate as its resources will be split between several different applications.
Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery?
And IBM said no one needed the power of the 80386. Then Compaq released their 386 monster and IBM stopped mattering in the PC world.
Boobies never hurt anyone. - Sherry Glaser.
since intel has about another 100million to pay intergraph, before the judge releases the injunction against selling itaniums. the REAL innovation (in stealing anyway) is at intel now. too much scrutiny at m$ to steal right now. give em a week or two.
The people that are spouting about the G5 being Motorola have forgotten or never realized that the G3 is an IBM chip. Apple could call this G5 or anything else they wanted.
Encryption: I may not agree with what you say, but I will defend your right to encrypt it...
Just because a PowerPC instruction is "complex" and "does more per instruction" does not mean that it executes any faster than one instruction per cycle per functional unit. It just means that it makes the pipeline longer and possibly introduces more pipeline stalls.
:)
That's not how it works... otherwise the pipeline of a PPC would be longer than a Pentium4... the opposite is in fact true.
http://www.apple.com/g4/myth/
Fewer stages means "less bubbles" when cache misses and branch prediction fails. G4's have shorter pipelines.
And IBM didn't see a world-wide demand for more than a dozen mainframes.
By the time you factor in biometric security, voice recognition and Christ's own gaming engines, VR generation, desk-top video editing and so on, 64 bits gets chewed up pretty fast even if you offload some processing to custom chips (and anyway who wants to build boxen with more ASICs that cost more money?)
64-=bitrs on the desktop? In five years it may be the majority of new box builds are 64-bits and 32-bit will be for poor for folks stuck on Windows without a migration path.
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
" Despite the fact that the PPC 970 will be introduced at 1.8 GHz while the P4 is expected to be around 3GHz, the 970 will execute 8 instructions per cycle."
The IBM processors are RISC processors. The Intel ones are CISC. RISC do less per instruction, therefore, it is stupid compare the way you do.
A slashdotter who didn't build his own computer is like a Jedi who didn't build his own lightsaber.
Headline: Apple employees seen putting new IBM chips into new computer cases
It is still unclear whether Apple is going to sell these computers, or switch to Intel at the last second for no good reason.
Give it up people! Apple is stuck with PowerPC chips whether they like it or not. What are they going to do, release OS X for Intel and realize suddenly that there are *no* applications or drivers available for it? It would take a while for the application base to build up again, and some older applications would never be recompiled. Then would new applications continue to be released both in Intel and PowerPC versions? If there's something Apple cannot afford, it is to lose market share due to a messy transition.
main(c,r){for(r=32;r;) printf(++c>31?c=!r--,"\n":c<r?" ":~c&r?" `":" #");}
There ought to be moderation guidelines so I can mod you down for typing "their"
>80 column hard wrapped e-mail is not a sign of intelligent
>life
Given the insane rush to the bottom of the barrel by the entire PC hardware industry, Apple has done surprising things to stay innovative and at the top of the game in price, features and "quality".
Price: At the low end, on any given day of the week, Apple's machines cost no more than $100 more than the equivalent Dell junk-box, at best Apple will best their price by $100.
Features: At the integration level, you're guaranteed to have the best interconnectivity with an Apple computer. Apple packages the best USB and Firewire support available. With expandability options that run from ATA/133 and 4xAGP to Gigabit and Wireless Ethernet, you're unlikely to find something in the real world you can't connect to.
"Quality": Clearly, on a hardware basis, Apple offers more...
To make the point, in todays market, there's only one other way to offer "superior value and/or price", and that happens to lead directly to your disappearance from the market a la Compaq, Packard Bell, Acer, Gateway, etc.
From what we can tell, there's not going to be much of a business left for whoever is left standing. There's no support for the already-razor-thin profit margins of the PeeCee maker.
You'll have to forgive Apple from taking the road less-traveled for their customers' sake!
Why compare it with the Pentium 4 at all?
Wouldn't it more useful and accurate to compare it to compare it to Intel's 64bit Itanium 2?
I guess most of us are more familiar with the P4 but for someone try to choose a platform for a future 64bit app, the choice will be I2, G5 or Hammer. To a great extent, how these compare to their 32bit cousins will be moote if your app actually has 64bit precision or memory requirements.
Why I got interviewed for a position at IBM about a month ago... They wanted me and a group of 20 other people to write device drivers for "Apples 64bit powerPCs"...
I hope Apple has great plans for this chip...