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.
Slashdot Mirror
I predict that Apple will use the chip in a high end personal computer.
Google News of course has pretty much all the acticles. They are all based upon the same IBM press release, but many make slightly different predictions.
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.
http://www.eet.com/semi/news/OEG20021014S0059
Essentially a derivative of the company's Power4 microprocessor, IBM's PowerPC 970 adds 64-bit PowerPC compatibility, an implementation of the Altivec multimedia instruction-set extensions and a fast processor bus supporting up to 16-way symmetric multiprocessing.
I hope they use a memory controller that does at least DDR 333.
The law is a weapon of the government, not a protection for the likes of you. Surely you understand that.
Keep in mind most of these articles are coming from the BusinessWeek article, or an IBM press release. IN the IBM release, *nothing* about a real date of shipping was stated. What was stated was "Second Half of 2003".
As for the GHz issue, the chip does more per-clock than the P4. This means that it can still be competitive. Just wait another day for the MPF, and maybe we'll be able to see some initial SPEC numbers.
I think you'll be pleasantly surprised.
.
Blocklevel: Practical Information Architecture
I predict that Apple will use the chip in a high end personal computer.
...but the 64-bit iPod project is already in high gear, so we can't stop now, can we?
Wow! That's an even better idea!
pi = 3.141592653589793helpimtrappedinauniversefactory7
Both the Power4 and Itanium are tremendously powerful processors. See this page, ironically intending to promote the Itanium2 (which is a tremendously powerful chip), to see how a 1.3Ghz Power4 compares with a P4.
http://www.wired.com/news/mac/0,2125,55722,00.html
This is being discussed all over (here, Ars, Macworld) but the Wired article takes a much more "done-deal" tone than any of the other commentary I have seen yet. It suggests the possibility of Macs with 4TB of ram too :-)
--is not to be confused with user #672982 - Bame Flait
When Apple started selling FireWire-based Macs, Intel immediately tried to marginalize it by saying that the technology only appealed to a niche of consumers, and oh-by-the-way here's our specs for ATA/66 and USB 2.0 (for which the detailed specs hadn't been finalized, and which didn't start hitting mainstream systems until some 2 years later).
Intel takes seriously Andy Groves's words about only the paranoid surviving.
Slashdot: SF Gate: Wake me when one of the companies comments please. They will, but be patient before yelling CONFIRMED!
Thanks
So close and yet so far from the world's perfect ID number
"Critics -- notably Intel -- argue that most desktop users have no need for 64-bit processing"
:-)
Critics -- notably Microsoft -- have argued that most desktop users have no need for more than 640kb of memory.
the 'slide
"Corporate rock still sucks. What are you gonna do about it?"
"Corporate rock still sucks. What are you gonna do about it?"
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.
The 'G5' will be whatever chip Apple slaps on their next 'big' processor upgrade. The G3, G4, G5 designations have nothing to do with the chips themselves or their model numbers. They're just spin that Apple uses to compete with the Pentium 3, Pentium 4, etc lineup. Apple could decide to throw AMD Hammers in their next generation systems and would still call the chip the 'G5'.
Ignorant consumers are unlikely to percieve any performace improvements in models unless there is some underlying technology that gets a new name or a new version number. It's like model years in cars, the 2002 has a higher number than the 2001 model, so it MUST be better, and people drool over it.
Article X: The powers not delegated... by the Constitution...are reserved...to the people
Cupertino, CA - Apple Computer (AAPL) is expected to buy a record number of the new "PowerPC 970" CPU, but in a suprise move, isn't expected to actually do anything with them.
"We're doing great with the iPod, the warehouse is totally empty," said Apple VP Phil "All your Jaguar" Schiller. "Steve thought it would look more lived-in if we had some big boxes of stuff in there."
Steve Jobs was hard at work developing a new way to mispronounce the name of the new CPU and was unavailable for comment.
ZOMG I WOULD LOVE TO KNOW ABOUT YOUR FEELINGS ON MACINTOSH VERSUS WINDOWS, VI VERSUS EMACS, AND HOW YOU'RE NOT A DORK
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. I can't recall how many instructions per cycle the P4 executes but I believe it is far fewer than 8. Of the handful of articles I read about it, somebody said that the 970 would effectivly compete with a 4-6 GHz P4 as a result of the instructions per cycle efficiency of the chip.
Plus, it's gotta run cooler than a 6GHz P4 would. As a laptop owner, ignoring the superior performance potential of this chip, the cooling and power requirements alone would make me choose a 970 architecture over a Pentium.
The fabled G5 is the next generation chip from Motorola, Apple's current supplier of G3 and G4 chips.
Sorry, but you're wrong. IBM currently supplies Apple with the G3s (for the iBook). Motorola only supplies Apple with the G4s.
The Gn style of naming is Apple's doing. Motorola and IBM use names like PPC 750 or PPC 7440.
If Apple uses this chip in their future you can bet it will be called G5s (if they decide to keep with that naming convention).
sin(6cos(r)+5A)
From the article:
"Critics -- notably Intel -- argue that most desktop users have no need for 64-bit processing. In fact, Microsoft Corp. has yet to release a 64-bit version of Windows that will run on AMD's Hammer chips."
Is it any wonder, given they just lost their defense against Intergraph's patent lawsuit which may result in them not being able to release the Itanium series?
Hey, Intel, last I checked, no one had a use for 32-bit processing or 640K of RAM on the desktop, either.</sarcasm>
blog |
http://www-3.ibm.com/chips/news/2002/1014_powerpc. html
moox. for a new generation.
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.
This kind of technology can be more easily implemented by burning porn directly into ROM reducing lookup times to almost the speed of the bus.
Apple could appeal to the hardware hackers with offers of ROM upgrades packaged in convienent easy-to-bend pinned chips using tightly machined push-down sockets. Withing months there would be a "Burn your own Porn ROM howto" and instructions on how to mill the pin thickness down to permit easy insertion!
(puns, unfortunately, were intended)
Breakfast served all day!
Also, notice that according to press relewase 970 will be the single core version of Power4, so you should look at the green box closer to Sun's suckers, not at the orange one. Press release also notices "economy version" of Power4, so it may be even slower.
MSDOS: 20+ years without remote hole in the default install
Ahem. 128MB L3 cache (on the POWER4 in the benchmark)? Daaaamn. I'm not saying that a fat L3 cache has anything to do with SPEC benchmarks (I'm guessing it doesn't), I'm just making an observation: that's a lot of cache! And it's probably bloody expensive to get 128MB of cache-speed memory. HP's comments allude to that but it also has 64GB of RAM so it's sort of a straw man ("let's overconfigure a system and then make fun of how overpriced it is").
I think it's quite silly of HP to say that "IBM's Power4 architecture is outclassed in performance". Really? A 10% difference qualifies as outclassed? I don't agree. And the POWER4's SPECint score is better. "Outclassed?" Hah.
Of course the proof is in the pudding. Let's see what actually hits the streets. Apple has now been "just around the corner from really kicking Wintel's butt" performance-wise for about 8 or 9 years, but it has yet to happen. We were all led to believe that the PPC would blow away x86 and that never happened. With luck, IBM will actually deliver a really kick-ass CPU at clock speeds close to the x86 family, and the superior per-clock performance will actually make it faster. But there would still be the question of price/performance. If Joe PC Buyer can buy a faster PC for the price of a Mac, it doesn't matter that the Mac runs cooler, or at a lower clock speed, or in 64-bit mode. Joe will just say "my $500 PC is faster than your $1500 Mac, end of story". And he will have a good point. Until that changes, the only people who care are the people who are willing to pay a premium for OS X and the Mac experience, and people who need something faster than the fastest desktop PC but still want a user-friendly mainstream desktop OS. The folks who use Office and Outlook all day won't be able to justify the extra $1000 or whatever it would cost to get a Mac that performs similarly.
I'd also like to remind everybody that benchmarks don't necessarily reflect real-world performance. This is a very synthetic benchmark that is great for telling you what the best-case raw CPU performance of these CPUs can be, but it doesn't prove that $REAL_APP will see those performance gains over older CPUs.
In particular it's not clear what the performance cost would be of using code compiled for a PPC604 would be vs. using code compiled with the very best compiler for the POWER4. I'm sure that Steve Jobs will crow about another highly-optimized Photoshop benchmark that we can all wish represented overall system performance, but it doesn't. That said, I imagine that the really important professional creative apps (you know, the ones that cost thousands of dollars per seat and really beat the @%$%@$% out of the CPU) will be quickly updated for the new CPUs because their customers will demand it. (To be fair, the same is true for the Itanium.)
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