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IBM PowerPC 970 Architecture
riclewis writes "Hannibal from Ars Technica offers an explanation of some of the internals of the new IBM chip. It's certainly more powerful than anything on the desktop now, but by the time it's released a year from now, it looks to be middle-of-the-pack (which could still be a step up for Apple...) This excitement over the early release of hardware specs kinda reminds me of all the hype surrounding the Sony's Emotion Engine when it was introduced a couple years ago. In fact, some are suggesting the PPC 970 chip might be closely related to the PS3's 'Cell' processor..."
"In fact, some are suggesting the PPC 970 chip might be closely related to the PS3's 'Cell' processor..."
Even though it's really doubtful, it'd be extremely cool to see a PS3 emulator on the mac if the processors are that closely related.
I remember running Mac OS 6.0.5 on my Atari ST. Because it had the same processor, it didn't need much to make it run.
Oh well, I can at least dream, can't I?
Not that hot NOW! They will have a lot of competition in that space with Opteron/Clawhammer, and the new Sparcs.
Still, glad to see something other than incremental progress.
The law is a weapon of the government, not a protection for the likes of you. Surely you understand that.
I mean... it's great news that Apple won't have to rely on Motorolla's decidedly passive desktop chip development strategy anymore...
But man. First off, this kills any possibility of a big surprise hit. Second, this dooms apple sales for the next year or so... who wants to buy a stagnating desktop model when the next edition has so much promise?
Then again, Apple's desktop offerings have been a little stagnant anyway... most people probably won't want to play the waiting game for as long as it'll take for these to come out.
I just hope that by the time they do, they're worth it.
A couple of points to throw water on this:
Apples are certainly wonderful machines, and Windows certainly is icky most of the time, but be prepared to back up any benchmark statements with actual benchmarks.
Also, PowerPC and Intel/AMD are two different types of processing, so they can't really even be compared.
Um, no.
All general-purpose microprocessors perform certain basic tasks upon which everything else is built - integer and FP math, memory access, and control flow operations. Processors take different approaches in how they implement these functions, but the interfaces presented to programmers - even assembly programmers - are very similar [and yes, I've done assembly on multiple platforms].
You can also completely ignore architecture and take test programs that you think are representative of the kinds of tasks found in different types of application, compile them for both platforms, and measure how long it takes to do the same amount of work on each machine. This is the _foundation_ of benchmarking.
If the machines were completely different, you wouldn't be able to do the same tasks on them!
Everything you said is correct... BUT...
It doesn't matter how much work a processor does per clock, if you can scale an "inferior" (according to your definition of inferior) to a MUCH higher clock.
This may not even be an architectural flaw as much as the result of an inferior manufacturing process. If Motorola's fabs aren't as good as Intel's (I don't think they are) then the fact that the G4 is a "better" processor on paper is completely irrelevant - for all the consumer cares, the FASTEST G4 available is slower than the fastest P4 (Currently, according to benchmarks not done by apple, it seems that you dont even need the absolute fastest P4s to beat the fastest Macs)
My server
Does it?
The eetimes story linked at the top says it's an 8-stage pipe. That doesn't mean any more or less than the extreme tech statement that the new pipe is triple the length (which would be 21, the current pipe is 7) since we haven't seen any actual reference docs from IBM.
Can anybody who was at the Microprocessor Forum give us more info?
Don Negro
Perl 6 will give you the big knob. -- Larry Wall
There is never a good time to buy a computer, and nobody in their right mind will ever buy one at all. There is always something faster coming up.
Once you get over how ludicrous that is, I say buy a computer whenever the hell you want one. And yes, your machine will be obsolete, according to all the charts and graphs and tables of benchmark numbers, almost immediately. It doesn't matter if you buy a G4 in 2003, or a 970 in 2004. It will still happen. Get over it.
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computing in chunks... sounds a lot like a Cray
This chunking is described in great detail in the original POWER4 public design documents. It's referred to in passing as a redeeming feature, borrowed from VLIW concepts. The suggestion is that its a part of traditional VLIW that could be leveraged into a non-VLIW design.
C//
Everybody, that is, except the people that want *good* optimizations, rather than merely "sick" ones. Take a look at the code GCC produces sometime... it's not pretty.
How do you make a CPU go faster without jacking up the clock? You can create a new design, but that would be a lot more expensive than jacking up the clock. It takes years to develop a new CPU design and IPC increases are usually minimal. Most new CPUs seem to be designed to run at higher frequencies to achieve better performance. The P4 actually has a lower IPC than the P3 but can operate at much higher frequencies.
Many companies are planning to use parallelism to improve performance. IBM has a CPU with two logical cores, and Intel will introduce CPUs with two virtual processors in the very near future. But parallelism is not likely to get you a doubling of performance, especially on a desktop machine that is often running only one intensive process at a time.
Contrary to some of the opinions presented recently it is just fine for Apple to use the 970 and be behind the curve with respect to typical performance. Sure there are specialized apps that can leverage a RISC architecture to outperform x86 or leverage Altivec to outperform SSE, but that is a small minority. Typical performance lags behind PC a little but we are in a situation where PCs and Macs have more performance than most people actually use. Most folks out there in the real world will get along very nicely with a 1GHz PC or a 800MHz Mac. Very few people need 2.xGHz machines, and only a few more have enough disposable income to buy those machines for Quake FPS pissing contests :).
The real Apple problem is that the gap between typical PC and typical Mac performance is starting to grow beyond the range that has historically shown to be viable. Not a problem today, standard dual CPUs counter this to a degree, but it's likely to be a problem in a year or two. While the 970 may only perform like a 3GHz P4 (SPEC), lag whatever Intel/AMD has in a year or two, it will be close enough. Apple will be back to a point where the typical performance gap is small enough. Apple has sold tens of millions of Macs that lagged PC counterparts in performance. They know that their customers are more interested in ease of use. Performance wise close-enough is all they need.
There's a specific talent to buying a Mac at the right time, as performance increases happen in large steps in a few distinct instances in the year.
PCs just keep getting gradually better and better. But with a Mac you can buy a single processor machine one day only to find you could have had a dual for the same price on the next day.