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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?
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
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.