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Preliminary OS X & PPC 970 Benchmarks

Posted by timothy on from the believe-what-you-will dept.

Dixie_Flatline writes "Macbidouille.com is reporting that they have preliminary benchmarks involving PPC970 hardware. The results are seriously impressive. We're looking at a single processor PPC 970 1.4GHz machine quite strikingly outperforming a dual G4 1.42GHz machine. Don't worry, there's an English translation embedded in the page so you don't have to try to muddle through the French." Update: 05/05 19:58 GMT by T : Thanks to Eric from macbidouille.com, above link updated to a static page; hopefully you'll get better response this way.

62 of 389 comments (clear)

  1. FPU favoured? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    It seems the benchmarks they ran all favour SIMD FPU performance. I'd be much more interested in integer (and integer-SIMD) performance, as this is used much more in mainstream video and audio compression work.

  2. So it is faster than dual G4s by stanmann · · Score: 3, Interesting

    How does it compare to the AMD/Intel/Via processor families?

    --
    Food not Bombs is a nice platitude but it breaks down when you notice that the Bombees are usually well fed
    1. Re:So it is faster than dual G4s by KingDaveRa · · Score: 5, Funny

      Well, we can be sure of one thing, it'll be faster than PCs at rendering something in Photoshop.

    2. Re:So it is faster than dual G4s by imnoteddy · · Score: 4, Informative
      How does it compare to the AMD/Intel/Via processor families?

      Well, if you'd looked at the bar charts in the artcle, you'd have seen that the 1.4 GHz
      benchmarks at about the same or a little faster than a 3 GHz P4.

      --
      No electrons were harmed creating this post, though some may have been subjected to electrical and/or magnetic fields.
    3. Re:So it is faster than dual G4s by OwnedByTwoCats · · Score: 5, Informative

      It's in the article.
      Test 1: Cinema 4D-XL
      PPC G4 Dual 1.42 GHz 33 seconds
      Pentium IV 3.0GHz 30 seconds
      PPC 970 1.4 GHz 29 seconds
      PPC 970 Dual 1.8 GHz 18 seconds

      Test 2: Photoshop Actions
      PPC G4 Dual 1.42 GHz 73 seconds
      Pentium IV 3.0GHz 58 seconds
      PPC 970 1.4 GHz 50 seconds
      PPC 970 Dual 1.8 GHz 24 seconds

      Test 3: Bryce 5
      PPC G4 Dual 1.42 GHz 21 seconds
      Pentium IV 3.0GHz 16 seconds
      PPC 970 1.4 GHz 16 seconds
      PPC 970 Dual 1.8 GHz 7 seconds

    4. Re:So it is faster than dual G4s by dAzED1 · · Score: 3, Insightful
      did you read the article at all?

      Right there in the article is a comparison to the P4 3Gz, which the 970 is only slightly faster than. Now, compare the price of a p4 3.0 (or a duel p4 2.6 or such) to the price of a 970...

      Glad that there is a great chip out there (970) but price per performance, the guy (intel) that's making far more chips still is doign it cheaper. Economics.

    5. Re:So it is faster than dual G4s by Shuh · · Score: 5, Insightful
      did you read the article at all?

      Right there in the article is a comparison to the P4 3Gz, which the 970 is only slightly faster than. Now, compare the price of a p4 3.0 (or a duel p4 2.6 or such) to the price of a 970...
      Now consider the 1.4GHz single-processor 970 is goint to be the bottom-of-the-line PPC tower.
    6. Re:So it is faster than dual G4s by timeOday · · Score: 5, Insightful
      Well, if you'd looked at the bar charts in the artcle, you'd have seen that the 1.4 GHz benchmarks at about the same or a little faster than a 3 GHz P4.
      The 1.4 PPC 970, that is, not the G4 1.4.

      Of they G4, they write,

      By reading these benchmarks you'll understand that we couldn't publish them before. Now we know that PM G4 sells are stuck at a very low level, the following test results won't have much incidence. It will however make the ones switching to PC wait for the next generation of Power Macs.
      Now, maybe I'm reading too much into a rough translation, but it sounds like they were witholding benchmarks that showed how the single P4 3.0 spanked the dual 1.4 G4. That doesn't seem very forthright.

      Meanwhile, comparing *today's* Intel product against *tomorrow's* PPC must also be done with caution; by the time you can buy that PPC 970, Intel and AMD will have something else, too.

    7. Re:So it is faster than dual G4s by sjgman9 · · Score: 5, Informative

      All this seems very nice.
      Lets get it out now.

      The thing to remember is that the PowerPC is originally based on the IBM POWER chip -- a native 64 bit chip that can do 32 bit programs as well.

      IBM tends to undersestimate and overproduce. They arent just making it for Apple, they will put the 970 in their own Linux blade servers and NetVista boxes for financial stuff. Also, the 970 is a variant of the POWER4 dualcore Risc monster processor in IBMs big server iron.

      IBM doesnt screw around. Motorola is becoming irrelevant.

      Heres another key reason why this chip might actually be as fast as MacBidoulle claims:

      The system bus runs at 900 MHZ. The current mac system bus runs at 167 mhz. Think about it. A 900 lane highway vs a 167 lane highway? This chip will have monstrous bandwith. And the power consumption will be reduced a big deal as well..

      Look at this official IBM presentation from last october

      and this ArsTechnica review as well

      The 970, being a 64 bit chip, allows more memory than 4GB, the current 32 bit limit. Servers need more than 4 gigs, especially IBM's monster iron.

      10 years ago my Mac used 32 MB's of ram. Now its up to 768 megs. Sooner or later, it will go past 4 gigs. Better to get this transition done now than later.

      The current PPCs (The g4s) are wide, but shallow. The much faster Pentium 4s are deep but narrow.

      This is a guess, and if any cpu engineer wants to help out, id appreciate it.
      The P4 stuffs all execution data down the pipe as fast as it can. If there's a break in the chain of execution instructions, the whole chain must be shoved down the pipe again.

      The G4 spreads it all out over multiple pipes, but the pipes arent deep. The main work is figuring out which pipe is free to shove stuff into.

      This is a gross simplification, so please bear with me.

      The 970, on the other hand, has more pipes than the G4 and the Pentium 4, but the pipes are deeper than the P4. So it can stuff a whole ton of stuff down and be very efficient. Wide and deep. Theres a bit of a tradeoff, but the chip is just engineered much better.

      I read the Ars technica article a long time ago and the IBM PDF file a while ago too. I would not be suprised if the data on Mac Bidoulle is accurate.

      I am waiting for apple to stuff a 970 into a PowerBook, preferably the 15 inch one. I am waiting on that for my next computer. I do not want the G4. The Mobo on the G4 just doesnt have a wide enough bus to suck up massive amounts of data. The 970 mobo will.

      The 970 mobo will be 900 Mhz. Intel has the 533 mhz mobo and soon will have the 800 mhz mobo.

      Motorola and Apple were fighting about how to make the data path on the mobo. Motorola had the chips, they were just being strange. Motorola's problems stunted apple with the g4 for a long time. Apple had to overclock the g4 so much that the g4 tower got obscenely loud.

      I welcome the 970 and want it in a Mac ASAP. I think that WWCD was delayed to show the developers the chip and a version of Panther that will have it. Bring it on! Lets see IBM take on Intel in the chipmaking business.

      My bets are on IBM

    8. Re:So it is faster than dual G4s by bnenning · · Score: 3, Informative
      it sounds like they were witholding benchmarks that showed how the single P4 3.0 spanked the dual 1.4 G4. That doesn't seem very forthright.


      It didn't sound that way to me, it's already common knowledge that the 3.0 P4 beats the 1.4 G4 at most stuff. The impression I got was that they didn't want to deflate Apple's Power Mac sales by pointing out that a much faster processor is due shortly. But then they found that G4 PMac sales are already in the tank, so it wouldn't do any harm (which is also common knowledge, so that doesn't entirely make sense). Of course this is assuming they're not fabricating numbers out of thin air.

      --
      How to solve most of our problems: 1.Lots of nuclear plants. 2.Cure aging.
    9. Re:So it is faster than dual G4s by gig · · Score: 5, Insightful

      I think they mean that these benchmarks are really for PC users. If you are about to buy a new P4 and do MS Windows all over again then they are saying to you "wait a tick and see how the G5 looks first". There is a widespread feeling in the Mac community that the G5 will be something special because it will be from top-to-bottom all New Apple (post NeXT purchase). There won't be anything at all left from the pre-1997 Mac, basically, that hasn't been completely rebuilt (OS, form factors) or replaced (ADB with USB, A/V with FireWire, CRT with LCD). Also, there is a feeling that IBM made the PowerPC 970 just for Steve and Avi and John, so whatever they wrap around it will take really good advantage of it, and basically blow the doors off Wintel for all you guys who are still stuck with 1990's-era computer systems. The idea is that if you bristled reading the previous sentence they hope to show you that it is really true, with 64-bits and system design that goes from the tiniest hardware element all the way to single pixels on the 3D alpha-composited display.

      If you are a Mac user you probably don't care about bar graph benchmarks. I am one and I don't. I just buy a new Mac every three years when my AppleCare is up and sell the old one for half what I paid for it originally and just laugh and laugh.

      Mac users are more interested in feature lists like Rendezvous (zero conf networking), FireWire (hook up lots of disks and cameras real fast and easy), CoreAudio (flexibly utilize pro audio interfaces, applications, effects, and instruments simultaneously in real-time), CoreMIDI (route MIDI performance data between applications in real-time), SuperDrive (read and write CD and DVD), Unicode typography throughout, one-crash-per-year stability, etc. And of course I want it in an enclosure that is 50% of the volume of the last one, too.

      Bar graphs of a particular render or a particular step or action are fairly useless in creative work. You get a better idea by just using the machine you plan to purchase for 20 minutes at an Apple Store or similar dealer. As long as it has all the necessary features (some noted above) and it feels good then you are set. Apple's Photoshop shoot-outs are not so bad because they run numerous day-long scripts on Photoshop on both platforms. These are scripts that it literally takes an artist all day to record in Photoshop, and you can play them back as fast as the machine can manage, so if you play back 20 scripts on both machines and one is consistently faster then that might be interesting. Not enough to make me ignore how much I don't want to run Windows, though. It's not worth if for so many reasons, not the least of which is the dearth of good creative software on MS Windows.

    10. Re:So it is faster than dual G4s by afantee · · Score: 4, Insightful

      >> But I switched to Linux on Intel five or six years ago and haven't looked back since. As a programmer, I love the tools. As a user, I love the independance. And as a man who appreciates freedom, I savour the chaos, the energy, and the source code.

      With OS X, the Mac world is so much better and more exciting than it was 2 or 3 years ago, so you experience gained 5 or 6 years ago is simply irrelevant.

      As an long time UNIX and Windows programmer, I can tell you that OS X is truly a dream platform - better than Solaris, Windows and the old Mac OS in every way. I am now much more productive on my $999 iBook than on a $15K Sun Ultra Sparc machine.

      Many UNIX and Linux geeks have switched to Mac OS X, including people like James Gosling, Bud Tribble, James Duncan Davidson, Tim O'Reilly, and most of the Perl 6 core team. At least 4 or 5 Slashdot editors are now Mac users.

  3. Mac Rumour Mongering by meador · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Remember that MacBidouille has a history of inaccurate rumors... remember their AMD rumor earlier this year. Check out their rating at www.macrumors.com

    1. Re:Mac Rumour Mongering by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

      Actually, macbidouille.com is known for its ACCURACY on rumours. They had early photos of the Quicksilver PowerMac, they had photos of prototype motherboards for XServe, they were true about the specs of 2002 Apple-Expo Macs, etc...

      Note that it is NOT a rumours site, but a Mac news / hacks site.

    2. Re:Mac Rumour Mongering by John+Harrison · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Also remember that Steve likes to announce things himself. There is not way he would stand for a leak of this size. The chances of this being real are slim indeed. If it were real they would show us a picture of the machine and its innards. That said, if it is real this might be enough to get me to purchase another Mac.

      --
      Lasers Controlled Games!
  4. The article... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Informative

    Merci de votre patience et de votre compréhension.
    Vous allez comprendre en lisant ces tests pourquoi il nous était impossible de les publier avant. Maintenant que nous avons appris que les ventes de G4 pro sont anémiques, la publication de ces tests ne risque plus d'avoir d'incidence sur le marché. Cette publication ne fera plus qu'une chose, inciter les MacUsers qui passent au PC en désespoir de cause à attendre pour acheter un Mac.

    [By reading these benchmarks you'll understand that we couldn't publish them before.
    Now we know that PM G4 sells are stuck at a very low level, the following test results won't have much incidence. It will however make the ones switching to PC wait for the next generation of Power Macs.]

    Ces premiers tests datent de mi Mars 2003. Ils ont été réalisés sur un modèle de présérie à 1,4 GHz. Le système était une Alpha de Panther en version 7B5 et 7B8 optimisée 64 Bits mais les applications testées étaient en 32 Bits.

    [The first benchmarks were done during March 2003 on a preview model running at 1.4 GHz. OS was an alpha version 7B5 and 7B8 of Panther, optimised for 64 bits processor, but the applications tested were only using 32 bits.]

    Sous Photoshop, le PPC 970 Mono 1,4 est 87% plus rapide qu'un Dual G4 1,42 GHz.
    Sous Final Cut Pro, le PPC 970 Mono 1,4 est 112% plus rapide qu'un Dual G4 1,42 GHz.
    Sous Alias|Wavefront Maya Render, le PPC 970 Mono 1,4 est 254% plus rapide qu'un Dual G4 1,42 GHz.

    [Photoshop : PPC 970 mono 1.4 is 87% faster than a Dual 1.42 GHz Final Cut Pro : PPC 970 mono 1.4 is 112% faster than a Dual 1.42 GHz Alias|Wavefront Maya Render : PPC 970 mono 1.4 is 254% faster than a Dual 1.42 GHz]

    Cette seconde série de tests a été réalisée sur des machines sorties de l'usine et donc identiques à celles qui seront en vente. Notez qu'il n'y a pas encore de certitude sur la mise en vente du modèle haut de gamme Dual 2.0 GHz, car la disponibilité en volume suffisants de ces puces n'est pas encore certain. Il reste donc possible qu'Apple ne fasse une gamme Mono 1,4,Dual 1,6, Dual 1,8 GHz.

    [The second series of benchmarks were done on the same computers that will be sold. There is however a doubt on the presence of the up-market dual 2.0 GHz as the availability of these chips isn't sure. It seems Apple will surely be able to sell Mono 1.4 GHz, Dual 1.6 and Dual 1.8.]

    Le commentaire est simple. Le PPC 970 relègue le G4 au rang de machines de secrétaire.

    [The result is that the G4 compared to the PPC 970 is now a secretary computer.]

    Voici les explications de ces résultats:
    - L'altivec démontre une amélioration de performances de 80% sur le 970. Mais ce n'est pas à cause de la puce en elle même, mais grâce à l'accès extrèmement rapide du processeur à la ,mémoire centrale. La carte mère Mach 64 est optimisée au maximum pour l'usage de la DDR-SDRAM.- Le PPC 970 ne perd en aucun cas du temps en exécutant des applications 32 Bits.
    - L'optimisation de la carte mère est telle que le passage du mono au biprocesseur permet pratiquement de doubler la puissance effective. On arrive à 90% de performances en plus contre 50 pour le G4.

    [A few explanations to the results :
    - The Altivec shows a 80% increase of performances with the 970. This is not due to the chip itself, but to the high speed access between processor and central memory. The Mach 64 motherboard is highly optimised for the use of DDR-SDRAM.
    - There is no performance loss when the PPC 970 executes some 32 bits apps.
    - The motherboard optimization almost allows dual processors to reach double performance. In fact it's about 90% efficiency gained with the second processor, compared to 50% for the G4.]

    Lorsque l'on voit ces résultats on comprend mieux pourquoi

    1. Re:The article... by grub · · Score: 5, Funny


      Mac fans, our wait will be rewarded. The fight is over and Apple will soon rule the world !

      I didn't know the former Iraqi Information Minister works at Apple now.

      --
      Trolling is a art,
  5. They almost got it. . . by noewun · · Score: 5, Insightful
    Inneresting. However, I wish they would have left off the

    Mac fans, our wait will be rewarded. The fight is over and Apple will soon rule the world !

    cause it makes the whole article sound silly. I've been a Mac user since 1989, but I really, really, really, really wish people would find something more interesting to argue over than which platform/OS you use.

    --
    I am a believer of momentum and curves.
  6. Slashdotted by gricholson75 · · Score: 4, Funny

    Evidently, they should run the server on the PPC970.

    1. Re:Slashdotted by fobbman · · Score: 4, Funny

      That'd only work if someone creates a an Apache-based Photoshop filter.

    2. Re:Slashdotted by Shuh · · Score: 3, Interesting
      That'd only work if someone creates a an Apache-based Photoshop filter.
      This is humorous, but the thing that makes the Photoshop filters on the Mac so fast (relative to their clockrate) is the use of the Altivec unit. Motorola has a PDF explaining how to use Altivec to speed up TCP/IP operations.


  7. Mirror by brejc8 · · Score: 4, Informative

    Mirror list

    --
    Mouse powered Chips, Open source Processors and Lego
  8. I'm skeptic by joeykiller · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I find in hard to believe that MacBidouille actually have been able to benchmark a computer not announced by Apple, based on a chip that's not available before the end of the year according to it's manufacturer IBM.

    (Of course, IBM may have been willing to enter Steve Jobs' reality distortion field this time, and have been misleading us all this time - but personally I find that unlikely)

    1. Re:I'm skeptic by Shuh · · Score: 4, Interesting
      I find in hard to believe that MacBidouille actually have been able to benchmark a computer not announced by Apple, based on a chip that's not available before the end of the year according to it's manufacturer IBM.
      Engineering samples of both the chips and the boards are out for development and review before any product is manufactured en masse. They would otherwise have no idea if it worked before they produced it. So this is not very "hard to believe" for me.
  9. The roadmap is interesting by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Interesting

    The roadmap is also interesting, though still just a rumeur, of course.

  10. As was pointed out on Macrumors.com... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Macbduille must either:
    a) have some really good contacts nobody knows about
    or
    b) is trying to cash in on money from adversiting on it's site and such, but is going to burn it's reputation to do so (come end of may we will know more).

    I honestly hope thier reports are true. If they are, macbiduille will be given much status among mac rumor sites, if not, they will be ignored for a long time to come.

  11. Nice, but still skeptical.... by Dr.+Mojura · · Score: 5, Insightful

    While I truly believe Apple will use the 970, and I'm sure it will be much faster that their current offerings, I still have to remain skeptical of this. Call me naive, but how am I to believe they not only have alpha releases of panther (very possible, since they are probably developer seeds), but they also somehow obtained unreleased hardware as well? "...were done on the same computers that will be sold." I can't imagine Apple is so loose to let out alpha/beta harware.

    Then again, never underestimate the marketing power of 'hype'. Whether it's true or not, I hope the release is sooner than later.... I miss OS X.

    --
    "Nothing exists except atoms and empty space; everything else is opinion." - Democritus
    1. Re:Nice, but still skeptical.... by Steve+Cowan · · Score: 4, Interesting
      When Apple first announced the Power Mac G4, the rumor sites were all saying that the G4 was still at least 6 months away. Jobs blew everybody away and even made an "if you believe the rumor sites" remark just before he said that the Power Mac G4 will begin shipping "today".

      Apple must have had at least some "same machines that will be sold" at that time; they just did a really good job at keeping them under wraps.

      These days the beans are typically spilled at least a few days prior to the announcement of new Apple products. It would be very difficult to have such a high-profile (and high-tech) company entirely leak-proof.

      Take this article to mean what you want it to, but I think it is quite possible that it is true.

  12. Remember the "Apple" section of /.? by chasingporsches · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Maybe this should have been posted to the Apple section. I had to actually click on the /. logo to see this post! My home page is the apple section, to filter only what i really want to see ;-)

  13. Re:Apple Secrecy Sucks by Valdrax · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Perhaps you should read the educational tale of the Osbourne to learn exactly how your reaction is exactly why Apple keeps this kind of thing secret:

    Two years after the Osborne débuted in the marketplace, the company was bankrupt! Why? Osborne made a fatal mistake! They failed to plan! To make matters worse, they announced a second machine, the Osborne 2, which was suppose to be a great improvement over the initial Osborne and all of its competition. However, the announcement was premature since the Osborne 2 was not ready for customer shipments. As a result, the sales for the original Osborne dried up while their customers waited for the Osborne 2. Consequently, the company had no sales that translated to no revenue and subsequently to no cash. Meanwhile, the market was waiting for the new and improved Osborne 2 that never materialized because the company ran out of money, and went bankrupt. The company failed in large part to a lack of honest and intensive business planning. In summary, by failing to plan, it plan to fail and was found guilty of "eating its own children."

    -- From this site.

    --
    If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
  14. French? by Gefiltefish11 · · Score: 3, Funny


    Is this high performance hardware described in French???

    No no, I don't think so. This is Freedom hardware!

  15. Re:Sad... by Dixie_Flatline · · Score: 4, Informative

    The story states explicitly that the OS and hardware are 64-bit, but the applications are 32-bit.

  16. Mirror by Door-opening+Fascist · · Score: 4, Informative

    Ho hum. Another /.'ing. Here's a mirror of of the French, and one for the Babelfish-translated English.

  17. Re:Sad... by Steveftoth · · Score: 5, Insightful

    They're not running in 64-bit mode.

    The 970 runs 32-bit PPC code and 64-bit PPC code. Only the kernel has to support the 64-bit mode and switching back and forth for the individual applications.

    However, these benchmarks still might be fake. It's hard to tell since I can't even download the article.

  18. Re:Sad... - not needed by victim · · Score: 3, Interesting

    64 bits is mostly silly for 99% of applications. Sure its nice to have wider data paths, but that doesn't require any code changes. And sure, as with any radically different procressor implementation the code generator optimization rules need to be changed in the compiler...

    But the 6 applications that could actually benefit from a process address space greater than 4GB, or were simulating 64 bit integer math are the only ones that need to be recoded. (Lets see, oracle server comes to mind, nothing like caching the whole database for performance. We do that regularly when possible. Is it on os-x yet? I'm not sure anything else comes to mind. I suppose the computational fluid dynamics folks and other simulations might appreciate it. In general it is the people who do a little bit of processing to large amount of data on a repetitive basis that benefit most from larger address spaces.)

    Still, don't underestimate the importance of that code generator rework I mentioned before. I would presume that the applications benchmarked are the regular old 'optimized for motorola g4' versions and a recompile with the new code generator will result in 5-25% improvements. (You might wipe that number off before you use it anyplace else. It came out of my ass.)

  19. Pretty decent accuracy... for a rumor site. by The+Placid+Casual · · Score: 3, Funny

    The same site released pictures and specs of the Mirror Drive Door series Powermacs weeks before it was announced... and, it has also had a lot of correct info on numerous products and services in the past year. They do have a good veneer of credibility... well more so than the other rumor sites *cough* Spymac *cough*. While I take the rumor with a healthy pinch of salt, the specs do seem in the right ballpark from what I have heard so far...

  20. This *is* slashdot by siskbc · · Score: 5, Funny
    I really, really, really, really wish people would find something more interesting to argue over than which platform/OS you use.

    Hmm...I mean that's a great idea and all...but what the hell are you doing HERE???

    --

    -Looking for a job as a materials chemist or multivariat

  21. I wouldn't be at all suprised... by SvnLyrBrto · · Score: 5, Interesting

    > IBM may have been willing to enter Steve Jobs' reality
    > distortion field this time, and have been misleading us
    > all this time - but personally I find that unlikely

    I've a couple of uncles who recently retired from IBM. And today's IBM isn't the "Big Blue" of the '80s. Things have changed.

    For starters, the engineers, at least, don't wear suits anymore!

    But that's not the important bit. The important bit is that ever since bill gates fucked them over, back in the early '90s, in the OS/2 incident, IBM has had an institutional hatred of microsoft the likes of which mere mortals can barely comprehend. They're nowhere near as rabidly vocal about it as the likes of Ellison, McNealy, or a big segment of the Linux community, of course. But, then, IBM has always been rathar understated. They don't bluster. But they *DO* remember!

    Catch an IBM'er and have a frank discussion sometime. And you'll find that the prevailing attitude towards microsoft there is: "One day, maybe not soon, but one day... we WILL bend gates and his minions over a barrel and assrape them HARD. And as they say: 'Revenge is a dish best served cold'".

    It wouldn't be suprising at all if the RDF had nothing to do do with it; and IBM sped up production, and got prototypes to Apple early, JUST to spite gates.

    cya,
    john

    --
    Imagine all the people...
  22. Altivec? by Goldfinger7400 · · Score: 4, Interesting
    According to the article, "The Altivec shows has 80% increase of performances with the 970."

    This strikes me as being odd, considering that an IBM chip shouldn't have an "Altivec" unit (Altivec is a Motorola brand name.) I know the 970 is supposed to have a vector processor, maybe the author's just screwed up. I'd certainly like to believe this article.

    1. Re:Altivec? by Brandon+Sharitt · · Score: 5, Informative

      IBMs vecotor processer is Altivec compatible. Apple calls it velocity engine. I think they just called it altivec since some people wouldn't know that Altivec is just Motorolla's name for their vector processor. When these things are in Macs, apple will probably call them G5s with velocity engine, even though they will be fourth generation(or second if you count how long they've been 64-bit) chip and not the exact same thing that was velocity engine.

  23. Obviously bogus by siberian · · Score: 4, Interesting

    This site is wrong a majority of the time and their specs/benchmarks do not ring true.

    Go to http://www.macrumors.com/ for a detailed analysis in the forums of why these are fake benchmarks.

    Beyond that, the release dates they give are insane, apple is still producing G4 desktops.

    Call me when the G5 desktops stop rolling off the line and apple starts depleting inventory.

  24. barely keeping up by g4dget · · Score: 5, Informative
    The French site is slashdotted, but SPECmark estimates are out on the web here. The relevant quote is:
    When the PowerPC 970 first ships in the second half of 2003, it should clock in at around 1.8GHz on a 0.13 micron, 8-layer SOI process with copper interconnects. [...] The estimated SPEC INT and SPEC FP numbers (937 and 1051) would allow the 970 to clearly dominate the desktop scene were it released tomorrow, but by the time we see this chip in a shipping system the performance landscape will look significantly different in both the 32-bit (P4 at 4GHz+ with SMT) and 64-bit (AMD's Hammer) desktop markets. I won't try to predict exactly how it will stack up to the x86 and x86-64 offerings in late 2003/early 2004, but when it finally ships the 970 certainly won't spanking anything from Intel or AMD in the SPEC benchmarks. It should, however, enable Apple to avoid the kind of overpriced embarrassment (from a hardware perspective, at least) that is their current "pro" desktop line. And in fact a dual- or quad-970 system could potentially compare quite nicely in terms of price/performance to a single-processor Prescott or Hammer machine.
    Note that a 3GHz P4 system already gets SPECint and SPECfp of 1130 and 1085, and AMD's Opteron may be slightly faster yet (and give you an optional 64 bit mode).
    1. Re:barely keeping up by g4dget · · Score: 4, Interesting
      SPEC doesn't say much about SIMD speed.

      It says exactly what it should say about SIMD speed: "how fast does regular C/Fortran code run when I compile it with a regular compiler". If the compiler can figure out how to transform, say, Fortran array code into SIMD, it will help the SPECmarks. If not, then whatever SIMD features the chip has are useless for most applications, in particular scientific applications. The exception are a few specially crafted apps like Photoshop plugins and MP3 encoders.

  25. Don't trust by humina · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I don't trust this information at all. There are a lot of apple people that would like to see a processor that is significantly faster than intel's offering (I am one). Unfortunately there are people that will publish rumors that apple is going to do this soon without proof because they wish it were so now. The only apple rumor site that I would trust is Think Secret. Other than think secret or an announcement from apple, I refuse to believe that any of this information is true. This is merely wishful thinking.

    --
    check out the best blog ever:
    http://oehlberg.com
  26. Re:Sad... by gerardrj · · Score: 4, Informative

    You need to learn some more about the PPC arcitecture.
    PPC was designed from the ground up to scale to 64bit without affecting the performance of 32bit apps on the same processor. 32 and 64bit comingled apps can live quite happily on the same machine. There is no porting or special software required.
    When a developer gets around to porting their app(s) to 64bitness, they can take advantage of newer features and higher performance.

    The 32/64 bit conversion should go at least as smoothly as all the others: System 6->System 7+,68K->PPC,G3->G4, OS9->OS x. In each case the developer was under no pressure to release (properly written) software specially compiled for the new arcitecture, the hardware and/or OS masked the change and allowed the older apps to "just work".

    --
    Article X: The powers not delegated... by the Constitution...are reserved...to the people
  27. Slashdotted by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    Apparently the French server surrendered to our requests ... like that's a surprise.

  28. Macintosh Nerd Factor @ All-Time High by Shuh · · Score: 3, Insightful

    First they moved to a modern RISC-based ISA in 1994. Then they moved to a UNIX/NeXT-base OS with OSX in 2000. Now they're moving into a Power-4-workstation -derived 64-bit processor that will come out of the gate (at its lowest clockrate) neck-n-neck with the highest clockrate x86 CPU's in their prime.

    Throw in things like brilliant X11 support, a desktop graphics subsystem only dreamed about for other OS's now, and even a Nightly Phoenix/Firebird build for OSX.

    It's going to be a great time to upgrade a Mac, or buy one if you don't alreay have one.

  29. Re:Pot calling the kettle black by Brandon+Sharitt · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Well MacRumors doesn't really release its own stories that often. Most of the time they just post links to sites like MacBidouille and tell you to take it with a grain(or barrel) of salt.

  30. The benchmarks are bogus by Hannibal_Ars · · Score: 5, Insightful

    We've had some discussion of these in the Ars Mac forum, and the consensus is that they're bogus. I'm currently wrapping up part II of my 970 article, and I'm pretty certain that these numbers are made up.

    Here's how it will break down clock-for-clock:

    Floating-point: the 970 will spank the G4e
    Integer: The G4e will spank the 970
    Vector: it's a tie, even though the 970's Altivec hardware is inferior to that of the G4e. What gives the 970 a boost is Dual-channel DDR400 and a real FSB. If you were to put the G4e in a similar system, it would out perform the 970 clock-for-clock pretty handily.

    Anyway, I could elaborate more, but I'd rather work on my article.

    --
    Senior CPU Editor | Ars Technica | http://arstechnica.com/
    1. Re:The benchmarks are bogus by Hannibal_Ars · · Score: 4, Informative

      Ok, I see that I should've clarified a bit more, but I was in a hurry to get out of the house so I just fired off a quick post. First off, see this thread:

      http://arstechnica.infopop.net/OpenTopic/page?q= Y& a=tpc&s=50009562&f=8300945231&m=3470943335&p=5 6

      Check out pages 52 onward for some detailed discussion of these issues in advance of my article.

      Now for a preliminary explanation (let's see if I can condense this):

      In a very small nutshell, the 970 has less general-purpose integer hardware than either the G4e or the P4. It has two general-purpose ALUs (or arithmetic logic units, which do integer computation) that are both mostly symetric. This means that both ALUs handle almost all types of integer ops with a two cycle latency. However, there are some differences, but more on that in a sec.

      The G4e, on the other hand, has one complex integer unit and three simple integer units. The three simple integer units have a one-cycle latency and handle all the basic types of integer instructions (add, multiply, etc.). Longer, more complex multi-cycle instructions, of which there are few and these show up statistically more rarely than the fast integer ops, are handled in the complex ALU.

      So a basic comparison of ALU hardware shows you that the G4e has slightly more integer hardware that's more specialized and hence potentially faster. (Think a supermarket with two general purpose checkout lanes vs. a supermarket with three express lanes and one general purpose checkout lane).

      This doesn't tell you the whole story. First, the good: The 970 handles CR logical operations in a separate unit, the CR logical unit. These types of ops are done on the G4e in the complex integer unit. So this bit of specialization helps the 970 out just a bit, but only a bit because CR ops are relatively rare.

      Now for the bad, which is a killer: the 970's group dispatching scheme dictates that one ALU is fed from dispatch slots 0 and 3, while the other is fed from dispatch slots 1 and 2. (If you don't know what a dispatch slot is, reread my first 970 article.) So of the four possible integer ops that can be dispatched in parallel on any given cycle to the 970's ALU issue queues, two are constrained to go to one unit and two are constrained to go to the other. This sort of partitioning scheme makes code scheduling critical, because if there's a mix of integer ops and other types of ops (e.g. loads, stores, etc.) then one ALU's issue queue(s) could be oversubscribed while the others' languishes, due to the fact that the other ops happen to be pushing all the integer ops into one particular pair of dispatch slots (i.e. either 0 and 3 or 1 and 2).

      Now, this is potentially bad enough already. But when you factor in the fact that the ALUs are not symetrical, and that certain types of ops can only go to one ALU and hence MUST go into one of only two dispatch slots, then you get a recipe for further choking of dispatch bandwidth.

      Ok, I've probably managed to confuse anyone who's read this far, but so be it. You asked for an explanation. Read that thread I linked above for more discussion, or just wait for my article (it should be finished any day now) for a more user-friendly explanation with nice color diagrams and such.

      The end result is that the 970's ALU hardware is weaker than that of the G4e, the P4, and the Athlon. So its clock-for-clock integer performance will be worse, at least this is what I'm predicting. We'll see if I'm right.

      Now, this really isn't too big a deal to my mind, because most people care more about floating point and vector ops for the types of desktop and workstation apps that run on a Mac.

      More worrisome is the inferior Altivec (or, as IBM calls it, VMX) hardware. The G4e has a superior and more robust SIMD implementation, but it's severely hobbled by a lack of FSB and memory subsystem bandwidth. I'm sure that IBM will improve the SIMD situation in future releases of the chip, though. Right n

      --
      Senior CPU Editor | Ars Technica | http://arstechnica.com/
  31. What are you smoking? by 2nd+Post! · · Score: 3, Interesting

    What do you mean, not needed?

    How about Photoshop, which could *easily* swallow 4gb of RAM?

    Or VirtualPC running Windows XP + some program?
    Or Classic running OS 9 + some program?
    Or a combination of all three of the above at once?

    Sure, only *some* applications can use the 64bit data paths, but every program can take advantage of the faster bus :D

    --

    GPL Deconstructed
  32. Re:maybe Intel Xeon 1M comparisons more relevant by TotallyUseless · · Score: 3, Funny

    PHOTOSHOP
    MAC
    INTEL
    XEON
    WINDOWS
    LINUX

    Which of these are acronyms? None of them.

    I guess I should spell your username as CINQDEMI? What is that an acronym for?

    --

    Time for some tasty Shiner Bock!
  33. Re:What about a dual PIV? by bnenning · · Score: 3, Interesting
    Why didn't they test a dual PIV, why cause it might just win?


    Um, maybe they didn't have one? At any rate, the main point of the benchmarks (making the large assumption that they're legit) was to compare the PPC 970 to the G4, not x86. Although since the low-end single 970 beat the 3.0 P4, I'd imagine a high-end dual 970 would beat a dual P4/Xeon. We'll just have to wait a few more months to see.

    --
    How to solve most of our problems: 1.Lots of nuclear plants. 2.Cure aging.
  34. Panther version is wrong by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    The Panther builds are not on the B build train yet, so this article is wrong. There is no such thing as Panther 7B6.

  35. Re:The 970 vs The Opteron x44 ....... tsarkon repo by Aqua+OS+X · · Score: 4, Insightful

    First off, most mac users have known that their platform has been behind the curve (in processing power) for a few years now. I don't know why you'd have to "try to tell" Mac zealots this. Mac users use Mac's because of the better usability, better UI, better hardware integration, etc. I could care less if my new Mac is 8months slower then a new Windows/Linux box.

    Secondly, the 970 is far from vapor. It was first presented 6 months ago and they are now rumored to be falling off Hon Hai assembly lines. Not only was the PPC970 announced well -after- AMD and Intel's consumer 64bit solutions, it will most likely be the first 64bit CPU to appear in consumer desktops and laptops.

    And finally, what good would an Opteron be to Mac users? Although Cocoa apps could probably be recompiled for a different CPU with minimal headaches, Carbon apps do not port well. Apple would have to create an emulation layer for Carbon apps. It would be a nightmare, it would take for ever to develop, there would be countless software incompatibilities at first, and Mac developers would throw a hissy fit. Shess, we're still coming out of a -major- OS migration.

    I could go on and on about why an Apple AMD box would be technically impossible at this point in time...but hey, just trust me, ain't gon'a happen. The PPC970 is a smart move.

    --
    "Things are more moderner than before- bigger, and yet smaller- it's computers-- San Dimas High School football RULES!"
  36. Never worked with IBM people, have you? by cirby · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I've worked corporate meetings for IBM, and they would quite happily do quite a lot to frustrate Microsoft. Keeping the 970 secret would be right in line with their corporate attitude. You have to remember that Microsoft's screwing of IBM didn't stop with the selling of DOS to Compaq - it's been a habit for the last 20 years.

    1. Re:Never worked with IBM people, have you? by Erwos · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Indeed - when IBM came to our school, all of them could not stop talking about how they were going to use Linux to kill Microsoft. The parent wasn't lying - it's hunting season at IBM, and they're now armed and dangerous.

      -Erwos

      --
      Plausible conjecture should not be misrepresented as proof positive.
  37. These are fake by blackmonday · · Score: 4, Interesting

    As posted by some on macrumors, the benchmarks claim a performance increase in Bryce 3D with dual processors. Bryce 3D does not take advantage of dual CPU's. Don't trust these numbers. I think this website is just making some cash off of the banner ads on the site.

  38. Not serious by Bulln-Bulln · · Score: 5, Insightful

    This ''benchmark'' is really bullsh*t.
    When you do serious benchmarks, you post details about the hardware and the used OS.
    Well, they gave a few details about the Mac they claim to have. But what about the P4-PC?
    What kind of RAM did they use? 100MHz? 800MHz? Something in between?
    Which Windows version did they use? Was Hyper Threading enabled?
    The list could be a lot longer, but you get the point.

    Also: Wasn't the PPC970 meant to be a competitor to Intel Xeon and AMD Opteron CPUs rather that just the plain P4 (by price and aimed market)? (I'm not sure about this one.)
    Why didn't they benchmark these as well? (They could at least get a Xeon, an Opteron is harder to get.)
    The last sentence (''The fight is over and Apple will soon rule the world!'') gives me an indication why they didn't do this: They seem not to be interested in an objective comparison.

  39. Re:What about a dual PIV? by Jungle+guy · · Score: 4, Informative

    Maybe is because there is no dual Pentium 4 in the market. If you want dual processing, you need to go with Xeon.

  40. Re:Power4 & PowerPC 970 Review Announcement (l by JonathanF · · Score: 3, Informative

    Here's a fixed link (with HTML in it): PowerPC 970 Annoucement

  41. Total fabrication... by jriskin · · Score: 3, Interesting

    1. Bryce does not support multiple processors. So the MP results should NOT be significantly different.

    2. The Pentium 4 and 1.42Ghz DP G4 numbers were lifted directly off of Barefeats website!!! The odds of them using theEXACT combination of hardware and software setup to receive exactly to the second numbers is *HIGHLY* suspicious.

    See this page to see where they got some of the numbers...
    http://www.barefeats.com/pentium4.html

    3. In general they have been hit and miss on rumors.

    I wouldn't believe these numbers at all. Although, I would love for them to be true.