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PPC 970 Confirmed for Apple?
batboy78 writes "In what perhaps is the first 'official' confirmation that IBM's PowerPC 970's will be used by Apple, BusinessWeek claims that IBM has confirmed that it's developing a new set of chips for the Mac: 'IBM says the new Apple chip will be of the 64-bit variety, which means it can process twice as much information per cycle as existing 32-bit chips.'" CT The article has been updated to make the confirmation seem... well, far less comfirming.
The G4 is a 32-bit CPU with a 128-bit vector processing unit (aka SIMD Unit) called Velocity Engine or Altivec. This kind of like (though much superior) to MMX, 3DNow!, etc. The new IBM chip is suppose to be a 64-bit chip with a 128-bit Altivec compatible unit. In the past, the Altivec unit has always suffered from Motorola's slow FSB on the G4. One bonus of the PPC 970 is that it sports a 900MHz DDR bus that can keep the SIMD unit fully fed.
They do, but everyone knew about this before today--well, everyone except you, so i guess you have a point. But PowerMac sales were already abysmal anyway.
Oh, and if you want an iMac or a PowerBook, odds are against the new chips premiering in those Macs, so you may have a longer wait than you expect on your hands.
Altivec or Velocity Engine was developed by Apple, IBM and Motorola together (AIM), so Velocity Engine and Altivec are the same thing. The name Altivec is owned by Motorola, but the actual 128-bit vector processing unit is owned by AIM, so IBM can use it in their processors, they just can't call it Altivec.
You might want to check out the MacRumors Buyer's Guide to help you decide when to purchase which Mac model.
For example, right now they recommend purchasing a LCD, XServe, iBook, iPod, or eMac. They're neutral on iMacs, Powerbooks, and Power Macs.
There's no way you'll see a PowerPC 970 in a 12" Powerbook, so don't wait if you want one of those. The iMac is tricky...my guess is that it'll see faster G4's for a while before it eventually gets a processor upgrade. I'd only wait for sure if you want a Power Mac.
Actually, this is wrong. A 64-bit process cannot necessarily process 2-32-bit instructions at once. The number of parallel instructions a processor can process is entirely dependent on the number of pipelines it has. A 64-bit processor with 3 integer pipelines can process 3 32-bit or 3 64-bit integer operations per cycle (in theory) while a 32-bit processor with 3 integer pipelines can still process 3 32-bit integer operations per cycle.
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
The G4 really was a supercomputer at launch... but only by the letter of the law. The G4, capable of over 1GFlop, came in north of the Federal definition of a Supercomputer (in relation to the export of arms). So.. you couldn't ship the Macs to any 'enemy' country like Libya... or even to France... at least not right after they were released.
;-) A dual 2.5 GHz machine would be capable of up to 40GFlops (max theoretical) by Apple's calculations. ;-) hehe.
The US Govt. quickly revised the rules. I believe supercomputers are just north of 50GFlops now.... so Apple could get real close again with an SMP 970... if you go by Altivec performance again.
I'm not feeling witty so bite me
Since when did a BusinessWeek article become official confirmation? Probably, BusinessWeek got their information from rumor posts on MacRumors.com. As well as calling it "official" instead of just official, MacRumors also adds:
No specific executives are quoted, however... so it's unclear from where the information originated.
The PowerPC 970 has been widely rumored and expected to be used in Apple's upcoming Macs, though both IBM and Apple had not made any official announcements about their use.
The PPC 970 only dissipates 19W at 1.2 GHz. The 7455 (the G4 that goes into the current PowerBooks) dissipates 22W at 1 GHz. Those numbers are at full capacity and I got them from official spec sheets.
Don't say that these use more power or produce more heat without the facts to back up your position.