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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 Powerbook's won't be updated for a while yet, they were only released in January! If you want one that bad, buy one, they are great :)
/me posts using a 12" PB :)
">>>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.
"Argh! Head... going... to... explode..."
He didn't say twice as fast... he said that it could process twice as much information per clock cycle... he is correct with that statement.
Did I miss the part of the article where it said that IBM confirmed making PPC chips for Apple? I don't see a press release or any other real evidence. This is just an article about some guys speculation as to what is happening.
Argh! Head... going... to... explode...
Indeed. But this is the sort of stuff that you can expect from the popular press. Hey, if the number is twice as big, it must be twice as fast. Right?
At any rate, the reporting for this article is shoddy at best. For example: While I would absolutely love to believe this has been verified by a source at IBM, the reporting is a little suspect and I would suppose that this is based upon rumor and nothing else. For instance, this rumor has been making the rounds for some time and if you look at the other big rumor the author is speculating on Yet, help may be on the way. Quark is signaling that it might soon release an OS X version. No guarantees and no dates, to be sure. You will find that Quark has hidden nothing about this. In fact, in the latest Macworld there is a whole expose on Quark coming to OS X.
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From the article:
Although Apple won't talk about it, IBM is developing a new set of chips that Apple will likely use to replace theaging Motorola processors used in its G4 line.
How is this "official confirmation"?
If IBM is officially releasing this information these machines should be out soon.. As apple is probably not going to sell a lot of G4s now..
I'd be surprised if the nextgen chip landed in a portable right off the line. Apple's Power Mac line has been, well, pretty stagnant lately; a new chip is the perfect way to boost this line.
In any case, putting a brand new and untested chip into a laptop environment is risky. They'll roll 'em out in nice, big towers, where heat dissipation is easier to handle and hardware doesn't need to be custom-crafted to fit inside a hella-small space. Once they're comforatble with the quirks of the chip in Real World settings, they'll start working them into laptops.
So, in other words, don't hold your breath for a PPC 970 laptop in the next round or two of Mac hardware, for both product line freshening and technical reasons.
Obliteracy: Words with explosions
It says process twice as much information. Information tends to mean data such as mp3-encoded data, jpeg-encoded data, undecoded tcp data etc. Now process could mean many things. Sending it out to ram, to harddisk etc would be of the same speed , but doing a xor for finding flags from a network packet header would be faster since more of the packet is in the registers, assuming the information to be extracted is in more than 32 bits of the source data.
Process generally means WORK on it, which means the data in question that might be over 32 bits will be processed twice as fast, unless its already being processed by MMX, SSE(2) et al, in which case, it depends on whether these extensions have been improved too. (dont know about powerpc).
So the article is right.
"Give orange me give eat orange me eat orange give me eat orange give me you." -Nim Chimpsky
OK, but... ...Apple knows laptops are the only growth area in PC sales right now, and what better way to capture customers than some ass-kickin' new laptops?
Moreover, why spend time and money trying to push something consumers aren't interested in just so you can say you improved one area of your sales? It's the overall sales picture that matters, and giving consumers what they want is the best way to maximize that.
Of the handfull of people I know who are looking for a new machine right now, it's either for a laptop or a gaming rig, and while a new Mac is suitable for gaming, it won't make a good choice as a gaming oriented purchase. The laptop lookers I know are very open to the idea of buying a Powerbook.
Actually not really. It can process instructions that are twice as long as 32 bit per clock cycle.
A reason Business Week has a 'Byte of the Apple' columnist is because he covers all sorts of things in the 'Mac World'. Having a column about Ford would make no sense as its not really a separate universe like Mac versus Wintel.
Another reason is that lots of Mac people probably read just about anything Mac related. So, page hits and ad revenue.
I was gearing up to buy a Mac -- a 17" iMac or a 12" PowerBook, but with new chips on the horizon I think I'll hold off for a few months.
The 970 will most probably premier in the high-end machines, like PowerMac and XServe. It's highly unlikely that 17" iMac or 12" powerbook will get the new chip in the close future. Apple usually tends to differentiate its product line even by means of effectively cripplling its low end machines - like deliberate blocking of non-mirroring external video on the iBooks (technically possible for Radeon, but crippled by Apple on iBooks) or the lack of L3 cache on the 12" powerbook.
So if the machines that interest you are the iMac and 12" powerbook, you are safe to buy them now. No serious upgrade is likely for them to happen in next half year (maybe some minor speed bumps, like the recent one for iBooks). The ones that are likely to see major changes are Powermacs, and indeed I would recommend holding with purchases in their case.
I think the likely scenario is that the G3-based iBooks will be eventually ditched (there is hardly any development of this product line since more than half year), and the 12" powerbook G4 will become the new low-end of the Apple portable line; the high-end being some Mucho Macho Seventeen Incher With The Brand New Chip.
Jeez... did any one read the article? it is just repeating the rumor. It does NOT say that IBM is confiming its making the chip for macs. go back to work and clean the jism off your screen.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
Oh, and it gets worse. In a few months when you finally get what you think you want right now, there will be more heartbreaking news: new computers will come out some day. They will be even faster. You wasted your money on obsolete junk, fool.
Some day the 970 will be an ancient joke like the Opteron and the abacus. "You still use a PowerPC 970? Can you still get replacement beads if they fall off?" Ultra320 RAID arrays will be laughingly referred to in the same breath as 1541 floppy drives and people will speculate that they work by means of a turtle on a treadmill. "Grandpa, is it true that your display devices only projected a two-dimensional image and didn't have smell synthesizers?"
It's almost like there's a pattern or something.
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I think it depends on when the 1.2 V. version of the chip comes out. It used a very small amount of power - 13 W. if I recall correctly.
I think the G4 will have a fairly lengthy run in the tiBook line, with the 970 at the high end.
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I kept seeing posts on the rumor sites that the 15" PowerBook was to be updated "real soon now." Finally, fed up with waiting (I could be enjoying one instead, after all), I went ahead and bought one of the current models.
It doesn't matter which PowerBook you get: get the one that fits your needs best. They ROCK.
I haven't had this much fun with a computer in 20 years!
Non tam praeclarum est scire Latine, quam turpe nescire
-- Cicero
No offense, but ye gads! The 12" and 17" PowerBooks aren't even half a year old, and they're still pretty much universally recognised as some of the ass-kickingest laptops ever.
Moreover, why spend time and money trying to push something consumers aren't interested in just so you can say you improved one area of your sales? It's the overall sales picture that matters, and giving consumers what they want is the best way to maximize that.
That's the beauty of marketing. If you're good at it, consumers will be interested in exactly what you want them to be interested in; if the product is actually good, then it's that much easier. Apple wins on both counts. Besides, they've been pushing laptops big time for a while now. That momentum is gonna run out at some point. Desktops need to be there to pick up the slack. (Got your iBook/PowerBook? Got your iPod? Great--now you need a Power Mac with Airport wireless to act as your home media hub!)
Of the handfull of people I know who are looking for a new machine right now, it's either for a laptop or a gaming rig, and while a new Mac is suitable for gaming, it won't make a good choice as a gaming oriented purchase. The laptop lookers I know are very open to the idea of buying a Powerbook.
Obliteracy: Words with explosions
I ordered the last OS9 booting G4 because I need a new computer now, not next week or next month. I need OS9 booting for QuarkXPress and for OS9 multitrack audio applications that I use.
If a rumour about new computers is putting you off buying you probably don't need a new computer anyway. If you make money with it who cares what's in the pipeline? If you need a new machine and it's going to make you money you buy it.
I'll worry about buying a Mac with a 970 processor when it's actually shipping and the software I use has been rewritten to take advantage of 64 bit processors.
"Clean up the air and treat the animals fair" - Captain Beefheart
well over 3 grand, for that much money, i want something that renders audio and video faster then any other mobile device on the planet.
apple is NOT.
i repeat apple is NOT THAT DEVICE.
So?
Apple doesn't sell "-est" machines. Not the fastest, not the thinnest, not the lightest, not the most durable, not the most reliable, not the longest battery life, not the cheapest -- they're not really the best at anything.
But they're pretty damn good at everything, and for people who are looking for a good balance (as opposed to the best in any one area), they're often perfect. That's why people get attached to them.
(And that's not even mentioning aesthetics (of both hardware and software), which is one of Apple's biggest selling points.)
Don't become a regular here -- you will become retarded.
"While technically true, saying "64-bit can process 2x faster than 32-bit" is misleading."
It's a good thing the article didn't say that.. in fact.. I will quote it here:
"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"
There. It says it can process twice as much information per cycle. Which is exactly what the benefit of 64 bit computing is. (along with 64 bit instructions[read: more general purpose registers are possible], and 64 bit memory addressing).
The article makes no claims of 2x performance increase. Nobody said that more information/cycle directly correlates to overall, or even specific performance. 2x the information per cycle is EXACTLY what 64 bit means, no matter how you look at it. And that is exactly what the article said. Claiming 2x performance increase would just be absurd. Kindof like your statements.
Two infinite things: your stupidity and mine. But I'm not sure about the latter. If my sig offends you, I'm sorry.
There are a number of reasons why the 970 will most likely end up in power books this year.
- PowerMacs and XServes will most likely feature multiple power 970 CPUs, placing them well ahead of a single CPU powerbook in performance.
- The target market for powerbooks is really not the same market as xserves and powermacs. The true competition for powerbooks is PC notebooks. The true competition for desktops is PC desktops. There is little risk that 970 equipped powebooks will cut deeply into Apple's server and PowerMac sales.
- In the year of the notebook, where Steve Jobs has claimed more than half the macs sold will be notebooks, he can't really afford to push desktop systems over powerbooks.
- The 970 requires less power and gives off less heat than a G4. It's a perfect notebook CPU.
I'm looking forward to pickign up a 970 Powerbook before Christmas.
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From the article:
"IBM did not confirm it was building a chip specifically for Apple, but it does say its new PowerPC chip will work on Apple platforms."
So IBM has confirmed that the new chip will work in Apple Machines, something they heretofore had not said.
I'm a bit worried about the lack of 64 bit applications. Converting an application to run well on a 64 bit CPU is no small task I suspect, so Mac users might have to deal with sub-G4 performance with 32 bit software for quite a while as software developers scramble to advance.
I wonder how the Athlon64's (aka "Clawhammer") 32 bit performance will compare to the PPC970. With x86-64 extensions I'd expect it to be significantly faster, though I wouldn't be surprised if its 64 bit performance was slower.
Untill someone demos a Photoship plugin that utilizes the Radeon or NVidia GPU, this one's a non-starter. Having said that, it shouldn't be too hard to produce something...
Next, the article cites the "timing". Assuming these chips haven't been sampled yet, Apple has no chance to get these things out in time to compete with Athlon 64. Users are already doing the things he lists as high-performance tasks, and have been doing it on PowerMacs for some time (let alone Wintel PCs, though arguably it is easier to edit down your home movies onto DVDs using a mac, based on the included software.) Also, digital music is not at all a processor-intensive task; Digital recording can be if you're worried about being realtime, which I assume most people are. Realtime digital audio manipulation (though not synthesis) is generally CPU-intensive, but most people won't be doing this. Video is about a zillion times more intensive, and people are doing it NOW, but he cites "digital photography and digital music" as the reasons people need CPU? PLEASE.
As for "WATCH OUT, SUN" -- Sun is in no danger whatsoever from Apple. It's in far more danger from AMD, and in even more trouble than that since it's under fire from itanic, which is about to get another revision, right? Ultrasparc processors simply don't have the go-get'em any more, the only advantage of Sun machines is that they have the "big iron" systems and an OS to run on them. As itanic systems become more multiprocessor, Sun will be in more trouble. As Opteron/Sledgehammer systems become more multiprocessor (I believe 32 processor systems have been announced?) then Sun will be in even more trouble because of the price-performance ratio. I CAN see a day when Sun will stop making Ultrasparc-based workstations, but it won't be because of Apple.
As for a 64 bit chip processing twice as much data per cycle, you still have to do loads and stores, and Apple has traditionally had the slowest-of-class memory and system bus. I understand the new processor has a 400MHz DDR (800MHz equivalent) bus, so perhaps Apple will match it with DDR400 SDRAM, and then it will do them some good.
I guess the Quark upgrade for MacOSX could push some shops to upgrade, but can't they run Quark for MacOS9 on MacOSX just fine? Unless there are meaningful new features on the new version... Which seems unlikely.
Face it, this chip will not "breathe new life" into Apple. It will only allow it to keep fighting the "good fight" against other platforms which are going or have gone 64 bit.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
You *can* recompile your application code but the only program that *has* to do it is the Operating System
But you will have to recompile/rewrite all of your Windows and x86 code in general.
Well that makes it definite in Apple land - a retraction's been made.
..k
The Mothership
Ok, here's my question. Why does everyone spend so much time comparing PPC to x86? Ok, so I'm a recent switcher, I purchased a 12' PB. I love it. So it only has a 867 MHz G4, its way fast enough for 90% of what I do with it. So I hear this new PPC 970 is on its way. GREAT! Anything faster then what I have now is better. Right? I have a mac, I'm not trying to run Windows on it. If OS X and the software I run on it work fine, then I'm happy. All I'm getting at is that faster processors for Apple is a good thing. Just because they are not as fast as the x86 flavor doesn't bother me.