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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.
Apple sales guys must hate this kind of press.
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...
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The AltiVec engine (which is also available in the 970 though I'm not sure if IBM can call it that or not) is like MMX/SSE/SSE2 where it can process chucks or multiple chunks of data that can be larger than 64-bit (AltiVec and SSE can handle 128-bit, not sure about SSE2).
32-bit and 64-bitness of a processor generally means how much memory it can address and the size of the registers.
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.
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.
Ok.. I wish people would get this through thier heads. A 64 bit chip is _NOT_ inherently faster than a 32 bit chip. It is able to address more memory space and perform greater precision calculations faster. If you are just working with lots and lots of 32 bit numbers you will see some speed improvement but not close to double. Once you are into the realm of 33 bit and higher numbers which are done with mathematical trickery on 32bit processors, you will see a huge speed increase when working with a 64 bit processor.
Also, the increased memory ceiling helps.
*note: yes, I know this is not technically correct, but I'm not explaining how 32bit and 64bit processors handle thier operations. Maybe someone can reply with that.
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Does that mean my G3 isn't a supercomputer anymore?
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"?
I didn't read anywhere in the article that IBM confirmed Apple will be using PPC970.
Is this new news?
mr.
OK, let's review. First off, this is not the regular "Byte of the Apple" columnist. Second, if I had a comment like that in my back pocket, I'd make damn sure that readers knew where I got it, who said it (if possible) and get as much detail as I could. This sounds too offhand to be authentic, and, really, the comment doesn't necessarily indicate that IBM will be building chips for the Apple. The author could simply be referring to a comment made at the Microprocessor Forum--where IBM and Moto executives deliberately avoid the A-word.
What we've got is not a smoking gun, but a shadowy silhouette of an unknown object that might be a gun and seems to be emitting some sort of vapor. If Business Week had something definite, this would be a news story and not something buried in a column.
(Pardon the troll: why does Business Week actually have a dedicated Apple columnist, anyway? They cover business: why not a column on Ford, or Charles Schwab, or Genentech? hell, it's not like it paid off for them--Apple gave the iMac story to Time.)
You must have been asleep for most of the 90s when the PPC was kicking x86 butt.
Here is what the article actually says:
"Although Apple (AAPL ) won't talk about it, IBM (IBM ) is developing a new set of chips that Apple will likely use to replace the aging Motorola processors used in its G4 line."
TO REPEAT: "...CHIPS THAT APPLE WILL LIKELY USE..."
In other words, THIS IS JUST MORE FACT-FREE SPECULATION.
It's easy to make up & spread cool- and credible-sounding stuff. Finding & checking hard facts is hard work.
The past has shown this to be untrue. Apple held the CPU speed crown with the G3s when they first came out. Motorola has been screwing Apple for dropping the clones (and cost Moto big $$$), and because there is no incentive in their embedded market for fast FSB. Mark my words! This is just the beginning. IBM has the most advance fabs in the world. And they just made a deal with AMD to share process techniques. The POWER 5 (and its PPC 980 derivitive) are a hell of a lot closer then you think. Oh, you want benchmarks? http://www.macbidouille.com/niouzcontenu.php?date= 2003-05-05#5440
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.
I was more intrigued by the "1.8 GHZ per second" claim.
1.8 Billion instructions per second per second. It's about time that somebody made an accelerating chip - way to go, IBM!
"It is our blasphemy which has made us great, and will sustain us, and which the gods secretly admire in us." - Zelazny
I'd bet money you won't see the PowerPC 970 in anything other than the PowerMac at least at first.
PowerMac = Highest Performer, iMac = Mid teir and eMac = cheapy.
PowerPC 970 isn't going to be a laptop PC unless you want to cook eggs. Can't see that nice chip being in a book just now.
(Speaking as a recent Powerbook 12" Owner too)
As a rock-in-roll Physicist once said, No matter where you go, there you are.
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.
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
Quick everybody dump Intel and AMD stock! Their 64bit roadmaps demonstrate that they're pushing useless processors.
64 bits are coming and Apple's wise decision years ago to go to PPC mean that today it has the easiest roadmap. Itanium requires lots of rewritten software code (not just recompiled) and a lot of people think AMD's solution won't last too long. In contrast, The Power ISA has always allowed 32bit code to run on 64bit processors with little speed penalty. You *can* recompile your application code but the only program that *has* to do it is the Operating System, and even then not all of it has to be recompiled.
Apple's product roadmap seems to involve tighter and tighter coordination with IBM and their Power Series which serve many large Fortune 1000 businesses and are likely to continue to do so with 64 bit Power (and now PPC) technology.
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.
As in, it'll be announced that Quark is available, but only on the new 64-bit power macs, driving the sales of both.
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.
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The 'desktop' variant of the chip dissipates 19W at 1.2GHz, which is not out of the realms of possibility for a laptop (many Intel laptop chips dissipate more than this) and the 1.2V version is expected to make do with only 13W. It is entirely possible that the PowerBooks will move to this chip quickly, and the iBook will start to use G4s.
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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.
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.
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