PPC 970 Confirmed for Apple?

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Posted by pudge on Wednesday May 21, 2003 @08:48AM from the i-want-one-in-my-ipod dept.

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.

19 of 379 comments (clear)

Now I'll wait to buy a Mac by StephenLegge · 2003-05-21 08:50 · Score: 5, Interesting

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.
Apple sales guys must hate this kind of press.
1. Re:Now I'll wait to buy a Mac by mikedaisey · 2003-05-21 08:59 · Score: 5, Informative
  
  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.
2. Re:Now I'll wait to buy a Mac by American+AC+in+Paris · 2003-05-21 09:01 · Score: 5, Insightful
  
  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.
  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
3. Re:Now I'll wait to buy a Mac by Dominic_Mazzoni · 2003-05-21 09:07 · Score: 5, Informative
  
  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.
4. Re:Now I'll wait to buy a Mac by Sloppy · 2003-05-21 09:28 · Score: 5, Insightful
  
  I was gearing up to buy a Mac .. but with new chips on the horizon I think I'll hold off for a few months.
  Even before this "announcement" I could have told you: new computers will come out some day. They will be faster than the old ones.
  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.
  
  --
  As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
5. Re:Now I'll wait to buy a Mac by Dylan+Zimmerman · 2003-05-21 09:56 · Score: 5, Informative
  
  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.
Re:64bit by Anonymous Coward · 2003-05-21 08:54 · Score: 5, Insightful

">>>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.
Confirmation? by Anonymous Coward · 2003-05-21 08:55 · Score: 5, Insightful

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.
Re:G4 Vector Engine then? by skinlayers · 2003-05-21 08:56 · Score: 5, Informative

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.
Say what? by Chief+Typist · 2003-05-21 08:57 · Score: 5, Insightful

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"?
Re:Apple CPU speed by skinlayers · 2003-05-21 09:02 · Score: 5, Interesting

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
Re:G4 Vector Engine then? by mtuller · 2003-05-21 09:04 · Score: 5, Informative

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.
Re:64 != (2*32) by Tumbleweed · 2003-05-21 09:10 · Score: 5, Funny

No, no, son, the standard is "on the head of a pin", not "in a Volkswagen"! :)

Volkswagens are units of measurements for sizes of asteroids that are about to impact Earth.

Other measurements in this system:

% of the width of a human hair
Length of a football field
Length of an Olympic-sized swimming pool
Equivalent # of bowls to 1 bowl of Colon Blow (or Super Colon Blow) cereal

And you thought _metric_ was cool... :)
Re:64bit by be-fan · 2003-05-21 09:11 · Score: 5, Informative

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...
1.8 GHz per second by tm2b · 2003-05-21 09:12 · Score: 5, Funny

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
NOT confirmed by goombah99 · 2003-05-21 09:26 · Score: 5, Insightful

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 actually was a supercomputer... by Ffakr · 2003-05-21 09:30 · Score: 5, Informative

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.

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. ;-) A dual 2.5 GHz machine would be capable of up to 40GFlops (max theoretical) by Apple's calculations. ;-) hehe.

--
I'm not feeling witty so bite me
Re:Stimulus / Response by chasingporsches · 2003-05-21 09:38 · Score: 5, Informative

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.
Read more carefully. by Raffaello · 2003-05-21 11:47 · Score: 5, Insightful

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.