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Motorola to Boost 0.13-micron PowerPCs
Anonymous Cow writes "From The Register: 'Speculation that Motorola may soon cease to be a supplier of processors to Apple may be premature. The chip maker yesterday said it had successfully implemented low-k dielectric materials in its 0.18 micron silicon-on-insulator (SOI) processors, bringing an estimated 20 per cent speed bump to the PowerPC line. Motorola expects to roll out the process on its 0.13 micron chips this month...'"
From the article on The Register:
candidate processors include the MPC7457, which has yet to ship but is set to take Motorola's G4 family beyond 1GHz.
I don't know where they've been looking but under my desk just here is a dual 1.25GHz G4 tower... there are 1.42s out there, too...
Honestly, I don't know what I'd do with a dual 2GHz G4 at the moment... apart from the two folding@home clients I'm running, I'm using perhaps 10 - 20% of the CPU on this machine, and that's running OS X and a heap of graphics apps...
I don't think the Motorola is completely out of the picture. When the 970s come, Apple can use these new G4s in the iBook product line to bump up their "consumer" grade laptops.
Karma: The shiznight, mostly because I am the Drizzle.
Which 20% would Motorola be referring to? If you remember correctly, you will note that the current 1.42GHz machines user overclocked 1.25GHz parts. Underneath that large heatsink in each 1.42GHz powermac is a chip containing the numbers 125.
I doubt it will be a big jump, merely allowing a jump from 1.25GHz to 1.5GHz.
Of course, I fully expect Apple to do their overclocking again, and attempt to pull 1.7GHz out of these systems.
I would buy it, I would actually drop Windows and become a OS-X user overnight (and thats coming from a 100% Windows fan). I just cant afford / dont want to pay over the odds for pretty and slow(ish) computers. Its just the OS I want, I'll buy my own monitor etc.
I'd rather buy those sweet 800-series Opterons and build a 4-way number crunching monster for my calculations. I really need that memory bandwidth!
Apple will most likely use this as an oppurtunity to drop the G3. Finally Apple will have Altivec across the board. You have to take into account that the manufacturing process also reduces heat and well ... size ... making this sound more and more like a processor for an iBook.
I also beleive Apple will use this as an oppurtunity to make everything above 1Ghz this year. We will most also likely see quad G4 Xserves because of this (moto producing better G4s)
The 970 is a great chip. It's benchmarks at the Microprocessor Forum VERY HANDILY beat EVERY processor put up against it - even the AMD 64 bit!
Apple shouldn't move to x86 as suggested in the redundant Apple naysayers. (hey you "apple is dead people": how about looking in my journal?) I rather like the RISC processor anf the PPC - there is MUCH less code overhead and easier "addon" capability (cache, media functionality, i/o) - Motorola has been the hold up in it's development and needed someone like IBM to step in and lend a hand, they have done so.
Yell & scream & rant & rave... it's no use... you need a shaaaave ~ Bugs Bunny
rubbish!
i've got os x running on a g3/400 and i'll admit its not snappy, but it doesnt lag to the point of frustration either. it works and it doesnt seem to be a pain to me.
i just had to get my 2 cents out there because EVERYONE says you need an g6/5000 to run aqua smoothly. i dont agree.
I'm limping along on a failing beige G3 because I need filemaker. But there's no new Mac in store for me because they're too expensive for what you get.
Megahertz myths prove, not that that much speed is (un)necessary, but that Apple has lost the technological leadership it once had in hardware. I think G3s are fabulous chips but Motorola can't execute the future. Time to move on, if there's any time left.
Apple's responsibility lies with its shareholders, not its users, no matter what Einstein and Miles think. Once the users realize that they might begin pressuring Jobs enough to get him off his high horse, and the only thing that migh do that is Zero sales for a few months.
This is actually bad news. The MPC7457 still doesn't make full use of the bandwidth available in the DDR400 RAM the Macs are currently using. The MPC7470 does, but we're still not getting that chip - for whatever reason - I assume its a manufacturing & design issue. It's been a very long delay.
Motorola looks pretty amateurish with this feeble boost. This is a manufacturing tweak that intel and IBM have made months ago in their primary foundries. The MPC7457 likely isn't going to get used in any serious Macintoshes - perhaps it will go into the iBook and iMacs eventually.
So perhaps Motorola has given up on the MPC7470, and conceded that market to IBM's 970 and 980 chips. Let's hope so; I would like to buy a new workstation pretty soon. ;-)
Anyone seen my low uid? last seen 10 years ago while panning the #@$# out of Taco's 'web based discussion system'
You're comparing the 64-bit PowerPC 970 with the 32-bit Pentium and expecting the GHz figures to correspond, which isn't true. As Intel themselves will tell you.
:-)
Take a look at the Itanium, which is the correct processor to use as a comparison, being as it's also the 64-bit high-end next-generation (blah blah) processor. Likewise, AMD fans should not compare the 970 with the Athlon, but with the Opteron.
And lo and behold; Intel's release schedule for Itanium indicates the latter is somewhere around the 1.5GHz mark, ramping up to 2GHz now. Same speeds as the 970, basically (I think the 970 might be debuting at 1.8GHz though).
If you get the basis for comparison correct, the picture is slightly different from the one you're painting. Seems to me that a 970-based Mac and an Itanium-based PC are starting from a level playing field.
Which should make the 64-bit debate more interesting; tailored hardware and software (970-based Mac/OS X), bolted-together hardware and FOSS (Itanium/Opteron/Linux), or bolted-together hardware and commercial software (Itanium/Opteron/Windoze)?
You might be able to guess from the way I've put that which I'd choose....
We know that the longer Apple uses the PowerPC platform, the less likely the possibility of it switching to an Intel/AMD platform becomes.
You know, the longer Apple has been around, the more likely it has become. Years ago there was only broad speculation. Now there is a feasibility build. Give it another 10 years and they will have a *BSD/OSX combination running happily, and with enough proprietary hardware to make it worth Apple's while.
Why they would do such a financially suicidal thing is beyond me (though I would be very happy if they did), but the idea that they must do so soon or risk missing out is a bit unfounded.
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