Apple to Announce the Power Mac G5 at WWDC?

a.ameri writes "Apple Insider is reporting that Apple will announce computers based on IBM's 64 bit PPC 970 processor in the upcomming WWDC and will market them as G5. The new Power Mac G5s will sport a completely new motherboard design utilizing DDR 400 RAM as well as AGP 8x graphics, FireWire 800, and USB 2.0, sources said. "In the box" connectivity among the news systems is based on Hypertransport which provides 64-bit addressing and will replace Apple's multilevel bus architecture found in current systems. Initial offerings of the Power Mac G5 are said to boast 1.4 to 1.8GHz, single core PPC 970 processors, with the possibility of a dual 1.8GHz chips shortly thereafter."

Comments

G5 a good name?

[freedom_leffo]

Is G5 a good marketing name though? I've understood that the whole Gx-line is thought of as slow and stagnant processors. Perhaps a name not associated with Motorola would be a better idea.

Thoughts, anyone?

Re:Does the clock speed matter that much?

[phelddagrif]

I wouldn't say that they've caved into the Mhz myth, so much as the G4 processors have pretty much hit the top of their lifespan quite some time ago. This is just a natural progression, they needed a new processor, and Moto's offerings are pants, so they went with the 970, which is a darn good processor.

Furthermore, if they were really caving, they would have gone with a processor with a few more RPM.. 1.8Ghz? That's pretty weedy in the world of x86.. That's actually pathetic as far as "new" machinew would be concerned..

I'm really not trolling, but...

[niko9]

whats stopping IBM from making these chips available
with an appropriate motherboard for folks who would like to run linux/bsd/ on them?

Re:I'm really not trolling, but...

[RalphBNumbers]

Nothing.
In point of fact IBM announced they would be selling PPC970 based systems running linux months ago. The announcement concerned blades, but I'd be willing to bet they'll build "low end" (compared to Power4 systems) workstations around them too, finally phasing out their old PPC604 low end workstations.

Of course, I wouldn't count on them matching/beating Apple's price point. Historically IBM's PPC based stuff has been *much* more expensive.

Re:I'm really not trolling, but...

[doce]

As far as I know, the technology is licensed to Motorola which is actually manufacturing the chip and reselling it to Apple.

alas, no. IBM and Moto both manufacture PPC processors. Most G3's, for instance, were manufactured by IBM (IIRC, even the current iBooks sport IBM procs), but G4's are all from Motorola* because IBM refuses** to use the Altivec unit.

Anybody knows if Apple has been able to gain any market share in the rackmounted server market with its 1U servers? A 1U server build around the PPC970 may be a killer server.

well... before the XServe, Apple had 0% of this market. Selling just one would increase their market share. A friend of mine went to a Minnesota Wild hockey game and was telling me that the stadium luxury boxes are decked out with Apple hardware which you could use to watch instant replays and call up historical video of the various players. Supposedly the stadium has an XServe data center to host it all.

Pet rock.

[Duncan3]

"These initial units will ship with Mac OS 10.2, and hence, will not be optimized for the 64 bit PPC 970 processor. Consumers who purchase these Power Mac G5s will receive a coupon for a free copy of Mac OS 10.3 (Panther), which will ship in September and will be optimized for the new 64 bit processor"

Translation: It's a pet rock until September, by which time production can be geared up and units will actually be available. Of course this will kill all sales until then, so announcing this early would be a very bad idea. So an announcement this early is unlikely.

But... we all know it's coming. Won't be cheap tho, but you get what you pay for in the OSX/Win/Linux world. Over 2 years and still not one crash on my Mac.

The Way Of Steve

[nwf]

Didn't Steve say some time last year that Apple will never introduce new hardware at WWDC?

Of course, the way of Steve is complex and sometimes contradictory.

Re:Um, point of order...

[Lysander Luddite]

Some rumor sites claim the PPC prices will be lower than Motorola's G4. Who knows for sure? I would think IBM would offer the lowest prices possible to speed adoption of the chip. I have also read on the web that IBM's costs for G3s were lower than Motorola's because their production facilities were better. *shrug* If PPC970 truly is 25-35% lower than G4s its a no-brainer for Apple to use them.

If the prices are that low I wouldn't expect Apple to lower prices though. The pro models have been fairly consistent at their current price point for some time. I'm sure other costs have gone up with new features like Hypertransport, Firewire 800 and USB 2.0 (how much does Intel charge for that?). All o fthis si specualtion until the hardware actually comes out of course.

As for the stock comment, prices go up and down. I seem to recall a stock split a few years back. The stock has gone up recently with the iTunes sales announcements. However I think stock price is one of the least indicators about how well a company is doing - and certainly has nothing to do with the price of mac hardware.

Re:"New!"

[Distinguished Hero]

Which wintel motherboards have fw 800 and hypertransport? I'd be interested.

I wasn't really going to comment on this, but since it got modded up 5, Insightful...
nForce, nForce2
You might be further interested in knowing that hypertransport was primarily designed by AMD and is used in all of their Opteron systems, and will also be used in all Athlon64 systems. I guess that's not wintel per se... but it's a PC motherboard nonetheless.

Furthermore, if there is a demand for fw 800 on PCs, they will have it... a small upside of not being at the whim of a single company *cough*Apple*cough*.

Re:what is the processor price point?

[willtsmith]

Apple needs higher clock speeds to remain competitive in the minds of Joe Consumer and Joe IT Worker (see #2).

Apple doesn't have a prayer of competing in the Joe IT Worker space. Wintel rules business operations, Unix still has a mindshare in web services, Linux is making a LARGE dent in web services, Mac is a non-player.

The first job of any Mac today is to PRESERVE market share in it's core demographics, Elementary Ed, Higher Ed, Graphics Artists, Publication, Videography. BTW, did you know that many hollywood and HBO/Showtime movies are edited with Final Cut Pro????

A PPC970 machine would obviously be a higher end offering for high-end customers that need serious CPU horsepower. Most of the market doesn't NEED 64-bit and probably won't take advantage of it for quite some time.

In the higher ed space, I see that a 64-bit processor could become a great tool for researchers who want to do simulation work on their desktops (and notebooks).

This is especially relevant as IBM starts putting PPC970 CPUs into super-computer rigs running linux variants. It becomes feasible to run the same large scale programs (at a dialed down resolution) on a G5 OSX Mac.