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PPC 970 Powerbooks and Powermacs in Production?
Thadddius_Brinks writes "MacWispers.com
is reporting here
that apple is currently in production of a redesigned single processor PowerPC
970 Powermac system and a 15.4 inch Powerbook. They (MacWhispers.com) are also standing by
their earlier claims about the speed of the new processor."
This article consolidates many of the major rumors surrounding WWDC including
the rumor of a new case for the Powermacs, but it raises the ultimate question: 17" Powerbook, or PPC 970 Powerbook?
1. That the 970's are being produced, but so far, there's still small numbers, so either only folks at the Developer's Conference will first crack, or you'll have to wait for a bit of time before you can actually get your hands on one (kind of like when the 12" and 17" first started shipping).
2. The major OS Upgrade to 64 bits will happen in a few more months - either way, I expect that OS 10.3 will cost another $50 - $100 (depending on how they do it).
3. The G3 iBook line will be slowly phased out, and replaced with G4 based systems.
4. Dual processor systems by Christmas or so.
5. iTunes for Windows sooner than we thought.
6. Somewhere in this timeframe, new Xserves will start to appear with the 970 chip and the 64-bit server operating system (which should be interesting for folks running "big ass" database/graphical rendering farms.
So either way, I'd say we'll "see" the devices, a few "first adopters" will play with them, pass judgement, Ars Techana [SIC] will write a big ass article on them, and "everybody else" will pick them up later.
Hopefully somebody can convince Valve that Half Life 2 would really run rather nicely on these boxes so I don't have to spend money upgrading my old Wintel Game Box.
52 Weeks, 52 Religions with John Hummel
If they release a 15" g5 powerbook, what would happen to sales of their 17" g4 powerbook? I don't believe apple would have a powerbook line with their midrange model having such a radically better architecture/processor then their high end model.
yes i run a goth/punk/emo porn site.
Isn't much more elegant to use hexadecimal?
-Libertarian secular transhumanist
Do you think the new "G5"s will sport new enclosures too..?
The current design is long in the tooth to say the least and is highly associated with the G4 processor... yet I've heard nothing about new enclosures at all..
Dude, RTFA:
"- The new Power Mac has a new case design with "metallic look plastics," and a front panel "mostly made with the same anodized aluminum surface" as the newest Powerbooks."
Its only one short page. Its not slashdotted (yet). How hard was that?
Sailing over the event horizon
apple is offering sweet $300 dollar rebates to students, and they have just dropped the price on many models like the powerbook. might be a good time to jump on one.
My problem? I was perfectly gruntled, until some numbnuts came by and dissed me.
I'm no fan of Jack Campbell and honestly do not believe anything his site spouts. The only time I ever hear anything about it is when (semi-)legitimate news sources pick up "scoops" from his site.
To read more about how cool a guy he is, check out the MacTable report at Macintouch:
http://www.macintouch.com/mactable.html
I am not who I say you are.
Well, from past knowledge of how Apple has done things recently, I'd say...
PPC 970 Single 1.4 Ghz shipping July.
PPC 970 Duallies shipping within 4 weeks of the single.
OSX 10.3 Late August... and I would bet my kidneys you WILL have to pay for it (~$129), but don't moan... apparently there is a LOT of new/improved stuff, and this is only the beginning as Apple have found that they can build on the code very easily *indeed* due to the quality and clenaliness of it... exactly the problem MS seems to have with Windows ATM.
This sig has been deprecated.
Or the one in June 2000 that predicted that Apple was about to drop the entire PowerMac line and just sell laptops and all-in-ones?
Or the one in August 2001 that predicted Apple and AMD had collaborated on a "secret" CPU design code-named "Twostone", a 48 bit CPU with 16384 registers, that was going to replace the G3 and run it in emulation just as the PPCs had emulated the 68000?
Or maybe the one that, in September 2002, predicted Apple was about to release a cordless phone, FOR NO REASON WHATSOEVER.
I hardly would describe them as a dependable source of unfounded rumours.
They are comparing to a single G4. Due to the G4's bad architecture, putting two of them into a computer doesn't improve performance nearly as much as it should. IIRC, you only see roughly a 25%-50% improvement. Therefore, a single 970 is about on par with a dual G4 in integer based operations and it's much faster running Altivec code.
Everyone's immediate reaction to MacWhispers is always negative.
"Oh, I'll believe it when I see it."
Obviously. MacWhispers has given up on making release date predictions. You'll notice that they have *not* given a specific timeframe for the release of these machines. They have said that they are being built.
So, now, when WWDC makes no mention of the 970, everyone will say "See! MacWhispers are a bunch of damn fools." and no one will remember, two months from now, when these machines surface, that it fits perfectly with MacWhispers' information.
If you take them completely literally, they are a valuable source of information. They cannot divine the future, and they don't seem to be trying to do so, either.
There are no trails. There are no trees out here.
Specifically:
Unlike the G4, where the AltiVec unit is integrated rather nicely into the issue unit, and can issue several types of vector instructions in parallel, the 970 can only do a permute in parallel with another instruction. Hence, for some tasks, I would expect the G4 to be almost twice as fast as a similarly clocked 970.
They make a similar claim about the non-AltiVec speed, which I tend to believe. The compiler has to be a little smarter (but Apple did add a bunch of G4 optimizations to gcc anyway), but the 970 can do more per clock the the G4 can, under many circumstances. Not only can it have more instructions in-flight, but it has a much more advanced reordering unit than the G4.
Oh yeah, and when did /. just copy over Apple rumor stories? </obligatory>
Yes, I'm still a junky. Are you still a bitch?
I haven't looked but do you get an equal number of PC rumour sites if you go Googling for that?
If not then you've got to ask yourself why is it that so many people care about what may or may not be coming along next from Apple and so few give the proverbial rats ass about the next offering from HP, Dell, or eMachines.
Apple seems to have perfected getting attention to an art. You can love them or hate them but almost nobody ignores them. That kind of PR is priceless.
Appended to the end of comments you post. 120 chars.
I don't think the ArsTechnica report said that the implementation was supposed to be worse - just that it was more of a hack. Just because something is a hack doesn't necessarily mean it can't perform well. In fact, most hacks are done for none other than performance reasons.
Gotta get me one of these!
Er, no. Apple prides itself on having a low inventory (a couple of weeks, at the most) - all personal computer manufacturers do. If they had any more, they'd wind up in the December 2001 "5+ weeks of unsellable inventory" glut problem.
WWDC isn't exactly a place Steve Jobs likes to announce hardware products, it is really the wrong venue for such announcements. MacWorld Expo is a much better place to do things like that and is only two months away.
Except that Apple isn't going to be at MWNY this year.
Blue skies, Barthy Burgers, girls...
I think that at this point it's quite obvious _something_ is in production, but that doesn't mean the time frame you can by an updated Mac is close at hand though.
Major changes that effect developers will be announced at WWDC. It's likely that whatever new directions in CPUs, APIs, or Market segments will be announced there because developers will have to react to the news. That doesn't mean anything will be available for sale or even that we'll get the whole picture of what cases, prices, user interface changes, or iApps will be released. Not only don't developers need to know this stuff, but traditionally they've been a very conservative, non-spontaneous, purchasing crowd where such surprises would be wasted.
People keep talking about having the whole Mac product line refreshed at WWDC and nonsense like that. My guess is far more conservative. We may get a timetable to expect new PowerMacs, but we probably aren't even going to see the new machines in final plastics.
During the transition from 68000 to PowerPC, Apple bent over backwards to give developers access to emulators, test labs, and even loaned machines to big developers. But they didn't start commercially selling anything until eight or nine months after the WWDC announcements.
I don't think Apple will wait quite that long to introduce new chips if such plans are really on the horizon, but I think there will be some non-trivial lag from WWDC to new consumer-marketed debut of new hardware.
OK, that might addmittedly not be for the same audience as a 64-bit powerbook, but still... drool indeed!
Programming can be fun again. Film at 11.
Assuming you aren't memory bound. You've only got 166 Mbps TOTAL between the two processors, which well tuned AltiVec codec can saturate with a single processor, let alone two.
My video compression blog
To determine what features will be on the leading edge PCs of the coming years, all you have to do is go to www.apple.com.
Egads, I've turned into a troll!
Don't forget: Jobs intro'd the original bondi blue iMac at WWDC five years ago. He will do hardware at WWDC if he thinks it is cool enough to show off.
"I hardly would describe them as a dependable source of unfounded rumours."
What are you trying to say, they are a great source of unfounded rumours! Not to mention dependable!
A fool throws a stone into a well and a thousand sages can not remove it.
I don't get why its believed that Mac OS X has to be 64-bit to run on the 970. We've been told in numerous places (Ars, IBM's frickin website) that the 970 runs in 32-bit just fine.
SO... that being said... my WWDC announcment predictions along with what Apple has already stated
- New Macs with PPC 970
- New PowerBook 15 with PPC 970 (the 15" PowerBook is the workhorse of the line, always will be, sorry)
- Preview of Panther
- Macintosh Roadmap Roadmap showing the future... and this is the big-ass news that everyone's been talking about.
Roadmap steps will look something like this...
July 2003:
10.2.7 running on new 970-based Macs practically unmodified because the 970 handles 32-bit operation just totally fine. x.x.+1 updates between WWDC and October 2003. Developer-only release of 64-bit SDK which will not be ready for prime time, but will allow developers to make the swtich, if necessary (similar to Mac OS 9 -> Carbon transition)
October 2003:
10.3 release - all those cool updates in iApps, updates in performance and operation of Mac OS X UI that were shown at WWDC. Panther Will NOT BE a 64-Bit OS!! - why not? Does not need to be because there are no 64-bit apps! Where are the apps? They are still being worked on with the 64-bit SDK, see you at Mac World San Fran with first 64-bit apps.
Jan 2004 (MWSF):
10.3.5 release. Mac OS X will run 64-bit applications. Only apps that NEED to be recomplied 64-bit clean will be recompiled 64-bit clean (iChat, for example, does NOT need to be 64-bit). Finder will be first app to be 64-bit clean because it needs to be.
beyond that, its non-speculateable.
But i think that the real news at this WWDC is going to be the first major Macintosh Roadmap since we saw the Rhapsody one in 1997(8?). You will see where the Mac is going hardware-wise and software wise.
Apple is going to push into the small-medium server market in a hard way.... 64-bit XServes which can run horkin Oracle databases, huge fileservers, and be the backbone of big-ass renderfarms... all with Mac OS X moron-simple UI and none of the pain of cost with Windows servers or admin headache of Linus servers? Puhlease... Apple is going to kick ass and move in where Intel and AMD are just simply lagging behind.
(yes, half the guys in my wedding party have apple.com email addresses.. no, none of this information was gleaned from them.)
guns kill people like spoons make Rosie O'Donnell fat.
Actually, from what I have heard, the duals "balance the drain". By that I mean that though you don't feel it being a load faster in day to day activities, you feel less of a slowdown when one process would bog the processor. - so overall, the entire system feels smoother - nere I say snappier.
- Zav - Imagine a Beowulf cluster of insensitive clods...
"Banging your head against the shiny new Dell Inspiron 600m keyboard...priceless. There are some things money can't buy. For everything else, there's Microsoft."
A programmer is a machine for converting coffee into code.
I do belive that Apple will have some sort of 970 based machine for the developers to look at, as well as some benchmarks for us all to drool over.
So what can we expect? Previewing Panther on a 970 based system, probably an update to the developer software (64 bit Project Builder), benchmarks of the 970, overview of 970 based hardware. Probably annouce a PPC 970 based Powerbook in the near future...END OF YEAR? Possibly a Naming change to hardware lineup, and Adjustable Displays
What is less likely? Windows verison of iTunes, PPC 970s shipping, PPC 970 Powerbooks shipping, iCam,
What is NOT going to happen? Apple PDA, Apple Cell phone,
As for the whole product line being revamped, i don't think we'll see a whole new product line at WWDC, but i think that Apple is going to be moving all it's lines away from the G4/G3 based systems. I don't even see the iBooks being converted to G4 systems, as IBM's chip lineup is known to be 20-30% cheaper than Motorola's line...
Instead of seeing G4s as the low end chips, i'd probably wager that IBMs will develop a PPC off of the 750 chip and this will probably replace the G3 systems. But i wouldn't expect to see a PPC 750 until you see a 980 in a powermac.... I think if Apple is going to IBM processors, it would be prudent that they went to an all IBM chip lineup.
Apple can waffle on about the Mhz myth all they want, but I don't see them REDUCING clock rates generation after generation.
Pentium 4: 3 GHz
Xeon: 2.6 GHz
Pentium M: 1.6 GHz
Itanium 2: 1 GHz
"32 bits ought to be enough for anybody"
right?
BTW, a 64 bit processor means more than just the amount of ram you can stuff in it... Think virtual.
--jeff++
ipv6 is my vpn
I think PCs do get equal attention, but since all the parts in Dell's, HP's, etc. machines are all industry standard parts manufactured by other companies, the speculation isn't about their offerings but the offerings of their suppliers.
There's a lot of speculation about AMD's chips, or new motherboard chipsets, or nVidia or ATI's new graphics cards -- probably just as much or more in total as that which surrounds Apple's products. Apple just has a lot of relative speculation surrounding it since it's the only provider for a particular platform.
" well, I've read some moderately convincing arguments that - because of the low latency, 4GB/sec L3 cache that the current top end G4s sport - memory bandwidth is not the bottleneck that we'd all like to believe. It seems that the REAL bottleneck is simply the low clock speed and lack of integer and FP execution resources that the 7455 has available."
The only problem with that argument is that the bus tops out whenever you're churning on a large dataset.. like video editing...
There's no doubt that the L3 helps, but actual memory bandwidth would help a whole lot more.
You've got that backwards. Macs use the carriage return, decimal 13 (0x0D) as their line break character. Unix uses the line feed, decimal 10 (0x0A). DOS (and therefore Windows) uses the asinine CR-LF combination, which is also the standard marker for line and command endings in most text-based internet protocols, such as SMTP.
For those youngsters not in the know, these "control" characters really did control things. On a paper teletype machine, a carriage return would move the print head back to the left side of the carriage. A line feed would advance the roller one line. The combination of the two would prepare the teletype for printing another line, so in a way Windows does it right.
In reality, using two characters to mark an end of line is a major pain in the ass. I wish everyone would standardize on using just an LF.