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Yet Another G5 Roundup

Posted by pudge on from the you-thought-we-were-done dept.

Lawrence Person writes "This article on Low End Mac talks about why the PowerPC 970 is so fast, covering its superiority to Intel chips in Multiply Accumulate, double precision arithmetic, and Fast Fourier Transforms, among other operations. A short, clear article for those who don't have the time to wade through Parts 1 and 2 of Ars Technica's exceptionally detailed dissection of the 970/G5." Trollaxor writes "IBM has a neat two-page history of the PowerPC architecture, detailing its evolution from the first RS/6000 chipsets in 1990, through the POWER ISA, and into the processors that we know and use today. A very interesting read."

5 of 69 comments (clear)

  1. FFT is a good mesure by Baikala · · Score: 5, Informative

    Fast Fourier Transform is bread and butter for the scientific comunity. This is a good news for sys admins at research centers like me.
    Maybe I have a chance at getting one or two of these babies for the next year budget.

    --
    16,777,216 comments ought to be enough for any forum!
  2. Okay by Japer+Lamar+Crabb · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I understand the excitement over these machines, so I won't get all pissy about this, but...

    Until these machines are widely available, each and every thread concerning the performance of the PPC 970 will run the risk of degenerating into a heated debate over whether the figures being offered are reliable. In other words, a flamefest.

    Don't we already have enough of those around here?

    --
    Habit is the ballast that chains the dog to his vomit - Samuel Beckett, "Proust"
  3. Yea, but does it run Linux? by Znonymous+Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Seriously. The G5 PowerMac has like 9 fans in it that are controlled by the OS (Mac OS X). It will be easy to run Linux on it, but will Linux properly control the fans to keep the system from burning up or flying off the desk?

    --

    Karma: The shiznight, mostly because I am the Drizzle.

    1. Re:Yea, but does it run Linux? by MrTangent · · Score: 5, Interesting

      There are actually two hard drive bays. Look closely.

      The lack of more than two hard drive bays was a concern of mine as well, but the drive that ships with the G5's is 60 to 250 gigabyte Serial ATA. Factor in the plethora of fast Firewire/Firewire 800 external drives and most Mac users will be as happy as pigs in shit (as well as Fibre channel XServe Raid for multi-terabyte storage for the higher end users). So you can get half a terabyte internal Serial ATA in the G5's if you chose to pay the premium. I think that's more than enough for 99% of the population.

      I do agree there's some aspects of the G5 design that seem like a step backwards over the previous G3 & G4 'El Capitan' case. While two hard drive spaces is fine for most users, the G4 allowed you to have four internal hard drives. The lack of a second optical drive bay is also a "step backwards" over the G4 design (this can be rectified with an external Firewire drive if needed, and again, most users don't require a second optical drive).

      For me though the biggest gripe I have with the G5 case is the removal of the drop-down motherboard door design on the G3 (Blue and White) and G4. The one button access with drop-down door was an amazing feat of engineering and it saddens me to see this go. The new G5's internals are very elegant but installing and upgrading RAM, PCI and AGP cards is so much easier on the previous G4 and G3 models (although the G5 certainly looks easier to upgrade/get into than most PC boxes I've worked on before).

      As far as the fans go, I have no gripe there. While it might be more moving parts, the idea of thermal zones is a sound idea and will help keep the machine cool and output less decibels. By the way, the fans will be replaceable. You make it sound like the machine will be junk just because one fan fails. I'm sure Apple has thought of this and will provide replacement fans.

      One could also argue that by having nine fans that work in tandem you'll have less chance for failure since no one fan will be running at 100% at all times like on other machines. This quote kind of explains what I mean:

      "the candle that burns twice as bright burns half as long."

  4. Multiply and add by Matthias+Wiesmann · · Score: 5, Interesting

    One thing that irks me in the low-end mac article is that it states that the G5 can do a multiply add in one cycle. While this is true, this is nothing special about the G5, the multiply and add instruction has been in the PowerPC instruction set since the start - my Powermac 7100 (technically à G1) already could do this. This is in fact pointed out in the intersting article by IBM about PowerPC.