Freescale Debuts Faster, Cooler G4

acsinc writes "The Register reports that Freescale (Motorola's chip division) has launched the 90nm G4, and is planning a dual core version for next year. The chip is faster -- over 1.5GHz -- and cooler than the old chip, but it is also pin compatible. This ought to help provide a speed bump for PowerBooks, which still don't have G5s."

Comments

Re:Huh?

[jhoffoss]

Read it again. The one just released is compatible; the planned dual-core CPU probably will not be (my assumption).

Re:Huh?

[Chucker23N]

"unless it requires new hardware, but then its not exactily a G4 anymore, at least in my mind."

What? G4 merely defines the PowerPC generation 4, which means existance of AltiVec, multi-processing capability, etc. It doesn't have to be on the same hardware at all. The G4 exists for everything from embedded devices over laptops to servers.

Re:Huh?

[adamjaskie]

It is NOT dual core. The article is talking about a 90nm G4 processor, and they are planning a dual core for later. The single core is what is pin-compatible.

The new chip is Freescale's first 90nm G4 and is based on the company's e600 core, the foundation for Freescale's upcoming line of dual-core chips. The 7448, however, contains just one core, clocked to beyond 1.5GHz. It contains 32KB of L1 cache and 1MB of L2, double the 512KB of L2 found in the MPC7447A currently driving Apple's PowerBook G4 and iBook G4 notebooks.

Cunningly...?

[funkdid]

Cunningly, the 8641D can not only appear to the host OS as two processors, but is capable of running a separate operating systems on each core.

My that is rather cunning...!?

So when the dual core G4s do come out I could run 2 separate operating systems simultaneously? That's odd, how (and which ones) is that pulled off. Getting a dual boot mac is enough of a pain in the ass, to have it multi boot is, yeah I don't see that happening.

Re:Cunningly...?

[Guy Harris]

Cunningly, the 8641D can not only appear to the host OS as two processors, but is capable of running a separate operating systems on each core.

So when the dual core G4s do come out I could run 2 separate operating systems simultaneously?

Not necessarily. Freescale's Web site speaks of them as a vendor of embedded microprocessors; perhaps that feature is intended for use in embedded systems, where the OS can be tweaked as necessary to handle two processors sharing an I/O bus and peripherals, so that doesn't necessarily imply that the dual-core processor magically turns any system into which it's plugged into two separate systems that can boot separately and communicate separately with peripherals on the system.

(BTW, when I tried Googling for "8641D freescale" and "MPC8641D freescale" to see if I could find anything giving details about that feature - nothing turned up - Google asked whether I wanted "firesale" instead of "freescale". Is Google expressing its opinion of Motorola's spinning off Freescale?)

(No, don't bother explaining to me how that Google feature works; I'm already aware of it. "It's a joke, son....")

new powerbook cpu

[boomerny]

this cpu will probably be in the last generation of G4 Powerbooks before they move to G5. Personally I think I'd rather have a nice, cool running, fast, energy efficient, 3rd or 4th gen G4 than a 1st gen G5.

Re:new powerbook cpu

[Dr Reducto]

And the other benefit is that people will start getting rid of G4's to try to get a nice shiny new G5. Everyone who i thinking about a Powerbook, but can't quite justify it is waiting for the G5.

Re:new powerbook cpu

[TheRaven64]

Personally, I'm more interested in a dual-core G4 powerbook. I do a few things that would possibly benefit from 64bit address space, but usually not on my laptop. On the other hand, I do a lot of highly parallel stuff while on the go, and so I would notice a lot more of an improvement from a dual core CPU. Not to mention the fact that a dual 1.5GHz machine will run a lot cooler than a 3GHz one (since power is roughly proportional to the square of the clock speed for ICs), not to mention the fact that the G4s have a history of being significantly cooler than the G5s. A dual 2GHz G4 would be really nice (not that my 1.5GHz PowerBook feels slow, but more speed is always nice)

Missing the Bus...

[valkraider]

What some people don't realize, is that more than the extra Mhz that this processor provides, it does up the bus speed to 200Mhz (current 1.5Ghz G4s are at 167Mhz). That is a pretty hefty increase, so they should perform quite well...

But having said that, I (who own a 1.5Ghz 15' Powerbook) would rather see the G5 in a laptop.

While the G5 is a GREAT processor, the 64bitness is not it's strongest points. The G5 is simply a very efficient processor... But still, most apps are not CPU constrained, but Bandwidth constrained. In fact, I would bet that a 2Ghz G4 on a 200Mhz bus would still be outperformed by a 1.6Ghz G5 on a 800Mhz bus.

What I would like to see would be a ~ 1.5Ghz G5 laptop with a 1Ghz bus and a 7200rpm disk and a good video card. They could do that right, and not have heat problems. But it wouldn't be cheap... :) The common 7200 RPM drives and high end video use a lot of power and generate a lot of heat...

Interestingly, if you don't believe how much things OTHER than the processor can impact performance, if you have a PowerBook (especially one with a 4200RPM drive) - Run XBench, note the score, then plug it into a 7200RPM firewire drive, and run it again (using the firewire drive instead of the internal). Note the score. That one little change should give you a pretty good speed boost!

Re:G4's last gasp?

[Graymalkin]

Tiger isn't going to be released until sometime in the first half of 2005, even then it will contain fat binaries which are binaries containing multiple versions of the same executable in different ISAs or what have you. Tiger then will have 32-bit and 64-bit versions of all of its frameworks and the OS will pick which to use at runtime based on what processor the system is running on. This was a capability of OpenStep, fat binaries allowed you to compile for different architectures yet only distribute one executable file without JITC.

After Tiger there isn't likely to be another OSX upgrade until the first half of 2007 or so. So between now and the release of Tiger's successor you've got plenty of time to use a Powerbook. Even when Tiger's successor (Ocelot?) is released it will very likely still support old 32-bit Macs considering there will still be millions of them in use. It was only with Panther's release the Apple dropped official support for the last of the Old World machines, Wallstreet Powerbook and Beige G3 PowerMac, though with a little hacking they work just fine. Those systems were both five years old when Panther was released.