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What Makes Apple's Power Mac G5 Processor So Hot

Posted by Hemos on from the learn-the-basics dept.

An anonymous reader writes "58 million transistors can drive a lot of power. Apparently, Apple appreciated the choices IBM processor architects made when designing the 970 family. This article provides the 64-bit architecture big picture for the 970 family (A.K.A. the Power Mac G5) and the critical issues in IBM's 64-bit POWER designs, covering 32-bit compatibility, power management, and processor bus design."

3 of 313 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Nice title... by DigitalRaptor · · Score: 0, Troll

    Uh, maybe I'm a moron, but is there another reason to use liquid cooling, other than excessive temperature?

    And don't say noise, because noise was never an issue until we were pushing the fans hard because of excessive temperature...

    I'm thinking it takes a moron to know one.

    Nice to meet you.

    --
    Lose Weight and Feel Great with Isagenix
  2. Re:So sick of it by Suburbanpride · · Score: 0, Troll
    I think I've figured it out.

    With oil prices so high, I can replace the boiler in the basement and heat my whole house with a G5!

    Why would you want to cool it when you can use some of the energy that is lost as heat?

    now I just need to install one of those 5 megawatt wind turbines in my back yard to keep it powered.

    --
    sorry 'bout the mess...
  3. Too bad MacOS X can't use it! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Troll

    OS X applications are limited to at most 1GiB or 2GiB of address space *per process*. So much for running on a "64bit" cpu. The OS doesn't use it for much. Better luck next decade Apple.