Slashdot Mirror
IBM Officially Unveils Dual-core PowerPC Chips
PM4RK5 writes "Today at the Power Everywhere Forum in Japan, IBM officially unveiled its rumored dual-core PowerPC line of chips, the 970MP. Code-named Antares, these chips have been rumored to be under development since 2004. It is believed that Apple has been working with prototypes and is likely to use them in forthcoming updates to the PowerMac G5 line. The press release is in Japanese; as of this writing, IBM has not released an English version. Some of the slides from the presentation given by IBM are available.
The processors pack some impressive specs, ranging from 1.4 to 2.5 GHz and including 1MB L2 cache per core; the chips also include the ability to power down the extra core when it is not needed. Alongside the 970MP, IBM also announced its low-power 970FX chips, ranging from 1.2 to 1.6 GHz, with power consumption ranging from 13 to 16 Watts, respectively."
I wonder if Apple will reconsider the decision regarding the migration. I don't think it will feasible for them to support products with both the processors. According to the rumors on the web, Apple wasn't happy about the low power processor option from IBM. I wonder if this is it ?
That sounds impressive. Will there much of a market for these processors after Apple makes the conversion to Intel? I can understand upgrading the G5 line... but after that, then what?
Get some.
It would be nice if Apple would offer a machine with one (two would be even better). I know they are going to be using PowerPC for a while longer. Maybe when Apple stops using PowerPC, another company will come along and start putting these chips in desktop machines (are there any already?) In all honesty, I use a 1.25 GHz G4 Mac Mini with Debian Linux, which compiles my source fast enough with GCC, same with my x86 desktop machines. This is probably more for a server. With IBM getting away from hardware manufacturer, who will offer this CPU in their servers? Disclaimer: Right now my server is a 300 MHz x86 PC tower with FreeBSD.
Powered by caffeine and sugar; BSD
It sounds like that apple would most likely use the PowerPC for Power Macs and Power Books and xServes... while reserving Intels for the consumer line of products, iMac and iBook and Mac Mini.
As for the dual core, I believe, it may be exciting to many Apple PowerPC fans and may provide a reason to some to buy Apple machine in this transition period.
What happened to the Freescale MPC8641D Dual Core Processor http://www.freescale.com/files/32bit/doc/fact_shee t/MPC8641DFACT.pdf? It was announced last November but is not shipping. Is the chip the same design? Is the IBM chip any different?
Apple (Steve-boy) already mentioned that there were moreproc. updates coming, and even said there were some good updates coming down the pipeline. His big concern was not just "now" but the future road map.
Low power g5 in a ws ibook, that would be so nice.
Also-ran, anyone?
Seriously, not an anti-Apple troll, but this strikes me as just a wee bit sad...
With both Intel and AMD having decent dual-core offerings now (with AMD's absolutely dominating anything else on the market for both performance and low power), not to mention the impending dual core Pentium-Ms... Combined with Apple choosing to go with x86 (most likely, the same aforementioned dual-Ms)...
Does IBM even have a market for these anymore? This strikes me as nothing but wasted effort on their part. Even their embedded market won't care about this, when a few watts means far more than a second core...
Best performance per watt != Lowest power usage of highest-performing part.
The Pentium M family is much lower power than the Pentium 4, and has reasonably good performance. I don't think AMD really has a chip that competes with the Pentium M, even though AMD's chips are generally less power-hungry than a Pentium 4.
Ya know. that made me think about something
A lot of people are going to want to stay with the old architecture despite whatever apple starts issuing, i wonder if there's any hope in upgrading what will then be the old powerbooks with newer PowerPC's. I don't plan on getting rid of my G4 anytime soon. sorry: spelling and grammar probably poor.
Apple's only source is Intel. Even though AMD may be leading Intel in some benchmarks, it really makes no difference to Intel's core market. Do you really think millions of corporate, Intel based, servers will be replaced by AMD just because they are a little faster or a little less expensive? It just won't happen. Intel and their Xeon, have proven they are solid to the big corps. The big corps (like the fortune 500 I work for) will just continue to buy Intel. The best thing Apple could do is side with Intel and get Intel to start talking about Apple Mac OS X as a "possible" desktop/server system. Apple needs to get on the PHB radar. Apple is not going to get there on expensive PowerPC systems.
If Tyranny and Oppression come to this land,
it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy. -James Madison
AMD has more than adaquate output capabilities. This "AMD cannot meet demand" ad nauseum was invented to hide the fact that Intel was pressuring OEM's to buy their product. Also, for Dell to manipulate Intel to lower their prices.
AMD can compete with Intel and it has only one fab at the moment. Intel absorbs losses because it is so large, yet AMD remains agile. What do you think will start to happen when AMD expands and carries it's efficient manufacturing practices with it? (Ahem, Fab36?)
Glad to see someone else still kicking on the other side of the silicon curtain. MIPS, Alpha, HP-UX, Ultrasparc, m68k, Itanium are all more or less dead. The only players in the 32-bit/64-bit arena are x86(x64), PPC and ARM. ARM just isnt aiming for the same market, which really leaves PPC and x86/x64 for the Desktop AND the server market. Its amazing so many architectures are now powered by the same chips (mac, AS400, RS6000, game consoles, industrial VME cards) by PPC and everything else by x86/x64.
Personally I'd be glad to see x64-only chips with the 32-baggage dropped, and a BIOS standard that allows booting straight into 64-bit. That will really split the x64 from the x86, and give us cheaper and lighter chips. As for the PPC, I'm glad its still there. The price/performance ratio may be bad (relative to the Athlon64), but for one the base architecture is good, and diversity, which pushed semiconductors in general so far during the 90s is good for the industry.
Software for which source code is available (free or otherwise) is the only thing that can diversify the CPU market. People are stuck with a single CPU and operating system, both ill-designed, simply because their closed-source software will only run on that combination. Some awesome technologies like the Alpha chip, the Ultrasparc, the IRIX OS etc have died simply for that reason.
"Give orange me give eat orange me eat orange give me eat orange give me you." -Nim Chimpsky
Your point about the low end still being G4 just emphasizes the problem. IBM's G5 did not compete well with it's parent chip: the G4. The G4 ran cooler, had a stronger Altivec unit and generally was about 20% faster Clock for Clock.
The PowerMac had fast and hot G5's like the P4, it used cpu cycles and smaller instructions to make up for lower clock for clock performance.
IBM should have started with a G4 and gone from there to pick up the low end of Apple's line.
Slightly bored.. my Japanese ain't the greatest but no other translation was seen:
... HCL Technologies, Ltd. (a multifaceted company)...xilinx (a software design company). These three companies joined the power.org alliance.
...
Today, IBM started the "Power Everywhere Forum 2005" by unveiling new goods to those in its partnership iniatives, continuning the Power PC line unveiling a new processor to the world.
Power.org New Members:
This time IBM added: Denali Software inc, an engineering services group
Power.org works with consumers, electronics, networking, storage, data transmission (guess on that one) to provide a standard platform for development and usage. We welcome these new companies to the community
[there's more i'm just lazy]
It's a shame that the 970MP's two 1MB caches are not shared like the power4+'s cache is. A shared cache is great for single threaded performance and for sharing variables between threads (threads running on different cores).
Is shared cache a premium feature, maybe similar to power4+'s external L3 cache?
Are you saying that AMD has something that beats the Pentium M? Can you back that up?
No. The M certainly beats even the Venice core for power consumption (though not by much, when a fan alone can draw more than either of them at idle) - No arguing that, Intel wins that battle for now.
But when the dual Athlon 64s trounce Intel's best offerings, and with a power consumption at least in the same ballpark as the Pentium M... Well, that makes for a pretty impressive product, to the point that it amazes me anyone would even consider a dual core P4 as an alternative.
Actually, as an aside, we'll have to wait for some performance numbers, but I do believe the Geode will draw far less power than the Pentium M. Unfortunately I expect it will perform more like the Via C3 line, but if AMD can get it at least into the realm of "tolerable" (ie, at the last-gen 1 to 1.5 Ghz level), it could still give the M a run for the laptop market.