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 ?
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.
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.
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
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?