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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."
IBMs own server products and embedded processors. IBM's blue gene used the core from earlier PowerPC series.
Because they are most likely going to use Intel chips to replace the old G4 chips long before they replace the G5s. And they are not going to totally over to Intel till 2007. So, their needs to be updates between now and then.
Why use a 13-16 Watt PowerPC chip when you can use a 27-watt Pentium M?
"Scientists don't change their minds, they just die." -- Max Planck
Speaking of Roadmaps... Why not would Apple not switch to AMD? AMD's chips run with less power consumption and way less number of transistors. When comparing the Dual core chips from AMD and Intel, AMD wins on power consumption. But I thought Jobs said Intel had the best Performance per watt? ADA4800DAA6CD (AMD Dual core 64-bit): 110W Intel® Pentium® Processor Extreme Edition: 130W These are the latest and greatest from Intel and AMD right?
From the notes:
The dual 64-bit core PowerPC970MP(TM) (970MP) is the next evolutionary step in the PowerPC 970 family of microprocessors. The higher frequency grade versions of the 970MP consume higher amounts of power than earlier IBM microprocessors do, and that can cause temperature issues. Each 970MP processor core contains a thermal diode used to monitor its operating temperature. The thermal diode must be monitored to ensure that the maximum operating temperature of the 970MP is not exceeded.
The press release is in Japanese; as of this writing, IBM has not released an English version.
Assembly is bad enough. I can't imagine assembly in Kanji.
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
Hey Bill! You owe me $20!!! That's 20 years salary to a working stiff like me, so pay up, bitch!"
Speaking of Roadmaps... Why not would Apple not switch to AMD? AMD's chips run with less power consumption and way less number of transistors. When comparing the Dual core chips from AMD and Intel, AMD wins on power consumption. But I thought Jobs said Intel had the best Performance per watt? ADA4800DAA6CD (AMD Dual core 64-bit): 110W Intel® Pentium® Processor Extreme Edition: 130W These are the latest and greatest from Intel and AMD right?
From the roadmaps and rumor mill, even the Pentium EE 130 W(clocked at what, 3.8ghz?) and the AMD Athlon 110 W and too high power and not good enough on performance.
It appears Intel plans on dropping the P4 line and going to enhancing the Pentium M edition. It is expected that Apple will be going with the Pentium Ms (which apparently have dual core slated in their lineup) instead of with the Pentium EE.
In summary, Apple won't touch the Pentium EE due to high power consumption. However, they do like the Pentium M with has much better performance per watt/clock cycle and much lower power consumption.
From that I would guess that either AMD could not give Apple the same deal as Intel could. Either that or Apple expects Intel to have much better performance than AMD by that time. Also, as far as I know the Pentium Ms are much better than AMDs mobiles in power and performance.
Fly me to the moon Let me sing among those stars Let me see what spring is like On jupiter and mars
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.
I don't understand how some people are saying "OMG Apple switched at the wrong time oh noes!@#!!"
Does everything HONESTLY think Apple didn't know the exact release date of the 970MP BEFORE they announced their switch?
Apple knew when and where this was going to be released, and they know when and where Intel will release their next series. They switched because they wanted to, this isn't a surprise to them.
IBM has since released an English press release, available here.
This should be significantly more informative than the earlier available Japanese documents.
How are they "topped out for performance"?
There's nothing here significantly stronger that what we've had for the last several months. Sure, dual core vs. dual G5 has benefits, but without a clock boost or anything else, it's not much more than packaging.
I would say IBM's offerings are competitive. Steve Jobs and his "wah I wanted a 3GHz chip!" is all bullshit when you look at it; he wanted to compete with the Intel marketing machine, and still hasn't noticed that AMD Opteron chips top out at 2.6GHz - and have done for some time. The G5 is competitive in that it matches or outperforms the AMD Opteron (that frontside bus helps).
Yah, and Apple can have pretty much the same performance with Intel chips. It's not the top end that drove the decision, it's in part the laptop chips. 1.6GHz G5 is good, but the Pentium M looks like the place to be for a while.
Ultimately, I suspect its Intel DRM that drove the decision. If the media giants want DRM, they're going to go with Intels, and anyone else is going to have a uphill fight. Better to be in the game from the start there.
Their dual cores top out at 2.2GHz and also probably will for some time. Apple still have the potential to create a 2.4GHz PowerMac and an XServe with up to 4 processors which competes with AMD's most expensive and little used 400 and 800 processor lines.
Apple has always been able to do 4-way with the G5. Dual dual-core isn't *that* much easier than 4-way. If the market was there for 4-way we'd have it.
I don't see why it "illustrates" anything except that Steve Jobs is a nut job who lied himself through a developer conference. It's a damn shame Apple has gone so low and a damn shame the developers are so loyal that they keep so quiet.
How did he lie? Everybody knew about the MP before the conference. The transition lasts until 2007. The decision surely wasn't made based on any product that will ship between now and then. In fact, the MP is likely the main reason why the PowerMacs will be last to move - the performance is there with PPC in the near term. Will IBM make a 980, though, or is this the end of the line?
There is a lot of dissent in private quarters. All that PowerPC hype Apple pushed down our throats - some of it actually real as it turned out - has left 1000s of developers with a lot of AltiVec code and not a lot of choice. They are mighty
pissed about rewriting their apps again, especially to bridge the gap between now and the 10 years in the future that Steve's Intel Roadmap says they will have better integer performance.
Oh, come on. There aren't 1000s of Altivec apps. There are thousands of apps using Apple's SIMD libraries (which are already ported to SSE3) and using other OS X libraries, but there are *maybe* hundreds of apps using Altivec directly. Apple isn't worried about them being pissed. Developers will chase the money like everyone else and Apple isn't a bad ride right now. They'll suck it up, diddle their code and start selling product again.
The biggest dissent seems to be inside IBM. Not long after the 970 came out IBM merged their semiconductor and server groups. The semiconductor group that was quietly making small profits (due to low pricing to Apple) on 970s was publicly costing the server group big profits by taking a bunch of HPC contracts that could have gone to IBM 970 or POWER systems (IBM execs would of course claim that every Apple HPC sale was a lost IBM server sale since it was the CPU that carried the day).
Once those groups merged, Apple's sweet deals went away and Apple was expected to pay their way. The contract came up, Apple didn't want to pay the enormous development costs of a CPU line, so they saw their opportunity to further commoditize the product line and struck a deal with Intel. In the end, consumers and most developers really won't have a problem, and it *might* (who really knows) portend good things for Apple.