Motorola G5 - 2Ghz 64bit

Nerdkiller writes " An article appeared on ZDnet with some information on the G5 chip expected in 2 years. It will be competing with the Intel Merced which is expected out around the same time. A full 64 bit 2 Ghz processor. The Intel Merced will be able to support 64 bit processing, however it must be run under emulation for 32bit code. The G5 requires no change in current code with exception to some low level OS stuff. "

Comments

The critical resource: Motherboards

[Christopher B. Brown]

The critical resource whose availability or lack will most control whether PPC "G5" winds up in widespread use is that of Cheap Motherboards.

If you look at the various architectures on which Linux runs, there are three varieties, in general:

• IA-32, where there is a bountiful selection of inexpensive motherboards.

  There are a boatload of IA-32-based Linux systems.

• Systems where there are a few motherboards available. Alpha and SPARC, mostly.

  There are a fair number of such systems.

• Systems for which motherboards are virtually unavailable. StrongARM and MIPS are good examples of this.

  ... And this correlates with the tiny quantities of people running these architectures.

PPC is hard to assess; it is easy to buy a PPC Mac from Apple, but fairly difficult to buy just a motherboard.

If PPC motherboards were readily available, PPC would be vastly more popular...