[villalobos]

This is a PDF file on an article from a guy named Tom Halfhill about the PowerPC 970. It reports comments from IBM about how good this 970 would be in a PowerMac. It also gives some numbers (mostly known) and some technical details (reported in Arstechnica before for the most it seems). The best of all it is straight from ibm.com. It is old too (10/28/2002) but apparently has been posted there very recently.

http://www-3.ibm.com/chips/techlib/t...MPF_Review.pdf

Interesting i say.

villa

[mac freak]

Perhaps you could post some excerpts? This thread has 44 views and no replies; makes me think people don't want to have to download and read a long, winded PDF. I know I sure don't want to .

Does it say anything we don't already know? (that we can understand?)

[Spliffdaddy]

nice little comparison chart...

[villalobos]

Originally posted by mac freak:
Perhaps you could post some excerpts? This thread has 44 views and no replies; makes me think people don't want to have to download and read a long, winded PDF. I know I sure don't want to .

Does it say anything we don't already know? (that we can understand?)

Well look at Spliffdaddy's post for the chart which is an good summary of the technical details given in the article.
At the same time there are numerous references to Apple. It has been written by an outsider from IBM and includes a lot of speculation (regarding the fact that Apple should use this processor), but I think it is pretty interesting to find this on IBM website. You can note the comsumption of the PPC 970, which won't make it in a laptop @1.8GHz, at least in the present form.

villa

[Eug]

Well look at Spliffdaddy's post for the chart which is an good summary of the technical details given in the article.
At the same time there are numerous references to Apple. It has been written by an outsider from IBM and includes a lot of speculation (regarding the fact that Apple should use this processor), but I think it is pretty interesting to find this on IBM website. You can note the comsumption of the PPC 970, which won't make it in a laptop @1.8GHz, at least in the present form.

Yeah, interesting that it would appear on IBM's website. Note though that the author has a distinct Mac slant. Indeed, the .pdf itself was created on a Mac.

Re: Laptop - The 1.8 GHz 42 W (or more) typical power usage is too much for a traditional Mac laptop. The Motorola MPC7455 at 1 GHz uses something like 15-22 Watts. However, that doesn't stop something like a 19W 1.2 GHz or ?24 W 1.4 GHz PPC970 from being used (at the expense of a bit of battery life). ie. 15" and 17" PowerMac at 1.4 GHz and the 12" at 1.2 GHz. Either that or else they'll start sporting 0.13 u MPC7457 chips.

Personally, I'm waiting for a 0.09 u 2.2 GHz PPC970... maybe.

It's also rumoured that a 0.13 u 2.5 GHz PPC970 is possible. It would draw somewhere around 65 W, but for a PowerMac that would be OK, especially if were used as a single chip. (A P4 3.06 GHz draws over 80 W.)

BTW, some interesting SPECint and SPECfp numbers:

G4 1.4:
418
248

PPC970 1.8 GHz:
1051
937

P4 3.06 GHz:
1077
1099

Opteron 144 (1.8 GHz?):
1170
1219

This would suggest that MHz for MHz, the PPC970 simply destroys the G4. However, before you get too excited, Hannibal at arstechnica thinks that on average that the PPC970 will only do about as well MHz for MHz as the most recent G4, or may do slightly even worse. Thus PPC970 will be much faster, but only because of higher clock speeds.

My uneducated guess is somewhere in between. The PPC970 might be faster than the G4 clock for clock, but not by as much as many would think. But the faster clock speeds are definitely welcome.

[MacNStein]

I agree, deeper pipelines and a more complex design doesn't neccessarily make for a faster CPU. However, the 970's design allows for faster clock speeds and more reliable die shrinks. MHz for Mhz, the 970 will probably be about the same as a G4+ in most apps, but will have the noticeable advantage in floating point intensive, non-Altivec apps (like most FPS and CAD/CAM programs). A 2GHz 970 would be a beast, in today's apps.

Very interesting.

[euphras]

The higher FSB compared to the G4 will be the killer, i think....not just the MHz.

[Spliffdaddy]

I hate .pdf

Anyhow, here's another interesting tidbit...