[Eug]

Big Blue gives 90-nano boost to PowerPCs

The tech giant plans to announce on Friday that it has started mass production of PowerPCs on the 90-nanometer process, which refers to the average feature size on the chips. (A nanometer is a billionth of a meter.) The PowerPC 970FX, which is used inside IBM's blade servers and Apple Computer's Xserve G5 server, is the first processor to be made with this manufacturing method.

Big Blue is expected to describe a 2.5GHz version of the chip made on the 90-nanometer process at the International Solid State Circuits Conference (ISSCC) in San Francisco next week. PowerPCs on the market today, produced on a 130-nanometer process, top out at 2GHz.

[rogerkylin]

Hopefully these will work their way into the Xserve in short order.

[Eug]

Originally posted by rogerkylin:
Hopefully these will work their way into the Xserve in short order.

They chips are already in the Xserve, and they have already been shipping to end users (albeit "only" at 2 GHz).

[BZ]

Lets hope the RevB G5 comes at the same time as a monitor refresh... really... please.. don't make me buy a 1 year old monitor!

BZ

[GoGoReggieXPowars]

Did you even read the article? Like the 2nd paragraph you quoted?

How could they possibly ship 2.5GHz Macs next week when the chips don't even exist yet!

[Commodus]

GoGoReggieXPowers:

Yes, Eug did read it. That article isn't entirely accurate. It's not that there aren't any 970FX chips on the market; the Xserve G5 is being delivered to people right now, in fact. The only question is as to whether or not the G5 can truly scale up to 2.5 GHz in a PowerMac case.

I'm pretty sure that it can. Aside from the vent channels, the Xserve G5 is using relatively minimal cooling and is (supposedly) quieter than the G4 model. The PowerMac has considerably larger fans, better airflow and absolutely massive heatsinks. It should be able to handle considerably more than a 1U Xserve.

Probably the only reason IBM is making announcements now is because the >2.0 GHz chips are already on their way into production systems. Apple doesn't have to worry about people holding off on purchases for weeks, just a few days (hopefully).

[Evan_11]

So we'll probably see a dual 2.5 for 3K...what about the rest of lineup.

Of course most of us would like 2.5, 2.3 and 2.0. A 2.0 dual for $1999 would be an excellent deal. I doubt it will happen though.

[djohnson]

Well... Anyone think that Apple might want to keep the true speeds a secret until they announce their new macs? Also, 2.5Ghz will mean, more than likely, a 1.25Ghz bus, which is just weird. Ok so its not *that* weird... I can see Apple putting out a 2.6 or maybe 2.8Ghz machine. Well, why not go for the gold with the dual 3Ghz G5

[Eug]

Originally posted by Commodus:
It's not that there aren't any 970FX chips on the market; the Xserve G5 is being delivered to people right now, in fact

Yup. G5 Xserves have been shipping for weeks. People are using the 970FX right now in real machines.

I hope that Apple already has enough 2.5 GHz chips so they can release a Power Mac dual 2.5 soon, because a lot of people have been waiting for the update.

[Turias]

Originally posted by Eug:
I hope that Apple already has enough 2.5 GHz chips so they can release a Power Mac dual 2.5 soon, because a lot of people have been waiting for the update.

Like me!

*grumble, grumble* Stupid, slow Apple *grumble, grumble*

[GoGoReggieXPowars]

Sorry for the heated remark there, Eug. I just found the comment in the thread title a little off-base, ie. how can Apple possibly ship chips that do not exist. IBM is simply presenting papers next week to describe how they're going to ramp up the clock speeds.

Originally posted by Commodus:
The only question is as to whether or not the G5 can truly scale up to 2.5 GHz in a PowerMac case.

Going from what I read on The Register yesterday, I can't see why not. The 90nm process on the 970FX already will make 2GHz chips that run cooler than the current 970s:

IBM documentation has already revealed the 970FX's impressive power characteristics: 24.5W at 2GHz. The 130nm 970, by contrast, eats up 51W at 1.8GHz.

So, half the power and therefore heat at a very similar clockspeeds.

But again, the question as always is whether or not they can ramp the speeds up in time. It's a pretty aggressive target, but IBM seems to know what they're doing.

[Eug Wanker]

Originally posted by GoGoReggieXPowars:
Sorry for the heated remark there, Eug. I just found the comment in the thread title a little off-base, ie. how can Apple possibly ship chips that do not exist. IBM is simply presenting papers next week to describe how they're going to ramp up the clock speeds.

I suspect (hope) Apple already has a bunch of 2.5 GHz chips. It's not as if Apple (or at least IBM) would have 2.0 GHz 970FX chips and nothing else. 2.0 is probably the bottom end, save for perhaps some slower lower powered chips for consumer machines (and possibly laptops).

And the guys from Microprocessor Report seem to think 2.5 GHz chips should be here -very- soon. Maybe my question of next week for shipping dual 2.5 GHz Power Macs is a little optimistic but whatever the case it's gonna be soon. The MPR guys are even bullish on the thought of 3.0 GHz 970FX chips by summer, although I must admit that I'm not quite that optimistic. Or I should say, I don't believe we'll have shipping dual 3.0 GHz Power Macs by summer.

[djohnson]

I dont think IBM would have announced something unless they can do it... They are a little more reputable than Motorola...........

[Link]

Reggie: as previously stated a dozen times apple's xserve g5 DOES use dual 2.0ghz 90nm processors.

[Rev-O]

Originally posted by BZ:
Lets hope the RevB G5 comes at the same time as a monitor refresh... really... please.. don't make me buy a 1 year old monitor!

BZ

I'm hoping that the oft rumored 30" monitor becomes available at the same time as the oft rumored dual 3 gig G5. I want to update my 2x2 gigger and current display at the same time!

Of course that's like hoping that you get video of Bigfoot and Nessie hanging out together.

[Eug]

Here is the actual IBM announcement:

IBM today announced it has developed a new method of manufacturing low power, high performance microprocessors using an industry-first combination of silicon-on-insulator (SOI), strained silicon and copper wiring technologies.
IBM is putting the technique immediately to work in volume 90 nanometer production at its 300mm manufacturing facility. The company's award-winning 64-bit PowerPC 970FX microprocessor will be the first chip built using this trio of IBM technology breakthroughs.

Early PowerPC 970FX chips produced with the new technology deliver significant power savings, while performing at an equal or higher clock speed than comparable processors. The company expects to realize even greater gains in processor efficiency as it ramps production of the new process technology.

"Our decades-long commitment to pursuing and rapidly implementing technology breakthroughs like SOI and strained silicon is paving the way for a new generation of power savvy chips," said Bernard S. Meyerson, IBM Fellow and chief technologist, IBM Systems and Technology Group. "With this fusion of IBM-pioneered technologies, customers no longer have to sacrifice performance to achieve the power savings they increasingly demand."

[- snip -]

[I Me Mine]

Eug - From that info, when would you guess new G5s would be shipping?

[Eug]

Originally posted by I Me Mine:
Eug - From that info, when would you guess new G5s would be shipping?

If you're talking about the 970FX chip itself, it's already shipping, in G5 Xserves. It's just not shipping in Power Macs yet.

[mikerally]

Originally posted by Commodus:
It's not that there aren't any 970FX chips on the market; the Xserve G5 is being delivered to people right now, in fact.

Originally posted by Eug:
Yup. G5 Xserves have been shipping for weeks. People are using the 970FX right now in real machines.

I'm unaware of anyone who has received an XServe G5 yet? I understand they're shipping now, but if you check out the Apple Store online there's 6-8 week lead waiting time on actual product delivery.

Also I haven't seen anyone post any real life pictures of the XServe G5 (in their work place or whatever) posted on the Internet, which happened with the original XServe, which suggests to me that no more than a handful of special companies close to Apple have actually received any.

Don't forget the 4400 970FX cpus that have to go to Virginia Tech for their new XServe G5 cluster.

Apple needs to build up stock of as many of these chips as possible for their XServes, I don't think we will be seeing the revised PowerMacs until the XServe inventory is truly satisfied - and with a 6-8 week lead waiting time I doubt it's going to be very soon.

[Eug]

Originally posted by mikerally:
I'm unaware of anyone who has received an XServe G5 yet? I understand they're shipping now, but if you check out the Apple Store online there's 6-8 week lead waiting time on actual product delivery.

I've seen several posts now from people on other forums who have said they have received G5 Xserves. However, it seems they've been getting them in low volume. eg. Initial shipments of part of their Xserve G5 order 1-2 weeks ago with completion of their orders next week.

Don't forget the 4400 970FX cpus that have to go to Virginia Tech for their new XServe G5 cluster.

Unless they've changed their plans (again) it would be 2200 970FX CPUs (1100 Xserves). And I suspect they already have a bunch, considering the Power Macs they were using are already up for sale.

Apple needs to build up stock of as many of these chips as possible for their XServes, I don't think we will be seeing the revised PowerMacs until the XServe inventory is truly satisfied - and with a 6-8 week lead waiting time I doubt it's going to be very soon.

Well, I'm thinking/hoping the original listed 6-8 wk G5 Xserve lead times were a reflection of the time IBM needed to ramp up production of the chips for Power Macs, so that the Power Mac buyers wouldn't have to wait the same amount of lead time after ordering after the Power Mac update announcement. ie. IBM has been making the chips for a couple of months now, and maybe by the end of the month Apple will have enough chips to sell dual 2.5 GHz Power Macs in volume. Or maybe not.

BTW, one should also note that the official 2.5 GHz announcement from IBM won't be until Monday anyways.

[Eug Wanker]

ThinkSecret says no Power Mac update in February. Oh well.

By the way, here is a bit of info about the 970FX from a recent InfoWorld article.

IBM's 2.5GHz PowerPC 970FX will dissipate about 50 watts of power during typical use, down from 66 watts consumed by its PowerPC 970 predecessor at a lower clock speed, said Norman Rohrer, senior technical staff member at IBM. IBM's chip will launch soon in an Apple Computer Inc. XServe system, and is expected to also power a new version of Apple's PowerMac desktop.

[Evan_11]

...which is why we'll see an announcement on March 2. It will take a couple of weeks for IBM to ramp up production and Apple usually likes to have product updates ready for immediate delivery. They also don't want the mini to steal any thunder.

[Eug Wanker]

I'm just wondering how well the system controller is scaling. 1.25 GHz is nothing to shake a stick at. Maybe they don't have enough of the die shrunk higher MHz system controllers yet.

[djohnson]

Originally posted by Evan_11:
...which is why we'll see an announcement on March 2. It will take a couple of weeks for IBM to ramp up production and Apple usually likes to have product updates ready for immediate delivery. They also don't want the mini to steal any thunder.

Ummm.... Is it just me or does Apple always say 6-8 weeks for shipping times? I know a few times they do it immediately, but only on the low end stuff.

[Eug Wanker]

Originally posted by djohnson:
Ummm.... Is it just me or does Apple always say 6-8 weeks for shipping times? I know a few times they do it immediately, but only on the low end stuff.

Not always. Often they don't.

[djohnson]

Ah well, must be the stopped up head then.

[Spliffdaddy]

"The PowerPC 970FX, which is used inside IBM's blade servers and Apple Computer's Xserve G5 server, is the first processor to be made with this manufacturing method."

bzzt. wrong answer.




too late, IBM. Intel was first...

http://www.hardwareanalysis.com/cont.../article/1690/

[krassy]

Originally posted by Spliffdaddy:
"The PowerPC 970FX, which is used inside IBM's blade servers and Apple Computer's Xserve G5 server, is the first processor to be made with this manufacturing method."

bzzt. wrong answer.




too late, IBM. Intel was first...

http://www.hardwareanalysis.com/cont.../article/1690/

no IBM did ship some of the 970fx to apple before february. also: IBM uses strained silicon on insulator (ssoi) while intel just uses strained silicon which is why the power dissipation of intel's 90nm processors are just as high as the power dissipation of their 130nm products ;-)

[Link]

3 questions...

1. does this mean they removed the debug code from the g5 thus making it faster?
2. will it make OS X run snappier?
3. Will it FINALLY take care of this mac vs PC tco stuff?

[Eug]

Originally posted by Link:
3 questions...

1. does this mean they removed the debug code from the g5 thus making it faster?
2. will it make OS X run snappier?
3. Will it FINALLY take care of this mac vs PC tco stuff?

2. Yes

[gururafiki]

Originally posted by djohnson:
Ummm.... Is it just me or does Apple always say 6-8 weeks for shipping times? I know a few times they do it immediately, but only on the low end stuff.

I'm hoping that Apple is waiting so they CAN ship as soon as they announce.

[Spliffdaddy]

Originally posted by krassy:
no IBM did ship some of the 970fx to apple before february. also: IBM uses strained silicon on insulator (ssoi) while intel just uses strained silicon which is why the power dissipation of intel's 90nm processors are just as high as the power dissipation of their 130nm products ;-)

I stand corrected.

Being the first to produce a 90nm CPU and being the first to offer a 90nm CPU on the retail market are two different things, I suppose.

[Evan_11]

What's still frustrating about even the dual 2.0 G5 is window resizing. It still hangs for about a second and is not smooth. Not a big deal considering everything else is pretty amazing...

[Eug]

Originally posted by Spliffdaddy:
I stand corrected.

Being the first to produce a 90nm CPU and being the first to offer a 90nm CPU on the retail market are two different things, I suppose.

I think he was getting at the SOI part. While IBM uses strained silicon, it also uses silicon on insulator on the same chip (and has been using SOI for quite some time on the 130 nm process, but without strained silicon). Intel doesn't use it, and thus IBM is the first to use SOI and strained silicon together on a 90 nm part.

Intel made a conscious decision not to use SOI at this time. It's not clear why but rumours have suggested that Intel was having issues implementing it. However, not using SOI is likely one of the reasons Intel has been having more current leakage issues than IBM is.

[Anand]

Originally posted by mikerally:
I'm unaware of anyone who has received an XServe G5 yet? I understand they're shipping now, but if you check out the Apple Store online there's 6-8 week lead waiting time on actual product delivery.

Also I haven't seen anyone post any real life pictures of the XServe G5 (in their work place or whatever) posted on the Internet, which happened with the original XServe, which suggests to me that no more than a handful of special companies close to Apple have actually received any.

Don't forget the 4400 970FX cpus that have to go to Virginia Tech for their new XServe G5 cluster.

Apple needs to build up stock of as many of these chips as possible for their XServes, I don't think we will be seeing the revised PowerMacs until the XServe inventory is truly satisfied - and with a 6-8 week lead waiting time I doubt it's going to be very soon.

According to Arstechnica, the VT cluster has all been upgraded to G5 Xserves.

[Eug]

Originally posted by Anand:
According to Arstechnica, the VT cluster has all been upgraded to G5 Xserves.

Actually, what I read was that the upgrade is well under way, but won't finish until March.

[mishap]

Originally posted by Link:
3 questions...

1. does this mean they removed the debug code from the g5 thus making it faster?
2. will it make OS X run snappier?

Have you ever tried OSX on a G5? That's as snappy as it gets.

[Anand]

Originally posted by Eug:
Actually, what I read was that the upgrade is well under way, but won't finish until March.

I just saw this line:

"You can own a piece of history: MacMall is selling off the G5s used in the Xserve cluster at Virginia Tech. For the low, low price of US$2,799 you can get one of the gently-used G5s with 1GB of RAM now that they have all been swapped out for Xserve G5"

[Eug Wanker]

PowerTune details released. (German)

AppleInsider Thread:

According to the article, a PowerTune 970 can scale back its frequency in three steps to 1/2, 1/4 and 1/64th of max clockspeed. Additionally, in the 50% and 25% stages, the chip can lower the core voltage to 1V to conserve energy.

In the 50% and 25% speed setting, the chip can go to "nap mode", whereas the 1/64th speed is a sleepmode drawing minimal power but keeping the functional units ready to go to full speed without much delay.

Chip size is 62mm^2 (down from 118mm^2), typical power consumption is 50W @ 2.5Ghz (down from 66W @ 2Ghz). Running on the 25% speed (625Mhz) setting with lower core voltage, it consumes just 12W. This is for the 2.5Ghz part.

[Spliffdaddy]

So that's the long-awaited G5 laptop chip?

[Pierre B.]

Originally posted by Spliffdaddy:
So that's the long-awaited G5 laptop chip?

Yes , very likely.

[Eug]

More PowerTune details (from this Japanese article):

• - "PowerPC 970+" is fabbed with 90nm, 10-layer metal, Cu-SOI process
  - Transistor count (58 million) is not changed from 130nm version
  - Die size is shrunk from 118mm^2 to 62mm^2
  - Frequency is 1.3-2.5GHz
  - In "normal" mode, 970+ changes the frequency in three steps; full, 1/2 and 1/4.
  - As the change of frequency, the core voltage is also scaled
  - From any combination of frequency/voltage, 970+ can move to "nap" mode
  - In "deep nap" mode, the frequency is reduced to 1/64.
  - Power dissipations are ~50W@2.5GHz (normal voltage), 31W@625MHz (normal voltage) and 15W@625MHz (1.0V).

Sounds great for a quiet power desktop, and also great (at lower GHz) for a PowerBook/iMac 3.

[Spliffdaddy]

hmm.

If the CPU is stable at 625MHz with 1volt - then why does the option exist for 'normal' core voltage at that same 625MHz frequency?
Seems like a rather pointless option.

[Eug]

Originally posted by Spliffdaddy:
hmm.

If the CPU is stable at 625MHz with 1volt - then why does the option exist for 'normal' core voltage at that same 625MHz frequency?
Seems like a rather pointless option.

I dunno, but maybe there is higher latency increasing voltage and speed back to normal as compared to just increasing speed? Maybe it's more of a pain to control?

I'm not sure the 625 MHz 1.0 V option would be all that important for Power Macs, but would come in handy for Xserves.

For PowerBooks, the normal voltage of the 1.4 GHz parts is already 1.0 V. I've heard rumours it can drop down to 0.85 V or something in lower power modes, but I haven't seen that documented anywhere yet.

[Eug Wanker]

Today is the 28th, one day after the memory deal was supposed to have ended, but Apple has extended the memory deal until June 26. OTOH, IBM is having that big POWER party on the 31st. Hmmm...

Also, Apple has posted the Xserve G5 Developer Note. One interesting tidbit is that the system controller is 130 nm, not 90 nm as widely rumoured.

[eddiecatflap]

..well that's it then

WWDC - 3.0 ghz DP G5 , 2.0 Ghz G5 Pb & 1.6 Ghz iMac

..let's see if i'm right

[Simon]

Yep, this new promotion points to WWDC as well.

Now, what will it be? Announce 3GHz and deliver at WWDC or announce and then no release til the last day of summer fulfilling Steve's sacred promise...

[eddiecatflap]

..wow simon , is that all your kit ??

[Simon]

Originally posted by eddiecatflap:
..wow simon , is that all your kit ??

Yes, but unfortunately not all are still working. Most are however.