[Simon]

According to AI IBM is ready to start shipping the multi-core G5 970MP Antares to customers. IBM claims the clock will range from 1.4GHz to 2.5GHz and there will be 1MB of L2 cache per core which should basically double the efficiency of the chip compared to the 970FX.

I guess these chips should be right in time for Apple to upgrade the PowerMacs within a 6 month upgrade cycle in October (the current revision was into'ed in April). However, they could also chose to hold out some more in order to shorten the wait for the Intel PowerMac given that this will probably be the last IBM PowerMac revision.

I'm still wondering how Apple plans to play this one. Will they use the FX on the low end and the MP on the high end model? Will they use the MP for all models? Or will they even use dual MPs (making it their first quad core PowerMac) on the top model? What are the chances that the MP finds its way into the iMac? Does anybody have wattage numbers for this chip at ~2GHz?

And what about Apple's marketing? Since the MP tops at 2.5 GHz, how are they going to market it as superior to the current dual 2.7 GHz? Does this mean we should expect dual MPs for the top model? Or will Apple try to market the large L2 cache?

[Todd Madson]

There will be more than one powermac revision, not only did Jobs mention it
in the keynote but other sources have said as much. Intel is still two years
away for the pro level stuff.

Best guesses:
Remember "dual dual" with the dual liquid cooled CPU running dual 30" flat panels?

I would guess two dual core chips in one machine gives you the equivalent of four
processors. They'll have some "four on the floor" or other marketing gimmick.

Two processors with two cores.

There will be ways to pitch it with the cache and dual-ness to show it off as THE
DREAM MACHINE for high-end media production or scientific computing
if they're smart about how they do it.

Secondly:
Low power? Powerbooks. Definetely. And also, think about this, Mac Mini G5.

I suspect the future iMac G5 machines will also use the lower power chips because
of the heat issues occurring with capacitor issues. Makes sense.

[Eug Wanker]

Coming updates:

Quad (dual 970MP) Power Mac 2.5 GHz
G4 PowerBook 1.8 GHz
Maybe an Xserve with the 970MP as well, but if so, it will most definitely not be at 2.5 GHz.

No update to Mac mini soon. When it gets updated, it will be with a G4.

And this isn't an AI rumour by the way. They're just repeating what some Wall Street analyst said.

[mousehouse]

What are the chances of these Quad babies being announced at Apple Expo Paris (September), or is a January 2006 announcement more likely?

[KeyLimePi]

I'd be really surprised if these were announced at Paris. Didn't they Powermacs just get bumped in April? I think five months is too short for Apple.

I've always said I refuse to own a liquid-cooled computer, but if Apple comes out with a 'dual-dual' at 2.5Ghz or higher, I'd dive in feet first.

[Todd Madson]

One other thought: a dual dual would be one heavy, heavy beast. I'm talking giant aluminum case.
60 pounds in the G5 duals was nothing compared to this one.

[Catfish_Man]

Originally Posted by Simon

[url=http://www.appleinsider.com/article.php?id=1237]...and there will be 1MB of L2 cache per core which should basically double the efficiency of the chip compared to the 970FX.

This is incorrect. If doubling the cache doubled the efficiency, then modern chips would just be tiny tiny cores with immense caches attached[1]. I'd expect less than a 10% improvement from going from 512k to 1MB.


[1] Yes, I know about the Itanium. Shush

[Todd Madson]

Still, if you had a four x 2.5 ghz machine it would be serious hardware no matter what little
performance increase is experienced.

I would expect it would also generate a lot of heat as well.

[goMac]

This doesn't sound efficient at all. It's already hard enough to find software that can really take advantage of two processors, imagine trying to find software that could use four...

[Catfish_Man]

Originally Posted by goMac

This doesn't sound efficient at all. It's already hard enough to find software that can really take advantage of two processors, imagine trying to find software that could use four...

It exists. In many (most?) cases, if software can use 2 it can use 4. For example, with a 3D renderer, it would simply divide the screen into 4 tiles instead of 2, with a compiler, it would compile more files at once, etc... The tricky ones are ones where each thread is doing something different (games, for example, where one thread is doing sound and another physics). We'll be seeing much more highly threaded software in the future, since both Intel and IBM plan to up the number of cores over the next few years.

[osxisfun]

although i am now on a powerbook and now longer a desktop, i think the biggest advantage to dual dual cores will be with overall "responsiveness", yes, if you have a 3d app you will benefit the most but if you have 4 cpus then the os can give each app either their own "cpu" or each cpu has less of a burden on it.

yes this is an over simplification but...

[Eug Wanker]

This doesn't sound efficient at all. It's already hard enough to find software that can really take advantage of two processors, imagine trying to find software that could use four...

Many software apps that need power have already been optimized to use it. Catfish Man has already mentioned 3D apps. These things scream on 4 processors. eg. Quad Opteron PCs can be literally twice as fast as the fastest dual Power Mac at 3D renders.

One other thought: a dual dual would be one heavy, heavy beast. I'm talking giant aluminum case.
60 pounds in the G5 duals was nothing compared to this one.

I'd expect a dual dual case to be the exact same size actually. Remember, it's actually only two chips, not four, so the spacing would be similar. The heatsink assembly might have to be a little bit bigger, but the space within the current case is likely more than sufficient.

[goMac]

Originally Posted by Eug Wanker

Many software apps that need power have already been optimized to use it. Catfish Man has already mentioned 3D apps. These things scream on 4 processors. eg. Quad Opteron PCs can be literally twice as fast as the fastest dual Power Mac at 3D renders.

I'd expect a dual dual case to be the exact same size actually. Remember, it's actually only two chips, not four, so the spacing would be similar. The heatsink assembly might have to be a little bit bigger, but the space within the current case is likely more than sufficient.

You're right. I'm sure 3D renderers and XGrid apps would love these machines, but for most pro users, I don't know if it will help much. And for games, it probably won't help at all.

[osxisfun]

mmmm faster compile speeds with gcc 4.0....

[Eug Wanker]

Originally Posted by goMac

You're right. I'm sure 3D renderers and XGrid apps would love these machines, but for most pro users, I don't know if it will help much. And for games, it probably won't help at all.

True. However, nobody's arguing that the quad market will be somewhat limited. I'd advise a Photoshop jockey NOT to get a quad. It will be small group that needs uber-power budget be damned, but at least Apple can get some more sales without having to resort to a motherboard design to house 4 discrete CPUs.

With a company that already ships tons of dual-processor machines, it seems like a logical progression to also sell a flagship dual dual-core model using a very similar design, for much higher price.

Apple sells its dual 2.7 right now for $2999. They could sell a quad 2.5 for $3999. At that price it's high enough for Apple to justify the extra model in the line, and it's low enough that the people who seriously consider quads would be willing to fork over the dough. A quad Mac would offer serious unix power, alongside a nice friendly OS and native Office and Photoshop support.

[Simon]

Originally Posted by Catfish_Man

This is incorrect. If doubling the cache doubled the efficiency, then modern chips would just be tiny tiny cores with immense caches attached[1]. I'd expect less than a 10% improvement from going from 512k to 1MB.

CatfishMan, that wasn't my opinion. It was just a quote from the linked article.

Looking at the wording of the article (they say 'chips' not cores), it could even be understood as one 970MP = twice the performance of one 970FX. That is of course to be expected since the MP has two cores and twice the doubled L2 cache. That way the claim sounds not nearly as surprising. I'm not sure what they really intended to point out.

[Link]

4 2.5ghz G5 cores with 1mb of L2 cache for each...

Man that's some robust hardware.. makes a xeon sound pathetic I honestly can't figure out WHAT apple's going to try and stick in the powermacs when they have to go x86.. laptop processors?? hhAHHAHAH

[Simon]

Link, man, stop embarrassing yourself.

You could easily guess that
a) Apple knew about the 2.5GHz 970MP coming up when they considered Intel
b) Apple knows pretty well what a current Xeon can or can not do
c) Apple gets product promises from Intel that they chose not to inform you about

Why don't we just wait and see what happens? Xeons will never enter any Mac. The Intel Macs we'll see will probably run chips that don't exist today.

And if all turns out to be as shitty as you claim and Apple goes down the crapper, you can come back and call us nasty names if you like. Until then, chill and stop embarrassing yourself. How's that for starters?

[Link]

LOL, hey even if apple built 1.5ghz celeron machines with intel integrated graphics 3 years from now, you'd all be too busy talking about how great they were and how nice they looked to listen.

[Simon]

[Link]

It actually does get on my nerves that nobody ever hears me out. Really, now.

You all want to discount the "vaporware" from IBM and Motorola, well let's discount all the vaporware from intel and look at what they have RIGHT NOW.

*A celeron line with pathetic cache
*A Pentium M/Celeron M line, lousy FP performance though there's an "SSE3 platform in the future!" -- it still doesn't hold a candle to motorola's altivec
*A Pentium 4 line with "hacked in" dualcore system, that was fairly evident when it came out, and now they themselves admit it -- its stretched to the limit, so they come out with something new....

in a few years.

Motorola has the 7448 ready and the 8641 soon to be ready, IBM has the 970MP for now (at least in the desktops), and the 8641, while with a slower bus, will probably still kick the G5's butt.

IBM's PPC processors have become nothing short of a hit with console manufacturers, driving the game industry in a whole new direction. The G5 still competes very well with AMD's Athlon64 lineup, which is very well reputed against Intel's offerings.

So we have companies finally realizing the PPC platform is good, switching over.. and apple? Oh they're ducking out.. they want those outdated x86 processors. For what?

"I'm sure Intel is making something totally awesome"..

[Alantis]

i have a i mac 233hz yes it's old, but ok for now. I will buy a new powermac G5 mac this year after Paris expo i want the new mac to last me for 7 years from now i'm just not shore about software for it? when the new mactel come out , yes Apps will be intel/PPC in one (fat) but how long will that last. or should i get a intel mac.

Alantis

[Catfish_Man]

Originally Posted by Link

It actually does get on my nerves that nobody ever hears me out. Really, now.

You all want to discount the "vaporware" from IBM and Motorola, well let's discount all the vaporware from intel and look at what they have RIGHT NOW.

*A celeron line with pathetic cache
*A Pentium M/Celeron M line, lousy FP performance though there's an "SSE3 platform in the future!" -- it still doesn't hold a candle to motorola's altivec
*A Pentium 4 line with "hacked in" dualcore system, that was fairly evident when it came out, and now they themselves admit it -- its stretched to the limit, so they come out with something new....

in a few years.

Motorola has the 7448 ready and the 8641 soon to be ready, IBM has the 970MP for now (at least in the desktops), and the 8641, while with a slower bus, will probably still kick the G5's butt.

IBM's PPC processors have become nothing short of a hit with console manufacturers, driving the game industry in a whole new direction. The G5 still competes very well with AMD's Athlon64 lineup, which is very well reputed against Intel's offerings.

So we have companies finally realizing the PPC platform is good, switching over.. and apple? Oh they're ducking out.. they want those outdated x86 processors. For what?

"I'm sure Intel is making something totally awesome"..

It's easy to say something nasty about [insert chip here].

G5: Power hungry, waaaay behind schedule, very hard to make motherboards for, and the company making it seems to have lost interest in it

G4: Obsolete single-fp-pipe core, low clock frequency, abysmal bus speed, one process generation behind the competition, also persistently way behind schedule

Pentium-4: Power hungry, relies on now-dead clock scaling, prone to idiotic management (pretty much the entire Prescott core, from maintaining its obsessive clock frequency focus, to getting blindsided by dual core), requires radically different optimization from most other x86 chips (no 0-cycle fxch, for example)

Athlon64: On chip memory controller limits flexibility, doesn't have the dedicated compiler support that the P4 does, very expensive at the high end (for a consumer chip)

Pentium-M: Relatively weak floating point unit and bus.

Celeron: I don't think I even need to say anything here

Itanium: Expensive, huge, doesn't run x86 or PPC apps natively (yes, it has that x86 compatibility logic, but from what I've heard it gets its butt kicked by just running a software x86 emulator)

CELL: Early reports (and logic) have it sucking horribly on any code that isn't specifically optimized for it (particularly branchy or serially dependent code)



However, it's just as easy to say something positive about any of those (with the possible exception of the Celeron). I understand that the "omgintelyay" fanboy take on things gets on your nerves, but the reverse is true as well. At this point it's unclear which architecture is going to come out ahead... but the R&D dollars aren't on the side of the G4, G5, or Pentium-4. I'm also noting that of the chips above, the Athlon64 and Pentium-M were the hardest to make fun of. That may just be my personal preference influencing me though.

[mousehouse]

despite all sentiments, if we look at the "here and now" we have OSX running on PPC hardware only (legally and practically). the available PPC parts for Apple are FreeScale's products with the new 1.8GHz/200MHz G4's and IBM's G5's in 970FX, GX and MP variants.

these products need to keep Apple running for at least two more years... now... PowerBook updates to 1.8 maybe 2.0 G4's seem very likely, but to me personally i'm very curious about the PowerMac roadmap... what and when is Steve going to bring us?

[Simon]

AFAIK, the GX isn't currently available. Maybe after the MP starts shipping...

[mousehouse]

Originally Posted by Simon

AFAIK, the GX isn't currently available. Maybe after the MP starts shipping...

Ack, overlooked that one...

Given availability of FX and MP chips, what would be a reasonable lineup for the improved PM line? I'd think Apple will drop the grapejuice cooling alltogether if it's not needed by the MP chips and replace the top machine with a dual-MP. What will be the consensus regarding the Entry and Mid machine? Single MP chips or stick to the current 970FX 2.0 and 2.3 ?

[Simon]

Hmm, depends. Can Apple use the same motherboard for a dual MP that they use for the dual FX Power Macs? If not, it will make a quad core Power Mac even more expensive to manufacture.

What I'd like to see is
• single MP at 2.0
• single MP at 2.5
• dual MPs at 2.5
That makes the way clear for the single FX 2.5 GHz iMacs.

More realistic is probably something like
• single 2.0 MP
• single 2.3 MP
• single 2.5 MP

[elvis2000]

Originally Posted by Todd Madson

Best guesses:
Remember "dual dual" with the dual liquid cooled CPU running dual 30" flat panels?

Yeah, "dual everything" is the latest trend in high-end homebuilt systems... dual dual-core CPUS, SLI video cards, etc. I'd expect Apple to jump on a "Double Dual" or some such marketing nonsense for the next update.

[Eug Wanker]

Originally Posted by elvis2000

Yeah, "dual everything" is the latest trend in high-end homebuilt systems... dual dual-core CPUS, SLI video cards, etc. I'd expect Apple to jump on a "Double Dual" or some such marketing nonsense for the next update.

I think they should partner with Tim Hortons and call it the Double Double®.

[chris v]

"Ready to start accepting orders" from IBM's clients is still quite a ways away from these actually shipping in anything to retail customers-- try to keep that in perspective. 6-9 months might be a reasonable time-frame.

[mousehouse]

Well, Simons quote says "ready to ship". I assume that means these MP babies are actually being moved out of production to customers. Am I mistaken? It's been several years since I worked in the semiconductor industry, not quite up to speed on the latest terminology I guess

[osxisfun]

Originally Posted by mousehouse

despite all sentiments, if we look at the "here and now" we have OSX running on PPC hardware only (legally and practically). the available PPC parts for Apple are FreeScale's products with the new 1.8GHz/200MHz G4's and IBM's G5's in 970FX, GX and MP variants.

these products need to keep Apple running for at least two more years... now... PowerBook updates to 1.8 maybe 2.0 G4's seem very likely, but to me personally i'm very curious about the PowerMac roadmap... what and when is Steve going to bring us?

they only need to keep apple running for 10 months (or less) except for the powermacs which they need to keep going for 16 months. (or less.)

freescale has no place on the desktop. if anything it will be the last PB update maybe. maybe not.

there is no need to limit ourselves to the here and now as apple has already stated they are going intel and new machines can are being developed that "fill in the blanks" of a rpoduct rollout calendar.