[Eug Wanker]

Next IBM-Apple chip getting high-end feature

The next-generation chip will have technology that lets it run multiple operating systems simultaneously, said Karl Freund, vice president of IBM eServer pSeries. Doing so allows a computer to handle more jobs at the same time and to be used more efficiently.

The technology, called partitioning, relies on a concept called virtualization that breaks the hard link between an operating system and the underlying hardware. Partitioning is available today only on servers using IBM's higher-end Power4 and Power5 processors and in competing server designs from Sun Microsystems, Hewlett-Packard and Intel.

"The goal is to make virtualization capability ubiquitous across the Power line," Freund said in a Tuesday interview. "We want to drive it down to lower price points and make it available on products like BladeCenter as well."

Freund declined to comment on when in 2005 the chip is scheduled to arrive but said it's "pretty late in the design cycle now." Apple plans to use it, he added.

[power142]

The article seems to refer to the next-generation PowerPC 9xx rather than the real Power-series. It's great to hear that the new chip will inherit more features of its parent.

Now, while I can see why this might be useful on an Xserve (especially a dual dual-core processor machine), I'm not so sure it will benefit us desktop users in a hurry. Can't grumble, it's progress

[Eug Wanker]

Originally posted by power142:
The article seems to refer to the next-generation PowerPC 9xx rather than the real Power-series. It's great to hear that the new chip will inherit more features of its parent.

IBM refers to both POWER and PowerPC as Power Architecture™ these days.

Now, while I can see why this might be useful on an Xserve (especially a dual dual-core processor machine), I'm not so sure it will benefit us desktop users in a hurry. Can't grumble, it's progress

Yeah, this feature will be superfluous on desktop Macs but I'm sure the chip will get all sorts of other goodies too, which would make for a good dual (or dual dual) Power Mac.

[macaddict0001]

Nice find

[power142]

I particularly like the PowerEverywhere(tm)

I know I'm wishing, but here's what I hope they're going to throw in with the virtualization bits:

1) more cache!

2) on chip memory controller

With the addition of these and the multi-core approach, surely the distinction between Power and PowerPC will be a little harder to see?

<sigh> One step at a time....

[Superchicken]

Hey maybe this will help with Classic

Though this could actually be used by some linux distros to run at the same time as OS X. Some people do like to dual boot. Apple could probably work with YDL or something, and have easy ways to switch between the two.

[NordicMan]

A lot of people would like to see that on the same machine. There was a dealer that would sell Macs loaded with both the Mac OS and linux, but it was called BlackDog linux, based on YellowDog linux. I loved the fact that Apple did not mind. Kai Staats of YellowDog has had a good relationship with Apple. I believe that there are some things to work out for YDL to work on the 64 bit G5. LinuxFormat did an article on linux on the PPC.

It would say a lot for Apple if this happened, and Apple did not mind, but allowed dual boots to go out of their store(s) by request. That would be a high compliment to Apple, that is for sure. I would think it would gain Apple a great deal of respect.

I wish there were more room in the case of the G5 for extra hard drives. The simplest way to have two OSs would be to have one on a second drive. But this chip development would obviate that, it seems.

I reckon the XServe is where that will come first.

[i_wolf]

Yes this does look very interesting. The capability of having two operating systems running concurrently would on the same chip would be of tremenduous use to developers who wish to test an applications on different versions of OS X. For example have Tiger and Panther running at the same running the developers latest build of xyz.

One area that I believe IBM and Apple are overlooking is with regard to altivec. While technically altivec is still the most powerful SIMD for single precision and other types of computations... Apple really needs to be able to offer native double precision. There are ways around this presently but a native double precision solution will always be faster.
I am a huge fan of altivec myself, and I really believe there is huge room presently for improvements.

[GoGoReggieXPowars]

Right, because they're doing such a bang-up job getting the FX out the door