[PBAddict]

Is there any chance that apple will release a 17" PB with dual Processors, is this technically feasible and if so when?

[seanyepez]

It's possible, but it's not likely. I don't see multiprocessing on notebooks becoming available until either IBM creates multicored CPU's for use in PowerBooks...

[k2director]

Ahhh, the old MacOSRumors prediction for duals in a PowerBook.

More heat, more cost, more headaches. I think Apple will focus instead on moving Books to the IBM PowerPC chips, which will boost performance and reduce heat.

[Over Achiever]

One reason apple made their desktops dual processors is because the desktops are falling way behind on speed. With duals, they can boast higher gigaflops, and not worry about power consumption or heat.

Apple is doing fine in laptops, and they're speeds are quite comparable. Even tho' the 17" is big, and might be able to hold two processors, that would cut the battery life in half. Unless Apple finds a way to have 8-10 hour battery life on the 17" Alubook, Apple isn't going to market a laptop that can only last "up to 2-3 hours". Because that would mean 1-2 hours real life...and many disappointments.

But many are thinking with the release of the IBM chip, that apple will go dual...we'll see.

My vote is NO, never.

[seanyepez]

Actually, I vote that we won't see multiprocessor notebooks in PowerBooks until PC notebooks have had dual CPU's for two years. I project that the earliest we will get dual-processor PowerBooks is 2007.

[NathanA]

Originally posted by Over Achiever:
Even tho' the 17" is big, and might be able to hold two processors, that would cut the battery life in half. Unless Apple finds a way to have 8-10 hour battery life on the 17" Alubook, Apple isn't going to market a laptop that can only last "up to 2-3 hours". Because that would mean 1-2 hours real life...and many disappointments.

You folks sure aren't very inventive.

If the space is available in the 17" PB I fully expect to see a dual CPU version.

The biggest problem is not that of power consumption, the problem is heat dissapation.
With the profiles being so low on laptops Apple uses a heat rail cooling system where long tubes attached to a series of heatsinks are used to try and spread heat across a large area in the machine so that heat build up isn't centralized right at the location of the CPU. If they didn't do this one spot on the machine would get really really hot, and the rest would remain largely cool.

One might think that Apple could simply place the CPU's on opposite ends of the machine to reduce this problem, but the CPU's need to be joined on short trace lengths to facilitate their "high speed" communication.

So if a better heat dispersal system could be designed I think a dual CPU PowerBook would be very feasible.

The reason I don't see the additional power consumption as a problem is because the second CPU could be disabled via power management software/firmware. The user could choose to use both CPU's while running on battery power, but by default both CPU's would only be active when using the AC adapter. Making the 17" PowerBook G4 the first true portable desktop replacement.

I don't know about you, but that's something I think I'd be interested in. Especially if Apple followed suit of the likes of Dell, and placed the system's graphics chip/memory on a removable module so that it could be upgraded. This feature is available on Dell's 8100 and 8200 machines, and is something I think Apple should provide for the 17" PB.

-Nathan

[mrmister]

THAT is a complicated piece of engineering work.

[NathanA]

Originally posted by mrmister:
THAT is a complicated piece of engineering work.

Not really, it's already quite easy to disable either of the dual CPU's from the firmware, and using a KEXT it can be done on the fly I believe.

I'm pretty sure that Apple's CHUD tools included with the dev tools can do this already.

The concepts here could be easily be extended to a power management shceme.

And moving the graphics card to a removeable module ought to be pretty simple, as Dell has already done this, allowing for upgrading the graphics technology in some of their laptops via a standard module. It's a matter of space more than engineering. It may not fit to have a two MiniPCI slots in the machine, one for the Airport Extreme card, and one that is hung off the AGP bus on the Northbridge for the graphics card.

Anyhow the more I think about it, the more it really seems like an inevitibility as long as Apple sticks with a large format laptop like the 17" PB.

-Nathan

[seanyepez]

Unless you have invented a feasable method by which Apple is to sufficiently cool two processors (generating about 35 watts of heat each) close together in a case an inch thick, a dual-processor notebook is an impossibility at the present time.

[seanyepez]

The question asked was whether a dual-processor notebook was likely to happen or not. To this question, we can see that the answer is clearly no.

Remember that more cooling equals more noise unless you're planning on creating a 23-inch PowerBook.

[samslaves]

NathanA,

I agree with you. I had a PM9600MP an I used to disable processors (even the last... system crash) via Pulse (software).
So, if I'm connected to the line why I can't increase gflops with a second G4 right now? It's only a matter of heat dissipation, I think.
I don't know if the PB processor is now soldered on motherboard or on a module, like my PB 1400cs. If it is soldered a new motherboard must be developed if not all the logic resides on the module (like MP macs).

Bye
Sam

PS: do you know you can disable processors in PowerMacs via software? It is tricky but you can too.

[Commodus]

Unless IBM can do what seanyepez mentioned, which is to produce a dual-core PPC 970 for the PowerBook (assuming Macs get PPC 970s) that doesn't create much more heat or draw much more power, I'd vote no. You're not getting much of a speed boost for all the extra headaches that will come out of having to fit in and cool an extra CPU.

[NathanA]

Well the reports from the MWSF show floor were that the 17" already barely gets warm.

One person I know who was there said that it seemed like the heat that was present was being caused by the lit surfaces that the PB was sitting on more than from the machine itself.

This would lead me to believe that because of the larger form factor, and perhaps partially because of the Aluminum casing, that the current 17" model stays pretty cool. Now if they can design a better heat rail for heat transfer, not so much to reduce total heat saturation, but to spread the heat across a larger area... then I think it would just be plain silly for Apple not to try and build a dual CPU laptop. It would be the first truely portable high-end Macintosh workstation.

I could have gone from my Dual 1083 Mhz Tower to a Dual Ghz 17" PB and taken almost no hit in performance, and in that case I would have gained a pile of integrated features.

That would have been great, and I can say beyond a shadow of a doubt that if Apple ever does release such a machine I'll be first in line to buy one.

After all, "... this is the year of the laptop ..."

-Nathan

[Eug]

Not only heat disispation and power utilization, but don't forget cost. Elsewhere it has been said that 1 GHz G4 costs upwards of around $300 EACH in small quantities. And that's not including the extra other engineering and parts involved.

The only reason dual desktops exist now is because the CPUs are simply too slow.

If anything I'd hope to see things go the other direction. ie. I want to see almost all Macs being single-CPU (not at current G4 speeds though of course), except for the very high-end PowerMac and the Xserve.

If Apple has to go to dual in a laptop, I'd take that as a sign that Apple is in even worse trouble if the laptop design is anything resembling what the current 17" laptop is. To make dual designs a viable solution, there would have to be a radical change in the chips and in the whole architecture. Otherwise we'd just be building the equivalent of Alienware Macs.

[NathanA]

Originally posted by Eug:
The only reason dual desktops exist now is because the CPUs are simply too slow.

If anything I'd hope to see things go the other direction. ie. I want to see almost all Macs being single-CPU (not at current G4 speeds though of course), except for the very high-end PowerMac and the Xserve.

Oh I completely disagree. No matter what the motivation for doing so, the decision to go MP across the desktop was a smart choice.

If Apple offers a high end multi-CPU desktop machine for use as a media workstation, then I think, if technically possible, it would be smart of them to provide a similar solution for the laptop arena.

MacOS X is amazingly smooth on dual CPU machines, even old Dual 450's. So far having moved from a Dual Ghz desktop to a Ghz TiBook I can say that I don't notice the Application speed performance drop for the most part, what I do notice is the ability to smoothly multi-task as well as run more than one demanding application at a time.

While I'd like to see the overall increase in single CPU speed on the Mac, I think we should be careful not to discount the importance of SMP, especially now that we Mac users have a consumer level OS which takes very good advantage of it.

Sure a Dual CPU Powerbook would be religated to a high-end solution, but I and I'm sure many other professionals that would like an one-stop no-punches-pulled portable solution would jump at an opportunity to get one. I'd gladly pay $3999 for a dual CPU 17" Powerbook, and probably a little more even.

Though I'd also like it if Apple didn't use size of screen to determine what constitutes their low to high end product line. It would seem better to have each of the three sizes have their own levels of low to high end. Because I really would have jumped at the chance to pick up a 12" PB with a faster CPU, more RAM, L3 cache, and a better graphics card.... the only thing holding me back then would have been the lack of DVI out... but I would have gladly paid the $2800 I paid for my TiBook for a more fully loaded 12"

-Nathan

[NathanA]

Originally posted by Eug:
To make dual designs a viable solution, there would have to be a radical change in the chips and in the whole architecture. Otherwise we'd just be building the equivalent of Alienware Macs.

Hmmm... I thought I had explained this away, but evidently not.

Given that the towers and the portables, with the exception of the TiBook, now use the same system architecture what's so complicated about it. If the space is available to handle the footprint of another 7455 + L3 cache, and the can bolster the heat rail to accomodate the spreading of the heat generated by two CPU's then what's the big deal?

When you disable the second CPU for power savings, like when running from battery power by default, then the machine isn't any different than the current 17" PB which by it's being a working design is an obvious feasibility. When plugged in, or when switched on by the user, the second CPU becomes active and you get the benefit of the added fluidity and speed that having dual CPU's provides in OS X, and for the target market of high-end multimedia you'd see a marked improvement in application performance.

So there are two hurdles, internal space, and better heat transfer. That's one less than before which people had originally inlcuded, which was power draw. I suspect of those two problems space is the bigger limiting factor currently, but that doesn't mean the layout couldn't be manipulated to handle it.

Perhaps placing the CPU's on opposing sides of the PCB or some other such trickery. Offset them from eachother a bit and you solve the need for them to have short connected trace lengths, you solve some of the heat issue by allowing independent heat rails, one that dissipates heat through the top of the machine and one that does it through the bottom, and you somewhat solve the space issue.

I'm not saying it's likely to happen, I'm saying it would be stupid for Apple to not give it a go.

-Nathan

[Eug]

The current Apple designs are so 20th century. Hell, we don't even have real DDR support yet. (Much of that isn't Apple's fault, but the fault of the CPU itself, but you get my gist.)

Dual CPU laptops would be a compromise solution at best, and an inefficient costly venture at worst.

And for the entire line to be dual makes no sense either. The solution of an unsmooth OS is not only to throw another CPU at it. Furthermore, not all "pros" need to have the top-end dual machines either. There is more to a desktop than simply the CPUs as you know.

As for the speed drop from going from a dual desktop to a single TiBook, how much of that is due to the rest of the components? A more fair comparison would be against a single-CPU PowerMac. Even an iMac 800 runs some things perceptively faster than a TiBook 1 GHz. Much of that has to do with the hard disk speeds. Heck, even my Celeron 800 desktop is faster at some things than a P4 2.0 GHz laptop.

I could have gone from my Dual 1083 Mhz Tower to a Dual Ghz 17" PB and taken almost no hit in performance, and in that case I would have gained a pile of integrated features.

That would be a huge hit in overall system performance. See above.

I think we should be careful not to discount the importance of SMP, especially now that we Mac users have a consumer level OS which takes very good advantage of it.

The OS does, but most software does not. Thus at this point the advantage is not as much as one might want, unless you're dealing with very specific software.

Though I'd also like it if Apple didn't use size of screen to determine what constitutes their low to high end product line. It would seem better to have each of the three sizes have their own levels of low to high end. Because I really would have jumped at the chance to pick up a 12" PB with a faster CPU, more RAM, L3 cache, and a better graphics card.... the only thing holding me back then would have been the lack of DVI out... but I would have gladly paid the $2800 I paid for my TiBook for a more fully loaded 12"

I agree that 12" PB does have some disappointing aspects to it. However, what's holding me back is PCMCIA, DVI, and maybe L3. I don't care about the faster MHz CPU per se or the graphics card actually. I also find it interesting though that you would consider say a 1 GHz 12" PB. So obviously you're not in a situation where pure dual power is absolutely necessary. I suspect that most people in the market for laptops aren't either. Thus Apple is designing the laptops for the vast majority of their customers, not for the rare few that must have a dual setup.

I'm not saying it's likely to happen, I'm saying it would be stupid for Apple to not give it a go.

What I'm saying is that it won't happen anytime soon, and I'm glad that Apple is not yet at the point where they have to consider it. With current technology, a dual setup would simply be an exercise in maximizing compromises, like what the dual towers are today. However, if new chips aren't out in the next few months, then maybe they will have to make that ultimate compromise.

[NathanA]

I'd be interested in a better 12" only because it opens the door for me to also own a Dual CPU desktop.

The problem I have now is that I have to use my TiBook for everything because I can't stand using the 2.5 Ghz Dell PC running RedHat 8 as my work workstation, and all the UNIX dev tools I needed would work with OS X just fine.

So I decided to dump my desktop and get a machine I could use at both home and work adequately.

If the 12" PB were a better machine, with at least a DVI out and a L3 cache then I could probably have used it connected to a flat panel at work to do dev work on.

However when I'm at home I'm doing mostly multimedia stuff like DV editing, and now DVD authoring, which by the way is probably the most relaxing and rewarding tech related past time I've ever gotten into.

However if I had a decent 12" PB I'd be happy with a Dual Ghz+ tower at home connected to an LCD screen, just using the PB as a way to take my work with me, and to be able to do things on the go.

A dual CPU 17" PB would have been perfect, filling the role of both machines perfectly.

-Nathan

[samslaves]

quote:
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I think we should be careful not to discount the importance of SMP, especially now that we Mac users have a consumer level OS which takes very good advantage of it.
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quote:
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The OS does, but most software does not. Thus at this point the advantage is not as much as one might want, unless you're dealing with very specific software.
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With SMP OSes MP systems are a MUST. Let's take an example.
Have a system loaded with 1xG4 2.0 GHz and a second one with 2xG4 1Ghz. Let's assume two (heavy metal... brushed )apps that do not spawn any thread but the main thread (the app itself). Execute them. Then try to switch from one to the other. The question is: what's the more responsive system? The fastest one or the fat one? Response: the fat one. Who finished first? Response: the fat one. The gap increases if the apps you execute both use altivec.

Open CPU monitor: the fat system "computes" app1 to proc.1 and app2 to proc.2 via the SMP OS, you can find app1 switching from proc.1 to proc.2 and app2 switching from proc.2 to proc.1 depending on processors workload (after all there are system threads around), but the bottomline is that two brains are better than one and four brains are even better (there is an OS limit obviously).

In MP systems there is less context switching and mutiple altivecs are around (and Mac OS X use altivec!), working in parallel.

It is likely that if you run only one app (a game?) a fast CPU is better but if your concern is having more apps runnig concurrently, exchanging information (publishing, messaging etc...), then MP systems are better. For sure.

Bye
Sam

[Eug]

SMP arguments don't necessarily apply in the laptop world. For pure performance you guys may be right, but that's not what a laptop is all about.

That's what my Alienware comment was about previously. Just about NOBODY I know personally values pure performance enough in a laptop to have to settle for an Alienware or SmartStep type machine. Those machines use high power high performance desktop CPUs, at the expense of size, heat, and battery life. It's no surprise that essentially the only market for the Alienware is the gamer looking for a LAN party desktop replacement.

[NathanA]

Originally posted by Eug:
SMP arguments don't necessarily apply in the laptop world. For pure performance you guys may be right, but that's not what a laptop is all about.

That's what my Alienware comment was about previously. Just about NOBODY I know personally values pure performance enough in a laptop to have to settle for an Alienware or SmartStep type machine. Those machines use high power high performance desktop CPUs, at the expense of size, heat, and battery life. It's no surprise that essentially the only market for the Alienware is the gamer looking for a LAN party desktop replacement.

Well if this is your argument, then you are effectively stating that you also think there is no market for the current 17" PB since the "design" I proposed is no different than the single CPU 17" PB in terms of heat, size, battery life when the user is operating on battery power. The second CPU would only engage when plugged into the AC adapter, or when otherwise specifically set by the users' power management preferences.

So you get a 17" PB as you know it today, except that you get another whole G4 CPU and L3 cache for when you really need high-end performance. Currently Apple lacks a real "high-end" workstation class portable, and wouldn't it be amazing that even their workstation class machine could run as long as their standard single CPU general purpose machine.

If it can be done, and for less than $4000, I say go for it. I'd spend more than that on a desktop, a 12" PB, and a LCD display easily. Then I'd also have the hassles of having to share time, information, and workflow across two machines. It's like owning a sedan to drive to work, and an SUV to go to the mountain when what I should have gotten is a Volvo V70 XC.

-Nathan

[ddma]

I think the new PowerBook G4 15" will come with the first updates for the new PowerBook G4 12" and 17".