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Eug Wanker · 06:23 PM

Posted in the AppleInsider forums:

Play with CHUD:

And you get this:

EDIT:

REAL proof that the quad (dual dual-core 970MP) is coming:

See later in the thread.

Captain Egotist · Mar 10, 2005, 01:24 PM

huh? That would be really easy to photoshop.

Krypton · Mar 10, 2005, 01:27 PM

Eug just came.

(I don't doubt there are some quads in Cupertino, but that doesn't mean they will be for sale).

Eug Wanker · Mar 10, 2005, 01:30 PM

So someone just posted that if you grep MONster you can find PPC 970MP in there.

I can't test this at the moment because I don't have a Mac in front of me, and I don't have the developer tools installed on my Macs anyway. Can somebody do that?

BZ · Mar 10, 2005, 02:32 PM

I tell you, if this the best we have, we are in trouble.

BZ

Eug Wanker · Mar 10, 2005, 02:39 PM

Originally posted by BZ:
I tell you, if this the best we have, we are in trouble.

BZ

What, dual dual-core Macs are not good enough for you?

If you're talking about the pre-release info, it's about as good as it gets when it comes to Apple releases.

Lateralus · Mar 10, 2005, 02:43 PM

Since when did the G5 processor illustration become the same one that was used for the G3 and the G4?

MORT A POTTY · Mar 10, 2005, 03:33 PM

Originally posted by Lateralus:
Since when did the G5 processor illustration become the same one that was used for the G3 and the G4?

good question...

but hey, at least it's a good sign that they have the capabilities

tooki · Mar 10, 2005, 04:23 PM

I renamed this thread because it is in no way "confirmed". The fact that this software has been updated does not prove that such machines will ever make it out of a lab, though I'd love for them to.

tooki

Al G · Mar 10, 2005, 04:33 PM

Note it says 970 v2.2. That means the old 130nm part.

If real then it's just some lab abomination, not a new multicore CPU.

BZ · Mar 10, 2005, 05:23 PM

Originally posted by Eug Wanker:
What, dual dual-core Macs are not good enough for you?

If you're talking about the pre-release info, it's about as good as it gets when it comes to Apple releases.

I am talking about the info. I too am hungry for rumors, but I rather someone stumble across one in an elevator.

BZ

Eug Wanker · Mar 10, 2005, 05:49 PM

Originally posted by Al G:
Note it says 970 v2.2. That means the old 130nm part.

If real then it's just some lab abomination, not a new multicore CPU.

That pic is someone's current Power Mac. The point was the software now can see four cores, whereas it didn't in the past. Also FWIW, "clock speed" has now been renamed as "core freq".

Originally posted by tooki:
I renamed this thread because it is in no way "confirmed". The fact that this software has been updated does not prove that such machines will ever make it out of a lab, though I'd love for them to.

OK, but the "Confirmed!!!11one" part was in jest.

Catfish_Man · Mar 10, 2005, 07:09 PM

Originally posted by Al G:
Note it says 970 v2.2. That means the old 130nm part.

If real then it's just some lab abomination, not a new multicore CPU.

Also notice it says two processors... the point is the capability, not that it's actually running on a 4 core machine.

Eug Wanker · Mar 10, 2005, 07:20 PM

grep -binary 970MP MONster.app

MONster.app/Contents/Resources/English.lproj/MONster.nib/keyedobjects.nib:879:71755:YPPC 970MP?$&'(b)?d4+S-?1./TU?
YPPC 970FX?$&'(b)?d4+X-?1./YZWPPC 970?$&'(b)?d4+]-?1./^_XPPC 7455?$&'(b)?d4+b-?./cdXPPC 7450?$&'(b)?*d4+g-?1./h0iYPPC 7447A?$&'(b)?d4+l-?1./mXPPC 7410?$&'(b)?d4+q-?1./rsXPPC 7400?$&'(b)?d4+v-?1./wx!"ZPPC 750CXE?$&'(b)?d4+{-?1./|}$?%YPPC 750FX?$&'(b)?d4+?-?1./??'(YPPC 750CX?$&'(b)?d4+?-?1./??*+XPPC 750A?dse?9!!?|?-.?

Eug Wanker · Mar 10, 2005, 08:22 PM

I posted my summary of the findings here.

The older MONster.app only lists 2 CPUs.

Eug Wanker · Mar 11, 2005, 09:56 AM

And yet another clue:

Typing grep -binary Quad CPU.menu in the /System/Library/CoreServices/Menu Extras directory reveals:

Single CPUDual CPUQuad CPU

Dumbo · Mar 11, 2005, 10:05 AM

Wanker, stop linking to your ridiculously boring blog. It makes you look like a 12 year old publicity bitch longing to get laid.

Eug Wanker · Mar 11, 2005, 10:10 AM

Originally posted by Dumbo:
Wanker, stop linking to your ridiculously boring blog. It makes you look like a 12 year old publicity bitch longing to get laid.

Dumbo, if you don't want to read it, then don't read it.

All the pertinent quad mac stuff is in this thread anyway.

BZ · Mar 11, 2005, 11:52 AM

Originally posted by Dumbo:
Wanker, stop linking to your ridiculously boring blog. It makes you look like a 12 year old publicity bitch longing to get laid.

Eug is a great member of this and other forums with solid information. You, on the other hand, are offering nothing to this thread.

BZ

Eug Wanker · Mar 11, 2005, 11:58 AM

There are more clues in this forum post at Macrumors, and he summarizes it by writing "But the fact that the 970MP is nearly everywhere is quite interesting."

P.S. He also points out that references to the G4 7448 are also present.

This is gonna be a good year for chips for Apple...

osxisfun · Mar 11, 2005, 11:58 AM

Originally posted by Dumbo:
Wanker, stop linking to your ridiculously boring blog. It makes you look like a 12 year old publicity bitch longing to get laid.

I see you are living up to your name.... go back to your nintendo...

slugslugslug · Mar 11, 2005, 01:13 PM

Originally posted by Dumbo:
Wanker, stop linking to your ridiculously boring blog. It makes you look like a 12 year old publicity bitch longing to get laid.

Hate to hijack the thread, but I just had to chime in in support of Eug as well. As long as I've been reading and posting here, he's been consistently posting insightful commentary and breaking tech news, is laudably polite without being humorless, and has an eerily good record in predicting upcoming hardware. Yeah, his blog's a little dry and infrequently updated, but it's also pertinent, insightful, and nicely focused. I'm sometimes surprised it doesn't draw more comments.

At any rate, that you should care about his linking to it is what's ridiculous. Nobody's forcing you to go read it, so don't be an ass.

Back on topic: damn, I hope this turns into a shipping machine before this fall. I'm thinking about getting a mid-range G5 between Tiger's ship date and September. And even if dual-duallies are only at the top price point, the $1999 machine oughtta be a monster.

Eug Wanker · 01:56 PM

Thx for the support guys.

Originally posted by slugslugslug:
damn, I hope this turns into a shipping machine before this fall. I'm thinking about getting a mid-range G5 between Tiger's ship date and September. And even if dual-duallies are only at the top price point, the $1999 machine oughtta be a monster.

Actually, despite my interest in the CPUs, I'm not going to buy a Power Mac at all. My next purchases are likely to be an iMac and a PowerBook.

I am hoping the PowerBook will get updated this year with a G5, and I'll buy the 12" (or 13"?) when it comes out. It's interesting to see the reference to the 7448 though. Will this be the new PowerBook chip? Or is that strictly for the iBooks and Mac minis? I'd strongly consider buying a 1.6 GHz G4 7448 12" PowerBook with 1 MB L2 cache though. (I'm currently running a TiBook 1 GHz.)

As for the iMac, I don't think it will go dual-core any time soon, but it'd be nice to see a 970GX iMac with increased L2 cache. However, the Apple tools haven't yielded any references to that specific chip. In any case, I won't be buying until the 3rd iteration anyways. ie. I can wait for the iMac. I'm running a 1.7 GHz G4 Cube and it works fine for my purposes.

For the Power Macs (for the rest of you), I'd really like to see an across the board price drop, with perhaps all the duals going with single dual-core 970MP chips. While we lose one bus's bandwidth, we do make up for it with increased L2 cache and possibly more clockspeed. ie. Overall faster computers for most people, at less cost. The G5 Power Macs are definitely overdue in any case. These (possible) quads are just a bonus at this point.

bradoesch · Mar 11, 2005, 02:35 PM

Hey Eug, congrats on making front page at /.

yaro · Mar 11, 2005, 05:36 PM

How are they going to handle the heat? It be one hot bitch.

MORT A POTTY · Mar 11, 2005, 05:56 PM

Originally posted by yaro:
How are they going to handle the heat? It be one hot bitch.

the same way they handled the G5 thus far, exceptional cooling

Eug Wanker · Mar 12, 2005, 02:32 AM

Heh. The CHUD 4.1.0 public download link no longer works.

macaddict0001 · Mar 12, 2005, 03:30 AM

cause everyone on the forums was downloading it to see if it was true. Probably for optional processors in xserves.

Eug Wanker · 10:39 PM

Originally posted by macaddict0001:
cause everyone on the forums was downloading it to see if it was true. Probably for optional processors in xserves.

No I think it has actually been pulled. However, I'm not sure if it has been pulled cuz of this or because of bugs. Even now the (public) link for 4.1 is still dead. However, 4.0.2 is back up, but it only lists 2 CPUs.

Originally posted by bradoesch:
Hey Eug, congrats on making front page at /.

Heh, I've now gone thru the ultimate geek rite of passage.

osxisfun · Mar 12, 2005, 08:09 PM

Originally posted by Eug Wanker:
No I think it has actually been pulled. However, I'm not sure if it has been pulled cuz of this or because of bugs. Even now the (public) link is still dead.

Heh, I've now gone thru the ultimate geek rite of passage.

have there been any references to what heat vis a vis the current G5 we should expect?

more? less?

Eug Wanker · 10:55 PM

Originally posted by osxisfun:
have there been any references to what heat vis a vis the current G5 we should expect?

more? less?

I dunno, but Apple says the G5 970FX 2.3 has a maximum power consumption of 55 Watts. I'm thinking the G5 970MP will get some further power efficiency tweaks, and hoping that a 3 GHz dual-core might just be feasible.

That's a pretty optimistic guess though with nothing to back it up, and even if it's true, a dual-core 970MP part is gonna get pretty damn hot. I also must point out that when dual-core chips show up on the x86 side, they will not be clocked as fast as the existing single-core CPUs. ie. AMD has a 2.6 GHz Athlon 64, but their dual-core part is 2.4 GHz.

osxisfun · Mar 12, 2005, 11:27 PM

Originally posted by Eug Wanker:
I dunno, but Apple says the G5 970FX 2.3 has a maximum power consumption of 55 Watts. I'm thinking the G5 970MP will get some further power efficiency tweaks, and hoping that a 3 GHz dual-core might just be feasible.

That's a pretty optimistic guess though with nothing to back it up, and even if it's true, a dual-core 970MP part is gonna get pretty damn hot. I also must point out that when dual-core chips show up on the x86 side, they will not be clocked as fast as the existing single-core CPUs. ie. AMD has a 2.6 GHz Athlon 64, but their dual-core part is 2.4 GHz.

Interesting...

Your post in the other thread for the new G5

snip: Power Mac single dual-core G5 970MP 2.2 GHz - $1999

That would mean the same machines as today speedwise would only have 1 proc.

lower heat less fan?

Oh man i can not wait. My CC is waiting with baited breath...

reader50 · Mar 13, 2005, 01:09 AM

Originally posted by Eug Wanker:
...
AMD has a 2.6 GHz Athlon 64, but their dual-core part is 2.4 GHz.

That 2.4 GHz dual-core AMD part is an engineering sample, it may not represent the shipping product. That particular sample could be the 1 in 10,000 that runs stable at 2.4 GHz, while the majority of the yield runs at 2.0 GHz.

Kenneth · Mar 13, 2005, 04:21 AM

Originally posted by Eug Wanker:
Heh. The CHUD 4.1.0 public download link no longer works.

Works fine here.

Simon · Mar 13, 2005, 04:56 AM

The AppleStore is down.

MORT A POTTY · Mar 13, 2005, 07:09 AM

and the Apple Store is up, but the CHUD tools are back at 4.0.2, nothing more.

sounds like someone goofed and now everyone knows about the quad-processor support and they're doing damage control.

Pierre B. · Mar 13, 2005, 07:10 AM

Originally posted by Eug Wanker:
It's interesting to see the reference to the 7448 though. Will this be the new PowerBook chip? Or is that strictly for the iBooks and Mac minis? I'd strongly consider buying a 1.6 GHz G4 7448 12" PowerBook with 1 MB L2 cache though. (I'm currently running a TiBook 1 GHz.)

I think it will first go to the Powerbooks. All evidence about future processors for the Powerbook and the iBook comes right now from Freescale (7448 and the dual-core 8641D). However, we have some clues from IBM, but very vague for the moment. Yes, I talk about this PPE unit in CELL. It is a high-clocked 64-bir processor, probably low-power (although detailed power features are still missing), and it has... Altivec. Why IBM would put Altivec in a CPU designed for such a general and modular use? This PPE is not perhaps for the Power Macs, which already have the higher(?) performance G5, but I see no reason to believe it is not for the Powerbooks either. So, CELL PPE = G5-mobile?

As for the iMac, I don't think it will go dual-core any time soon, but it'd be nice to see a 970GX iMac with increased L2 cache. However, the Apple tools haven't yielded any references to that specific chip.

This is perhaps not surprising if we believe the rumor saying that the 970GX is the single-core version of the 970MP.

Eug Wanker · Mar 13, 2005, 12:30 PM

Originally posted by Kenneth:
Works fine here.

Yeah, sorry, I guess I posted the wrong link. That's for the 4.0.2 update from January, which doesn't have the modifications for 4 CPUs. (Or perhaps VersionTracker changed it from 4.1 to 4.0.2 after I posted it, I don't know.)

Here is the public MacUpdate page for CHUD 4.1 from March, which is the one with all the interesting info, but the download link (which is an Apple ftp address) is now dead.

Originally posted by MORT A POTTY:
and the Apple Store is up, but the CHUD tools are back at 4.0.2, nothing more.

sounds like someone goofed and now everyone knows about the quad-processor support and they're doing damage control.

Yeah, I'm wondering, but I'm also hearing thru the grapevine that CHUD 4.1 was buggy, so it could have been pulled for that too.

osxisfun · Mar 13, 2005, 12:32 PM

Originally posted by Simon:
The AppleStore is down.

In the past Apple would do a "test" store is down on sunday.

maybe ibooks on monday?

Big Mac · Mar 13, 2005, 12:54 PM

Originally posted by Pierre B.:
I think it will first go to the Powerbooks. All evidence about future processors for the Powerbook and the iBook comes right now from Freescale (7448 and the dual-core 8641D). However, we have some clues from IBM, but very vague for the moment. Yes, I talk about this PPE unit in CELL. It is a high-clocked 64-bir processor, probably low-power (although detailed power features are still missing), and it has... Altivec. Why IBM would put Altivec in a CPU designed for such a general and modular use? This PPE is not perhaps for the Power Macs, which already have the higher(?) performance G5, but I see no reason to believe it is not for the Powerbooks either. So, CELL PPE = G5-mobile?

The whole point is that Cell is not a general purpose processor. It is more specialized than regular processors but not as specialized as GPUs.

Eug Wanker · Mar 13, 2005, 01:09 PM

Originally posted by Big Mac:
The whole point is that Cell is not a general purpose processor. It is more specialized than regular processors but not as specialized as GPUs.

Yeah, but he was talking about Cell's PPE, which could be used as a general purpose processor. It even supports Altivec. A PPE-based CPU (with none of Cell's SPEs) at 4 GHz would probably make a nice mobile CPU.

However, despite my statements above I don't see PPE-based chips coming any time soon to Apple's computers. My guess is that the next-gen PowerBook mobile CPU will be derived from the G5 970 line. And if not, then it may be just a faster G4 (7448).

angelmb · Mar 13, 2005, 02:18 PM

great info!

slugslugslug · Mar 13, 2005, 04:05 PM

Interestingly the Think Secret article about the next iMac/eMac revs mentions PM revs in passing; it says they'll use the 970GX. Nothing about 970MP. Not that TS has been perfect of late, but their track record is nothing to sneeze at either..

I wonder if this means the MPs aren't gonna show up for another 2 revs. Or maybe the next PMG5 lineup will be a mix of GX and MP machines..

hmm...

Eug Wanker · Mar 15, 2005, 06:12 PM

I have a G4dual 1gz. if AlchemyDVR is recording a file (sorensen3) then I can't really use other 'movie' programs to manipulate other movie files as Alchemy uses '105%' of a processor. it will skip frames If the machine is ding someting else, like batch poceessing QT files or processing MPEG2 files with Streamclip.

my quesion was more to the tune of even with lots and lots of chips, will they be able to do more with one programs

I'm no expert, so someone else can comment more intelligently, but really it depends on the applications.

Certain software is much more parallizable than others. It's really dependent upon your own application mix (and budget) for any decision to go quad or not. For most traditional Power Mac buyers, duals may be enough, but for others, they'll jump at the chance for a quad.

As for skipping frames and stuff while multitasking, I do have to wonder how much you're hitting the hard drive. Is it a bottleneck? (Sorry, I don't know anything about Alchemy.)

Is your dual 1 GHz simply too slow? Maybe a dual 2.5 would be more than enough.

power142 · Mar 15, 2005, 07:38 PM

Note that CHUD is available from Apple's FTP site again, but the version is 4.1.1....

Eug Wanker · Mar 15, 2005, 07:42 PM

It's official. Here is a 970MP document on IBM's website.

osxisfun · Mar 15, 2005, 08:06 PM

Originally posted by Eug Wanker:
It's official. Here is a 970MP document on IBM's website.

I saw this in another thread.

Question about its meaning:

Is this the first time a doc from ibm has explicitaly stated the existance of a 970MP?

Everything before this has been rumor and vague statements by ibm people at processor conferences?

thanks

Eug Wanker · Mar 15, 2005, 08:16 PM

Originally posted by osxisfun:
Is this the first time a doc from ibm has explicitaly stated the existance of a 970MP?

Everything before this has been rumor and vague statements by ibm people at processor conferences?

Yes.

osxisfun · Mar 15, 2005, 08:20 PM

Oh baby. I literally can sniff that "New Mac Smell�" already...

Eug Wanker · Mar 16, 2005, 12:25 AM

CHUD 4.1.1 is now out, and the references to "970MP" and "Quad" have disappeared.