[milhous]

I'm just basing this on the recent PowerBook announcement.

People have said that there would be no SuperDrive in the next Ti revision because there wasn't a slot-loading unit available. Obviously, this isn't the case. Although these units aren't available for immediate delivery, nevertheless it exists.

Finally, just because the 970's won't be available in volume production early next year doesn't mean that they won't announce or release new systems.

Has there even been any precedent where Apple has released something in which there is very limited supply. Or has Jobs ever released a system where it wouldn't be made readily available for a prolonged period of time?

[P]

Originally posted by milhous:

Has there even been any precedent where Apple has released something in which there is very limited supply. Or has Jobs ever released a system where it wouldn't be made readily available for a prolonged period of time?

The original G4s come to mind. I have to say that this happens all to often, and that Apple has only recently cleaned up their act.

[clash]

Originally posted by milhous:

Has there even been any precedent where Apple has released something in which there is very limited supply. Or has Jobs ever released a system where it wouldn't be made readily available for a prolonged period of time?

absolutely!

[clarkgoble]

However, as I understand it, the 970's are still being debugged. It isn't simply the case that production facilities aren't finished. Am I wrong in this?

Further I've read that the support chips from Apple for doing communication with memory are behind schedule. So even if 970 systems come out early, they would likely be low volume IBM systems running Linux.

[alien]

IBM says samples of the 970 will be in 2Q03 (spring), with production in 2H03. So I don't see how Apple could ship systems based on this processor for a while yet. Of course, IBM could be lucky and start production a little earlier, but not by many months, that's not realistic. I guess Seybold 2003 could be a small possibility.

And I don't think SJ wants to go through the G4 introduction fiasco once again...

[beb]

I know I'm just a babbler, but... The G4 was introduced at Macworld New York in 1999. It's time. Whether the damn thing will ship in January or not doesn't matter. It may not even ship until March. Yet, a new 970 based PowerMac will be introduced and be available for purchase. -I hope.

[Amorph]

Originally posted by beb:
I know I'm just a babbler, but... The G4 was introduced at Macworld New York in 1999. It's time. Whether the damn thing will ship in January or not doesn't matter. It may not even ship until March. Yet, a new 970 based PowerMac will be introduced and be available for purchase. -I hope.

It wouldn't be the first time Steve has announced model at MWSF that didn't ship until March.

He rolled out the original 733MHz PowerMac just as Motorola was spiffing up the lines to start making the chips!

It would be a bold move, and they'd have to have IBM very much on their side, but on the other hand, the idea of getting that significant a jump on Wintel has to be almost irresistable after taking crap about the G4 for so long.

[mikellanes]

Am I wrong or werent the LCD iMacs announded at MWNY and not shipped until April and the high-end slipped into May?

They could just announce them in Jan with the low end being a 1.6 current 7550? (whatever they have now) G4 and the mid & high being 1.7 & 1.8 970's
with the 970 not shipping till may, and oops it slipped to late june... lalala

just a thought... barley

[suhail]

I think if they have a chip to work with they will demo it and probably take early orders. But according to IBM, the chip has not even been sent to developers yet.

[CIA]

NO WAY, NO CHANCE IN HELL.

Regardless of the massive amount of work that IBM would have to do in order to get the chips ready, what about Apple's part of the deal?
A ton of software re-engineering would have to be done in three months to get OSX running on these chips. Apple needs more time to get it working. Maybe announced at MWNY, or, if Apple and IDG keep fighting during the summer, but not shipping untill next Jan. And that's optimistic.

[slim jim]

I am sorry, but I heard the the new chips would be backward compatable.

[Metzen]

Originally posted by CIA:
NO WAY, NO CHANCE IN HELL.

Regardless of the massive amount of work that IBM would have to do in order to get the chips ready, what about Apple's part of the deal?
A ton of software re-engineering would have to be done in three months to get OSX running on these chips. Apple needs more time to get it working. Maybe announced at MWNY, or, if Apple and IDG keep fighting during the summer, but not shipping untill next Jan. And that's optimistic.

The rework required to get MacOS X running on these chips are minimal. Welcome to the PowerPC world. There is no massive amount of work or re-engineering that would need to be done.

Originally posted by clarkgoble:
However, as I understand it, the 970's are still being debugged. It isn't simply the case that production facilities aren't finished. Am I wrong in this?

That's correct. The PPC 970 is in silicon, and initial production will be on the current 0.13u fabs.

Originally posted by clarkgoble:
Further I've read that the support chips from Apple for doing communication with memory are behind schedule. So even if 970 systems come out early, they would likely be low volume IBM systems running Linux.

Thanks Ars.

Nah, that's just speculation and rumor. If it's true though, I'd have to wonder whether that's IBM's doing for not having the Point-to-Point northbridge controller portion worked out yet, or if it's something on die or both. Either way, it's a properitary IBM bus, so Apple is going to be forced to pay for it somehow (licensing the bus architecture and designing their own maybe?)

Speculation, all the same though.

Originally posted by slim jim:
I am sorry, but I heard the the new chips would be backward compatable.

You heard wrong.

[pliny]

I don't see why we wouldn't see a 970 Mac in MWSF in January. I think we will.

The IBM plant where it's manufactured opened in July. It's their biggest plant, and their highest production plant.

At the time they opened IBM said samples from the plant, that is, chips, were scheduled to be delivered to customers in September, with revenue-generating shipments of chips from the plant beginning in the fourth quarter, which just ended. Volume production they said comes in the first quarter of 2003, and ramps up through the year.

So: samples in September
revenue generating shipments in the quarter just ended.

Are they not on schedule? AFAIK, they've been pretty mum since their first announcements, so I think they're on schedule.

As far as OS X needing work to run on these chips, what's this about? They're 64-bit chips and if X is to run as true 64 bit, then it will need some work, but not otherwise.

[cowerd]

At the time they opened IBM said samples from the plant, that is, chips, were scheduled to be delivered to customers in September, with revenue-generating shipments of chips from the plant beginning in the fourth quarter, which just ended. Volume production they said comes in the first quarter of 2003, and ramps up through the year.

The new Fishkill fab is an open foundry, it will be producing chips other than the 970. It is running at very low capacity right now.

Apple got a "special" run from IBM Burlington this summer. I suspect those were 970 first silicon samples. If thats the case don't expect anything from Apple until after MWNY. But then again disappointment is what Macworlds are all about. Well that, and unrealistic expectations.

[slim jim]

well, I heard that the new chips will run in OS X. I mean, the chips themsleves are what Powers tha machines, so if they are able to run in OS X, whats the big deal? Any appz that work for OSX would work. Same as for chip[s with p2, p3, p4, AMD...... Even XP would work with new 64 bit chips, I would hope OS X would be able to do this also.

[Graymalkin]

The 970 is so backwards compatible with the G3/G4 chips. It is a PowerPC chip and has fully native 32-bit support for the 32-bit aspects of the PPC ISA. Just about anything compiled for a PowerPC chip will run on anything higher (POWER3/4) because the PPC code is the common compiler mode. With the VMX instructions the 970 will support every PPC instruction and add serveral 64-bit memory and integer operations. Except in the rare cases of really G4 specific code (most often assembly routines) just about everything running in Cocoa and Carbon will run on the 970 according to IBM's paperwork.

AIX has been doing just this for a number of years. It won't take much for OSX to be able to do it either.

[McDriver]

http://www.applelust.com/oped/amc/ar...mc021108.shtml read this article and also follow this link http://www.igeek.com/browse.php?id=1101 and then maybe you will be a little more informed

[Metzen]

Originally posted by slim jim:
well, I heard that the new chips will run in OS X. I mean, the chips themsleves are what Powers tha machines, so if they are able to run in OS X, whats the big deal? Any appz that work for OSX would work. Same as for chip[s with p2, p3, p4, AMD...... Even XP would work with new 64 bit chips, I would hope OS X would be able to do this also.

64bit XP is an exception. Microsoft had to write from the ground up most of 64bit XP to run on the IA64.

But, as for the processing of data, yes, the 970 will run the same programs that ran on the G3 with no to little modifications. Backwards compatible in terms of hardware, nope.

[Metzen]

Originally posted by McDriver:
http://www.applelust.com/oped/amc/ar...mc021108.shtml read this article and also follow this link http://www.igeek.com/browse.php?id=1101 and then maybe you will be a little more informed

Couple things wrong with the first article:

Early in 2001 Apple had been working with Motorola on the next generation of processors to replace the then-current versions of the G4. There was some work to develop the next generation of PPC processors, the G5. IBM had offered Apple the option of using a cut down version of their Power4 processor, but Apple publicly declined because IBM had no plans to include a vector processing unit on it. Apple continued to work with Motorola for a while.

This never happened. Apple never publically accepted or denied working with IBM because IBM wasn't adding a vector unit to their (then) processors.

Actually reading more of the first article, I have to say I'm really disappointed with it. It's no better than MacOS Rumors, passing rumors and semi-educated guesses as fact.

Example:

"Some recent news has come to light that the problems may be Motorola's intent to use RapidIO as the data bus, not ApplePI. RapidIO is pretty generic and works well with 32 bit x86, but is its not the ideal bus for a 64 bit processor. It is beginning to look as if Apple and Motorola had a falling out over this data bus dispute. Motorola wants to be able to plug their chips directly into generic RapidIO boards because the Wintel world has once again chosen the inferior of two available technologies and Motorola wants to join the gang. Apple wants to use their own implementation of the superior technology, HypertTransport. Apple's version of the of HyperTransport bus is called ApplePI (Apple Processor Interconnect). The inefficiencies of RapidIO won't be so bad for a 32 bit design, but it would severely handicap a 64 bit design which is why Apple (a member of the HyperTransport Consortium) chose the superior HyperTransport as their preferred bus design. Apparently Motorola's bone-headed management types simply don't care. They still think 32 bit is sufficient for their own markets... and why should they care what Apple needs?"


The author has no idea of the differences between HyperTransport and RapidIO nor knows what either are actually supposed to be used for.

This article is pretty pathetic.

Apparently the PPC 970 proved to be a real whiz-bang processor. IBM now has plans to use it themselves in Linux based machines... even using Apple's ApplePI bus. It looks like the IBM engineers agreed with Apple that an efficient bus was better than a generic bus. IBM also must think that they are going to sell a lot of them. Why else would the put a billion dollars or so into a new plant just for this processor?


Riiiiiiiiiiiiight... IBM designed the processor memory architecture around a mythical bus called ApplePi. Someone needs to tell this guy to get a clue. The memory controller was designed by IBM and IBM even called it their own proprietory technology.

And lastly:

irst I checked on Ars Technica, that favorite hangout of the Wintel-Uber-Alles crowd. True to form, "Hannibal" the Uber-Geek who runs the show presented the "facts" about the PPC 970 in his article "Inside the PowerPC 970" but despite his trying to look impressed, his pro-Intel bias showed. That got the attention of David K. Every of iGeek.com. Mr. Every, for those of you who aren't familiar with him, has proven to be one of the most knowledgeable processor analysts I have ever read. He certainly knows more about processors than the whole shebang of posters at Ars Technica combined. Mr. Every took exception to Hannibal's version of the PPC 970. You can read his response, "IBM's 970 Power4-lite, and the future of the PowerPC?".


This one quote makes the author an idiot. Mr. Every knows jack all. He is one of those guys where a little bit of knowledge is detrimental. Anyways, if your considering reading the articles, you might want to take both as if they were a joke, because that's exactly what they are.

[MindFad]

Well, whatever the case may be, I wish he would address the processor issue. I hope he mentions something in January. Address the issue, talk about their plans, yadda yadda. Don't even mention the damn chip. I don't care if it would hurt G4 sales. They better say something. They won't.

I want me some PPc 970 lovin' already.

[McDriver]

OOOps never believe anything you read if you are not knowledgable in the subject at hand
As a complete knownothingaboutit man it sounded very nice but obviously it wasn't the gospel.

[mikerally]

All this arguing about the PPC 970 is making me curiouser and curiouser. I'm quite anxious to see how this processor will perform in real world tests.

I guess I'll be waiting a long time.

[beb]

and on, and on, and on...

After reading the ARS (Geez, what an Intel biased f...) and iGeek and other articles. IBM unlike some other tech companies also sees the value of secrecy.

I'm willin to bet they showed the plans for the 970 to a technical contact at Apple in the fall of 2001. Apple, meanwhile sets up a two-fold game plan. They wanted to stick with Motorola -beats me as to why. So they build the motherboard for the wind tunnel to use a now defunct Motorola processor.

One thing I do know about Steve -he and Gates do not like IBM for various reasons. That's not to say that both he and Bill aren't impressed with Big Blue. Yet, one of Steve's justifed concerns about IBM is that Apple's needs and processor requirements will just get lost in a bureaucratic shuffle.

Oh well...

[Eug]

Originally posted by beb:
and on, and on, and on...

After reading the ARS (Geez, what an Intel biased f...) and iGeek and other articles. IBM unlike some other tech companies also sees the value of secrecy.

I'm willin to bet they showed the plans for the 970 to a technical contact at Apple in the fall of 2001. Apple, meanwhile sets up a two-fold game plan. They wanted to stick with Motorola -beats me as to why. So they build the motherboard for the wind tunnel to use a now defunct Motorola processor.

One thing I do know about Steve -he and Gates do not like IBM for various reasons. That's not to say that both he and Bill aren't impressed with Big Blue. Yet, one of Steve's justifed concerns about IBM is that Apple's needs and processor requirements will just get lost in a bureaucratic shuffle.

Oh well...

I hope you realize that Apple is using IBM CPUs already in some units.

[brainchild2b]

I just find it funny that everyone actually believes just because IBM says it won't be ready until mid-next year that its "truth"

Maybe it won't be ready, but I bet it will be ready for Apple long before it's "ready"

[Vanquish]

We can only hope...

[rjenkinson]

Originally posted by Vanquish:
We can only hope...

...and post lots of baseless speculation in the meantime!

-r.

[Superchicken]

gooooo baseless speculation!
woo hoo!
heh

Personally I'm glad I've tried to read Ars Articles it's prepared me for recognizing big words scare me. Hence I've been able to not run in terror from a Theology book my pastor lent me... It's like 1300 pages! Eeep!
Serious this thing could kick and Ars article's butt in being crazy technical and using 50 different words you don't know the meaning of per paragraph.

Oh and I'm glad I'm buying an iBook right away, new comp and I can hold off till the second rev of the 970s so that I'm in the grooove hehe

[beb]

--I hope you realize that Apple is using IBM CPUs already in some units.--

I didn't mean that, Apple probably had a limited test run supply of 970s back in January of this year.

I meant that Steve mentioned I think in an early Wired article about how WebObjects could be very benificial to IBM. Yet that idea or paper got lost on somebody's desk. Of course Steve's ego probably can't get round the fact that no matter how innovative Next, WebOjects and brilliant Avie were and are. Next was never a real player. Yet, Apple has been and is... especially if Linux really does take off on the consumer side of things.

[clarkgoble]

Apple will undoubtedly get chips to develop hardware with. Hell, they likely have quite a few prototype chips even now as it is debugged.

I don't see what that has to do with when the 970 and support chips are available in quantities high enough to sell a machine from Apple.

[rambo47]

If Apple were to announce the 970-based Macs at MWSF, what would happen to sales of current PowerMacs for the 6 months to a year until the 970s actually appear? Nah, we won't see them until well after MWNY this July. The G4 has probably two more bumps before we go all IBM.

[beb]

-Ah but there's the rub... IBM states in a press release that the 970 won't be ready for everyone else until midway 2003. Until then, I'm guessing that Apple might have a specficl deal...

Of course this is all wonderfully entertaining speculation...

[Mark Tungston]

with technology it always seems later is much more likely than sooner

let em' work their kinks out so we dont get another pci sawtooth fiasco thingy

i'm looking for 2004 as more likely date of actually having something in my greedy hands...2003 is too early.

[eno]

Originally posted by alien:
And I don't think SJ wants to go through the G4 introduction fiasco once again...

Ha... he's still going through it!

[eno]

Originally posted by pliny:
As far as OS X needing work to run on these chips, what's this about? They're 64-bit chips and if X is to run as true 64 bit, then it will need some work, but not otherwise.

Apple shouldn't do this in a half-assed fashion. If there are architectural gains to be had in moving to a 64-bit artchitecture, then they should make sure their OS fully exploits them before they release hardware employing the new chips.

Remember what happened with the G4 and the "Velocity Engine"?

Even now, more than three years down the track (nearly four!), we are still only just seeing certain things coming out optimised for Altivec.

[eno]

Originally posted by Metzen:
This one quote makes the author an idiot. Mr. Every knows jack all. He is one of those guys where a little bit of knowledge is detrimental. Anyways, if your considering reading the articles, you might want to take both as if they were a joke, because that's exactly what they are.

Totally agreed. This guy criticizes Ars Technica for being Intel-biased, yet then goes to heap praise on David K Every for being level-headed and informed?!?!?!?!?

DKE is a stark-raving Mac Zealot if ever there was one. A great advocate for the Mac, to be sure, but a bit too rabid for my tastes. You know the type: Apple can do no wrong; the Mac is perfect; etc.

[eno]

Originally posted by beb:
Of course this is all wonderfully entertaining speculation...

???? I don't know about the "entertaining" part.

[rjenkinson]

Originally posted by eno:


???? I don't know about the "entertaining" part.

"entertaining" in the sense of being "a waste of one's time."

-r.

[CIA]

I'm sorry, even if these chips are backwards compatable, there are ALWAYS some things you need to work out in software. And in this case, I doubt Apple could work these things out in time to have a computer shipping soon after MWSF. This is assuming that IBM is fully ready to go and has the chip nailed down and ready to ship in quantity. (no small feat in itself)
If IBM says 2H'03, there is a good reason for it. What would IBM shareholders say if they had a chip that could begin pumping in revenue, and they were holding it back so Apple could use it first? (Esp. if the hold was for several months!)
We'll see a few shipments of IBM Linux machines based on the 970 chip before we see Apple machines with 970's in 'em

[pliny]

Originally posted by eno:

Apple shouldn't do this in a half-assed fashion. If there are architectural gains to be had in moving to a 64-bit artchitecture, then they should make sure their OS fully exploits them before they release hardware employing the new chips.

Remember what happened with the G4 and the "Velocity Engine"?

Even now, more than three years down the track (nearly four!), we are still only just seeing certain things coming out optimised for Altivec.

Hm, yes. Do the work for true 64-bit OS for those machines with 64-bit chip. But it'll have to be a parallel track for OS development at least for awhile, right, since only the 970-based machines will get the exploits.

Does anybody know exactly what or in the general area of what work needs to be done to X to make it 64-bit? I've been looking around for awhile and haven't been able to find anything.

[jwblase]

Why?


The same thing happened when Apple moved to the PPC architecture from the 68040. The technology was there, and those that took advantage of it first (Apple wasn't necessarily the first!) saw huge performance gains and sales boosts as the result of taking advantage of the technology.

Even if Apple doesn't fully implement a 64 bit architecture in OS X, could not other applications?

Apple can phase in the changes as older machines (over time) become "obsolete". Heck, it wasn't until 9.1 that most of the system was rewritten in PPC native code instead of 68040 code.

JB

[clarkgoble]

The main issue for things like the Velocity engine is how easy it is to compile your code. This means two things. First updating Apple's gcc compiler with appropriate optimizers and the like. I'm sure IBM will help there. More significantly is updating Codewarrior since most of the big houses like Adobe are still using that. If you make it easy to recompile with the features, then software houses will take advantage of the features. If it is more difficult, software houses will wait much longer to take advantage of them.

This has always been Apple's problem. Remember way back before the "dark times" when Apple had such cool technology like OpenDoc, QuickdrawGX and so forth? Remember how big a hassle it was to use them and how few of the popular class libraries utilized them in a comprehensive fashion? Remember how few programmers used those features?

Even the Altivec issues can be tied to "how easy is it for the programmer to use."

I suspect that most of OSX can use 64bit processing, given its roots and the way they've keep compiling Darwin on other platforms. (i.e. x86) It seems like that part of things is well used. Quartz - who knows. However if they've been thinking 64 bit for a long time, any manager ought to have had people at least thinking of that. So we'll see how Apple does.

[DrBoar]

Apple announced the iMac the iBox and the Xserver way before shipping but these are products that hardly affected the sales of the other hardware lines.


If Apple anounce a 970 tower in January to be "aviable during the summer" the tower sales that might be low in number but high in profit margin would drop like a stone.That is generally not a good buissness idea. However, if Apple knew that the G4 had major problems getting past the current 1.25 GHz they could do such an anouncement to show that there is a solution to the problem. Do not forget that currently the notion of Apple using the 970 is just a speculation, nothing more!

[Mark Tungston]

Originally posted by DrBoar:

If Apple anounce a 970 tower in January to be "aviable during the summer" the tower sales that might be low in number but high in profit margin would drop like a stone.That is generally not a good buissness idea. However, if Apple knew that the G4 had major problems getting past the current 1.25 GHz they could do such an anouncement to show that there is a solution to the problem. Do not forget that currently the notion of Apple using the 970 is just a speculation, nothing more!

he's got it

but a compromise may be made....

at around MWSF....release a dual 1.5 as the last powermac upgrade to spur sales...and then announce the PPC 970 at MWNY.

they then can have machines (hopefully re-designed with other improvements besides the processor) start selling at mid-august, like they did with Jaguar this year.

then the ppc 970 can enjoy back to school and christmas


����������������������������
of course wha i say is speculation, apple may want to develop the technology more or the design more or the software more....or a myriad of things may happen.

[suhail]

Wouldn't you also think that if Steve Jobs planned a PPC970 demo, he would use-up the whole event instead of gining Mr. Schiller the other half?

I'm sure Jobs is going to demo the new OSX10.3 (Chimpanzee), show us the Clock-Face and how they are so ahead of schedule, then make a big-deal out of the new PowerBook, iBook, and the new Dual PM.

Yeh� That sounds more like it

[pliny]

Originally posted by suhail:

Yeh� That sounds more like it

[brainchild2b]

haha half assed?

You act as if Apple just got their hands on the chip this week or something? Uh duh if Apple is using the 970 chip (they are) there had to be agreements made way way way back with IBM. I guarantee you somewhere in the dark confines of Apple R&D there is a lab of these suckers that have been running for at least as long as a year.

Powermac sales slump? I think not why do you think Apple is being so tight lipped about the 64 bit chip? Wait until 2004? NO. Apple won't have any customers by then at 100mhz per year speed gains.

One downside to the chip (as reported by ars) is that it's megahertz won't scale as high as the current pentium and the next chips intel is coming out with. That could mean three years down the road we have this motorola slow chip mess all over again.

[pliny]

Originally posted by brainchild2b:
haha half assed?

You act as if Apple just got their hands on the chip this week or something? Uh duh if Apple is using the 970 chip (they are) there had to be agreements made way way way back with IBM. I guarantee you somewhere in the dark confines of Apple R&D there is a lab of these suckers that have been running for at least as long as a year.

Powermac sales slump? I think not why do you think Apple is being so tight lipped about the 64 bit chip? Wait until 2004? NO. Apple won't have any customers by then at 100mhz per year speed gains.

2004 is impossible. Apple cannot wait that long to roll these things out. No way. Maybe my "MWSF!" is too optimistic--it is. But 2004 is too far afield. Between January and what, July? for MWNY, though if it's not until July 2003 then they need to be ready to ship at announce.

The pricing of these thing is a big question. Hopefully the 970s will send everything else downward.

One downside to the chip (as reported by ars) is that it's megahertz won't scale as high as the current pentium and the next chips intel is coming out with. That could mean three years down the road we have this motorola slow chip mess all over again. [/B]

3 years from now Ars'll be posting how the 1 ghz Itanium roolz the 1.4 970.

[gadster]

Wouldn't it be easier to go AMD?

[chris v]

Originally posted by gadster:
Wouldn't it be easier to go AMD?

AMD is in p#ss poor financial shape. They're losing money, and have cash reserves to get them through maybe the next year if they don't pull a profit. Maybe there'll be a big cash infusion through a stock sale or buyout or something, but I wouldn't put my eggs in that basket right now.

CV