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Peder Rice · Aug 18, 2002, 08:28 PM

http://www.geek.com/procspec/ibm/power4desktop.htm

This site gives a bit of the rumored information on IBM's rumored G5. The thing that looks hilarious to me is the 2000MHz guess that Geek.com provided. I seriously doubt we'll see 2GHz in 2003 (unless IBM's G5 can scale like crazy)

Superchicken · Aug 18, 2002, 08:45 PM

2Ghz is what IBM said they were aiming at by the end of the year from what I understand... all I can say is I hope show up in Power Macs!

raferx · Aug 18, 2002, 08:55 PM

From the little I've read about them, IBM's new chips are supposed to scale very well indeed. That said, I remember reports at The Reg about Moto's G5 scaling at 400MHz over 1.6 Ghz... grain of salt everybody...

milhous · Aug 18, 2002, 08:57 PM

Oh yeah....
Oh yeah....
The moon... BEAUTIFUL
The sun...even more BEAUTIFUL
Oh oh. Chick...ChicaChica.

Jdraienier · Aug 19, 2002, 12:08 AM

I'm pretty sure apple wouldn't jump from 1.25 GHZ to 2GHZ.
They would release a 1.5 GHZ with a G4 or Power4 machine so they can squeeze more money out of us.

Fipher · Aug 19, 2002, 02:31 AM

ya, mabe

iSilver · Aug 19, 2002, 02:50 AM

maybe the are just clearing out the old stock of G4 processeors before the bring in the G5, or whatever they will be called. I'm sure the Apple Marketing team would like a change to something else ...

Superchicken · Aug 19, 2002, 03:01 AM

I think apple will go with what's avalible!
if they figure IBM can reach 2.5Ghz by the next expo I dout they'll wanna give AMD and Intel the time to catch up with IBM.

CIA · Aug 19, 2002, 08:26 AM

This little IBM rumor is keeping my hopes for the Mac platform up for the moment. If it ends up a becoming pipedream, or "just around the corner" for to long, ala Moto's G5, we might have a serious problem. If no IBM chips are headed to the Mac, Apple may be in deeper water than we expected.

bigv · Aug 19, 2002, 11:41 AM

"If no IBM chips are headed to the Mac, Apple may be in deeper water than we expected."

Which is exactly why I am almost positive that a change is coming. I would be very surprise if the IBM chip does not end up in a PowerMac at some point.

Jdraienier · Aug 19, 2002, 02:13 PM

The IBM chip uses a vector processing which is similar to Altivec, but not exactly the same. My question is wouldnt Apple have to recompile the programs and OS ?

Superchicken · Aug 19, 2002, 02:16 PM

it already exists.
And unless IBM wants to start selling PPC linux desktops which I highly dout, Apple's the only vendor avalible that sells PPC chips for desktops, and these are low end server, desktop chips!
WHO ELSE WOULD THEY GO TO!?
I'm just hoping for MWNY.. cause that's when I buy my next Mac

I REALLY hope apple beings moving the Power Macs, and iMacs up to this new IBM chip as soon as it's avalible, forgetthe G4, if it's avalible by San Fran, give it to the PMs and then at NY give it to the iMacs!
Apple REALLY needs something to keep the pros on the platform.
But I HIGHLY dout apple would have gone to all the effort of buying shake and emagic and continuing FCP so much if there was no hope for the Power Mac.
Pretty soon the Power Mac WILL be a new speed demon... hopefully... either that... or I simply have a cool LCD on an arm at least

Superchicken · Aug 19, 2002, 02:26 PM

Anyone else miss the Blue and White G3s?
Personally I think thtey looked better than the Quick Silver.... but the smoothness of the QS was cool and...
Yeah..... what do you guys think, would you sooner have some sorta blue QS or keep the QS?
I dono I really like my blueberry iMac's case... and I think the Power Macs have been grey for to long...

BRING BACK THE BLUE!

it'd match OS X better too

businezguy · Aug 19, 2002, 04:21 PM

There's a reason why Steve Jobs didn't announce the new G4s at this Macworld, and I think we certainly can agree that he could have and just given the release date of 1 to 2 months.

I would have to say the idea that Apple is trying to clear out their G4s before an upgrade could very well be the reason. Steve Jobs just didn't want to bother announcing the release of something he wasn't too thrilled about and he is just waiting for the G5 to come along.

I'm a PC user, so I'm not expert on Macs, but this certainly does leave Steve Jobs clear to make an announcement at the upcoming January Mac World. The alternative is that he doesn't have anything new to announce on the G4s, and that just doesn't seem very likely at all.

Peder Rice · Aug 19, 2002, 04:29 PM

The blue and white rocked. I wish they'd bring it back for the G5 (whenever that may be)

olePigeon · Aug 19, 2002, 04:35 PM

Originally posted by Peder Rice:
The blue and white rocked. I wish they'd bring it back for the G5 (whenever that may be)

I never liked the Blue & White case. My favorite is the graphite.

slider · Aug 19, 2002, 04:58 PM

Originally posted by Jdraienier:
I'm pretty sure apple wouldn't jump from 1.25 GHZ to 2GHZ.
They would release a 1.5 GHZ with a G4 or Power4 machine so they can squeeze more money out of us.

While Apple certainly isn't cheap, no pro computers are, PC or Mac. There seems to be a misconceptions that it's Apple that has been keeping the clock speeds low. I think Apple is as upset about this as we are. Sales of PowerMacs have surely fallen and that's not squeezing money out of anyone. Things started to slip, then there was talk about the G5 and Moto just hasn't been coming out with the speeds expected. Now that IBM is on the scene Apple as an opportunity to finally catch up. While the PowerPC chip is a superior chip, I can't match a Pentium running at nearly three times the speed. Apple has this great new OS, and it's being dwarfed by slow processor speeds, Apple knows this and I believe they are working with IBM on the chip and have plans to release it in the next round of PowerMacs. Adoption of the Power4 has probably taking priority at Apple right now. Everyone here seems to comment on the urgency of this, and Apple knows this better then us, they have the numbers. I think January sounds about right.

hmurchison2001 · Aug 19, 2002, 08:10 PM

This site gives a bit of the rumored information on IBM's rumored G5. The thing that looks hilarious to me is the 2000MHz guess that Geek.com provided. I seriously doubt we'll see 2GHz in 2003 (unless IBM's G5 can scale like crazy)

Scalability is determinded by a number of factors. Pipleline stages have a major influence.

Original G4- 4 Pipes, hit wall at 500mhz
Revised G4+- Core changed to 7 Pipes enters at 733Mhz(50% improvement)
Rumors of IBM G5- 10-15 Pipes should easily clock to 1.8 and 2.0ghz is a very obtainable target as it will ship at .13 micron.

I'm pretty sure apple wouldn't jump from 1.25 GHZ to 2GHZ.
They would release a 1.5 GHZ with a G4 or Power4 machine so they can squeeze more money out of us.

The current G4 is still .18 microns. Fab them at .13 and you'll hit 1.4 or 1.5Ghz. So I expect to see Apple rev the Powermacs one more time with possible .13 micron G4's.

The IBM chip uses a vector processing which is similar to Altivec, but not exactly the same. My question is wouldnt Apple have to recompile the programs and OS ?

Actually no one has been able to confirm that this is not the same. Altivec is Moto's TM but search Google for IBM and VMX and you'll see that IBM has had this for sometime. Chances are more likely that Altivec/VMX are one in the same and no extensive work will be needed for reprogramming

While the PowerPC chip is a superior chip, I can't match a Pentium running at nearly three times the speed

That's certainly true. The current PM's don't have a fast enough FSB to effectively use all the power of the G4 processor. Moving to an IBM Power4lite will require a much faster memory subsystem..thankfully IBM has already gone on record as saying this proc will support 6.4Gbps...yowza! That's a nice bump.

milhous · Aug 20, 2002, 04:14 AM

The current PM's don't have a fast enough FSB to effectively use all the power of the G4 processor.

That's not true. It's the G4 processor's inability to natively address a faster DDR FSB that's the problem. If the G4 was able to handle it, we wouldn't be having this discussion now.

foobars · Aug 21, 2002, 12:25 AM

Originally posted by milhous:

That's not true. It's the G4 processor's inability to natively address a faster DDR FSB that's the problem. If the G4 was able to handle it, we wouldn't be having this discussion now.

There is a huge FSB bottleneck right now because of the DDR issue. So one is a symptom of the other and you're both right.

6.4GB/s is huge. The current FSB saturates at what? 1.5 or something. I hope Apple has the mobo to go along with this amazing chip or we'll be having the same problem when it comes out.

suhail · Aug 21, 2002, 12:40 AM

Now, with this POWER 4 chip from IBM, does it require the current MacOS X apps to be recompiled, or is it fully compatable?

Superchicken · Aug 21, 2002, 12:47 AM

From what I understand, if it's 32 bit backward compatable, it won't require a recompile.

businezguy · Aug 21, 2002, 01:39 AM

Yeah, that's really the question. Can the IBM run at 32-bit? And, would Apple still have to port their operating system if the IBM can run at 32-bit?

The second question is, if the IBM can run at 32-bit, how does it perform? We should keep in mind that AMD has an upcoming chip that performs quite well at 32-bit even though it is also a 64-bit processor (at least has 64-bit extensions).

bigv · Aug 21, 2002, 12:06 PM

I remember way back in the early pc days when the processors were just 16 bit processors. I don't think the processors went 32 bits until the 80386. At any rate, whenever it did go to 32 bits I seem to remember complaining that the operating system, windows 3.0 I believe, was still the same old 16 bit OS as before. That is the reason I switched to OS/2 being that it was the first pc OS to be 32 bit, though not 100% 32 bit. Also when win95 came out it was supposed to be 32 bit but still had aa lot of 16 bit legacy code hanging around. I suspect that if the new Power4 based chip is 32 bit compatible the same will be the case for OSX. It will likely take a while to make the switch to being fully 64 bit.

Just a thought. See how optimistic I am that Apple will be going to the new IBM chip?

markphip · Aug 21, 2002, 01:03 PM

Originally posted by businezguy:
Yeah, that's really the question. Can the IBM run at 32-bit? And, would Apple still have to port their operating system if the IBM can run at 32-bit?

The second question is, if the IBM can run at 32-bit, how does it perform? We should keep in mind that AMD has an upcoming chip that performs quite well at 32-bit even though it is also a 64-bit processor (at least has 64-bit extensions).

PowerPC has been designed from day one to have full 32-bit compatability in the 64-bit designs. IBM has been making 64-bit PPC chips since 1994-5 and every one has completely supported the 32-bit PPC ISA. There is no reason to think this new chip would not do the same.

There is no performance penalty in running 32-bit instructions and the processor is capable of mixing 32/64-bit instructions without a performance hit either. As an example, OS/400 which is a fully 64-bit OS can run 32-bit AIX PPC binaries natively, often at speeds that are faster than the RS/6000 (mainly because the AS/400 offers faster I/O).

Mark