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Pentium Dual Core

daveL

daveL

macrumors 68020
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Jun 18, 2003
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I saw this little ditty on hardmac and thought it would be of interest:

http://hardmac.com/niouzcontenu.php?date=2005-04-05#3865

As I have expected, due to the speed with which Intel was getting its first dual core processor out the door, it ain't pretty. Each core has to go out to the motherboard bus to communicate with each other. What's with that? They're only getting a 55% performance boost!

Both AMD and IBM dual core offerings are expected to spank the Intel kludge, since both will provide on-chip buses between cores. In other words, they're doing it right.
 
quagmire

quagmire

macrumors 604
Apr 19, 2004
6,905
2,326
Just a note on all the dual core chips, IBM is the only company that is making their dual core chips faster. Intel is going from 3.8 Ghz to 3.2 Ghz and AMD is going from like 2.6 Ghz to 2.2 Ghz or around there. While the PPC 970MP is going to be around 3 Ghz from 2.5 Ghz.
 
daveL

daveL

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Jun 18, 2003
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quagmire said:
Just a note on all the dual core chips, IBM is the only company that is making their dual core chips faster. Intel is going from 3.8 Ghz to 3.2 Ghz and AMD is going from like 2.6 Ghz to 2.2 Ghz or around there. While the PPC 970MP is going to be around 3 Ghz from 2.5 Ghz.
Click to expand...
And this information (IBM) comes from ... ?
 
R

RacerX

macrumors 65832
Aug 2, 2004
1,504
4
I'm not sure why people are acting like IBM is trying to catch up on this area. They have had a dual core processor on the market since late 2000, the POWER4.

The original design of the PowerPC 970 was to be based on a single core of the POWER4 processor with both 32-bit and 64-bit compatibility to provide IBM's workstation clients using PowerPC 604e, POWER3 and POWER3-II based systems a way to migrate to the 64-bit POWER4 (and later POWER4+ and POWER5).

The only thing IBM did to bring the PowerPC 970 in line with what Apple wanted was to add Altivec (a Motorola based technology).

IBM is re-implementing dual core on a single core processor based originally on an existing dual core processor. This isn't there first dual core processor to market... just the first that Apple is planning on using.
 
daveL

daveL

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Jun 18, 2003
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quagmire said:
If you been following the Thinksecret PPC reports about the 970MP/GX they said it will be clocked around 3 Ghz.
Click to expand...
TS said Tiger would be announced on April 1st, as well. Just because some specs shows up on a rumor sight, doesn't mean you should go around asserting them as facts.
 
Sun Baked

Sun Baked

macrumors G5
May 19, 2002
14,937
157
daveL said:
TS said Tiger would be announced on April 1st, as well. Just because some specs shows up on a rumor sight, doesn't mean you should go around asserting them as facts.
Click to expand...
And if you go with "actual" IBM public releases -- they stated that dual cores would likely need to be introduced at reduced clock speed to fit within the current heat/power specifications.

Replacing a single core 2.5GHz chip with a dual core 2.0GHz chip is a big performance bump.

But it all depends on how much they can reduce the heat/power in the next generation -- don't go by initial reports, especially since we were getting reports that 7455s up to 1.8GHz were coming off the assembly line before those ever shipped and the reality of what we got was still rather ugly.
 
Catfish_Man

Catfish_Man

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Sep 13, 2001
2,579
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Portland, OR
iirc power levels for the 970fx are such that a dual core 2GHz processor could be feasible. Since IBM is introing some new tech ("dual stress liner" iirc, there were a few articles about it) that they claim gets them a 24% frequency boost at the same wattage, then it seems possible that they could intro the dual core G5 at ~2.5GHz. I'm not expecting higher than that though, unless Apple decides to go with liquid nitrogen ;)
 
daveL

daveL

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Original poster
Jun 18, 2003
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Catfish_Man said:
iirc power levels for the 970fx are such that a dual core 2GHz processor could be feasible. Since IBM is introing some new tech ("dual stress liner" iirc, there were a few articles about it) that they claim gets them a 24% frequency boost at the same wattage, then it seems possible that they could intro the dual core G5 at ~2.5GHz. I'm not expecting higher than that though, unless Apple decides to go with liquid nitrogen ;)
Click to expand...
Hey, the water cooling in my dual G5 isn't refrigerated, so there's still room for improvement. :)

Seriously though, I can't see the 970 dual core running at a higher clock than we already have.
 
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