7470 PPC and Why no G5's.

[arn]

After publishing possible specs for upcoming PowerMacs, the discussions invariable return to G5s, with people holding out hope that G5's will be released "any day now". However... based on all available information, G5's are likely not expected until 2003 at least.

In Feb 2002, the G4's and Beyond article references a Register article which reports upcoming G4 processors that are to be introduced over the coming year:

According to Motorola sources, a tweaked version of the Apollo 7450 G4, the 7470, will be ready for volume production shortly after the end of Q2, in time for a summer ramp. The 7470 will be manufactured on a 0.13 micron process, allowing for a smaller die size with room for 512K of L2 cache, and support up to 4MB of DDR-SDRAM L3 cache.

The 7470 supports a modified bus protocol, MPX+, which supports double data transfer and which should effectively run at 266Mhz according to sources.

The MPX+ bus retains MPX's 36-bit addressing lines, and is described as an interim measure. Don't expect dramatic leaps in SMP scaling - two will remain the sweet spot. The 7470 should scale to 1.5GHz. In parallel development, Motorola is priming a cut-down 7470, labelled the 7460, which doesn't support L3 cache.

In another report from Jan, 2002, MacCentral quotes Motorola on how the G4/Apollo chip still has a lot of life left in it:

It is important to note that this is only the first installment in this [G4] processor family. "The big news here is that this device is certainly not topped out," said Swearingen. Mac users can reasonably expect incremental performance increases from this processor family in the future, taking Apollo to its promised GHz+ performance levels.

While we'd like to tell you outlandish tales of teleporters and G6's... expecting true G5 processors "any day now" is setting yourself up for disappointment, based on available information. That being said, there were alternative rumors (Register),Architosh as well... and we'd love to be proved wrong.

 

[trilogic]

but me want G5

 

[firewire2001]

well, im jus wondering.. cant apple technically call the new processor whatever they want? i mean, they could call the faster processors g5s, although this isnt apples track record.. i mean, i know the g4 was in a completely different class than the g3s, but they were WAY diff in speeds -- well i mean, the g3s couldnt go at the speeds of the baseline g4s, i dont think-- maybe apple calssifies its proccessors by speeds, or sumthin?

just my two cents

 

[Backtothemac]

Originally posted by firewire2001
well, im jus wondering.. cant apple technically call the new processor whatever they want? i mean, they could call the faster processors g5s, although this isnt apples track record.. i mean, i know the g4 was in a completely different class than the g3s, but they were WAY diff in speeds -- well i mean, the g3s couldnt go at the speeds of the baseline g4s, i dont think-- maybe apple calssifies its proccessors by speeds, or sumthin?

just my two cents

Actually, they could, but they won't. They may call it a G4 squared or something, but no, they will not call it a G5. These rumors are dead on to everything that I have heard. We will see a G5, but a super G4 would be great for me.

 

[lucs]

anti disappointment technique

Aight people, listen up:

THE ONLY WAY TO AVOID DISAPPOINTMENT IS TO FORGET ABOUT G5s IN MWNY. IF YOU DON'T, YOU MAY FEEL LIKE JUMPING OFF A CLIFF IF THEY DON'T COME OUT.

Cmon people, lets stop deceiving ourselves, we know the G5 is not ready yet, it is most definetely on the works, but not yet ready. If you aim for a faster G4, you will not be as dissatisfied and if the G5s happen to come out, you will burst with joy.

Now lets start speculating about the G7.

 

[rice_web]

Guys,

Did you see where the article mentioned a weaker version of the G4? What the celeron is to the Pentium 4, will be the weak G4 to the 4MB L3 Cache G4.

I think that Apple may come up with a crafty name for the crappy G4, and place it in every Mac out there. Meanwhile, a G4 with a killer 4MB level 3 cache could be placed in the pro line to differentiate between the two lines. This could allow Apple to even allow the same processor speeds (in MHz), but emphasize the cache for their pro line.

 

[Catfish_Man]

Actually...

Originally posted by Backtothemac


Actually, they could, but they won't. They may call it a G4 squared or something, but no, they will not call it a G5. These rumors are dead on to everything that I have heard. We will see a G5, but a super G4 would be great for me.

...the G4+ could have been called the G5. It added L3 cache, 3 new pipeline stages and 2 new pipelines, which is a much bigger jump than say... 604e Mach5 to G3. The new one could very well be called the G5, it will certainly provide the type of performance you might expect from a G5.

 

[rice_web]

Why rename it? There really is no point this late in the game. If they wait until the true 5th generation PPC processor from MOTO comes out, they won't be accused of using naming schemes to boost sales.

For the notebook side of things, notice the .13 micron process. The PowerBooks and iBooks will take a liking to these processors immediately, for both the less heat and longer battery lives associated with the new manufacturing process.

 

[agent302]

Originally posted by rice_web
Guys,

Did you see where the article mentioned a weaker version of the G4? What the celeron is to the Pentium 4, will be the weak G4 to the 4MB L3 Cache G4.

I think that Apple may come up with a crafty name for the crappy G4, and place it in every Mac out there. Meanwhile, a G4 with a killer 4MB level 3 cache could be placed in the pro line to differentiate between the two lines. This could allow Apple to even allow the same processor speeds (in MHz), but emphasize the cache for their pro line.

The "weak" G4 has existed for quite sometime. It's what was in the previous iteration of the Powerbook and the current versions of the iMac, eMac, and low-end PowerMac. They probably won't differentiate names based on cache because the functional units of the processor will be the same.

 

[Spidermanjohn]

the birds tell me

Been a lurker for a while now. Living in Sactown has its advantages when it comes to hearing things about Mac. Have an insider telling me Apple is sitting on new advancements until the economy picks up and can justify the release of these products. Don't kill the messenger only passing on what I was told by an Apple employee. Have had former students of mine who now work for Apple telling me the same thing.

Why is it no windoze only user understands Mac??? I use both platforms in my line of work and each has its strengths. Had an employee at CompUSA tell me he hates the Mac. I asked him if he had tried the Mac, he said no?!? I asked why he hated the Mac? My dad says it sucks!!! So you never try things for yourself and make a decision on your own huh??? Well, you know the rest of the story.

Nothing does video better than a Mac and FCP IMHO.

On another note: Just loaded OS X 10.1.4 on my G3 500 Powerbook, man what a speed increase! I am typing this on my pb running OS X, Airport which works a lot better now, even better than 9.2 and have classic open for word. Classic Word launched in under 10 seconds, WOW!!! Can't tell classic is even there now.

 

[jelloshotsrule]

i don't see them emphasizing cache in the naming scheme itself... but who knows

all in all, i think the new hypothesized g4s sound quite good and i'd like one. but of course that won't happen for a while.

if the ddr ram does half as much as most people have said it would, it will be a big boost.

and 400 mhz boost in one update is the biggest recent increase that i can remember at least.

but perhaps it's still not the bomb we're waiting for jobsy to drop on us... yet.

oh well. that just leaves more room for rumors.

 

[jasonpaul75]

Feed your G4 its Wheaties!

I have had my G4 450 Dual processor for a long...long time. I may be completely crazy but it certianly outpaces almost every single processor machine I have ever worked with at my office. Especially under 10.1.
I may be clearly crazy...but I will not be buying another machine to compliment this one until I see "real" performance progress. I have no problem paying for a top of the line...and its likely that I will always have to in order to get the Dual processor machines from here on out...but I really need to see the overall difference. I am cerainly glad everyone else is willing to upgrade for simple changles like built-in Bluetooth (this kind of rabid unnecessary purchasing keeps Apple in biz)....but you can give me a $50 adapter any day.

I love new tech when my office pays for it (hence my desire to slap the hand of anyone who touched my G4 powerbook)...but seriously. There is about a 2.5 year window on necessary hardware quality shifts...If you really work with the hardware you will see this. I have a close friend with a G4 cube who is still generally very pleased with its performance...

"believe"

Jason-Paul

 

[Mr. Anderson]

Ah, snit. I think I'm going to change my 'tar now, its looking pretty ludicrous. I have to defer to the common wisdom here and acknowledge that the G5 is a long shot in the short term.


Show me the G4+

 

[G4scott]

Re: Actually...

Originally posted by firewire2001
well, im jus wondering.. cant apple technically call the new processor whatever they want? i mean, they could call the faster processors g5s, although this isnt apples track record.. i mean, i know the g4 was in a completely different class than the g3s, but they were WAY diff in speeds -- well i mean, the g3s couldnt go at the speeds of the baseline g4s, i dont think-- maybe apple calssifies its proccessors by speeds, or sumthin?

The G4's actually came at the same, if not a lower clock speed (the baseline was 350 mhz after Apple raised their prices...)

Originally posted by Catfish_Man


...the G4+ could have been called the G5. It added L3 cache, 3 new pipeline stages and 2 new pipelines, which is a much bigger jump than say... 604e Mach5 to G3. The new one could very well be called the G5, it will certainly provide the type of performance you might expect from a G5.

No... calling it a G5 would've been wrong. It was just an upgraded G4, and that's it...

Lets get over it guys. Apple IS NOT going to release a computer with a G4 chip in it and call it a G5! It will be called a G5 when it has a G5 chip in it...

 

[Hemingray]

Oh well.

Until they DO come out with a G5, or a G4 with the rumored G5 specs, Apple won't get another cent from me (for a new CPU). In terms of processor/bus speed, they really haven't come that far from when I bought the first model G4 three years ago. It's kinda scary.

Who knows, though. I'll be waiting for July.

 

[Macmaniac]

From what I can tell now it looks like we may get the G5 at MWSF in 2003 at the earliest, or MWNY 2003 at the latest. Meanwhile Apple should increase bus speed and get to 1.5ghz and add DDR ram. This I think we will see at MWNY.
Lets hope, we don't want the best chip ever to be rushed.

 

[kaneda]

working for Apple?

What if a guy who started this post working for Apple and tried to spread B.S. rumors about G4? but G5 is ready to go in MWNY... we will never know

 

[Silver Dragon]

G4, G5, who cares?

Why is everyone so ga ga over the G5? Because it's 64 bit? Well, that gets you more memory, but not these great speed enhancements I hear about. Besides, the current G4 is 32x32x64x128 bit (I believe). Does everyone want the G5 because it's one number bigger than the G4? If that's it, I have a G7 I can sell you RIGHT NOW! It's 2 whole numbers bigger than the G4!!!

What *I* am hoping for is Apple to go to IBM for the G5. As I have stated before, there are issues with Altivec when doing this, but it would be cool. Don't think for one second that Motorola is the only company working with Vector units in the PPC.

I just don't understand. Can someone please explain? Maybe I'm just missing something.

 

[gbojim]

Now this makes much more technical sense than the other things we are hearing. Tweaking the G4 to handle DDR would not be a huge deal. You also get a natural clock increase with the 0.13u process. Tweak the mobo to handle ATA133 and you would get a major performance increase.

It would also make sense then to use this CPU in the consumer products when the G5 is released into the PowerMac and PowerBook families.

What *I* am hoping for is Apple to go to IBM for the G5. As I have stated before, there are issues with Altivec when doing this, but it would be cool. Don't think for one second that Motorola is the only company working with Vector units in the PPC.

I just don't understand. Can someone please explain? Maybe I'm just missing something.

Lots of vector processing units exist. Problem is that Motorola owns Altivec and using these technologies is not a simple re-compile. Apple would have to hand tool a lot of code to add an IBM SIMD to the mix.

 

[utilizer]

New G5s: I HOPE SO -- But New Enclosure? You better have it Apple!!

I could really buy an Apple tower finally after holding out hope for a G5 -- I've owned my PowerBook Firewire G3 for almost two years now and the only problem I've had with it, within the last month out of its entire life of ownership, is that it had bad RAM installed in it and a bad sound card. Other than that, everything is right.
I was really hoping for a G5 would show up at MWSF but didn't, then I heard it would show up at MWNY -- Now you guys say "No go, no way, no how".
I say: I'm still optimistic of a G5 showing up, two reasons:
1. Apple hasn't surprised us lately, it's time to inject some more juice into the company and shock the world!
2. MWNY 2001 was disasterous! Many were disappointed and thoroughly upset! Understandably so considering that DVD was the "highlight" of the show. You could tell SJ was pissed off; nothing went right; the digital camera he had, he threw at an assistant which broke on the spot as he tossed (unsuccessfully!) the camera to floor towards her! He was obviously upset and looked as if that instance was built on top of another headache that occurred earlier -- Being up all through the night, only getting four hours of sleep, so yeah, we know what really happened. Motorola F'ed up and continues to do so to this day; they are the reason why Apple is sooo behind and struggling to stay alive in this marketplace.

I have no interest in the current G4 desktop pro lines; I HATE THE ENCLOSURE. Who ever heard of covers over a ZIP drive or CD drive?! You can't stick a paper clip in there anymore if a disk gets stuck! That's crazy! Excuse me, you can, but if your stuff won't boot up, well then you're screwed since you have to access Drive Setup to eject the silly thing!
Here's my take on this entire thing and my plans for whatever occurs at MWNY 2002:
1. SJ says about the Pro lines: NO G5s, no new enclosure; same sorry-as* design we've been using for the past 3 1/2 years folks! Go home and go forth, spread the word about the crappiest line of comps available!!
REGARDLESS OF PERFORMANCE, ETC.! I DON'T CARE!

2. SJ says this: Hey, we've got G4s and G5s mixed up in the pro lines, modified enclosure, slight changes, (MAYBE I'll go for it) and that's that.

3. SJ says: Pro line is all G5s (unlikely) and new enclosure.

4. SJ exclaims: New enclosure, same processor.

If 1 or 2 happens, I'll likely buy a PowerBook after they get upgraded to their new enclosures hopefully soon. If not, then I guess I'll be stuck with my Pismo, which is perfectly fine with me. This is my way of saying to Apple:
"You must not care to survive in this marketplace and therefore you deserve to die away."

Hoping for 3 or 4. Let's hope it comes true!

 

[shadowfax0]

Dual 1.5's with a more compact chip design (.13 microns is about the cutting edge right now) with DDR, a faster bus speed, and faster internals, BRING IT ON! The G4 is great, I'm whipping people's 1.2 GhZ's with my DP 450, and I've got slow internals, wow, screw the G5, this is great! It's just about G4 in name now...

 

[arn]

Re: New G5s: I HOPE SO -- But New Enclosure? You better have it Apple!!

Originally posted by utilizer

I have no interest in the current G4 desktop pro lines; I HATE THE ENCLOSURE. Who ever heard of covers over a ZIP drive or CD drive?!

there's no cover on the zip drive if u have it installed.

If 1 or 2 happens, I'll likely buy a PowerBook after they get upgraded to their new enclosures hopefully soon. If not, then I guess I'll be stuck with my Pismo, which is perfectly fine with me.

I doubt the Powerbooks will get updated enclosures any time soon.

arn

 

[Silver Dragon]

Lots of vector processing units exist. Problem is that Motorola owns Altivec and using these technologies is not a simple re-compile. Apple would have to hand tool a lot of code to add an IBM SIMD to the mix.

Right, hence the comment on the Altivec issues in my original post (although vague). I think the only way this will work is if Apple or IBM buys the rights to Altivec from Motorola. I would not rule that out completely as Motorola's processor division does not seem to be doing so well right now. From there you could incorporate Altivec into the now IBM processor. The question is, would IBM then enhance Altivec or create a different vector unit requiring yet more coding?

The chances are slim to none that any of this would happen. I'm just hoping that Apple moves away from Motorola and to IBM for their processors. Motorola does not have the facilities to take care of the Apple crowd like IBM does. Another option would be to allow Intel to produce PPCs for Apple, but I *highly* doubt that will happen any time soon.

Anyhow that's just my $.02. Could be wrong.

 

[j763]

We will get a G5. Everyone in the apple community will be thoroughly pissed off. If this happens, SJ may as well drop MWNY... and i think he will if he has 2 years in a row go so unsuccessfully

 

[mozez]

irony

i find this funny. the specs for the newg4s to be released and the article released about the new chips shows just how much apple has dropped and how sad the apple coommunity has fallen. the "mpx" is an athlon technology, as well as the chipset for the ddr ram. yes, motorola had to get it from amd b/c they own the technology rights.
now what makes all this funny, is everyone is so happy to accept second rate technology, and it is second rate. they have proven, so please, no yelling, they have proven that a dual athlon 1.4 can do real world projects nearly twice as fast as the dual 1ghz macs, so that is now final, no arguements. now they are up to dual 1.9, with faster front side buses, and faster ram, and newer technology. after the final release of the benchmarks and companies agreeing, some mac users got mad, true mac users gave this reply, "osx and the os apple provides is why i buy a mac, not because it is or is not the fastest item of the day." this is a true mac user. guys, stop yelling about a g4 or g5, it doesn't really matter all that much, if you are looking for true speed and that's your main concern, then just buy a pc, it will be ten times cheaper and it will go twice as fast, even in photoshop and after effects, and others. but, if you love apple, like me, then buy it for the os, the stability, the ease of use, the programs, and everything else great on the mac, but if you are looking for the next great thing in hardware, apple is so far behind it's not even funny. i think this is why so many people are begging for the g5 to come out, they think this might jump apple back in, or they can shut their friends with pcs up that the pcs are faster.
all the parts in apple's machines are now pc driven, back in the day when used scsi and different mobos it was a big difference, but now, it doesn't matter.
i hope osx stays for a long time, i really love it, and if i buy a new mac, i'll buy it for that, not for what's inside, cause all it is, is pc hardware with a risc processor, and i can get that from ibm if i want, but only apple can give me osx.