Re: Which reminds me - - Dual 1.8Ghz G5?
What "won't happen" is for there to be an unnecessary proliferation of designs that costs a Company money.
This unnessary complexity potential exists here at two basic points: the CPU and the Motherboard.
On the motherboard, the word from 'way back was that there were two configurations being develped, a "low risk" and a "high risk" one. With only two configurations that went into 3 products (the 1.6, 1.8 and DP 2.0), the question is who got what? Obviously, the 1.6 got the Low Risk and the 2.0 got the High Risk. For the 1.8 in question here, since it has the PCI-X and RAM slots of the 2.0, its obvious that its more similar to the DP 2.0 than the SP 1.6 As such, its probably the high risk design, which since it already supports the DP 2.0, can be construed as "DP ready".
Granted, they might have not installed one of the DP 2.0's motherboard components, but in the bigger picture, the costs of keeping track of a "3rd" motherboard has to be balanced against the cost savings of the component being deleted. Because the logistical costs include stocking both while in production (WIP), plus later repairs, they're a lot higher than what is otherwise obvious. Overall, it doesn't generally make financial sense to proliferate low production volume items if a sngle design can replace them all, which is the case here for the 1.8's motherboard.
On the CPU's, the same business rule of avoiding unnecessary complexity also applies: what is cheapest is to have a single design whose only difference is the speed at which it proofed out. The implication here is that any chip can be used in a SP or DP configuration without any modification to the chip.
Now I'll admit that I've not bothered to keep close track of the G5's specifics, but I've not seen any word whatsoever that there's any differences such as what would be merited by SP vs DP at the chip level, which would obviously be significant enough to justify their own chip design ID's. Perhaps I've simply missed that, and you'll be gracious enough to cite what the different G5 chip designs are, by each chip's code names. Of course, if you can't do so, that pretty much proves my point.
Throughout all of this, just keep in mind that all I'm doing is simply applying the rules of good business practices.
The rule of thumb is that additional complexity is an additional logistical cost that should be avoided. The general exception is that the production rate is large enough to pay the logistical cost and still recover a cost savings, but this generally requires MASSIVE(*) production volumes when you're talking about short product lifecycles as what exists within Apple's market.
(* - as in "Millions of units produced/sold per day").
The eventual "proof of the pudding" will be the motherboard of the DP 1.8 versus the motherboard of the SP 1.8: if they carry the same part ID# in Apple's repair manuals, that locks that down. Ditto for the repair part for the 1.8 G5 in the old and new designs. Perhaps an Apple Tech will provide that answer shortly.
-hh
What "won't happen" is for there to be an unnecessary proliferation of designs that costs a Company money.
This unnessary complexity potential exists here at two basic points: the CPU and the Motherboard.
On the motherboard, the word from 'way back was that there were two configurations being develped, a "low risk" and a "high risk" one. With only two configurations that went into 3 products (the 1.6, 1.8 and DP 2.0), the question is who got what? Obviously, the 1.6 got the Low Risk and the 2.0 got the High Risk. For the 1.8 in question here, since it has the PCI-X and RAM slots of the 2.0, its obvious that its more similar to the DP 2.0 than the SP 1.6 As such, its probably the high risk design, which since it already supports the DP 2.0, can be construed as "DP ready".
Granted, they might have not installed one of the DP 2.0's motherboard components, but in the bigger picture, the costs of keeping track of a "3rd" motherboard has to be balanced against the cost savings of the component being deleted. Because the logistical costs include stocking both while in production (WIP), plus later repairs, they're a lot higher than what is otherwise obvious. Overall, it doesn't generally make financial sense to proliferate low production volume items if a sngle design can replace them all, which is the case here for the 1.8's motherboard.
On the CPU's, the same business rule of avoiding unnecessary complexity also applies: what is cheapest is to have a single design whose only difference is the speed at which it proofed out. The implication here is that any chip can be used in a SP or DP configuration without any modification to the chip.
Now I'll admit that I've not bothered to keep close track of the G5's specifics, but I've not seen any word whatsoever that there's any differences such as what would be merited by SP vs DP at the chip level, which would obviously be significant enough to justify their own chip design ID's. Perhaps I've simply missed that, and you'll be gracious enough to cite what the different G5 chip designs are, by each chip's code names. Of course, if you can't do so, that pretty much proves my point.
Throughout all of this, just keep in mind that all I'm doing is simply applying the rules of good business practices.
The rule of thumb is that additional complexity is an additional logistical cost that should be avoided. The general exception is that the production rate is large enough to pay the logistical cost and still recover a cost savings, but this generally requires MASSIVE(*) production volumes when you're talking about short product lifecycles as what exists within Apple's market.
(* - as in "Millions of units produced/sold per day").
The eventual "proof of the pudding" will be the motherboard of the DP 1.8 versus the motherboard of the SP 1.8: if they carry the same part ID# in Apple's repair manuals, that locks that down. Ditto for the repair part for the 1.8 G5 in the old and new designs. Perhaps an Apple Tech will provide that answer shortly.
-hh
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