970MP - Still Coming?

[blitzkrieg79]

Back to the 970MP and its first version, I am thinking the top dual core version will probably top out at what 970fx is now (2.5-2.7ghz)... NOW all this talk about 970s and Power4 derivatives BUT didnt IBM said from the beiginning release that the Power4 derived 970 will max out at around 2.6-2.8GHZ? But the rumor sites say that the 970GX version (single core) will debut at around 3GHZ?!? So now all this talk about 970FX GX MP gets me a bit confused because if my math is correct we should soon also see some kind of Power5 derivative, so now we will have 970GXs 970MPs and Power5 derivatives? In my opinion thats a bit too many processors for Apple at one time... Unless IBM is playing number games and the MPs although mysteriously called 970 are in fact 975 (thats what original rumors called the processor after 970)?!?! Anyway, as deeper as I go in to this the more I get confused... I am sweating Power5 derivatives more because it definately is a better design than Power4, SMT, onboard mem controller and such, larger cache... So my question is, does anyone know what is up with development of the Power 5 derivative for Apple? Or is 970MP a mixture of Power4 and Power5 technologies?

 

[Frobozz]

Unless I'm misunderstanding what you're saying, the mid-range does not have water cooling. Per the Apple website, only the 2.7 has it. I just got the 2.3GHz and there is no mention of water-cooling that I can find.

I guess the guy at xlr8yourmac.com was wrong. Someone posted that the 2.3 also needed water cooling and said he "confirmed" it. But, I'm sure you're right, then.

The thing that gets me-- the 970mp MUST be in production soon. There's no logical reason to top out at 2.7 unless it's coming in the next revision. It may not be until MWSF '06, but it certainly would be nice.

 

[poundsmack]

the comming IBM procesor *has to be* (what is being called) the GX. the FX is totaly tapped out. the MP (multi core version of next gen chip) has to be based off this GX. Unless they did some serious work on heat production it can not be a procesor with 2 FX cores (as it would burn your house down). All evidence leads to the MP and GX being POWER 5 dereivitives. this is good as the POWER 4 was not built to be economical it was built for server power, so the deign is not practical to coninue development. The new power macs will be amazing. but who knows mabey Apple is gona switch them over to Freescales e700 (not yes in production, and wont be for another year....at least)

 

[blitzkrieg79]

the comming IBM procesor *has to be* (what is being called) the GX. the FX is totaly tapped out. the MP (multi core version of next gen chip) has to be based off this GX. Unless they did some serious work on heat production it can not be a procesor with 2 FX cores (as it would burn your house down). All evidence leads to the MP and GX being POWER 5 dereivitives. this is good as the POWER 4 was not built to be economical it was built for server power, so the deign is not practical to coninue development. The new power macs will be amazing. but who knows mabey Apple is gona switch them over to Freescales e700 (not yes in production, and wont be for another year....at least)

Yeah thats my theory too but then again if they are indeed Power 5s (or Power4 and Power5 hybrid) why are they still called 970 since it should be a new backbone architecture and not an evolution of the 970fx but a birth of something new, thats why all this number games get me confused a bit...

 

[poundsmack]

i thnk the numbers are wrong. has anyone from IBM or Apple actualy confirmed that its the "970"GX or MP? or was 970 a creation of speculation and in reality has no bering....

 

[FlyNolJ]

Agreed.

i thnk the numbers are wrong. has anyone from IBM or Apple actualy confirmed that its the "970"GX or MP? or was 970 a creation of speculation and in reality has no bering....

I think an Apple engineer needs to speak up....what's going on??

 

[LGRW3919]

I think an Apple engineer needs to speak up....what's going on??

fat chance, although i and the rest of the mac community would certainly appreciate it.

 

[wdlove]

fat chance, although i and the rest of the mac community would certainly appreciate it.

I take it that you don't work for Apple? Do you live near 1 Infinite Loop?

 

[Sun Baked]

Wake up people and sniff the SMT folks...

...The dual-core PowerPC 970MP remains the future for Apple's high-end systems, however. Following an update to Apple's CHUD tools earlier this year that suggested systems featuring quad-processors were forthcoming -- likely in the form of dual dual-core 970MP processors -- another indication has trickled out of Tiger that suggests dual-core Power Macs will be ready by year's end. Running the "sysctl -a" command in the Terminal under Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger yields a couple new interesting lines pertaining to a system's physical CPU and logical CPU count:

hw.activecpu: 1
hw.physicalcpu: 1
hw.physicalcpu_max: 1
hw.logicalcpu: 1
hw.logicalcpu_max: 1

The new information suggests that a dual-core processor would presumably be reported as one physical CPU, but two logical CPUs...

They are saying 970MP would show as logical, but a 970MP is 2 physicalcpus while the 9xx SMT shows up as 1 physicalcpu + 2 logicalcpu...

Nothing wrong with Apple dumping dual core 970MP and moving to the Power5-Lite instead -- the Power5 has advance dynamic power/thermal management onboard the CPU that makes PowerTune look like a box fan.

If they do, the PowerBook 9xx looks a lot more likely.

 

[dongmin]

i thnk the numbers are wrong. has anyone from IBM or Apple actualy confirmed that its the "970"GX or MP? or was 970 a creation of speculation and in reality has no bering....

It'd be nice if you guys bothered to use the SEARCH function on the front page once in a while. Since I'm feeling generous:

Thinksecret, July 23, 2004
Thinksecret, Nov. 15, 2004
CHUD tools reference, March 11, 2005
IBM leak, March 15, 2005

Of course, no one has officially "confirmed" anything. Apple is not in the business of pre-announcing anything. But based on the bits that IBM & Apple have leaked, we know that the 970MP does exist--at least in the testing labs. Whether these puppies will actually make it into production and when they will have good enough yields to pump out Power Macs based on them is anyone's guess, at the moment.

 

[Mechcozmo]

Just add DDR 2 and PCI express and I'm a buyer. I should even say a very happy buyer!!!

C'mon Steve ... you can do it. I want a killer beast. Much faster than any Windoze machine.

You don't need PCI express. Its just a way to get you to fork over extra. It has one application now-- video cards. And that's why you have an AGP bus.

 

[Fredstar]

You don't need PCI express. Its just a way to get you to fork over extra. It has one application now-- video cards. And that's why you have an AGP bus.

Yup i pointed this out in a recent thread, people are fooled that pci express makes ANY difference in todays apps/games. We don't even use the AGP 4X bus and bandwidth.
Intel just made this to make money, only reason why it is good to have it is because unfortunately it is the future as graphics card companies will just make pci-express graphics card exclusively.

 

[blitzkrieg79]

It'd be nice if you guys bothered to use the SEARCH function on the front page once in a while. Since I'm feeling generous:

Thinksecret, July 23, 2004
Thinksecret, Nov. 15, 2004
CHUD tools reference, March 11, 2005
IBM leak, March 15, 2005

Of course, no one has officially "confirmed" anything. Apple is not in the business of pre-announcing anything. But based on the bits that IBM & Apple have leaked, we know that the 970MP does exist--at least in the testing labs. Whether these puppies will actually make it into production and when they will have good enough yields to pump out Power Macs based on them is anyone's guess, at the moment.

Well all those links are all nice BUT as I said EVEN IBM said from the beginning that the 970s will max out at 2.6-2.8GHZ (and that would explain why the latest Powermac update was so lame because thats what IBM had in plans from the beginning) and the 3GHZ mark will be achieved by something "other" than 970 (thats where power5 lite comes in)... Those rumor sites contradict themselves because all of them are saying that the 970MP will debut at 3GHZ when it is clearly visible that 970 is basically tapped out and I doubt some kind of miracle happened with it (because that would cost a lot of research and development money on a technology that even three years upon its introdyction cant seem to find itself in a laptop and won't find itself in a laptop)... Anyway, nothing has been announced as of yet so all of it is just speculation but all I am saying is that when you read about it some things just dont seem to be right...

 

[daveL]

Well all those links are all nice BUT as I said EVEN IBM said from the beginning that the 970s will max out at 2.6-2.8GHZ (and that would explain why the latest Powermac update was so lame because thats what IBM had in plans from the beginning) and the 3GHZ mark will be achieved by something "other" than 970 (thats where power5 lite comes in)... Those rumor sites contradict themselves because all of them are saying that the 970MP will debut at 3GHZ when it is clearly visible that 970 is basically tapped out and I doubt some kind of miracle happened with it (because that would cost a lot of research and development money on a technology that even three years upon its introdyction cant seem to find itself in a laptop and won't find itself in a laptop)... Anyway, nothing has been announced as of yet so all of it is just speculation but all I am saying is that when you read about it some things just dont seem to be right...

"From the beginning" the 970 was produced on the 130nm process. That processor hasn't been used since the 2.5 GHz G5s were introduced, which are the 970FX 90nm processors. In other words, the current G5s *are* something other than the original 970.

 

[daveL]

Yup i pointed this out in a recent thread, people are fooled that pci express makes ANY difference in todays apps/games. We don't even use the AGP 4X bus and bandwidth.
Intel just made this to make money, only reason why it is good to have it is because unfortunately it is the future as graphics card companies will just make pci-express graphics card exclusively.

Because PCIe cards are cheaper to produce than AGP cards, and you don't have to have a dedicated, special purpose (AGP) slot. PCIe is more flexible than PCIx + AGP.

 

[wdlove]

"From the beginning" the 970 was produced on the 130nm process. That processor hasn't been used since the 2.5 GHz G5s were introduced, which are the 970FX 90nm processors. In other words, the current G5s *are* something other than the original 970.

So why is it that we aren't being told exactly what processor is being used in the current Power Mac? The secrecy as to actual naming of the current processor doesn't make sense.

 

[daveL]

So why is it that we aren't being told exactly what processor is being used in the current Power Mac? The secrecy as to actual naming of the current processor doesn't make sense.

WD, I'm not sure that you mean. The 2.7 GHz G5s are 970FXs.

 

[blitzkrieg79]

"From the beginning" the 970 was produced on the 130nm process. That processor hasn't been used since the 2.5 GHz G5s were introduced, which are the 970FX 90nm processors. In other words, the current G5s *are* something other than the original 970.

Well the 970FX is based upon 90nm process and yet after 10 months they came up with only a 0.2 GHZ increase so something is definately not right considering they upped the original 2.0GHZ to 2.5GHZ... Its clearly visible that the 970 line has reached its limits and its a waste of money in further development of it... I think when they said that 970s were gonna top out at 2.6-2.8GHZ they meant in general the entire Power4 derivative line will top out at that speed...
And I agree that their secrecy sux, whoever wants to buy the computer right now will buy it right now and people like us (the rumor mongers) will probably wait till somekind of significant improvement will come out... But then again Apple ha sbeen in business for so many years so I guess they know what they are doing...

 

[daveL]

Well the 970FX is based upon 90nm process and yet after 10 months they came up with only a 0.2 GHZ increase so something is definately not right considering they upped the original 2.0GHZ to 2.5GHZ... Its clearly visible that the 970 line has reached its limits and its a waste of money in further development of it... I think when they said that 970s were gonna top out at 2.6-2.8GHZ they meant in general the entire Power4 derivative line will top out at that speed...

I'm not sure how you arrive at this conclusion. The top end of any processor design is going to depend on the chip fabrication process used to produce it. The original 970 @ 130nm never went beyond 2 GHz, but has managed to attain 2.7 GHz @ 90nm. If they moved the 970 to a 65nm process down the road, it would have a higher top end than the current 90nm chip. I'm not saying that Apple/IBM will do that; I don't think they will. I'm just saying the top end of a processor is dependent on the process used, in addition to the chip design. There's nothing inherent in the 970 design that would prevent it from running faster on a different fabrication process.

 

[dongmin]

Well all those links are all nice BUT as I said EVEN IBM said from the beginning that the 970s will max out at 2.6-2.8GHZ (and that would explain why the latest Powermac update was so lame because thats what IBM had in plans from the beginning) and the 3GHZ mark will be achieved by something "other" than 970 (thats where power5 lite comes in)... Those rumor sites contradict themselves because all of them are saying that the 970MP will debut at 3GHZ when it is clearly visible that 970 is basically tapped out and I doubt some kind of miracle happened with it (because that would cost a lot of research and development money on a technology that even three years upon its introdyction cant seem to find itself in a laptop and won't find itself in a laptop)... Anyway, nothing has been announced as of yet so all of it is just speculation but all I am saying is that when you read about it some things just dont seem to be right...

1. IBM never stated that the "970" will top out at 2.8 ghz. In their very first presentation, they stated 1.4 ghz - 1.8 ghz.

2. It was Steve Jobs that promised "3.0 ghz in a year." But he was referring to the "G5" architecture. It was the rumor sites--not IBM or Apple--that suggested that the original 970 would not reach 3.0 ghz but rather through further revisions. A die shrink was a certainly, but beyond that, no one had any solid info on what these revisions would entail.

3. The 970FX was introduced by IBM in early February 2004. The FX is basically a die-shrunk 970 with PowerTune added in.

4. The GX (or MP) will incorporate several new technologies and represent a bigger leap than the 970-->FX revision, according to TS rumors. A 1-ghz elastic bus, 1MB of L2 cache, SoI process, and more advanced power management are among the rumored features. The new design + new process should allow for higher clock speeds. So I don't see why IBM can't get to 3.0 ghz with the 970GX.

5. GR-UL rumors are purely based on speculation. At least the 970MP/970GX rumors have some reality to back it up. Assuming that the 970MP/970GX will come before any GR-ULs, I think it's safe to assume that when Steve was promising 3.0 ghz, he had the 970MP/970GX in mind.

6. It's up for debate whether the MP will clock as high as the GX. My uneducated guess is that the yield will be better for 3.0 ghz GX than for 3.0ghz MP. So the rumors of a 3.0 ghz MP may indeed be a pipe dream, but I'm certain that the GX will reach 3.0 ghz and beyond.

 

[poundsmack]

PCIe is more flexible than PCIx.

how is PCIe mroe flexible than PCIx?
about a comment that IBM said that the 970 would top out at 1.4 - 1.8 that was there prediction on when it was 130mn. and they were close. they at that time were aplnning on/woring on getting it to 90mn and shortly after gave the 2.6 - 2.8 guess. about it going to 65mn it is wayyyyy unlikely. there are very few chips in development using that right now. intel has there mobile processor being developed at 65mn and fujitsu has a SPARC chicp being developed at 65mn other than that i am not sure anyone else is doing it (currently)....(there could be others but as far as i know there are not). but IBM will not take the 970fx down to 65mn, thye jsut wont. they had enough problems going to 90mn but in the end did it quite well. better to take your time on something and do it right rather than rush it and make it half assed (caugh *pentium 4* caugh). after all VIA is haveing IBM help them with making there new chip 90nm. (VIA is, as far as I am concerned, the best x86 processor maker around.)

 

[Lacero]

God I hate when these threads degenerate into pointless debates on which technology is better, etc, etc. by armchair engineers.

 

[poundsmack]

i am not saying one is better thant he other I just want to know what makes PCIe better than PCI-X 2.0. i looked a lot of stuff up online but it jsut compares PCIe to PCI-X 1.0 and now that there has been a rather large update I am corious as to what makes one better than the other.

 

[daveL]

how is PCIe mroe flexible than PCIx?
about a comment that IBM said that the 970 would top out at 1.4 - 1.8 that was there prediction on when it was 130mn. and they were close. they at that time were aplnning on/woring on getting it to 90mn and shortly after gave the 2.6 - 2.8 guess. about it going to 65mn it is wayyyyy unlikely. there are very few chips in development using that right now. intel has there mobile processor being developed at 65mn and fujitsu has a SPARC chicp being developed at 65mn other than that i am not sure anyone else is doing it (currently)....(there could be others but as far as i know there are not). but IBM will not take the 970fx down to 65mn, thye jsut wont. they had enough problems going to 90mn but in the end did it quite well. better to take your time on something and do it right rather than rush it and make it half assed (caugh *pentium 4* caugh). after all VIA is haveing IBM help them with making there new chip 90nm. (VIA is, as far as I am concerned, the best x86 processor maker around.)

PCIe is more flexible for exactly the reason I stated: It's one bus that can handle video cards as well as other add-on cards, instead of having a separate video-only AGP slot plus PCI/PCIx. Got it now?

As for the 970 at 65nm, you completely missed the point of the post, and I don't feel like restating it. I was not, in any way, trying to say that the 970 would ever go to 65nm.

 

[poundsmack]

i was agreeing with you that it would never go to 65mn not agrguing against you. i was reiterating that you were right.