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Future of the PPC? (970, 980, 990, 9900)
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Although you'll be assisted by OS XXXIV ( codename TIDDLES ) inbuilt pre-emptive ' watcha-wanna-type' technology ( see system preferences ) that theoretically will type your report about a week before you even knew you had to type it - this advantage will be completely ofset by the fact that we will all be forced to use M$ Office 9,000,000.1.2a, thereby causing you to be late with your report--again
ah progress.......
20-25 Ghz?
Well, about the 20 Ghz thing: I would have my doubts even if it was an official press release by IBM and Apple. Especially in the computer world the time from now to 2009 is very long and the physical aspects discussed above will require big changes. Anything can delay 20 Ghz or promote, or maybe, due to new or current technologies, we won't be measuring computer speeds in frequency anymore but maybe in how many calculation units you have. The further in future they predict the less reliable the rumors get, I think, just because so many things can happen even if it was true at the beginning.
Well, about the 20 Ghz thing: I would have my doubts even if it was an official press release by IBM and Apple. Especially in the computer world the time from now to 2009 is very long and the physical aspects discussed above will require big changes. Anything can delay 20 Ghz or promote, or maybe, due to new or current technologies, we won't be measuring computer speeds in frequency anymore but maybe in how many calculation units you have. The further in future they predict the less reliable the rumors get, I think, just because so many things can happen even if it was true at the beginning.
Ah, just a couple posts too late on the processor comparison... Maybe if I could express myself more succinctly...
Yeah, 45nm poses all kinds of physics headaches, but then so did 180nm and 130nm... Every year the industry talks about how Moores Law is about to hit a wall but then they have another session in the same conference explaining how to beat the limitations.
People never thought we'd be able to get this small with optical lithography and we have.
What is becoming the limiting factor is cost. I don't even want to venture a guess at what the mask costs for a 45nm chip will run. This is why we're seeing supposed competitors team up to build fabs and co-develop technologies-- they can't afford the investment risk to go it alone.
It's also why it's such a good idea to start using IBM as a supplier. Mot seems to be having trouble getting down to 90nm whereas IBM is likely to be one of the last companies standing in the race to smaller processes.
Even the great Intel is usually a step behind IBM in pure technology...
The G5 meant a lot more than just a faster PowerMac. It meant a roadmap for the future, which is oh-so-much more important.
Finally, don't think of 25GHz in terms of doing the same thing faster. Think of it in terms of shorter development cycles for new software. Assembly coding is quickly going the way of Latin. Look at how quickly amateur coders are putting out Cocoa apps. If you have more cycles to burn, you can focus less on optimizing and more on putting apps together quickly with more reusable code.
Yeah, 45nm poses all kinds of physics headaches, but then so did 180nm and 130nm... Every year the industry talks about how Moores Law is about to hit a wall but then they have another session in the same conference explaining how to beat the limitations.
People never thought we'd be able to get this small with optical lithography and we have.
What is becoming the limiting factor is cost. I don't even want to venture a guess at what the mask costs for a 45nm chip will run. This is why we're seeing supposed competitors team up to build fabs and co-develop technologies-- they can't afford the investment risk to go it alone.
It's also why it's such a good idea to start using IBM as a supplier. Mot seems to be having trouble getting down to 90nm whereas IBM is likely to be one of the last companies standing in the race to smaller processes.
Even the great Intel is usually a step behind IBM in pure technology...
The G5 meant a lot more than just a faster PowerMac. It meant a roadmap for the future, which is oh-so-much more important.
Finally, don't think of 25GHz in terms of doing the same thing faster. Think of it in terms of shorter development cycles for new software. Assembly coding is quickly going the way of Latin. Look at how quickly amateur coders are putting out Cocoa apps. If you have more cycles to burn, you can focus less on optimizing and more on putting apps together quickly with more reusable code.
Just going to ask this whats the value of 25ghz as far as costs go how much would such a chip cost...
Taking into acount that yeap 25 ghz chips can and will be around and if you use a 1.4 ghz chip now and its slow well sure 25ghz will be slow one day too..
bring on the fluid content screens and anamations and voice over stuff oh and bring in some of that star treck stuff for recreating food ..
Taking into acount that yeap 25 ghz chips can and will be around and if you use a 1.4 ghz chip now and its slow well sure 25ghz will be slow one day too..
bring on the fluid content screens and anamations and voice over stuff oh and bring in some of that star treck stuff for recreating food ..
Re: 25 GHz?
When I had my Centris 650(a 25 mhz machine) My work a few years later purchased a new 601 machine. I was stunned. I didn't think we'd ever need to upgrade since it was so fast.
Just saying that applications and the OS will take full advantage of the speed of the processor....eventually.
When I had my Centris 650(a 25 mhz machine) My work a few years later purchased a new 601 machine. I was stunned. I didn't think we'd ever need to upgrade since it was so fast.
Just saying that applications and the OS will take full advantage of the speed of the processor....eventually.
Re: 20-25 Ghz?
It probably came from a marketing roadmap rather than anything concrete. Some wonk sat down and started doubling every 18 months and decided that's the clock speed they'd need to stay competitive.
My question is when they're going to dump the clock all together and just go with asynchronous self-timed processing.
At some point that's got to be easier to design and it would require so much less power...
We'll probably see it out of TI first in one of their DSPs and then it'll filter through others. Eventually Intel will change the name, claim they invented it, and bring it to the mainstream. (EPIC, hyperthreading?!)
It probably came from a marketing roadmap rather than anything concrete. Some wonk sat down and started doubling every 18 months and decided that's the clock speed they'd need to stay competitive.
My question is when they're going to dump the clock all together and just go with asynchronous self-timed processing.
At some point that's got to be easier to design and it would require so much less power...
We'll probably see it out of TI first in one of their DSPs and then it'll filter through others. Eventually Intel will change the name, claim they invented it, and bring it to the mainstream. (EPIC, hyperthreading?!)
25 GHz Old Hat
Infineon has cranked it up to 110 GHz already (well, not shipping, and not a micro).
Register article link
Infineon has cranked it up to 110 GHz already (well, not shipping, and not a micro).
Register article link
Bit off topic-but interesting
..from Macworld ( UK )
Product managers: G5 '4.3 billion times better than G4'
By Simon Jary
A group of Apple product managers met in London yesterday to discuss Apple's WWDC announcements: the Power Mac G5, Mac OS X 10.3 Panther, and iChat AV. These included: Tom Boger, Director of Power Mac Worldwide Product Marketing; Chris Bourdon, Senior Product Line Manager, Worldwide Product Marketing; Souad Laoussadi, Desktop Marketing Manager, EMEA; and Stephen Kelly, Pro Software Marketing Manager, EMEA.
Product managers on OS X 10.3.
A billion billion big numbers
Boger started his look at the new Power Mac G5 by running through the "giant leap" in processor technology made by IBM and Apple.
The PowerPC G5 is the PowerPC 970 chip, which is based on IBM's Power4 processor which Boger called "the world's most sophisticated processor". The G5 is the size of an adult's fingernail and yet includes 300 metres of wiring; the circuitry is 800 times thinner than a human hair.
Boger was keen to point out that the G5's 64-bit architecture is not merely double that of the previous 32-bit chip builds. As 32-bit means 2 to the power of 32, and 64-bit means 2 to the power of 64, the new architecture is actually 4.3 billion times as expandable.
For example, although Apple states the maximum memory of the top-end Power Mac G5 as 8GB, it could - if the DIMMs existed - stretch to an almost unthinkable 18 exabytes (a billion billion bytes). 1 exabyte equals 1,024 petabytes. 1 petabyte is a quadrillion bytes. 18 exabytes is a hell of a lot of RAM!
Boger claimed that if memory requirements doubled every year, the G5's 64-bit architecture would still support our needs in 32 years.
In a similar fashion 32-bit computers can express numbers up to 4 billion. 64-bit can reach up to 18 billion billion. In the short term this power will be restricted to such fields as scientific research and cryptology, but will eventually filter down to more desktop-orientated operations. Yet the G5 can still happily run today's 32-bit applications, even those running in OS X's Classic environment. This is because when Apple, IBM and Motorola designed the original PowerPC back in the early 1990s, it was always planned to be a 64-bit chip - unlike Intel's Pentium. The Pentium's 64-bit successor, the Itanium, is "years away from reaching the desktop" claimed Boger.
Panther will remain 32-bit, however, as nearly all that power is still only needed at the very highest levels of computation. Developers can still write calls that take advantage of the 64-bit architecture. And Apple has rewritten the way that 10.2 Jaguar addresses memory. Mac OS X 10.2.7 - which ships in the G5 - has no memory limit, allowing up to 4GB of RAM per processor using the DIMMs that are available today.
Cool case
Boger praised the Power Mac's efficiently engineered aluminium enclosure the number-one goal of which was acoustics. It has a fine-tuned thermal management, including an Apple-invented fan-control system that means a 5,000rpm fan can spin down to a much quieter 500rpm depending on the operation being carried out by the user. The Power Mac director admitted that the cooling system is designed for each model, and therefore Apple does not recommend later processor upgrades in the new systems.
The transparent air deflector has scoops for channeling air through the enclosure. If it is removed, the Power Mac automatically sends itself to sleep because the air-cooling system will be compromised. As soon as it is replaced, it wakes itself up again.
No tools are required to swap out either optical or hard drives, and Apple even includes spare "buttons" for users to add to third-party external hard drives so that they fit like that already installed in the top drive bay.
..from Macworld ( UK )
Product managers: G5 '4.3 billion times better than G4'
By Simon Jary
A group of Apple product managers met in London yesterday to discuss Apple's WWDC announcements: the Power Mac G5, Mac OS X 10.3 Panther, and iChat AV. These included: Tom Boger, Director of Power Mac Worldwide Product Marketing; Chris Bourdon, Senior Product Line Manager, Worldwide Product Marketing; Souad Laoussadi, Desktop Marketing Manager, EMEA; and Stephen Kelly, Pro Software Marketing Manager, EMEA.
Product managers on OS X 10.3.
A billion billion big numbers
Boger started his look at the new Power Mac G5 by running through the "giant leap" in processor technology made by IBM and Apple.
The PowerPC G5 is the PowerPC 970 chip, which is based on IBM's Power4 processor which Boger called "the world's most sophisticated processor". The G5 is the size of an adult's fingernail and yet includes 300 metres of wiring; the circuitry is 800 times thinner than a human hair.
Boger was keen to point out that the G5's 64-bit architecture is not merely double that of the previous 32-bit chip builds. As 32-bit means 2 to the power of 32, and 64-bit means 2 to the power of 64, the new architecture is actually 4.3 billion times as expandable.
For example, although Apple states the maximum memory of the top-end Power Mac G5 as 8GB, it could - if the DIMMs existed - stretch to an almost unthinkable 18 exabytes (a billion billion bytes). 1 exabyte equals 1,024 petabytes. 1 petabyte is a quadrillion bytes. 18 exabytes is a hell of a lot of RAM!
Boger claimed that if memory requirements doubled every year, the G5's 64-bit architecture would still support our needs in 32 years.
In a similar fashion 32-bit computers can express numbers up to 4 billion. 64-bit can reach up to 18 billion billion. In the short term this power will be restricted to such fields as scientific research and cryptology, but will eventually filter down to more desktop-orientated operations. Yet the G5 can still happily run today's 32-bit applications, even those running in OS X's Classic environment. This is because when Apple, IBM and Motorola designed the original PowerPC back in the early 1990s, it was always planned to be a 64-bit chip - unlike Intel's Pentium. The Pentium's 64-bit successor, the Itanium, is "years away from reaching the desktop" claimed Boger.
Panther will remain 32-bit, however, as nearly all that power is still only needed at the very highest levels of computation. Developers can still write calls that take advantage of the 64-bit architecture. And Apple has rewritten the way that 10.2 Jaguar addresses memory. Mac OS X 10.2.7 - which ships in the G5 - has no memory limit, allowing up to 4GB of RAM per processor using the DIMMs that are available today.
Cool case
Boger praised the Power Mac's efficiently engineered aluminium enclosure the number-one goal of which was acoustics. It has a fine-tuned thermal management, including an Apple-invented fan-control system that means a 5,000rpm fan can spin down to a much quieter 500rpm depending on the operation being carried out by the user. The Power Mac director admitted that the cooling system is designed for each model, and therefore Apple does not recommend later processor upgrades in the new systems.
The transparent air deflector has scoops for channeling air through the enclosure. If it is removed, the Power Mac automatically sends itself to sleep because the air-cooling system will be compromised. As soon as it is replaced, it wakes itself up again.
No tools are required to swap out either optical or hard drives, and Apple even includes spare "buttons" for users to add to third-party external hard drives so that they fit like that already installed in the top drive bay.
I've only had a quick browse through this thread, but I haven't seen anyone say "but they only just released the G5, they can't release the G6 in just one year, it has to be further away than that". If anyone is thinking about this, remember that a 980 can still be called a G5. Just like how we went through several Motorola 74xx chips that were all called G4.
I guess I'm being a bit pre-emptive, like OS XXXIV's auto-typing function mentioned above, I'm answering the question before anyone asks it
I guess I'm being a bit pre-emptive, like OS XXXIV's auto-typing function mentioned above, I'm answering the question before anyone asks it
"All the physics aside (and way beyond my expertise), so long as Moore's Law continues, there's no news here.
Doubling every 18 months (yes, I know it has to do with transistor counts, not GhZ, but historically it works for either):
3 years = 4x
5 years = 10x
10 years = 100x
15 years = 1000x
20 years = 10000x
30 years = 1 Million X
So, by 2033 your Mac should be running around 1 Million times the speed of a G5.
And - more to the point - in 5 years, it should be running at 20 GhZ, which is what this "breaking news" says.
1986, my first PC:
6 MhZ 286
1 Meg RAM
30 Meg disk
1200 baud modem
15 years later (2001) - by Moore's Law 1000x - curiously it applies to everything, not just the chip:
6 GhZ chip (ok, we're off by 3 years)
1 Gig RAM (yup, right on)
30 Gig disk (right on schedule)
1.2 Mbaud(?) is about 1.5x my DSL" [B/]
A quick look and I think the 6Mhz 286 had 29,000 transistors. Todays P4s have 42 million transistors. In 15 years we should have had 10 (18mo) periods or we should be at 30 million transistors? Are we actually a head of Moore's law?
Doubling every 18 months (yes, I know it has to do with transistor counts, not GhZ, but historically it works for either):
3 years = 4x
5 years = 10x
10 years = 100x
15 years = 1000x
20 years = 10000x
30 years = 1 Million X
So, by 2033 your Mac should be running around 1 Million times the speed of a G5.
And - more to the point - in 5 years, it should be running at 20 GhZ, which is what this "breaking news" says.
1986, my first PC:
6 MhZ 286
1 Meg RAM
30 Meg disk
1200 baud modem
15 years later (2001) - by Moore's Law 1000x - curiously it applies to everything, not just the chip:
6 GhZ chip (ok, we're off by 3 years)
1 Gig RAM (yup, right on)
30 Gig disk (right on schedule)
1.2 Mbaud(?) is about 1.5x my DSL" [B/]
A quick look and I think the 6Mhz 286 had 29,000 transistors. Todays P4s have 42 million transistors. In 15 years we should have had 10 (18mo) periods or we should be at 30 million transistors? Are we actually a head of Moore's law?
Re: 25 GHz?
Hi,
I don't know as well. I even don't know for what I could need a G5. At the moment I have a iBook with 900MHz. It does all I want at a speed that is quite enough for me.
But on the other side - I want to order a G5 (middle system) - maybe just to have one.
And if they offer a 25Ghz system - I will buy it.
Cheers
Originally posted by Ja Di ksw
Not to be rude, but what does someone need 25 Ghz for? Honestly, that is just insane, especially if they are dual processors. I know people making music or animation or whatever would like them, but for your average Joe, do we really need that much? I guess that's what the iMac's and the like are for, though by then they will have 10 or 20 Ghz or whatever.
Remember this?
"640K ought to be enough for anybody"
- Satan, um, I mean, Bill Gates.
Hi,
I don't know as well. I even don't know for what I could need a G5. At the moment I have a iBook with 900MHz. It does all I want at a speed that is quite enough for me.
But on the other side - I want to order a G5 (middle system) - maybe just to have one.
And if they offer a 25Ghz system - I will buy it.
Cheers
Re: 25 GHz?
Just think about all of the stuff that is computationally expensive to do now. Real time language translation for the web and IM, full 1024 bit filesystem encryption, Java applets loading in less than 5 min, yahoo maps not just giving you the approximate travel time but doing a full particle simulation on the air between your house and the Mall to get the travel time (well maybe not).
Originally posted by Ja Di ksw
Not to be rude, but what does someone need 25 Ghz for? Honestly, that is just insane, especially if they are dual processors. I know people making music or animation or whatever would like them, but for your average Joe, do we really need that much? I guess that's what the iMac's and the like are for, though by then they will have 10 or 20 Ghz or whatever.
Remember this?
"640K ought to be enough for anybody"
- Satan, um, I mean, Bill Gates.
Just think about all of the stuff that is computationally expensive to do now. Real time language translation for the web and IM, full 1024 bit filesystem encryption, Java applets loading in less than 5 min, yahoo maps not just giving you the approximate travel time but doing a full particle simulation on the air between your house and the Mall to get the travel time (well maybe not).
Unfortunately it was an accident, when the PowerMac became self-aware it jostled the PC next to it and knocked the heatsink off of the Athlon (Mr. Fusion edition) inside. Losing the heatsink on the Athlon is what caused the flash. If you don't know where this joke comes from just follow the link:
http://www.tomshardware.com/cpu/20010917/heatvideo-04.html
Nice - that might actually get me realtime radiosity rendering for Lightwave - something I've been continually waiting for. And I always thought it would be about 5 years away, this seems to be about right - if its true....
I wonder if these HAL 9900s will be multiprocessor.....
You know you shift each letter 1 place in the alphabet and you change HAL to IBM......
D
Another G5 competition
http://www.digitalproducer.com/cgi-.../2003/07_jul/features/07_01/cw_hp_ita2int.htm
check this article... nothing surprising but very interesting
Michel
http://www.digitalproducer.com/cgi-.../2003/07_jul/features/07_01/cw_hp_ita2int.htm
check this article... nothing surprising but very interesting
Michel
Re: 25 GHz?
Real time computational fluid dynamics in my flight sim. Real time semi-rigid body calculations, same purpose. True translucent cloud rendering and other better graphics, although for this we need ATI and 5dfx to keep up with the roadmap.
Real time computational fluid dynamics in my flight sim. Real time semi-rigid body calculations, same purpose. True translucent cloud rendering and other better graphics, although for this we need ATI and 5dfx to keep up with the roadmap.
Re: Bill Gates
Ahh yes he did, do a web search for that phrase. All the famous quote sites list him as the author. He made it in 1981.
And at that time, it WAS enough
Ahh yes he did, do a web search for that phrase. All the famous quote sites list him as the author. He made it in 1981.
And at that time, it WAS enough
well lots of users now are running a gig of ram now in 2007
10 gigs? should be about average
with
4gig memory modules runniing in the $80 range.. QDR Quad data rate
also.. one thing.. if the chips runnig at 20ghz.. then the bus is running at 10ghz!.
i sure hope they make some drastic improvements on the price/storage ratio of solid state storage
other wize the bottleneck we have now will be crazy in a few years
10 gigs? should be about average
with
4gig memory modules runniing in the $80 range.. QDR Quad data rate
also.. one thing.. if the chips runnig at 20ghz.. then the bus is running at 10ghz!.
i sure hope they make some drastic improvements on the price/storage ratio of solid state storage
other wize the bottleneck we have now will be crazy in a few years
No your brain will be wired for Bluetooth, therefore your thoughts will be processed the the computer ...