IBM Announces the PowerPC 970MP

[~Shard~]

Geez, I was born in '83. Looks like it has a color screen...that thing must have been a revelation back in the day. 5MHz, huh? Real screamer!

Alright, so not quite before your time - it was released when you were either a few months old or still in the womb, depending on your birthday. And hey, I was only 5 years old at the time myself. As for the processor and color screen, read my comments below....

It was also the year that I purchased my first Apple, an Apple IIe. That makes it a great year for both of us.

Yep, that was my first Mac as well. My brother bought a //e and man, we had good times on that! The Lisa's 5 MHz processor blew that one away though, as my //e only had a 1 MHz processor. The 64k of on-board RAM was pretty sweet too...

The Lisa did indeed have a color screen, and was the first personal computer ever to have a GUI - there's a little bit of trivia for ya.

 

[Lord Kythe]

I'm in the same boat, i cant decide whether to buy a powerfull dell latitude d610 for 500 dollars cheaper than the powerbook, then put the x86 version of os X on it when it becomes available, or to buy a the powerbook now! This whole development just confuses me further, because i dont want a 970 going into new powerbooks a few weeks after i buy mine! any input?

Eh... x86 version of OS X, eh? Despite the fact that I was wrong before (yeah... I was one of the guys who said: "Apple with Intel? HAHAHAHA! NO WAY IN HELL" a while ago...), there is one golden rule which Apple made clear throughout their existence: they are a hardware company. They will never allow/license Mac OS X to run on PCs. Mac OS X x86 will ONLY run on Apple x86 computers; they'll make sure of that. If you could buy a $300 PC and slap in Mac OS X, Apple would lose a TON of $$$ as they would lose a significant (to say the least) portion of their computer sales.

Wasn't it Dell (or Gateway... not sure anymore) who stated they'd be glad to offer Mac OS X in their computers? Steve just giggled and said "Thanks but no thanks".

If you want OS X, get a Powerbook. Your Dell d610 will NEVER run OS X, not in this lifetime anyway.

Here I go again, making absolute statements... Oh well, it's just how I feel. After all, isn't it the whole purpose of Forums like this one?

 

[Platform]

Eh... x86 version of OS X, eh? Despite the fact that I was wrong before (yeah... I was one of the guys who said: "Apple with Intel? HAHAHAHA! NO WAY IN HELL" a while ago...), there is one golden rule which Apple made clear throughout their existence: they are a hardware company. They will never allow/license Mac OS X to run on PCs. Mac OS X x86 will ONLY run on Apple x86 computers; they'll make sure of that. If you could buy a $300 PC and slap in Mac OS X, Apple would lose a TON of $$$ as they would lose a significant (to say the least) portion of their computer sales.

Wasn't it Dell (or Gateway... not sure anymore) who stated they'd be glad to offer Mac OS X in their computers? Steve just giggled and said "Thanks but no thanks".

If you want OS X, get a Powerbook. Your Dell d610 will NEVER run OS X, not in this lifetime anyway.

Here I go again, making absolute statements... Oh well, it's just how I feel. After all, isn't it the whole purpose of Forums like this one?

It was Dell........

Well people get a PB Not a Dell brick

 

[ksz]

Apparently, Lisa was also named after Steve's daughter. Hence, his baby.

I vaguely remember that Lisa later became an acronym for Local Integrated Software Architecture. The software was the big thing. Anyway, the acronym definitely smells like a convenient afterthought.

 

[sacear]

The Lisa did indeed have a color screen, and was the first personal computer ever to have a GUI - there's a little bit of trivia for ya.

The Lisa had a 12" monochrome display.

 

[~Shard~]

The Lisa had a 12" monochrome display.

I stand corrected - thanks sacear, I must have been confused. The Lisa sported a 12" 720x360 built-in monchrome display.

 

[fluidinclusion]

Shhhh.

What I'm interested to know is what will Apple do with any of their intellectual property they own in the PowerPC architecture? Will they sell it to IBM and Freescale, license it to Intel and AMD, or just quietly sit on it?

Shhhh. Intel wants those Console sales. This is how they'll get the next round.

 

[wdlove]

Originally Posted by Lynxpro
What I'm interested to know is what will Apple do with any of their intellectual property they own in the PowerPC architecture? Will they sell it to IBM and Freescale, license it to Intel and AMD, or just quietly sit on it?

My guess is that Apple will hold onto its intellectual property. Steve has been against letting anyone else making use an Apple license hence the death of clones.

 

[Sun Baked]

Well they got the new CPUs out and still no word on the 90nm U3H or an updated Memory Controller.

Would have been amusing if IBM had gotten the CPUs out on time, but stumbed badly on the revised Memory Controllers.

Which wouldn't be a big deal to anyone else but Apple.

 

[chatin]

Company Politics - A bad way to do engineering!

I stand corrected - thanks sacear, I must have been confused. The Lisa sported a 12" 720x360 built-in monchrome display.

The Lisa was great for text, but the dots were twice as high as they were wide, thus terrible for graphics. Mac Designer, Burrel Smith actually came up with a design for the Lisa team of a 768 x 512, square, quick draw display, but the Lisa team manager blew off the design because of company politics.

 

[~Shard~]

The Lisa was great for text, but the dots were twice as high as they were wide, thus terrible for graphics. Mac Designer, Burrel Smith actually came up with a design for the Lisa team of a 768 x 512, square, quick draw display, but the Lisa team manager blew off the design because of company politics.

Another interesting piece of trivia - cool.

 

[fluidinclusion]

funny

Dont be THAT guy.

It hasn't been funny since the 16,345th time it was posted.

I propose a one week ban on anyone who posts this. Second offense, lifetime ban.

I thought it was funny, although I've only seen it 347 times. Or so.

 

[sacear]

Re: Lisa Display

I stand corrected - thanks sacear, I must have been confused. The Lisa sported a 12" 720x360 built-in monchrome display.

Yeah, no problem.

I remember when the Macintosh came out I liked the OS interface better but it was hard to get used to that small 9" display compared to the "large" 12" display of the Lisa/Macintosh XL. Today I can't even imagine a 12" screen, let alone a 9" screen! (He says while navigating thru an iPod menu. )

Makes me want to check out the display on the 12" iBook and PowerBook.

 

[~Shard~]

Yeah, no problem.

I remember when the Macintosh came out I liked the OS interface better but it was hard to get used to that small 9" display compared to the "large" 12" display of the Lisa/Macintosh XL. Today I can't even imagine a 12" screen, let alone a 9" screen! (He says while navigating thru an iPod menu. )

Makes me want to check out the display on the 12" iBook and PowerBook.

Yah, funny how times change, huh? I remember the enormous difference when my brother bought his SE/30 compared to our //e - it was mind-boggling!

 

[Lord Kythe]

It was Dell........

Well people get a PB Not a Dell brick

Thanks Platform, I didn't have the courage (or should I say the time) to recheck that. Dell, Gateway, HP, all the same junk to me.

And yes, I agree: GET A POWERBOOK! It's sleek, it's powerful, it's Mac OS X and it's soon to be a G5 *cross my fingers and toes*.

 

[Platform]

Well if this goes as we hope..........Quad G5's

Intel has Dual Core.......but not really desktop CPU's that are Dual

 

[$MacUser$]

$MacUser$, hate to break it you, but the 2.13ghz centrino blazes. It should beat the pants off the 1.6ghz G5. That said, the 1.6ghz G5 should be competitive enough that it's acceptable, something which the speeds of the current G4 laptops are not.

That's the point Im trying to make. The current intel lineup trumps the G4s. I doubt Apple will stick the lower clocked G5's in the Books, even if there is a marginal increase in speed. For one, the average computer user would see the centrino and the G5 next to one another and assume the cent is faster because of the higher clock speed. This is already an issue with the current lineup, but would be compounded by G5's. The second issue is the fact that Apple would have to completely rewire the innards of the PBook, or come up with a whole new one. I dont see this as a sound business move when Intel is looming. In the end, I doubt apple will go through the trouble of a G5 notebook. There is not a dramatic benefit to be had, sales would probably be just the same with a G4 upgrade, and we have those centrinos to look forward too.

Perhaps you got confused when i said "celeroned G5's"? I dont think the celerons have the performance of the centrinos, but I could be wrong. I haven't really been on top of PC hardware in some time. About all I know is the FX-55 is a knarly chip and SLI is the best thing [for gaming] since sliced bread. What are the centrinos based on? I know they're fast but I know next to nothing about the tech involved.

 

[Squire]

I don't think Apple will even bother with a G5 Powerbook. They'll probably just skip the whole thing and put an intel chip in as soon as possible. If there's a problem with an intel chip going in the 'books, I think an e600 Freescale chip would be likelier choice to tide us over. (Wouldn't it require less internal revamping?)

As I mentioned before, they have to get something intel-based out the door quickly. Perhaps something to whet the appetites of users content on just using the OS and the iLife apps. I believe that the portables will get intel chips first simply because their current chips have less (no?) room to grow while the desktops have a little breathing room after this recent IBM announcement.

Squire

<edit> ~Shard~, who's the dude in the 'tar? I've been meaning to ask you that since the update. By the way, who was the little cartoon guy in your last one?

 

[AidenShaw]

Good use of the "confused" smiley

Intel has Dual Core.......but not really desktop CPU's that are Dual

What do you mean by this?

The Intel Pentium D is a dual-core desktop chip. It has dual CPUs - a "core" is a complete CPU. It would be almost impossible to determine whether a system has one dual-core chip or two single-core chips from the way it behaves. (It's pretty easy to tell if a system is a single CPU with hyper-threading, though.)

There's a myth often stated here that "dual CPU" is better than "dual core" (probably because x64 is shipping with dual core and Apple isn't).

 

[ewinemiller]

Well if this goes as we hope..........Quad G5's

Intel has Dual Core.......but not really desktop CPU's that are Dual

Technically yes, but the Xeons are cheap enough that you can build or buy a dual desktop pretty fairly inexpensively. I paid ~1150 shipped for a dual 3ghz xeon box (a dell precision 470) back in November of last year, PCI-express, DDR2, 64 bit support, etc. Nice box, quiet, wicked fast in the things I do, surely even cheaper now. The price puts it squarely against a high end "desktop" p4 and frankly I'd much rather go for a dual at 83% of the top end clock (at the time) for the same price.

 

[Platform]

What do you mean by this?

The Intel Pentium D is a dual-core desktop chip. It has dual CPUs - a "core" is a complete CPU. It would be almost impossible to determine whether a system has one dual-core chip or two single-core chips from the way it behaves. (It's pretty easy to tell if a system is a single CPU with hyper-threading, though.)

There's a myth often stated here that "dual CPU" is better than "dual core" (probably because x64 is shipping with dual core and Apple isn't).

Meaning that they don't really have 2 phisical CPU's.....Dual Core fine but what if you could have 2 dual core

And as ewinemiller said.........they have the Xeon but that is more server like if you know what I mean

 

[AidenShaw]

Meaning that they don't really have 2 phisical CPU's.....Dual Core fine but what if you could have 2 dual core

Yes, they *do* have two physical CPUs - each core is a physical CPU. Each core has all of the execution units, the registers, the data paths, the cache (L1, usually L2) - all of the physical components of a CPU.

A dual-core chip is two physical CPUs sharing one carrier and socket - and often the same piece of silicon.

Dual dual-core is a quad - but that's another beast entirely. A dual-core is roughly equivalent to dual single cores. Apple doesn't have a quad, so why denigrate the x64 dual-core chips?

And as ewinemiller said.........they have the Xeon but that is more server like if you know what I mean

No, I don't know what you mean.

There is very little difference between a Celeron, a Pentium 4, and a Xeon - they all share the same core. (The new Celerons are 64-bit....)

The P4 has a larger cache than a Celeron (actually, a Celeron starts life as a P4, but one with too many defects in cache to run as a P4 - it's reconfigured to run with smaller cache and sold for less money).

The Xeon has larger cache (up to 8 MiB), and the SMP circuitry is brought out to the pins.

So when ewinemiller said "technically" that the Xeon wasn't a desktop, it meant merely that Intel puts the Xeon pages under "Workstations and Servers" on its website - rather than under desktops.

Will you argue that a workstation like a PowerMac G5 is *not* a desktop? Is there really any fundamental difference between a PMG5 and a Dell PW470 (dual Xeon workstation) and Dell PW380 (dual-core Pentium workstation) ?? (except that the Dells are much smaller and more suitable for actually putting on top of a desk)
(http://www1.us.dell.com/content/products/compare.aspx/workstations?c=us&cs=555&l=en&s=biz)

 

[sacear]

CPU?

Yes, they *do* have two physical CPUs - each core is a physical CPU. Each core has all of the execution units, the registers, the data paths, the cache (L1, usually L2) - all of the physical components of a CPU.

A dual-core chip is two physical CPUs sharing one carrier and socket - and often the same piece of silicon.

That brings up a question for me, that might also explain the communication gap that is happening.

I hear the term CPU used to refer to a specific main processor chip and also used to refer to a circuit board containing the main processor chip. So are both references correct?

The CPU is the brains of the computer. Sometimes referred to simply as the processor or central processor, the CPU is where most calculations take place. In terms of computing power, the CPU is the most important element of a computer system.

CPUs require one or more printed circuit boards. ...the CPU is housed in a single chip called a microprocessor.

 

[$MacUser$]

Hey Squire...

The guy in his avatar is none other than Harvey Birdman, Attorny at Law!

 

[Squire]

Hey Squire...

The guy in his avatar is none other than Harvey Birdman, Attorny at Law!

Thanks!

Squire