IBM G4's in 2003

[ffakr]

Re: RE: 64-Bit

Originally posted by sturm375


Nope.

1Q03, AMD will have their version of the x86-64 out for the masses. Rumor has it that it will start at the equivent of a P4 3 Ghz. Later in '03 AMD will be shipping 90 nm technology CPUs.

[edit]http://www.amd.com/us-en/Processors/ProductInformation/0,,30_118_608,00.html
[/edit]

AMD has backed off from the 1st quarter talk.. they are officially stating first half. The release date is anything but sure. The last time anyone outside of an iron-clad NDA has seen a demo clawhammer, AMD was only running the clawhammer at 1.2GHz...
This was a month or so ago... and AMD is targeting 1.8 GHz for release.

It will be a good chip when it comes out, but I don't think anyone outside of AMD knows whether the public will see Clawhammer in March, or in June.

Personally, I think that Apple's R&D is moving in parallel with IBMs work. I hope that we might see a shipping PPC 970 product in the third quarter. The xServe is the likely candidate since the volumes are low, allowing Apple to get it shipped without a stockpile of processors.
I don't expect that we'll see 970 towers any time before Q4, 2003.

 

[MacKid]

Re: I pity the fools

Originally posted by Mr T
that believe Apple / IBM can put a g5 machine in the next 4 months. This is a long ways off . At least 8 months for Apple R&D develpment.

Get used to the dualies - you will be using them for a while .......

The rumor has always been "late 2003".

 

[locovaca]

Re: Re: RE: 64-Bit

Originally posted by ffakr


AMD has backed off from the 1st quarter talk.. they are officially stating first half. The release date is anything but sure. The last time anyone outside of an iron-clad NDA has seen a demo clawhammer, AMD was only running the clawhammer at 1.2GHz...
This was a month or so ago... and AMD is targeting 1.8 GHz for release.

It will be a good chip when it comes out, but I don't think anyone outside of AMD knows whether the public will see Clawhammer in March, or in June.

Personally, I think that Apple's R&D is moving in parallel with IBMs work. I hope that we might see a shipping PPC 970 product in the third quarter. The xServe is the likely candidate since the volumes are low, allowing Apple to get it shipped without a stockpile of processors.
I don't expect that we'll see 970 towers any time before Q4, 2003.

See here Go to the news entry for January 7

 

[MacKid]

Re: Re: RE: 64-Bit

Originally posted by ffakr
Personally, I think that Apple's R&D is moving in parallel with IBMs work. I hope that we might see a shipping PPC 970 product in the third quarter. The xServe is the likely candidate since the volumes are low, allowing Apple to get it shipped without a stockpile of processors.
I don't expect that we'll see 970 towers any time before Q4, 2003.

I agree, and I think that the Xserves are pretty much due for an update, I mean things have been really quiet in that area lately. Something has got to change, since the PowerMacs now have faster processors than the servers. And I also think that people need to stop expecting Power 4's or 970's by July.

 

[locovaca]

Re: Re: Re: RE: 64-Bit

Originally posted by MacKid


I agree, and I think that the Xserves are pretty much due for an update, I mean things have been really quiet in that area lately. Something has got to change, since the PowerMacs now have faster processors than the servers. And I also think that people need to stop expecting Power 4's or 970's by July.

I don't think it's necessary to bump the Xserves until the 970 comes into the arena. Servers are about stability before speed- that's why you see so many of them running older processors, not the latest and greatest. Heck, you don't see very many P4 processor servers, and it took a few years to get the Athlon into a server! Real high density servers (read: rack mounts) need to be stable, part of which comes the heat dissipation. If Apple wants to remain serious in the market I'd rather they took their time.

 

[josepht]

I've got an old G3 266 PowerMac. Needless to say, I need to upgrade. I'm planning to wait for the PPC 970s before I spend my family's money on a new PowerMac. The thing is: we're not rich. How much do any of you think the low-end PowerMac G5s will be?

Another thing: I'm probably not going to get the first G5s out of the shoot. Wouldn't it be wise to wait for the first update so some of the kinks could be worked out? I've waited this long. I can wait a bit longer.

Joseph

 

[idkew]

Originally posted by josepht
I've got an old G3 266 PowerMac. Needless to say, I need to upgrade. I'm planning to wait for the PPC 970s before I spend my family's money on a new PowerMac. The thing is: we're not rich. How much do any of you think the low-end PowerMac G5s will be?

Another thing: I'm probably not going to get the first G5s out of the shoot. Wouldn't it be wise to wait for the first update so some of the kinks could be worked out? I've waited this long. I can wait a bit longer.

Joseph

it will roughly cost the same as a low end powermac costs now. maybe cheaper. each top and bottom of the line costs about the same each generation...actually a little cheaper.

 

[ffakr]

Re: Re: Re: RE: 64-Bit

Originally posted by locovaca


See here Go to the news entry for January 7

Yes, it is a posting about a possible release of a dual opteron server. The subject ends with Feburary?
Yes, it could happen by Feburary but I want to point out a few things....

1. AMD promised the *hammer in the 4th Quarter of 2002, then the 1st Quarter of 2003, now the 1st half of 2003. Products slip and I'm not ripping on them, just saying that I wouldn't be betting on a product ship date in 2 weeks.
2. AFAIK, MS doesn't have a 64bit x86-64 Windows release ready to roll. If you want one, You'll be running a 32bit OS, or an essentially experimental Linux OS on it
3. A server company trying to make first to market is a far cry from the average consumer getting access to this chip. That might not happen for quite some time after the first production processor rolls out of Dresden (or whatever fab is making these)
4. The price on the dual CPU server is over $9000! Doh! That is for a 1U server that essentially has the performance of a dual, high end P4 rig. Sure the Opteron box will have much larger addresses, but a 1U will have real world constraints on how much memory/storage you can pop in.
   [/list=1]
   
   I might buy a Hammer myself next year... but I think it has a very long road to travel before it is a real option to the consumer. I think the hammer will directly compete with the 970 on the high end desktop because hammer will take a while to come down in price... especially compared to Athlon and even P4. Add in the uncertainty of the OS side of things and I really don't see hammer being a contender till later (2nd half) of this year.
   Apple, on the other hand, will likely have a 970 box with a 64bit OS X ready to roll as soon as the processor is available in volume. I think Apple is going to give 970 an advantage by supporting it more whole heartedly than MS is supporting the x86-64 platform.
   
   Unfortunately, it also appears that AMD is focusing its attention on the hammer line and not on the Athlon. The Athlon was stuck at around 2GHz for a long time due to errata, and it appears to be stuck again after the launch of a few new cores. At this rate, Intel will have 3.4GHz hyperthreading P4s out before we see a new Athlon

 

[ffakr]

Re: Re: Re: Re: RE: 64-Bit

Originally posted by locovaca
I don't think it's necessary to bump the Xserves until the 970 comes into the arena. Servers are about stability before speed- that's why you see so many of them running older processors, not the latest and greatest. Heck, you don't see very many P4 processor servers, and it took a few years to get the Athlon into a server! Real high density servers (read: rack mounts) need to be stable, part of which comes the heat dissipation. If Apple wants to remain serious in the market I'd rather they took their time.

Servers are about stability, redundancy, AND power.
I know people who are evaluating the xServe for Cluster use. Apple should definately update the xServe asap.

There are also more reasons than just raw Integer performance to put newer G4s in the xServe asap... the next processor [7457] is supposed to support a DDR processor bus. Servers are also about bandwidth. A dual CPU server, especailly one running at a Gig or higher needs a DDR bus (at least!).

Also, the low volume of the xServe would make it an obvious candidate for a new processor as volume is usually constrained at launch.

And finally, the xServe is targeted at education, research, AND the enterprise... they need to get the attention of the IT manager.

...as for the P4, the P4 wasn't a good candidate for the 1U rack server due to it's thermal characteristics. Why put in a 60+ watt P4 when you could put in two Tualitan P3s that were faster and shed less heat (combined) than the P4. The P4 is finally muscleing out the P3 in the 1U server market, because the heat/power ratio is getting better and the single P4s are faster than the Dual P3s... not to mention the fact that the hugely increased bandwidth of the P4 makes it more attractive in the server market.

..jmho... Ffakr.

 

[sturm375]

Re: Re: Re: Re: RE: 64-Bit

Originally posted by ffakr


Yes, it is a posting about a possible release of a dual opteron server. The subject ends with Feburary?
Yes, it could happen by Feburary but I want to point out a few things....

1. AMD promised the *hammer in the 4th Quarter of 2002, then the 1st Quarter of 2003, now the 1st half of 2003. Products slip and I'm not ripping on them, just saying that I wouldn't be betting on a product ship date in 2 weeks.
2. AFAIK, MS doesn't have a 64bit x86-64 Windows release ready to roll. If you want one, You'll be running a 32bit OS, or an essentially experimental Linux OS on it
3. A server company trying to make first to market is a far cry from the average consumer getting access to this chip. That might not happen for quite some time after the first production processor rolls out of Dresden (or whatever fab is making these)
4. The price on the dual CPU server is over $9000! Doh! That is for a 1U server that essentially has the performance of a dual, high end P4 rig. Sure the Opteron box will have much larger addresses, but a 1U will have real world constraints on how much memory/storage you can pop in.
   [/list=1]
   
   I might buy a Hammer myself next year... but I think it has a very long road to travel before it is a real option to the consumer.
   Unfortunately, it appears that AMD is focusing its attention on the hammer line and not on the Athlon. The Athlon was stuck at around 2GHz for a long time due to errata, and it appears to be stuck again after the launch of a few new cores. At this rate, Intel will have 3.4GHz hyperthreading P4s out before we see a new Athlon

1. 
   
   I think you might be wrong about the experimental linux OS on the "Hammer" processor. I have read in several articals that the "Hammer" would have been next to impossible to produce (at least the compiler) were it not for the fact tha AMD courted the open source/linux community. SuSE already has a full blown software package for the x86-64, the won't sell it because there is no hardware to put it on yet. At least not on the open market, I know that there are developmental rigs out there for this stuff to work on. Also in a recent convention in Los Vegas, AMD showed off their "Hammer" complete with a Windows version with 64-bit support.
   
   I agree that consumers will not see any "Hammers" until late this year, but large OEM will see them much sooner than the rest of us. Also note that at the moment the current AMD Athlon XP 2800s out-perform the P4 3.06Ghz w/ hyperthreading in most respects. Only specific tasks that are coded to hyperthreading so minimal headway over the Athlons.
   
   I will try to find links to the above references when I have more time.

 

[Kid Red]

Arn you know that IBM will not be making G4s. Tsk Tsk on the title.

 

[locovaca]

Re: Re: Re: Re: RE: 64-Bit

Originally posted by ffakr

2. AFAIK, MS doesn't have a 64bit x86-64 Windows release ready to roll. If you want one, You'll be running a 32bit OS, or an essentially experimental Linux OS on it
4. The price on the dual CPU server is over $9000! Doh! That is for a 1U server that essentially has the performance of a dual, high end P4 rig. Sure the Opteron box will have much larger addresses, but a 1U will have real world constraints on how much memory/storage you can pop in.
   [/list=1]
   
   I might buy a Hammer myself next year... but I think it has a very long road to travel before it is a real option to the consumer. I think the hammer will directly compete with the 970 on the high end desktop because hammer will take a while to come down in price... especially compared to Athlon and even P4. Add in the uncertainty of the OS side of things and I really don't see hammer being a contender till later (2nd half) of this year.
   Apple, on the other hand, will likely have a 970 box with a 64bit OS X ready to roll as soon as the processor is available in volume. I think Apple is going to give 970 an advantage by supporting it more whole heartedly than MS is supporting the x86-64 platform.
   

1. 
   
   Well, I don't necessarily disagree with you, but a few thoughts:
   
   1. People who will really benefit from the 64 bit power (science companies, etc.) most likely use some kind of linux/unix base, so not having windows at launch I don't think will be that big of a problem. When the consumer chip comes out then the Windows will be a much bigger factor.
   
   2. Linux in itself is one big experiment in my eyes. In fact, all software is one big experiment- development, testing, releasing, fixing, lather, rinse, repeat. There's no such thing as a finished software product. There will always be one more thing to add, one more thing to optimize, one more bug to fix.
   
   3. When the Athlon 1 GHz was being presold it too had ridiculous prices like $6000 for a processor. That's not to say that this system is going to be the same, but I do not think that the $9000 pricetag will stick long. Opteron systems are supposed to compete with Xeon systems in terms of price.
   
   4. Who's to say that the 970 is going to be in the consumer machines at launch? For all we know they may be only stuck in the Xserves. The 970 in powermacs are just speculation at this point- we know that Apple will bring out a machine that has the 970, but nobody knows which yet.
   
   5. Once again, I reiterate that the people who will want 64 bit the most at it's launch- laboratories, renderers, etc. use linux as a base OS for the mean number crunching. Windows won't mean much to this market at this point (although they will eventually switch everything over to 64 bit as the Windows/X machines come out). Plus, do you really think that Microsoft will sit on their hands while Linux takes over the X86 server market?

 

[ffakr]

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: RE: 64-Bit

Originally posted by locovaca
2. Linux in itself is one big experiment in my eyes. In fact, all software is one big experiment- development, testing, releasing, fixing, lather, rinse, repeat. There's no such thing as a finished software product. There will always be one more thing to add, one more thing to optimize, one more bug to fix.

This is pretty much my take on it... There may be 'release quality' linux when hammer ships, but I'm sure there will be bugs to be worked out.

3. When the Athlon 1 GHz was being presold it too had ridiculous prices like $6000 for a processor.

This I don't recall. Why would anyone pay that much for a 1GHz Athlon when it was just an incremental upgrade to the existing processor line? The Athlon of that day was pretty friendly to overclocking too.

[/b]4. Who's to say that the 970 is going to be in the consumer machines at launch? For all we know they may be only stuck in the Xserves. [/B]

I actually think that the xServe will be the first to sport the 970 for a number of reasons. I think the desktop will follow very soon though... as soon as IBM production volume comes up enough to meet demand. The current desktop isn't significantly different from the xServer at a low level after all.

 

[josepht]

Originally posted by idkew


it will roughly cost the same as a low end powermac costs now. maybe cheaper. each top and bottom of the line costs about the same each generation...actually a little cheaper.

That's what I thought; but, I wanted someone else's opinion.

Thanks!

Joseph

 

[locovaca]

This I don't recall. Why would anyone pay that much for a 1GHz Athlon when it was just an incremental upgrade to the existing processor line? The Athlon of that day was pretty friendly to overclocking too.

This was before it was actually released, around February of 2000. It was some company over in Europe that was making these available for Pre-release orders. I'm not talking about the socket processors, this is the original, "First to 1 ghz" slot a processor. I don't remember if people actually bought them, but it was done. The slot A's weren't AS OC friendly because the cache wasn't integrated, and was only rated up to certain speeds, and unless you bought a nice "golden finger" device you couldn't change the cache divider unless you had some nice soldering skills.

 

[dongmin]

Originally posted by josepht


That's what I thought; but, I wanted someone else's opinion.

Thanks!

Joseph

Actually, it's possible that Apple will keep the old processor in the low-end Tower; they sometimes split processors even within one line of macs.

So, assuming that 7457s are coming in Feb and 970s are introduced in August, you might see the low-end tower retain the 7457 and the higher two models running the 970s.

Moral: Take all these rumors and prognostications with a grain of salt.

 

[MacKid]

Personally. . .

Originally posted by josepht
I've got an old G3 266 PowerMac. Needless to say, I need to upgrade. I'm planning to wait for the PPC 970s before I spend my family's money on a new PowerMac. The thing is: we're not rich. How much do any of you think the low-end PowerMac G5s will be?

Another thing: I'm probably not going to get the first G5s out of the shoot. Wouldn't it be wise to wait for the first update so some of the kinks could be worked out? I've waited this long. I can wait a bit longer.

Joseph

I think the PowerMacs will cost in the same range as they do now, because whenever Apple upgrades, they usually keep the same general pricing system, and it would be up to you to decide whether you want to wait or not, because after a new computer comes out, you can expect a 3-5 month wait before they are updated with higher speeds.

 

[Centris 650]

I've got a question concerning the 970's that can only be answered in pure speculation but here it goes....

When I bought my first mac (a Centris 650) it had the 68040 processor in it. A few years after that the G3 processor came out. I waited to upgrade my C650 but a G3 upgrade never came out. I was told that due to differences in the motherboard my 68040 machine would never get a G3 upgrade.

MY QUESTION: Will this be the case for the G4s? If I buy a new machine and the 970s are released am I stuck with an unupgradeable computer? If so then I might just bite the bullet and buy an iMac and upgrade to a 970 Mac next time.

Thoughts?

 

[ffakr]

Originally posted by Centris 650
MY QUESTION: Will this be the case for the G4s? If I buy a new machine and the 970s are released am I stuck with an unupgradeable computer? If so then I might just bite the bullet and buy an iMac and upgrade to a 970 Mac next time.
Thoughts?

Since the 970 will use a processor-chipset bus that is unlike anything available on a current Mac, I'd bet that it'll be just about impossible to make a 970 upgrade for existing machines.
Sure, you can do just about anything with enough resources... but I think an 'adapter' would cost about as much as a motherboard chipset to produce.

 

[cubist]

Right, and you're going to 64 bit etc. ... I strongly doubt any upgrades will be possible.

However, if you buy, for example, the dual G4 now, there may be upgrade boards with 7457's which could get you up to 1.4GHz fairly soon.

I myself have a 450MHz Cube and there are upgrade boards with dual 1GHz. They won't be as fast as a dual 1G powermac because of the Cube's 100MHz bus, though.

Upgrades that don't change the whole MB are usually not cost-effective, because it won't be as fast as a machine designed around the newer processor. When I say 'cost effective', I mean that they don't add their price to the resale value of the machine. The Cube is a special case because there aren't going to be any new Cubes... or are there?

 

[GeneR]

Re: Interesting links from Outsider on AI

Originally posted by nuckinfutz
http://www.plasma-online.de/index.h...line.de/english/identify/picture/ibm_cpu.html

Power4-B (0.13 µm, Cu, 2GHz, 2003)

Look at the very last entry on the whole page.

http://www.midrangeserver.com/tfh/tfh030402-story02.html



Last paragraph states that Power4-II servers should be out sometime in October of 2002...

As for the timing of AIX partition support, I think it is much more likely that PASE in enhanced in OS/400 V5R2 and AIX partitions will become available around when OS/400 V5R3 and AIX 5L Release 5.3 ship on Power4-II servers. AIX 5L Release 5.2 and the Power4-II servers are due around October 2002, and AIX 5L 5.3 is expected sometime in the second half of 2003, probably on Power5 servers.

I'm sorry. Would you mind explaining this to me (the layman/lame man) I don't really understand. It's all greek to me. How much better is the Power4 than the G4? Sorry to bother. Thanks!

 

[barkmonster]

Anyone who actively follows processor developments new the jump from 500Mhz to 700Mhz G4+ wasn't going to yield a huge jump in speed.

The 500mhz G4 was a 4 stage pipleline Proc.

The 700mhz G4+ was a 7 stage...

...It's frustrating to read so many Mac users who are disgruntled because Apple's computers aren't clocked as high as AMD/Intel when many do not realize the design tradeoffs involved.

I agree there. I was just refering to the clockspeed increase, not the realworld performance increase. I know higher pipeline stages, a tiny L2 cache and a quarter clockspeed DDR L3 were done to increase the clockspeed at the expense of performance. I even remember reading benchmarks where the 533Mhz G4 was thrashing the 733Mhz model at quite a few tasks. I know we're getting a 512K L2 and a faster (200Mhz vs 167Mhz) bus speed on the 7457 G4s so that should improve things quite a bit.

I know it's no exactly the same comparison because of the pipeline going from 10 stages to 20 but when the original P4 had a 100Mhz x 4 bus speed and only 256K of L2 it was being thrashed by the P3 in the same way as the early 7450 G4s were thrashed by 7410 G4s. Once they increased the bus speed to 133Mhz x 4 and upgraded the L2 to 512K, the Pentium 4 became a lot more efficient. Now it only needs to have a 40% clockspeed advantage to match the speed of the Athlon.

With the knowledge that the new 970/Power4 Lite has the AltiVec unit on it, it seems obvious to me that IBM has either:

A - Licensed the right to make AltiVec on their chips;
B - Reverse-engineered AV to work and be legal, or;
C - Apple has paid for IBM to use AV.

Actually it was :

D - Desktop '98, A SiMD extension to be included in a future PowerPC design was originally refered to as VMX. Motorola called their implementation Altivec. It was a join project and neither IBM or Motorola have any more or less right to use the technology.

Incidentally, Desktop '99 is the codename for a 64 bit version of the PowerPC that was expected late 2002 (PowerPC 970). Info about proposed features of both the G4 and the GPUL was in a macworld article from '97 or something with quotes from IBM sources.

NO DDR on the 7457!!! (seriously, I read it in a Motorola PDF last year)

The G4 chip that's going to use DDR is only a proposed design and doesn't have a release date or even a name/product number. The 7457 L is going to be out Q2 '03 and scale up to 1.3Ghz. That is the only new version of the G4 with a definate release date that was featured in the document "PPCSALESFACT.PDF" available online sometime last year. After the L version comes the P version that can scale to 2Ghz+ but that still uses the 200Mhz bus and doesn't use DDR.

 

[zulgand04]

what about the Xserve

Everyone is talking about how Apple should put the new IBM chips in the PowerMacs but has anyone thought about the Xserve. Now would't it make sense for Apple to put this awsome chip in there servers before the powermacs. I mean it kinda is common sense, their not gonna put a IBM chip in a powermac and forget about there server hardware. So you never know Apple may put new chip in the Xserve before july and then in september put them in the powermacs.

just my theory

oky im not the only one with the theory

 

[trebblekicked]

Re: what about the Xserve

Originally posted by zulgand04
Everyone is talking about how Apple should put the new IBM chips in the PowerMacs but has anyone thought about the Xserve. Now would't it make sense for Apple to put this awsome chip in there servers before the powermacs. I mean it kinda is common sense, their not gonna put a IBM chip in a powermac and forget about there server hardware. So you never know Apple may put new chip in the Xserve before july and then in september put them in the powermacs.

just my theory

oky im not the only one with the theory

as if powermac sales weren't bad enough, updating the xserve with a new, (hopefully) more competitive processor while leaving the overmatched desktops with the motochip would be like the G4 towers themselves drinking cyanide koolaid. apple knows how awful the towers are selling. i don't think they'd leave the towers out to dry like that...i do think that once the 970 is ready, it'll be in both the tower and the server. **unless, for some ungodly reason, the 970 is not cost-ready for the desktop sytstems. that would be a bummer.

 

[MacCoaster]

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: RE: 64-Bit

Originally posted by locovaca
4. Who's to say that the 970 is going to be in the consumer machines at launch? For all we know they may be only stuck in the Xserves. The 970 in powermacs are just speculation at this point- we know that Apple will bring out a machine that has the 970, but nobody knows which yet.

Au contraire. We actually don't know if Apple will ever use the PowerPC 970. There is nothing solid.