Not a Power4
People, please read the Microprocessor report blurb again. It clearly states this is a POWERPC, Not a Power4 processor.
The posts, especially in this thread, seem to finally be recognising this but there are still people calling the new chip a Power4. It isn't.
It uses the PowerPC instruction set, with design cues from the Power4 processor.
This will be a HUGE difference when it comes time for Apple to implement this processor.
The Power4 ISA is a cousin of the PowerPC ISA. OSX and all of the apps would need to be recompiled to run on a Power4. This chip just needs hardware support and we should be able to use it.
... sorry for being grumpy...my back hurts
Other topic... If this thing is 8way superscalar, it is going to need a lot of load/store and excecution units. It is going to be a big honking processor.
Don't expect dualies any time soon... Maybe when IBM starts cranking them out on their .09 micron plant next year. Not that it will matter though... it will likely have twice the IPC (instructions per Clock) of the G4 and It will probably be clocked higher than the G4. yum yum