Sidebar Sidebar
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

IBM Power5 Info

Cool. Just come out with it, already!

I'm getting a bit impatient now... I really, really, really want a faster processor. Like, er, yesterday? But I'm going to have not simply grin and bear it until it happens... For now, the situation smells like poop.

;)

Still good info, though...
 
TrebbleKicked = Smart :O

lol.

I just want a dual PPC970 with 5 gigs of ram.

Also the x86 is way out of date. And he said death to the itanium, which is a very bad chip to begin with....
 
Power 5? Power6? come on we need to focus! The only real question this year will be 7457 or 970 or both? this is what we should be asking and when?If Apple had consumer machines(meaning powermacs) that had a 1.8 ghz 970 and it showed that it could blow the doors off the intel 3.06 P4 the windows world would be beating a path to the Apple door.Market share would jump!Mac allready has the best software we know that and its a given. Now couple a machine with real Power that knows how to drive that darn bus and iam talking front row nascar and apple could find itself leading the pack in every test! Now if they show the 7457 in the powermacs then they are still going to be playing the same game they have for the past 2 years and that is in the bus off pit row watching the race go by.Steve should have a crash program running the 970 right now full blown so the day IBM starts producing these in volume Apple can start shipping powermacs with 970's in volume. This is assuming that this chip has no problems. The path is clear if this chip turns out to be what we think it is. If they think that a christmas release of the 7457 is going to do it then i think they are really satisfied with the current marketshare.Forget power 5 and 6 untill this time next year.
 
maybe I'm a pessimist(and I am) but I'll like it when I'm able to see it and buy it. I'd also like someone else said like to pick and choose what I want to put in a MAC instead of paying for extra ram I don't need, etc.
 
Originally posted by hvfsl
Apple only cares about the short term, not the long term. If they did care about the long term they would have switched to x86 chips a long time ago since Apple has been behind Intel/AMD in terms of raw speed since 1997. Switching to x86 will mean that Apple will get 20% of the market very quickly, just look at windows and linux sites were they would love to install Mac OS X on there computers, but don't like the low speed and cost of current Macs.

Most people now agree that Mac OS X is the best OS, but most people still say it runs on the worst hardware.
Click to expand...

hvfsl-

Here in the US that would be called "Selling Out." I don't know what it would be called in the UK.

Intel and it's business practices are the same and as dangerous as Microsoft's. There's a lot more to to the term "Wintel" than just the fact that MS and Intel use eachothers technologies. They also share the same un-ethical mentalities.

I will put my faith in IBM over Intel anyday because it has a different business practice. Even though IBM once had this same mentality, which is why Steve Jobs' and Bill Gates' original goal was to bring them down, "Big Brother [Monopoly] = Big Blue [IBM], it seems to have learned and changed it's business model and practices.

Apple, being a hardware & software manufacturer, would not start selling Intel based machines any sooner than it would start using Windows.

However, the enemies can both be taken down if Apple releases the long rumored "Marklar" project, allowing the Linux and Windows users you speak of to Switch to Mac OS X on their x86 hardware.

This would not compromise Apple's ethics while attacking both Microsoft and Intel on their own turf.

"Killing two birds with one stone" is what we call that.
 
Originally posted by hvfsl
We are getting a bit ahead of ourselves here. We do not even know for sure Apple is going to use the PPC970, they may keep to the Moto G4 until the time comes to release Mac OS X for AMD/Intel. I just think that people are setting themselves up for a big disapointment if the 970 does not come out for the Mac in 2003, or at all.

Apple only cares about the short term, not the long term. If they did care about the long term they would have switched to x86 chips a long time ago since Apple has been behind Intel/AMD in terms of raw speed since 1997. Switching to x86 will mean that Apple will get 20% of the market very quickly, just look at windows and linux sites were they would love to install Mac OS X on there computers, but don't like the low speed and cost of current Macs.

Most people now agree that Mac OS X is the best OS, but most people still say it runs on the worst hardware.
Click to expand...
My words verbatim!!!!
I was just talking about this with an Apple rep!!!!
I love Jag, but I hate the slow and expensive hardware!!!
 
x86? Just say No!

Originally posted by hvfsl
We are getting a bit ahead of ourselves here. We do not even know for sure Apple is going to use the PPC970, they may keep to the Moto G4 until the time comes to release Mac OS X for AMD/Intel. I just think that people are setting themselves up for a big disapointment if the 970 does not come out for the Mac in 2003, or at all.

Apple only cares about the short term, not the long term. If they did care about the long term they would have switched to x86 chips a long time ago since Apple has been behind Intel/AMD in terms of raw speed since 1997. Switching to x86 will mean that Apple will get 20% of the market very quickly, just look at windows and linux sites were they would love to install Mac OS X on there computers, but don't like the low speed and cost of current Macs.

Most people now agree that Mac OS X is the best OS, but most people still say it runs on the worst hardware.
Click to expand...

I have posted this before, but here goes.

It is time for a history lesson I believe...

NeXT, Inc. started by an ex executive of Apple (Steve Jobs), started with a new computer and proprietary OS. They later dropped the hardware and ported the OS to x86. Now, bought out by Apple. IOW, out of business.

Be, Inc. started by an ex executive of Apple started with a new computer and proprietary OS. They later dropped the hardware and ported the OS to x86. Assets bought by Palm.

Apple ports OS X to x86. Countdown to bankruptcy.

Personally I believe they will push to differentiate themselves from the drones adopted by the masses. Apple has always been for the creative spirit not the business pragmatists.
 
Originally posted by ddtlm
jettredmont:

[I said the x86 line is reaching an end]

Hahaha! Yeah whatever.
Click to expand...

You seem to believe x86 has more life in it than a few more years? Well, Intel is already jumping that ship, and has said numerous times over the past couple of years that x86 needs to and will die. Soon. Yeah, you can believe that Intel is wrong about its own creation, but I tend to agree with their analysis.

x86 is in its last throes. If it survives to 64-bit, then such a 64-bit architecture will be a warty monstrosity and obviously not in line with its competition. Hammer and Yamhill are "neat" as in interesting, but far from elegant and far from survivable long-term.

Itanium is Intel's next-generation hardware. The problem with Itanium is that it loses Intel's traditional strength (x86 compatibility) so that it can move forward, and short-sighted members of the industry don't see it as being any better than Hammer right now (and 64-bit processors aren't needed enough on the desktop to justify a wholesale platform shift right now either). So, Itanium's near-term future is in question, and certainly no brighter than PPC's near-term future. Long-term, PPC and Itanium both are viable 64-bit architectures which have many years ahead of them.

Again, "jumping ship" today would be stupid and silly for Apple. The alternatives are all in far more trouble than PPC today and in the foreseeable future.
 
I dont see apple going to old x86 at all. sure it could be an emergency escape manuever but what i see is the 970 and that will be starting at 1.4 and 1.8 scaling up. It would be like back when the g4 was beating up on the p3.Also remember ibm and apple have become freinds did they or did they not sell 6 million imacs with the g3? If iam not mistaken you can still buy a new classic imac with the g3:)
 
970 in Xserve

One thing that gets me is why do people think that the 970 will debut in the xserve only? If the chip is available for use, and apple has designed a mobo and everything that it needs to go along with it, why would they only release it in the xserve if they could release it in the Powermacs at the same time? First off those who need servers would buy the xserve and those looking for a powerful desktop would buy the powermac, neither would lose sales, and the powermac may be able to regain all that ground they have lost in the past year or so that much quicker. And all these arguments about 970 or 7457 seem silly as well. If apple has decided to use the 970, and I am sure that they have thought this over plenty by now, then the 7457 would easily fit into their lineup in the imac/ibook again restoring the difference between their product lines.
In my mind everything apple needs seems to be falling into place for them. At the years end I think we will all be happier and less worried about apples future.
 
jettredmont:

You seem to believe x86 has more life in it than a few more years?
Click to expand...
Without a doubt it does.

Well, Intel is already jumping that ship, and has said numerous times over the past couple of years that x86 needs to and will die. Soon.
Click to expand...
IA-64 is not about jumping ship so much as it is about expanding into the large and expensive server space.

Yeah, you can believe that Intel is wrong about its own creation, but I tend to agree with their analysis.
Click to expand...
A typically ignorant Mac-user comment.

x86 is in its last throes.
Click to expand...
No.

If it survives to 64-bit, then such a 64-bit architecture will be a warty monstrosity and obviously not in line with its competition.
Click to expand...
AMD's x86-64 Opteron is coming out well before the PPC-970. All indications are that it will also outperform the PPC-970, and actually most everything available, while it's at it.

Hammer and Yamhill are "neat" as in interesting, but far from elegant and far from survivable long-term.
Click to expand...
Yeah, they will be replaced by yet more x86 processors, clocking ever higher, rolling in ever more instruction set additions and clever bits like hyperthreading as they go, and adding more and more clever architectural features like on-die memory controllers and HT processor-to-processor links. It is laughable that when knowledgeable people are asking if the PPC-970 is as fast that x86 chips available right now, you are predicting the end of x86.
 
Originally posted by jettredmont
No, Apple wouldn't get that much marketshare. The chief retaining factor for Windows right now is software, not hardware. Too many people and companies need Windows-based software. Were this not true, Linux would have at least 10% non-server penetration, instead of the 1-2% non-server penetration it has now (overall Linux "market share" is higher, but these are primarily servers, not desktops).
Click to expand...

Actually latest figures show that Linux has got 10% of the desktop market. This is mainly to do with a lot of the poorer countries like Mexico using Linux over Windows. Compare to Macs 3-4%.


This is not forward thinking. This is suicide. This is stupidity. Apple will not sacrifice its highly-profitable hardware business, a business in which Apple enjoys a considerable advantag over the competition in terms of forefront design and simplicity-of-use integration, for a very short-lived software mini-success. Apple makes good money off software. However, i can guarantee you that the lead it has with OS X and its overall development focus can not offset the war-chest fund difference wherein MS has 10x as much money in cash. MS could easily slash the price of Windows and Office/Windows to $50/per and still make a profit (currently they make 85% profit on average of $200/Office sale and $100/Win sale). Apple can't compete there on price (I suspect they'd start losing money at $100/Marklar), and can't fund feature innovation with their war chest more than MS can.
Head-to-head with MS is not an option.
Switching to x86 today would be utterly stupid. Period.
Click to expand...

But how long can Apple keep on with its current business plan. Palm lets others use its OS and it is now increasing it's market share over Pocket PC, so it does sometimes work. In a few years Linux will have evolved to such a point where it is as good as Mac OS, better than windows and cheaper than both of them. Businesses all around the world are already switching to special Linux with Wine so thye can continue to run windows programs. When this happens it will be the begining of end for Apple. Linux can already look like Mac OS X and there are lots of programs for Linux that are basically copies of Apple software, but without the restrictions set by Apple e.g. only being able to use iDVD with an internal Apple DVD writer.
 
I think people freaking about apple switching to x86 (marklar) are missing a big point. apple certainly won't give up its hardware division, it is a) the main revenue source, b) a main sell point for many computer users (the fact that a company ties their hardware and software together, a plus for me as a consumer).

Now, imagine this. p4 at 3 Ghz, 533Mhz fsb (apple can't touch this spec), 8x AGP (see above comment about apple not meeting this spec either), 1066mhz RDRAM (ditto), ultra ata, fw, usb, etc. imagine it made by apple, with os X. now you have apple with a robust hardware platform (let's face it, the g4 has been around, and intel proc development is a bit more rapid than PPC), while it may not be as architecturally elegant as ppc, it can hold its own. i love this scenario as an apple user and as a business investor. or apple makes the move to itanium (a bit neater in the long run, assuming products pop up with ia-64 that consumers can afford), in a similar fashion as stated above. it just seems that apple is without a decent, guarenteed hardware provider.

as far as which platform is faster, come on! take a look at those stupid photoshop tests you see everywhere. of course a dual proc g4 is gonna beat a single proc intel. but only by 30%?? throw the g4 against a dual p4 workstation with a decent fsb, and let's see what happens.
apple does need to start looking at the future a bit more like a business. innovation is a great thing, but it doesn't happen when companies cannot make decent long run decisions.
here's hoping for the best.
 
look at this another way

According to the article, IBM chose to design the 970 without a significant effort to tweak the design for maximum performance, but for low power, high bandwidth, low cost and full PPC compatibility, including their Altivec compatible vector processor. According to this same article, it will perform at about 50% of Itanium II performance.

The nice thing about this design philosophy, is that it has minimal risk associated with it, and will scale very nicely to .65nm, and plays well in a multiprocessor configuration. IBM will deliver per the roadmap. And it will work.

At this juncture, that's exactly what we, and Apple, need.

Oh, and one other thing.

PPC scales from small to large, mobile, handheld desktop, server, blades, cluster, supercomputers, telecom, automotive, aerospace, network...there's no other architecture in the world that even comes close. IBM is the challenger to Intel, and AMD will be the worse for it.
 
TMay:

PPC scales from small to large, mobile, handheld desktop, server, blades, cluster, supercomputers, telecom, automotive, aerospace, network...there's no other architecture in the world that even comes close. IBM is the challenger to Intel, and AMD will be the worse for it.
Click to expand...
Do you have some evidence to back this up?
 
Re: look at this another way

Originally posted by TMay
According to the article, IBM chose to design the 970 without a significant effort to tweak the design for maximum performance, but for low power, high bandwidth, low cost and full PPC compatibility, including their Altivec compatible vector processor. According to this same article, it will perform at about 50% of Itanium II performance.

The nice thing about this design philosophy, is that it has minimal risk associated with it, and will scale very nicely to .65nm, and plays well in a multiprocessor configuration. IBM will deliver per the roadmap. And it will work.

At this juncture, that's exactly what we, and Apple, need.

Oh, and one other thing.

PPC scales from small to large, mobile, handheld desktop, server, blades, cluster, supercomputers, telecom, automotive, aerospace, network...there's no other architecture in the world that even comes close. IBM is the challenger to Intel, and AMD will be the worse for it.
Click to expand...

RE: "IBM chose to design the 970 without a significant effort to tweak the design for maximum performance"

Sorry, you lost me here. :D Does that mean it's going to still be much slower than a P4 in terms of MHz? And can you give some proof to this? Thanks!
 
FOR THE LOVE OF GOD!!....

Originally posted by herocero
of course a dual proc g4 is gonna beat a single proc intel. but only by 30%??
Click to expand...

The test was of a SINGLE 867 Mhz G4 punishing a SINGLE 1.7 Ghz Pentium4 by 30%.

That is why a common equation to determine a G4's Pentium 4's processor speed equivalent is to multiply the speed by approximately 230%.

Get it right once and for all:mad:

This isn't the first time I've seen a Windows blower giving inaccurate information [or extremist Mac users either]. Especially about this test comparison.
 
Re: FOR THE LOVE OF GOD!!....

Originally posted by MacQuest


The test was of a SINGLE 867 Mhz G4 punishing a SINGLE 1.7 Ghz Pentium4 by 30%.

That is why a common equation to determine a G4's Pentium 4's processor speed equivalent is to multiply the speed by approximately 230%.

Get it right once and for all:mad:

This isn't the first time I've seen a Windows blower giving inaccurate information [or extremist Mac users either]. Especially about this test comparison.
Click to expand...

The 867 may be faster than the 867 G4, but even a 1.2Ghz P3 is faster than the P4 at that speed. If the 3Ghz HT P4 were to be clocked down to 1.7ghz, then the difference would be a lot less. The new P4s are much faster than the old.

About the Photoshop tests, this is about the only test that can be done that shows a Mac coming out on top, this is because of the optimisations Adobe have done for PhotoShop on the Mac. In all other tests have have done between Macs and PCs, the PC comes out on top. Examples are tests in Maya, Quake 3 and Dreamweaver. In Maya the a top of the range PC can be as much as 4x as fast as a top of the range Mac, the same goes for Quake 3. In Dreamweaver PCs are generally twice as fast as Macs. If anyone does not believe me, then search the internet for benchmarks done on PCs and compare these to benchmarks done on Macs.

I am not saying this is a good thing, it is not. It is just that this is the reality and Apple needs to increase in speed quickly or it will die. I would love to get a new Mac to replace my old G4 adn fsat PC, but the current Macs are just too slow compared to PCs at half the price. I need as much speed as I can get as I do things like 3D modelling.
 
For those who do not believe about PCs being faster, I have found some Quake 3 benchmarks of PCs and Macs. Both use the Geforce 4Ti. The Mac is a dual 1.25Ghz and the PC is a 2.4Ghz P4. Both are not top of the range, but these are the best I could find. The Mac scores are from the UK November edition of MacWorld and the PC scores are from this website. http://www.pclabs.gen.tr/reviews/VGA/Ti4200/page_1.htm

Mac 1024x768: 131fps

PC 1024x768: 206fps
PC 1600x1200: 115fps

The PC only gets a much a lower frame rate at a much lower resolution. Games are not the most important things in the world, but the scores do show the performance differences between Macs and PCs which Apple needs to do something about.
 
This point is mute.

Windows boxes are better for gaming.

I would rather get a dedicated game console for this though [NOT XBOX of course].

Macs are for productivity.

That's why it rip's Wintels "a new one" in processor intensive apps like Photoshop.

I know you posted that Wintels beat PowerMacs in Maya & Dreamweaver. I would like to see those benchmarks myself if you would post them. Just to make sure the configurations are kosher. But I wouldn't doubt that Maya & Dreamweaver haven't been coded for multi-processing yet though.

Meanwhile, why don't we compare video editing & rendering process' using the industry standard Final Cut Pro?:D

We could keep going at this "Yeah, but..." debate forever.:eek:
 
ok, to bring the discussion back to the original topic, the PPC 980 is supposed to be a slimmed down version of the Power 5. The 980 will replace the 970 in 2004. Or at least that's what this rumor suggested.
 
GeneR, here's the source article that I left out...

Sorry that I left it out. I got distracted by other stuff I was doing at the time

http://www.realworldtech.com/page.cfm?AID=RWT012603224711

The point isn't that it is only 50% as fast as the Itanium II will be (it will still be a major step up in performance over the G4 family), rather, that Apple will have a processor in volume that users can count on to be delivered on time, and at a price that makes it competitive on the desktop, and in multiprocessor configurations.

I like the design philosophy that IBM has chosen, as it will allow for very fast transitions to newer .90 nm and .65 nm technologies. It also implies that custom features might be added onto the die much as we would see on the embedded side of the PPC, a feature that Apple would be inclined to pursue (onboard networking functionality, etc).

Contrary to many, I don't count out Motorola as a continuing supplier of PPC chips to Apple, though I would agree that they will have been placed in a secondary role by years end.

Pure speculation on this, but it wouldn't surprise me if AMD enters the PPC world, as Hector Ruiz, CEO was head of Motorola Semiconductor during the heady days of the PPC, and as AMD now has ties with IBM. Perhaps this will produce the Marklar chip, which will have the ability to run XP and OSX concurrently, as multiple threads.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.
Top Bottom
Back