IBM PPC 970MP A Reality?

[nuckinfutz]

Why all the disbelief?

Dual Cores is a natural progression of CPU technology. Folks the POWER Series processor have been dual core for years. It's just no gotten to the point where they can put them in systems aimed at non workstation markets.

Yes the dual core chips will be clocked lower but we have to remember that overall clock doesn't matter as much as efficiency. With dual core we have a SMP system that supports "chip to chip" communication at full speed. In today's system each proc snoops the others cache via the FSB. That's one bottleneck gone.

Heat dissipation should be improved because you don't wants something small and hot. You want large coverage hence you see amplifieers with heatsinks that cover the whole surface. Moving to the 120mm^2 chip will actually make it easier for engineers to cool the procs down.

Software will support the multiple cores just fine. For maximum speed benefit the app will want to utilize as many cores as possible for even for basic multitasking in OSX the OS is going to love having two more cores to work for should a Quad ever see the light of day.

Dual Cores is pretty much a win/win scenario for all involved. It's more expensive to yield but once that is licked you save the extra engineering efforts in cooling and motherboard traces. There's a reason why AMD Intel and IBM are all moving dual core and that's because of of today it's easier than trying to scale the hell out of the chip.

 

[iGary]

Well if this happens this year, I'll be happy. I am in the market for a dual 2.0 or dual 2.5 in the 2,000 dollar range by the end of the year. Don't think I will hold my breath for the dual 2.5 at $2,000, though.

The G5 was announced in June, 2003, right?

I guess it would make sense that a REV C G5 would be released at WWDC.

For those who understand chip development, are these notes indicitave of a processor that is far along in the development cycle, or one that we'll be waiting for?

Either way, a dual, dual core G5 would blow the Wintel world out of their seats.

 

[miloblithe]

A question. Should a 970MP=2*970FX if the clock speeds are the same?

How would the performance likely compare?

 

[kainjow]

Either way, a dual, dual core G5 would blow the Wintel world out of their seats.

Well, since a typical single-core processor PC can't multitask worth crap, a dual dual core G5 would be unreal to a PC user.

Plus Tiger, these machines will blast away a PC in productivity. Maybe Apple will bring back the G3 snail?

 

[Sun Baked]

A question. Should a 970MP=2*970FX if the clock speeds are the same?

How would the performance likely compare?

There is a decent chance that a dual-core 970MP system will be faster that a dual processor 970FX -- at the same clock speed.

Right now the cache snooping is done through the memory controller on the 970FX while the 970MP won't have that penalty. Since it would be using a faster and shorter path for cache snooping.

 

[adamjay]

Don't think I will hold my breath for the dual 2.5 at $2,000, though.

thats what i'm looking at buying as well.
and i got one word that will make it happen for around $2k (maybe $2100):

REFURB!!!!!

 

[Rod Rod]

OUCH...

<snip>

XBox 2: Custom tri-core high-clocked low-efficiency PowerPC processor. 3 cores, 3 GHz, 2 calculations per GHz. There will be tons of these shipped.

You're right, OUCH!

IBM has been preparing for this situation for the past few years though, haven't they? Their new fabrication plant seemed like a very serious effort in that Power Mac G5 introduction video.

 

[Flynnstone]

WWDC 2005 will be interesting.
The article mentions higher clock rates ... good, hopefully the 3 GHz mark.
The power will be higher. Perhaps by a factor of two. The power density should be about the same. The power density was one of the problem moving from 130nm to 90nm.

I hope there will be an upgrade from my single 1.8 GHz to a dual core!
A 2.7 GHz dual would be quite fine!

 

[ASP272]

Cool beans! 2 for the space of one!

 

[Mr. Anderson]

This is great stuff - and its curious that they haven't pulled it yet. I wonder if it will stay online now or not.

The only thing that concerns me is that they're talking about the fact that there is a lot of heat generated by these things.....I wonder if there are any issues with them because of that.

D

 

[daveL]

"The higher frequency grade versions of the 970MP consume higher amounts of power than earlier IBM microprocessors do, and that can cause temperature issues."

This is not good. Am I missing something here? It says it will consume more power than ealier IBM processors. How can they put this in a PowerBook if it is consuming even more power than the 970FX?

I don't recall anyone mentioning these as candidates for the PB.

 

[velocityg4]

Just think what this means. Two dual core G5's, Dual PCI x16 supporting SLI, 3 PCI x1, and 1 PCI x4 slots. For memory uses DDR 2 at 667mhz.
Dual Layer Superdrive

Then Apple would have the latest in tech in their G5's. One can always dream.

 

[velocityg4]

Actually why even bother with the 970MP. Apple should just put in the POWER 5 processors and introduce the G6. Unless those things are like $2000+ a pop then no one could buy it.

 

[fpnc]

There is a decent chance that a dual-core 970MP system will be faster that a dual processor 970FX -- at the same clock speed...

At the same clock speed, I think it is unlikely that a single 970MP would be faster than a dual processor 970FX (as in the current dual G5 Power Macs). The problem is that the dual cores on the single 970MP will have to share the same Front Side Bus (FSB or system bus), while the dual processors in the current Power Mac G5s have independent FSB connections to the system controller and i/o. It's possible that a single 970MP could perform as well as or even slightly better under some conditions, but overall it could be a "wash" or even a modest advantage to the current dual G5s (IMO).

As for clock speed, I suspect that the first 970MP chips will max out at around 2.5GHz. Yes, that's no faster than we have today but you'll have twice as many cores operating at that speed so the net work done per processor will almost double (well, truthfully it won't be anywhere near double, but it will be much better than today's single-processor G5s).

As far as the competition (Intel and AMD), well Intel is going to ship a dual-core Pentium in the second quarter of this year and that processor will run at 3.2GHz. They will also offer a version of that chip (the dual-core Pentium Extreme Edition or Pentium EE) that will support Intel's Hyper-Threading technology and that will allow this single processor to execute four threads simultaneously (Intel calls the Pentium EE a four-thread processor). I suspect that this dual-core Pentium EE will outperform any single 970MP that IBM can produce (at present or in the near future). Thus, to claim any real performance advantage over the soon-to-be, top-of-the-line Pentium desktops Apple will almost have to produce a twin or dual 970MP configuration (this would be the "quad" Power Mac).

AMD is also set to deliver dual-core desktop chips (third quarter?). It's somewhat likely that the AMD chips will perform even better than Intel's dual-core Pentium EE because of AMD's Integrated Memory Controller (IMC) and the superior performance/MHz rating in the AMD Athlon architecture.

Finally, the Intel and AMD dual-core chips will both be 64-bit capable and the 64-bit version of Windows XP is supposed to ship real soon now.

Given all of the above, this new 970MP doesn't give Apple any huge advantage over what will be available on the PC. On the mid-level, single-processor products it probably gives Apple rough parity with the PC (i.e. the price/performance between a high-clock-speed, single-core Pentium or AMD Athlon and a mid-level -- but similarly priced -- single 970MP Mac will be closer than it is today -- and that's good). Most likely, a single-processor 970MP will still be priced higher than a top-of-the-line, single-core Pentium, but I think the price/performance ratio will improve for the Macintosh.

On the highest-end products, a single dual-core Pentium will most likely outperform a single 970MP. And that means that a twin processor 970MP will be needed to better the PC. The only drawback here is that a twin-processor design like we have in today's dual Power Mac G5 (and which we may have in a twin 970MP design) is much more expensive to build than a single-processor solution. Thus, the dual-processor Power Macs are likely to remain significantly more expensive than a top-of-the-line dual-core Pentium. The good thing, however, is that under certain situations (but not all) a dual-processor 970MP Power Mac will likely outperform any single-processor (dual-core) desktop system from either Intel or AMD. But that advantage may not be any better than we have today (comparing a high-clock-speed, single-core Pentium or Athlon to the currently shipping dual Power Mac G5).

 

[~loserman~]

This should not come as a surprise to anyone This chip has already made its way into Xbox prototypes and the Xbox 2 is suppose to arrive in Sept.

Apple has first dibs on this processor line from IBM so it can be safely assumed we will see it in both the Power Macs and the xserves soon

 

[~loserman~]

Well if this happens this year, I'll be happy. I am in the market for a dual 2.0 or dual 2.5 in the 2,000 dollar range by the end of the year. Don't think I will hold my breath for the dual 2.5 at $2,000, though.

The G5 was announced in June, 2003, right?

I guess it would make sense that a REV C G5 would be released at WWDC.

For those who understand chip development, are these notes indicitave of a processor that is far along in the development cycle, or one that we'll be waiting for?

Either way, a dual, dual core G5 would blow the Wintel world out of their seats.

Not so sure about the blowing Wintel out of the water.

I do agree that it is a major advancement for the Power Mac line and can't wait to get my grubby little hands on one.

But I personally think that the CPU that will benefit most from dual core will be the Opteron. You have to keep those CPU's feed with data and the Opterons integrated on die memory controllers double memory bandwidth with ea CPU added or in this case core.

For example a dual core Opteron will offer 12.8 Gbytes per sec memory bandwidth and 2 dual cores will get you 25.6 Gbytes per sec.
They will also be able to achieve 16 way systems with dual cores as either SMP or Numa.

So the jury is still out on which technology can really pump out the performance.

 

[adamjay]

Actually why even bother with the 970MP. Apple should just put in the POWER 5 processors and introduce the G6.

oh yea, that would be a GREAT idea...
then NO ONE would buy an apple portable until they are at least G5... and there's still no definitive clue (only random speculation) as to when that would happen.

if there's one thing you can't expect Apple to do, its get ahead of themselves.

 

[Sun Baked]

At the same clock speed, I think it is unlikely that a single 970MP would be faster than a dual processor 970FX (as in the current dual G5 Power Macs). The problem is that the dual cores on the single 970MP will have to share the same Front Side Bus (FSB or system bus), while the dual processors in the current Power Mac G5s have independent FSB connections to the system controller and i/o. It's possible that a single 970MP could perform as well as or even slightly better under some conditions, but overall it could be a "wash" or even a modest advantage to the current dual G5s (IMO).

I think everybody is under rating the capacity of the elastic-FSB, especially after years with the MPX bus.

 

[adamjay]

Just think what this means. Two dual core G5's, Dual PCI x16 supporting SLI, 3 PCI x1, and 1 PCI x4 slots. For memory uses DDR 2 at 667mhz.
Dual Layer Superdrive

Then Apple would have the latest in tech in their G5's. One can always dream.

all that, and a Radeon 9600 XT. lol.

 

[~loserman~]

Actually why even bother with the 970MP. Apple should just put in the POWER 5 processors and introduce the G6. Unless those things are like $2000+ a pop then no one could buy it.

Well actually Power 5 CPU's are about $10k to 15k a pop so I dont see them in apples future.

A 32 processor Power 5(read 16 dual cores) runs about 750k

 

[GFLPraxis]

Either way, a dual, dual core G5 would blow the Wintel world out of their seats.

Weeeell, AMD is also supposed to be having dual core chips this year.

A dual dual core Opteron could match the G5.

However, Windows sucks at multitasking so bad the G5 would feel faster

 

[GFLPraxis]

Well actually Power 5 CPU's are about $10k to 15k a pop so I dont see them in apples future.

A 32 processor Power 5(read 16 dual cores) runs about 750k

POWER4 processors are really expensive as well. A stripped down POWER5 would make the G6, not a normal POWER5.

 

[~Shard~]

Wow, this would be great! This would give the PowerMac line a serious performance boost. Can't wait to see what happens with this!

 

[fpnc]

This should not come as a surprise to anyone This chip has already made its way into Xbox prototypes and the Xbox 2 is suppose to arrive in Sept...

Actually, I'm pretty certain that you are incorrect. The XBox 2 won't use the dual-core 970MP. The last I heard the XBox 2 was going to use a three-core POWER derivative (from IBM). Most people seem to believe that the XBox 2 processor will be more similar to the simplified POWER core that will be used as the master control processor in Sony's and IBM's Cell-based processor (for the Playstation 3). Microsoft decided to use three of these cores, while Sony decided to use one and combine that with eight highly specialized (but simplified) vector processing units. The vector units don't do much more than "crunch" numbers, they aren't general purpose processors or cores.

 

[absolutmp5]

new powerbook g5s! not anytime soon!

look face the facts, apple is sucessful not because of the hardware or even the software its the marketing. Their is no way in hell a powerbook g5 will be coming unless they started phasing out the ibooks to prepare for some g5 ultimate line. The thing is apple will milk the new powerbooks til all their worth and sales start to dip. It only makes sense, if you can retain acceptable sales of your current hardware there is no need to up and create a new revision. Besides if anything is going to happen in realtion to the g5 its going to be a powermac. From the PR side of things it would be a bad disatvantage to apple if they didn't have dual core ready while the average consumer will just take a look at the intel/amd ridden market for this elusive "DUAL CORE TECHNOLOGY" (which they wont fully comprehend". If you look at steves situation, if he releases by april 15th which i think he will hes going to need some big guns for the developers conference. The powermac will be a big step in this corner along when compared to a two button mouse ( which is the dumbest argument to not get a mac and the dumbest thing to be posting as importatnt news considering users are not confined to using the standard one button mouse). Asteriod and the other applicatons we have been hearing will also be thrown into the mix. Steve at conferences is not a buisness man but a entertainer and presenter, keep that in mind. DUAL CORE POWERMACS WILL BE AT DEVELOPER CONFERENCE I GAURANTEE IT!