IBM Preps for Apple Announcements

[ryan]

Re: No, they're not talking about another update...

Originally posted by dongmin
Anyways, So PLEASE DON'T SPREAD any new rumors about another update before X-mas.

Why not? With Apple now using IBM as the primary chip supplier we may be getting to the point where we'll see speed bumps every 3-6 months, like what happens in the PC world. Intel and AMD release faster chips every few months with very little fan fare; "Oh look, the PIV is now 200MHz faster than it was a week ago, nice." They don't setup entire conferences, web casts and such, the manufactures just release them and OEMs put them in their products. These continual small speed increases are one of the reasons for such a MHz gap. Intel didn't jump from having 1.4GHz to 2GHz chips, or from 2GHz to 3GHz, they did it in small 100-200MHz increments. If Apple and IBM were to do the same they could maintain the pace with the x86 world.

 

[wrc fan]

Originally posted by ryan
Depending on the motherboard design slapping another processor in is not the same as having to deal with maintaining an inventory of various colors. Dell offers single and dual processor configurations on the entire range of workstation machines, it would be nice if Apple were to do the same.

I agree with the OP, I would love to be able to buy a dual processor machine with two "slower" chips. As a software developer I tend to not push any one program all that hard but I typically have a dozen or so different applications (web server, database, app server, etc.) running at one time so a dual processor box can really make a difference.

It would be nice if apple had a seperate 2nd processor slot for the dual processors, that way, if you got a 1 processor system, you could buy a 2nd chip seperate at a later time (perhaps Apple could sell them, so they would still make money from it) and upgrade to dual. I know a lot of people that did that in the PC world with Athlon MPs.

 

[Abstract]

Originally posted by starflyer 59
One thing I have never understood is why Apple will not let people have a single processor configuration or dual based on their needs. I think it is pretty obvious that you could fit two of the 1.6 chips in the motherboards that they are using for the dual 2.0's. Also, I would love to have the option to get a single 2.0 processor. It should not be such a big deal.

Yeah, I want either single proc or dual proc (or both) across the entire PM line. What sense is it to release single 1.6 and 1.8 GHz and a dual proc 2.0GHz machine? Why not just release 3 models of the single proc machine, and 3 models of the dual and price them accordingly?

 

[SonnyCA]

New CNET Article on G5

Here's a link to a new CNET article on the G5...

This pretty much confirms what everyone is saying, and shows promise to get to 5 GHz by 2005...

YAY!

 

[phranque27]

Originally posted by ryan
Depending on the motherboard design slapping another processor in is not the same as having to deal with maintaining an inventory of various colors. Dell offers single and dual processor configurations on the entire range of workstation machines, it would be nice if Apple were to do the same.

While that's true, Apple can't match Dell as far as inventory and distribution goes. Dell manufactures-to-order. Apple builds first, then sells/customizes later. This means that its much more difficult to create 'a-la-carte' systems.

I realize the Apple store does offer a certain degree of customization (RAM, video card, HD), but those are all 3rd-party parts that Apple would have to slap in anyway. Not so for the processor, even if it is a daughtercard.

No one can offer the degree of customization that Dell can, because dell's the industry leader in terms of manufacturing processes, right?

 

[billyboy]

Re: Re: No, they're not talking about another update...

Originally posted by ryan
Why not? With Apple now using IBM as the primary chip supplier we may be getting to the point where we'll see speed bumps every 3-6 months, like what happens in the PC world.

Why not indeed!

This sort of deal with IBM seems to be one of the serious signs that Apple are reacting well to a leanish patch and are maybe prepared to broaden their horizons in order to move up a commercial gear. Apple itself hopefully wont change or overstretch itself by trying to be all things to all people like some companies try, but by linking to the best of the bigger players, they can get a little closer to the PC world's faster and more furious development mentality, and still score heavily with their over-riding Apple touch.

How long till Monday?

 

[Windowlicker]

Originally posted by oaklandbum
I certainly hope not, IBM hard drives have been known to be prone to failure, which is one of the reasons for the Hitachi agreement. I hope they just offer a 120GB+ model from Seagate and/or Maxtor, and the 36GB 10,000rpm Raptor drive from Seagate as an option.

I've got two IBM HDs on my computer. The 40Gb that was there when I bought it and a 120GB Deskstar I added later. both have worked well so far. I thought IBM fixed the problems in the Deskstar HDs a long time ago..? hope I'm not wrong

 

[lewdvig]

PCI-X = 16x PCI

PCI-X is twice as fast as AGP 8x (AGP 1x was initially the same speed as PCI).

Standard PCI is 33MHz. PCI Pro is 66MHz.

PCI-X is not available in any PC that I am aware of. Maybe a server mobo somewhere.

Great future proofing against the insanely fast graphics cards using PCI-X later this year from ATI and NV (the r420 and NV40 chips respectively). These are supposed to be twice as fast as the RADEON 9800Pro and GeForce FX5900 Ultra that just came out.

If this is all true, Mac will be THE platform for Doom III. That will sell more system than Quark. Trust me.

 

[wrc fan]

Originally posted by Windowlicker
I've got two IBM HDs on my computer. The 40Gb that was there when I bought it and a 120GB Deskstar I added later. both have worked well so far. I thought IBM fixed the problems in the Deskstar HDs a long time ago..? hope I'm not wrong

I had a 30GB Deskstar that I had to send back under warrenty 3 times, when it failed the 4th time, I decided to just get a 40GB Western Digital drive instead (and I know my story isn't the only one, I have seen over 50 articles on PC hardware sites about this). That was over a year ago though, maybe they've improved things since then.

I have the 20GB IBM Travelstar 5400rpm drive in my Pismo, and it's run great so far, so I'm certain the portable drives are nice and solid.

 

[Masker]

Re: PCI-X = 16x PCI

Originally posted by lewdvig
PCI-X is twice as fast as AGP 8x (AGP 1x was initially the same speed as PCI).

Standard PCI is 33MHz. PCI Pro is 66MHz.

PCI-X is not available in any PC that I am aware of. Maybe a server mobo somewhere.

Great future proofing against the insanely fast graphics cards using PCI-X later this year from ATI and NV (the r420 and NV40 chips respectively). These are supposed to be twice as fast as the RADEON 9800Pro and GeForce FX5900 Ultra that just came out.

If this is all true, Mac will be THE platform for Doom III. That will sell more system than Quark. Trust me.

Don't confuse PCI-X and PCI Express! See the specs here (from a previous post).

In short: PCI-X (from the spec) UP TO (for the PCI-X 533 spec) 4.3 Gigabytes per second of bandwidth. PCI-X 266 half that. PCI-X is backwards compatible.

PCI Express (right now, not a finished standard) 16 Gigabytes per second of bandwidth in a 32 lane configuration (whatever that means... ) and directly from the site:

PCI Express provides I/O attach points for high-performance graphics, 1394b, USB 2.0, InfiniBand? Architecture, Gigabit networking and so on.

So, I think you're talking about PCI Express...

 

[iLilana]

Originally posted by hmmfe
No offense, but you need to do a bit more research. The article you linked to was Oct. 2002. So, the December reference was Dec. 2002.

Segate makes a "true" S-ATA drive. They have been shipping for quite some time now. Welcome to 2003!

Maxtor has just started shipping 80g sata. Ordered one today for a customer. Seagate has been too as well as Western Digital (although WD is fairly unstable). Fujitsu is crap so they will never be good again and doubt the likelyhood of sata drives from them.

Lil

 

[vniow]

So how wil the bandwith for PCI-X be for secondary video cards?

 

[iLilana]

Re: Re: No, they're not talking about another update...

Originally posted by ryan
Why not? With Apple now using IBM as the primary chip supplier we may be getting to the point where we'll see speed bumps every 3-6 months, like what happens in the PC world. Intel and AMD release faster chips every few months with very little fan fare; "Oh look, the PIV is now 200MHz faster than it was a week ago, nice." They don't setup entire conferences, web casts and such, the manufactures just release them and OEMs put them in their products. These continual small speed increases are one of the reasons for such a MHz gap. Intel didn't jump from having 1.4GHz to 2GHz chips, or from 2GHz to 3GHz, they did it in small 100-200MHz increments. If Apple and IBM were to do the same they could maintain the pace with the x86 world.

Actually there was an intel channel conference about 2 months ago specifically for the introduction of the D865PERL mobo with hyperthreading, SATA (with sata raid support) and 800mhz fsb (which was recalled and finally released 6 weeks later) and 3.0g processor as well as the soon to be released 3.2 . It was a big thing for intel people. They even sold mobo and chip for a reduced price for channel members. My boss bought a couple. But generally the increases in speed are no big deal to them. ALso Centrino was introduced for mobile solutions replacing the P4m and those clock speeds came way down. 1.6 ghz centrino was supposedly faster than 2.4 p4m by 2 or 3 times. The heat was significantly reduced as well. They redisigned it from the ground up for laptops.

Lil

 

[babydoc]

Re: No, they're not talking about another update...

Originally posted by dongmin
Anyways, So PLEASE DON'T SPREAD any new rumors about another update before X-mas. It won't happen. I gurantee it. Apple will have hard enough time meeting the demand for this round. Is anyone who's been waiting to buy a power mac the last year or two seriously gonna wait for the next update??? How can anyone pass this up? Are you serious? It's the biggest jump Apple has made, EVER. As soon as I go back to school in the fall, I'm taking out a serious loan. Apple has my $4000 in the bank.

Yep, I plan on waiting for REV-2 whenever Apple finally releases this upgrade. It's a great jump and everything, but I have already been through enough REV-1 issues with Apple and other companies (mostly other companies) that I don't want to be the REV-1 guinea pig anymore.

Why shouldn't we start with new rumors? Do you think all of our favorite sites will just roll over and die once the next hardware REV is out? We mac geeks will always be looking for the next thing, just like our wives will always be looking for that next great pair of shoes. We know we will never find the perfect end-all and be-all, but the quest, ah the never-ending quest, it is nourishment in a barren world.

bd

 

[JoeRadar]

Originally posted by oaklandbum
if you got a 1 processor system, you could buy a 2nd chip seperate at a later time

Take this one step further. Apple would sell one chip at the high-end CPU range, and then down-clock it for the cheaper prices. Later, when you had a little more money, you send Apple the serial number of your CPU, and they send you the code to unlock the additional speed.

 

[HornetOSX]

Originally posted by JoeRadar
Take this one step further. Apple would sell one chip at the high-end CPU range, and then down-clock it for the cheaper prices. Later, when you had a little more money, you send Apple the serial number of your CPU, and they send you the code to unlock the additional speed.

and that would take exactly 4.3245 seconds for the cracks to be out and on the net Apple would lose money .......FAST

And as for all these rumors........
I'm already wrriting my letter

Dear Santa,
I've Been A reallllllllllly good Macer this year......

 

[Vlade]

Re: Re: No, they're not talking about another update...

Originally posted by ryan
Why not? With Apple now using IBM as the primary chip supplier we may be getting to the point where we'll see speed bumps every 3-6 months, like what happens in the PC world. Intel and AMD release faster chips every few months with very little fan fare; "Oh look, the PIV is now 200MHz faster than it was a week ago, nice." They don't setup entire conferences, web casts and such, the manufactures just release them and OEMs put them in their products. These continual small speed increases are one of the reasons for such a MHz gap. Intel didn't jump from having 1.4GHz to 2GHz chips, or from 2GHz to 3GHz, they did it in small 100-200MHz increments. If Apple and IBM were to do the same they could maintain the pace with the x86 world.

Your logic doesn't make sense, its not the fact that we wait and release big updates that makes us slower, its the fact that our "big" updates aren't very big. Your basically saying if a man takes lots of small steps he will be faster than a man who takes very large steps every once and a while, those facts aren't the point, its the walker themselves and there speed.

 

[Vlade]

Originally posted by vniow
So how wil the bandwith for PCI-X be for secondary video cards?

We will probably stick with AGP because its WAY faster than what video cards require right now (and it has been like that for a while)

 

[fpnc]

Well, since this may be my last post before next Monday's WWDC I guess I should summarized what I've been saying (off and on) for the last month. And I'll be back on Monday to "fess up" if I'm wrong.

I think all that Apple will do on Monday is announce that they are switching over to the PPC970 and that the machines will be available sometime around the end of the year. They'll probably give few details on the actual configurations, except to say that the high end will be at least 1.8GHz.

As for last night's "leaked" specs, I'm pretty confident that they are fake. How they got onto the Apple Store is anyone's guess. It could have been a hack or an inside job by someone who was settling a score or perhaps a prank that went wrong. The problems I have with these "leaked" specs is that they seem to be a shopping list for every geek's dream Macintosh. The 2GHz system is just over the top (right now anyway), the serial ATA is very questionable, the PCI-X somewhat questionable, and the audio optical out __and__ in makes absolutely no sense (wouldn't that require some type of copy protection or DRM?). Taken together it seems just unbelievable.

I do expect a new 15" PowerBook G4, that may be the one piece of hardware that actually ships at WWDC.

As for the PPC970, they will happen, the only question is when will the machines actually ship? I'm expecting that it will still be several more months and when they appear the specs will most likely not be as good as what appeared in yesterday's post to the Apple Store.

 

[jelloshotsrule]

Re: That's plain wrong

how many times are people going to correct him for the outdated article? it's already been about 50...

 

[punter]

I can't wait to hear IBM describe this chip nice and simply for an audience. I've read some documents, but I absorb information better if someone tells me, and there is some hype thrown in.

My budget says "get a DP1.4 G4" but my eyes say "G5!!!!"

fantastic!

 

[eric_n_dfw]

Originally posted by starflyer 59
One thing I have never understood is why Apple will not let people have a single processor configuration or dual based on their needs. I think it is pretty obvious that you could fit two of the 1.6 chips in the motherboards that they are using for the dual 2.0's. Also, I would love to have the option to get a single 2.0 processor. It should not be such a big deal.

It would be nice - didn't they do this when they first started offering Dual G4's a few years back?

 

[anastasis]

I am starting to lean towards what fpnc said in the above post. When I saw the leaked specs this morning I thought to myself, "Damn, this is way too god to be true!". When you think about it, there is almost nothing left out there that could go into this to make it any better... seriously. This is the type of thing that you see in the apple store, and then you wake up from that marvelous dream.....

I really hope I am wrong. I am 50/50 at this point. I would not be suprised if they just announced the usage of the 970. I will still hold hope for these machines, however.

Again..... they are almost too perfect.

 

[GetSome681]

Originally posted by macman21
I have serious doubts about the availability of these machines. One problem is Serial ATA. I have done some research, and while there are plenty of Serial ATA controllers out, there wont be any true Serial ATA hard drives out until December of this year.

http://www.explosivelabs.com/articles/sata/

Unless Apple plans on using plane old IDE hard drives with an adapter so they will work with Serial ATA controllers. This will of course work, but there would be no increase in performance. I really hope they have something up their sleve for this.

Another thing I hope is that they are all DP. I want a DP G5, but I am pretty sure I don't want to fork over the money for the top of the line dual 2GHZ.

this WD raptor that I'm running in my PC is what? not really there?

some people are REALLY good at doing research.

 

[rjwill246]

Re: Re: No, they're not talking about another update...

Originally posted by ryan
Why not? With Apple now using IBM as the primary chip supplier we may be getting to the point where we'll see speed bumps every 3-6 months, like what happens in the PC world. If Apple and IBM were to do the same they could maintain the pace with the x86 world.

The PPC 970 will be followed by the 980 and the roadmap ahead is now pretty clear. Indeed, the P4 can only be pushed so far as its wattage consumption is about to take it into brownout territory. The switch to Xeons for 'ordinary' dull-boxes will have to be touted soon and then there'll be that pesky Megaherz problem, with the shoe having to go onto the other foot (which will have to be forcefully disengaged from the Intel mouth first).

Oh and MacBidouille; well done folks. You nailed this one bigtime and you never backed down even when the loquacious "ex-spurts" here were rubbishing the idea that Apple would go with IBM, IBM wouldn't have chips ready anytime soon, and if they did, only one or two flavours... it goes on and on but I am taking some delight in fact that those loudmouths are suddenly silent on these fora... and so they bloody well should be!