iMac G4 no longer?

[Phinius]

I'm in complete agreement with you

I have no faith in Moto after year after year of nothing and more nothing.

I'm in complete agreement with you on that, finally you have gotten the facts straight. Why, the G4 now tops out at 450MHz just like it did years ago. This whole notion that Motorola has more than tripled the frequency of the G4 since then is all hog wash and so is that ridiculous idea that we have put men on the moon. We ALL know that men used to depend on horse and buggies and so those SAME men could not possibly put people in outer space.

If i was to put my finger on the one thing that has hurt Mac more then anything the past 3 years it would be its last place G4.

I would say it was Apple getting their asses kicked by not only Intel but also Microsoft. Just look at the less than 200,000 per quarter sales of the PowerMac compared to the 300,000+ sales that it had three years ago. The introduction of the G5 did NOT pull Apple out of its marketshare nosedive. The blame rests squarely on Apples shoulders and not its suppliers.

 

[ClimbingTheLog]

I feel your pain and have also wondered how Apple will cripple G5 Imac.

Only 1 CPU.

 

[ClimbingTheLog]

We really do need a cheap, high level machine. ...
At the moment, they are using mostly old CRT iMacs. ... iMac is too expensive for very little performance or longetivity. Powermacs are more than they need, or would want to deal with.

The eMac sounds perfect for them. It's just a faster CRT iMac. 500MHz G3 -> 1.25GHz G4 is a nice bump. Bigger disk and faster everything subsystem too.
Maybe it's not ideal but at $799 for a refurb it's a great deal.

The current iMac is also much faster than what they're using, but at twice the price of an eMac it's hard to justify. Still, for a chic fashion botique it might be worth it just on looks.

 

[Dont Hurt Me]

I'm in complete agreement with you on that, finally you have gotten the facts straight. Why, the G4 now tops out at 450MHz just like it did years ago. This whole notion that Motorola has more than tripled the frequency of the G4 since then is all hog wash and so is that ridiculous idea that we have put men on the moon. We ALL know that men used to depend on horse and buggies and so those SAME men could not possibly put people in outer space.



I would say it was Apple getting their asses kicked by not only Intel but also Microsoft. Just look at the less than 200,000 per quarter sales of the PowerMac compared to the 300,000+ sales that it had three years ago. The introduction of the G5 did NOT pull Apple out of its marketshare nosedive. The blame rests squarely on Apples shoulders and not its suppliers.

I agree with part you say, going from G4 powermac to a all aluminum beast that was bigger,uglier,held less optical drives was a shock to many of us me included. I really thought the G5 was going to be a lot better looking and would least still fit my desk which the current one doesnt. Apple has a few problems and they are being overpriced,underperforming,little advertising,and the fact you just cant walk into a store and buy a mac anywhere like you could 10 years ago. I bought my first Mac performa at Wal-mart. so yeah they got problems but i still think the biggest problem is performance wise they are getting their arses handed to them by pcs that cost a lot lot less and people can walk into anystore and come home with a pc. Is there 1 G4 machine that can match a P4 3.0 in benches? well is there? heck no even the dual 1.42 from over a year ago was getting slaughtered by Intel. People dont go out and buy a new machine because it had a slight bump. People do go out and buy a new machine when there is a big increase and with G4 there wll never be a big increase. That is moto's legacy,lil bump,stagnation,promises,stagnation and another lil bump.

 

[Phinius]

Comparison of G4, PIII and Pentium-M

Like it or not the G4 currently has very comparable performance to the Pentium III. So, a good comparison would be to see some of the improvements that Intel made to the Pentium III design in order to arrive at the Pentium-M and what Motorola has planned for the next round of improvements for the G4.

First, the Pentium III topped out at 1.4GHz on a 130-nm process size. It had a bus speed of 100MHz and a L2 cache size of 512KB. Intel increased the P III pipeline stages for the Pentium M to boost it to 1.7GHz on a 130-nm process size and doubled the L2 cache to 1MB and quadrupled the bus speed to 400MHz.

Compare the PIII top frequency of 1.4 on a 130-nm process size to the 1.5GHz that Motorola achieved with the G4. The G4 will also move to at least a 400MHz bus speed on a 90-nm process size, but instead of doubling the L2 cache like the Pentium-M, Motorola chose to double the amount of processors. Doubling the amount of L2 cache on the Pentium 4, at the same frequency, achieves about a 23% increase in performance. However, doubling the amount of processors boosts the speed by about 50%.

Unlike the transition from PIII to Pentium-M, the G4 will not get a increase in the amount of pipeline stages until it is moved to a 65-nm process in the second half of 2005. That should put it at about 3GHz, according to Motorola, which should be about parity with the Pentium-M in frequency.

Judging from the Pentium III and G4 having equivilant performance on the same process size, I'd expect a dual-core G4 to have comparable performance to a Pentium-M on the same process size.

 

[LaMerVipere]

Motorola hasn't done squat and neither has Intel recently with notebook computers I reckon.

http://news.com.com/Intel's+Dothan+sets+sail/2100-1006_3-5209454.html
http://news.com.com/Intel+plans+processor+party+for+June/2100-1006_3-5226981.html?tag=nefd.top

^ Neither has Intel?
Reeeeeally? Are you sure about that?

I can't believe all of you people trying to justify the performance of the G4 vs. pentium or even amd's processors, it's laughable really, the G4 gets killed and we all know it. Why are you all wasting your breath trying to defend a piece of crap?

 

[Dont Hurt Me]

http://news.com.com/Intel's+Dothan+sets+sail/2100-1006_3-5209454.html
http://news.com.com/Intel+plans+processor+party+for+June/2100-1006_3-5226981.html?tag=nefd.top

^ Neither has Intel?
Reeeeeally? Are you sure about that?

I can't believe all of you people trying to justify the performance of the G4 vs. pentium or even amd's processors, it's laughable really, the G4 gets killed and we all know it. Why are you all wasting your breath trying to defend a piece of crap?

I have wondered the same, what is their true motive?

 

[Phinius]

I agree with part you say, going from G4 powermac to a all aluminum beast that was bigger,uglier,held less optical drives was a shock to many of us me included. I really thought the G5 was going to be a lot better looking and would least still fit my desk which the current one doesnt.

Apple obviously was planning to put more hardware into the G5 box than they did with the G4. I'd venture to guess that would include more than two processors perhaps and more hardware drives. Judging from the service manual pictures that also includes adding a fluid based cooling system also. That metal looking cover with the G5 logo in that PowerMac is not a heatsink its a box of some sort that takes up the entire corner of the PowerMac. That's likely to have a liquid cooling system inside of it.

Apple has a few problems and they are being overpriced,underperforming,little advertising,and the fact you just cant walk into a store and buy a mac anywhere like you could 10 years ago.

Those are problems that come with a shrinking marketshare. Apples' marketshare was sliding well before the G4 came along. Whatever the performance of the Mac has been in comparison to a PC, Apple has continued to have a eroding marketshare. It seems that the performance of PCs have been good enough for the great majority of people. Will technology reverse that slide for Apple? Perhaps somewhat, although the introduction of the G5 did not push PowerMac sales to where the G4 PowerMac was at three years ago and personal computer sales overall have gone up for the industry in the last three years.

Is there 1 G4 machine that can match a P4 3.0 in benches? well is there? heck no even the dual 1.42 from over a year ago was getting slaughtered by Intel.

Compare what Apple might be doing with the G4 and G5 to what Intel did with the Pentium 4 and Pentium III. The Pentium 4 seemingly replaced the Pentium III and yet in reality Intel made some modifications to the Pentium III architecture which transformed into the Pentium-M. In much the same way Apple will be using an updated G4s for boxes that need processors that use less watts. There doesn't have to be a major performance hit to do that though. It seems likely that Apple will use the G5 for all desktop computers, in that the desktop does not have the power use restrictions that notebooks require and because of that the G5 can hit greater speeds as a mono processor than can be achieved with the G4. The G4 will overcome a lot of that with dual-cores, but a 970FX will be a much smaller chip than a dual-core G4, and because of less manufacturing costs due to a smaller chip, there is a possibility that IBM would price it competitively with the dual-core G4.

 

[ingenious]

This is just about the only time I am in agreement with Don't Hurt Me. If Apple introduces another G4 iMac, it's going to send the marketshare problem into a horrible spin down the tube (even farther). Apple's marketing is horrible! Consumers should be able to purchase iMacs and eMacs in Walmart, Kmart, and Target! Apple needs to have commercials on TV, showing how easy it is to use a Mac, and how well they work, etc. If they come out with an iMac G5 and bump up their marketing, we may see some increase in sales and marketshare.

<sarcastically hopeful>
Can anyone say 12-20% marketshare again?!?!
</sarcastically hopeful>

 

[Dont Hurt Me]

This is just about the only time I am in agreement with Don't Hurt Me. If Apple introduces another G4 iMac, it's going to send the marketshare problem into a horrible spin down the tube (even farther). Apple's marketing is horrible! Consumers should be able to purchase iMacs and eMacs in Walmart, Kmart, and Target! Apple needs to have commercials on TV, showing how easy it is to use a Mac, and how well they work, etc. If they come out with an iMac G5 and bump up their marketing, we may see some increase in sales and marketshare.

<sarcastically hopeful>
Can anyone say 12-20% marketshare again?!?!
</sarcastically hopeful>

I agree,maybe not imac since its gotten so expensive but Emac and ibook should be in Dept stores for anybody to see. I still think apple would be wise to have say 1 shelf of Emacs,ibooks,ipods and minis along with some software and a few goodies in sears,walmart and a few other places so those places with no apple stores can still show off Macs. Apples marketing is a lost cause and so is current G4 imac.

 

[Phinius]

^ Neither has Intel?
Reeeeeally? Are you sure about that?

I was using sarcasm since several people don't seem to grasp the whole notion when it is explained using facts.

I can't believe all of you people trying to justify the performance of the G4 vs. pentium or even amd's processors, it's laughable really, the G4 gets killed and we all know it. Why are you all wasting your breath trying to defend a piece of crap?

Frankly, Apple is trying to catch up with the performance of Intel on the desktop and notebook computers. The G5, as of yet, has not reached parity in speed compared to the Pentium 4 and to believe that Apple can lower the frequency of the G5 enough to be competitive in speed to the Pentium-M for notebooks is rather misguided. Quite simply, the G4, with updates, has the basic architectural design to compete with the Pentium-M in notebooks and the higher watt G5, also with some updates, should compete very well against the Pentium 4 in future desktops or servers.

Whether Apple uses an updated G4 for the iMac, or a G5, is something that Apple will have to decide. Putting a dual-core G4 into the iMac will make it easier to cool compared to a G5, so the choice is not obvious. As for performance differences, a dual-core G4 should be very comparable to a much higher frequency 970FX.

 

[Phinius]

I agree,maybe not imac since its gotten so expensive but Emac and ibook should be in Dept stores for anybody to see. I still think apple would be wise to have say 1 shelf of Emacs,ibooks,ipods and minis along with some software and a few goodies in sears,walmart and a few other places so those places with no apple stores can still show off Macs. Apples marketing is a lost cause and so is current G4 imac.

Apple did recently test market Macs in several Best Buy stores but it evidently was a failure since Apple and Best Buy discontinued it.

It seems that Apples' tiny marketshare has brought up the costs of manufacturing each computer to a point to where they have priced themselves out of the lowend market. An Apple executive has recently stated that the company has no intentions of entering the $600 and under computer price category due to not being able to differentiate their products, compared to competitors, at that price. It seems more likely that Apple would have a hard time justifying to their shareholders the losses that would result from selling a lot of computers at much lower gross margins. To give you an example, HP only made .75% profit margins on their PC sales last quarter and that was at perhaps 6X the volume that Apple sells at.

 

[Belly-laughs]

The G4 iMac as we know it is out according to this rumour. But does that mean a change of form with a 1.5 G4, same form with a G5 or brand new design with a new processor?

What´s really great about this rumoured new iMac is that we don´t know what CPU it will use. I doubt the 970 will make it onto the iMac, the fx however is my bet. Or the e600 if Freescale has employed Harry Potter. The fx will be in the new PMs, higher clocked than in the Xserve, like the G4 PMs were. 970fx at around the 2.0GHz mark in the iMac and higher rates (up to 3.0?) in the PMs seems to make sense.

The reason I don´t think the e600 is ready is the launch of the 1.5 G4 PowerBooks earlier. If Apple knew that the e600 were ready, surely that would be the chip of choice.

The G5 seems to be the chip for Apple´s desktop range at the moment. I would not be surprised to see a G5 eMac when the G5 iMac hits rev B. Or maybe the e600, if ready, which might lead to upgraded PBs too.

 

[Phinius]

The G4 is on a schedule of yearly updates, which means that when a dual-core G4 comes out the next update after that would likely occure no sooner than a year later. Assuming that a dual-core G4 would be used in a new iMac model, and it could be equal in speed to a 3GHz 970FX, Apple would not be able to update the iMac for another year. Compare that to the scenerio of the 970FX first moving to the PowerMac and the 970 (or slower speed 970FX chips) going to the iMac. Then, when the Power5 derived 9XX chip arrives in a few months, the fastest 970FX can move down to the iMac and this new higher performance chip would be used for the PowerMac. Then, if IBM moves the G5 to dual-core at the 65-nm process size, in the second half of 2005, then that chip in turn could go to the PowerMac and the single core version could move on down to the iMac.

This above scenerio for the G5 would involve a lot more updates to the iMac in a given time frame than if Apple stayed with the G4.

 

[thatwendigo]

The G4 is on a schedule of yearly updates, which means that when a dual-core G4 comes out the next update after that would likely occure no sooner than a year later.

Is the e600 on a yearly revision schedule, or do you think that Freescale will be making minor architectural changes as they have with past G4 cores? I could easily see the kind of bumps that have come in the past, with power consumption and cache tweaks, with the occasional clock bump when the process allows. If this isn't the case, could you show me the current roadmap that you're referring to?

Assuming that a dual-core G4 would be used in a new iMac model, and it could be equal in speed to a 3GHz 970FX, Apple would not be able to update the iMac for another year.

The thing that a lot of people don't seem to realize is that SMP tends to give Apple's systems a 35-60% boost if the applications are written to take advantage of it. That means that a 2.0ghz e600 could equal a 3.0ghz 970FX in a lot of ways, while also running cooler and handling multiple processes in a more fluid way. Of course, this is assuming that the core revision doesn't at all change performance and it's a linear scale, which I've seen is probably not the case. The e600 is supposed to be instruction-set compatible with the G4, but it's supposed to be more efficient per clock, to the tune of a 30-40% increase in performance. In other words, the debut chip at 2.0ghz could perform like a 4.2ghz G4 (2.0 x 1.5 x 1.4) would have, but at far lower heat, because the dual core is supposed to run 25-30 watts maximum.

By comparison, the current 2.0ghz single-core 970 has no on-die memory controller, but still runs 24.5 watts typical.

This above scenerio for the G5 would involve a lot more updates to the iMac in a given time frame than if Apple stayed with the G4.

The scenario calls for more potential updates. None of that mandates that Apple has to use the revision for the iMac.

 

[thatwendigo]

http://news.com.com/Intel's+Dothan+sets+sail/2100-1006_3-5209454.html
http://news.com.com/Intel+plans+processor+party+for+June/2100-1006_3-5226981.html?tag=nefd.top

^ Neither has Intel?
Reeeeeally? Are you sure about that?

Funny that they axed all further development of the P4 after this revision, isn't it? Sounds like a lot of progress to me. However, I was predicting the move to Pentium-M on the desktop some time ago, while people were still crowing about the P4EE and how it was competing with AMD and supposedly stomping the G5.

Also, as the really sparse article noted, there's a big push to sell notebooks to consumers lately. Things are just getting to the "fast enough" and "lasting enough" points on the PC side of things that Apple has a serious challenge to their crown. Of course, they're still a major player in the game, with something like the overall 6th or 7th highest sales of notebook computers in the entire computer market last year. That's with G4s, too.

I can't believe all of you people trying to justify the performance of the G4 vs. pentium or even amd's processors, it's laughable really, the G4 gets killed and we all know it. Why are you all wasting your breath trying to defend a piece of crap?

Actually, depending on the test, the G4 doesn't get "killed" any more than the G5 does. What a lot of people don't seem to realize is that many, many of the benchmarks that are thrown around are software optimzized for PCs and not macs. Games don't use OpenGL all that much on the x86 side, and lots of the companies use ICC to produce shiny, but meaningless, numbers. Even the hardware sites like anandtech and Tom's are pushing some things - like DirectX - that just aren't available on the mac because of Microsoft's proprietary coding.

Then again, you could have realized that Phinius has been talking about a chip other than what you think of when you hear "G4" and then kneejerk. So, to be explicit about this, the e600 allows programmers to use existing G4 code, but adds on-die DDR control, triples the system bus and eliminates one stage of it because there's no external memory controller, raises the core clock to 2.0ghz, adds a second extremely low latency processor that will likely perform far better than a traditional SMP system, runs heat equivalent to a single 2.0ghz 970fx, and which has the superior G4 AltiVec unit.

 

[windowsblowsass]

Funny that they axed all further development of the P4 after this revision, isn't it? Sounds like a lot of progress to me. However, I was predicting the move to Pentium-M on the desktop some time ago, while people were still crowing about the P4EE and how it was competing with AMD and supposedly stomping the G5.

Also, as the really sparse article noted, there's a big push to sell notebooks to consumers lately. Things are just getting to the "fast enough" and "lasting enough" points on the PC side of things that Apple has a serious challenge to their crown. Of course, they're still a major player in the game, with something like the overall 6th or 7th highest sales of notebook computers in the entire computer market last year. That's with G4s, too.



Actually, depending on the test, the G4 doesn't get "killed" any more than the G5 does. What a lot of people don't seem to realize is that many, many of the benchmarks that are thrown around are software optimzized for PCs and not macs. Games don't use OpenGL all that much on the x86 side, and lots of the companies use ICC to produce shiny, but meaningless, numbers. Even the hardware sites like anandtech and Tom's are pushing some things - like DirectX - that just aren't available on the mac because of Microsoft's proprietary coding.

Then again, you could have realized that Phinius has been talking about a chip other than what you think of when you hear "G4" and then kneejerk. So, to be explicit about this, the e600 allows programmers to use existing G4 code, but adds on-die DDR control, triples the system bus and eliminates one stage of it because there's no external memory controller, raises the core clock to 2.0ghz, adds a second extremely low latency processor that will likely perform far better than a traditional SMP system, runs heat equivalent to a single 2.0ghz 970fx, and which has the superior G4 AltiVec unit.

i agree the new eseries (ae i will call it from now on to many 500 600 700 numbers)from frescale semms to be the future wave of low power/portable proccessors unless it goes the way of moto ie not coming out for another 3 years

 

[Phinius]

Is the e600 on a yearly revision schedule, or do you think that Freescale will be making minor architectural changes as they have with past G4 cores?

It's my understanding that the e600 will be manufactured as both a mono-processor and a dual-core. So, perhaps the dual-core could arrive a few months later.

Motorolas' microprocessor division has been losing buckets of money, with a long string of quarterly loses, but Motorola just posted a $100 million profit from the division in the last quarter. I would expect that this return to profitability will help speed development a bit after Motorola cutback on development severely in the last two years. IBM, incidently, is losing money from their microprocessor manufacturing.

I could easily see the kind of bumps that have come in the past, with power consumption and cache tweaks, with the occasional clock bump when the process allows. If this isn't the case, could you show me the current roadmap that you're referring to?

I interpret the e600 going to 2GHz+ on the FreeScale roadmap as meaning it will arrive on the 90-nm process. The e700 is listed for 3GHz+ and that is likely to arrive on the smaller 65-nm process no earlier than the second half of 2005. The e700 would get up to 1/3 of this speed increase from the smaller process size and the rest would likely be from more pipeline stages. I'd expect the e700 to have about 3-5 more pipeline stages than the 7 for the latest G4.

The thing that a lot of people don't seem to realize is that SMP tends to give Apple's systems a 35-60% boost if the applications are written to take advantage of it. That means that a 2.0ghz e600 could equal a 3.0ghz 970FX in a lot of ways, while also running cooler and handling multiple processes in a more fluid way.

A Aceshardware.com article compared a dual processor G4 against a Pentium 4. The author thought a G4 processor was about equivilant in performance to a 1.8-2GHz Pentium 4. Assuming that, two G4s running at 2GHz should be at least equal in performance to a 3GHz Pentium 4. Apple will be making remarkable strides, in the next few months, catching up to the performance of the Intel processors.

The e600 is supposed to be instruction-set compatible with the G4, but it's supposed to be more efficient per clock, to the tune of a 30-40% increase in performance.

I don't know where you are getting that increase in efficiency per clock. The bus to core speed ratio should improve from about 9-to-1 to about 5-to one using 400MHz DDR memory and the memory latency will improve with the onboard controller. But, it remains to be seen how much affect that will have per clock.

[quote In other words, the debut chip at 2.0ghz could perform like a 4.2ghz G4 (2.0 x 1.5 x 1.4) would have, but at far lower heat, because the dual core is supposed to run 25-30 watts maximum.[/quote]

Motorola has already stated that a dual-core G4 running at 1.5GHz will typically use about 25 watts. The maximum would be higher than that.

By comparison, the current 2.0ghz single-core 970 has no on-die memory controller, but still runs 24.5 watts typical.

That's a rather unfair comparison since you are taking the word of IBM on what the typical watt usage is and yet ignoring what Motorola has stated about the typical watt usage of the 90-nm G4.

The scenario calls for more potential updates. None of that mandates that Apple has to use the revision for the iMac.

It's more than likely that Apple will use a updated G4 in some capacity. It's to early for the G5 to be used in all of the Mac computers, even if Apple wanted to do so.

 

[Phinius]

i agree the new eseries (ae i will call it from now on to many 500 600 700 numbers)from frescale semms to be the future wave of low power/portable proccessors unless it goes the way of moto ie not coming out for another 3 years

Motorola now has two major chip manufacturing partners to help speed thing up and a state of the art 300-mm wafer plant that they share with the two partners. Each partner brings different expertise to the collaboration and that significantly reduces the time it would take compared to if Motorola went at it alone.

Motorola did get behind in implementing new process technologies and architectural changes in the last three years, but there has been significant progress in the past year or so. Essentially the G4 is at the performance stage where the Pentium III was on a 130-nm process, but Motorola is close to moving the G4 to a smaller 90-nm process with some significant performance boosts to the chip.

 

[ClimbingTheLog]

I can't believe all of you people trying to justify the performance of the G4 vs. pentium or even amd's processors, it's laughable really, the G4 gets killed and we all know it. Why are you all wasting your breath trying to defend a piece of crap?

Maybe their point is that it's not a piece of crap.

Perhaps it doesn't benchmark all that well and you might not want to use it for the next terascale supercomputer, but it runs Mac OS X just fine. That's the only measure of performance that matters for many users.

It runs iMovie fine, and iPhoto fine, iDVD works well enough and Garageband is OK for most. Oh, and you can surf the web and send e-mail without any trouble. Heck you can even video conference now.

And that's about 90% of the potential consumer market.

The consumer market automatically disqualifies blowers and expensive thermal control systems, so depending on your target use, one can argue that your precious G5 is a piece of crap.

Right tool, right job, that's all.

 

[~Shard~]

Maybe their point is that it's not a piece of crap.

Perhaps it doesn't benchmark all that well and you might not want to use it for the next terascale supercomputer, but it runs Mac OS X just fine. That's the only measure of performance that matters for many users.

It runs iMovie fine, and iPhoto fine, iDVD works well enough and Garageband is OK for most. Oh, and you can surf the web and send e-mail without any trouble. Heck you can even video conference now.

And that's about 90% of the potential consumer market.

The consumer market automatically disqualifies blowers and expensive thermal control systems, so depending on your target use, one can argue that your precious G5 is a piece of crap.

Right tool, right job, that's all.

Very well said. I am quite enjoying the discussion going on here, but see quite a contrast in the posts - from the intelligent, technology-based and educated posts from the likes of Phinius, thatwendigo, yourself, and many others, to the ignorant and uneducated posts of others who, instead of composing constructive comments and debates, use sophistocated terms like "crap" or "sucks", or seem to ignore the detailed technical posts due to their obvious lack of knowledge, and their ability to only see things with a very narrow, simplistic focus - these appear to be the types that see the G4 as a horrible chip and that the G5 is the be-all and end-all because it is new and is a higher number. Meanwhile, they ignore the facts.

I always shake my head when I read posts indicating that the G4s are "slow", that they get stomped by other processors hands-down, and that Motorola has been horrible these past couple years, that IBM is Apple's savior, and Motorola is to blame for EVERYTHING. Sales and marketshare did not rise significantly this past year with the introduction of the G5, so how can people say IBM is better than Motorola yet, at this stage of the game? And it isn't IBM's fault, and it isn't Motorola's fault - it's Apple's fault when it comes down to it. And what has IBM done so far? They've released their G5, almost a year ago, and we haven't seen anything from them since. Now, if this was still Motorola, man, would there be complaints flying about their slow advances - but because it's IBM, nothing is mentioned by these G4-bashers. They just keep going on about how Motorola hasn't done anything for the past 3 years - right, moving from 450 MHz (or whatever it was) to 1.5 GHz is pathetic and insignificant...

I could go on, but it's time for bed - too much to comment on, so little time...

 

[Apple //e]

First, the Pentium III topped out at 1.4GHz on a 130-nm process size. It had a bus speed of 100MHz and a L2 cache size of 512KB.

actually, the pentium IIIS 1.4 had a 133 bus with 512k L2. the tualatin celerons had a 100bus with 256k L2

 

[Apple //e]

However, I was predicting the move to Pentium-M on the desktop some time ago, while people were still crowing about the P4EE and how it was competing with AMD and supposedly stomping the G5.

many, many people were wondering when (and if) intel would release a desktop pentium m when it was released.

 

[Belly-laughs]

Judging from the material Motorola has on their site, we can only guess when the e600 is ready for prime-time. Their 2004 chart shows no sign of it, only referring to the G4 7447A that was released earlier this year @ 1.42GHz.

Still, it will make for great competition between IBM and Moto when they have it ready and available for Apple to use, hopefully speeding up development on both the 97x-series and e600.

 

[nmk]

Judging from the material Motorola has on their site, we can only guess when the e600 is ready for prime-time. Their 2004 chart shows no sign of it, only referring to the G4 7447A that was released earlier this year @ 1.42GHz.

Still, it will make for great competition between IBM and Moto when they have it ready and available for Apple to use, hopefully speeding up development on both the 97x-series and e600.

I would think that the e600 will appear on their website when it is shipping in quantitiy to customers. As things stand right now, they have put out a very solid roadmap showing the development of the e600. I think someone mentioned on this board a while back that Apple mysteriously dropped development of the IBM 750, which was to be the G4's successor in low power consumption applications. This indicates that they have renewed confidence in Motorollas ability to provide them with something competitive soon for their portable and budget machines.