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Intel's Tulsa Server Processor, and IBM Power 6

TangoCharlie said:
These Xeon's (Tulsa) are aimed at the high-performance high-power usage
end of the market. At 150W power usage <http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=29540> I can't see these in Apple's 1U XServe style enclosures.

I think the XServe will get the Sossaman LV Zeon (Lendenhurst platform).

The "PowerMac G5" replacement might get Depsey and/or Woodcrest (Dual-Code) DP Xeons.

Tulsa will only get into Apple's line-up if they try another "big" server (like the old Apple Network Servers), or at the very least a 3U rack-mounted server. It's extremely unlikely IMHO. I don't see Apple trying to compete with HP and Dell for the 3U-5U server market.
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I dunno, we have 256 Xserves in one of the clusters here at UMaine and I think they'd upgrade if they had bigger ones available to them.

http://www.clusters.umaine.edu/
 
question for you...

joecool85 said:
I dunno, we have 256 Xserves in one of the clusters here at UMaine and I think they'd upgrade if they had bigger ones available to them.

http://www.clusters.umaine.edu/
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I wonder if they'd upgrade....

Seriously, I wonder if the nascent "Apple SuperCluster" movement ended with a crash last June.

For the cluster market (which is *not* the same as the small render farm market for content creation) Apple will be competing with Linux (free software, with "zillions" of free applications) on the software side, and *every*other*intel*and*AMD*vendor* on the hardware side, including the "white box" vendors like SuperMicro (http://www.supermicro.com/products/system/1U/6014/SYS-6014P-32R.cfm) and Appro (http://www.appro.com/product/server_1142h.asp - quad CPU 1U 64-bit server).

What does Apple offer these people that they can't get from Linux? Higher prices for the same hardware, along with binary incompatibility for the software....

I think that places like Virginia ("boy did Apple screw us") Tech (http://www.vtu.edu) and the other Apple cluster sites are looking at their options for their next upgrade.
 
??

Prom1 said:
How about the best of both worlds.

Remember YPC Yellow Dog Linux which is Linux that runs exclusively on PPC chips; currently has a Linux server running on PPC chips ranked 15 in 2005 (late) and their OS can still run OS X natively;
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But there won't be any more PPC Apples, right?

Also note that PPC Linux is not binary compatible with x64 Linux - to run on PPC Linux you must get the x64 source code and port to PPC.
 
Why not Opteron?

I cann't understand why Apple switched to "Intel chips" and not to "Intel architectre". The later includes Intel and it's "core duo" but also AMD and the opteron. The Operon 200 series would be the perfect CPU to replace the G5 in the Power mac. Sun makes some really nice quad-core Operon desktop systems that woud be perfect PowerMac replacements (see http://tinyurl.com/d6uou ) and if you have the bucks they'll sell you an eight core Opteron basd server. These are real. you can buy one today. I think Apple wants to sell at a lower price pont and not compete in the $25K per box server market

I'm sure Apple must have gotten some kind of a deal from Intel
 
ChrisA said:
I cann't understand why Apple switched to "Intel chips" and not to "Intel architectre". The later includes Intel and it's "core duo" but also AMD and the opteron. The Operon 200 series would be the perfect CPU to replace the G5 in the Power mac
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AMD is very successful at the moment. So successful that they are completely sold out. Yes, I think Apple should switch to a supplier that is sold out. Not.

For the first time in many years, Intel has a plan and a roadmap. According to the roadmap, Intel was going to be ahead of AMD in the notebook market in January (which happened), and if they manage to release Merom and Conroe chips in time, they will be far ahead in the notebook market and ahead in the desktop market in about July.
 
lightsout said:
Yes it is unusual - Sun's 16MB cache was off-chip. This means it has much higher latency and much lower bandwidth and is generally not so good. The on-chip cache Intel has it going to way better, but of course, it also much more difficult to make. Hence why it is much smaller than Sun's.
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True. Which is why (jumping back a generation) the UltraSPARC IIIi was good for desktop applications and replaced the III/III+ in that role: The 1M on-chip was as good in that instance as the 8M off-chip. Of course, when you got to the big servers it was a different story. (But on those the external cache is on DIMMs anyway.)

Where I work now, we develop on and for a variety of platforms (including OS X), and to be frank we don't see a huge difference at the high-end between any of them. My personal feeling is that it's less and less the chips used, and more and more the quality of the code in both the OS and the application.
 
we shall see what Intel does to improve the bus speed. they are expected to announce an all new architecture. this is probably why the PowerMac G5 successor was farmed out to them. I suspect that Intel is not yet ready to release all the details to the masses.

Current Intel server bus is not as advanced as Xserve G5. Xserves have dual independent bus that runs at 1/2 the processor speed. Current Intel server bus is 800MHz and shared between all processors. (Maybe they have improved it slightly recently, but still not as advanced.)

Long live the PowerMac G5 and Xserve G5. They were excellent products.
 
aegisdesign said:
IBM announced new blade servers using the dual core G5 aka 970MP as used in the PowerMacs today.

http://www-03.ibm.com/systems/bladecenter/js21/index.html

Up to 2.5Ghz Quad G5. ie. the same as the Quad PowerMac but in a rackable case.
Click to expand...

It is interesting to note that there are single core 2.7Ghz versions with 1MB L2 cache. This could be the 970GX. Also, these systems are air cooled and are housed in a very small enclosure (even much smaller than the XServe).

Also, IBM released some performance data for the 3Ghz 970GX and 970MP at ISCCC:

http://www.realworldtech.com/forums...PostNum=4058&Thread=1&entryID=62544&roomID=11

1677/2368 SPEC int/FP @ 3 GHz
19.5/27.5 SPEC int/FP rate @ 3 GHz for 970GX
37.7/48.8 SPEC int/FP rate @ 3 GHz for 970MP
 
aegisdesign said:
What the Yahoo article doesn't say is that the POWER6 is running at 6Ghz currently within IBM. The POWER range always has conservative ratings on release because for it's uses it needs to be super reliable, not necessarily fastest. The PowerPC 970 ran much faster than the POWER4 series that it was based on.

The Xeon chips are toys by comparison and the latest ones are too hot to be used by Apple. The low power Sossaman Xeons are slower than the G5s in the Xserve and kind of pointless. Apple will be waiting for something faster than the G5 and at the moment, there isn't anything from Intel. PowerMacs are in a similar situation, especially as so far Intel do not allow more than 2 cores in a desktop system and the Quad G5 has 4 cores, each faster than a single Intel Core.

It'll be interesting if IBM come out with a new POWER6 based PowerPC chip which if it comes in at even 4Ghz, the low end of POWER6, would completely blow Intel and AMD away. I can't see Apple resisting that unless they really do want to only sell to the low to mid end of the market.
Click to expand...

http://www.reghardware.co.uk/2006/02/07/ibm_power6_show/

Would be nice if, at the time, Apple offered a choice in procs. With OSX available in two flavors it would offer the pro consumer the opportunity to buy the most powerful machines available at the time. For example, say next year, the Power6 is available to the Mac along with an Intel proc, but the Power6 variant is 2x faster Apple can offer the top of the line Power6 Mac at a premium to those of us who want the latest and greatest.

Personally, I would stick with PowerPC if it was available in the future. I still cringe at the time early in the OSX transition when I had to deal with carbon, classic and OSX to get my work done. That was a real horrowshow. Scanning in classic, image editing in X then going back to classic for layout and finally carbon to PDF. :D

I'm being naive as I don't even know if a variation of Pwer 6 can even be put in a desktop unit.

B
 
Yeah I like the idea of a future macs being either or depending on which chips aare best at the time. perhaps the powerbook line could continue on with power 6.
 
Why can't Apple use The Cell in its server line?

If they have already ported the code to Intel, and they have already done a lot of harware abstraction.

(Correct me, but isn't the point of EFI to stay away from the hardware?)

Apple could use the best chips too in the laptops (Core Duo) and The Cell in the server market where software is usually proprietary (doing something special like rendering, predicting hurricanes and earthquakes, deciphering Iranian-Syrian communications, etc.)

Is this far fetched?
 
cell sucks for most things and excels in others if you need 25Gflops of FP vector performence fine but for everything elce it's just not any good, it's an in order cpu for gods sake.
 
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