Interesting IBM article

[praetorian_x]

OK, since I don't give a *rats* about anything but the 970 and if and when it is getting into a mac, I offer the following article:

http://www.computerworld.com/hardwaretopics/hardware/story/0,10801,78460,00.html?f=x010

It is about how IBM has yanked Linux developers off the Itanium port of linux, and has them working on supporting Power. Off topic? I don't think so, and here is why:

Itanium was a flop. Itanium 2 *seems* inevitable, but if anyone can fight it, it is IBM. IBM seems to be interested in fighting that battle. To fight Itanium, IBM is going to have to really commit to the Power architecture and to chip making in general. This has to be good news for the 970, and for Chipzilla alternative enthusiasts everywhere.

So, in short:

Step 1) IBM stops supporting Itanium
Step 2) ???
Step 3) A decent specInt for Apple!

The only question is when. So, arn, when?

Cheers,
prat

 

[MrMacMan]

Um...
IBM has there own Power4 & Power5 chips comming...

The 970 is not the messiah as all of you are praising it.

Pleeeaasse!

 

[etoiles]

Originally posted by MrMacman

The 970 is not the messiah as all of you are praising it.

But we have to believe in SOMETHING, right ?

 

[yzedf]

you forgot...

Step 4) Profit!!!

 

[FelixDerKater]

Itanium was a flop. Agreed.
Itanium 2 benches higher than the Power 4. The Power 5 is on the way, so that will take care of the Itanium 2.

The 970 is not meant to be competition for the Itanium or the Itanium 2. It is a desktop chip. As a desktop chip, it will be good performance-wise, improving greatly over the G4, but the speed will have to go up to stay competitive with Intel's P4 and higher chips.

 

[Catfish_Man]

The lower end Itaniums *might* end up competing with SMP 970 systems. The .09 micron 3MB cache one is supposed to be small enough to have a halfway reasonable price. However, it's still going to be above Apple's level, so all that's going to come out of it for us is big improvements to the POWER architecture (and hopefully POWER's little sibling, the 970). Basically, I think this is going to be like the AMD/Intel rivalry, but on a higher scale, and PPC vs. IA64 rather than x86 vs x86. Currently IBM's ahead in price/power while Intel's ahead in floating point performance. IBM also has a more advanced manufacturing process (.13 micron SOI vs. .18 micron for the current Itanium 2).

 

[Nipsy]

The Itanium is a server class chip.
The Power 4/5 is a server class chip.

The Xeon is a workstation class chip.
The 970 is a workstation class chip.

The Pentium 4 is a desktop class chip.
The G4 is a desktop class chip.

IBM has been using (expensive) Power 4s in workstations, so they'll benefit from having a workstation class chip available. Apple will be using a workstation class chip in it pro line, which is beneficial to them.

As usual, the P4 will likely be faster in 'raw' benchmarking, gaming, etc., but the Xeon & 970 will outperform in bandwith heavy work tasks (cad, rendering, etc.). All of these will be outperformed by Power 4/5 and Itanium based machines, which will be primarily found in enterprise servers, and clusters.

The 970 is the answer...it looks like a phenomenal chip.

 

[Macpoops]

There will never be a power4 or power 5 in a apple desktop. Because...they are server chips, tremendously expensive, consume large amounts of power, and are physically larger the other desktop chips. and the biggest reason of all they were never designed for use in a desktop.

 

[janey]

Originally posted by Nipsy
The Itanium is a server class chip.
The Power 4/5 is a server class chip.

The Xeon is a workstation class chip.
The 970 is a workstation class chip.

The Pentium 4 is a desktop class chip.
The G4 is a desktop class chip.

wtf? The Itanium totally sucks. It is in no way a server class chip.
The Xeon is a P4 chip-isn't it? It's really nice...i have a dual 2.4ghz P4 Xeon PC.

 

[szark]

Originally posted by Macpoops
There will never be a power4 or power 5 in a apple desktop. Because...they are server chips, tremendously expensive, consume large amounts of power, and are physically larger the other desktop chips. and the biggest reason of all they were never designed for use in a desktop.

Never say never...

Read about IBM's POWER 4-based desktop workstation.

Though I'll admit the IBM workstation is incredibly expensive.

 

[ddtlm]

Nipsy:

The Itanium is a server class chip.
The Power 4/5 is a server class chip.

The Xeon is a workstation class chip.
The 970 is a workstation class chip.

The Pentium 4 is a desktop class chip.
The G4 is a desktop class chip.

I would move the PPC-970 down to desktop, since it is really no faster than a P4, and I would push the G4 off of the bottom of the list into the void.

As usual, the P4 will likely be faster in 'raw' benchmarking, gaming, etc., but the Xeon & 970 will outperform in bandwith heavy work tasks (cad, rendering, etc.).

The Xeon is essentially a P4, and in fact it often has slower FSB's and lower clockspeeds, so they're pretty much worthless except that they can be used in dual setups, whereas normal P4's cannot. In any case, the PPC-970 is going to have a very hard time beating the P4 in performance. Apparently within a few months P4's will have 800mhz FSBs, and apparently sometime this year they will go to 90nm and get 1mb L2, SSE3, and improved hyperthreading. Add to that the increasing availability of software optimized for the P4, and it seems clear to me that the P4 is not going to be dethroned.

All of these will be outperformed by Power 4/5 and Itanium based machines, which will be primarily found in enterprise servers, and clusters.

The P4 already has the lead in integer performance.

The 970 is the answer...it looks like a phenomenal chip.

I think it's primary advantage is rather low power usage.

szark:

Read about IBM's POWER 4-based desktop workstation.

Though I'll admit the IBM workstation is incredibly expensive.

I think it's pretty big, too.