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maradong

macrumors 65816
Original poster
Mar 7, 2003
1,058
0
Luxembourg
Macbidouille posts the following :

Bon, prenez tout ça avec les plus extrèmes précautions comme à chaque fois.

Les cartes mères bipro devraient avoir en tout 8 emplacements mémoire. Il y en aurait 4 par CPU. Ces emplacements sont dors et déjà compatibles avec les barrettes de 4 Go. On aura donc une capacité mémoire maximale de 32 Go !!
Nous ignorons totalement comment le Mac va se débrouiller avec sa RAM.
Nous ne savons pas si chaque processeur aura sa mémoire allouée avec un éventuel Twin Bank ou si les slots de 4 seront en fait appariés pour faire du Twin Bank entre les deux.
Give me 10 minutes and i ll make you a little translation :D
 

maradong

macrumors 65816
Original poster
Mar 7, 2003
1,058
0
Luxembourg
First of all, here comes the google translation:

Well, take all that with more extrèmes precautions as each time. The mother charts bipro should have in all 8 sites report. There would be of them 4 per CPU These sites are sleep and already compatible with the bars of 4 Go. One will thus have a maximum memory size of 32 Go!! We are unaware of completely how Mac will manage with its RAM. We do not know if each processor will have its memory allocated with possible Twin Bank or if the slots of 4 in fact are paired to make of Twin Bank between the two.
 

maradong

macrumors 65816
Original poster
Mar 7, 2003
1,058
0
Luxembourg
Well, take all that with more precautions as each time. The motherboads bipro should have in all 8 ram slots sites report. There would be of them 4 per CPU These slots already compatible with the bars of 4 Go. One will thus have a maximum memory size of 32 Go!! We are completely unaware of how Mac OS X will manage that amount of RAM.
We do not know if each processor will have its memory allocated with possible Twin Bank or if the slots of 4 in fact are paired to make of Twin Bank between the two.
the translation, a bit changed.
 

mathiasr

macrumors regular
Mar 20, 2003
105
0
Strasbourg, France
4 slots per CPU would mean a cc-NUMA architecture like the Opteron.
I think that Apple will stick with a true SMP system with the 970, on the other hand the PowerPC 980 is rumored to have an integrated memory controller, thus high-end Macs will naturally turn to NUMA, Apple could try to train developers to this new architecture early to get full benefit on the next generation.

Before you ask:
http://lse.sourceforge.net/numa/faq/

NUMA stands for Non-Uniform Memory Access, and cc for Cache Coherent.

This could pave the way to some very high-end HPC systems like SGI does:
http://www.usenix.org/publications/...nt98/invited_talks/baskett_slides/ppframe.htm

Xserves could be turned into modules like in the Origin 350 for instance (32 CPUs Macs anyone?):
http://www.sgi.com/origin/350/
 

ZeeOwl

macrumors member
May 31, 2003
87
0
Sherbrooke, QC, Canada.
PowerMac 970 memory architecture from MacBidouille.

Just as an FYI, Here is a human translation from French by your's truly (French is my first language)...

"OK, take this with a major dose of salt, as usual.

The dual-processor motherboards should have 8 memory slots in all. There seems to be 4 per processor. These slots are currently compatible with 4 GiB memory modules. Therefore we should have a maximum memory capacity of 32 GiB !!

We have no clue how the Mac will manage it's RAM. We don't know if each processor will have it's own dedicated Twin Bank memory allocation, or if the two groups of 4 slots will be combined to form one large Twin Bank.

The question now remains: How much will the ultimate PowerMac 970 configuration with 32 GiB of RAM cost?"
 

Mr. Anderson

Moderator emeritus
Nov 1, 2001
22,568
6
VA
Re: PowerMac 970 memory architecture from MacBidouille.

Originally posted by ZeeOwl
The dual-processor motherboards should have 8 memory slots in all. There seems to be 4 per processor. These slots are currently compatible with 4 GiB memory modules. Therefore we should have a maximum memory capacity of 32 GiB !!

32 Gig? That's huge, and most likely for a server. There are very few applications that would use this much memory.

With the fiber channel and now this, I'm thinking that the board they have is not going to be on every new 970 - but might be for an XServe or XStation (desktop server like they had before the XServe).

D
 

ZeeOwl

macrumors member
May 31, 2003
87
0
Sherbrooke, QC, Canada.
Re: Re: PowerMac 970 memory architecture from MacBidouille.

Originally posted by Mr. Anderson
32 Gig? That's huge, and most likely for a server. There are very few applications that would use this much memory.

There's a caveat to that. They say "32 GiB maximum memory capacity". That's using 4 GiB modules. Do those even exist yet? As far as I know, the biggest ones currently on the market are 512 MiB. That would give the PowerMac 970 a total of 4 GiB of RAM with today's technology. I do 3D animation in 720 x 480 (DVD) resolution. On average my scenes need about 3 GiB to render finished frames. That would only leave 1 GiB for the OS and other apps. Not huge. My current machines only support 1 GiB of memory, so rendering uses virtual memory heavily at the moment. Having 4 GiB would probably at least double rendering speed. And that's not even taking into account that a PPC 970 is much faster than a G3/G4. :) For people doing HDTV or film rendering, about 18 GiB would be needed, by extrapolating. So 32 GiB don't look so huge now, does it?... ;) This is the market the PowerMac is aimed at: high-end video/audio and scientific. And Apple needs to keep the future in mind. This thing needs to be upgradeable.
 

Vlade

macrumors 6502a
Feb 2, 2003
966
4
Meadville, PA
Yes there are 8GB modules, but they cost a whopping 3700 bucks! There are 4GB ones for 191 dollars, and 2 GB ones for 303 dollars (Odd)
 

iJon

macrumors 604
Feb 7, 2002
6,586
229
isnt there a hardware conflict somewhere that wouldnt allow each processor to have their own bank by themselves. i was talking to a friend about it and he said something that i cant remember, i guess ill have to ask him again.

iJon
 

P-Worm

macrumors 68020
Jul 16, 2002
2,045
1
Salt Lake City, UT
As Dukestreet pointed out, each rumor we get from this site seems to be more and more outrageous. either these aren't true, or they're not what we think they are.

P-Worm
 

tjwett

macrumors 68000
May 6, 2002
1,880
0
Brooklyn, NYC
Originally posted by Vlade
Yes there are 8GB modules, but they cost a whopping 3700 bucks! There are 4GB ones for 191 dollars, and 2 GB ones for 303 dollars (Odd)

Link Please? The only evidence I've been able to find of a 4gb module in existence is a recently tested Samsung which doesn't look like it will be mass produced or affordable for a long long time. And I find it very hard to believe that a 4gb module would cost $191, I've spent more than that on a 512 SDRAM chip. Please prove me wrong, that would be exciting stuff.
 

tjwett

macrumors 68000
May 6, 2002
1,880
0
Brooklyn, NYC
Originally posted by P-Worm
As Dukestreet pointed out, each rumor we get from this site seems to be more and more outrageous. either these aren't true, or they're not what we think they are.

P-Worm

Yo, seriously. Imagine what everyone will say when WWDC comes and Apple releases a (drumroll).........
Dual 1.8Ghz G4 PowerMac:(
 

Mr. Anderson

Moderator emeritus
Nov 1, 2001
22,568
6
VA
Re: Re: Re: PowerMac 970 memory architecture from MacBidouille.

Originally posted by ZeeOwl
I do 3D animation in 720 x 480 (DVD) resolution. On average my scenes need about 3 GiB to render finished frames. That would only leave 1 GiB for the OS and other apps. Not huge. For people doing HDTV or film rendering, about 18 GiB would be needed, by extrapolating. So 32 GiB don't look so huge now, does it?... ;) This is the market the PowerMac is aimed at: high-end video/audio and scientific. And Apple needs to keep the future in mind. This thing needs to be upgradeable.

Thats somewhat true - and a real pro machine would be nice. I'm also doing 3D animation on an older machine and I'd be perfectly happy with more RAM. Although I never thought that 32 Gig would be required. And it might be for planning on the future here - which would be nice for a change.

I'm personally looking forward to getting one of the 970s - hoping for an order of magnitude faster rendering...:D

D
 

EponymousCow

macrumors newbie
Mar 25, 2003
22
0
Re: Re: Re: PowerMac 970 memory architecture from MacBidouille.

.
Originally posted by ZeeOwl
There's a caveat to that. They say "32 GiB maximum memory capacity". That's using 4 GiB modules. Do those even exist yet? As far as I know, the biggest ones currently on the market are 512 MiB.

I believe that 1GB modules have just become available. Apple has done this before, making their motherboards compatible with a memory size not yet available. In fact, the MDD powermacs have 4 slots that can use 1GB DIMMs, but the motherboard can only handle 2GB total. Must be limited to 31-bits of addressing. :rolleyes:
 

joelc

macrumors member
Apr 15, 2003
52
0
CA
I thought my 512 megs was pretty good...*looks sheepishly at Indigo iMac*
This is crazy stuff. How common is what ZeeOwl described? Do people actually need that kind of capacity?
 

freundt

macrumors member
Apr 8, 2003
87
0
Seattle
Originally posted by tjwett
Yo, seriously. Imagine what everyone will say when WWDC comes and Apple releases a (drumroll).........
Dual 1.8Ghz G4 PowerMac:(

not too hard to imagine at all...

*loud boo-ing, some scattered yells of "this is bullsh*t, and the sounds of lots of feet heading for the door*

oh, wait... I forget, these are MAC fans we are talking about..We will all clap in a nice mannerly way and then come back here and specualte on the pushed back relase date for the 970's and what could have happened. ;)

_f
 

Chobit

macrumors member
Jan 4, 2003
97
0
NY
GiB

I'm just glad that someone's starting to use the correct GiB instead of GB. Its 32 Gibibytes because it is 2^30 bytes, not 10^9. I don't know.. It really doesn't matter too much, but sometimes its annoying not knowing if things (especially harddrives) are being measured in Giga or Gibi bytes. People use Giga (which is supposed to be pronounced "jiga" even though I still say it with a hard g out of habit and people not understanding me) when they mean gibi and it all makes my head hurt!
 

Steradian

macrumors 6502
Dec 3, 2002
393
0
San Jose
I really hope that people aren't dissapointed if all that is announced at WWDC is panther and a few upgrades on normal iApps... We DO need a power mac of this caliber however I doubt that it existists
 

MacFan25

macrumors 68000
Jan 5, 2003
1,624
0
USA
I bet apple is wondering where macbidouille is getting all this info.

originally posted by tjwett
Yo, seriously. Imagine what everyone will say when WWDC comes and Apple releases a (drumroll).......
Dual 1.8Ghz G4 PowerMac:(
could the g4 go that fast? :confused:
 

t^3

macrumors regular
Oct 17, 2001
179
0
Originally posted by tjwett
Imagine what everyone will say when WWDC comes and Apple releases a (drumroll).........
Dual 1.8Ghz G4 PowerMac:(
Imagine what kind of cooling would be needed to keep it from burning up! The 7457 isn't scheduled to ship until the end of this year, so any new G4 chip will continue to be the 7455. All 7455's running past 1GHz are running really hot, especially if you look at the size of the heatsinks on the dual 1.4GHz PM's.
 

alset

macrumors 65816
Nov 9, 2002
1,262
0
East Bay, CA
Yeah, Right

I'm just sick of MB. They get more unrealistic every day. I bet if everyone stopped paying attention, they would stop making such outrageous claims. Good luck getting everyone to ignore them, though.

MB is quickly becoming my least favorite site on the net.

Dan
 
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