This will never happen....
I'm sorry everyone, this won't ever happen. Nvidia will NOT produce a chipset that supports AMD and PowerPC.
The truth is, the architectures are radically different. They don't use the same instruction set, the aren't even the same Endian (that means the order of the data is reversed between i386 and PPC code). The processors are TOTALLY [excuse the pun] apples and oranges.
There is no way that AMD will produce a chipset that supports both processors. I don't believe it is even possible, irregardless of how extravagant the design is.
I know that some of you wish and hope so much that you will refuse to belive me. Let me go through this point by point so that you can, hopefully, see reason.
1) The processors are too different to run on the same chip set.
* Have you EVER seen one chipset that supported Intel and AMD processors? I can't think of any since the Pentium (1) days. Why can't the nForce handle Pentium 4's? Why can't KT333 support P4s? Surely it would make good business sense to use the same chipset in multiple motherboard designs, right?
If it is so hard to make a chipset that handles K7s and P4s, how are they going to do this with RADICALLY different chip architectures?
2) Chipsets are designed to recognize certain processor buses.
*Read above... Now why is it so hard to support K7s and P4s on the same chipset? Perhaps because the K7 bus is based off the Alpha bus and the P4 uses a totally different bus? Well guess what, PPC chips use yet a different bus spec. The current one is MPX, but they are moving to yet another bus.
3) Apple's inclusion in the Hypertransport consortium does not mean they can use nForce2.
*Hypertransport is a bus that the chipset uses. It is not, as far as I understand, the processor to chipset bus. I could be mistaken about this, but I believe Apple planned to create a hypertransport chipset, but to interface it to a G4 with the BookE bus spec.
This is what
The Hypertransport Consortium has to say about it...
"An example is the NVIDIA® nForceTM chipset that utilizes HyperTransport_ technology to deliver up to a six-fold increase in bandwidth between the nForce Integrated Graphics Processor (IGP) and nForce Media and Communications Processor (MCP). In fact, the bandwidth supplied by HyperTransport_ allowed NVIDIA to implement full Dolby Digital 5.1 3D audio processing and broadband networking in the MCP, something no other existing technology allowed them to do."
Notice this has nothing to do with the processor to chipset bus.
4) The so called proof of this rumor is a general statement by Nvidia that says,
"You are going to see many more exciting introductions in [the Mac] space".
* Did anyone consider, for even one second, that Nvidia was talking about new Graphic Processors coming into the Mac space? Why does this have to refer to the nForce2 when it is (most likely) completely impossible to make a chipset that supports both the PPC and Athlon?
*The other claim is that, the fact that the integrated graphics core supports Apple's Endian-ness, the whole chipset will. Supposedly Nvida confirmed this. I have to doubt this. I believe that the big reason that other graphic chipsets won't work on the mac has to do with the way that Macs handle video at a low level. RGB datastructures are different on the PC and the Mac. It doesn't (at least directly) have anything to do with endian-ness. In fact, PCI is the wrong endian-ness for the Mac, but the mac chipset does a byte reorder on all data bound for PCI. (this is how I understand the process to work). If I understand Endian issues correctly, the other rumor is patently false, and it was generated by someone who doesn't understand hardware as well as I *think* I do. ;-)
OK, OK, I sure as hell don't know everything. I do know enough to realize this though. I've come to accept that there are only three steps in computer knowledge... 1) I don't know anything, 2) Boy, I sure know a lot, and the ultimate... 3) Boy, I never realized how much I didn't know. I feel I've reached the third level.
What I'm trying to say is, I don't design chipsets. I don't have a PhD in Engineering. I do, however, follow hardware closely... as part of my job, and as a hobby. I'm pretty sure I know (mostly) what I'm talking about.
.... take it for what it's worth. If nForce2 comes out for the mac next year, I'll be the first to admit I was totally wrong. However....I'd bet my admittedly small savings account that it won't happen.
🙂
.....ffakr.
