i read something on ars technica about how the supposed built in gigabit ethernet meant that the dual core g4 was intended for embedded markets. can anyone elaborate?
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PowerBook To Get Dual-Core G4?
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beatle888 said:
I have to admit .... I laughed for at least 5 minutes when I read your reply....
Obviously.... My post was sarcastic.
AidenShaw
macrumors P6
Pretzel logic
Huh? The faster chip isn't any larger, and Dell puts a PC Card (and an SD memory slot) in the 12.1" Latitude X300 that's 40% smaller than the 12" PB. Surely those innovators at Apple could figure it out if they wanted to (that is, if LGJ ordered it).
It's a simple matter of upsell - to get any one of the features, you have to buy the more expensive model and pay for other features that you may not need or want.
Great - so there are two different speeds of 12" PBs at two different prices. Why is that bad? Why is choice bad?
G4-power said:
Huh? The faster chip isn't any larger, and Dell puts a PC Card (and an SD memory slot) in the 12.1" Latitude X300 that's 40% smaller than the 12" PB. Surely those innovators at Apple could figure it out if they wanted to (that is, if LGJ ordered it).
It's a simple matter of upsell - to get any one of the features, you have to buy the more expensive model and pay for other features that you may not need or want.
G4-power said:
Great - so there are two different speeds of 12" PBs at two different prices. Why is that bad? Why is choice bad?
Here's the link.
http://arstechnica.com/news/posts/20040818-4112.html
Having read the article,
I'd like to know, what's the problem with option 2:
redesign the io system for Rapid IO.
This is what I'd expect Apple to do.
What's the timeframe on a motherboard redesign?
Anybody know?
drsuse said:
http://arstechnica.com/news/posts/20040818-4112.html
Having read the article,
I'd like to know, what's the problem with option 2:
redesign the io system for Rapid IO.
This is what I'd expect Apple to do.
What's the timeframe on a motherboard redesign?
Anybody know?
G4-power
macrumors 6502
I know the faster chip isn't any larger, but it does produce more heat. I know, they probably could put that 1.5 GHz in there. I know its not nice, but even if it was possible to put FW800 and a PC Card slot there, without taking anything out or making it bigger, like you said, Apple won't do it because they want you to pay more for bigger laptops.AidenShaw said:
I never tried to say that, even if you heard like that. Choice is good, but Apple probably will keep the hardware line-ups as few as possible, for simplicity's sake, (and production/R&D cost, too.)AidenShaw said:
G4-power
macrumors 6502
MikeBike said:
The problem there is, like the article says, that Apple is doing a motherboard redesign, only when moving to the G5. I say, if the dual-core G4 chip is as good as it sounds, get them and make a new design of the motherboard. Though, if Apple wants to move to the G5 as soon as possible, they would have to make two new motherboard models, and this would add cost. It's a matter of money and time. Do they want to put more money to PB R&D, and do they have the time for two major revisions in such a small time. I'd expect the G5 to come to the PB's some time next year, or early 2006. At that time, they have to do SOMETHING to the PB's.
Apple already spend proportionally more on R&D than assemblers like Dell. Given the G5 is a known quantity and has been available for some time Apple will have G5 PB motherboards and chipsets for testing right now. The e600 will only debut in October and unless Mot has substantially improved quality control the chip will remain a largely unknown quantity until it actually reaches production. If I was Apple I know where I would be focusing. Of course Apple has far more actual information available to them to make that decision where we have access to small amounts of data from which we extrapolate wildly to fuel the rumour boards.G4-power said:
Given the state of the current PB lineup I would suggest Apple needs to do something well before 2006 to inject some innovation. I like the news about Tiger including a resolution independent GUI, that will pave the way for new hi-res displays which must be high on the list of features for a new PB. I guess we could see Tiger and a new PB debut at the same time which would at least save me the expense of buying Tiger seperately.
AidenShaw said:
yea your right the ibook will become dual core g4 in january when the powerbokk will go g5 creating a bigger porfessional consumer gap the ibook will then adopt the g5 a year later or whenver the g6 or next processor enters the powermac
thatwendigo
macrumors 6502a
lazymuoio said:
Uh. Right.
You do realize that a dual-core G4 with any kind of clockspeed performance increaase would SMOKE a single G5, don't you? Take a look at Barefeats and compare the dual G4s (with much higher latency, no on-die control, and the older MPX bus) to the single G5 of your choice. Notice the lack of a huge gap, despite the higher clock of the 970?
Ramp the G4 to 2.0ghz, feed it properly with a modern architecture, and eliminate much of the system slowdown by cutting the northbridge out of the picture. Raise the clock and keep the pipeline as short as possible. Give it access to high speed memory and full DDR/DD2 support. Put it on a low latency chip interconnect and make some good logical algorithms for deailing with the potential issues or dual cores...
Sure.
The G5 makes so much more sense in a laptop. 🙄
Unless Freescale completely screws up the implementation, the e600 should kill the 970 on the desktop, too.
G4-power
macrumors 6502
pigwin32 said:
Yep, I agree quite much. The thing is, do they have the G5 PB ready when they are doing the dual-core G4's. Well, if they will be doing them. If they aren't upgrading now straight to the dual-cores, will theyhave another speed-bumped MPC 7447A, or are we waiting for a G5 now.
Yeah, you're right. Dual-core iBooks, why not. Unless someone here's working at Apple on the PowerBook, we don't really have to worry about what they put in the PB/iBook. I'm sure they'll come up with something.AidenShaw said:
AidenShaw
macrumors P6
Why would you even want a PPC970 PowerBook ???
Why do you want a PPC970 in a PowerBook (a "G5 PB") ??
You might want a *faster* PB, but a dual-core e600 with faster bus would certainly fit that bill.
Do you need a 64-bit PB ?? Not really - unless you need 8 GiB of RAM in your PB 64-bit won't do much for you. (And besides, a PB with 8 GiB of RAM would be big, hot and heavy!!!)
Maybe someday in the next year or two there will be enough 64-bit applications (absolutely none for OS X today, none) and memory will shrink so that 8 GiB will fit in 2 SO-DIMMs.
And, that someday in the next year or two, the dual-core e700 with 64-bit addressing will be available.
_________________________
Think about it - doesn't it make sense to continue to base the PB on chips from a low-wattage embedded heritage rather than from a heritage of bad-ass liquid cooled servers?
A G4 derivative with a fast bus, better memory, dual-core would be a great chip for a high end laptop.
You want performance, right? Does it matter which chip is used if the results are good?
I wonder if Apple will be smart enough to *never* put a G5 (or G6) in a PB....
G4-power said:
Why do you want a PPC970 in a PowerBook (a "G5 PB") ??
You might want a *faster* PB, but a dual-core e600 with faster bus would certainly fit that bill.
Do you need a 64-bit PB ?? Not really - unless you need 8 GiB of RAM in your PB 64-bit won't do much for you. (And besides, a PB with 8 GiB of RAM would be big, hot and heavy!!!)
Maybe someday in the next year or two there will be enough 64-bit applications (absolutely none for OS X today, none) and memory will shrink so that 8 GiB will fit in 2 SO-DIMMs.
And, that someday in the next year or two, the dual-core e700 with 64-bit addressing will be available.
_________________________
Think about it - doesn't it make sense to continue to base the PB on chips from a low-wattage embedded heritage rather than from a heritage of bad-ass liquid cooled servers?
A G4 derivative with a fast bus, better memory, dual-core would be a great chip for a high end laptop.
You want performance, right? Does it matter which chip is used if the results are good?
I wonder if Apple will be smart enough to *never* put a G5 (or G6) in a PB....
G5 = 5th generation = dual-die G4? 🙂
Back in the "G5 next week" (a year before it happened) days, i remember the argument being made that Apple might take the newer revision of the G4 and call it a G5 for marketing purposes.
While I'm glad they didn't do it then, maybe they're thinking about it again now? Awfully tempting to the marketing folks, don't you think? 🙂
Back in the "G5 next week" (a year before it happened) days, i remember the argument being made that Apple might take the newer revision of the G4 and call it a G5 for marketing purposes.
While I'm glad they didn't do it then, maybe they're thinking about it again now? Awfully tempting to the marketing folks, don't you think? 🙂
Yeah, what are the odds of Freescale screwing up? Actually I'm a believer, the question remains, how long has Apple had access to these chips. Apple are unlikely to drop G5 PB development and start from scratch using the e600.thatwendigo said:
So we are left with a number of scenarios; Apple has had the chip for some time and have quietly been building a PB around it, in which case we could see a product in the next PB release; or Apple are sick of dealing with Mot and wouldn't touch the e600 with someone else's barge pole, instead focusing on shoehorning the G5 into a PB; or Apple now ditch their current G5 PB effort and start over with the e600, meaning the next PB release will be another minor speed bump while the e600 PB is being developed.
Frankly, the last scenario is unlikely, and the first scenario requires Steve to think with his brain instead of his ego, a possibility but given the frosty relations he's had with Mot in the recent past I think it is most likely the next PB will be a G5. Industry is littered with examples where the best tech didn't make it for whatever reason. Maybe YDL could package the e600 into a Linux laptop, then I wouldn't have to hang round MacRumors waiting for my next PB rumour fix.
AidenShaw
macrumors P6
Faith-based reasoning
Drop *what* development? Did I miss an announcement from Apple about the upcoming PB G5?
Maybe there is no PPC970 development project - maybe e600/e700 is what is being worked on now.
It would make more sense than trying to shoe-horn a hot server chip into a laptop. (Unless, they're adding the "Portable PowerMac G5" series in a larger form factor than the Ti/Al books....)
pigwin32 said:
Drop *what* development? Did I miss an announcement from Apple about the upcoming PB G5?
Maybe there is no PPC970 development project - maybe e600/e700 is what is being worked on now.
It would make more sense than trying to shoe-horn a hot server chip into a laptop. (Unless, they're adding the "Portable PowerMac G5" series in a larger form factor than the Ti/Al books....)
G5 yield issues
It sounds to me like G5 yields at IBM have been a big impediment. Has anyone heard if yeilds have gotten better? 😕
It sounds to me like G5 yields at IBM have been a big impediment. Has anyone heard if yeilds have gotten better? 😕
Sure, if Apple's relationship with Mot wasn't in the toilet. Right now I don't need an argument about which chip, I want a new PB and I'm not buying until the current G4 is replaced.AidenShaw said:
obDisclaimer: check my previous posts, I've been wrong every time I've speculated about a new PB.
quagmire
macrumors 604
As I said in my 5 computers updates coming soon thread, the pbook numbers 7,1 and 7,2 use the MacRISK4 architecture. The Pmac G5, the Xserve G5, and the upcoming imac G5 also use the MacRISK4 architecture. So that pretty much confirms for me the next rev of the pbook is going to be G5 and they are going to kill or cripple the 12" pbook.
quagmire said:
That's too bad if you're right...
A dual G4 is the way to go for Max Performance.
In you are right, we will get a G5 powerbook,
and probably have to wait 2 years to get a dual-core G5.
Whereas, If apple stuck with the G4,
we'd get dual-core in the next revision,
and give us breathing room to wait for IBM's G5 Dual-Core.
Now, for a personal Dual-Coor.
Pop pop, chink chink, slurp-slurp-slurp, glug-glug-glug... Ahhhh...
😀
maxvamp
macrumors 6502a
Ti--MING
I don't know about this one, as it has many temptations.
On one hand, you have a on die controller, and a faster, more advanced altivec engine...
On the other hand you have a released processor that has a lot of fanfare.
I would venture to say that Apple may be wanting to just move to the G5.. here is my reasoning:
- Apple has been through the Fat Binary thing in the past, I doubt that they really want to spend any more time in promoting fat binaries than they have to. You can optimize for a G5 without being 64-Bit, and this may be a motivation factor to move to this platform.
- We know that the G5 has powertune. We do not know how close IBM is to offering a variation of the G5 that could be used in notebooks, but at this point, the Freescale has not even been presented.
- In the past, it has take ~8 months from the presentation of a processor to the time mass production starts. If IBM is closer than 8 months to a G5 that is mobile ready ( and a new iMac makes me think that they are ), then I doubt we will see the dual e600. We may, however one day find a e700 in an iBook, or a eMac.
Oh, I wish I had my on die controller......
Max.
I don't know about this one, as it has many temptations.
On one hand, you have a on die controller, and a faster, more advanced altivec engine...
On the other hand you have a released processor that has a lot of fanfare.
I would venture to say that Apple may be wanting to just move to the G5.. here is my reasoning:
- Apple has been through the Fat Binary thing in the past, I doubt that they really want to spend any more time in promoting fat binaries than they have to. You can optimize for a G5 without being 64-Bit, and this may be a motivation factor to move to this platform.
- We know that the G5 has powertune. We do not know how close IBM is to offering a variation of the G5 that could be used in notebooks, but at this point, the Freescale has not even been presented.
- In the past, it has take ~8 months from the presentation of a processor to the time mass production starts. If IBM is closer than 8 months to a G5 that is mobile ready ( and a new iMac makes me think that they are ), then I doubt we will see the dual e600. We may, however one day find a e700 in an iBook, or a eMac.
Oh, I wish I had my on die controller......
Max.
hey, any validity to this? if it's real, that really suggests "a supercomputer in your lap" as the next logical step.
