PowerPC 970 requires process shrink to reach 2.5Ghz

[noverflow]

I agree... if we can see 64 bit color... why would we want to edit in it?

but on a diff note... i have 1.5Gb of ram... and i do run out when im doing big stuff in photoshop... 20 by 30 inches at 266 dpi with 5 layers takes about 1.6Gb of ram to do... and because i have 1.5... my swap goes carzy and i cant even get the doc till the swap is cleared. And i would like to do bigger, more complex things... i would like at least the option to have 4gb of ram.

 

[ddtlm]

KingArthur:

Ok, there seems to be a little confusion in what I said earlier. When I made the example of the 64-bit processor, I knew that it doesn't operate scalable like the AltiVec vector processing unit. The altivec can do 4-32bits, 8-16bits, ect. ... Maybe they can find ways of speeding up certain functions that usually require more than one pass through the processor to complete.

No no no, you're still saying exactly the same thing as ktlx very eloquently told you was wrong. 64-bits allows certain things to be spead up, such as huge bitwise ops, and such as working with integers that are too large to store in 32 bits. Everything else is a vector op, seems to me, and we have 128-bit AltiVec for that.

I was merely trying to say that along with the new 64-bit code comes possibilities that most programmers are probably not even aware of.

64-bit machines have been out since 1993 or so.

Rincewind42:

All indications show that the PPC970 will be a cheaper part than the PPC74xx.

Hardly. Even on 130nm the PPC-970 is larger than a 180nm 7455, and it uses a more complex and therefore more expensive FSB. Don't forget that the more complex FSB also means a more complex system controller, and don't forget that since CPU's cannot share FSB's dua CPU or greater machines will require more complex motherboards (multiple FSB's routed on it) and system controllers with multiple FSB ports. Eek.

No L3 cache, those things are expensive as hell, easily costing as much as the CPU itself

The off-die L3 should not be that expensive. It is very unremarkable stuff.

nuckinfutz:

Apple is not going to shoehorn a .18um G4 into an iBook

Except for the 12" TiBook.

ftaok:

At $189 per 10,000, the 7457's are a whole lot cheaper than the 7455's. I think the 7455's were priced around $300 per 10,000.

The price depends on the clockspeeds, which you didn't mention for either chip.

ffakr, ktlx:

Boy am I glad to see that you two are here shooting down these endless "64 bit is twice as fast" posts. I'm just getting frustrated by them all... shoot down one, and another pops on tomorrow in another thread... and it may be written by the same guy. Just imagine what will happen when Apple's PR starts to roll, it's gona be like D-Day holding off the RDF-ed invaders (except this time the good guys are the defenders of course).

Hattig:

Intel want to go 64-bit in 2008 for the consumer. That is too late in my opinion. The consumer will already have been enticed by the marketing talk of AMD and Apple for 4 years by then, regarding 64-bits - and will have purchased because they desired it, not out of any particular need.

Right now Intel is just trying to discredit AMD and IBM while trying to save their Itanium, but I bet they'll have a 64-bit consumer chip ready to go long before 2008... they'll just disable the 64-bit support (like they did with Hyperthreading) until the time is right.

64-bit integers are great for certain applications, particularly encryption and decryption like SSL.

But is AltiVec better?

Maybe in 5 years time he will have 16 GB, and be working on images or raw video with 64 or 128-bit per pixel colour depth... or running several apps at the same time that all require a lot of memory, as you edit multiple images on your 2 OLED 2560x2048 128-bit displays ..

You know, some new video cards (GF-FX) are doing 16-bit and higher FP per color already. I expect that idea will spread to software some day.

 

[Kid Red]

Originally posted by ddtlm
KingArthur:

Hardly. Even on 130nm the PPC-970 is larger than a 180nm 7455, and it uses a more complex and therefore more expensive FSB. Don't forget that the more complex FSB also means a more complex system controller, and don't forget that since CPU's cannot share FSB's dua CPU or greater machines will require more complex motherboards (multiple FSB's routed on it) and system controllers with multiple FSB ports. Eek.


The off-die L3 should not be that expensive. It is very unremarkable stuff.

Well I have heard also the 970 may be cheaper also. Not sure if it's IBM or that more people are going to be using the chip or that IBM is making the chip anyway or something. The tech on the 970 doesn't facilitate it's price from what I read somewhere.

 

[ddtlm]

Kid Red:

Well I have heard also the 970 may be cheaper also.

Yeah, probably multiple times on this thread alone. Unfortunately that does not settle the issue of which chip is actually cheaper.

The tech on the 970 doesn't facilitate it's price from what I read somewhere.

I don't know what you mean by this.

 

[ftaok]

Originally posted by ddtlm
ftaok:


The price depends on the clockspeeds, which you didn't mention for either chip.

My bad. In both cases, the prices were for the 1ghz chip. I'm not sure how much the 1ghz 7455 costs these days. That was back in January 2002.

 

[reyesmac]

Steve said this was the year of the laptop, so whatever Powermac comes out, it probably wont be the fastest computer out there, just a speedbump. We wont be crossing the 2gig barrier this year.

 

[ffakr]

Originally posted by reyesmac
Steve said this was the year of the laptop, so whatever Powermac comes out, it probably wont be the fastest computer out there, just a speedbump. We wont be crossing the 2gig barrier this year.

Steve won't give us ANY hint of what's coming out on the desktop.
It was the "Year of the Laptop" because they started taking orders on the 17" Powerbook.

When the 64bit xServes arrive, it will be the year of the internet app... or some such thing.

When the 970 based desktops arrive, it will be the year of the workstation or some such catch phrase.

he could have had a warehouse full of 3GHz 970s and he would have only mentioned laptops is thats all they were ready to announce.

 

[ffakr]

Apple Blades

I had a thought a while back...

IBM has announced Blades with 970. They demo next week. They will likely ship in the not too distant future.

Apple has the xServe and the xRaid. They are the first step tword Apple entering the enterprise. Unfortunately, they fit a very specific need. They are small form, full featured servers with an impressive ammount of internal storage. They aren't designed to be big number crunchers, they aren't designed to be 'computationally dense' to possibly coin a phrase.

Apple is, however, courting sectors that require low cost, dense computational power... film, life sciences...

What is to stop Apple from releasing OS X or OS X Server (or OS X Cluster) on the IBM Blade servers???????
The instruction set is the same. most of the underlying architecture is the same (just need drivers for the chipsets).
Apple automatically gets blade servers overnight. They are also designed for specific applications that the xServe is not well suited for so they don't canabalize market, they expand presence in enterprise server rooms. Best of all, all the current software still works. You don't screw developers over by moving to x86 yet you still manage to expand your client base.

I'd be a brilliant move.

what cha all think?

 

[ddtlm]

ffakr:

What is to stop Apple from releasing OS X or OS X Server (or OS X Cluster) on the IBM Blade servers?

Well IBM would have to play along if Apple intends to rebadge the servers. I assume IBM would be a making a nice chunk of change, and that Apple would then have somewhat thinner margins that what they are used to. Still, it would be a cheap way for Apple to invade a new market, and I'd say it sounds like a good idea.

 

[suzerain]

Re: Re: interesting note...

Originally posted by noverflow
they are talking about a dual 800... the 1.25 is a sing processor... the dual 1ghz QS were doing 21M/s.... check out this page


http://www.xlr8yourmac.com/archives/jan02/013002.html

Ummm...did you even go to the site? According to their FAQ, they split the multiprocessor setups onto a separate page, which is where your xlr8yourmac numbers come from.

The speed I quoted is from a page ostensibly listing single processor speeds. Now, it's entirely possible someone submitted a bogus entry, I suppose, but it wasn't from the duals page.

Just go here and you'll see that.

 

[MacRETARD]

Re: Re: comparing apples to apples

Originally posted by bones
With a much faster bus.

I think you all are seriously under-estimating how fast these 970 machines will be.

The 970 spec scores currently are about the same as a 3 ghz p4. Thats a pretty standard benchmark. Also the P4 and intel will have a 800 mhz bus with dual 400mhz ddr, or faster rambus memory within a few months. Next on the intel roadmap is 1000 and 1200 mhz bus with a improved P4 core with improved HT.

Yeah it will be fast and competitive but its not going to be an x86 killer.

 

[beatle888]

Re: Re: crap-idy-crap crap

Originally posted by ffakr
Where is the real advantage in working on 128 bit color video?

the future, maybe there are possibilities that we will only see when we get 128 bit.

 

[Dont Hurt Me]

Just want to say it again, as long as apple keeps dicking around with the stagnating g4 they are going to loose more and more marketshare. I will not buy another g4 mac. I may upgrade my mac with a faster g4 but will never buy a new mac with this cpu. Apple had better wake up and replace that motorola lagger. The 970 is the answer to all of their hardware problems, without it its just more of the same old crap. I still think that all that xserve architecture is prepping those machines with it for the 970.

 

[Rincewind42]

Originally posted by ffakr
But this is a limitation of the development language, not the hardware... isn't it?

It is a limitation of the hardware. A hardware's pointer size is equal to the size of the registers used by the integer unit, therefore on a 32-bit platform a pointer is always going to be 32-bits. Now, using chip and OS specific techniques you can emulate larger memory areas in software. This is how DOS used to address more than 64k of memory, and why it uses a segmented memory architecture (and additionally how it broke past the 1MB barrier...). Using a segmented architecture the latest x86 can address 36-bits work of memory, but not in one application without OS hooks.

Personally, I'm pretty hard pressed to see the difference between 24bit and 32bit color. Do you need 3.4 x 10^38 colors?

That would be because there isn't one =). 24-bit and 32-bit both addresss 16 million colors, but 32-bit is typically used because it gives better memory access characteristics.

That said, there is a place for greater than 32-bit color, however it isn't very useful on the desktop yet.

Yeah it will be fast and competitive but its not going to be an x86 killer.

One to tie, two to kill =). That, and with Apple able to say that they have the same chip in desktops & laptops (which Intel won't even do anymore) I can see the old PowerBook G3 commercials coming back in new form.

Another data point that may be interesting to pro users is that while a 1.8Ghz 970 uses 42 watts, two 1.2 Ghz 970s would only use 38...

 

[nuckinfutz]

The 970 spec scores currently are about the same as a 3 ghz p4. Thats a pretty standard benchmark. Also the P4 and intel will have a 800 mhz bus with dual 400mhz ddr, or faster rambus memory within a few months. Next on the intel roadmap is 1000 and 1200 mhz bus with a improved P4 core with improved HT.

Yeah it will be fast and competitive but its not going to be an x86 killer.

Those are "Estimated" Spec scores by the way.

The PPC 970 will support up to a 900Mhz FSB and 6.4Bgps bandwidth.

Can support the same DDR AND run in SMP configurations. If Apple had the balls to create a Dual 1.8Ghz 970 system then yes it would be faster overall than whatever Intel has.

Intels Hyperthreading "needs" improvement. Currently it is not very efficient. I expect IBM's implemtation to be superior in the Power5.

Needless to say. If Apple is aggressive Mac users won't be having Intel envy for a while. That's something to look forward to.

 

[ffakr]

Re: Re: Re: crap-idy-crap crap

Originally posted by beatle888
the future, maybe there are possibilities that we will only see when we get 128 bit.

My point was actually that the human eye is not acute enough to discern a large palette of colors.

The JPEG format can store images that contain up to 16.7 million colors (termed as "24-bit" or "true-color" since the human eye can not differentiate between 2 colors that are next to each other in a "true-color" spectrum).
... from... http://dp3.lib.ndsu.nodak.edu/~nem/archive/

64bit color bit depths would allow for a pallet of 1.844 x 10^19 colors (that's 18,440,000,000,000,000,000 colors) while so called 'True Color' provides slightly more than 16,000,000 colors.

Even on the 'OLED 2560x2048' displays... there are only 5,242,880 pixels. You would need 3,518,437,208,884 of those monitors to display every color available. If you were playing 30 frame/sec video of smooth color blends... your video would play for 3,719 YEARS before it was able to display all of those colors.
If you had a 128 bit color panel, it would take the same movie 6.860277220920572e+22 years to play! (hope I got my math correct ;-))

Any Who... 64 bit and 128 bit color pallets are enormous. Too big to be useful to people.
Perhaps if you wanted to create some cinema classic filmed (rendered) entirely in subtle variations of one shade of aqua. ;-)

So... I was basically saying that I REALLY doubt that people will be running iMovie on 128bit video in 3 years. There is no benefit.

Additionally, assume a video stream of 640x480 resolution, 30 frames per second, 128bit color depth (fairly low rez, super high quality). You'd need over 140 MByte/second constant bandwidth to stream that video. That would require a solid state drive or striped 15K SCSI drives (that MIGHT be fast enough).
BTW... if you had a Firewire camera that could to that... it'd require the majority of a FW 1600 bus. FW 800 wouldn't come close, neither would a Gigabit ethernet connection.

... just playing with my calculator.

 

[ffakr]

Originally posted by Rincewind42
It is a limitation of the hardware. A hardware's pointer size is equal to the size of the registers used by the integer unit, therefore on a 32-bit platform a pointer is always going to be 32-bits. Now, using chip and OS specific techniques you can emulate larger memory areas in software. This is how DOS used to address more than 64k of memory, and why it uses a segmented memory architecture (and additionally how it broke past the 1MB barrier...). Using a segmented architecture the latest x86 can address 36-bits work of memory, but not in one application without OS hooks.

I was about to conceed this to you since you appear to know better than I...
but then I checked.
Technically we are both wrong. (I said 38bit, and it's 36bit)

36-bit physical address space for direct addressability of 64 Gigabytes of memory

from http://e-www.motorola.com/webapp/sps/site/prod_summary.jsp?code=MPC7455&nodeId=03M943030450467M98653

 

[MaxArturo]

Personally

I can't believe they woiuld do this

 

[Clockwork]

What is to stop Apple from releasing OS X or OS X Server (or OS X Cluster) on the IBM Blade servers???????

I reckon that would be a very bold move by both Apple and IBM if that should happen.
Apple have just ventured into a market where few thought they would ever see an Apple branded product, but I think that If Apple was to do this they would buy the chips from IBM and develop their own Blade systems under their own market name.
Apple continues to impress alot of people and all they need is speed. That is the only thing holding Apple back in every aspect.
The OS and the overall software portfolio has never been stronger and it will surely continue to develop.

Someone said something about Intel moving to a 1200Mhz fsb on an improved P4. wtf?!? Are you talking about the proposed P5 named "Prescott"? It will start out at 800Mhz and from there on who knows... The 970 will start out at 900Mhz, so that should give us a head start.
And something else people should think about when talking about how the 970 leveled with a 2.8Ghz P4 is that SPECint leaves out AltiVec. Something known to be the real power behind the G4 and I'm sure it will throw the 970 into #1 position in areas that really matter. Science, 3D, Film and Sound not that other areas don't matter, but this is where the real power hungry community is.

 

[MarkCollette]

Re: Re: crap-idy-crap crap

Originally posted by ffakr
But this is a limitation of the development language, not the hardware... isn't it?
I doubt any average user (and again, the article in question mentions average users) will be editing images or video with 64bit or 128bit color depths in a few years (again, the article said 3 [a few] years). Where is the real advantage in working on 128 bit color video? Can your eyes see the difference? Can your monitor or TV display at that depth? Maybe if you absolutely need to have a perfectly smooth fade of one color on a HDTV while still having a full pallet... then maybe you'd need a bazillion color pallet.
Personally, I'm pretty hard pressed to see the difference between 24bit and 32bit color. Do you need 3.4 x 10^38 colors?

128 bit video will not be using integral values like 24 bit and 32 bit video. Instead, the 128 bits are used to define alpha, red, green, blue as floating point components. This is part of the new OpenGL standard, and in the DirectX "standard". The reason being for maintaining precision over many, many calculations. Apparently this is required for photorealistic rendering.

 

[ffakr]

Originally posted by Clockwork
I reckon that would be a very bold move by both Apple and IBM if that should happen.
Apple have just ventured into a market where few thought they would ever see an Apple branded product, but I think that If Apple was to do this they would buy the chips from IBM and develop their own Blade systems under their own market name.
Apple continues to impress alot of people and all they need is speed. That is the only thing holding Apple back in every aspect.
The OS and the overall software portfolio has never been stronger and it will surely continue to develop.

Well, the beauty is, Apple doesn't need to spend R&D or worry about building, warehousing, or selling an IBM Blade server with OS X.
They just need to write the drivers for OS X to run on the blade. It should run on the processor with zero changes (though a recompile for 64bit would make sense).
Apple can simply release a blade version of OS X and IBM can sell it.
'Get your PowerPC 970 blade with Linux, AIX, or OS X. Run all in the same enclosure. Purchase the Xeon blade and you can even add Windows to the mix!'
The old slogan for IBM is "No one ever got fired for buying IBM". If Apple could get IBM to acknowledge that OS X runs on their blades... or even endorse it!... that would be a major coup for Apple as far as increasing Apple's enterprise reputation.

I'd be worth the work porting it even if they barely sold any copies... just the PR and Image would be awesome.

 

[ffakr]

Re: Re: Re: crap-idy-crap crap

Originally posted by MarkCollette
128 bit video will not be using integral values like 24 bit and 32 bit video. Instead, the 128 bits are used to define alpha, red, green, blue as floating point components. This is part of the new OpenGL standard, and in the DirectX "standard". The reason being for maintaining precision over many, many calculations. Apparently this is required for photorealistic rendering.

I did realize that CAD/CAM was interested in higher bit depths for precision. I had heard 48bit was being talked about.
I didn't realize that a 'color depth' would include alpha info for so called 64bit and 128 bit color. Usually there is a seperate value associated with the alpha channel.
I still don't see how you'd need 128bits though... especially for raw video or image editing.
32bit color with 16bits of alpha channel is considered high end right now. Even 64bits of room is vastly larger than that.

Thanks for the info though.

... stuborn old ffakr.

 

[macrumors12345]

Originally posted by Hattig
Where would I like to see Apple's product range this time next year?

Portable

Ultra-lite (12" PB, new products): G4 7457 @ 1.2 GHz (maybe 1.4 GHz)

iBook: G4 7457 @ 1.0 GHz (maybe 1.2 GHz)

Well, at least you are not crying for 970s across the board. I actually think you are shooting low here. This time next year? I would want the iBook to be at 1.3 Ghz 7457 and 12" PB at 1.6 Ghz 7457 (12" PB would also have faster memory bus, or L3 cache, or something to distinguish it from iBook).

Powerbook: 1.2 GHz IBM 970 (maybe 1.4 GHz)

Fine. Unless they transition as quickly to 90 microns as AMD does with Athlon-64 (kinda doubt it)...then I would expect 1.6 to 1.8 Ghz.

Consumer Desktop

iMac: 1.2 GHz IBM 970 to 1.6 GHz IBM 970

NO. The iMac will NOT have a 970 in it this year. And almost surely not at the beginning of next year either. Nor should it!! I would go for 1.8+ Ghz 7457 in this case, w/L3 cache and a good memory bus. Look, there ARE users who want a nice, affordable Mac that is fast but doesn't need to have supercomputing speed. Unless the 970 is cheaper across the board than the 7457 (which, remember, should be cheaper than the 7455 because of the process shrink), it makes no sense to force them to buy the more expensive 970 when a high clocked G4 meets the processing needs of many people. It doesn't make sense for the consumers, and it doesn't make good business sense to have no segmentation in your product line. If you go to the Dell website, you will see that only a small minority of their machines ship with 2.8 and 3.0 Ghz P4s. In fact, they sell many desktops with 1.8 and 2.0 Ghz Celerons. A G4 running at nearly 2 Ghz should be pretty competitive with a Celeron clocked as high as 3 Ghz, so (unlike today) Apple's low end machines would actually be quite competitive with low end PCs (albeit several hundred dollars more expensive). And this is as it should be. Honestly, if you really need a workstation class 64 bit chip in your iMac, then you should probably be looking at a Pro Machine. I think it could make sense for Apple to offer a single, high-end 970 iMac like the current 1 Ghz iMac. But nothing more than that.

If you want the 970, buy a Pro Machine. If not, sit back and watch as Apple doubles the clockspeed on the iMac in a matter of months. For many users, that is more than enough power. So why should they be forced to pay for more (for 970s across the board)?

Power Desktop

PowerMac: 1.8 GHz IBM 970 to 2.5 GHz IBM 970

Power Workstation

"PowerMacPro": Dual IBM 970's (1.8 GHz to 2.5 GHz)

Agree with these.

As you can see, I expect Apple to fully drop the G3 and G4 throughout their entire product range, except for the very low power 7457 in cheap and low-power systems.[/B]

I don't. Eventually, yes. But not this year, and not even next year. The G4 has been out since 1999, but the consumer laptops are still using the G3 (albeit only the G3 is currently fabbed on a lower power 0.13 micron process). They are going to want to differentiate their systems. And that makes sense.

 

[Hattig]

Originally posted by macrumors12345
I don't. Eventually, yes. But not this year, and not even next year. The G4 has been out since 1999, but the consumer laptops are still using the G3 (albeit only the G3 is currently fabbed on a lower power 0.13 micron process). They are going to want to differentiate their systems. And that makes sense.

This does depend entirely on the price of the IBM PPC 970 processor at different speed grades, which depends on IBM's fabrication yields for the processors, and how many of the things they can make.

I think that it is simple to have the same processor throughout the range, and to differentiate on processor speed, expandability and number of processors.

If the 1.2GHz PPC 970 from IBM processors are cheaper than the 1.6GHz 7457's from Motorola, then I don't see why Apple would want to use the 7457 processor, when it could get cheaper processors, and the advantage of 64-bit marketability.

So:
iMac3: 1.2GHz, 1.4GHz, 1.6GHz PPC970
PowerMac: 1.8GHz, 2.1GHz, 2.4GHz PPC970
PowerMacPro: 2x1.8GHz, 2x2.4GHz PPC970

However, if IBM aren't going to ship below 1.8GHz (as you could read the recent article as), then the iMacs will of course be faster 7457's.

And I did say that is what I would like, not what Apple will probably mess up with.

I agree, I was shooting a bit low with the iBook and PowerBook speeds But I do think that Apple will use a low-voltage 1.2GHz PPC 970 in the top of the range PowerBook, because it is only 20W or so. Maybe not in March, but by mid-year 2004.

 

[MacRETARD]

Originally posted by nuckinfutz
Those are "Estimated" Spec scores by the way.

The PPC 970 will support up to a 900Mhz FSB and 6.4Bgps bandwidth.

Can support the same DDR AND run in SMP configurations. If Apple had the balls to create a Dual 1.8Ghz 970 system then yes it would be faster overall than whatever Intel has.

Intels Hyperthreading "needs" improvement. Currently it is not very efficient. I expect IBM's implemtation to be superior in the Power5.

Needless to say. If Apple is aggressive Mac users won't be having Intel envy for a while. That's something to look forward to.

A few things:

1) Apple has annouced no new chip.
2) Intel does support dual cpus as well. Actually intel supports 32 cpus via SMP.
3) Yes intels hyper threading could use improvement, anything could use improvement but it is a feature that is out NOW, and is a feature that does help.
4) Intel supports SSE2 which in some benchmarks will blow away the G4 and altivec just like in other benchmarks (rc5?) the g4 blows away the P4. These specialized benchmarks mean little you have to look at a bunch if you want to get a good idea of performance.

Whats my point? The legendary holy grail of apple computing is not out yet. I think too many people have "G5 syndrome". How long have we been talking about the legendary pentium killer G5? To bash something that is out, and is useful(intels HT), while comparing it to something that is NOT out and you can only speculate on is stupid.

If Apple or AMD finally come out with the 64 bit chips for the desktop that support SMP at reasonable prices you can bet Intel will magically enable the P4 to be SMP capable. The only thing keeping the P4 from supporting SMP now is a hardware restriction intel adds so they can charge more for the Xeon cpus.