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Phinius said:
In the article Motorola's Claudine Simson states in the last paragraph that a 90-nm PowerPC will be in production in 2004.

Look, I sat through a Motorola NDA briefing in the summer of 1998 about their processor roadmap. They guaranteed quad-core G4's running at 900MHz (I think, maybe 800) by the 1st quarter of '01.

Need I say more?
 
mbs said:
I'm just wondering when Mot will apply the gallium arsenide on silicon technology to their CPU

GaAs tends to be much more expensive to produce. This is the stuff Cray's chips were made of.
 
thatwendigo:

I not concerned with samples, I care about products. I'm not aware of a 90nm Moto processor, perhaps there is one on the market. Someone should tell me about it. Unless Moto has a 90nm chip out, and a fairly complex one at that, then I don't think they can be viewed as being ahead of Intel in the tech game. Like I was saying, its easy to critisize Intels 90nm progress from the sidelines.

Centrino 1.7ghz @25-30w roughly equals P4 2.8-3.0ghz.
P4 90nm 3.4ghz @90-105w roughly equals P4 130nm 3.4 @75-80w
Looks like a design flaw to me.
Hey I'm not gona defend the Prescott. I'm just saying this isn't proof that Intel botched 90nm. Wait to see a 90nm Pentium M, then we can look at process and design separately.

It's part of what makes the Celeron so much faster than the P-III.
Well clearly cutting cache below a certain point is a severe problem. Adding "extra" cache is totally different. Going to 2MB of on-die cache (from 512k) didn't keep the P4EE ahead of A64.

The VX != a mere 750. Like the Centrino, which I have repeatedly compared it to, it was a redeisgn that used a more efficient core design and new factors from later processors.
Precisely why I don't believe it ever existed. Why would IBM work so hard for a design which, apparently, is primarily going to go into low-margin Macs? It could go into the embedded market but I'm thinking that most all IBM's embedded customers that want features like AltiVec are already running Moto chips. IBM would have a fight on its hands, no easy money there.

The e600 is pin-compatible with the G4 and backwards compatible with the processor's instruction set. Whether or not that means the FSB is ruled out is something I'm not fully qualified to speculate on, but I'd love to see your justification for that claim.
Isn't the e600 a G4? Perhaps I'm confused. But in any case, I'm not aware of any processor which has significantly redesigned its FSB without changing pinouts. Even if no new pins need to be added, the DDR signalling isn't gona work with an old chipset, so what's the point of being pin-compatible? Pin-compatible is all about drop-in replacement, such as 7455 to 7457.

Also, the e600 (G4e-based) and e700 (new design) will both have 128-bit dual-precision SIMD (AltiVec) engines.
Really? Dual-presion SIMD floats I could get excited about. However I've read informative articles that suggests it would be hard to do cause the execution units would be huge.
 
ClimbingTheLog said:
Look, I sat through a Motorola NDA briefing in the summer of 1998 about their processor roadmap. They guaranteed quad-core G4's running at 900MHz (I think, maybe 800) by the 1st quarter of '01.

Need I say more?
Not a word, those of us long time Mac users know all about Moto's so called fictional dreams and road maps, we know all about the year at 500 or 450 rather and we know about the year at 1.42 or should i say 1.33. enough talk, show me a chip that can hang with AMD's Fx53 or even a stale yet still much faster P4. so Moto has a chip that equals a 2.0 P4 from 2 years ago. BFD! Moto is still Last place when you look at Intel,AMD & IBM. Still amazed Apple went with this looser. Biggest reason for Apples lost marketshare is this slow cpu and Apples piss pot poor marketing.
 
thatwendigo said:
There are issues besides the chip that will need to be solved before the G5 can go into an iMac that's even remotely the formfactor that's currently in use. Maybe it will end up being resolved in a some unforseen way, maybe it's possible that Apple's got something up their sleeves and I'm about to eat my words about the heat being too great when they release a 2.0ghz iMac in the gumdrop white machines.
Seems clear Apple's got something up their sleeves relative to the current iMac. Otherwise wouldn't you think they'd have gotten a refresh update by now since all other G4 systems recently got one? Waiting until WWDC now in light of that would be a disappointment, which the current models can't afford. Regardless of what happens, it sure looks to me like WWDC will be a pivotal time for the destiny of the iMac. Or I'll eat my words when it gets a refresh update next Tuesday. :)
 
This isn't 1998 and I didn't post 2 1/2 year projections.

ClimbingTheLog said:
Look, I sat through a Motorola NDA briefing in the summer of 1998 about their processor roadmap. They guaranteed quad-core G4's running at 900MHz (I think, maybe 800) by the 1st quarter of '01.

Need I say more?

Your stating you sat in on a Motorola briefing that gave a talk about a roadmap two and one half years into the future. My links were to statements about chip designs that were already being tested in 2003 and were scheduled to go into production sometime this year.

In order for Motorola or Freescale to continue producing PowerPC processors that can be used in the embedded market (or even Apple's computer market), advancements must be made to the chips performance. At some point design changes must be made in order for the chip to stay even remotely competitive. Furthermore, the G4 has had at least yearly updates in performance since August of 1999. It just that many Mac users are disappointed that it's performance has not kept up with Intel's speed advances. Seeing how Apple's marketshare has been sliding since a peak of 12% in 1992, it seems inevitable that at some point Motorola and or IBM would find it difficult to keep up with Intel in performance processors used in personal computers.

To believe that the G4 or a derivitive will never make it to a 90-nm process in the near future is ignoring the facts that have happened in the last year and a half. First, Motorola (or Freescale) now has two major chip manufacturing partners and use of a state-of-the-art chip making in France. Second, Motorola's chip manufacturing division is now making money after going several quarters of heavy losses and cutbacks. Third, the G4 has advanced about as far as it can realistically go in frequency using a 166MHz bus and a a 130-nm process. It quite simply would need a change in bandwidth in order to move the core up to 2 GHz on a 90-nm process, and to stay competitive in the embedded market.

Motorola or Freescales projections of a 3GHz+ processor are also a natural progression for the G4. Motorola has stated numerous times that they intended to keep the average power use at a peak of 20 watts. In the last two process shrinks the top average power use of the G4 has moved below 20 watts. Moving to a 65-nm process would shrink the power use enough to add more pipeline stages and advance the frequency to 3GHz. This has happened once before with the move from 4 pipeline stages to it's current 7 pipeline stages. I'd expect to see about 10 pipeline stages for the e700 at the 65-nm process level. Seeing how Freescale has chip manufacturing partners, I'd expect the move to a 65-nm process to occur as early as the beginning of 2006 or late 2005.
 
ClimbingTheLog said:
Look, I sat through a Motorola NDA briefing in the summer of 1998 about their processor roadmap. They guaranteed quad-core G4's running at 900MHz (I think, maybe 800) by the 1st quarter of '01.

Need I say more?

As much as I'm hoping we don't get burnt again, Freescale is already moving faster than Motorola was on the PowerPC arcitecture. Their new e500 core is on the line right now, runs ramping up for the embedded market.

On top of that, a huge portion of the Crolles2 budget is into research into alternative materials, process shrinks, and alternatives to traditional COMD techniques. This isn't just Motorol doing this... Phillips and ST are heavily invested in the line, and AMD, Sony, and others are buying into the PowerPC's newer, more open standards as well.

If nothing else, we ought to see a broadening of the technology over the next few years. That, and all these licensees are paying into IBM's coffers. They do own PowerPC, after all.

ClimbingTheLog said:
GaAs tends to be much more expensive to produce. This is the stuff Cray's chips were made of.

As I mentioned above, I've been doing some research into the purposes of the fab, the R&D space, and their outlined projects for the next couple of years. Depending on just how much success they have, Motorola might start creating a little IP of their own on the PowerPC, something that they don't necessarily need to license from IBM. It may not directly help Apple, but the platform needs to expand in general if there's going to be the kind of economy of scale that would start to favor us.

ddtlm said:
I not concerned with samples, I care about products. I'm not aware of a 90nm Moto processor, perhaps there is one on the market. Someone should tell me about it. Unless Moto has a 90nm chip out, and a fairly complex one at that, then I don't think they can be viewed as being ahead of Intel in the tech game. Like I was saying, its easy to critisize Intels 90nm progress from the sidelines.

There is no Motorola chip actively being sold at 90nm that I am aware of. Granted, I'm new to seiving their site for information and they seem to be in a transitional phase. However, their entire top-end line is set to be transferred down to 90nm, with a whole wing of the fab dedicated to the 300mm wafer 90nm process.

Hey I'm not gona defend the Prescott. I'm just saying this isn't proof that Intel botched 90nm. Wait to see a 90nm Pentium M, then we can look at process and design separately.

Dothan. 10th of May, unless they slip the deliver date.

Well clearly cutting cache below a certain point is a severe problem. Adding "extra" cache is totally different. Going to 2MB of on-die cache (from 512k) didn't keep the P4EE ahead of A64.

That's because the Athlon 64 FX series (which is the only Athlon 64 to beat the P4EE, as of the last time I looked) uses a lowered version of the Opteron's memory controller, which AMD licensed from Cray. It's got a far better FSB and memory fabric than the Pentium ever has. Also, the Athlon 64 is a newer chip, not just a further ramping of the same execution cores and pipelines that were introduced three or four years ago.

Precisely why I don't believe it ever existed. Why would IBM work so hard for a design which, apparently, is primarily going to go into low-margin Macs? It could go into the embedded market but I'm thinking that most all IBM's embedded customers that want features like AltiVec are already running Moto chips. IBM would have a fight on its hands, no easy money there.

The G3 is still used in embedded designs, and if IBM could offer their G3 customers extra value and function on the processor they've been using, it wouldn't hurt them. Having something competitive with the G4 would give them a chance at Motorola's market, and unless I'm vastly mistakenm IBM's got a much bigger warchest than Motorola. They could weather the storm much better than even Intel could.

Also, unless I'm mistaken again, IBM is the only manufacturer of 750s.

Isn't the e600 a G4? Perhaps I'm confused. But in any case, I'm not aware of any processor which has significantly redesigned its FSB without changing pinouts. Even if no new pins need to be added, the DDR signalling isn't gona work with an old chipset, so what's the point of being pin-compatible? Pin-compatible is all about drop-in replacement, such as 7455 to 7457.

I linked to the Freescale PowerPC core site earlier in this post, but just to save you time, I'll confirm that their documents say the e6000 is a "G4e," or MPC74xx series derivative. I find it likely that if they're making it as backwards compatible as the site claims, the memory bus will run in older boards as well, just not with the advantages of the new bus or memory clock.

Even without them it's got a better SIMD engine and a higher clock.

Really? Dual-presion SIMD floats I could get excited about. However I've read informative articles that suggests it would be hard to do cause the execution units would be huge.

From the horse's mouth:
The e600 core is instruction set and pin compatible with the G4 core used in the award-winning, high-performance MPC74xx family of PowerPC processors; however the e600 core is planned to scale beyond 2 GHz and to support Chip Multiprocessing (CMP). Like the G4 core, the superscalar e600 core is designed to issue four instructions per clock cycle (three instructions plus one branch) into eleven independent execution units, and to include a full 128-bit implementation of Freescale's advanced AltiVec Single Instruction Multiple Data (SIMD) vector processing technology.

SoC Implementation to include new buses and architectures:
In addition to leveraging enhanced PowerPC™ processor cores optimized for SoC design methodologies, Freescale's scalable SoC platforms draw from the company's large and growing portfolio of intellectual property (IP). This broad portfolio includes system fabrics (RapidIO™, SerDes), network acceleration (10/100/100 Ethernet, ATM, HDLC, etc.), external buses (PCI, PCI-X, etc.), memory controllers (DDR and DDRII), general communications peripherals, and security engines. Access to Freescale's IP portfolio makes it fast, easy and cost-effective to mix and match functional blocks and develop new SoC-based products optimized for a wide range of applications.

Incidentally, the e500 embedded processor has a cool feature. It does on-chip encryption enhancements for industry standards like MD-5, RC5, and other that are listed in the specs.

Dont Hurt Me said:
Not a word, those of us long time Mac users know all about Moto's so called fictional dreams and road maps, we know all about the year at 500 or 450 rather and we know about the year at 1.42 or should i say 1.33.

Yes, we knows about a company under different management and entirely under Motorola's heel. Supposedly, Freescale is completely reorganized. It might as well be another company with the same IP and licensing rights.

I'm not saying that they're going to deliver on the promises they're making, but there might be reason to at least take them more seriously. The first of the new core designs is done.

enough talk, show me a chip that can hang with AMD's Fx53 or even a stale yet still much faster P4. so Moto has a chip that equals a 2.0 P4 from 2 years ago. BFD! Moto is still Last place when you look at Intel,AMD & IBM.

Depends on the market. Embedded? Intel and Motorola are the big players, not AMD or IBM, though IBM does sell a large number of G3s in this market.

For laptop performance? Intel all the way right now, short of a major revolution from IBM or Motorola in the next few months. In a week, the Dothan 90nm Centrino is supposed to be droppping in at 2.0ghz. Considering that the 1.7 performs like a 3.0 ghz, the 2.0ghs could very well be faster than the top of the line P4 Northwoods, let alone the Prescotts. Scaling linearly, the 2.0 would reach a theoretical equivalent of a 3.5ghz P4, and since the Athlon FX and P4EE are neck and neck at the moment... It's interesting all over, right now.

Still amazed Apple went with this looser. Biggest reason for Apples lost marketshare is this slow cpu and Apples piss pot poor marketing.

I'm sure it has nothing to do with the hundreds of PC component manufacturers and OEMs that compete on price. :rolleyes:
 
sjk said:
Seems clear Apple's got something up their sleeves relative to the current iMac. Otherwise wouldn't you think they'd have gotten a refresh update by now since all other G4 systems recently got one? Waiting until WWDC now in light of that would be a disappointment, which the current models can't afford. Regardless of what happens, it sure looks to me like WWDC will be a pivotal time for the destiny of the iMac. Or I'll eat my words when it gets a refresh update next Tuesday. :)

I'm predicting the death of the iMac as we've known it, to be replaced by an unannounced product. The iMac concept has run for seven years and it's getting a little long in the tooth.

Barring that, we'll probably see a major revision of the machines at WWDC. My guess is that they're either going to be dual G4s or single G5s at around 1.6-1.8ghz, though either one will probably require a new form factor.

Oh, and nicely done, Phinius. I still retain my skepticism, but let's say that I'm open to possibilities at this point.
 
ddtlm said:
Well clearly cutting cache below a certain point is a severe problem. Adding "extra" cache is totally different. Going to 2MB of on-die cache (from 512k) didn't keep the P4EE ahead of A64.

Both IBM and FreeScale are probably going to go for adding more processors on a chip for their respective 970 and G4 designs, rather than adding much more cache as Intel is doing with the Pentium 4 and Pentium-M. Motorola had already announced plans last year to make a dual-core G4 that tops out at 2GHz+ (presumably at the 90-nm level) and IBM could very well put 3-9XX processors on one chip at the 65-nm process size. A rough calculation puts a 3 core 9XX chip at about the same die size and watt use as the 970. Intel would be hard pressed to put three Pentium 4 processors on one reasonably sized chip and the Pentium-M is expected to move to dual-core in 2006.

Isn't the e600 a G4? Perhaps I'm confused. But in any case, I'm not aware of any processor which has significantly redesigned its FSB without changing pinouts. Even if no new pins need to be added, the DDR signalling isn't gona work with an old chipset, so what's the point of being pin-compatible? Pin-compatible is all about drop-in replacement, such as 7455 to 7457.

The e600 will not need a Northbridge bus, as it will have a onboard memory controller. FreeScale does state that the e600 will be pin compatable with the 74XX series. The e600 is just another name for a continuation of Motorola's 74XX series of chips. The e700 series will evidently have much more extensive changes to the architecture.

Really? Dual-presion SIMD floats I could get excited about. However I've read informative articles that suggests it would be hard to do cause the execution units would be huge.

The G4 has four independent 128-bit single precision Altivec units (simple, complex, floating, permute). Adding RapidIO and a onboard DDR/DDRII memory controller, by way of the e600, should move the G4s floating point performance up considerably.
 
iMac legacy/destiny

That's a well formulated and sensible prediction, thatwendigo.

Not to belabor this too much, but the eMac/iMac legacy has become somewhat of a sour note in Apple's product offerings. Just today I read something about that starting in the third paragraph of this Bill Palmer article. His claim is basically that Apple was unable to carry out its original plan to completely replace the original iMac, thus the eMac was born. And that jives with Steve Jobs' claim around that time that the CRT was dead. Whoops.

So, it'll be interesting if an iMac replacement is announced and with it the overdue retirement of the "misplaced" iMac name (I hope; no sentimentality here).

Wish I could make it to my first WWDC this year since it's looking like an emphasis will be on desktop hardware announcements and that's what I've been waiting to get for over a year.
 
thatwendigo said:
I'm predicting the death of the iMac as we've known it, to be replaced by an unannounced product. The iMac concept has run for seven years and it's getting a little long in the tooth.

Barring that, we'll probably see a major revision of the machines at WWDC. My guess is that they're either going to be dual G4s or single G5s at around 1.6-1.8ghz, though either one will probably require a new form factor.

Oh, and nicely done, Phinius. I still retain my skepticism, but let's say that I'm open to possibilities at this point.

I've got to admit that I love ideas circulating around concerning a modular design that would allow a new Mac to be AIO - but would also allow it to be a stand alone unit. I agree that the iMac has reached the end of the line. The original G3 iMac was a brilliant design and necessary to the Mac's rejuvenation. The FP iMac was even more brilliant, but I really think the AIO has it the wall (although there may be a market for another LCD AIO to replace the eMac to the education market).

I'm optimistic for the future, though I feel that Apple needs to be able to offer better options on their low-end. And there's a need for better video cards across the lineup. I realize this is not Apple's fault, but they should be more proactive in getting essential hardware developed for the platform.
 
ClimbingTheLog said:
GaAs tends to be much more expensive to produce. This is the stuff Cray's chips were made of.

Yes, but now one can deposit it on silicon - you need some titanate as an interlayer to remove the strain because silicon and GaAs have different cell constants - so you need less material.
 
ClimbingTheLog said:
Why do we care again about the Apple displays? Yeah, they're pretty. A few years ago Apple put out the best displays in terms of pixel density and viewing angle, but the market caught up and how much beyond 180 degrees do we need? ADC is interesting but not revolutionary.

I pay Apple's premiums for their computers as they bring alot to bear to the equation, but with displays? - they got out of the printer market because they were only equal with the competition, when will they do the same with displays? Pay Samsung something to make an Aluminum Ives-Edition frame and be done with it.

Sorry this is just a small thing. You can't have anything beyond a 180º viewing angle because the other side would have to be pure LCD as well :) You could get it to work but you'd have to work pretty hard on lighting it. Seriously though, the highest potential viewing area for an LCD display (unless it's like an LCD window) cannot be more that 180º. 180º goes from viewing parallel to the display to viewing it from the opposite side along the same parallel.
 
So my questions are:

1. How much heat do these things dissipate?

2. What is the current and maximum FSB bus speed?

3. How efficient are they at MP?

4. How does the performance compare with a G4 or G5 clock-for-clock?

5. How much do they cost?
 
Interesting read

This whole thread has been the most interesing read I've had for months, thanks to everyone who contributed. It's certainly given me a lot to think about.

P.S. Zync, I think ClimbingTheLog was being ironic about the 180º+ viewing angle.
 
T'hain Esh Kelch said:
Nice to know that the Powerbook is a consumer product. You should tell Steve that, 'cause he doesnt know it!
Suggest that you read what he said.

Here is it again:

Originally Posted by rastalin94
Actaully keeping the G4 line alive and increasing the speed could help Apple keep the consumer and pro line different.
Pro Line = G5
Consumer Line - G4
a 2GHz iBook would be a very nice little machine.
He is saying the G4 would be in the Consumer Line, which is the iBook!

The PowerBook is the Pro Line, which would be a G5 in his argument.

Sushi
 
rdowns said:
Nice to know people love to post things without any regard to what was actually written.

He said a 2GHz iBook would be nice. An iBook is not a PowerBook.
rdowns, you beat me to it. Good catch!

Sushi
 
Rower_CPU said:
But if you're differentiating pro and consumer lines based on the processor, PowerBooks are "consumer" machines.

I don't think he was referring to the iBook part.
You are getting the posters mixed up.

Go back to the beginning of the thread and read them again.

One person is saying:

Pro Line G5
Consumer Line G4

Another is saying:

Desktops G5
Portables G4

It helps to read the posts before posting. We have two ideas going in parallel here.

IMHO, of these two concepts, I like the first one the best (Pro=G5, Con=G4). It keeps it simple and is easy to understand/differentiate.

Sushi
 
If your questions are about the next version of the G4...

HiRez said:
1. How much heat do these things dissipate?

Last year Motorola stated that the dual-core G4 chip would dissipate 25 watts at 1.5 GHz. That's at least 25% more than a 1.5GHz 7447A G4 uses now. Whether Apple would use it in a notebook computer is debatable. A 2GHz dual-core should use about 35 watts, by my rough estimate. That would make it's power use high for a notebook computer, but it also dispenses with a Northbridge memory controller (it will be on the processor) which uses some watts. The main memory will run at a faster MHz and probably use more watts, but if Apple uses DDR-II memory then that would reduce the memory power use somewhat.


2. What is the current and maximum FSB bus speed?

The G4 FSB currently tops out at 166MHz, but the 7457 has the capability of using up to 2MB of L3 cache. Since L3 cache is accessable to the processor much faster than going to main memory, then the use of a L3 cache probably makes up for the slow bus speed. But since most people don't seem to be aware of the heirarchy of cache to main memory, then that could be a big reason why Apple dispensed with the added expense of using it in any Mac computers.


3. How efficient are they at MP?

Don't know at this point, but the second G4 processor on the PowerMacs added up to a 50% performance boost on some applications that made use of a second processor.


4. How does the performance compare with a G4 or G5 clock-for-clock?

Can't say for sure without seeing the chip in action. Moving the memory controller onboard will reduce latency due to shortening the distance to main memory. Also there is the RapidIO chip interconnect, which has similar characteristics to Hypertransport used in Opteron. On some applications a dual-core e600 (G4) should be at least 50% faster clock-for-clock compared to the current G4s and probably faster than the G5. The question is cost and power use compared to the G5. The G5 uses a more costly and complex memory subsystem than this dual-core e600 would need. The G5 uses a northbridge memory controller and dual channel memory. The e600 should have a onboard memory controller and use single channel memory which will also reduce power use compared to the G5 memory subsystem.

Aceshardware compared the dual 1.25GHz G4 PowerMac to Athlon and Pentium 4 powered computers. The authors conclusion was that the 1.25GHz G4 was comparable in speed to at least a 1.8GHz Pentium 4. So if you add a boost of 60% to bring the G4 to 2GHz and add a 50% speed increase with the use of a second processor onboard, then that brings it up to about the performance of a 4.3GHz Pentium 4 without Hyperthreading. With two processors sitting side-by-side on the chip and using RapidIO, along with a onboard controller, it could very well be that a 2GHz dual-core e600 G4 could match the performance of a 4.3GHz Pentium 4 on at least some applications.

I'd say that the current G4 has comparable performance to the Pentium III clock-for-clock. The Pentium-M is about 50% faster than the Pentium III clock-for-clock on SPECint2000 and about 70-80% faster on SPECfp2000. So adding another processor and faster subsystem should bring the G4 performance more in line to what the Pentium-M is capable of.


5. How much do they cost?

Judging from the almost 50% die shrink that IBM achieved moving the 970 to the 90-nm process, the upcoming dual-core 90-nm G4 could be not much larger than the 130-nm G4. So a dual-core G4 could cost not much more than the $245 retail list price that Motorola states for the 7447A used in the latest PowerBooks. Compare that to the $600 list price for the topend Pentium 4 and Pentium-M chips. What IBM is charging Apple for the G5 is unknown, but I can't see IBM being stupid enough to not charge more than what the G4 is costing Apple. Afterall, the G5 is supposed to be a higher performing chip and should therefore cost a premium.
 
anjaki said:
This whole thread has been the most interesing read I've had for months, thanks to everyone who contributed. It's certainly given me a lot to think about.

P.S. Zync, I think ClimbingTheLog was being ironic about the 180º+ viewing angle.

Maybe, but it didn't read like it. Though I'd been awake since like 2 p.m. on saturday and my post was at like 8:30 sunday morning :)
 
thatwendigo:

That's because the Athlon 64 FX series (which is the only Athlon 64 to beat the P4EE, as of the last time I looked) ... Also, the Athlon 64 is a newer chip, not just a further ramping of the same execution cores and pipelines that were introduced three or four years ago.
Ah yes, but as you recall my point was that simply adding cache to an existing design does not make it high-performance, which was what "Mr. MacPhisto" claimed about the Pentium M some posts ago. So we are agreeing, it seems. :)

Having something competitive with the G4 would give them a chance at Motorola's market, and unless I'm vastly mistakenm IBM's got a much bigger warchest than Motorola.
Well they could do it, but I'm just thinking that the incentive for them to do it is small. They want to turn a profit. To me it seems that they would profit more by working on the 970 family, and in my opinion the fact they stuck to 512k L2 at 90nm shows that they want to make it attractive to lower-end machines.

I find it likely that if they're making it as backwards compatible as the site claims, the memory bus will run in older boards as well, just not with the advantages of the new bus or memory clock.
Hmmm well I guess its not impossible that the processor could support two different FSB modes. That would be a clever trick.

Phinius:

Intel would be hard pressed to put three Pentium 4 processors on one reasonably sized chip and the Pentium-M is expected to move to dual-core in 2006.
Yeah the way its looking, Intel is gona be hard pressed to do anything useful with P4's. :) I'm thinking that you'll be seeing Intel chips that look something like A64, in the future.

The e600 will not need a Northbridge bus, as it will have a onboard memory controller. FreeScale does state that the e600 will be pin compatable with the 74XX series.
OK, this seems like a reasonable direction to take.

On some applications a dual-core e600 (G4) should be at least 50% faster clock-for-clock compared to the current G4s and probably faster than the G5.
I'd put a lot of emphasis on some there. If there's one thing time has shown me, its that people always overestimate the performance of the "next big thing". Sure it'll be faster than a current G4, but this appears to be the same core as we've had for the past couple years, so lets not expect miracles. Its not exactly advanced, practically an in-order processor, sporting just a single unit capable of doing double-precision floating point math. If I were to characterize the estimated performance boost of this e600, I'd say "from 0% to 50%". I couldn't see much a boost in, for example, code that was mostly bottlenecked on double-precision float math. That sort of thing will definately continue to be the G5's stomping grounds.

The e700, though...
 
agreed

rastalin94 said:
Actaully keeping the G4 line alive and increasing the speed could help Apple keep the consumer and pro line different.

Pro Line = G5
Consumer Line - G4

a 2GHz iBook would be a very nice little machine.

The ibook will stay a G4 intill G6 comes out. They will make the powerbook a 2.5 Ghz+ G5. I am only taking the G4 intill G6 perdiction because when the G5 came out ibook G4's came out. With the powerbook G5's we will see a 20" screen.
 
well it's good to see that Moto is still coming out with new chips (or at least planning to).

i don't think it's possible for Apple to say definitely whether or not they're going to stick with IBM now, or what will happen. as we've seen far too often chips get delayed and there are yeild issues that prevent G5 Xserves from being released on time. ;)

it's going to be a good thing for Apple to have both Moto and IBM working on chips now.
 
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