Re: macnn, and gigawire
Falleron> I think that the imac will stay with the G3 because IBM has announced the 1Ghz G3.
There's no guarantee that Apple will use the 750FX. They might, in
laptops, but I can't see Apple having G3 and G5 in their desktop line to
the exclusion of the G4, particularly when the G4 is faster at the same
clockspeed, with Altivec,
> Apple needs to stick with IBM because they are developing more than Motorola as far as I can see!
Apple would probably not be able to continue PPC development on their own
(should Moto want out), so a design partnership would be necessary. Less
partners is probably better and IBM strikes me as a better partner due to
its commitment to the POWER line and advanced technologies which can seep
down into PPC development, meaning less speculation and a more solid
foundation for future plans; if Apple knows what IBM's already done, then
Apple should be able to count on IBM being able to incorporate those
finished technologies into the PPCs; this is not possible with motorola
(conflicts with their embedded focus in any case; relatively low-tech). So
roll on IBM, at least for a design partnership, foundry partnerships are
another game altogether.
OTOH:
1) Motorola has still done an admirable job of designing the G4 in spite
Apple's insane turnovers (~18-24 months? the P6 is still around and that's
~95, for example).
2) IBM is in the hole further than Motorola is, although I'm not sure as
to the financial health of their processor design unit specifically. IBM
seems to be coping well enough with their insane debt load by the looks of
things (add salt to opinion).
ThlayliTheFierce> What about the whole multi-core thing? I remember
reading that the G5 was supposed to be multi-cored, but then I stopped
seeing things about it.
The latest MOSR has a few lines on it.
> Oh well, that probably means it was nothing more than a rumor.
... as if the increase in the number of execution units (7410 -> 7450) and
the multicored power4 wasn't a less-than-subtle reminder of the PPC's
shift towards increased thread-level parallelism.
http://www-3.ibm.com/chips/news/1999/microprocessor99.pdf
spikey> Im not sure if apple will stick with the G3 but i think they
should.
... not that you ever provided any convincing reason that they shouldn't
switch to the 7460 (apart from the 400 Mhz frontside bus that wasn't).
> The multi-core thing is quite an old rumor. I think it was just a spin-off from the multi-core G4 rumor.
Altivec was intended toward the G3 and multicoring toward the G4, as
rumour had it; I wouldn't be surprised if Apple's strict timetabling
forced certain things to be dropped.
> By the way, what would happen to a multi-core chip heatwise?
It probably would put out close to 2x the heat, all other aspects being
equal (figuring that there's 2x the transistors and the two cores
themselves are ~identical...).
