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Why no dual G3’s
- Thread starter cellularmitosis
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I typed “G3 Multiprocessor” into a search engine and found this.
www.mactech.com
Not from a apple but still.
[NPL] G3 Multiprocessor PCI Board/PowerBox System - MacTech.com
Total Impact Announces PowerPC G3 Multiprocessor PCI Board And The Multi-Board PowerBox System FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE CAMARILLO, California, August 4, 1998 -- Total Impact today announced the Total Power G3, a PCI based multiprocessor application accelerator using up to four PowerPC G3 mic
www.mactech.com
While obscure stuff like above might have existed, dual G3 CPU just didn't make sense as this would still be firmly in pre OSX times where SW support was still spotty at best.
Also G3 PowerMacs (both old and new world) were relatively short lived and one has to ask at which point did Apple know that the G4 would come making a 2xG3 look obsolete.
Even with the G4s going dual rarely made sense and while the top end Macs did it at the end of PPC consumers had to wait till after the Intel switch (and a bit longer before CoreSolo was discontinued).
It's kinda like the PentiumPros on the darker side that did exist but had no impact on the mainstream where it took almost a decade before anything but 1 CPU 1 core would be viable.
Also G3 PowerMacs (both old and new world) were relatively short lived and one has to ask at which point did Apple know that the G4 would come making a 2xG3 look obsolete.
Even with the G4s going dual rarely made sense and while the top end Macs did it at the end of PPC consumers had to wait till after the Intel switch (and a bit longer before CoreSolo was discontinued).
It's kinda like the PentiumPros on the darker side that did exist but had no impact on the mainstream where it took almost a decade before anything but 1 CPU 1 core would be viable.
multi processor g3s didn’t happen because at the time apple was on the brink of bankruptcy. They needed to sell iMacs and the concern at the time was the price of the Mac…Steve jobs knew more then anything especially with the flop of the Macintosh 1984 that price was important…same as the Lisa before it. They couldn’t take chances now like they could with past projects because of the position they were in at the time…any mistake would cause the collapse of the company so tragically they had to put there eggs in one basket that they knew could sell well at an attractive price. They did the same in 1984 with the Macintosh…color screens had been available at that time but they were so expensive($20k a panel) that they chose black and white. So many people think Steve saved the company and the fact is he did. Those of you who are old enough remember the mess that was the Mac lineup back the 1990s….it consisted of like 20 different computers and it was confusing for consumers.
Another reason : the PowerPC 7xx (G3) processors were not designed for this usage and lacked a data cache coherency protocol. This was a major bottleneck. 604 and 74xx cpus were designed with such protocol and were much more efficients in symmetric multiprocessing.
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