“MacGuardians (German) report from CeBit that IBM’s PowerPC 970 will debut at up to 1.8GHz as originally expected. (IBM’s Microprocessor Forum presentation in October 2002 indicated initial speeds for the PowerPC 970 ranging from 1.4GHz – 1.8GHz). The 2.5GHz models described in an IBM press release more recently are reportedly for the subsequent generation of 970’s, but will apparently utilize the 0.13 Micron Process, contrary to ZDNet’s report.” The article is at MacRumors.
CeBit: PPC 970’s up to 1.8GHz
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Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
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Apple users like me were waiting for this message so long. I´m so happy!
Use it while you can!
that Apple will use them? I mean I know that it is a duh type of situation for apple becasue it is basicly a more scalable version of the G4 but Apple has not even mentioned that they will be using the chip.
I think that Apple will utilize the chip when IBM begins fabrication on the 2.5 gh line since by that time, Intel and AMB 3 GHz will be affordable so they can compete head to head.
IBM lost it’s entire PC market, Apple lost its entire desktop market to post IBM PCs. Lets team up those two pathetic losers and see what happens.
LOL
Imagine a Beowulf cluster of these!
Seriously, whats the target market? PPC tech used to be used a lot in telecoms ( routers ) I understand and embedded systems ( Nintendo Gamecube ) but this sounds a lot like a Workstation processor.
PPC Linux/Unix servers? I’m sure Apple can’t use enough of these to make it worthwhile for them alone. ( Incidentally, does anyone apart from Apple, Amiga and Nintendo buy G3s? )
If it’s basically the same as the G4, why aren’t the upgrade card companies making announcements?
Hmmm, IBM had revenue of $85.9 Billion in 2001 and ret income of $7.7 Billion in the same year, they may have made mistakes in the past, but personally, I wish I was a pathetic loser like them!
IBM lost it’s entire PC market, Apple lost its entire desktop market to post IBM PCs. Lets team up those two pathetic losers and see what happens.
Mind you… They are already teamed up… So no more need to team up, as the PowerPC chip they are currently using now, is, well, basically a joint effort between IBM/Motorola/Apple.
Might as well slap in a PPC970 and see what happens.
As for IBM, they’ve made mistakes in the past in the PC market, and so they decided to drop it, along with many other things (like the HDD business). It’s all about streamlining and focusing, and hey, they’re one huge successful company
.
Apple’s got the niche market, IBM’s big… Hey, it isn’t so bad for em.
Intel’s already lost it’s past dominance, and Microsoft eventually will (might be a long time, but eventually).
Of course… If apple wanted to take the radical route… They could just pop in 2 Opterons and the price will still stay the same… Ridiculously HIGH!
“I think that Apple will utilize the chip when IBM begins fabrication on the 2.5 gh line since by that time, Intel and AMB 3 GHz will be affordable so they can compete head to head.”
no, they need this yesterday..
apple cant afford to wait a second longer than it needs to. if what we know about this chip is true, apple should get it in there even if they can only get their hands on 1.2Ghz version..
“Sonnet and friends could beat Apple to market with the 970”
they wont get anywhere untill apple get OSX running on the 970
“If it’s basically the same as the G4, why …”
Err!! Hu? Read the specs dude!
the 970 is a 64Bit CPU with a complete different bus than the G4. No chance to swap only the cpu model. You need a new mobo.
Sorry – some things aren’t that simple.
Finally I can look forward to running Amiga OS4 at a blistering 1.8Ghz on PPC. Thankyou IBM.
It would take a lot more then an upgrade card…
The G4 has a 64bit data bus. It runs at about 133Mhz.
The PPC970 has 2 32bit data bus. 1 32bit output bus and 1 32bit input bus. Both of these busses run at around 400Mhz which means the Memory/Cache control needs to sort everything out.
An upgrade card would need to include the PPC970, the Memory/Cache controler, the L3 cache, and the logic to back port everything to the old G4 bus. Also note that the old memory bus is too slow to keep the 970 happy; this would have to be fixed by putting PC2100 or PC2700 memory on the upgrade card. At this point all you need as PCI & AGP chip and you have a new mother board.
[~CdBee~]
Apple is just a hobby project to Motorolla. Their bread-and-butter is embedded & aerospace. They own it. Intel, AMD, etc.. are bit players. You won’t find real EE’s in defense/areospace contracting that would touch Intel chips with a 10′ pole! Unfortunately, Motorolla’s chips aren’t flashy–engineers are generally willing to give up flashy for reliable and easy to program. All of their processor but the processors Apple uses are very minimal power, temp, electrical requirements. They literally do run in tanks!
Apple can’t really sell computers to save it self, so Moto. hasn’t really put any effort into it–they don’t have to to be profitable!
Hopefully, IBM will shake things up with this new chip.
Someone really needs to build a line of Linux PC stations with a different proc family in each! i.e. one arm, one PPC, one hammer, one MIPS, etc. Set them all up with exactly the same desktop on one code base, but with apps to show off each processor’s streangths, just to show what Linux is capable of!
I don’t think I have read so much meaningless blabber from know-nothings who haven’t a clue since the last Presidential speech!
I have checked the info from IBM, intel and AMD. It doesnlt look good for either AMD or intel. Apple is definitely going to use the PPC 970. The PPC 970 has one ENORMOUS performance advantage ove anything from either Intel’s failed Itanium and dead-end Pentiums, and AMD’s wishful-thinking Opterons:
The PPC 970 runs PPC code as-is… no translations or emulations. Both AMD and Intel require legacy code to be run in emulation. Both have chosen a different emulation path and both will be dragged down for years before developers get off of their lazy butts to write in native code. That includes Microsoft which has shown NO interest in making Windoiws 64 bit capable or written in something other than x86 code.
Linux is the Op System From Hell for end users despite KDEs best efforts to date or silly claims from supporters, so don’t even bother to mention that one. Besides, which incompatible version supported by a small committee do you mean? That would be the ONLY real world choice for an Opteron or an Itanium. Lots of luck… you’ll need it!
IBM ain’t stupid. They know that the PPC 970 will run rings around anything from intel or AMD. Worse, the PPC’s successor, the PPC 980 is already being developed and can outperform the initial PPC 970 by a factor of four times.
Wintel Weenies, you are about to join the Apple ][ and CP/M as supporters of a forgotten technology.
Kiss your obsolete kiesters good-bye!
>>>Hopefully, IBM will shake things up with this new chip.
The IBM VP in charge with the PowerPC chips is their VP for telecom/networking devices. Cisco is a bigger powerpc customer than Apple for both IBM and Motorola.
Kiss your obsolete kiesters good-bye!
>>>>
Apple is using 4.4-BSD-lite2 code in a commercial OS and you’re calling *wintel* people obsolete?
I think that it is a given that this processor was intended with Apple and PowerPC Linux in mind. The numbers look good but Intel and AMD won’t stand still and we have yet to see how Apple engineers implement this processor on a motherboard.
What would be interesting to find out is, how much will the 970 cost? What will be the performance in a dual processor configuration? How compatible will it be with older PowerPC code?
IBM also is a huge customer for powerPC there high end super computers are PowerPC based(power4,power5).
Also the ibook which is still selling like hot cakes is an IBM only CPU product.
There is plenty of life left for Apple and IBM in a post MS era.
Just watch.
Max
Erm… Isn’t it the other way around?
The PowerPC970 is nothing more than a slimmed down Power 4.
Power 4 = Dual Core Beast.
PowerPC970 = Power 4 – 1 core, and a buncha other things chopped off.
Of course, having either a Power 4 or Power 5 in an Apple desktop would be crazy. Fast, but extremely expensive, and what a power sucker and heater the thing would be… Heh, Apple consumers complain about the noise level. Imagine trying to cool that Power 4 beast.
IBM also is a huge customer for powerPC
Of course they are their own customers
. IBM makes the damn chip. Why not use it?
I see from comment above that cisco is major buyer of PPC processors… I take it they’re still used for routers and stuff mainly then ( low power, low heat, I guess )
The currently fastest Powermac G4 is at 1.42 MHz to attain the same SPEC2000 score as a G4@1.42 the 970 have to run 620 MHz for integers or 320 MHz for fp!. A 1.8 GHz 970 has 3 to 5 times the the performance of the current G4, and now even the dual G4 is lagging behind the 3 GHz Pentiums. Apple need to have the 970 powermac out last year, if not sooner!
In Jan 1999 the B&W G3 came out, the slowest one at 300 MHz was faster than the current top of the line beige 333 MHz at a fraction of the cost. The B&W added the then leading edge ATI 128 card, 100 MHz bus as well as USB FW and VGA ports.
It is time to make such a leap in performance and features, this time a bigger leap in performance
“The PowerPC970 is nothing more than a slimmed down Power 4.”
Not quite so. There are improvements, like 2 Altivec units, instead of 0.
“The PPC 970 runs PPC code as-is… no translations or emulations. Both AMD and Intel require legacy code to be run in emulation. Both have chosen a different emulation path and both will be dragged down for years before developers get off of their lazy butts to write in native code”
Three steps to native code on windows…
1) Load source into your new visual studio compiler
2) Select “Rebuild solution”
3) Make a cup of tea while you’re waiting.
Of course there may be sections where this doesn’t work (I have SSE and MMX assembler in stuff I write), but the largest chunks will work without a problem, the rest won’t take years to sort out, especially if you’ve got competition out there.
Apple is using 4.4-BSD-lite2 code in a commercial OS
Not quite. While they are lagging (sometimes dramatically) behind the latest FreeBSD release, they are syncing up every now and then.
the PPC 980 is already being developed and can outperform the initial PPC 970 by a factor of four times.
As far as I can say, you’re wrong here. The PPC 980 is four time faster than the PPC 970 *for business tasks* (read press releases again). It sports some dedicated instruction sets aimed at very specific tasks like Oracle processing, and other “business” things. In pure computational power, it’s absolutely not 4 times faster. In other terms it’s a sort of “Altivec for e-business” that makes the difference.