IBM PPC 970 now OFFICIALLY the next generation cpu to be used by Apple Computers

[anieves]

interesting article, thanks!

[dark_lotus]

*starts frothing at the mouth*

[Renzsu]

What, no Intel Itanium?? hmm..

[Per-Anders]

well, it would be good, now they need to drop their prices some and fix their ogl support (the ogl thing should happen with the next full point release of the os). could indeed be a good year for apple. i really hope things pick up for them just because i so much prefer the os on my macs to windows on my various pc's.

[flipnap]

Wait a minute? The article says

Apple could use to replace the aging Motorola processors used in its G4 line. (IBM did not confirm it was building a chip specifically for Apple, but it does say its new PowerPC chip will work on Apple platforms.)

so am i missing something.. it says apple IBM did not confirm it was building a chip specifically for Apple ... so how is this official?

flipnap (hoping im wrong:hmm: )

[takkun]

Nowhere in this article does it say that this is official, this is all just speculation. And the article is a bit misleading:the new Apple chip will be of the 64-bit variety, which means it can process twice as much information per cycle as existing 32-bit chips. That's a myth about 64-bit chips, the only real benefit of 64-bit CPUs is that they can address more memory (over 4GB) then 32-bit processors. This guy should have done his homework. :rolleyes:

Here's a great article if anyone wants to know the truth about 64-bit CPU's -

The myths and realities of 64-bit computing (http://www.anandtech.com/guides/viewfaq.html?i=112)

[parallax]

It does not say explicitly that the new cpu is built for apple, but it does say it will run on the apple platform.

So probably, it will be the next cpu to be used in a new line of apple computers.

The two products being compatible could hardly be a coincidence.

[Thalaxis]

Originally posted by Renzsu
What, no Intel Itanium?? hmm..

Um... have you seen the price tags for Itanium processors? The processors alone START at close to $2000.

[Thalaxis]

Originally posted by flipnap

so am i missing something.. it says apple IBM did not confirm it was building a chip specifically for Apple ... so how is this official?


That doesn't mean anything at all. Motorola didn't build processors specifically for Apple either, after all.

The PPC970 is intended for IBM's Linux workstations and blade servers also.

[Nicodemus]

Sweet.....I have been waiting for this annoucement. I really hope this helps bring the gap between PC and Max in terms of speed.

~L~

[takkun]

Umm, you guys realize that every program, not just the OS, will need to be rewritten to take advantage of the 64-bit CPU, if they aren't then they'll run even slower then on a G4. If apple did start implementing this then it would probably only be in their servers to start with.

[ages]

970 can run 32-bit flawlessly.
Itanium was a flop, it costs soo much and no real speed difference. IBM atleast will push the mhz far beyong what the itanium starts with.
I dont see why there is a fascination with cisc chips, theyre noisey and hot. PPC is way cooler, smaller and less consuming.
When you have a render farm of 10 computers you start to see those pros add up.. Expecially when its electricity bill time.

[beaker]

Originally posted by takkun
Umm, you guys realize that every program, not just the OS, will need to be rewritten to take advantage of the 64-bit CPU, if they aren't then they'll run even slower then on a G4. If apple did start implementing this then it would probably only be in their servers to start with.
The 970 is just like the AMD64 bit line of chips, it runs 32 bit just fine. You do though get a nice boost in integer performance when compiling for 64 bit. With many people jumping on the AMD64 bandwagon in the next year or so, I see people doing the same thing on the powerpc, especially if it is only just a recompile(not sure if it is that simple).

[beaker]

Originally posted by ages
970 can run 32-bit flawlessly.
Itanium was a flop, it costs soo much and no real speed difference. IBM atleast will push the mhz far beyong what the itanium starts with.
I dont see why there is a fascination with cisc chips, theyre noisey and hot. PPC is way cooler, smaller and less consuming.
When you have a render farm of 10 computers you start to see those pros add up.. Expecially when its electricity bill time.
I was talking to someone recently who mentioned that they were looking at itanium for render farm and I asked about the power bill part since you could probably pay for double the amount of non itanium machines over a year just because of the high power bill. Most of people don't look at the entire picture(TCO) and only care about short term price that they see in front of them. Google said that they are staying away from itanium for this exact reason.
http://www.geek.com/news/geeknews/2002Sep/gee20020930016552.htm

The powerbill is a big difference when comparing itanium to powerpc, but not as big of a deal comparing it to an AMD. Not considering the 970, the amd is still more price effective for renderfarms over the g4. Especially with the stupid shared bus can actually hurt your rendering speed when rendering with certain apps. Once exception is Lightwave which seems to be optimized really well for the G4. Other apps like maya are pretty abysmal and suck up so much bandwidth that it overflows the shared bus and you get that slow down from dual processor rendering that I mentioned.
Itanium = 130 watts
Athlon = 60-70 watts
P4 = 70-80 watts
G4 = 20-30 watts(which is why you easily get 5 hours of battery power with their laptops and you have to resort to processor throttling and dual batteries on a p4 to get 5 hours)
970 = 40 watts

[Thalaxis]

Originally posted by ages
970 can run 32-bit flawlessly.
Itanium was a flop, it costs soo much and no real speed difference. IBM atleast will push the mhz far beyong what the itanium starts with.
I dont see why there is a fascination with cisc chips, theyre noisey and hot. PPC is way cooler, smaller and less consuming.
When you have a render farm of 10 computers you start to see those pros add up.. Expecially when its electricity bill time.

Itanium2 is doing quite well on the market, and has OEM support from nearly every major vendor out there -- including IBM.

Nothing on the desktop is in its league in floating point performance, and it's very close to the top of the heap in integer performance. Only the Power4+ at 1.7 GHz (with a 512 MB 3rd level cache, apparently) beat its floating point performance, and not by all that much.

The fascination with CISC chips comes from the fact that they're blowing the doors off of EVERYTHING else on the desktop. Oh wait, it's too late; they've already demolished the RISC competitors, and cost quite a bit less. Yup, no reason to be interested there.

BTW, of COURSE PPC is cooler... ALL of the PPC processors on the market right now are embedded. The 970 is the first non-embedded PPC core since the defunct PPC620.

[Thalaxis]

Google also has no use whatsoever for the Itanium2's biggest strength, which is floating point math.

You also just pointed out why Intel is putting such large 3rd level caches on Itanium2.

Not counting the 970 (since it's not yet available), there isn't a PPC processor that can even begin to compete with any x86 processor in price/performance; x86 is a LOT faster, and a LOT less expensive. For now, it's a slam-dunk, and as far as renderfarms go, G4's aren't even a consideration, they're a waste of money; you'd need so many more of them just to match the performance that you'd more than make up the difference in electricity.

IBM's hoping that PPC970 will compete in the blade market space for that reason; I suspect that the blade market is also one of the target markets for the small-cache Itanium2 variant due out this summer. Whether or not it will run cool enough is unknown, but it stands to reason that Intel's clock-throttling it for a reason, given that it's bigger sibling with the same architecture and a bigger cache is slated to run at a 50% higher clock speed.

Originally posted by beaker
I was talking to someone recently who mentioned that they were looking at itanium for render farm and I asked about the power bill part since you could probably pay for double the amount of non itanium machines over a year just because of the high power bill. Most of people don't look at the entire picture(TCO) and only care about short term price that they see in front of them. Google said that they are staying away from itanium for this exact reason.
http://www.geek.com/news/geeknews/2002Sep/gee20020930016552.htm

The powerbill is a big difference when comparing itanium to powerpc, but not as big of a deal comparing it to an AMD. Not considering the 970, the amd is still more price effective for renderfarms over the g4. Especially with the stupid shared bus can actually hurt your rendering speed when rendering with certain apps. Once exception is Lightwave which seems to be optimized really well for the G4. Other apps like maya are pretty abysmal and suck up so much bandwidth that it overflows the shared bus and you get that slow down from dual processor rendering that I mentioned.
Itanium = 130 watts
Athlon = 60-70 watts
P4 = 70-80 watts
G4 = 20-30 watts(which is why you easily get 5 hours of battery power with their laptops and you have to resort to processor throttling and dual batteries on a p4 to get 5 hours)
970 = 40 watts

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