IBM Power5 and Apple - must be a mistake

[WB_DC]

<a href="http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,3-485578,00.html" target="_blank">http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,3-485578,00.html</a>

[quote]ASCI Purple will be built using 12,544 IBM Power5 microprocessors, the same chips that are used in Apple PCs and Nintendo games systems.<hr></blockquote>

:confused: <img src="graemlins/smokin.gif" border="0" alt="[Chilling]" />

[ 11-19-2002: Message edited by: WB_DC ]</p>

[Moogs]

Ya think? It's called bad reporting. ;)

[Bodhi]

It's a broad statement. Referring to the G3 that is used in Apple computers.

[T'hain Esh Kelch]

This means that this baby will be as fast as 12.000 iBooks? :p

[KidRed]

12,000+ chips!? How big this thing gonna be!? And they used the plural form, so that means IBM will make many of these 12,000+ chips machines? holy hell.

[Krassy]

[quote]Originally posted by Bodhi:
<strong>It's a broad statement. Referring to the G3 that is used in Apple computers.</strong><hr></blockquote>
i think it's a wrong statement. or just a hint to the PPC architecture. in fact apple is NOT using the Power-architecture and the G3 isn't even fully multi-processor cabable. the processor for that machine could be a real Power5 and each cpu will be more than 200% faster than every G3 on earth...

[Programmer]

I think the author of the article is under the impression that PowerPC=POWER and that all of these processors are created equal. These IBM machines do look like they are going to be real brutes though, that's for sure.

[Analogue bubblebath]

ASCI purple is going to be built in 2004, so you can be sure it's going to use the fastest IBM processors available at the time, in this case, the POWER5.

[boy_analog]

[quote]Originally posted by T'hain Esh Kelch:
<strong>This means that this baby will be as fast as 12.000 iBooks? :p </strong><hr></blockquote>

Precisely. I hear they're just going to make an Appleseed cluster out of all the iBooks in Maine....

There'll be a lot of unhappy schoolkids, but hey, it's not like they vote or anything.

:D

[Franck]

[quote]Originally posted by Programmer:
<strong>I think the author of the article is under the impression that PowerPC=POWER and that all of these processors are created equal. These IBM machines do look like they are going to be real brutes though, that's for sure.</strong><hr></blockquote>

AFAIK, PowerPC=POWER when we talk albout instruction set. (POWER3 and later use PowerPC ISA)

[Programmer]

[quote]Originally posted by Franck:
<strong>AFAIK, PowerPC=POWER when we talk albout instruction set. (POWER3 and later use PowerPC ISA)</strong><hr></blockquote>

They are very similar but POWER is a slight superset of PowerPC. I don't know if IBM's code uses the difference anymore, however, because they have a whole series of POWER3 machines which using the 604e processor. You'd think they'd at least bite the bullet and use Moto's 7455 in order to stay competitive, but this is IBM after all.

And just because they use the same instruction set hardly means that you can say that this IBM monster machine will be using the same processors that go into the Nintendo and Apple machines.

[Powerdoc]

The reporter means that they will use the same family of processor : the PPC chips. It's like saying that the Opteron belong to the X86 family.
It's a huge approximation for people who does not know a clue about chips.

[ 11-20-2002: Message edited by: Powerdoc ]</p>