did businessweek just confirm the 970?

Posted:
in Future Apple Hardware edited January 2014
today, businessweek has an article on the state of supercomputers in the U.S. after having the top honor stolen by NEC, the article states that IBM is striking back with a new design that will blow the old benchmark away. i was half asleep until i read this:



"The IBM machines that will be delivered to Lawrence Livermore by 2005 will use some of the same parts that go into a PC. The first supercomputer, ASCI Purple, will comprise 12,544 microprocessors using chip technology that IBM supplies to Apple Computer (APPL ) for the Macintosh. When these chips are lassoed together, the machine will do a top speed of 100 teraflops"



for those with better math skills....1 teraflop is 10 to the 12th power FLOPS or 1 trillop floating point operations per second. divide this by 12,544 and you should get the performance of a single processor (which i'm betting is either the 970 or the power5)



any ideas??

Comments

  • Reply 1 of 14
    ... and? You're talking about 4 years from now. There is nothing new here really. The IBM 970 chip won't be ready for prime time until the 4th quarter of '03. There are plenty of other posts discussing the so far unconfirmed to be used by Apple product.
  • Reply 2 of 14
    spartspart Posts: 2,060member
    ...or IBM could be using G3s.



    <img src="graemlins/lol.gif" border="0" alt="[Laughing]" />



    Seriously though, does IBM supply any chips that have to do with MP, rather than processing itself, to Apple?
  • Reply 3 of 14
    bigcbigc Posts: 1,224member
    They're using <a href="http://www-916.ibm.com/press/prnews.nsf/jan/E04B02CEA65993A785256C7700030952"; target="_blank">Power5 Processors</a>.



    and there is also a picture of the <a href="http://www.llnl.gov/llnl/06news/Images/comp2women.jpg"; target="_blank">Prototype Power5 System</a>
  • Reply 4 of 14
    spartspart Posts: 2,060member
    How retro. <img src="graemlins/smokin.gif" border="0" alt="[Chilling]" />
  • Reply 5 of 14
    bigcbigc Posts: 1,224member
    it's even before my time. <img src="graemlins/smokin.gif" border="0" alt="[Chilling]" />
  • Reply 6 of 14
    oh well...so much for my burst of momentary excitement...i wouldn't have gotten so excited if there wasn't such an incredible lack of sound mac intel lately. who would know it's only 2 weeks till macworld?



    dammit.
  • Reply 7 of 14
    [quote] ...will comprise 12,544 microprocessors using chip technology that IBM supplies to Apple Computer (APPL ) for the Macintosh ... <hr></blockquote>



    the technology that they are referingto is the PowerPC chip family, which the Power chips are related to, so they are talking in borad terms. You could cay the same thing about any company that uses embeded PowerPC chips, and it would be correct.
  • Reply 8 of 14
    [quote]Originally posted by Bigc:

    <strong>They're using <a href="http://www-916.ibm.com/press/prnews.nsf/jan/E04B02CEA65993A785256C7700030952"; target="_blank">Power5 Processors</a>.



    and there is also a picture of the <a href="http://www.llnl.gov/llnl/06news/Images/comp2women.jpg"; target="_blank">Prototype Power5 System</a></strong><hr></blockquote>



    OH wow that supercomputer looks so unreal, futureistic like. <img src="graemlins/smokin.gif" border="0" alt="[Chilling]" />
  • Reply 9 of 14
    bigcbigc Posts: 1,224member
    [quote]Originally posted by trevorM:

    <strong>



    OH wow that supercomputer looks so unreal, futureistic like. <img src="graemlins/smokin.gif" border="0" alt="[Chilling]" /> </strong><hr></blockquote>



    Yep, none of that big video screen stuff that just confuses everything.
  • Reply 10 of 14
    outsideroutsider Posts: 6,008member
    How fast does it print to tape? And how many punch cards can it process in a minute? 1000? 1500? Sweet!
  • Reply 11 of 14
    bigcbigc Posts: 1,224member
    [quote]Originally posted by Outsider:

    <strong>How fast does it print to tape? And how many punch cards can it process in a minute? 1000? 1500? Sweet!</strong><hr></blockquote>



    How many cards in a box and remember the readers eat about two cards per box, what a pain to figure out which ones
  • Reply 12 of 14
    mjemje Posts: 91member
    [OT]



    Yeah, Apple's ticker isn't APPL..
  • Reply 13 of 14
    ed m.ed m. Posts: 222member
    A simple Google search turned up the following tidbits:



    [[[ASCI Purple will consist of a cluster of IBM's POWER chip-based eServer systems and storage systems. ]]]



    And this:



    [[[Boasting 50 terabytes of memory and two petabytes of storage, ASCI Purple will be powered by 12,544 of IBM's forthcoming POWER5 microprocessors, which features more than 10GB per second memory bandwidth\t]]]



    <a href="http://www.internetnews.com/ent-news/article.php/1503211"; target="_blank">http://www.internetnews.com/ent-news/article.php/1503211</a>;



    [[[The 100 teraflop ASCI Purple system will be powered by 12,544 POWER5 microprocessors, IBM’s next generation microprocessor. These processors will be contained in 196 individual computers with a total memory bandwidth of 156,000 GBs, the equivalent of 31,200 DVD movies every second. All of the computers are interconnected via a super-fast data highway with a total interconnect bandwidth of 12,500 GB. ASCI Purple will run IBM's AIX 5L operating system.\t]]]



    <a href="http://www-1.ibm.com/servers/eserver/pseries/news/pressreleases/2002/nov/asci_purple.html"; target="_blank">http://www-1.ibm.com/servers/eserver/pseries/news/pressreleases/2002/nov/asci_purple.html</a>;





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



    At this URL:



    <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>;



    I wonder what's really going on between Apple and IBM...



    --

    Ed M.
  • Reply 14 of 14
    [quote]Originally posted by Ed M.:

    <strong>...

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

    I wonder what's really going on between Apple and IBM...



    --

    Ed M.</strong><hr></blockquote>



    They are speaking in general terms in reference to the Power/PowerPC family, not a specific chip. Nintendoes chips that IBM makes is a custom chip that is not sold to anyone else. At present Apple only uses 1 IBM chip, the G3. The Power5 is still in development, with a ship date after the 970's, as far as I know.



    What this story says to me, and it strenghtens the move that IBM made with Nintendo when they got them to put IBM's name on the product, is that IBM is interested in making the PowerPC linage a product with brand recognition the way the Intel did with the Pentium family of chips. I would not be suprised if IBM begins a seriouse move to make the PowerPC into a competator with Intel/Windows computers when they release the 970, and or a revised G3.
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