[quote]Originally posted by Dave Marsh:
<strong>I also noted the need for a new custom system controller that would have to be designed from the beginning for X number of processors. Here's the quote:
"System Chip Support
One of the more troublesome hurdle for Apple to overcome in the adoption of the PowerPC 970 processor may be the system engineering aspect of the processor. As described previously, the 4 byte wide unidirectional serial links may provide upwards of 6 to 7 GB of raw bandwidth per second. However, the specification of the ~900 MHz operation on the system board would require considerable investment into the system support chip. Moreover, the nature of the point to point interconnect means that to support a dual CPU system, the companion chip must be designed with the dual CPU SMP in mind, with dedicated channels devoted to each CPU. Furthermore, to support the high bandwidth available on the system interconnect, a dual channel PC2700 DDR SDRAM memory system would appear to be a minimum requirement to support a single CPU. Unless Apple can also obtain a low cost support chip from IBM, the PowerPC 970 processor would likely force the Apple Macintosh product lines to become even more upscale, and Apple would likely retain the use of the PowerPC G4 processors for the lower end iMac and eMac product lines."
My question, not being a chip tech person, is how long would we expect it to take Apple to design/build/manufacture this chip? Considering that IBM says it won't have samples ready for Apple until April - June 2003, and Apple will need this controller chip to test with the new 970, it would seem EXTREMELY OPTIMISTIC to expect anything but just a pre-announcement at MWNY in July, with availability in the Sep 2003 timeframe, if all goes well. MacOS X also has to be modified to be 64-bit compliant, but I expect that's already been done. That just leaves getting the hardware working reliably.
Comments from anyone who actually understands how all this works?
:confused:
[ 10-16-2002: Message edited by: Dave Marsh ]</strong><hr></blockquote>
Apple probably already has this chip in house, and most likely has been working on the motherboard since May/June of this year. If I understand it, Apple does a lot of the custom chip design for the Mac systems, so they should have the talent and experience to design the daughter cards for these processors without relying on IBM for everything, and it is possible that IBM and Apple are pooling their R&D budgets together to come up with a common daughter cards and chip sets for the variouse configurations will likely use such as Singal, Dual and Quads.
<strong>I also noted the need for a new custom system controller that would have to be designed from the beginning for X number of processors. Here's the quote:
"System Chip Support
One of the more troublesome hurdle for Apple to overcome in the adoption of the PowerPC 970 processor may be the system engineering aspect of the processor. As described previously, the 4 byte wide unidirectional serial links may provide upwards of 6 to 7 GB of raw bandwidth per second. However, the specification of the ~900 MHz operation on the system board would require considerable investment into the system support chip. Moreover, the nature of the point to point interconnect means that to support a dual CPU system, the companion chip must be designed with the dual CPU SMP in mind, with dedicated channels devoted to each CPU. Furthermore, to support the high bandwidth available on the system interconnect, a dual channel PC2700 DDR SDRAM memory system would appear to be a minimum requirement to support a single CPU. Unless Apple can also obtain a low cost support chip from IBM, the PowerPC 970 processor would likely force the Apple Macintosh product lines to become even more upscale, and Apple would likely retain the use of the PowerPC G4 processors for the lower end iMac and eMac product lines."
My question, not being a chip tech person, is how long would we expect it to take Apple to design/build/manufacture this chip? Considering that IBM says it won't have samples ready for Apple until April - June 2003, and Apple will need this controller chip to test with the new 970, it would seem EXTREMELY OPTIMISTIC to expect anything but just a pre-announcement at MWNY in July, with availability in the Sep 2003 timeframe, if all goes well. MacOS X also has to be modified to be 64-bit compliant, but I expect that's already been done. That just leaves getting the hardware working reliably.
Comments from anyone who actually understands how all this works?
:confused:
[ 10-16-2002: Message edited by: Dave Marsh ]</strong><hr></blockquote>
Apple probably already has this chip in house, and most likely has been working on the motherboard since May/June of this year. If I understand it, Apple does a lot of the custom chip design for the Mac systems, so they should have the talent and experience to design the daughter cards for these processors without relying on IBM for everything, and it is possible that IBM and Apple are pooling their R&D budgets together to come up with a common daughter cards and chip sets for the variouse configurations will likely use such as Singal, Dual and Quads.
For some reason there seems to be less excitement about this. Damn you reality, damn you to hell! I just knew moki would ruin this place when he started talking sense. Nirvana always seems to be a year away. Well, I guess at least we now know what it looks like, and that we have a real future there. I can't help but wonder, however, what the hell we are going to talk about until then? <img src="confused.gif" border="0">
