CONFIRMED IBM Power PC 970 - Page 3

Expect last updates for powerbooks or PM this Quarter then you 'll have to wait untill Januari or July.

[quote]Originally posted by Addison:
<strong>
How much are Apple going to charge for the Power4 Lite 970 machine?
[ 10-14-2002: Message edited by: Addison ]</strong><hr></blockquote>

That partially depends on how much IBM charges for the chips.

So the question would be how much are these chips
gonna cost.
900mhz bus <img src="graemlins/smokin.gif" border="0" alt="[Chilling]" />

[ 10-14-2002: Message edited by: O and A ]</p>

[quote]Originally posted by Addison:
<strong>If this chip isn't comming until the second half of 2003. Why were the PM's updated with the odd DDR mod. Clearly the 970 will need a new logic board and will support DDR properly, and what is going to happen in January to make new machines OS X only?</strong><hr></blockquote>

I think the DDR mod will allow for a trickle down to the consumer models, so you have an iMac running a G4+++ with a true DDR bus, and a PowerMac running a 900 mhz bus with a PPC 970. Seems like a good concept to me.

Another story...

<a href="http://www.cnn.com/2002/TECH/biztech/10/14/ibm.apple.ap/index.html" target="_blank">from cnn</a>

CNN

Now everyone is jumping on the "Apple will go IBM" bandwagon

Hopefully since IBM wants to use this chip for Linux systems as well as for Apple, and presumably interest other manufacturers in a CHRP type design, the CPU will come in a standard socket format, like the P4 or Athlon. Then CPU modules would not need to be custom made by Apple, and prices should go down quicker because the chips would be standardized. My $.02

[quote]Originally posted by Leonis:
<strong>CNN

Now everyone is jumping on the "Apple will go IBM" bandwagon </strong><hr></blockquote>

But will Apple jump on to that wagon?

[quote]Originally posted by FotNS:
<strong>Hopefully since IBM wants to use this chip for Linux systems as well as for Apple, and presumably interest other manufacturers in a CHRP type design, the CPU will come in a standard socket format, like the P4 or Athlon. Then CPU modules would not need to be custom made by Apple, and prices should go down quicker because the chips would be standardized. My $.02</strong><hr></blockquote>

I wouldn't count on this happening -- IBM and Apple make their money selling systems, not individual chips. Just ask Intel and AMD what the margin on chips is like!

There seems to be a conception that this new processor will be expensive, but I don't think that is necessarily so. Cost is generally a function of yield, and yield is generally a function of die size (at least in the first approximation). Since we now know that this will be a 52 million transistor chip on a 0.13 micron process, this processor should be in about the same ballpark as the 7455 (which is 0.18 microns and about 30 million) and less than the PIV (which is now 0.13 micron and over 60 million, I believe). IBM has traditionally charged more for its fabs, but they are some of the better fabs around so without detailed information its hard to say whether that will increase or decrease prices. The mere fact that this is a 64-bit processor doesn't affect pricing at all. The cost of motherboards to support a 900 MHz bus might be higher, but it'll probably be a narrower bus. So I don't see any evidence (either way) of significantly different costs. Apple could try to charge a premium for these new machines, except that they already charge a premium and they have some catching up to do in terms of the price/performance of their PowerMac line. Going back to single-processor machines would save on their processor costs significantly, giving them bigger margins and the ability to have a wide range of PowerMac configurations to offer and the full range of reasonable to outrageous prices.

hey now, don't knock CNN.............

I don't know why everyone's saying the 970 can't come in dual core configurations. I haven't seen any such assertion from the sources. Additionally, I don't know why MWSF '04 is the time-line people are giving for the introduction of the machines.

I think we all realize that Apple really needs to announce and ship these machines as soon as possible. All possible resources should be diverted to getting them out ASAP. As others have noted, if PM sales look dismal right now, they're going to look dreadful the longer these machines are delayed. Only individuals who enjoy throwing money away would purchase the current desktops. A year is far too long to wait. If Apple doesn't announce by April, it will be terribly unfortunate.

Apple had eleven years - between '84 and '95 - to decimate MS in the market place. Apple could have been in the position of dominance MS has been in for these many years, yet they failed to do so, and now every day of complacently in which Apple rests, it is sealing the fate of our platform. The coming fray that the 64 bit era will usher in is another golden opportunity - perhaps the last - for Apple to gain the marketshare it is rightfully entitled to. But that's not going to happen unless the company is bold, aggressive and committed to winning back the desktop.

programmer - system costs

Going back to single-processor machines would save on their processor costs significantly, giving them bigger margins and the ability to have a wide range of PowerMac configurations to offer and the full range of reasonable to outrageous prices.

it would also make for an easier motherboard layout, which would be helpful in getting them out sooner than later, and reducing mobo costs as well.

neye

"I don't know why everyone's saying the 970 can't come in dual core configurations."

i believe that is because the press release from IBM says they are single cored.

They had *better* not go back to single processor only configs--a lot of people are porting for multiprocessing for Apple, and one of the strengths of the PPC970 is that it supports SMP up to 16 processors. I don't think we'll see octos out of the gate, but if they drop duals completely people won't code for it, and it will just muddy everything.

The fab is ready.

This from July: (Article is about 3000mm wafers)
When fully loaded, IBM Microelectronics' East Fishkill facility thus far known only as Building 323 will ramp up over the course of this year to full-scale commercial production by next January. The fab will rival IBM's sprawling 200-mm complex in Burlington, Vt., in terms of production capacity, a spokesman said. Indeed, the abundance of capacity has led IBM to position itself as a leading-edge foundry, soliciting business from the largest fabless semiconductor makers, including Analog Devices Inc. and Xilinx Inc.

Is the 970 first on tap?

The IBM press release on Monday Oct 14 only says 'next year'


<a href="http://www.siliconstrategies.com/story/OEG20020719S0037" target="_blank">http://www.siliconstrategies.com/story/OEG20020719S0037</a>

[quote]Originally posted by mrmister:
<strong>They had *better* not go back to single processor only configs--a lot of people are porting for multiprocessing for Apple, and one of the strengths of the PPC970 is that it supports SMP up to 16 processors. I don't think we'll see octos out of the gate, but if they drop duals completely people won't code for it, and it will just muddy everything.</strong><hr></blockquote>I hope they do drop the duals. It was a poor strategy from the start, and just because they've had a poor strategy in the past doesn't mean they should continue with a poor strategy.

Duals are just not efficient for mainstream computers. They're great for niche-y situations, like people who render video all day, and should be an option for those who use many dual-optimized apps. But for most of us, they're just not worthwhile. A single fast processor makes much more sense.

[quote]Originally posted by Kecksy:
<strong>If one 1.8GHz PPC970s isn't enough to clobber Intel and AMD, two should do the job. The 970 presumably has Altivec and a VERY high IPC. I wouldn't worry too much about the P4, although the Opteron could pose a threat.

Does anyone know if the 970 has separate or shared buses for multiple CPUs?</strong><hr></blockquote>

I don't know, the power4 is very thoughtfully designed. The x86, on the other hand, is not.

I bet a 1.8Ghz 970 can run with a 5Ghz Whatever-Intel-will-have-in-2003.

They should keep duals. Unless anyone has failed to notice the PM's come in at a workstation price, and for that price they ought to offer workstation performance. Duals are good: Good marketing angle, good OS to take advantage of it, good platform to enable it in the first place. The Mac platform is in the rare position to make duals good, because of the strict control Apple exerts.

Another thing that it does is enable a better spread of offerings throughout the low end. With all duals in the pro machines, Apple could serve up faster single CPU's in the consumer line-up without worrying about speed overlap. Apple needs to exploit advantages in hardware when/where-ever it can get them. Being marginally faster or on par with similarly priced windows hardware is nowhere near as good as being measurably faster at the same price points.

It all depends on how 'fast' the next gen PPC really is, but you can expect Intel to produce a quick answer.

Dual isn't a bad stratagy at all.

Apple now has an OS which fully takes advantage of dual CPUs.

This CPU has a 6.4GB/s bus (compared to the G4+'s 1.3GB/s), so even if it is shared there will be enough bandwidth to run duals effectivly.

Double your CPU, double your power*.

As CPUs get smaller, cheaper and cooler, it will make even more sense to run multiple processors.

EETimes has an <a href="http://www.eet.com/semi/news/OEG20021014S0059" target="_blank">article</a> up on MPF. In it they assert that this CPU has "what Motorola calls Altivec and Apple calls the Velocity Engine".

"The 970 also sports a cache-coherent, 900-MHz processor bus capable of data rates up to 6.4 Gbytes/second. It will support symmetric-multiprocessing configurations of up to 16 CPUs. That capability could be valuable for Apple's new line of Xserve entry-level servers."

w00tz0r 16-CPU workstations

Barto

*Excuse the pun.

If they can feed both 970s at the same time and they can get them cheaply enough, I'm sure you will see duals. Probably not in the first release.

A lot of the Power 4's amazing performance comes from the fact that it has 128 MB of L3 cache.... I'm postive this chip doesn't have anywhere near that..... so I would expect performance would be no where near comparable..... any word on how much cache these things will have?

[quote]Originally posted by Barto:
<strong>Apple now has an OS which fully takes advantage of dual CPUs.
...
Double your CPU, double your power*.</strong><hr></blockquote>The first statement only applies if 1) the app is dual aware or 2) you're running two compute-intensive apps at once. Unless one of those two conditions is met, you might as well have one processor rather than two.

As for the second statement - do you work for Apple marketing?

[quote]Originally posted by BRussell:
<strong>I hope they do drop the duals. It was a poor strategy from the start, and just because they've had a poor strategy in the past doesn't mean they should continue with a poor strategy.

Duals are just not efficient for mainstream computers. They're great for niche-y situations, like people who render video all day, and should be an option for those who use many dual-optimized apps. But for most of us, they're just not worthwhile. A single fast processor makes much more sense.</strong><hr></blockquote>

I have to strongly disagree with this assertion. Multi-processing is the way of the future, initially as multiple single-core chips and eventually as one or more multi-core chips. We're going to max out how fast a single chip can run, and we're going to max out how complex a single chip can be and at that point the only option will be to go parallel. This day isn't far off, and the sooner the software goes multi-threaded, the better.

If Apple's first GPUL machine is single core, single processor that won't slow down the creation of multi-threaded software -- they have already sold many multi-processor machines and the existence of the POWER4 shows the likely direction for the future. I expect that Apple will offer a mixed lineup of 1, 2, and probably more processors... they'll finally have enough bandwidth to make &gt;2 processors worthwhile.

[quote]Originally posted by BRussell:
<strong>The first statement only applies if 1) the app is dual aware or 2) you're running two compute-intensive apps at once. Unless one of those two conditions is met, you might as well have one processor rather than two. </strong><hr></blockquote>

Not necessarily -- the OS can use a fair amount of processing power by itself (I/O, timer interrupts, Aqua, networking, various daemons, etc) and if one processor can handle all of that while the second works on the compute task uninterrupted then there is a fair amount of potential gain (fewer context switches, keeping the cache pure, no switching address spaces, etc). Going forward more apps will be multi-threaded which lets them directly leverages the multiple processors.

Well, if Apple uses a 900Mhz bus, they almost have to use multiple processors. Here's why:

The processor speed has to be a multiplier of the bus speed, generally in 0.5 increments.

a 1.8Ghz 970 would be using a bus multiplier of 2 on a 900Mhz bus.

That is the fastest the chip will be. If you use a bus multiplier of 1.5, you end up with 1350Mhz. I don't know if Apple will even dare to ship a PowerMac at that clock speed by the time this chip is available. So, what will they have to do to have 3 power mac models?

low end: 1350
mid range: 1800
high end: dual 1800

- or -

low end: single 1800
mid range: dual 1800
high end: quad 1800

It's not like the bus won't be able to feed these chips, we're talking about a bus with almost 5x as much bandwidth as the current PowerMacs and probably less latency as well.

A few observations:
1. Reading some other boards makes you realize that the Wintel world is awfully defensive over the 970- of course they're normally idiots anyway. But, this one makes them especially nervous because they've enjoyed a performance edge for 2+ years. Now they're not really sure of the 970's performance or its actual ship date. It's an unknown that threatens their little world.

2. The contrast between the Apple/Mot and Apple/IBM partnership is telling. Mot bedded down with Apple because they wanted to produce a high performance low cost embedded chip. On this count they didn't do to bad.

IBM has teamed with Apple, because they wanted to produce a low cost server/desktop chip. I think Mot's motivation is pretty clear. IBM's OTOH is to produce an Itanium/Hammer killer possibly to protect their server market. They accomplish this by producing low end servers (&lt;$20k?) which I'm guessing may be a server class eating its way into their high-end server business.

IBM probably expected Itanium and Hammer-once released and/or performing satisfactorily- to accelerate the erosion. Theymay have also needed a low cost high performance server box to sell to their Linux brothers. Why sell them a PIV box when they can sell a PPC Linux Box? And Apple needs a desktop CPU with a brighter future. The low power low-cost G4 just wasn't getting it done.

3. Since, Apple needs a CPU built for the desktop why not combine IBM's goals with Apple's? IBM gets economies of scale and Apple gets power. To me the question is really who got who's way- IBM or Apple? I truly believe that Altivec inclusion was a concession to Apple in order to sell them a chip IBM wanted to build for another market niche. Were their others? And what- if anything- did Apple concede?

4. I wonder if the Mac on Intel rumors we heard was simply Apple testing OSX on an Itanium, Hammer and 970 to judge which one displayed the greatest promise. And still I wonder what "options" SJ meant would appear after the first of the year? G5 or 970?

5. Tommorrow will be interesting to say the least. But I'm betting that if SPEC numbers are released they will be so far ahead of anything on the Wintel side that it will be a few years before they could even try to catch up.

The speed advantage came from video cards,ddr RAM,and a faster bus-it hasn't existed for 2 1/2 years.The current G4s are approximately as fast as the current P4s-it depends on what you are using the chips for-the G4s excel at highly parallel processes-that is what the chip is designed for.Gigaflops are the measure of chip speed how many times do people have to be told this? What is gignificant about the 970 is that it blows away Intel's chips-not plays catchup or bests it by a little.The 1.8 gHz 970,according to benchmarks,runs at a speed roughly equivalent to what a 3.6 gHz G4,or an 8+gHz P4.Apple should not abandon multiprocessors at all,they should ramp up their production.OSX is designed at its core for multiple processors.Altivec is one of the best aspects of the processor,not simply something that was added on.

[quote]Originally posted by applenut:
<strong>A lot of the Power 4's amazing performance comes from the fact that it has 128 MB of L3 cache.... I'm postive this chip doesn't have anywhere near that..... so I would expect performance would be no where near comparable..... any word on how much cache these things will have?</strong><hr></blockquote>

True, it'll have no where near 128 MB of cache. But this chip has a 6.4 gigabytes per second interface to memory which should make up nicely for the smaller on die cache.

[quote]
w00tz0r 16-CPU workstation!
<hr></blockquote>

216 gigaflops,cool.

I'm all 4 keeping the dual processors, or any MP configurations for that matter.

It seems this processor is possibly the best suited MP processor for desktops that anyone has ever seen. IBM seems to think it's a good idea to use it as an MP processor.


Other than that has anyone noticed we are all unregistered again?

[quote]Originally posted by Rick1138:
<strong>What is gignificant about the 970 is that it blows away Intel's chips-not plays catchup or bests it by a little. The 1.8 gHz 970, according to benchmarks,runs at a speed roughly equivalent to what a 3.6 gHz G4, or an 8+gHz P4. Apple should not abandon multiprocessors at all, they should ramp up their production. OSX is designed at its core for multiple processors. Altivec is one of the best aspects of the processor,not simply something that was added on.</strong><hr></blockquote>

Do you have a source for the benchmarks... Yea I know tommorow it should all come out anyway (or most of it) but I'd love to have something fun to read before I go to bed.

"The 1.8 gHz 970, according to benchmarks,runs at a speed roughly equivalent to what a 3.6 gHz G4, or an 8+gHz P4."

Hmmm if this is even close to true then things will sure look bright come 'sometime' in 03.

Dave

[quote]Originally posted by rogue27:
<strong>Well, if Apple uses a 900Mhz bus, they almost have to use multiple processors. Here's why:

The processor speed has to be a multiplier of the bus speed, generally in 0.5 increments.

a 1.8Ghz 970 would be using a bus multiplier of 2 on a 900Mhz bus.

That is the fastest the chip will be. If you use a bus multiplier of 1.5, you end up with 1350Mhz. I don't know if Apple will even dare to ship a PowerMac at that clock speed by the time this chip is available. So, what will they have to do to have 3 power mac models?

low end: 1350
mid range: 1800
high end: dual 1800

- or -

low end: single 1800
mid range: dual 1800
high end: quad 1800

It's not like the bus won't be able to feed these chips, we're talking about a bus with almost 5x as much bandwidth as the current PowerMacs and probably less latency as well.</strong><hr></blockquote>

If the 970 starts at 1.8ghz, why would IBM make an underclocked 1.35ghz? It starts at 1.8ghz, that doesn't mean they don't have faster chips, like 1.8ghz, 2.0ghz, etc?

If Apple does go with this chip, I think it makes sense for them to drop duals as default config. Their margins go up on their basic configurations and they can get premium pricing on the dualies or quads, if they choose to offer them as well. And I do think they should continue to offer duals (at least) as built to order options.

Single proc machines will probably still toast anything we can get from Apple today, no matter what we use them for, so value would at least be maintained for regular users. (SoHo, home users etc). But for the true power users, like video, scientific etc, Apple would be able to offer, at premium pricing, truely top of the line machines. If you want these big spenders to truly view your platform as a contenter, you have to differentiate your true professional offerings from you pro-sumer offerings. Til now, the Powermacs have offered what is effectively prosumer performance. Well, it's been said before, but it all those software purchases Apple was making finally really make sense.

[quote]Originally posted by Rick1138:
<strong>The speed advantage came from video cards,ddr RAM,and a faster bus-it hasn't existed for 2 1/2 years.</strong><hr></blockquote>

I agree. But, like it or not, it's the perception due to the mHz gap not all the other goodies.

[quote]Originally posted by Rick1138:
<strong>Gigaflops are the measure of chip speed how many times do people have to be told this? .</strong><hr></blockquote>

Please...
Go over to the battlefront and you'll get a nicer reception to that comment- especially since Intel publicly disavows the legitimacy of MIPS in judging processor performance- just as we do for SPEC. Wintel users repeat it ad nauseum...and they say Mac users have a heard mentality!

[quote]Originally posted by Rick1138:
<strong> What is gignificant about the 970 is that it blows away Intel's chips-not plays catchup or bests it by a little.The 1.8 gHz 970,according to benchmarks,runs at a speed roughly equivalent to what a 3.6 gHz G4,or an 8+gHz P4..</strong><hr></blockquote>

Thanks. This is exactly the performance quantification I've been wanting to read. Was "gignificant" purposeful? If not, it's still a wonderfully appropriate wat to describe the 970.

[quote]Originally posted by KidRed:
<strong>

If the 970 starts at 1.8ghz, why would IBM make an underclocked 1.35ghz? It starts at 1.8ghz, that doesn't mean they don't have faster chips, like 1.8ghz, 2.0ghz, etc?</strong><hr></blockquote>

According to the IBM press release, it'll start at speeds up to 1.8GHz. 1.35GHz could be the low end in that instance.

Why does the GP-UL (oops . . . PPC970) need to have a 900Mhz bus for all the speeds of the chip? I was imagining that the bus would scale with the chip . . . ie, 900Mhz bus, 1.8GHz chip; 1GHz bus, 2GHz chip. Is there something faulty with my reasoning, or is this feasable? This would allow for several closely spec-ed models, ie 1.6, 1.8, and 2.0 (or something like it)

Good luck getting these chips outside of the USA... you know "security concerns", blah, blah, blah. It happens whenever we surpass a gigaflop export limit, and this will not just be a slight step over the limit, it will be a leap.

Why the hell is my Apple stock still selling at under $15?

Here they have alot of stories from all around <a href="http://news.google.com/news?hl=en&q=PowerPC+970" target="_blank">http://news.google.com/news?hl=en&q=PowerPC+970</a>

[quote]Do you have a source for the benchmarks?<hr></blockquote>

I can't find the articles it was in but it was from one of IBM internal testers-he stated that the one gigahertz chips that were being tested now ran at approximately twice the speed of the one gigahertz G4,and that it would be expected to scale accordingly.

If you assume that the Wintel world will be moving over to the Itanium, it might interest you to know that the current speed of the Itanium 2 -- which scores quite well on the benchmarks, btw -- is a palty 1ghz.

The people in the Wintel world who have been using ghz ratings as a measure of their penis size are going to be in for a rude awakening when the Itanium is pushed as mainstream. They very well may be forced to admit that there is something to this whole "mhz myth" after all.

One other thing to keep in mind is that the GP-UL is not just a stripped down, single-core POWER4 processor -- it isn't valid to assume that the GP-UL will simply be a scaled down POWER4 from earlier this year, with no enhancements whatsoever.

Wait until you see the benchmarks from this processor; I think you may be quite impressed.