[Closed due to flaky BB] Next Powermac 970 with up to 2,5 GHZ ? - Page 2

[quote]Originally posted by Hobbes:
<strong>Just curious... Without a release date, how do we know these aren't the specs for a second generation of 970s?</strong><hr></blockquote>
the 970+ or second generation 970 is a 90nm part. The links shows the blade using 130nm parts. Just that one thing tells me that these will use 1st generation 970 processors

Originally posted by Onlooker:
[quote] Can anyone say Maya Unlimited 5.0 for OS X? <hr></blockquote>
Looking at the success of Maya Complete for the Mac, Maya Unlimited seems very probable. And with Dual 970's and a 8X AGP FireGL, that would be a pro's dream come true.

[quote]Originally posted by Outsider:
<strong>This has some good implications. First it shows how IBM under promises and over delivers; a rarity in the tech world. Also the 970 yields much be great. I'm assuming that the bus on the 2.5GHz is 1.25GHz (625MHz DDR). Impressive to say the least. Unless they are going for an elaborate bus ratio scheme.</strong><hr></blockquote>

\\That's a freaking serious assumtion. Bus @ 1.25GHz?
ARe you speaking of the FSB? 1.25GHz?

The entire world would stop and gasp. OMG!

We know about the low voltage (specifically, 1.1 volt) variant because IBM announced it. It's the version that draws 19W of power at 1.2GHz.

[quote]Originally posted by onlooker:
<strong>

\\That's a freaking serious assumtion. Bus @ 1.25GHz?
ARe you speaking of the FSB? 1.25GHz?

The entire world would stop and gasp. OMG!</strong><hr></blockquote>

The 970's bus ratio is fixed at 1/4 the CPU clock speed, and its clock is doubled. So yes, a 2.5GHz 970 will have a bus that runs at an (effective) clock speed of 1.25GHz.

For those wondering, that's 10GB/s theoretical bandwidth, or about 8.8GB/s observed, assuming that the percentage lost to packet overhead is constant. Still not enough to sate the ravenous appetite of AltiVec, but a little tiny bit better than what we currently have, for definitions of "little tiny bit better" that approach a factor of 8.

[ 02-27-2003: Message edited by: Amorph ]</p>

[quote]Originally posted by onlooker:
<strong>

\\That's a freaking serious assumtion. Bus @ 1.25GHz?
ARe you speaking of the FSB? 1.25GHz?

The entire world would stop and gasp. OMG!</strong><hr></blockquote>
I know how it sounds. I've tried demonstrating that the 970 bus CAN have a non-static bus ratio but have been told otherwise, that IBM has made it clear that it's a 2:1 bus period. I'm sitting on the fence for now on that issue. It can swing either way.

[quote]Originally posted by Amorph:
<strong>

The 970's bus ratio is fixed at 1/4 the CPU clock speed, and its clock is doubled. So yes, a 2.5GHz 970 will have a bus that runs at an (effective) clock speed of 1.25GHz.

For those wondering, that's 10GB/s theoretical bandwidth, or about 8.8GB/s observed, assuming that the percentage lost to packet overhead is constant. Still not enough to sate the ravenous appetite of AltiVec, but a little tiny bit better than what we currently have, for definitions of "little tiny bit better" that approach a factor of 8.

[ 02-27-2003: Message edited by: Amorph ]</strong><hr></blockquote>


What do you mean by:

"Still not enough to sate the ravenous appetite of AltiVec"

[quote]Originally posted by Hobbes:
<strong>Just curious... Without a release date, how do we know these aren't the specs for a second generation of 970s?</strong><hr></blockquote>

Because IBM's already said "...and we'll transition to .09 RSN". -&gt; there won't _be_ a second generation of .13. These chips are actually being made at a .09 fab - warmup for the real work at .09.

[quote]Originally posted by onlooker:
<strong>What do you mean by:

"Still not enough to sate the ravenous appetite of AltiVec"</strong><hr></blockquote>

An Altivec calculation can rip through all of L1 & L2 in practically no time, particularly if it's streaming data of some kind.

All you have to do to guestimate the 'max' amount of bandwidth the VPU can suck up, is figure out 1) how many instructions/clock can be retired, 2) clock rate, 3) bits per instruction.

3) is 128 bits.
2) is 2.5 GHz.
1) is tougher, let's assume it's always just one.

I get _40_GB/s. (That's _bytes_)
Realize that a chunk of work can be 'saved' in the L1/L2 cache (or the registers, wherever)... but the tasks that AV is used on are data heavy -&gt; they don't _FIT_ in the caches.

Nevermind that there's two integer units in the 970, and two FPUs -&gt; 4x64 -&gt; _another_ 256 bits/cycle.

I'm not saying that this is a really how much bandwidth you _need_, just that more is always better, and alot more is alot better

One of the key benefits of the ppc approach to FPUs & SIMD is that all the units can operate independently - it's just that actually doing this has been somewhat choked because lots of computing capacity can't get data fast enough. (If the AV unit is running full tilt, there's roughly zero bandwith to keep the integer units & FPUs fed. And the caches are filled with drek.)

Then there are duals, which need 2x the bandwidth.

[quote]Originally posted by onlooker:
<strong>What do you mean by:

"Still not enough to sate the ravenous appetite of AltiVec"</strong><hr></blockquote>

AltiVec is pretty much doomed to be memory bound. At peak efficiency, on the current G4, it's capable of processing something like 12GB of data per second. If the 970's bus were capable of handling that, it would have to run in the neighborhood of 3GHz, which would mean a 6GHz 970 - but the AltiVec unit on that monster would be capable of consuming something dangerously close to 100GB/sec.

AltiVec performance on memory-bound processes should skyrocket with the 970, especially if those processes are threaded well and the machine is SMP. But the bus still won't be able to come anywhere near saturating the AltiVec unit (the GigaBus will supply 1/5th the necessary bandwidth, as opposed to MaxBus, which supplies about 1/20th). It's capable of that much raw power.

[ 02-27-2003: Message edited by: Amorph ]

[ 02-27-2003: Message edited by: Amorph ]</p>

If the first generation of the 970 does start with a top speed of 2.5GHz and you combine this with the software compianies that apple has aquired of the last 2 years. I do see a real increase in market share.

I also bet we see in 2004 or early 2005 Pixar will announce that will upgrade from intel to the IBM 970 running on OSX platform. <img src="graemlins/lol.gif" border="0" alt="[Laughing]" />

Anyone old enough to remember when IBM was with the bad guys?

[quote]Originally posted by Outsider:
<strong>
There's not much publicly official info on anything to do with the 970 besides some non technical press releases and a presentation PDF. Hannibal from Ars has some private info he was supposed to disclose in part 2 of his epic 970 saga article but has yet to do so. Personally, knowing his bias, I think he is afraid of showing his findings in that it totally obliterates anything on the x86 side or processor design. </strong><hr></blockquote>

Just to clarify, Hannibal's "Part 2" hasn't arrived yet because he's still [still!!] waiting for a response from the IBM folk.

For those who don't know the whole story, I'll give an overview:

Hannibal decides he wants to write up the newly announced 970. He knows that he wants to do it in 2 parts, and starts work on part 1, while attempting to get additional information [accuracy is a good thing] for part 2. Hannibal finishes part 1, but he never receives a response from his people at IBM [who specifically stated they'd help him and answer his questions]. Without this information, H can't finish part 2, without wildly speculating... not something he does often when doing a HW write-up.

A few weeks after the posting of part 1, he makes an addendum at the end that stated that the second part would arrive on December 17th. That never happened. IT is now several months later, and still no word from the IBM folks.

There are several threads on the Ars site that talk about this.


Hope that clears up some stuff. ...and yes, I am peeved as well, but there is not much I can do about it. IMHO, he should post what he's got, with [NEED TO FILL IN DETAILS LATER] when he gets the answers he needs.... but I am an information junkie, so something is better than nothing in my opinion.

I'm gonna ask this again because I think my first post got buried in the excitement of Page 1...

If IBM is getting 1.8-2.5 Ghz on a .13 micron process, is there some down and dirty formula that might give an indication of speeds when these get shrunk to .09? Sorry for being a nag.

[quote]Originally posted by Nevyn:
<strong>

An Altivec calculation can rip through all of L1 & L2 in practically no time, particularly if it's streaming data of some kind.

All you have to do to guestimate the 'max' amount of bandwidth the VPU can suck up, is figure out 1) how many instructions/clock can be retired, 2) clock rate, 3) bits per instruction.

3) is 128 bits.
2) is 2.5 GHz.
1) is tougher, let's assume it's always just one.

I get _40_GB/s. (That's _bytes_)
Realize that a chunk of work can be 'saved' in the L1/L2 cache (or the registers, wherever)... but the tasks that AV is used on are data heavy -&gt; they don't _FIT_ in the caches.

Nevermind that there's two integer units in the 970, and two FPUs -&gt; 4x64 -&gt; _another_ 256 bits/cycle.

I'm not saying that this is a really how much bandwidth you _need_, just that more is always better, and alot more is alot better

One of the key benefits of the ppc approach to FPUs & SIMD is that all the units can operate independently - it's just that actually doing this has been somewhat choked because lots of computing capacity can't get data fast enough. (If the AV unit is running full tilt, there's roughly zero bandwith to keep the integer units & FPUs fed. And the caches are filled with drek.)

Then there are duals, which need 2x the bandwidth.</strong><hr></blockquote>

Who initiated Altivec anyway, Apple, IBM, MOT? IBM didn't want it but who thought up the idea?

[quote]Originally posted by GardenOfEarthlyDelights:
<strong>Anyone old enough to remember when IBM was with the bad guys?</strong><hr></blockquote>

Also old enough to remember when IBM tanked due to bad management.

[quote]Is that a 2.5 GHz PPC 970 in my pants or... <hr></blockquote>

:eek:

That sends a shockwave through the computing community.

W-O-W!!!

1.8 970 = a 3.6 G4. That tops Intel to the year end.

But...BUT a 2.5 gig 970!?!?!?!?!?!?

:eek: :eek: :eek:

?!

Staggering. That will be the equivalent of a 5 gig G4!?!? Intel won't get to that level of performance until late 2004!!!

I'm in shock. :eek:

Put them in dual formation. That's the equivalent of a 10 gig G4 in terms of performance!

:eek:

Sandbagging. Indeed.

Macworld Newyork. Seismic announcement by Jobs. They, eventually, close the mhz gap and how.

A 2.5 970 will absolutely b*itch slap a Pentium 4 of any mhz from here until next year! And that's before you get to duals.

And as Amorph shrewdly noted, THAT altivec is going to fly on a 970 on that bandwidth at that mhz...g'yeesh.

Intel will get truly humiliated on Spec...and in real world performance...altivec enabled Photoshop filters!?!??!? Gurgle...

I want Lightwave benched on a 2.5 970. Then on duals!!!

I await the breath of the announcement from a certain fruit company...

Truly staggering.

Lemon Bon Bon

PS. Could Apple possibly not adopt this baby? They'd have to be stupifyingly nuts.

[ 02-27-2003: Message edited by: Lemon Bon Bon ]</p>

[quote] Also old enough to remember when IBM tanked due to bad management.

<hr></blockquote>

I remember that too.

Lemon Bon Bon :cool:

Strap on your seat belts, ladies..


...oh and please put your goggles on.

[quote]Originally posted by 709:
<strong>I'm gonna ask this again because I think my first post got buried in the excitement of Page 1...

If IBM is getting 1.8-2.5 Ghz on a .13 micron process, is there some down and dirty formula that might give an indication of speeds when these get shrunk to .09? Sorry for being a nag. </strong><hr></blockquote>

Figure 30%. So 2.3 - 3.25 GHz, extrapolating from the above frequencies. Of course, as the process matures, they should go higher.

[quote]Originally posted by Bigc:
<strong>Who initiated Altivec anyway, Apple, IBM, MOT? IBM didn't want it but who thought up the idea?</strong><hr></blockquote>

All three were involved in the design. The head of the development team was an Apple employee. I don't know how much more than that is known.

[ 02-27-2003: Message edited by: Amorph ]</p>

These specs look really good for Apple, but I feel that IBM's blade servers could actually result in damage to Apple.

Think about it - Apple sells loads of xServe's to these biotech company to do their protein cracking, or whatever.

A single rack of xServes is maybe 40 machines, 80 processors.

A rack of IBM PPC 970 blades will likely be 5 boxes, each with 14 blades, each with 2 processors = 140 processors.

These people aren't buying Apple hardware for its nice colours, but for its performance. If they can find similar performance for a similar price in a more compact unit, they'll buy it.

Plus, the Linux OS you'd run on the IBM kit is much better at clustering than Mac OS is, and so could be easier to manage for their systems folks.

Of course, if IBM and Apple can do a deal to put Mac OS X on IBM hardware, all bets are off, but I don't think this is likely. IBM have too great an investment in Linux.

Cheers!

[ 02-27-2003: Message edited by: ducasi ]</p>

[quote] Strap on your seat belts, ladies..

...oh and please put your goggles on.

<hr></blockquote>

...yeah, 2.5 ghz, you could take somebody's eye out with that...



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

[ 02-27-2003: Message edited by: Lemon Bon Bon ]</p>

[quote]I've been waiting for Hannibals second 970 article for MONTHS. Where is it?<hr></blockquote>

Me too. &lt;begins wild specualtion on why IBM aren't spilling the beans...&gt;

Right, how would you start the PowerMac 970 sales intro?

Payback's a B!tch, ain't it Intel?

Also. What's stopping IBM from producing say a 1.2Ghz or 1.3Ghz 970. Surely that would run cool enough for a powerbook.

Posted by Outsider:

[quote]Personally, knowing his bias, I think he is afraid of showing his findings in that it totally obliterates anything on the x86 side or processor design. <hr></blockquote>

Agreed.

Posted by Bigc:

[quote]Who initiated Altivec anyway, Apple, IBM, MOT? IBM didn't want it but who thought up the idea? <hr></blockquote>

Well, it sorta goes like this... Apparently, it was Keith Diefendorff of Apple (previously of Moto) who pushed for adding vector instructions to PPC. All 3 companies worked on joint development of this SIMD unit, as all 3 were still part of Somerset at this point, although a significant chunk of people involved on all sides were not actually at Somerset itself. The internal development name that the 3 companies decided on was VMX. Moto later trademarked the name AltiVec for it's own usage. Apple got Velocity Engine.

--
Ed M.

That's an interesting point, ducasi.

I'll offer a few admittedly less concrete counterpoints, just as food for thought:

NeXTStep had clustering support, and Apple is rumored to be working on kernel-level clustering support for OS X.

The above + Rendezvous + OS X server admin tools = the easiest clustering solution to set up and maintain.

Xserve is, according to Apple, an entry level solution and the first of a line. So Apple might well have a plan here.

Xserve is not as dense in terms of processing power per rack as dual-CPU IBM blades would be, but on the other hand it has gobs of storage per rack unit, where the blades require a SAN or other storage solution. In other words, it's tailored to serve a different market than is served by the processing-power-at-all-costs blades.

Apple had something very much like a blade system designed for them years ago, by frogdesign - the same design firm responsible for the original Macintosh. It was a "bookcase," into which "books" representing storage or CPUs or RAM could be placed. It was way ahead of its time, and well outside any market that Apple had any hope of penetrating then. But I wouldn't be too surprised if someone in Cupertino has dusted some of that research off. If anyone can do a fully modular, plug-and-play blade system it's Apple.

[ 02-27-2003: Message edited by: Amorph ]</p>

Everything that I've read says that the FSB will be 'up to 900Mhz, which is always tagged on to the whole 1.8Ghz introduction thing, which is now an understatement. Anyway, that suggests that anything with a lower clock speed might not have a 900Mhz FSB, but I never read anything about clear 2:1 ratio (due to DDR) though I suppose that one could assume that. I assume that I'm missing something if that's the case for sure, so can someone put up a link to where IBM states that it IS a 2:1 ration between clock speed and FSB?

[ 02-27-2003: Message edited by: FrostyMMB ]</p>

[quote]Originally posted by Stoo:
<strong>Right, how would you start the PowerMac 970 sales intro?</strong><hr></blockquote>

"This here's a dual 1.4 GHz G4+ maxxed out. Corner two has a Pentium whatsit-max." Blah blah. Start demo. Keep talking. (demo still running) (5 minutes pass). Oh, this is taking too long. Pulls sheet off a new case. "I think I'll do it on my new computer." Hits space bar. 970 finishes first. Rubs 970 affectionately.

Turns to crowd "$3799 for this one, singles start at 1400, duals, and quads available, and IBM is now an authorized reseller of Mac OS X if you'd like more than 4 processors." (Big rack with big _I_B_M_ on it rolls from darkness) Hits spacebar. _Still_ finishes before the G4 finishes (which is still chugging along).

"I told you we'd have options. I'd like to say 2004 is officially the year of the PowerMac"

Nevyn, I like your idea of IBM licensing 'X' for above 4 way configs. Good idea.

Nifty promo' idea.

IBM and Apple use a big 'strap on' (gun) and bend Intel over...

'This won't hurt a bit...'

Lemon Bon Bon

Imagine the look on the face of the poor unsuspecting not-in-tune-with-rumors soul that purchases a Dual 1.45 GHz G4s and discovers a couple weeks later that a 2.5 GHz 970 is now selling for the same price and offers 3+ times the performance.

I think the look would probably be equivalent to the those of the people that bought a 23" cinema display right before the huge price cuts.

[ 02-27-2003: Message edited by: kim kap sol ]</p>

Wouldn't a second generation of 970 be incremented in such a way as to show it is a newer generation?

Good news on Hannibal's part 2 of his PPC 970 article!

From Ars Technica's discussion thread on the IBM PPC 970 blade server news:

[quote]By Hannibal:
And regarding the PPC 970 article, I've yet to get a response from IBM either via phone or email. I'm going to go ahead without the info for now, because I'm determined to get it out there. It's half written already.<hr></blockquote>

Good. There's nothing wrong with doing a part 3 eventually.

That giant sucking sound you hear is, well, Motorola.

[quote]Originally posted by Nevyn:
<strong>

Rubs 970 affectionately.

</strong><hr></blockquote>

I would do a lot more than rub it affectionately, but then I'd probably get arrested.

Seriously, I was excited enough by 1.8GHz - but 2.5 GHz with the potential for more when it goes to 0.09 has me planning a celebratory bottle of wine whilst watching the keynote. And then, I'll just wait for the 970-powered Powerbook.

I want to see Michael Dell's face when this stuff gets released, especially when we see how fast Virtual PC runs on Mac.

Bring it on!!

Look Deeper....

<a href="http://www-5.ibm.com/de/pressroom/cebit2003/i/highres/bladeprototype_300_Dpi.jpg" target="_blank">http://www-5.ibm.com/de/pressroom/cebit2003/i/highres/bladeprototype_300_Dpi.jpg</a>

<a href="http://arstechnica.com/archive/news/1046380113.html" target="_blank">Ars Tech. and Hannibal's Acknowledgment</a>

--
Ed M.

From IBM's Press Release:
[quote] · Runs at frequences ranging from 1.8 GHz - 2.5 Ghz
Therefore the IBMPowerPC 970 is the fastest PowerPC so far.

Further technical highlights of the PowerPC 970:

· Onchip 512 KB L2 Cache
· Altivec Vector/SIMD unit
· 6,4 GB/s I/O system bus throughput<hr></blockquote>


Doesn't that imply that it'll only be a 900MHz bus? It lists the 2.5Ghz speed on that page so, if it was a 2:1 ratio regardless of frequency, wouldn't they have rated the bus speed as "up to 8.8GB/s" (going off Amorph's numbers)?

[quote]Originally posted by ghstmars:
<strong>Damn!! Moki !! someonew was sandbanging!! <img src="graemlins/cancer.gif" border="0" alt="[cancer]" /> </strong><hr></blockquote>

there may be more than one bag of sand, too... two more that I can think of actually... I posted it here as well:

<a href="http://www.ambrosiasw.com/webboard/Forum64/HTML/001106.html" target="_blank">http://www.ambrosiasw.com/webboard/Forum64/HTML/001106.html</a>

[ 02-27-2003: Message edited by: moki ]</p>

[quote]Originally posted by Lemon Bon Bon:
<strong>Staggering. That will be the equivalent of a 5 gig G4!?!? Intel won't get to that level of performance until late 2004!!!

I'm in shock. :eek:

Put them in dual formation. That's the equivalent of a 10 gig G4 in terms of performance!

:eek:

Sandbagging. Indeed.</strong><hr></blockquote>

See, there's plenty or reason to not worry and be happy.