Apple Confirms NO G5 PowerBooks anytime soon - Page 2

That isn't true at all. People keep making this statement with the only basis in IBM's microprocessor forum literature. This type of literature often conflates reality, with best case scenario testing, with projections, and a healthy dose of optimism -- a sort of advertorial/infomercial session really. According to this type of report IBM should have had 2Ghz G3's, or moto's G4 would already be at 1.8Ghz with a DDR FSB. It's rather obvious that they don't represent reality.

Production represents reality. Looking at Xserves and PMs, I think it's reather obvious that while the G5 is cool for a chip of its intended market, it isn't close to as cool as a 1.5Ghz 7447A.

Well said.

The G4 is a much simpler core than the G5 becuase it has shorter pipelines, far less out-of-order execution capability, is only 32-bit, and a high performance bus interface. As a result of the first two items the G4 has much smaller execution resources (registers, buffers, etc). These differences give the G5 the ability to scale to much higher clock rates and perform well despite the huge latencies on data from main memory, even in a multi-processor system. At G4 clock rates, however, the G5 will be slower than the G4 on many many tasks. Basically, if you don't run it at high speeds, it loses many of its advantages over the G4 because its architecture is designed from the ground up to run at high clock rates.

I'm not prepared to scoff at Freescale hitting 90nm this year because its not their fabs in question -- ST Microelectronics and Philips will very likely benefit them tremendously. If Freescale can focus on the processor / SoC desgin (which has always been their strength) then we may see a G4 that addresses the big weaknesses of past G4s. All it would take is an on-chip memory controller to eliminate the MPX bus, and an RIO or HT interface to the I/O controller. 90 nm would probably push the clock rate up to 1.8-2 GHz. Such a chip could blow the stuffing out of the Pentium-M, just like the G4 used to best the PentiumPro/II/III before Intel pushed its bus technology past what MPX could provide. And do this at a lower power dissapation point than the G5 would achieve with the same performance.

Apple does not need a single processor line -- they need 2 or 3. The iBook, iMac, PB, PowerMac, and Xserve cover a broad spectrum of processor requirements and the biggest problem with the G4 for all those years was that Apple only had the G4 to cover the whole gamut (there being not much to distinguish the G3 from the G4, aside from AltiVec the lack of which caused more problems). My hope is that now they can have 2 G5-class processors (970 & 975), and a heavily updated G4.

This isn't the old Motorola. It's not even just Motorola. You can bet against Philips Semiconductor and STM Micro (Europe's largest contract fab) if you want to.

Crolles is online now, making product at 90nm now. They're (wisely) starting out with simple stuff like memory before tackling something as complex as a CPU. So far, the whole Crolles partnership is on schedule.

Get used to it. Frankly, while I understand the impulse to be skeptical of Motorola, I have to wonder about the hostility toward the prospect of a valuable second supplier. Do you want Apple to have all their eggs in one basket again?

Oh, and check Motorola's last quarter results, will you? You might find them interesting.

That is all probably true, yet, if I remember correctly, the current G4 has more transistors on die than the G5. I believe the #'s are something like 52 million for the G5 and 58 million for the G4. So if my memory is good, , the G5 may in fact use less power than the G4.

I don't remember exactly, but I seem to remember that from somewhere.

The information is available in product information pdf's at both IBM and Motorola, but I'm too lazy to look it up. Other things affect power besided just transistor count, like clock speed, voltage, leakage, etc. I only mentioned it in passing to kind of re-inforce the distinct possibility that the G5 does in fact dissipate less heat.

I thought clock for clock that, that was already known.

I thought so too, however, it seems that some people are contending that the typical and maximum usages as measured/reported by Motorola and IBM are not comparable, which may very well be the case, who knows. That, and people keep "banging the pot", saying that the G5 uses too much power to be used in a laptop, even though the numbers indicate otherwise.

Regarding the concern for a powerbook upgrade I see little need for it at the moment. Perhaps marketing concerns will push apple to develope a G5 powerbook quciker, but the idea that PC laptops are killing powerbooks is pretty silly. I can understand if you'd say pc's are punchier (quicker to exacute simpler commande) but in terms of number crunching the mac have it in spades. I own a G3 pismo 500 and a PIV 2.6 GHZ vaio, each has a gig of ram and I use both interchangeably depending on my need and the pismo at 1/4 the clock speed hold up very well to heavy 3d and video rendering in FCP, lightwave and after effects just as well if not better than the VAIO. Truthfully the pc is junk and I wouldn't own it if I didn't need to, people need to look past the specs and get themselves some real world "practice" on these machines, for thier purpose before they make vague blanket statements like pc laptops are better than apple's. Silly!Regarding the concern for a Powerbook upgrade I see little need for it at the moment. Perhaps marketing concerns will push apple to develop a G5 Powerbook quicker, but the idea that PC laptops are killing Powerbooks is pretty silly. I can understand if you'd say pc's are punchier (quicker to execute simpler commands) but in terms of number crunching the Mac have it in spades. I own a G3 Pismo 500 and a PIV 2.6 GHZ Vaio, each has a gig of ram and I use both interchangeably depending on my need and the Pismo at 1/4 the clock speed hold up very well to heavy 3d and video rendering in FCP, Lightwave and after effects just as well if not better than the VAIO. Truthfully the pc is junk and I wouldn't own it if I didn't need to, people need to look past the specs and get themselves some real world "practice" on these machines, for their purpose before they make vague blanket statements like pc laptops are better than apple's. Silly!

The current PowerBooks may or may not hold up to the new 1.7Ghz centrinos for no benchmarks have been released yet. If I remember correctly the last revision fell behind in many tasks, although not by all that much. The G4 in its current form is not going to be able to keep up with the centrino. It needs a faster Bus, a smaller die shrink, and a 1MB L2 cache. If Freescale/motorola can pull this off the G4 should be able to surpass the centrino. The problem currently stems from the slow bus which substantially affects the G4s ability to process large amounts of data.

The G3 is a good chip, but I don't believe for a second that it comes anywhere close to the 2.6Ghz P4M. The P4M may be a lot slower than its desktop sibling but it is not that slow.

The PowerBooks do have one large advantage over most PC laptops and thats the high end graphic cards apple puts into them. They should really help any video benchmarks out.

I thought it is about the same thing. In what they do differ?

And its getting WORSE!, 2GHz Centrino , and its shipping in May!.

So hopefully, the next bump in Jan is a bit more than 100MHz? Oh no let me guess, we dont need faster CPU's because its all about the OS???

Did you notice the L2 cache size ?

I thought this was the most interesting statement:


Wither Pentium4?

Not only that, but some recent real data **confirm** that this G5 would not go in a Powerbook. We will see perhaps one day a G5 Powerbook, but I seriously doubt it will have the G5 we all know today.

And I explain. xlr8yourmac posted yesterday some comments of a XServe G5 user. Let's see:


Now, let someone explain to me how do you put a 44.5 W chip (processor alone--granted, at 100% CPU load) in a thin notebook like the Powerbook.

And not only that, as I posted in another thread, it might not be worth slowing it down to get the G5 into an acceptable power consumption range:

The G5 relies on high Mhz and a huge FSB for it's speed. Slowing it down to 1.3-1.6Ghz and limiting it to a DDR333/400 FSB may render it little better than a G4 in it's current state.

Basically, cooling it down enough for laptop use, may render it too slow. It isn't looking like a laptop chip, even in 970FX form.

Of course, and even if it is worth to slow it down to, say, 1.6 GHz, then what will be the next upgrade step, when this chip is hot as hell (in the slim Powerbook case) once it passes beyond 1.8 GHz? I don't think Apple would try such a solution without having an upgrade path for 3-4 generations of the same chip (with light alterations eventually). Unless it is 100% compatible with something more efficient in its late development stages.

The 970fx in the Xserve is running at 1.32 v. IBM has posted variants of the fx that run at 1 volt, so that seems to be possible.

Once yields are better, IBM can take high-clocking 970fx's, and run them at 1 volt, for a 1/3 reduction in power and (approximately) clock rate. That won't be a cheap line, though, because it's taking the cream of the crop and clocking it low.

A low voltage 970 would, at least, hardly be worse than the 7400 G4s that went into the first TiBooks. But it leaves Freescale a lot of room to repackage a G4-like core into a low-wattage, high-voltage (i.e., cheap) notebook CPU. Move the memory controller on die (no MaxBus), and you're pretty much there. Add an FPU, and you have a sweet little chip. At 90nm, it could either run really cool, or Mot could take it dual core and it would still run cool enough.

You mean to have two FPUs? What impact would have this on performance and heat?

Right now, the G4 gets slaughtered on scalar FP because it only has one floating point unit. So all floating point work queues up to go through this bottleneck one at a time. Contrast this to the G4's four integer units. A second floating point unit and a little extra support for instruction scheduling and reordering would nearly double the G4's FP performance. This is an extremely common tactic. I believe it's the only "high-end" CPU left that doesn't have two FP units, although I could be missing a "mobile" CPU somewhere.

Basically, look at the difference between the 970's FP performance and the G4's: The G4 has a very nice FP unit, so that's not the problem. The remaining 970 advantages are bandwidth, dual FP units, and clockrate. An on-die memory controller and a second FP unit knock down two out of three, and a process shrink will at least keep the third under control.

As for heat and die size, the entire AltiVec unit on the 7455 takes up less than 10% of the die, so I wouldn't expect a single FP unit to have a more than negligible impact, even accounting for the additional circuitry that will almost certainly be needed to take advantage of the additional parallelism. Die size might not change at all: There's a lot of space on the 745x die, because a lot of the circuitry is spaced out generously to avoid hot spots on the die.

Which CPUs, other than the 970, have two FPU units?


From what you are saying, I understand that adding a second FPU in the G4 depends only on a decision, since there are no significant technical difficulties. Right? So, why the G4s don't have this second FPU? Is it again all about the well known Motorola specialisation in screwing up things?

The embedded market doesn't need a second FPU and Motorola didn't want (read: spend the money) to redesign the core of the G4 for Apple alone.
And I don't think they will do it in the future. We will see a bigger L2 and a memory controller. Expect the e700 to have the first redesigned core.

It's just a business decision.

Just my 2¢
Sometime last year it became apparent that Apple had bought over half of all G4 cpu's made since they were developed, I'd say that was a bad business decision. Unless of course, Apple hadn't requested a 2nd floating point unit. This also applies to the FSB also, handicap the cpu for the single largest customer for the G4 for the needs of the embedded market.

I know there are other factors involved, but for Motorola not to expend the effort to develop the G4 further faster for the single largest purchaser of all G4's ever produced at the time this became apparent, at least in my mind is fairly damning of Motorola's upper management.

You will not find anyone with an other opinion here

Except mine, the 1.5 GHz G4 in my PowerBook is not at all slow. No complaints here. 3 years ago...whole 'nother can of worms.

The agreement was over the past incompetence of Motorola's management, which is beyond dispute.

When the CEO is ousted by a shareholder revolt and replaced by a total outsider (Sun's Ed Zander) you know there's a problem.

Freescale can be grateful that the 745x core is basically sound, and it really doesn't need much work to become a first-rate competitor again within its market (i.e., not high-end, fire-breathing desktops and servers).

It sounds like their future plans are all built around Book E, which will be interesting, and which should save them some engineering costs and time to market. I'm not sure how well that specification scales up (it's also used in IBM's 400 series and Mot's star-crossed 8500 series, neither of which are breaking any performance records) but Freescale seems to be fairly confident.

If i had the choice between Mo.. äh, Freescale and IBM i prefer the king of the hill IBM

Look at POWER4/ POWER5, the most powerful CPU of the world.
But i also love surprises
I want to believe

Unless the market changed overnight, the king of the hill - hands down - is Intel.

You're so right: Reuters


Efficient chip technology

First time i heard about that from Intel

Longhorn specs: 4-6GHz... PPC or what

Tejas was scrapped for good reason: massive leakage on the 90nm process, with around 100W of total power dissipation!!

And you guys want a 90nm chip in a laptop? Geeez. Just think of the G4 as a mobility chip!

Interesting... and a shrewd move too IMO. Even though it is Intel, it's good to see a company who is willing to correct their direction *before* things get ugly, even if means completely scrapping their current roadmap.

Good on 'em I say.

C.

If you compare the performance of the fastest PC portables to Apple's, the current powerbooks get solidly trounced.

You can get 3.2GHz P4s from Toshiba, and you can even get a 3.4GHz P4 on an 800MHz from Alienware - see the Area-51m

Apple could easily put the same 2GHz (44.5 Watt) G5 that's in the Xserve into a case about as thick as my old wallstreet G3.

I'm getting sick of thin -- I want POWER in my Powerbook.

Before things get ugly

The thing is already ugly, it's called Prescott
They had no other choice

Intel, the SCO of microelectronics

bla...bla... bla.....puff

Speak for yourself... I just got back from Best Buy, and was rather disgusted that I couldn't find a PC laptop (other than the token Sony 12") that weighed less than 6.5 pounds, and it seemed most of them were approaching (if not exceeding) 8 pounds. And to top it off, they were all WAY too bulky. I'll stick with my 5 lb. 12" Powerbook, thankyewverymuch.

If Apple were to come out with a G5 "Heftybook", that'd be OK by me, so long as they didn't drop the small & light Powerbooks. After all, who in their right mind would want small & light in something designed to be portable?

There is the possibility we could see a PowerBook G5 at WWDC. The only scenario for this I see happening is that it will be a 17-inch model only, running a G5 processor at either 1.6GHz or 1.8 GHz, for $3,299. Available in August. Meanwhile, Apple would continue to sell the current G4 PB's. _

Think about this, when the 17 was first released it was $3,299. It is now $2,799. We saw a similar price drop like this when the last of the G4 towers were released (the last rev before the G5s), and this scenario fits nicely with previous modus operandi from Apple.

Given what we know about the newer G5 chip and it's strained availability at its new process, in addition to the fact that the 17-inch form factor would be the most accommodating and forgiving relative to the G5's heat, I think my scenario is the closest to reality there is relative to any speculation about G5 PowerBooks at WWDC.

Now I don't know what the likelihood of anything like this coming from Apple at WWDC or this summer is. But I will tell you one thing, ask anyone who bought the first PowerBook with a SuperDrive from Apple in November who thought there would be 12- and 17-inch PowerBooks a few months later in January? And you would have a resounding, "No way in hell."

I'm sure Apple is not going to spend the entire WWDC demoing Tiger and Tiger's coding tools. While not much has been discussed about revolutionary new features in Tiger, it sounds to me like it's going to be a bland update. Much more so than 10.2 to 10.3 was. I also don't believe they are going to spend much time demoing towers that cannot reach 3.0GHz as was promised to members the year previously. I think that the PowerBook 17-inch at G5 is something that is feasible now, and if Apple chooses to woo developers, they just may put this thing out there. They will want momentum after this show, and this could provide the forward momentum they are looking for.

Then again, I could be off in left field again

Heh... good point. However, hot as it is, it still doesn't impede them from actually producing the Prescott. And by the looks of it, it still has some headroom to grow before they'll have to transition out to a cooler part.

Ugly is getting into Motorola territory...

Cheers,

C.

It is not known at all. The typical figures from Motorola and IBM can not be compared at all. If you compare Maximum power usage the 970FX loses. Even that is not really all that usefull as modern workloads seldom max out a processor for long.

The bigger issue is that the processor is only one element in the machine. Current G5 support logic quickly makes up much of the power usage difference.

Since we are talking about a highly integrated G4 here the differrences could very well be more extreme. simply adding a Hypertransport interface and a memory interface to the G4 will give it a tremedous advantage over the 970FX in its current form.

As far as the 970 series goes I would not be surprised to find out that Apple and IBM are working on a portable version that provides some of the same benefits. There is still the question of power usage, but such a chip should see consderable advantage over the 970FX.

Dave

Meanwhile, they are Wintel laptops that run rings around the 'light' 'power'Books.

It's five years since the 500 mhz intro' debacle and Apple are still dicking around with motorola cpus.

Business plan? What business plan?

The sooner they make a couple of billion from iPod and mate of iPod and the rest of the music/gadget family the future electronics based Apple has planned...the sooner they can just release 'X' on Intel processors and give up the Mac 'PPC' hardware ghost...

Yeesh. A year at 2 gig on the G5 (give or take a month...)

And no sign of the G5 in anything else?

What a **** poor start to the 'Mac' hardware year...

Lemon Bon Bon

Since the talk is about portable computers, I have to recall that today is the day Intel introduces Dothan, the second generation centrino going up to 2GHz and equiped with 2 MB of L2 cache memory. Here is a detailed presentation of the new processor. It is in french, but there are also comparative benchmarks.

thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you for reinstilling hope in my 1.5Ghz 15" PB, hahahaha. All this talk about new technology makes me feel so obsolete---and i only bought this a week ago...!