DDR/Mobo Speculation

dtoh

OK, here we go...



Most of the speculation about future towers has been relegated to G? at foo GHz + new mobo. I'd like to seperate the 2 for a moment.



I'll take as a tacit assumption that what's holding back the processor speeds is Motorola, so I won't discuss that here, instead I'd like to speculate wildly on the mobo aspects of upcoming towers.



There is simply no reason (o.k. fine, refabbing the mobo=not much R&D) for the PM line not to have had DDR/SDRAM for quite a while now, so why hasn't Apple thrown it in? Is it simply ineptitude? I think (well...urm...hope) not.



What I'm hoping to see in the future PM line is a radically different mobo architecture, and since I'm no engineer, I don't know what it is, but it seems that Apple must be holding off on this for bigger reasons than stupidity.



I'll insert buzzwords now which nobody knows what really are:

Gigawire

Hypertransport (o.k., maybe that one's a bit clearer)

Rapid-IO (ditto)



go forth and speculate!

paul

I think the problem with trying to separate the mobo rumor from the G? rumor is that the new mobo will only probably be rolled out with a new (read: G5 or Apollo) processor. If the 7541 just gets speed-bumped (the chip in the current iMacs) to 1GHz dual then the mobo will be the same, 133mhz bus and all...

But it makes sense: other threads bring up the 1999 situation with the G3 smurf mac and the speedbump and G4's 3 months later... I think this is spot on...



P.S. Great sig!!



[ 01-22-2002: Message edited by: psantora ]</p>

ghost_user_name

One of the specs of a processor is the bus speed it supports. If the processor doesn't support DDR, then you're SOL.



It seems the G4 is one of those procs. According to the chart <a href="http://e-www.motorola.com/webapp/sps/site/taxonomy.jsp?nodeId=03M943030450467M98653"; target="_blank">here</a>, the 7451 G4 only supports a 133 MHz bus.



So, even the mobo problem is a Moto problem.



Jet