I have no idea where this will lead. Perhaps Apple has enough in-house chip designers to help Moto design an Apple exclusive chip with HyperTransport. Otherwise, I'm hard pressed to believe that Moto will manufacture a chip with a competing bus technology.
<strong>Is it at all possible that the next generation processor from Motorola for Apple is not currently on Motorola's Roadmap?</strong>
Yes. However, it would probably mean it would really be an Apple funded and designed chip that Motorola fabs, not a Moto funded and designed one.
<strong>G4 w/ 10 stage pipeline, on die controlller, ala System on a Chip?, and Hypertransport, 0.13µ process?</strong>
Sure something like that could be done. But I think Apple would be better off with a brand new architecture that includes multicore or multithreading and a new FPU. But Moto seems to be controlling the direction of the chips they produce, so who knows.
My fantasy would be a new microarchiture that is multithreaded, 6 issue/retire, 4 integer units (2 full, 2 simple), 3 floating point units, 256 bit AltiVec units, 128 KByte L1, 512 KByte L3, quad short channel DRDRAM backside L3 (8.4 GB/s using P1066 DRDRAM!), and dual-link Hypertransport bus. It's just a fantasy.
<strong>My fantasy would be a new microarchiture that is multithreaded, 6 issue/retire, 4 integer units (2 full, 2 simple), 3 floating point units, 256 bit AltiVec units, 128 KByte L1, 512 KByte L3, quad short channel DRDRAM backside L3 (8.4 GB/s using P1066 DRDRAM!), and dual-link Hypertransport bus. It's just a fantasy.</strong><hr></blockquote>
I thought the 8540 was shipping now? Doesnt the fact that it's book-e compliant, and (IIRC) on a 13µ process indicate the direction that moto is heading in the 85xx line?</strong>
No, no and no.
Motorola announced the planned existence of the 8540 only. In that announcement, they say the chip will be sampling in 2H 02. Sampling is a term that means a manufacturer is producing a chip in hardware for the first time. They still have 4 to 6 months of debugging to do after that.
The mythical G5 for Apple will undoubtedly be produced on 0.13u micron. It's the nature of the business. In fact, Apple might be the last to the party with a 0.13 micron chip if they don't ship a G5 Mac by Spring.
There is nothing magical about Book-E compliance. It's just a set of requirements for modularizing a CPU. There are no details about performance.
Comments
What about Rapid I/O?
Apple - Hypertransport
Motorola - Rapid I/O</strong>
I have no idea where this will lead. Perhaps Apple has enough in-house chip designers to help Moto design an Apple exclusive chip with HyperTransport. Otherwise, I'm hard pressed to believe that Moto will manufacture a chip with a competing bus technology.
<strong>Is it at all possible that the next generation processor from Motorola for Apple is not currently on Motorola's Roadmap?</strong>
Yes. However, it would probably mean it would really be an Apple funded and designed chip that Motorola fabs, not a Moto funded and designed one.
<strong>G4 w/ 10 stage pipeline, on die controlller, ala System on a Chip?, and Hypertransport, 0.13µ process?</strong>
Sure something like that could be done. But I think Apple would be better off with a brand new architecture that includes multicore or multithreading and a new FPU. But Moto seems to be controlling the direction of the chips they produce, so who knows.
My fantasy would be a new microarchiture that is multithreaded, 6 issue/retire, 4 integer units (2 full, 2 simple), 3 floating point units, 256 bit AltiVec units, 128 KByte L1, 512 KByte L3, quad short channel DRDRAM backside L3 (8.4 GB/s using P1066 DRDRAM!), and dual-link Hypertransport bus. It's just a fantasy.
[ 01-31-2002: Message edited by: THT ]</p>
<strong>My fantasy would be a new microarchiture that is multithreaded, 6 issue/retire, 4 integer units (2 full, 2 simple), 3 floating point units, 256 bit AltiVec units, 128 KByte L1, 512 KByte L3, quad short channel DRDRAM backside L3 (8.4 GB/s using P1066 DRDRAM!), and dual-link Hypertransport bus. It's just a fantasy.</strong><hr></blockquote>
Yeah, I have fantasies like that all the time.
I thought the 8540 was shipping now? Doesnt the fact that it's book-e compliant, and (IIRC) on a 13µ process indicate the direction that moto is heading in the 85xx line?</strong>
No, no and no.
Motorola announced the planned existence of the 8540 only. In that announcement, they say the chip will be sampling in 2H 02. Sampling is a term that means a manufacturer is producing a chip in hardware for the first time. They still have 4 to 6 months of debugging to do after that.
The mythical G5 for Apple will undoubtedly be produced on 0.13u micron. It's the nature of the business. In fact, Apple might be the last to the party with a 0.13 micron chip if they don't ship a G5 Mac by Spring.
There is nothing magical about Book-E compliance. It's just a set of requirements for modularizing a CPU. There are no details about performance.