Rackmounts Coming
Jobs said a week from tomorrow they will be announced. Why he wouldn't just do it right then and there doesn't make sense but oh well. What I have heard is that they will be designed to set up with a RAID and will not ship with a hard drive. They will also have a high speed fiber connection for cluster purposes.
I have a friend who works closely with Apple on the sales end of this stuff and the sales end of it has been bitching at Apple for months to release this stuff.
I have a friend who works closely with Apple on the sales end of this stuff and the sales end of it has been bitching at Apple for months to release this stuff.
Comments
Steve
Outsider- To mount PCI cards on the motherboard you need a 3U chassis minimum. Just hope you don't have any connectors on the top edge of the card because if I can remember right there's only about 1/8" between case and card. At least that's how it is in my Antec 3U PC I'm about to retire. They could make 3U work fine or a 2U with mounting the PCI's horizontally like in my old PowerCenter Pro.
Any way it goes, it would be nice to see something that may help bolster their market and make UNIX/Linux network administrators think twice about getting Macs.
[QB]Jobs said a week from tomorrow they will be announced. Why he wouldn't just do it right then and there doesn't make sense but oh well.QB]<hr></blockquote>
This is an interesting way of announcing a new product. Seems Apple wanted developers aware of the upcoming hardware for WWDC but did not want to steal the thunder of OSX 10.2 and confuse the focus of WWDC. I think this means we can expect the rackmounts to sport some impressive specs. Impressive enough that no one would be talking about 10.2 anyways.
Now the big question is if the rackmounts sport new generation hardware are there new towers coming next week too or not till this summer. My guess would be this summer for the anticipation factor to really build. After imac and rackmounts and every other line getting seriously upgraded but the PM series I think there are a lot of pro users ready to blow their wad this summer.
originally posted by yours truly in a response to a buy or wait question from <a href="http://forums.appleinsider.com/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic&f=2&t=000816#000017"; target="_blank">this thread</a>
[quote]originally posted by Matsu (me, hehehe)]
[qi]It's time to wait. That logic board is on borrowed time, and the next major rev ought to seriously cut into it's resale value. I'm not one who's thinking of anything too exotic, but a modernized MoBo and a .13u SOI G4, along with DDR-RAM, faster firewire and AGP, and an ATA-RAID will make for a much more valuable machine -- one with a higher resale value, and longer life (because it should be more responsive to future upgrades) PowerMacs are expensive, spend wisely.
My pet theory, which is nothing to go on, is that the recent red MoBo stir could not happen unless it was damned close to release. Despite great pains by Apple to rub out any last trace of a leak, the few days/hours before a product announcement ussually produce a leak somewhere.
Kihei, days before on AI and other pages
Cube, days before (no pictures, and slightly off on the concept, but they got the cube shape right -- back in the days when AI still made an effort to corrale Mac info from semi-legit sources.
Radeon on Graphite PM and cube, days before ATI accidently spills the beans in a press release, and a well documented (extremely pissy) reaction from Steve sees ATI employees on the verge of tears during the expo.
Pro Mouse, days (weeks?) before, by workerbee, you know the rest...
QuickSilver, days before, doctored to protect identity but without a doubt the current QS case...
iMac LCD, hours before, Time Magazine, those crazy Canucks!
So you see, the rumor mill is tighter than an M$ lawyer's sphincter, but it usually coughs up the goods a few feet short of the bowl. That's what you get for holding it all in so long.
[/qi]<hr></blockquote>
Matsu, rumor analysis extraordinaire.
[ 05-06-2002: Message edited by: Matsu ]</p>
266MHz Bus
1-1.4GHz G4 possibly HiP7
GeForce 2MX
Bluetooth/Airport
MonstaDrive (HD)
1394b
2fw/2usb
Ultra320 SCSI (this out yet? maybe introduction of it
[QB]Bodhi- If i remember right Jobs never wants to use WWDC to debut new hardware that may be why it's next week for news on the new servers.[QB]<hr></blockquote>
Well Jobs has refreshed Powerbooks and announced the 17" display at WWDC shows. I just found it a little weird how this was handled.
<strong>Now time to speculate, well, on the specs
266MHz Bus
1-1.4GHz G4 possibly HiP7
GeForce 2MX
Bluetooth/Airport
MonstaDrive (HD)
1394b
2fw/2usb
Ultra320 SCSI (this out yet? maybe introduction of it
There will be no G4s in the rackmount. If apple is really serious about making an impact, they will either pull a G5 out of their ass or go with IBM's power4. *CONFIRMED*
<strong>
There will be no G4s in the rackmount. If apple is really serious about making an impact, they will either pull a G5 out of their ass or go with IBM's power4. *CONFIRMED*</strong><hr></blockquote>
Gut feeling tells me it wont be anything we've ever heard of...I.E. no G4, Sahara, Power 4, G5, etc.
<strong>
Gut feeling tells me it wont be anything we've ever heard of...I.E. no G4, Sahara, Power 4, G5, etc.</strong><hr></blockquote>
Holy crap a powerPC grandson of the old Alpha chips! *everyone rejoices*
As far as I have heard Motorola is ready to ship 1.2 Ghz G4 processors, although I do not know if these are 7455 or DDR supporting CPUs. Anyway, Apple should use a state of the art motherboard for the server line, therefore DDR is a must and therefore (my prediction) we will see the next Apollo revision (Apollo7) in a few days.
On the other hand we should not forget that Apple could also choose a very different way: remember that a rackmount server doesn't necessary need Aqua, Quartz, Carbon or even Classic. If you can administrate these servers using either a web interface, telnet or dedicated applications, it would be possible to choose a very different architecture for the server line. x86 for example.
I'm really looking forward to this event.
<strong>Very interesting - the upcoming servers next week may tell us much about the MWNY PowerMacs (I supposed there will be a motherboard revision in July).
As far as I have heard Motorola is ready to ship 1.2 Ghz G4 processors, although I do not know if these are 7455 or DDR supporting CPUs. Anyway, Apple should use a state of the art motherboard for the server line, therefore DDR is a must and therefore (my prediction) we will see the next Apollo revision (Apollo7) in a few days.
On the other hand we should not forget that Apple could also choose a very different way: remember that a rackmount server doesn't necessary need Aqua, Quartz, Carbon or even Classic. If you can administrate these servers using either a web interface, telnet or dedicated applications, it would be possible to choose a very different architecture for the server line. x86 for example.
I'm really looking forward to this event.</strong><hr></blockquote>
I would imagine that the server computers would be running Mac OS X Server... That would require a port of aqua, quartz, et cetera.
Flame away.
TING5
<strong>
There will be no G4s in the rackmount. If apple is really serious about making an impact, they will either pull a G5 out of their ass or go with IBM's power4. *CONFIRMED*</strong><hr></blockquote>
I'd bet the absolute opposite. I'd say definite G4. Reasons: 1) Peoples' main complaint about Apple's current servers is size and rackmountability. They'd be happy to use 'em if they could fit more of them in. Performance is important, but really, they want the fastest usually in the workstations, not necessarily the servers. 2) Reliability! Servers are all about reliability. You test and work bugs out on desktop machines before moving chips over to servers. Most PC servers are still using P3s, not P4s (I know that there's other reasons for this, but a lot of it is that IT trusts the P3 at this point, but they aren't willing to trust server duties to P4s yet. Of course, many won't trust server duties to Windows at all, but that's another story). Most people will be unwilling to jump onto servers with a brand-new chip that the OS hasn't been seen running on yet. 3) Clustering. If the rumours are true, these servers will cluster very well. A lot of work has already gone into making G4s cluster well. It would be far easier for Apple to have worked off that previous work than to go through all the testing and coding required to do this on a new chip.
Now, this being said, whether Apple will marker it as a G4 is another issue. I'd bet on DDR RAM, which means that they might well brand it as a new "generation" but requiring no huge changes or testing for things to run properly. Now, if it is a 64-bit chip, that's entirely different. It might be a big enough improvement in performance to take the risk of a new chip.
Just my opinion, but I wouldn't expect any IBM Power # or AMD Clawhammer or anything like that right now.