I am not sure for NUMA, even if Amorh (which in him, i have the deepest faith : thanks in advance for the cookie ) thinks it will arrive.
Before I give you your cookie, let me disclaim that. I've postulated a NUMA architecture as a possible explanation for the rumor that Sméagol only supports single-CPU 970s, and possibly as an upwardly scalable architecture for where-no-Mac-has-gone-before hardware.
Let's just say that I won't blink if something more like JRG's schematic actually ships, at least for now. The rumor could be false, or there could be some other reason for shipping singles, etc. There are a lot of variables in play here.
I'm going to be on the road on the 23rd, so I'll have to catch the recap.
I just read a white paper on HT. It is more flexible than I remember and can support fairly long connections (> 0.5 meters) which can be across connectors and cables. ATI and nVidia are both on the consortium. This is purely speculation, but I would love to see Apple define an video card standard that uses HT as the connection. 12.8 GB/sec of Quartz Extreme goodness. That would certainly make people working in the 3D graphics industry sit up and take notice.
Well, let's not forget the little quote from the president of nVidia about 6 mos. back or so suggesting that they would be bringing new products and technologies to the Mac, which we really haven't yet seen.
If Apple is willing to go to the effort they did with IBM on the 970, it would seem logical that they'd pull nVidia in - which has good ties with Apple and IBM - to develop either a new video card standard, *or* to develop or co-develop the new chipset. These guys have done this before in the nForce, why not bulid a ground-up HT based architecture for the 970 that IBM can build and use, and Apple will clearly support given they helped develop it.
Steve has *always* had a systems view. If he gets the best CPU, he's going to surround it in the best of everything else to help it shine and stand out.
It occurs to me that this will help the low end out as well. Right now, with a 1GB/s bus between the GPU and main memory, the GPU's onboard RAM is critical, and this biases performance strongly against lower end GPUs. With 12.8GB/s, the onboard RAM will still help (the memory bandwidth on modern GPUs is eye-popping) but the playing field will be leveled substantially, and a humble 32MB chipset will be able to handle Quartz Extreme and the like with much more aplomb than it could previously. On the other hand, GPUs with tons of onboard RAM will benefit less, because all that RAM is there to avoid waiting for the bus at all costs.
In other words, when this tech hits the notebooks and the iMac, look out. 8)
Arthur C. Clarke, who wrote "2001: A Space Odyssey" (no, Kubrick only directed, though Clarke gave him a co-writing credit)
sorry OT but, well here's a couple blurbs from IMDB...
Quote:
Stanley Kubrick initially approached Arthur C. Clarke by saying that he wanted to make "the proverbial good science-fiction movie". Clarke suggested that "The Sentinel", a short story he wrote in 1948, story would provide a suitable premise. Clarke had written the story for a BBC competition, but it didn't even make the shortlist. "The Sentinel" corresponds only to the relatively short part of the movie that takes place on the moon.
...
The screenplay was written primarily by Kubrick and the novel primarily by Clarke, each working simultaneously and also providing feedback to the other. As the story went through many revisions, changes in the novel were taken over into the screenplay and vice versa. It was also unclear whether film or novel would be released first; in the end it was the film. Kubrick was to have been credited as second author of the novel, but in the end was not. It is believed that Kubrick deliberately withheld his approval of the novel as to not hurt the release of the film.
Clarke is impressive in his own right, but on this particular trip, he was very much the passenger.
OK back to the regularly scheduled speculation now.
Check out the first two links, both will confirm the memory controller is part of the North Bridge, generally within the first few paragraphs.
Now onto the diagram, if you seperate memory controller portion out of the current system controller it lets you use chips from many PC oriented players who produce millions of these and can supply them at a price that Apple could only dream of. The standardisation of the Macintosh would be complete. Let Apple concentrate their resources on uniqueness not implementing the PC platform on their own.
Second, by seperating the components out you can use the space saved from splitting out the System Controller parts to, for instance, add eDRAM cache.
You should also be able to decrease the system latency by shortening the logic paths memory requests have to take to be serviced. That is why the fewer chips memory requests must go through to be completed the better it is.
You refer to a system with a seperate memory and system controller. This is impossible. A system controller is the chip which links the CPU and Memory and to other devices in the system. Hence, it is the "system" controller.
The Apple diagram, instead of refering to northbridge/southbridge renames them System Controller/IO Controller
Apple has chosen to put controllers for devices which would benefit from the decreased latency and increased bandwidth in the system controller. Ethernet, FireWire and the primary ATA bus.
You're saying, in essence, "Let's have a basic system controller where everything apart from memory [and I'm assuming AGP] is in the IO controller(s)".
BUT there is simply no off-the-shelf chip for Apple's IO needs. Apple would have to use multiple PCI-based controller chips for FireWire 800, Gigabit Ethernet, USB 2, ATA, Audio, Bluetooth, serial ports etc. If you wanted a beige box, there would be fewer controllers of course. But we are talking about Power Macs, not beige boxen.
This normally would be a low-bandwidth, high latency solution. Your idea is to build eDRAM into the system controller. However, the individual PCI controller chips combined with the eDRAM might end up as expensive as having 5 different non-Apple PCI-based IO controllers. I don't think anyone can state that one Power Mac solution would be cheaper than the other.
This leaves one question remaining: Why would you limit Apple's SMP horizons by distributing controllers in such a way? Your system would limit Apple to one or two CPUs, with the cost increasing exponentially as more are added. With seperate hypertransport-based companion chips, Apple could add however many chips they want, and not end up with more busses than CPUs (and more cost to the end user) in low end systems.
"Well, let's not forget the little quote from the president of nVidia about 6 mos. back or so suggesting that they would be bringing new products and technologies to the Mac, which we really haven't yet seen.
If Apple is willing to go to the effort they did with IBM on the 970, it would seem logical that they'd pull nVidia in - which has good ties with Apple and IBM - to develop either a new video card standard, *or* to develop or co-develop the new chipset. These guys have done this before in the nForce, why not bulid a ground-up HT based architecture for the 970 that IBM can build and use, and Apple will clearly support given they helped develop it.
Steve has *always* had a systems view. If he gets the best CPU, he's going to surround it in the best of everything else to help it shine and stand out."
These 'new' products we haven't seen yet. It was tantalizing at the time...then it went verrrry quiet. Made me think. If Hypertransport is that WIDE...what do you need AGP/ram on Graphics card for anyhow?
Couldn't Apple just have their own Nvidia chip sharing the Hyper WIDE love?
Couldn't you have dual-VPUs on said Hypertransport..? A twin Geforce FX cpu blowing current stuff out the water? 12 gigs of bandwidth vs the current 1 gig of G4 bandwidth? I'd have thought that Hypertransport by its very nature opens up alot of imaginative solutions to the current bottlenecks in creative workstations. Everything with its own Hyperlink? Sound, graphics...ram...harddrive.
The possibilities seem overwhelming... Do we really need Intel for the AGP anymore? Couldn't Apple/Nvidia/IBM define their own? SO long as Nvidia chips are Apple compatible...?
Well, Nick De Plume is standing by eWeek '100%'. (See the TomboftheUnknown thread started and then frozen by a trigger happy mod'. Gil Amelio's nervous grin got nuthin' on dese guys.)
Think Secret are rarely wrong. I guess we could then see these 970s announced at WWDC afterall?
Smeagol. Heh. The rumour boards are as schizo' as the codename.
Steve Jobs is 'smeagolizing' us. (Yeeesh. What a tease.)
Well, Nick De Plume is standing by eWeek '100%'. (See the TomboftheUnknown thread started and then frozen by a trigger happy mod'. Gil Amelio's nervous grin got nuthin' on dese guys.)
Think Secret are rarely wrong. I guess we could then see these 970s announced at WWDC afterall?
Smeagol. Heh. The rumour boards are as schizo' as the codename.
Steve Jobs is 'smeagolizing' us. (Yeeesh. What a tease.)
Hmmm. What did eWeek say again?
They said that something would appear at WWDC that was at least as fast as the current PowerMacs.
They said that something would appear at WWDC that was at least as fast as the current PowerMacs.
actually they say:
" Apple Computer Inc. is nearing the release of desktop systems featuring IBM's 64-bit PowerPC 970 chip, sources report, but a 64-bit version of Mac OS X may lag behind by a month or two"
and
"Apple's current plans call for wrapping up development of Smeagol within a month or so of WWDC, suggesting that Q37 may ship by August; however, sources were unable to confirm specifics of Apple's release schedule. "
so 970 machines ship in August....panther a month or so after that
i think apple could easily show these machines at WWDC even if shipping is not for a month or so
Apple's current plans call for wrapping up development of Smeagol within a month or so of WWDC, suggesting that Q37 may ship by August; however, sources were unable to confirm specifics of Apple's release schedule.
Meanwhile, resellers told eWEEK that current models of the Power Mac G4 are becoming constrained in the retail channel, indicating that new pro hardware models are on the way.
Q37 by August. That's four weeks within-ish of a WWDC debut. A carefully placed four weeks covers late June/July and early August. That's a quarter. August is within one month of Sept/Panther. Given Apple's track record of 'available right now'..., 'by August' would make sense if we look at when the iMac2 and this year's Powerbooks shipped. Did even the Mysterious Moki see the 17 incher Powerbook coming? Hard to see the dark side is (Re: Steve Job's Rabbits...)
Quote:
Sources said that the IBM chip will make its first appearance in a new Power Mac known internally as Q37. However, sources said, Q37 won't ship with a 64-bit version of Mac OS X, limiting OS performance gains in the initial release. Instead, Q37 will launch with a special build train of the current Mac OS X Version 10.2, a k a Jaguar.
A new Powermac known as Q37. At least as fast as the current top end. (I'll bet! :P )
Quote:
This build, code-named Smeagol, will run on the new chip but won't take advantage of many of its key features, including 64-bit support. Sources said Apple's goal for Smeagol is to deliver Mac OS X performance at least "on par" with what Jaguar could achieve on Motorola G4 chips running at the same speed; the move will allow Apple to ship the new hardware before Mac OS X 10.3, a k a Panther, can take advantage of all the new processor's capabilities.
'All'. 64 bit? Yeah. 'Special Mobo' dubry? Perhaps. But raw performance and bandwidth on a 32 bit Smeagol are surely non-issues according to IBM. 'Trivial'. I can't see a 32bit 970 not stuffing a 'G4' anyway you cut the benches.
May 970s won't be 'right now' after the WWDC. So? Can we wait to early August? YES! Normal Apple shipping protocol. But they may pull an iPod and say: 'Right here on the show floor...unzip (!) yer chequebook (what did you think I was going to say?)'
Still perplexed. 12 weeks from now at the latest. Possbily 'right now'. But Moki infers not ie the eWeek story is full of crap? (But then...maybe the 'new' Macs are called something else and he playeth with words. We know how Poetry and Guiness go together, right Andrew?) Nick De Plume says August.
((In the blue corner...the challenger, weighing in at an enigmatic 1000lbs, The Mighty, the Mysterious...all Moki all Myopic Entropiiiiiic! In the red corner, the Champion, with umpteen victories, a couple of losses and a few draws to his name...Nick 'Bruising Box of Secrets' De Plume.))
Take yer pick. June 23rd. Early August. September.
I've waited 4 years for this. A few weeks here or there...? What are we (me) fussing about? What's a few weeks here or there between friends of Apple?
i think apple could easily show these machines at WWDC even if shipping is not for a month or so
There's nothing new here. Apple always take ages to ship.
Announce at WWDC, special event, New York, Seybold. Same difference in my mind.
They may as well get people going pre-order crazy. Get the announcement out early. Stick it to AMD64.
Apple in on the ground floor before Wintel. Get PC tower owners going..., 'Ooooh.'
The retail channel for Towers G4 is becoming 'constrained'. That signals new models on past evidence. Given Quark 6 in a week or so. This 'new' G4 model (the one ThinkSecret spoke of...) is a mere 'winding' down exercise...enough to keep Quark 6 fans occupied until the 970 ships. But it won't be in volume? Just enough to satisfy initial Quark 6 heads? A couple of K here...or there? Enough to keep 'some' money rolling in until the the 970 ships?
"These 'new' products we haven't seen yet. It was tantalizing at the time...then it went verrrry quiet. Made me think. If Hypertransport is that WIDE...what do you need AGP/ram on Graphics card for anyhow?
Well, we should wait for Prog, etc. to really weigh in on the answer to this, but taking RAM off the graphics card probably shouldn't be a goal of Apple. Rather, given their graphics focus, they should be doing what they need to balance performance over to the GPU - and minimizing data shuttling across the bus should be a bit of a priority. That's the point of Quartz Extreme, and I suspect Apple will only do more to take advantage of the arrangement.
While Apple could build a bus that neither the CPU nor the GPU could saturate, they're probably much better off acknowledging that the GPU is going to have a lot of fast, local memory and using that for all it's worth rather than having to build that bus in all hardware. There's been more and more talk of offloading general computing tasks to the GPU that its well suited for (tasks not unlike what Altivec is well suited) and I'd expect that Apple will not move in the opposite direction of that. Further, I think that Apple is far better positioned to take advantage of SMP and distributed processing than the Wintel world, so why not make the most of it?
Is there supposed to be some sort of actual meaning buried in there somewhere, oh obfuscating oracle? I note in your mmmmlink that the last dates listed for mixing and recording the song are August. Too obscure? Mere coincidence? Smoke?
60s heavy was more like "serious" than cool (I was there), though I never knew exactly what the Beatles meant in that song. Was "she" heavy-serious or heavy-pounds?
Or as keyboardf12 says, is this about heavy iron? (I hope not. I want my dual 970 rendering on my desktop. Early August would be a happy thing. I hope that's what the oracle means. I hope the oracle is enjoying stirring us all up.)
The latest from MacBidouille provides some potential insights. Now note that this info comes from their forums and so is questionable. However at least part of it is supported by some facts.
Apparently FNAC (A Best Buy/Circuit City type retailer) has received a delivery of boxes, supposedly confirmed as from Apple (not to be opened). One group of boxes are stated to be consistent with the size of 15" Powerbook boxes. The other set of boxes are said to be "large".
In today's update, MacBidouille indicates that the word is that the boxes are possibly 15" Powerbooks and 19" eMacs. Further on the FNAC website http://www.fnac.com, the following is indicated (if I managed to read it correctly).
eMac 800mhz (bottom end) - no longer available
PowerMac 1ghz - no longer availble
PowerMac 1.25 dual - no longer available
PowerMac 1.42 dual - no longer available.
Powerbook 12" combo - temporarily unavailable
Powerbook 12" superdrive - new model coming, temporarily unavailable
Powerbook 15" - temporarily unavailable.
My interpretation of this is that the bottom end eMac is being dropped, the other models will move down the price scale, and the new top end eMac will be a 19" model.
Supply of PowerMac towers is no longer available to FNAC. This might imply all new models coming, or it could imply that FNAC just isn't going to carry them any more. My guess it is an indication of new model's coming, but no indication of how soon. Remember the new "mystery boxes" are suspected of being new Powerbooks and a "large" eMac.
The Powerbook 12" and 15" are being updated, but not replaced with "all new or 970 models".
Supposedly the new "rumored" Powerbooks and eMac are to be made available for sale on June 24th based on info from the MacBidouille forums.
I stated my full support of eWEEK's report, but it's important that you examine specifically what the article says, as well as what it does not say.
Release Schedule: eWEEK's report does not provide any sort of confirmation of what release schedule Apple plans for Q37, other than the general assertion that Apple is nearing the release. However, the article provides some limited direction, reporting that Apple's current plans with Smeagol suggest that Q37 may ship by August. While eWEEK says that Apple will first discuss the PowerPC 970 at WWDC, it provides no further specifics as to when the Q37 hardware will be announced, or as to when it will ship.
Operating System: eWEEK states that Panther will ship in September. It will include 64-bit support, but equally important, it will be built with an updated compiler that includes 970-specific support, including scheduling capabilities for the new chip. Apple plans to provide Smeagol to "hold over" users until Panther ships, but due to lack of compiler support, including lack of scheduling, some of Smeagol's OS performance gains will be limited, as compared to the optimized Panther release. However, the OS will still run at least as fast as on a comparable G4, and Smeagol will still be able to take advantage of some of the chip's new features.
Comments
Originally posted by Powerdoc
I am not sure for NUMA, even if Amorh (which in him, i have the deepest faith : thanks in advance for the cookie
Before I give you your cookie, let me disclaim that. I've postulated a NUMA architecture as a possible explanation for the rumor that Sméagol only supports single-CPU 970s, and possibly as an upwardly scalable architecture for where-no-Mac-has-gone-before hardware.
Let's just say that I won't blink if something more like JRG's schematic actually ships, at least for now. The rumor could be false, or there could be some other reason for shipping singles, etc. There are a lot of variables in play here.
I'm going to be on the road on the 23rd, so I'll have to catch the recap.
Originally posted by Programmer
I just read a white paper on HT. It is more flexible than I remember and can support fairly long connections (> 0.5 meters) which can be across connectors and cables. ATI and nVidia are both on the consortium. This is purely speculation, but I would love to see Apple define an video card standard that uses HT as the connection. 12.8 GB/sec of Quartz Extreme goodness. That would certainly make people working in the 3D graphics industry sit up and take notice.
Well, let's not forget the little quote from the president of nVidia about 6 mos. back or so suggesting that they would be bringing new products and technologies to the Mac, which we really haven't yet seen.
If Apple is willing to go to the effort they did with IBM on the 970, it would seem logical that they'd pull nVidia in - which has good ties with Apple and IBM - to develop either a new video card standard, *or* to develop or co-develop the new chipset. These guys have done this before in the nForce, why not bulid a ground-up HT based architecture for the 970 that IBM can build and use, and Apple will clearly support given they helped develop it.
Steve has *always* had a systems view. If he gets the best CPU, he's going to surround it in the best of everything else to help it shine and stand out.
In other words, when this tech hits the notebooks and the iMac, look out. 8)
Originally posted by jouster
Arthur C. Clarke, who wrote "2001: A Space Odyssey" (no, Kubrick only directed, though Clarke gave him a co-writing credit)
sorry OT but, well here's a couple blurbs from IMDB...
Stanley Kubrick initially approached Arthur C. Clarke by saying that he wanted to make "the proverbial good science-fiction movie". Clarke suggested that "The Sentinel", a short story he wrote in 1948, story would provide a suitable premise. Clarke had written the story for a BBC competition, but it didn't even make the shortlist. "The Sentinel" corresponds only to the relatively short part of the movie that takes place on the moon.
...
The screenplay was written primarily by Kubrick and the novel primarily by Clarke, each working simultaneously and also providing feedback to the other. As the story went through many revisions, changes in the novel were taken over into the screenplay and vice versa. It was also unclear whether film or novel would be released first; in the end it was the film. Kubrick was to have been credited as second author of the novel, but in the end was not. It is believed that Kubrick deliberately withheld his approval of the novel as to not hurt the release of the film.
Clarke is impressive in his own right, but on this particular trip, he was very much the passenger.
OK back to the regularly scheduled speculation now.
Originally posted by Barto
Also, the northbridge is NOT the memory controller, he who speaks of matters beyond his knowledge.
Barto
But the memory controller is part of the North Bridge.
<http://www.google.com/search?q=north...UTF-8&oe=UTF-8>
Check out the first two links, both will confirm the memory controller is part of the North Bridge, generally within the first few paragraphs.
Now onto the diagram, if you seperate memory controller portion out of the current system controller it lets you use chips from many PC oriented players who produce millions of these and can supply them at a price that Apple could only dream of. The standardisation of the Macintosh would be complete. Let Apple concentrate their resources on uniqueness not implementing the PC platform on their own.
Second, by seperating the components out you can use the space saved from splitting out the System Controller parts to, for instance, add eDRAM cache.
You should also be able to decrease the system latency by shortening the logic paths memory requests have to take to be serviced. That is why the fewer chips memory requests must go through to be completed the better it is.
The Apple diagram, instead of refering to northbridge/southbridge renames them System Controller/IO Controller
Apple has chosen to put controllers for devices which would benefit from the decreased latency and increased bandwidth in the system controller. Ethernet, FireWire and the primary ATA bus.
You're saying, in essence, "Let's have a basic system controller where everything apart from memory [and I'm assuming AGP] is in the IO controller(s)".
BUT there is simply no off-the-shelf chip for Apple's IO needs. Apple would have to use multiple PCI-based controller chips for FireWire 800, Gigabit Ethernet, USB 2, ATA, Audio, Bluetooth, serial ports etc. If you wanted a beige box, there would be fewer controllers of course. But we are talking about Power Macs, not beige boxen.
This normally would be a low-bandwidth, high latency solution. Your idea is to build eDRAM into the system controller. However, the individual PCI controller chips combined with the eDRAM might end up as expensive as having 5 different non-Apple PCI-based IO controllers. I don't think anyone can state that one Power Mac solution would be cheaper than the other.
This leaves one question remaining: Why would you limit Apple's SMP horizons by distributing controllers in such a way? Your system would limit Apple to one or two CPUs, with the cost increasing exponentially as more are added. With seperate hypertransport-based companion chips, Apple could add however many chips they want, and not end up with more busses than CPUs (and more cost to the end user) in low end systems.
Barto
If Apple is willing to go to the effort they did with IBM on the 970, it would seem logical that they'd pull nVidia in - which has good ties with Apple and IBM - to develop either a new video card standard, *or* to develop or co-develop the new chipset. These guys have done this before in the nForce, why not bulid a ground-up HT based architecture for the 970 that IBM can build and use, and Apple will clearly support given they helped develop it.
Steve has *always* had a systems view. If he gets the best CPU, he's going to surround it in the best of everything else to help it shine and stand out."
These 'new' products we haven't seen yet. It was tantalizing at the time...then it went verrrry quiet. Made me think. If Hypertransport is that WIDE...what do you need AGP/ram on Graphics card for anyhow?
Couldn't Apple just have their own Nvidia chip sharing the Hyper WIDE love?
Couldn't you have dual-VPUs on said Hypertransport..? A twin Geforce FX cpu blowing current stuff out the water? 12 gigs of bandwidth vs the current 1 gig of G4 bandwidth? I'd have thought that Hypertransport by its very nature opens up alot of imaginative solutions to the current bottlenecks in creative workstations. Everything with its own Hyperlink? Sound, graphics...ram...harddrive.
The possibilities seem overwhelming... Do we really need Intel for the AGP anymore? Couldn't Apple/Nvidia/IBM define their own? SO long as Nvidia chips are Apple compatible...?
Lemon Bon Bon (Thoughtfully.)
Think Secret are rarely wrong. I guess we could then see these 970s announced at WWDC afterall?
Smeagol. Heh. The rumour boards are as schizo' as the codename.
Steve Jobs is 'smeagolizing' us. (Yeeesh. What a tease.)
Hmmm. What did eWeek say again?
Lemon Bon Bon
Originally posted by Lemon Bon Bon
Well, Nick De Plume is standing by eWeek '100%'. (See the TomboftheUnknown thread started and then frozen by a trigger happy mod'. Gil Amelio's nervous grin got nuthin' on dese guys.)
Think Secret are rarely wrong. I guess we could then see these 970s announced at WWDC afterall?
Smeagol. Heh. The rumour boards are as schizo' as the codename.
Steve Jobs is 'smeagolizing' us. (Yeeesh. What a tease.)
Hmmm. What did eWeek say again?
They said that something would appear at WWDC that was at least as fast as the current PowerMacs.
Originally posted by Programmer
They said that something would appear at WWDC that was at least as fast as the current PowerMacs.
actually they say:
" Apple Computer Inc. is nearing the release of desktop systems featuring IBM's 64-bit PowerPC 970 chip, sources report, but a 64-bit version of Mac OS X may lag behind by a month or two"
and
"Apple's current plans call for wrapping up development of Smeagol within a month or so of WWDC, suggesting that Q37 may ship by August; however, sources were unable to confirm specifics of Apple's release schedule. "
so 970 machines ship in August....panther a month or so after that
i think apple could easily show these machines at WWDC even if shipping is not for a month or so
g
Apple's current plans call for wrapping up development of Smeagol within a month or so of WWDC, suggesting that Q37 may ship by August; however, sources were unable to confirm specifics of Apple's release schedule.
Meanwhile, resellers told eWEEK that current models of the Power Mac G4 are becoming constrained in the retail channel, indicating that new pro hardware models are on the way.
Q37 by August. That's four weeks within-ish of a WWDC debut. A carefully placed four weeks covers late June/July and early August. That's a quarter.
Sources said that the IBM chip will make its first appearance in a new Power Mac known internally as Q37. However, sources said, Q37 won't ship with a 64-bit version of Mac OS X, limiting OS performance gains in the initial release. Instead, Q37 will launch with a special build train of the current Mac OS X Version 10.2, a k a Jaguar.
A new Powermac known as Q37. At least as fast as the current top end. (I'll bet! :P )
This build, code-named Smeagol, will run on the new chip but won't take advantage of many of its key features, including 64-bit support. Sources said Apple's goal for Smeagol is to deliver Mac OS X performance at least "on par" with what Jaguar could achieve on Motorola G4 chips running at the same speed; the move will allow Apple to ship the new hardware before Mac OS X 10.3, a k a Panther, can take advantage of all the new processor's capabilities.
'All'. 64 bit? Yeah. 'Special Mobo' dubry? Perhaps. But raw performance and bandwidth on a 32 bit Smeagol are surely non-issues according to IBM. 'Trivial'. I can't see a 32bit 970 not stuffing a 'G4' anyway you cut the benches.
May 970s won't be 'right now' after the WWDC. So? Can we wait to early August? YES! Normal Apple shipping protocol. But they may pull an iPod and say: 'Right here on the show floor...unzip (!) yer chequebook (what did you think I was going to say?)'
Still perplexed. 12 weeks from now at the latest. Possbily 'right now'. But Moki infers not ie the eWeek story is full of crap? (But then...maybe the 'new' Macs are called something else and he playeth with words. We know how Poetry and Guiness go together, right Andrew?) Nick De Plume says August.
((In the blue corner...the challenger, weighing in at an enigmatic 1000lbs, The Mighty, the Mysterious...all Moki all Myopic Entropiiiiiic! In the red corner, the Champion, with umpteen victories, a couple of losses and a few draws to his name...Nick 'Bruising Box of Secrets' De Plume.))
Take yer pick. June 23rd. Early August. September.
I've waited 4 years for this. A few weeks here or there...? What are we (me) fussing about? What's a few weeks here or there between friends of Apple?
Lemon Bon Bon
i think apple could easily show these machines at WWDC even if shipping is not for a month or so
There's nothing new here. Apple always take ages to ship.
Announce at WWDC, special event, New York, Seybold. Same difference in my mind.
They may as well get people going pre-order crazy. Get the announcement out early. Stick it to AMD64.
Apple in on the ground floor before Wintel. Get PC tower owners going..., 'Ooooh.'
The retail channel for Towers G4 is becoming 'constrained'. That signals new models on past evidence. Given Quark 6 in a week or so. This 'new' G4 model (the one ThinkSecret spoke of...) is a mere 'winding' down exercise...enough to keep Quark 6 fans occupied until the 970 ships. But it won't be in volume? Just enough to satisfy initial Quark 6 heads? A couple of K here...or there? Enough to keep 'some' money rolling in until the the 970 ships?
Originally posted by Lemon Bon Bon
"These 'new' products we haven't seen yet. It was tantalizing at the time...then it went verrrry quiet. Made me think. If Hypertransport is that WIDE...what do you need AGP/ram on Graphics card for anyhow?
Well, we should wait for Prog, etc. to really weigh in on the answer to this, but taking RAM off the graphics card probably shouldn't be a goal of Apple. Rather, given their graphics focus, they should be doing what they need to balance performance over to the GPU - and minimizing data shuttling across the bus should be a bit of a priority. That's the point of Quartz Extreme, and I suspect Apple will only do more to take advantage of the arrangement.
While Apple could build a bus that neither the CPU nor the GPU could saturate, they're probably much better off acknowledging that the GPU is going to have a lot of fast, local memory and using that for all it's worth rather than having to build that bus in all hardware. There's been more and more talk of offloading general computing tasks to the GPU that its well suited for (tasks not unlike what Altivec is well suited) and I'd expect that Apple will not move in the opposite direction of that. Further, I think that Apple is far better positioned to take advantage of SMP and distributed processing than the Wintel world, so why not make the most of it?
Originally posted by Lemon Bon Bon
Take yer pick. June 23rd. Early August. September.
mmmmm
I want you
so bad
it's driving me mad
She's so heavy
60's "heavy" = serious.
2000's heavy = the damn powermac weighs a lot or apple is going to ship a new machine in rack form (über blades on a shingle?)
(Edit: artcat says it mean "serious" more tha cool)
60s heavy was more like "serious" than cool (I was there), though I never knew exactly what the Beatles meant in that song. Was "she" heavy-serious or heavy-pounds?
Or as keyboardf12 says, is this about heavy iron? (I hope not. I want my dual 970 rendering on my desktop. Early August would be a happy thing. I hope that's what the oracle means. I hope the oracle is enjoying stirring us all up.)
mmmmm
I want you
so bad
it's driving me mad
She's so heavy
Steve and the Beatles. Yeesh. Talk about 'fan'. He even likes getting sued by them...
Like a bridge over troubled water...I will lay me down...
I've got some real estate here in my bag...
Playing games with the faces...
I don't know why...
I've gone to look for America...
Me? I'm doing some S$G right now...
Place yer bets on the dates, folks!
Just remember...if its 2004...Steve gets the oozi out!
Lemon Bon Bon
Apparently FNAC (A Best Buy/Circuit City type retailer) has received a delivery of boxes, supposedly confirmed as from Apple (not to be opened). One group of boxes are stated to be consistent with the size of 15" Powerbook boxes. The other set of boxes are said to be "large".
In today's update, MacBidouille indicates that the word is that the boxes are possibly 15" Powerbooks and 19" eMacs. Further on the FNAC website http://www.fnac.com, the following is indicated (if I managed to read it correctly).
eMac 800mhz (bottom end) - no longer available
PowerMac 1ghz - no longer availble
PowerMac 1.25 dual - no longer available
PowerMac 1.42 dual - no longer available.
Powerbook 12" combo - temporarily unavailable
Powerbook 12" superdrive - new model coming, temporarily unavailable
Powerbook 15" - temporarily unavailable.
My interpretation of this is that the bottom end eMac is being dropped, the other models will move down the price scale, and the new top end eMac will be a 19" model.
Supply of PowerMac towers is no longer available to FNAC. This might imply all new models coming, or it could imply that FNAC just isn't going to carry them any more. My guess it is an indication of new model's coming, but no indication of how soon. Remember the new "mystery boxes" are suspected of being new Powerbooks and a "large" eMac.
The Powerbook 12" and 15" are being updated, but not replaced with "all new or 970 models".
Supposedly the new "rumored" Powerbooks and eMac are to be made available for sale on June 24th based on info from the MacBidouille forums.
I stated my full support of eWEEK's report, but it's important that you examine specifically what the article says, as well as what it does not say.
Release Schedule: eWEEK's report does not provide any sort of confirmation of what release schedule Apple plans for Q37, other than the general assertion that Apple is nearing the release. However, the article provides some limited direction, reporting that Apple's current plans with Smeagol suggest that Q37 may ship by August. While eWEEK says that Apple will first discuss the PowerPC 970 at WWDC, it provides no further specifics as to when the Q37 hardware will be announced, or as to when it will ship.
Operating System: eWEEK states that Panther will ship in September. It will include 64-bit support, but equally important, it will be built with an updated compiler that includes 970-specific support, including scheduling capabilities for the new chip. Apple plans to provide Smeagol to "hold over" users until Panther ships, but due to lack of compiler support, including lack of scheduling, some of Smeagol's OS performance gains will be limited, as compared to the optimized Panther release. However, the OS will still run at least as fast as on a comparable G4, and Smeagol will still be able to take advantage of some of the chip's new features.
-Nick