Power5 & PPC 980

Posted:
in Future Apple Hardware edited January 2014
It may be worth checking such news in more detail:



http://news.com.com/2100-1001-984808.html?tag=nl



The Power5 may very well be the 'father' for a stripped-down G5+ or G6 (or in IBMs' terms PPC 980).



-Do you think the 3 GHz will be achieved with the PPC 970 / G5 or will this already be the G5+ since IBM is much faster ?



-Did anyone check IBMs sites for low-power versions of these chips, eg. for blades? This may be key to anticipate a G5 laptop arrival time from Apple...



Discuss.
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Comments

  • Reply 1 of 65
    murbotmurbot Posts: 5,262member
    Read the sticky at the top of Temporary Insanity. No more threads here please.



    Moving to Future Hardware.
  • Reply 2 of 65
    macserverxmacserverx Posts: 217member
    I'm pretty sure that somewhere it says that the Fishkill Manufacturing plant will go to .09 process which will instantly save power (shorter cicuits) and boost Ghz (less silicon to switch, therefore faster). But with the shipment time for 970s moved up maybe a month (I forget the original quote) and with them producing dual 2Ghz, I think they're pretty confident about production, so I would guarantee (almost) a PowerBook 970 at MacWorld SF. I'd guess 1.4, 1.6, 1.8 if we're lucky, 1.2, 1.4, 1.6is reasonable though. As long as I can spend my college computer money on one I'll be happy.
  • Reply 3 of 65
    powerdocpowerdoc Posts: 8,123member
    i don't think that the PPC 970 under 0,09 micron process will scale less than the PPC 980.



    I think that basically the PPC 980 will be a Hyperthreaded PPC 970 (like the P4 HT compared to the regular P4). Perhaps the size of the cache will increase and some others minors improvement. However the IBM HT is supposed to be much more efficient than the intel counterpart. 8)
  • Reply 4 of 65
    hmurchisonhmurchison Posts: 12,419member
    I think the PPC 980 will have:



    1. Still one core. I don't think IBM moves to Dual Cores until the 65nm process is ready.



    2. L2 cache of 1MB. Matching Prescott. Fabbing at 90nm gives them more real estate.



    3. Supports SMT of course.



    4. Has additional Altivec improvements.





    That's it. I don't expect huge changes in he second gen 9xx processor.
  • Reply 5 of 65
    nitzernitzer Posts: 115member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by hmurchison

    That's it. I don't expect huge changes in he second gen 9xx processor.



    The 980 will be based off the Power 5 core. I'd call that a good sized change.
  • Reply 6 of 65
    outsideroutsider Posts: 6,008member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by Nitzer

    The 980 will be based off the Power 5 core. I'd call that a good sized change.



    Exactly. And the POWER5 core is substantially different than the POWER4 core. There will be great all around improvements, one of which will be a better VMX integration with the rest of the core. And possibly a built-in memory controller.
  • Reply 7 of 65
    placeboplacebo Posts: 5,767member
    What will the 980 be called by Apple? G6? And when is it supposed to be coming?
  • Reply 8 of 65
    screedscreed Posts: 1,077member
    Wasn't the rumored evolution the following:

    970

    970+ (Spring/Summer '04)

    980 (Summer/Fall '04)

    or was the 980 further on?



    Screed
  • Reply 9 of 65
    billybobskybillybobsky Posts: 1,914member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by sCreeD

    Wasn't the rumored evolution the following:

    970

    970+ (Spring/Summer '04)

    980 (Summer/Fall '04)

    or was the 980 further on?



    Screed




    hahahahaha



    oh man... i remember when the g4 was introduced, the g5 speculation ran rampant with claims that it would be introduced within 2 years. ha!



    hahahahahaha
  • Reply 10 of 65
    screedscreed Posts: 1,077member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by Placebo

    What will the 980 be called by Apple? G6? And when is it supposed to be coming?



    I can't imagine the 980 coming out before Spring '05. Or rather I can't imagine Apple switching from the G5 to the G6 in less than 18 months. Maybe it's me. We've been under the G4 cloud now for 3 and a half laborious years that I've come accustomed to expecting architecture changes to happen more slowly.



    Screed
  • Reply 11 of 65
    hobbeshobbes Posts: 1,252member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by billybobsky

    hahahahaha



    oh man... i remember when the g4 was introduced, the g5 speculation ran rampant with claims that it would be introduced within 2 years. ha!



    hahahahahaha




    Those were the days.



    Different game now with IBM.
  • Reply 12 of 65
    Quote:

    Originally posted by Placebo

    What will the 980 be called by Apple? G6? And when is it supposed to be coming?



    Geez, I love this. The day after the official announcement of the G5, speculation about a G6 starts.



    I consider yesterday a hallmark day for Apple. That day marked an end to years of "WHERE IS THE G5!!!!!" posts, and a beginning to all the "I WANT A G6!!!!" posts.
  • Reply 13 of 65
    jcgjcg Posts: 777member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by sCreeD

    Wasn't the rumored evolution the following:

    970

    970+ (Spring/Summer '04)

    980 (Summer/Fall '04)

    or was the 980 further on?



    Screed




    If the 970+ you are refering to is the 9nm fabed 970, then I think that IBM said that they would rapidly move to that. I'm not sure of if they stated an exact date, but by year end sticks out in my mind. That would be about 6 months at 13 nm and in time for a January Macworld intoduction of new models based on this new chip.
  • Reply 14 of 65
    powerdocpowerdoc Posts: 8,123member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by Outsider

    Exactly. And the POWER5 core is substantially different than the POWER4 core. There will be great all around improvements, one of which will be a better VMX integration with the rest of the core. And possibly a built-in memory controller.



    I agree that there will be a lot more improvements like bigger L2 cache (one MB for example), but i have doubt about the VMX integration thing. The power5 is not developped for Apple but for big mainframe IBM server, the integration of VMX is not their priority especially if you consider that the power 5 is not supposed to have VMX in it (or if the power 5 have Vmx it will be a real insider info).



    For the memory controller, the current mobo of Apple seems to be quite good, i don't see the need to change it so quickly, assuming that the 980 will appear in late 2004 or at the beginning of 2005.



    The biggest improvement of the power5 core will be the Multithread feature. It should rock under os X.
  • Reply 15 of 65
    outsideroutsider Posts: 6,008member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by Powerdoc

    I agree that there will be a lot more improvements like bigger L2 cache (one MB for example), but i have doubt about the VMX integration thing. The power5 is not developped for Apple but for big mainframe IBM server, the integration of VMX is not their priority especially if you consider that the power 5 is not supposed to have VMX in it (or if the power 5 have Vmx it will be a real insider info).



    For the memory controller, the current mobo of Apple seems to be quite good, i don't see the need to change it so quickly, assuming that the 980 will appear in late 2004 or at the beginning of 2005.



    The biggest improvement of the power5 core will be the Multithread feature. It should rock under os X.




    Sorry I wasn't specific enough. The 1st sentence of my post is comparing how different the cores of the Power4 and 5 will be. The rest of the post refers to the 980 specifically.
  • Reply 16 of 65
    matsumatsu Posts: 6,558member
    You can check the web for commentary by Apple, in another thread somewhere in AI right now, can't remember which tho, stating that Apple-Moto still has a LONG life ahead and that pretty much guarantees you won't see a 970 based PB any time soon, not even in six months.



    Apple is STILL using G3's and will be using G4's still (in its consumer products) 18+ months from now.



    Moto will "fix" the G4.
  • Reply 17 of 65
    powerdocpowerdoc Posts: 8,123member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by Outsider

    Sorry I wasn't specific enough. The 1st sentence of my post is comparing how different the cores of the Power4 and 5 will be. The rest of the post refers to the 980 specifically.



    Oh i see. If you are rigth and that IBM specifically improve the VMX unit in the PPC 980 core it will be a very good sign. It will be the sign that the PPC 9** series will not be only the celeron like of the power x line, but a specialized architecture for Apple, simplified in some aeras, but more achieved in others.



    The Celeron of Intel in other ways was always a crippled version of the pentium.
  • Reply 18 of 65
    telomartelomar Posts: 1,804member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by sCreeD

    Wasn't the rumored evolution the following:

    970

    970+ (Spring/Summer '04)

    980 (Summer/Fall '04)

    or was the 980 further on?




    The 980 will be further on.
  • Reply 19 of 65
    valmadvalmad Posts: 49member
    Well wait a week and that liar Jack over at MacWhispers will have the inside scoop about the G8 coming out next week because his sisters house cleaner has an auncle who spotted some boxes on a rickshaw somewhere in asia. Now it turns out that Jacks man at a plastics factory in hong kong has seen the same boxes and they are the G8 because this plastics factory is making the inner alumin. skirting for the G9 aswell (but he can't talk about the G9 just yet.) And Jack's other contacts in asia have confirmed that the G8 is in full production as we speak and will be shipping to apple stores over the weekend.
  • Reply 20 of 65
    @homenow@homenow Posts: 998member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by Matsu

    You can check the web for commentary by Apple, in another thread somewhere in AI right now, can't remember which tho, stating that Apple-Moto still has a LONG life ahead and that pretty much guarantees you won't see a 970 based PB any time soon, not even in six months.



    Apple is STILL using G3's and will be using G4's still (in its consumer products) 18+ months from now.



    Moto will "fix" the G4.




    Moto has been working on "fixing" the G4 for how many years now? Along with that they are just getting around to "fixing" the 13 nm process after 2 years working on it, and we might see a G4 on it by year end. Last I heard the official word from Moto is that they wont "fix" the slow FSB or support "true" DDR ram till sometime next year, with Moto's recent record that may be more like 2006. If Apple waits for Moto to "Fix" the G4 then they will be so far behind that a Octo G4 wont be equil to the bottom line $299 P4.
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