okay something useful: this is quoted from THT on the official Kasper thread on new Intel chips
i will add a personal note, having set up a amd rig (pentium 4 would have been even worse), even the power supply and cooling and gpus and hard disks all cnome in up to 300-500watts all up. not sustainable looking 5-10 years down the line, unless you want a FridgePuter on your desktop that is also a minibar. Fun, but not so practical.
From THT's post:
Standard voltage 970fx CPUs, maximum power consumption:
2.0 GHz: 60 Watts
2.2 GHz: 76
2.5 GHz: ~95
2.7 GHz: ~110
The low voltage power optimized ones will be available, but will be limited in clock rate. Maximum power consumption:
Thermal Design Power. Intel gives all of its CPUs a TDP number for which a cooling system should dissipate. If there is TDP of 20 Watts, the heat sink, fans, and other paths for heat dissipation should dissipate a maximum of 20 Watts.
It is not the maximum theoretical power number, but some power number under a certain maximum application Intel thinks that their CPUs would ever experience.
Btw, Intel TDP != AMD TDP != Freescale maximum != IBM maximum. But they should be close enough for comparison purposes. It's the best we got, so there is no choice anyway.
Now that I think about it some more, I think this is incorrect. The 0.5 and 5 Watts figures are likely the TDP for the ultra-low voltage variant of the processors, and at lower frequencies as well.
Not too sure I would believe a 2+ GHz Merom running at 5 Watts TDP yet.
They seemed to quote TDP for the others so it would make sense. I was surprised though as everyone was expecting it to be in the 30W laptop TDP region as in Dothan/Yonah. And the gap to Conroe at 65W is a big one. Conroe at 65W is not that much less than a P4 now but they were quoting 5x performance per watt. That'd make it the equivalent of a 7-8Ghz P4 I reckon!
Anyhoo, probably right there on the ULV call. That's probably for their single core ULV sub 2Ghz model like the ULV Yonah. It'd make a nice iBook/Mini CPU or finally a sub-notebook sized laptop.
I'm looking forward to an OQO running OSX with a 2 day battery life by 2010.
Also note that Conroe is dual core but does not support dual processor. For multiple processors, you need the Woodcrest (Xeon-like) server processor, which would allow a dual-dual setup.
Because we're expecting future ProMacs to be Conroe-based, they will be dual-core but not dual-processor, and we shouldn't expect Apple to release a dual-dual G5; this because of their "pecking-order" thinking.
As THT pointed out, Apple can use Woodcrest. It was originally believed (IIRC) that Woodcrest would arrive behind Conroe and Merom (as Brendon has stated) in 2007. This maintains a nice heirachy for Apples lines (and may even indicate that the transition could be moved up for the powermacs)...
Merom for 'books - dual core
Conroe for iMac - dual core
Woodcrest for PowerMac - dual proc, dual core
I think certainly a quad PM (though Apple would still prolly offer conroe-based PM too) qualifies as workstation class.
[Edit: sorry, the point of this post was that this info doesn't really negate the possibility of a dual-970MP based PM in the near future ]
Maybe they will bust out with Quad quad-core Whitefield CPUs, dual 16x PCI-Express/SLI/CrossFire compatible Main Logic Boards & 3U rackmount chassis to stuff it all in...?!?
Today, Intel announced plans to build a new line of processors designed to work smart rather than hard. The new processors are being designed with energy efficiency in mind and will shift the focus of Intel's engineers from raw speed to multicore computing. Intel plans to sell the chips in the second half of 2006 and offer them in three flavors: a desktop chip, currently code named Conroe; a laptop chip, code named Merom; and a server chip, code named Woodcrest. The new processors promise dramatic changes in mobile computing. Current Pentium M processors, common in laptops, consume 22 Watts. The Pentium M's successor, Merom, will run on a mere 5 Watts. Mileage will vary, but the difference will translate into substantially increased battery life for portable computers and significantly reduced power consumption for desktops and servers.
From Cnet.com
5 watts is really impressive - I hope to hell we get this in iBooks eventually - can u imagine BETTER than the current 6 hours of battery life?
I doubt that Apple would use Woodcrest in the PMs. Those chips are going to be Xeons and very expensive, over $1K each. There might be Xserves using them.
I doubt that Apple would use Woodcrest in the PMs. Those chips are going to be Xeons and very expensive, over $1K each. There might be Xserves using them.
There's two strands there in that slide using Woodcrest. One for servers the other workstations. Apple will want to have an entry in both of those or they'll lose out on the enterprise and Pro market.
That's not to say they won't have a Conroe based PowerMac also with a single dual-core.
The boundaries Intel uses for dual CPU processors capable chips or not is truly artificial with the Merom architecture. The CPUs are already multicore! Where a boundary would exist is in the support chipsets. The multi-CPU chipsets Intel has are dedicated for workstations and servers, hence, Woodcrest is dual-CPU capable and Conroe is not, even though the two are identical for all intents and purposes.
Look at this picture from Anandtech:
Just looking at the die images, we can infer that:
Conroe 2 = Woodcrest, and they won't have big differences in price. The big dollar difference will be in the chipsets, with a tier of prices to differentiate between $3000 workstations, $2000 servers, and $10000 big iron.
I wouldn't be surprised if there was a Woodcrest with 8 MB cache or 2 MB cache either. Sossaman, 32 bit and all, may even be going into dual CPU 1U servers.
Also, Intel will have to have a reasonably affordable solution to match AMD for those people possibly wanting dual opteron (dual core) or dual athlon X2 processors in their computers/workstations.
What was the number of CPUs earlier versions of OS X showed as being doable...?!?
Wasn't that number eight? Imagine some type of PowerMac with eight Whitefield quad-core CPUs... 128MB L2 cache, maybe 64GB of RAM, throw a PCI-Express 4x five port SATAII hardware RAID card in there with five 500GB SATAII HDDs for a nice 'little' 1TB speedy & fault-tolerant bootable RAID 0+1/5 (or is that 0+1/3, I can't remember anymore) array...
Don't forget the multiple 16x PCI-Express slots, for the SLI/CrossFire OpenGL solutions...
Something like this, there would be nothing but a constantly milling group of guys around the Apple booth next Siggraph, grunting like gorillas & drooling at the mouth...
Also, Intel will have to have a reasonably affordable solution to match AMD for those people possibly wanting dual opteron (dual core) or dual athlon X2 processors in their computers/workstations.
Why should they?
If someone is intelligent enough to want a dual-dual-Opteron machine, they already know that Intel has nothing to offer them... and more than one year from now, when Intel will have dual-duals, AMDs available then will still be better. IOW, people who know what they want in a processor will not buy something that they don't want.
To make an analogy, Saturn doesn't try very hard to sell an Ion to someone who knows he wants a Toyota Prius. They may make a feeble attempt, but they won't expect it to be convincing.
The vast majority of computer buyers probably don't even know who Intel or AMD are.
You sound very confident with this statement. Just wondering why?
AMD, being the smaller fish, has still been doing very well, and it is establishing its own almost cult-like fan base, for example, among gamers. It comes up against the pentium 4 very well even at lower clock speeds, i don't know enough about the mobile athlons/turions to comment though
i am happy that AMD is there 1. to keep intel on its toes and 2. to continue to be a very feasible backup to Macintels.
Thank you for the reply. I just don't see how someone can predict a year from now that AMD will have superior dual core processors. Not saying it isn't possible or even probable, but Intel is big, really really big, and comments I've read from people that have worked for Intel, it is a very engineeringcentric(is this a word?) company.
Some have gone on to comment that people they still know @ Intel were very excited about obtaining Apple as a customer, not so much it was Apple but that it provides additional interesting engineering challenges and opportunities.
Anyway, I agree with you and am also, "happy that AMD is there 1. to keep intel on its toes and 2. to continue to be a very feasible backup to Macintels." As much as I appreciate what little I understand of PPC ISA, it will be pleasant for Apple to actually have a cpu supplier that specializes in desktop/laptop cpus and not embedded or mainframe cpus.
Comments
i will add a personal note, having set up a amd rig (pentium 4 would have been even worse), even the power supply and cooling and gpus and hard disks all cnome in up to 300-500watts all up. not sustainable looking 5-10 years down the line, unless you want a FridgePuter on your desktop that is also a minibar. Fun, but not so practical.
From THT's post:
Standard voltage 970fx CPUs, maximum power consumption:
2.0 GHz: 60 Watts
2.2 GHz: 76
2.5 GHz: ~95
2.7 GHz: ~110
The low voltage power optimized ones will be available, but will be limited in clock rate. Maximum power consumption:
1.6 GHz: 21 Watts
2.0 GHz: 50
2.2 GHz: 60
Athlon 64 and P4 TDPs are also above 85 Watts.
Originally posted by Brendon
TDP == Total Dissipated Power??
Thermal Design Power. Intel gives all of its CPUs a TDP number for which a cooling system should dissipate. If there is TDP of 20 Watts, the heat sink, fans, and other paths for heat dissipation should dissipate a maximum of 20 Watts.
It is not the maximum theoretical power number, but some power number under a certain maximum application Intel thinks that their CPUs would ever experience.
Btw, Intel TDP != AMD TDP != Freescale maximum != IBM maximum. But they should be close enough for comparison purposes. It's the best we got, so there is no choice anyway.
Originally posted by THT
Now that I think about it some more, I think this is incorrect. The 0.5 and 5 Watts figures are likely the TDP for the ultra-low voltage variant of the processors, and at lower frequencies as well.
Not too sure I would believe a 2+ GHz Merom running at 5 Watts TDP yet.
They seemed to quote TDP for the others so it would make sense. I was surprised though as everyone was expecting it to be in the 30W laptop TDP region as in Dothan/Yonah. And the gap to Conroe at 65W is a big one. Conroe at 65W is not that much less than a P4 now but they were quoting 5x performance per watt. That'd make it the equivalent of a 7-8Ghz P4 I reckon!
Anyhoo, probably right there on the ULV call. That's probably for their single core ULV sub 2Ghz model like the ULV Yonah. It'd make a nice iBook/Mini CPU or finally a sub-notebook sized laptop.
I'm looking forward to an OQO running OSX with a 2 day battery life by 2010.
Originally posted by cubist
Also note that Conroe is dual core but does not support dual processor. For multiple processors, you need the Woodcrest (Xeon-like) server processor, which would allow a dual-dual setup.
Because we're expecting future ProMacs to be Conroe-based, they will be dual-core but not dual-processor, and we shouldn't expect Apple to release a dual-dual G5; this because of their "pecking-order" thinking.
As THT pointed out, Apple can use Woodcrest. It was originally believed (IIRC) that Woodcrest would arrive behind Conroe and Merom (as Brendon has stated) in 2007. This maintains a nice heirachy for Apples lines (and may even indicate that the transition could be moved up for the powermacs)...
Merom for 'books - dual core
Conroe for iMac - dual core
Woodcrest for PowerMac - dual proc, dual core
I think certainly a quad PM (though Apple would still prolly offer conroe-based PM too) qualifies as workstation class.
[Edit: sorry, the point of this post was that this info doesn't really negate the possibility of a dual-970MP based PM in the near future
Q4 2007...?!?
Is the processor speed race nearing an end?
Posted by: Allen Fear
Today, Intel announced plans to build a new line of processors designed to work smart rather than hard. The new processors are being designed with energy efficiency in mind and will shift the focus of Intel's engineers from raw speed to multicore computing. Intel plans to sell the chips in the second half of 2006 and offer them in three flavors: a desktop chip, currently code named Conroe; a laptop chip, code named Merom; and a server chip, code named Woodcrest. The new processors promise dramatic changes in mobile computing. Current Pentium M processors, common in laptops, consume 22 Watts. The Pentium M's successor, Merom, will run on a mere 5 Watts. Mileage will vary, but the difference will translate into substantially increased battery life for portable computers and significantly reduced power consumption for desktops and servers.
From Cnet.com
5 watts is really impressive - I hope to hell we get this in iBooks eventually - can u imagine BETTER than the current 6 hours of battery life?
Originally posted by cubist
I doubt that Apple would use Woodcrest in the PMs. Those chips are going to be Xeons and very expensive, over $1K each. There might be Xserves using them.
There's two strands there in that slide using Woodcrest. One for servers the other workstations. Apple will want to have an entry in both of those or they'll lose out on the enterprise and Pro market.
That's not to say they won't have a Conroe based PowerMac also with a single dual-core.
Look at this picture from Anandtech:
Just looking at the die images, we can infer that:
Merom: 2 cores, 2 MB shared cache
Conroe 1: 2 cores, 2 MB shared cache
Conroe 2: 2 cores, 4 MB shared cache, "Extreme Edition"
Woodcrest: 2 cores, 4 MB shared cache
Whitefield: 4 cores, 16 MB shared cache
Conroe 2 = Woodcrest, and they won't have big differences in price. The big dollar difference will be in the chipsets, with a tier of prices to differentiate between $3000 workstations, $2000 servers, and $10000 big iron.
I wouldn't be surprised if there was a Woodcrest with 8 MB cache or 2 MB cache either. Sossaman, 32 bit and all, may even be going into dual CPU 1U servers.
Wasn't that number eight? Imagine some type of PowerMac with eight Whitefield quad-core CPUs... 128MB L2 cache, maybe 64GB of RAM, throw a PCI-Express 4x five port SATAII hardware RAID card in there with five 500GB SATAII HDDs for a nice 'little' 1TB speedy & fault-tolerant bootable RAID 0+1/5 (or is that 0+1/3, I can't remember anymore) array...
Don't forget the multiple 16x PCI-Express slots, for the SLI/CrossFire OpenGL solutions...
Something like this, there would be nothing but a constantly milling group of guys around the Apple booth next Siggraph, grunting like gorillas & drooling at the mouth...
Originally posted by DaveLee
Also, Intel will have to have a reasonably affordable solution to match AMD for those people possibly wanting dual opteron (dual core) or dual athlon X2 processors in their computers/workstations.
Why should they?
If someone is intelligent enough to want a dual-dual-Opteron machine, they already know that Intel has nothing to offer them... and more than one year from now, when Intel will have dual-duals, AMDs available then will still be better. IOW, people who know what they want in a processor will not buy something that they don't want.
To make an analogy, Saturn doesn't try very hard to sell an Ion to someone who knows he wants a Toyota Prius. They may make a feeble attempt, but they won't expect it to be convincing.
The vast majority of computer buyers probably don't even know who Intel or AMD are.
Originally posted by cubist
Why should they?
<snip>... and more than one year from now, when Intel will have dual-duals, AMDs available then will still be better....<snip>
You sound very confident with this statement. Just wondering why?
Originally posted by rickag
You sound very confident with this statement. Just wondering why?
AMD, being the smaller fish, has still been doing very well, and it is establishing its own almost cult-like fan base, for example, among gamers. It comes up against the pentium 4 very well even at lower clock speeds, i don't know enough about the mobile athlons/turions to comment though
i am happy that AMD is there 1. to keep intel on its toes and 2. to continue to be a very feasible backup to Macintels.
Thank you for the reply. I just don't see how someone can predict a year from now that AMD will have superior dual core processors. Not saying it isn't possible or even probable, but Intel is big, really really big, and comments I've read from people that have worked for Intel, it is a very engineeringcentric(is this a word?) company.
Some have gone on to comment that people they still know @ Intel were very excited about obtaining Apple as a customer, not so much it was Apple but that it provides additional interesting engineering challenges and opportunities.
Anyway, I agree with you and am also, "happy that AMD is there 1. to keep intel on its toes and 2. to continue to be a very feasible backup to Macintels." As much as I appreciate what little I understand of PPC ISA, it will be pleasant for Apple to actually have a cpu supplier that specializes in desktop/laptop cpus and not embedded or mainframe cpus.