PPC G5 On The Way -- And Fast 526
Sulka writes: "The Register has a report claiming the PPC G5 CPU is ready for production and will be launched by Apple in January. Initial batch would include a 1.6GHz version with 2GHz to follow. 64 bit architecture, 10 stage pipeline, Silicon-On-Insulator and other buzzwords are mentioned." Maybe this will mean cheaper G4s for those of us who buy computers somewhat lower on the food chain, too.
puts Apple in a bind? (Score:5, Interesting)
1. Their fastest processor is an 867 MHz G4.
2. Their fastest machine is a dual-800 MHz G4.
3. When the G5 is available, the slowest speed going to the desktop market according to the article is 1.2 GHz.
4. The rumor (unlikely as it sounds) is that there'll be an announcement at MacWorld Expo San Francisco of a G5-powered Mac.
Now, if you knew a machine that was 50% faster in clockspeed than the current model was just a month or two away, wouldn't you want to wait? I would. And that's pretty much the last thing Apple really needs at the mement.
Perhaps they should start with the slower speed models? Even an 800 MHz G5 should be faster than the current G4s, if coupled with a better-performing chipset/bus.
Re:What about the G4s 128 bits? (Score:3, Interesting)
The really cool thing about the G5 is that it will be a 64-bit chip with complete backwards compatibility with 32-bit applications.
Re:Apple Competing w/ Intel PC's??!! (Score:4, Interesting)
I think Apple has already determined that they arent gonna use clock speed in advertising. They're simply using the numbers G3, G4, and now G5. That's pretty much similar to AMD's new campaign of AMD 7000 chips or something like that.
Re:Too bad it will be in $4000 computers (Score:5, Interesting)
There are a lot of per product costs (aka non recurring expenses, or NREs). It costs roughly as much to develop a new version of MacOS as Windows. It costs roughly as much to design a new PowerPC as it does a new P-IIII or K7. Apple has about 5% of the market.
If you pretend it costs $100,000 to design a new OS and CPU, and that there are 100 people that buy computers, you can see that the 95 people who buy a Wintel box will have to pay about $1000 each for their share of the NRE. The 5 people that buy Apples have to pay about $20,000 each.
In the real world it isn't quite that bad since there are more uses for the PowerPC then just Apple's products. There are also more NREs that are similar in scale for PC makers. For example the video card in a Mac is pretty much just a PC video card. Apple ships about as many PCs as a big PC maker, so their cost to design a case and motherboard is about the same.
Still if Apple had 50% of the market rather then 5% they could manage to sell the machines for much closer to Wintel prices (maybe even under it).
I'm sure there are some other reasons, but I have a feeling that this is the biggest one...
affordability (Score:3, Interesting)
On the PC side, I've had the same machine for over 3 years, and I just keep upgrading 1 or 2 parts at a time. It used to be a 300 celery, now it's a AMD T-bird 900 w/Geforce2. The initial cost was about $1,200-, well under $2,000. Upgrades have run about $1,000, and from the leftover parts I put together another computer that I have connected to my T.V.
With PPC, however, the initial cost would be $1,800+, and I know nothing about upgrades for PPC hardware. Would I be able to continually upgrade parts cheaply with a PPC based machine.
I am interested because I would like to start developing for Linux/MacOSX/Win within the next couple years, with the main focus on Linux/MacOSX, and only on Win if it is profitable for me.
Anyone care to explain how the PPC world works? ; )
Database Servers (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:WOOHOO!!! (Score:1, Interesting)