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IBM Businesses Apple Hardware

PPC 970 Confirmed for Apple? 450

Posted by pudge from the i-want-one-in-my-ipod dept.
batboy78 writes "In what perhaps is the first 'official' confirmation that IBM's PowerPC 970's will be used by Apple, BusinessWeek claims that IBM has confirmed that it's developing a new set of chips for the Mac: 'IBM says the new Apple chip will be of the 64-bit variety, which means it can process twice as much information per cycle as existing 32-bit chips.'" CT The article has been updated to make the confirmation seem... well, far less comfirming.
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PPC 970 Confirmed for Apple? More

PPC 970 Confirmed for Apple?

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  • PPC Confirmed for Apple -> New Mac Confirmed for KoopaTroopa

    • NOT confirmed (Score:5, Insightful)

      by goombah99 ( 560566 ) on Wednesday May 21, 2003 @05:26PM (#6010918)
      Jeez... did any one read the article? it is just repeating the rumor. It does NOT say that IBM is confiming its making the chip for macs. go back to work and clean the jism off your screen.

      • Read more carefully. (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Raffaello ( 230287 ) on Wednesday May 21, 2003 @07:47PM (#6011932)
        From the article:
        "IBM did not confirm it was building a chip specifically for Apple, but it does say its new PowerPC chip will work on Apple platforms."

        So IBM has confirmed that the new chip will work in Apple Machines, something they heretofore had not said.

    • Re:Stimulus / Response (Score:5, Informative)

      by chasingporsches ( 659844 ) on Wednesday May 21, 2003 @05:38PM (#6011039)
      Since when did a BusinessWeek article become official confirmation? Probably, BusinessWeek got their information from rumor posts on MacRumors.com. As well as calling it "official" instead of just official, MacRumors also adds:

      No specific executives are quoted, however... so it's unclear from where the information originated.

      The PowerPC 970 has been widely rumored and expected to be used in Apple's upcoming Macs, though both IBM and Apple had not made any official announcements about their use.

  • Now I'll wait to buy a Mac (Score:5, Interesting)

    by StephenLegge ( 558177 ) on Wednesday May 21, 2003 @04:50PM (#6010568)
    I was gearing up to buy a Mac -- a 17" iMac or a 12" PowerBook, but with new chips on the horizon I think I'll hold off for a few months.

    Apple sales guys must hate this kind of press.

    • Re:Now I'll wait to buy a Mac (Score:4, Insightful)

      by rastachops ( 543268 ) * on Wednesday May 21, 2003 @04:53PM (#6010589)
      The Powerbook's won't be updated for a while yet, they were only released in January! If you want one that bad, buy one, they are great :)

      /me posts using a 12" PB :)

    • Re:Now I'll wait to buy a Mac (Score:5, Informative)

      by mikedaisey ( 413058 ) on Wednesday May 21, 2003 @04:59PM (#6010662) Homepage

      They do, but everyone knew about this before today--well, everyone except you, so i guess you have a point. But PowerMac sales were already abysmal anyway.

      Oh, and if you want an iMac or a PowerBook, odds are against the new chips premiering in those Macs, so you may have a longer wait than you expect on your hands.

    • Re:Now I'll wait to buy a Mac (Score:5, Insightful)

      by American AC in Paris ( 230456 ) on Wednesday May 21, 2003 @05:01PM (#6010694) Homepage
      I was gearing up to buy a Mac -- a 17" iMac or a 12" PowerBook, but with new chips on the horizon I think I'll hold off for a few months.

      I'd be surprised if the nextgen chip landed in a portable right off the line. Apple's Power Mac line has been, well, pretty stagnant lately; a new chip is the perfect way to boost this line.

      In any case, putting a brand new and untested chip into a laptop environment is risky. They'll roll 'em out in nice, big towers, where heat dissipation is easier to handle and hardware doesn't need to be custom-crafted to fit inside a hella-small space. Once they're comforatble with the quirks of the chip in Real World settings, they'll start working them into laptops.

      So, in other words, don't hold your breath for a PPC 970 laptop in the next round or two of Mac hardware, for both product line freshening and technical reasons.

      • OK, but... ...Apple knows laptops are the only growth area in PC sales right now, and what better way to capture customers than some ass-kickin' new laptops?

        Moreover, why spend time and money trying to push something consumers aren't interested in just so you can say you improved one area of your sales? It's the overall sales picture that matters, and giving consumers what they want is the best way to maximize that.

        Of the handfull of people I know who are looking for a new machine right now, it's either

        • Re:Now I'll wait to buy a Mac (Score:5, Insightful)

          by American AC in Paris ( 230456 ) on Wednesday May 21, 2003 @05:34PM (#6011004) Homepage
          OK, but... ...Apple knows laptops are the only growth area in PC sales right now, and what better way to capture customers than some ass-kickin' new laptops?

          No offense, but ye gads! The 12" and 17" PowerBooks aren't even half a year old, and they're still pretty much universally recognised as some of the ass-kickingest laptops ever.

          ...how much further up the proverbial ass do you want the proverbial boot to go?

          Moreover, why spend time and money trying to push something consumers aren't interested in just so you can say you improved one area of your sales? It's the overall sales picture that matters, and giving consumers what they want is the best way to maximize that.

          That's the beauty of marketing. If you're good at it, consumers will be interested in exactly what you want them to be interested in; if the product is actually good, then it's that much easier. Apple wins on both counts. Besides, they've been pushing laptops big time for a while now. That momentum is gonna run out at some point. Desktops need to be there to pick up the slack. (Got your iBook/PowerBook? Got your iPod? Great--now you need a Power Mac with Airport wireless to act as your home media hub!)

          Of the handfull of people I know who are looking for a new machine right now, it's either for a laptop or a gaming rig, and while a new Mac is suitable for gaming, it won't make a good choice as a gaming oriented purchase. The laptop lookers I know are very open to the idea of buying a Powerbook.

          ...so buy the Powerbook! It's arguably the best mobile computing solution on the market today, and it's still a very fresh line. Games are good and all, but they're clearly not the spearhead of Steve's vision right now--music is. In any case, the state of development for Mac Games is such that catering to the gamers is a risk-fraught, low return gamble, at best. Until the software base is there to make Macs a truly attractive choice for a hardcore gamer, it's a strategy that just won't pay off. I know, it's a classic Catch-22, but them's the breaks.

      • Re:Now I'll wait to buy a Mac (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Glock27 ( 446276 ) on Wednesday May 21, 2003 @05:31PM (#6010966)
        I'd be surprised if the nextgen chip landed in a portable right off the line. Apple's Power Mac line has been, well, pretty stagnant lately; a new chip is the perfect way to boost this line.

        I think it depends on when the 1.2 V. version of the chip comes out. It used a very small amount of power - 13 W. if I recall correctly.

        I think the G4 will have a fairly lengthy run in the tiBook line, with the 970 at the high end.

    • Re:Now I'll wait to buy a Mac (Score:5, Informative)

      by Dominic_Mazzoni ( 125164 ) * on Wednesday May 21, 2003 @05:07PM (#6010749) Homepage
      You might want to check out the MacRumors Buyer's Guide [macrumors.com] to help you decide when to purchase which Mac model.

      For example, right now they recommend purchasing a LCD, XServe, iBook, iPod, or eMac. They're neutral on iMacs, Powerbooks, and Power Macs.

      There's no way you'll see a PowerPC 970 in a 12" Powerbook, so don't wait if you want one of those. The iMac is tricky...my guess is that it'll see faster G4's for a while before it eventually gets a processor upgrade. I'd only wait for sure if you want a Power Mac.

    • PowerPC 970 Powerbook or iMac (Score:5, Interesting)

      by OS24Ever ( 245667 ) <trekkie@nomorestars.com> on Wednesday May 21, 2003 @05:16PM (#6010832) Homepage Journal
      I'd bet money you won't see the PowerPC 970 in anything other than the PowerMac at least at first.

      PowerMac = Highest Performer, iMac = Mid teir and eMac = cheapy.

      PowerPC 970 isn't going to be a laptop PC unless you want to cook eggs. Can't see that nice chip being in a book just now.

      (Speaking as a recent Powerbook 12" Owner too)

      • Re:PowerPC 970 Powerbook or iMac (Score:5, Informative)

        by TheRaven64 ( 641858 ) on Wednesday May 21, 2003 @07:38PM (#6011870) Journal
        PowerPC 970 isn't going to be a laptop PC unless you want to cook eggs.

        The 'desktop' variant of the chip dissipates 19W at 1.2GHz, which is not out of the realms of possibility for a laptop (many Intel laptop chips dissipate more than this) and the 1.2V version is expected to make do with only 13W. It is entirely possible that the PowerBooks will move to this chip quickly, and the iBook will start to use G4s.

    • Re:Now I'll wait to buy a Mac (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Trurl's Machine ( 651488 ) on Wednesday May 21, 2003 @05:21PM (#6010875) Journal
      I was gearing up to buy a Mac -- a 17" iMac or a 12" PowerBook, but with new chips on the horizon I think I'll hold off for a few months.

      The 970 will most probably premier in the high-end machines, like PowerMac and XServe. It's highly unlikely that 17" iMac or 12" powerbook will get the new chip in the close future. Apple usually tends to differentiate its product line even by means of effectively cripplling its low end machines - like deliberate blocking of non-mirroring external video on the iBooks (technically possible for Radeon, but crippled by Apple on iBooks) or the lack of L3 cache on the 12" powerbook.

      So if the machines that interest you are the iMac and 12" powerbook, you are safe to buy them now. No serious upgrade is likely for them to happen in next half year (maybe some minor speed bumps, like the recent one for iBooks). The ones that are likely to see major changes are Powermacs, and indeed I would recommend holding with purchases in their case.

      I think the likely scenario is that the G3-based iBooks will be eventually ditched (there is hardly any development of this product line since more than half year), and the 12" powerbook G4 will become the new low-end of the Apple portable line; the high-end being some Mucho Macho Seventeen Incher With The Brand New Chip.

      • Re:Now I'll wait to buy a Mac (Score:5, Informative)

        by WasterDave ( 20047 ) <davep@z e d k e p.com> on Wednesday May 21, 2003 @06:54PM (#6011570)
        BTW, the "trouser filling" ibook screen spanning hack [rutemoeller.com] does, in fact, work. And it works very well. The only down sides are that I have a low VRAM model ibook (16Meg) and screen spanning appears to disable quartz extreme, even with the 8MB hack thing applied as well; that I can't drive 1600x1200 at anything more than 60Hz, although I do get 1280x1024x75Hz so that's fine; and that when I connect the monitor in the morning it sometimes seems to forget that I like to run at 1280x1024 with the menu bar on the CRT. I think this may be caused by hooking in the monitor while it's powered off, but I've yet to be sufficiently concerned to get all scientific about it.

        All new ibooks have twice as much video memory and probably wouldn't suffer from the QE disabling, so ... personally ... I don't really see the point in the 12" Powerbook if you have the will to apply the hack to an ibook and save yourself a wheel barrow full of money.

        BTW, I'm typing this screen spanned onto a Sony 19" that has a USB hub in the base. I have a cheap as chips USB keyboard (windows key maps to apple/command, alt to option and ctrl to ctrl) and a standard PC optical mouse hooked into that and when I arrive in the morning I just hook in the usb and monitor connectors and we're away. The ibook's touchpad and keyboard remain active - the only thing that isn't completely duplicated is that I still only have one mouse pointer. It's really *really* cool, and I'm very impressed.

        Dave

      • Re:Now I'll wait to buy a Mac (Score:4, Insightful)

        by truffle ( 37924 ) on Wednesday May 21, 2003 @07:28PM (#6011798) Homepage
        There are a number of reasons why the 970 will most likely end up in power books this year.
        - PowerMacs and XServes will most likely feature multiple power 970 CPUs, placing them well ahead of a single CPU powerbook in performance.
        - The target market for powerbooks is really not the same market as xserves and powermacs. The true competition for powerbooks is PC notebooks. The true competition for desktops is PC desktops. There is little risk that 970 equipped powebooks will cut deeply into Apple's server and PowerMac sales.
        - In the year of the notebook, where Steve Jobs has claimed more than half the macs sold will be notebooks, he can't really afford to push desktop systems over powerbooks.
        - The 970 requires less power and gives off less heat than a G4. It's a perfect notebook CPU.

        I'm looking forward to pickign up a 970 Powerbook before Christmas.

    • Re:Now I'll wait to buy a Mac (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Sloppy ( 14984 ) * on Wednesday May 21, 2003 @05:28PM (#6010940) Homepage Journal
      I was gearing up to buy a Mac .. but with new chips on the horizon I think I'll hold off for a few months.
      Even before this "announcement" I could have told you: new computers will come out some day. They will be faster than the old ones.

      Oh, and it gets worse. In a few months when you finally get what you think you want right now, there will be more heartbreaking news: new computers will come out some day. They will be even faster. You wasted your money on obsolete junk, fool.

      Some day the 970 will be an ancient joke like the Opteron and the abacus. "You still use a PowerPC 970? Can you still get replacement beads if they fall off?" Ultra320 RAID arrays will be laughingly referred to in the same breath as 1541 floppy drives and people will speculate that they work by means of a turtle on a treadmill. "Grandpa, is it true that your display devices only projected a two-dimensional image and didn't have smell synthesizers?"

      It's almost like there's a pattern or something.

    • First, as another reader pointed out, the PowerBook line was very recently updated. Apple wouldn't change things that quickly.

      Secondly, the chips will be much too hot for PowerBooks for quite a while. Even if Apple wanted to update the PowerBooks with a newer IBM chip, they couldn't keep power usage and heat output low enough. Don't expect these chips to move beyond the desktop market in the near future.

  • WWDC? (Score:2, Insightful)

    by rastachops ( 543268 ) *
    I wonder whether they will release more info, maybe even benchmarks at WWDC? It sure will be great to see Apple with the fastest CPUs again :)

  • 64bit (Score:5, Funny)

    by labratuk ( 204918 ) on Wednesday May 21, 2003 @04:51PM (#6010574)
    IBM says the new Apple chip will be of the 64-bit variety, which means it can process twice as much information per cycle as existing 32-bit chips.

    Argh! Head... going... to... explode...

    • Re:64bit (Score:3, Informative)

      by thebigmacd ( 545973 )
      Ditto...64 bit means it can address 2^32 times the memory as currently and/or do 64-bit numerical functions in one operation.

      • Re:64bit (Score:4, Informative)

        by Natalie's Hot Grits ( 241348 ) on Wednesday May 21, 2003 @06:28PM (#6011429) Homepage
        I know your trying to knock down the 64bit myths.. But in reality, 64 bit math essentially means you are processing 2x as much information per instruction..

        While you are right, if you are only processing 32 bit data, then yes, there is only one benefit, and that is 64 bit memory addressing. But if you are processing 64 bit data, then yes, the article is both technically correct, and just correct in general.

    • Re:64bit (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 21, 2003 @04:54PM (#6010610)
      ">>>IBM says the new Apple chip will be of the 64-bit variety, which means it can process twice as much information per cycle as existing 32-bit chips.

      "Argh! Head... going... to... explode..."

      He didn't say twice as fast... he said that it could process twice as much information per clock cycle... he is correct with that statement.

      • Re:64bit (Score:3, Insightful)

        by Ryan Amos ( 16972 )
        Actually not really. It can process instructions that are twice as long as 32 bit per clock cycle.
        • Actually not really. It can process instructions that are twice as long as 32 bit per clock cycle.

          But come on! We all know that bandwidth scales with clock speed! And clock speed is a true and unfailing measure of a computer's performance.

          You haven't been listening to your marketing department, have you? ;)

        • Re:64bit (Score:5, Informative)

          by mellon ( 7048 ) * on Wednesday May 21, 2003 @06:00PM (#6011224) Homepage
          The thing that slows computation down is mostly access to memory. The faster you can yank bits out of memory and slap them back out there, the faster you will compute. CPUs nowadays are highly optimized to make sure that every memory cycle does something useful.

          Generally a CPU can compute faster than it can fetch or store, because on-chip memory is faster than off-chip memory. Tricks like caches help to speed things up. Tricks like having wider registers can also help quite a bit, depending on what you're doing.

          If you are doing a lot of integer math on 32-bit integers, 64-bit registers aren't going to make any difference. If you are bitblitting images, they can make a difference. If you are doing double-precision floating point operations, they can make a big difference.

          You can get similar performance wins by having a wide memory bus, long pipelines and a high clock rate, but the problem with long pipelines is that unless your code is amenable to long pipelines, you wind up doing a lot of pipeline stalls, and all the memory cycles you spend loading the pipeline are wasted, and you don't get much benefit from your faster clock rate. This is a big problem on the Pentium IV, which has a really long pipeline, and is one reason why P-IV performance has been disappointing for a lot of geeks looking for general-purpose performance. P-IV does well with video because video compression and decompression algorithms work nicely with long pipelines.

          The bottom line is that there is no one thing that can double your performance, and certainly going from 32-bit registers to 64-bit registers can't double performance in all cases, but it can make a significant difference in some cases. If those cases are cases that Apple's customers care about, then Apple wins.

    • Re:64bit (Score:5, Insightful)

      by BWJones ( 18351 ) on Wednesday May 21, 2003 @04:56PM (#6010626) Homepage Journal
      Argh! Head... going... to... explode...

      Indeed. But this is the sort of stuff that you can expect from the popular press. Hey, if the number is twice as big, it must be twice as fast. Right?

      At any rate, the reporting for this article is shoddy at best. For example: While I would absolutely love to believe this has been verified by a source at IBM, the reporting is a little suspect and I would suppose that this is based upon rumor and nothing else. For instance, this rumor has been making the rounds for some time and if you look at the other big rumor the author is speculating on Yet, help may be on the way. Quark is signaling that it might soon release an OS X version. No guarantees and no dates, to be sure. You will find that Quark has hidden nothing about this. In fact, in the latest Macworld there is a whole expose on Quark coming to OS X.

      • Re:64bit (Score:5, Funny)

        by cpeterso ( 19082 ) on Wednesday May 21, 2003 @05:37PM (#6011034) Homepage

        By the time Quark finally releases QuarkXPress for Mac OS X, Apple will have released the 64-bit Mac OS X on the PPC970.

        Q: How long will it take for Quark to make QuarkXPress' code 64-bit ready?

        A: Never.

        • Re:64bit (Score:3, Informative)

          by dr00g911 ( 531736 )

          By the time Quark finally releases QuarkXPress for Mac OS X, Apple will have released the 64-bit Mac OS X on the PPC970.

          Q: How long will it take for Quark to make QuarkXPress' code 64-bit ready?

          A: Never.

          Parent may seem like a joke, but as a long-time Quark customer, I can assure anyone who asks that this is sadly very true.

          I've never witnessed another software company that has so much contempt for their customers.

          I'd addend that statement by adding:

          A: Never. And we don't care if you don't like it

    • Re:64bit (Score:3, Informative)

      by cmburns69 ( 169686 )
      While technically true, saying "64-bit can process 2x faster than 32-bit" is misleading.

      64-bit means that each instruction can be 64 bits long, allowing for the native computation of larger numbers. Concurrently, it can process 2 32-bit instructions, but they would have to be instructions such that neither relies on the result of the other.

      To sum up: 64-bit is not equal to 2x32-bit, but is much better than 32-bit.

      An online Starcraft RPG? Only at [netnexus.com]
      In soviet russia, all your us are belong to base!
      Karma: Re

      • Re:64bit (Score:5, Informative)

        by be-fan ( 61476 ) on Wednesday May 21, 2003 @05:11PM (#6010790)
        Actually, this is wrong. A 64-bit process cannot necessarily process 2-32-bit instructions at once. The number of parallel instructions a processor can process is entirely dependent on the number of pipelines it has. A 64-bit processor with 3 integer pipelines can process 3 32-bit or 3 64-bit integer operations per cycle (in theory) while a 32-bit processor with 3 integer pipelines can still process 3 32-bit integer operations per cycle.

      • Re:64bit (Score:3, Informative)

        by Cyno ( 85911 )
        Also any way you stack it a 32-bit instruction or a 64-bit instruction is still just one operation.

      • Re:64bit (Score:3, Insightful)

        by Natalie's Hot Grits ( 241348 )
        "While technically true, saying "64-bit can process 2x faster than 32-bit" is misleading."

        It's a good thing the article didn't say that.. in fact.. I will quote it here:

        "IBM says the new Apple chip will be of the 64-bit variety, which means it can process twice as much information per cycle as existing 32-bit chips"

        There. It says it can process twice as much information per cycle. Which is exactly what the benefit of 64 bit computing is. (along with 64 bit instructions[read: more general purpose register

    • Re:64bit (Score:4, Funny)

      by MyHair ( 589485 ) on Wednesday May 21, 2003 @05:00PM (#6010679) Journal
      IBM says the new Apple chip will be of the 64-bit variety, which means it can process twice as much information per cycle as existing 32-bit chips.

      Argh! Head... going... to... explode...
      Damn, I had my $8 all ready; What a disappointment to see that I was mislead.

    • 1.8 GHz per second (Score:5, Funny)

      by tm2b ( 42473 ) on Wednesday May 21, 2003 @05:12PM (#6010797) Journal
      I was more intrigued by the "1.8 GHZ per second" claim.

      1.8 Billion instructions per second per second. It's about time that somebody made an accelerating chip - way to go, IBM!
      • Yeah, imagine what THAT would do for protein folding, SETI, and all those other number crunching projects.

      • Re:1.8 GHz per second (Score:4, Funny)

        by cK-Gunslinger ( 443452 ) on Wednesday May 21, 2003 @05:34PM (#6011007) Journal
        1.8 Billion instructions per second per second. It's about time that somebody made an accelerating chip - way to go, IBM
        Yes, now I can reach those 365-day+ uptimes in mere minutes! Either that or blue-screen before the login prompt ;)
      • I was more intrigued by the "1.8 GHZ per second" claim.

        1.8 Billion instructions per second per second. It's about time that somebody made an accelerating chip - way to go, IBM!

        If you'll be picky about other people's stuff, you might as well proof-read your own posts.

        GHz != Billion instructions per second. GHz is the frequency the clock runs at, and that's all. Depending on the architecture, a single instruction may take several clock cycles. IIRC, Motorola 68HC12 has a few 7 cycle instructions.

        -bm
      • "1.8 Billion instructions per second per second. It's about time that somebody made an accelerating chip - way to go, IBM!"

        Unfortunately, they're only making one of this chip and selling off the clock cycles with distributed computing apps. So no 970 for us.

  • Confirmation? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 21, 2003 @04:55PM (#6010611)
    Did I miss the part of the article where it said that IBM confirmed making PPC chips for Apple? I don't see a press release or any other real evidence. This is just an article about some guys speculation as to what is happening.

  • 64 != (2*32) (Score:5, Informative)

    by SeanTobin ( 138474 ) * <<byrdhuntr> <at> <hotmail.com>> on Wednesday May 21, 2003 @04:56PM (#6010624)
    Ok.. I wish people would get this through thier heads. A 64 bit chip is _NOT_ inherently faster than a 32 bit chip. It is able to address more memory space and perform greater precision calculations faster. If you are just working with lots and lots of 32 bit numbers you will see some speed improvement but not close to double. Once you are into the realm of 33 bit and higher numbers which are done with mathematical trickery on 32bit processors, you will see a huge speed increase when working with a 64 bit processor.

    Also, the increased memory ceiling helps.

    *note: yes, I know this is not technically correct, but I'm not explaining how 32bit and 64bit processors handle thier operations. Maybe someone can reply with that.

    • Re:64 != (2*32) (Score:5, Funny)

      by infinite9 ( 319274 ) on Wednesday May 21, 2003 @05:00PM (#6010676)
      Ok.. I wish people would get this through thier heads. A 64 bit chip is _NOT_ inherently faster than a 32 bit chip

      Yeah, but how many libraries of congress can it fit in a volkswagen?

      • Re:64 != (2*32) (Score:5, Funny)

        by Tumbleweed ( 3706 ) on Wednesday May 21, 2003 @05:10PM (#6010776)
        No, no, son, the standard is "on the head of a pin", not "in a Volkswagen"! :)

        Volkswagens are units of measurements for sizes of asteroids that are about to impact Earth.

        Other measurements in this system:

        % of the width of a human hair
        Length of a football field
        Length of an Olympic-sized swimming pool
        Equivalent # of bowls to 1 bowl of Colon Blow (or Super Colon Blow) cereal

        And you thought _metric_ was cool... :)

        • Re:64 != (2*32) (Score:3, Funny)

          by iomud ( 241310 )
          You forgot rods to the hogshead.
        • Length of an Olympic-sized swimming pool

          Which is a really weird one to use since most people have never seen an Olympic sized swimming pool except on TV. At least based on the number of people I hear say, "Is that an Olympic sized pool?" when walking up to a 25 yard pool.

          Dastardly

    • Re:64 != (2*32) (Score:3, Insightful)

      by mnmn ( 145599 )
      It says process twice as much information. Information tends to mean data such as mp3-encoded data, jpeg-encoded data, undecoded tcp data etc. Now process could mean many things. Sending it out to ram, to harddisk etc would be of the same speed , but doing a xor for finding flags from a network packet header would be faster since more of the packet is in the registers, assuming the information to be extracted is in more than 32 bits of the source data.

      Process generally means WORK on it, which means the dat
  • I hear this "64-bit is TWICE as fast as 32-bit" stuff all the time. I don't think it's true though. As far as I know, almost all PCs use at least a 64-bit memory bus already. I thought the real advantage to having a 64-bit processor was the increased address space and that things that do calculate numbers over 32-bits will be easier to handle (ever notice how there are all sorts of 32-bit limits on PC internals, like disk addressing and 2GB file sizes that need to get worked around?).

    I want to hear from th

    • Link [hp.com]

      benefits of 64-bit computing

      increased scalability
      The main benefit of 64-bit computing is increased scalability of your computer and applications. Some applications simply do not fit into a 32-bit computing model. For example, limitations on file size in a 32-bit environment may require database systems to use multiple files to represent a single file. Applications requiring large files, a large number of files, or a large number of users will benefit from 64-bit computing.

      increased perfo

  • Twice as much? (Score:2, Interesting)

    by myusername ( 597009 )
    I thought it was powers of two?
    32bit = 2^32 = 4Gigs memory space
    64bit = 2^64 = alot more than 8gigs

    This would mean that it is far greater than twice as much information.
    I could be WAY wrong since I suck at math.

  • So... (Score:5, Funny)

    by tinrobot ( 314936 ) on Wednesday May 21, 2003 @04:57PM (#6010640)
    Does that mean my G3 isn't a supercomputer anymore?

    • The G4 actually was a supercomputer... (Score:5, Informative)

      by Ffakr ( 468921 ) on Wednesday May 21, 2003 @05:30PM (#6010961) Homepage
      The G4 really was a supercomputer at launch... but only by the letter of the law. The G4, capable of over 1GFlop, came in north of the Federal definition of a Supercomputer (in relation to the export of arms). So.. you couldn't ship the Macs to any 'enemy' country like Libya... or even to France... at least not right after they were released.

      The US Govt. quickly revised the rules. I believe supercomputers are just north of 50GFlops now.... so Apple could get real close again with an SMP 970... if you go by Altivec performance again. ;-) A dual 2.5 GHz machine would be capable of up to 40GFlops (max theoretical) by Apple's calculations. ;-) hehe.

    • Re:So... (Score:3, Funny)

      by dbrutus ( 71639 )
      No, it just means that a supercomputer isn't as super as it used to be.

      We need a new standard of excellence.

      What would be the performance characteristics of a superdupercomputer in gigaflops?

  • Say what? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Chief Typist ( 110285 ) on Wednesday May 21, 2003 @04:57PM (#6010641) Homepage
    From the article:

    Although Apple won't talk about it, IBM is developing a new set of chips that Apple will likely use to replace theaging Motorola processors used in its G4 line.

    How is this "official confirmation"?

  • Confirmation? Speculation (Score:3, Redundant)

    by mrpull ( 112590 ) on Wednesday May 21, 2003 @04:58PM (#6010647)
    Although Apple (AAPL ) won't talk about it, IBM (IBM ) is developing a new set of chips that Apple will likely use to replace theaging Motorola processors used in its G4 line.

    I didn't read anywhere in the article that IBM confirmed Apple will be using PPC970.

    IBM says the new [...]chip will be of the 64-bit variety, which means it can process twice as much information per cycle as existing 32-bit chips.

    Is this new news?

    mr.

  • This Means soon (Score:3, Insightful)

    by acomj ( 20611 ) on Wednesday May 21, 2003 @04:58PM (#6010652) Homepage
    If IBM is officially releasing this information these machines should be out soon.. As apple is probably not going to sell a lot of G4s now..
  • For those of us who have been thinking about purchasing an Apple for a little while now, this is just one more reason to do so. I've been trying to resist the urge, but once these systems come out, I'm sure they'll be too good to resist. For someone who used to hate Apple with a passion and mock all Apple users, that's a huge step :-)
  • the article does NOT confirm the 970 chip, only that "Although Apple (AAPL ) won't talk about it, IBM (IBM ) is developing a new set of chips that Apple will likely use to replace theaging Motorola processors used in its G4 line."

    Chances are the chips are a g5, but for the record the 970 is never mentioned.

  • This smells suspiciously of bull (Score:5, Interesting)

    by writertype ( 541679 ) on Wednesday May 21, 2003 @04:59PM (#6010661)
    I refer, of course, to the comment that seemed to spark the submission of this article: "IBM says the new Apple chip will be of the 64-bit variety, which means it can process twice as much information per cycle as existing 32-bit chips."

    OK, let's review. First off, this is not the regular "Byte of the Apple" columnist. Second, if I had a comment like that in my back pocket, I'd make damn sure that readers knew where I got it, who said it (if possible) and get as much detail as I could. This sounds too offhand to be authentic, and, really, the comment doesn't necessarily indicate that IBM will be building chips for the Apple. The author could simply be referring to a comment made at the Microprocessor Forum--where IBM and Moto executives deliberately avoid the A-word.

    What we've got is not a smoking gun, but a shadowy silhouette of an unknown object that might be a gun and seems to be emitting some sort of vapor. If Business Week had something definite, this would be a news story and not something buried in a column.

    (Pardon the troll: why does Business Week actually have a dedicated Apple columnist, anyway? They cover business: why not a column on Ford, or Charles Schwab, or Genentech? hell, it's not like it paid off for them--Apple gave the iMac story to Time.)

    • Re:This smells suspiciously of bull (Score:5, Insightful)

      by runenfool ( 503 ) on Wednesday May 21, 2003 @05:19PM (#6010860)
      A reason Business Week has a 'Byte of the Apple' columnist is because he covers all sorts of things in the 'Mac World'. Having a column about Ford would make no sense as its not really a separate universe like Mac versus Wintel.

      Another reason is that lots of Mac people probably read just about anything Mac related. So, page hits and ad revenue.
  • /me wonders why IBM was hiring people to write drivers for the 64bit p-series architecture...

    Dammit... should have taken job... But a bit confused at the time =P

  • IBM DID NOT CONFIRM -Slashdot Story 100% Wrong (Score:5, Informative)

    by 0x69 ( 580798 ) on Wednesday May 21, 2003 @05:02PM (#6010708) Journal
    Here is what the article actually says:

    "Although Apple (AAPL ) won't talk about it, IBM (IBM ) is developing a new set of chips that Apple will likely use to replace the aging Motorola processors used in its G4 line."

    TO REPEAT: "...CHIPS THAT APPLE WILL LIKELY USE..."

    In other words, THIS IS JUST MORE FACT-FREE SPECULATION.

  • Doesn't 40h bit sound better? (Score:3, Funny)

    by Thinkit3 ( 671998 ) * on Wednesday May 21, 2003 @05:05PM (#6010732)
    We should use hexadecimal notation around computer stuff. Doesn't the world need more elegance and beauty?

  • Maybe, but not necessarily this summer... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by telbij ( 465356 ) on Wednesday May 21, 2003 @05:06PM (#6010733)

    Personally I love OS X in and of itself, and don't need Apple's stock or marketshare to increase. As long as they continue to do what they've been doing recently I'll be happy.

    That said, I don't see any reason to believe that 64-bit (or 1.8ghz) Macs or Quark 6 will ship this summer. As much as I wish for it, history is not encouraging in this regard. The music thing on the other hand, could offer the kind of revenue growth stock buyers are looking for, or it could fizzle out (although admittedly it looks good so far).

    The bottom line is I see Apple in a great position for long-term stability, but I don't see that pushing the stock up any time soon. I'm not sure whether the kind of innovation Apple does will ever be able to transform it into a large growth company, and frankly I'm not sure that I would want it to. The challenges of focusing on growth tend to eclipse everything else, and I think innovation often falls into that category. Once you start attracting employees on the basis of being a big money maker like Microsoft, you don't get as many of the creative geniuses that allow Apple to do what it does best and a destructive downward spiral begins.

    I know analysts are paid to analyze, but frankly I think that kind of scrutiny misses the point of Apple entirely. Mac OS X is not the operating system of choice for stock brokers.

  • Macworld: (Score:5, Funny)

    by bih ( 674728 ) on Wednesday May 21, 2003 @05:08PM (#6010764)
    "As this graph shows, the new G5 PowerMac uses 64-bit processors. It uses TWICE the amount of bits as the FASTEST Windows PC on the market, and they are available right now on the Apple Store." -Steve Jobs *Applause* *Screaming* *OMG MACS RULE'ing*

  • Not confirmed...likely (Score:3, Informative)

    by nycroft ( 653728 ) on Wednesday May 21, 2003 @05:18PM (#6010854) Homepage
    From the Business Week article: IBM is developing a new set of chips that Apple will likely use to replace theaging Motorola processors used in its G4 line

    Again, that's likely, not definitely.

    There's absolutely nothing in that article that says confirmed. Like all things Apple, the big news will be announced by Jobs himself. This would be really big news for us true believers. I think we're so excited about the prospect, having a major publication like Business Week write an article about it makes us jump the line. I'm sorry, but I'm not holding my breath on this one.
  • San Francisco--Dave Hurley, some guy who uses Macs and reads Slashdot, announced today that he's pretty sure the G5 will use the new IBM 970 chip. "This is complete speculation on my part and I'm in no way connected to any aspect of the process, but I'm pretty sure about this."

    Although by no means an expert, Hurley also feels strongly that there may be additional news on Apple's strategy presented at the upcoming Apple WWDC (which he will not be attending as he is not a developer).

    Hurley, who incorrectly predicted a QuickTime video-equipped iPod late last year also indicated that the new G5 tower case design will "be significantly different in appearance from the current mirrored door line."

    The trade press may contact Mr. Hurley via the above web address.

  • Nice tie in, quark and this 64 bit chip... (Score:5, Funny)

    by weave ( 48069 ) on Wednesday May 21, 2003 @06:09PM (#6011292) Journal
    Maybe the new chip will be used to explain away why Quark took so long. Perhaps they skipped development for 32 bit OS X and concentrate on the 64 bit processor, etc, etc...

    As in, it'll be announced that Quark is available, but only on the new 64-bit power macs, driving the sales of both.

  • I ordered a new G4 yesterday... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by youbiquitous ( 150681 ) on Wednesday May 21, 2003 @06:24PM (#6011399)

    I ordered the last OS9 booting G4 because I need a new computer now, not next week or next month. I need OS9 booting for QuarkXPress and for OS9 multitrack audio applications that I use.

    If a rumour about new computers is putting you off buying you probably don't need a new computer anyway. If you make money with it who cares what's in the pipeline? If you need a new machine and it's going to make you money you buy it.

    I'll worry about buying a Mac with a 970 processor when it's actually shipping and the software I use has been rewritten to take advantage of 64 bit processors.

  • Update: PPC970 *NOT* Confirmed for Apple's Use (Score:3, Informative)

    by Desperado ( 23084 ) on Wednesday May 21, 2003 @07:16PM (#6011712)
    The MacRumors article has been updated with the following:
    Update: The article has been edited with the following correction/retraction:

    "IBM did not confirm it was building a chip specifically for Apple, but it does say its new PowerPC
    chip will work on Apple platforms"

    Not exactly a "Never Mind" but the air of mystery continues.

  • The article is goofy from top to bottom. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by drinkypoo ( 153816 ) <drink@hyperlogos.org> on Wednesday May 21, 2003 @10:04PM (#6012654) Homepage Journal
    First, the issue about how IBM said that the chips would work with Apple's platform. I doubt they said that, because they won't work with Apple's "platform" in that they aren't pin-compatible with the existing PowerPC offerings. At least so I presume, since going 64 bit generally means a wider data bus and a wider address bus. I guess I could be wrong about this part. :P If you mean, the instruction set is compatible, I'm not sure I'd believe that either, but I'm willing to reserve judgement until I look at the user's manual for the new processor.

    Next, the article cites the "timing". Assuming these chips haven't been sampled yet, Apple has no chance to get these things out in time to compete with Athlon 64. Users are already doing the things he lists as high-performance tasks, and have been doing it on PowerMacs for some time (let alone Wintel PCs, though arguably it is easier to edit down your home movies onto DVDs using a mac, based on the included software.) Also, digital music is not at all a processor-intensive task; Digital recording can be if you're worried about being realtime, which I assume most people are. Realtime digital audio manipulation (though not synthesis) is generally CPU-intensive, but most people won't be doing this. Video is about a zillion times more intensive, and people are doing it NOW, but he cites "digital photography and digital music" as the reasons people need CPU? PLEASE.

    As for "WATCH OUT, SUN" -- Sun is in no danger whatsoever from Apple. It's in far more danger from AMD, and in even more trouble than that since it's under fire from itanic, which is about to get another revision, right? Ultrasparc processors simply don't have the go-get'em any more, the only advantage of Sun machines is that they have the "big iron" systems and an OS to run on them. As itanic systems become more multiprocessor, Sun will be in more trouble. As Opteron/Sledgehammer systems become more multiprocessor (I believe 32 processor systems have been announced?) then Sun will be in even more trouble because of the price-performance ratio. I CAN see a day when Sun will stop making Ultrasparc-based workstations, but it won't be because of Apple.

    As for a 64 bit chip processing twice as much data per cycle, you still have to do loads and stores, and Apple has traditionally had the slowest-of-class memory and system bus. I understand the new processor has a 400MHz DDR (800MHz equivalent) bus, so perhaps Apple will match it with DDR400 SDRAM, and then it will do them some good.

    I guess the Quark upgrade for MacOSX could push some shops to upgrade, but can't they run Quark for MacOS9 on MacOSX just fine? Unless there are meaningful new features on the new version... Which seems unlikely.

    Face it, this chip will not "breathe new life" into Apple. It will only allow it to keep fighting the "good fight" against other platforms which are going or have gone 64 bit.

    • First, the issue about how IBM said that the chips would work with Apple's platform. I doubt they said that, because they won't work with Apple's "platform" in that they aren't pin-compatible with the existing PowerPC offerings. At least so I presume, since going 64 bit generally means a wider data bus and a wider address bus. I guess I could be wrong about this part. :P If you mean, the instruction set is compatible, I'm not sure I'd believe that either, but I'm willing to reserve judgement until I look at

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