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IBM Hardware

4.7GHz IBM Power6 Spotted 296

Posted by kdawson from the more-power-to-ya dept.
Ilgaz notes that The Register has posted benchmark results from Oracle 11i running on four 4.7GHz Power6 chips. Quoting: "The speedy chips confirm IBM's boasting that Power6 would arrive near 5GHz. They also show that IBM's customers have a lot to look forward to in terms of raw performance." Rumor has it that the Power6 chips will be announced on Tuesday.
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4.7GHz IBM Power6 Spotted More

4.7GHz IBM Power6 Spotted

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  • Power6 sounds like it's going to be pretty damn cool - Perhaps Apple made a mistake jumping to intel so soon...

    *sighs* I for one yearn for the days of smugly ending any performance argument with some PC user with "Well, we've got Altivec & Altivec is magic."

    • Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)

      by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Sunday May 20, 2007 @09:24PM (#19203651)
      Comment removed based on user account deletion

      • Re:Did Apple make a mistake? (Score:5, Interesting)

        by mrchaotica ( 681592 ) * on Sunday May 20, 2007 @09:30PM (#19203731)

        What I don't understand is, since Mac software has to be Universal nowadays anyway, why Apple doesn't just permanently keep its lineup as a mix of PPC and x86, picking whichever chip suits the particular machine they're designing at the time? Power6 Xserves along side Core 2 laptops... it sounds good to me!

        • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

          by kestasjk ( 933987 )
          If your software has to take advantage of both chips it probably won't be optimized for either, and it's also a lot of extra unnecessary work.

          • Re:Did Apple make a mistake? (Score:5, Insightful)

            by Nasarius ( 593729 ) on Sunday May 20, 2007 @10:11PM (#19204063)
            How much software is "optimized" for a specific architecture, beyond what the compiler does? How much "unnecessary work" is there, beyond what has already been done in the creation of universal binaries? It's extra work for Apple, but essentially none for the vast majority of application developers.

            • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

              by account_deleted ( 4530225 )
              Comment removed based on user account deletion
            • They why did it take so long for Adobe and all the other Apple software companies to release universal binaries?

              Little/big endianness woes, using 32-bit and 64-bit on both architectures, double the amount of testing, etc. It's no small matter to port a large application to a whole new processor architecture.

              • Re:Did Apple make a mistake? (Score:4, Informative)

                by fritsd ( 924429 ) on Monday May 21, 2007 @01:25AM (#19205381) Journal
                It's tricky but not as hard as you make it sound. Look at Debian [debian.org] if you don't believe me: this picture shows what percentage of the programs is compiled for each architecture: stats.png [debian.org] it's usually over 95%. This includes little- and big-endian (mips, mipsel), 32-bit and 64-bit (x86_64), and weirder (s390). Also note the x-axis on the picture runs from the year 2001 :-) And yes, I know, compiled doesn't mean it actually also works :-)

                As to why Adobe can't be bothered to create a working flash player for (at least) 64-bit AMD64: I have no idea; we can't see the source so we can't see how difficult it would be to port it.

        • Re:Did Apple make a mistake? (Score:5, Insightful)

          by suv4x4 ( 956391 ) on Sunday May 20, 2007 @10:09PM (#19204053)
          why Apple doesn't just permanently keep its lineup as a mix of PPC and x86, picking whichever chip suits the particular machine they're designing at the time? Power6 Xserves along side Core 2 laptops... it sounds good to me!

          As a software developer why you should work twice more (OSX intel / OSX ppc) to produce a piece of software that will work on roughly 2-3 % of the desktop computers out there?

          If Apple would keep randomly altering their hardware and require compatibility with a range of completely different architectures, in the end it'll completely alienate the developers. As Microsoft knows very well, developers, developers, developers are you best asset in this fight.

          Furthermore, no, being Universal binary is not a requirement, and I know few companies which release only Intel versions of their Mac software (example: Adobe's Soundbooth)

          • Re:Did Apple make a mistake? (Score:5, Insightful)

            by mrchaotica ( 681592 ) * on Sunday May 20, 2007 @10:38PM (#19204261)

            As a software developer why you should work twice more...

            By "work twice more" you mean "check an option box in XCode," right?

            If Apple would keep randomly altering their hardware and require compatibility with a range of completely different architectures, in the end it'll completely alienate the developers.

            Yeah, just like how the wide range of different architectures most UNIX software runs on alienates developers...

            ...oh, wait.

            • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

              by jhol13 ( 1087781 )
              Had he recommended Java there would have been zillions "write once test everywhere" comments.

              But apparently Apples "universal" binary does not require any testing whatsoever ...

          • Comment removed (Score:5, Informative)

            by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Sunday May 20, 2007 @10:40PM (#19204275)
            Comment removed based on user account deletion

            • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

              by suv4x4 ( 956391 )
              Building universal isn't twice the work. Most apps don't have any intrinsic byte-order dependencies, and very few people ever wrote CPU-specific code that depended on Alitvec (for example).

              You can tell that to the Flash developers who worked their ass off to deliver the Intel version of Mac Flash quickly.

              That little player has loads of ASM and SIMD instructions to be able to pull off what it does in this size and this speed.

              Also you're not accurate about Altivec, multimedia apps like Photoshop make very goo

              • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

                by PipsqueakOnAP133 ( 761720 )
                Dude, all work's been done.

                Either, you're doing a mac specific app and use the Accelerate.framework which handles conversion to SSE3 or Altivec depending on the platform... ...or, you'll just pull in all the SSE work you did from the Windows Flash runtime since it's the same chip and these are all not OS dependent.

                Same thing for Photoshop. The plugin architecture makes it hella easy since they should have started with plugins for all the heavy stuff anyways. Recycling! It's not just for cans.

                • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

                  by suv4x4 ( 956391 )
                  you'll just pull in all the SSE work you did from the Windows Flash runtime since it's the same chip and these are all not OS dependent.

                  The argument was about keeping PPC or not. So how do you pull that from SSE on Windows Flash?

                  Furthermore, if you're a startup, who writes version 1 of a software, where do you "pull" this from?

                  The accelerate framework is a toy, for serious work, you need to code it manually.

                  • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

                    by stephentyrone ( 664894 )
                    What do you need that Accelerate.framework doesn't provide?

                    Have you filed a feature request? http://developer.apple.com/bugreporter/ [apple.com]
                    You can use a free developer connection account to do so. If it's a feature that could be useful to multiple developers, there's a decent chance it will be added.
              • Comment removed based on user account deletion
          • This is a troll. Universal binaries are not twice as hard to create as architecture-specific code. For almost all programs, there is no extra work needed beyond a checkbox. Apple even provides frameworks for vector code that will use SSEx on Intel and Altivec on PPC. I've yet to hear a good reason why an app couldn't be Universal. The closest I've heard is dealing with Wine based apps (ie. those using Cider). And since those aren't really Mac apps, it doesn't matter.

            It could be a very good idea for Apple to
            • I think that you basically mentioned the only real place where there's a market for PPC: on servers. Although I've always been a big fan of the Power architecture (I have a dual-G5 spaceheater sitting under my desk that I'm writing this on, right now), I don't think that offering G5 PowerMacs along side Intel PowerMacs would really do anything besides confuse customers and potentially make the platform less appealing for developers who don't realize how easy Universal code is to produce. So I think that's a non-starter.

              However, keeping OS X Server (which under the hood really isn't that different from regular old OS X, but it's marketed as a totally different product) Universal, and producing PPC XServes in addition to Intel boxes, might not be a bad idea. PPC XServes have always had a fair bit of popularity in the HPC and scientific-computing segments over x86, and for servers, a lot of the software in use is OSS anyway and is architecture-agnostic by design. So they wouldn't really be confusing any developers there -- most of the software that runs on OS X Server is either supplied by Apple, or is OSS, or (in the case of custom HPC code) may have been written/optimized specifically for Power/Altivec in the past already, so they'd be saving their customers work by offering a PPC product.

              I think there could be a lot to gain by keeping a PPC model around. They might not even have to do too much hardware design; if they didn't burn too many bridges with IBM on the way out, they could probably use one of IBM's Power-based blade-server boards in a 1U case...particularly with the way Cell hasn't been selling, IBM would probably be happy for the microprocessor sales.

              • Re:OS X Server = PPC/Intel, OS X = Intel (Score:5, Interesting)

                by Amiga Trombone ( 592952 ) on Sunday May 20, 2007 @11:56PM (#19204813)
                I think that you basically mentioned the only real place where there's a market for PPC: on servers. Although I've always been a big fan of the Power architecture (I have a dual-G5 spaceheater sitting under my desk that I'm writing this on, right now), I don't think that offering G5 PowerMacs along side Intel PowerMacs would really do anything besides confuse customers and potentially make the platform less appealing for developers who don't realize how easy Universal code is to produce. So I think that's a non-starter.

                I'd agree with that assessment. Also, consider that desktop/laptop CPU's have different requirements than server CPU's. One of the reasons Apple dumped PPC was that IBM wasn't earning enough on chips optimized for desktops to invest in the necessary R&D to keep them competitive with x86.

                That is not an issue with servers, however, Power6 is already optimized for that purpose. Apple could probably offer a very attractive XServe indeed based on that chip. It would give them an offering that would outperform anything based on x86, making OS X a more attractive and versatile platform in general. I'd like to see them go for it.

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by cmacb ( 547347 )

              This is a troll. Universal binaries are not twice as hard to create as architecture-specific code. For almost all programs, there is no extra work needed beyond a checkbox.

              I don't think it's a troll, I just see evidence that the Apple fanbase can't admit that there was any downsides to whatever Steve comes up with then, now or in the future. It would OBVIOUSLY be better to keep support for multiple processor types (I think that discipline actually makes the code more stable too), allowing Apple to use hig

          • As Microsoft knows very well, developers, developers, developers are you best asset in this fight.
            Nowadays I have to grin sarcastically about that, since I know what hoops you have to jump through to develop for Windows Mobile 6. Not a simple compiler and be done, noooo just download an 8 CD monster and several APIs. Makes me happy that I'm primarily a Linux developer.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by pato101 ( 851725 )

            As a software developer why you should work twice more (OSX intel / OSX ppc) to produce a piece of software that will work on roughly 2-3 % of the desktop computers out there?

            I understand your point, but my personal experience developing software for several unices is that having several platforms is a good idea since some bugs arise at some platforms and others at other ones, so your software quality gets improved. Also, as already pointed the work is not twice the work but a bit more - and that "a bit more" consists in correcting bugs that happen only at one platform (but which could randomly happen at other one at any time).

        • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

          by solios ( 53048 )
          UBs are the new Fat Binaries - Apple dropped the 68k as soon as they were able but Fat Binary soft that could run on both 68k and PPC was around for quite a long while thanks to the big install base of 68ks. Now history's repeating itself - the only reason we have UBs is because of the hugehugehuge (proportionately speaking) PPC install base.

          Apple has no reason to go back to the PPC. The profit margin on intel kit is much higher..... and if you don't think it's about profit, ask yourself why all of the lo

          • and if you don't think it's about profit, ask yourself why all of the low end PPC machines had okay ATI or NVidia graphics, while all of the new low end intel machines have totally bullshit Intel GMA graphics?

            Personally, I'm okay with Intel graphics -- at least they've got Free Linux drivers. Of course, that's more of a concern on non-Apple computers, since any Mac I'd own would be running OS X...

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by solios ( 53048 )
              Intel graphics are fine if all you run is Office... personally, I can't stand the fact that the chipset's VRAM is actually system RAM, and "shared video memory" doesn't mean "I have a gig of ram! I can run Doom3 with 512 megs of VRAM!" It means "I have X megs of system ram that I can never, ever use for anything but video memory."

              Which is really misleading when they're billing a machine that has ~448 megs of useable ram as having 512.

              Regardless of the "for" arguments, the fact that Apple - who bills their

              • Re:Did Apple make a mistake? (Score:4, Insightful)

                by mrchaotica ( 681592 ) * on Monday May 21, 2007 @12:21AM (#19205007)

                Intel graphics are fine if all you run is Office...

                I've got Intel graphics on my X60, and I'm in the middle of installing a bunch of 3D games in Linux (Tremulous, FlightGear, Scorched3D, Neverball...); I anticipate that it'll run them just fine. It also works really well with Compiz/Beryl. Personally, I think it's a lot better than having an Nvidia or ATI chip, and not having 3D support at all.

                • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

                  by solios ( 53048 )
                  Try running, say..... Maya [autodesk.com]. Or Motion [apple.com].

                  Ultimately, the point I'm aiming at is that paying premium prices for bargain basement video really chafes my ass - if I'm going to lay down for kit that's twice the price of an equivalently powered wintel box, I'd like some name brand video and user access to all of the system memory.

                  • Well, Maya would still run better on my Intel graphics than it would on an otherwise-equivalent laptop with an Nvidia card using the 'nv' Free Software driver.

                    But I do get your point; I'm sure my girlfriend (an animator) would love to have a version of my X60 tablet with high-end graphics for running Maya.

        • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

          by Jeff DeMaagd ( 2015 )
          POWER isn't PowerPC. I don't think it's worth keeping two architectures in parallel like that for long term, not with Apple's current volume. Apple doesn't make that many Xserves last I heard, something like tens of thousands per year, when the other server companies exceed that by as much as 20x. IIRC, HP was selling 200k 1U servers when Apple sold 12k 1U servers. I don't know what IBM's numbers are, but POWER-based workstations and servers were a lot more expensive than Apple's stuff.

        • Re:Did Apple make a mistake? (Score:4, Insightful)

          by Lobster Cowboy ( 605052 ) on Monday May 21, 2007 @12:13AM (#19204951)
          Because one of Apple's new selling points is the ability for all new Macs to run Windows as well as OS X. Can you imagine the nightmare Apple would have if they mixed processors?

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by drsmithy ( 35869 )

          at I don't understand is, since Mac software has to be Universal nowadays anyway, why Apple doesn't just permanently keep its lineup as a mix of PPC and x86, picking whichever chip suits the particular machine they're designing at the time? Power6 Xserves along side Core 2 laptops... it sounds good to me!

          Because the market for such machines is miniscule and costs in designing, testing and mass-producing computers are non-trivial.

          (This is before even getting into the additional costs that would be heaped o

      • But Apple didn't have to switch - they could've gone intel for laptops & waited for power6 for high end.

        • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

          by account_deleted ( 4530225 )
          Comment removed based on user account deletion

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by nbvb ( 32836 )
            Thanks for bringing back those awful, awful memories.
            </sarcasm>

            SunOS begone!

    • Re:Did Apple make a mistake? (Score:4, Insightful)

      by stoneymonster ( 668767 ) on Sunday May 20, 2007 @09:24PM (#19203657) Homepage
      Huge increase in mac sales since the intel switch? Massive profits? Stock well over $100? Yeah they made a mistake. Look, sometimes business decisions are just that: business, regardless of whether they're the most exciting decision from a technical or geek standpoint.

      • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

        by Anonymous Coward
        The stock price is more related to the iPhone and phenomenal iPod sales.
    • It's interesting to see PowerPC on the other side of the megahertz myth for a change.

      Also, I bet Power6 would work great in minis and MacBooks.

      • watts (Score:3, Informative)

        by DreadSpoon ( 653424 )
        The Power6 uses "under 100 watts in performance sensitive applications."

        WAAAY too much for a notebook or a mini.

      • Re: (Score:2, Troll)

        by KonoWatakushi ( 910213 )

        Also, I bet Power6 would work great in minis and MacBooks.

        A Core2 Duo would also work great in a Mini.

        Apple now has tons of options with Intel, yet they still refuse to produce competitive hardware; whichever chips they are using is irrelevant. The future looks like more of the same: insanely priced outdated hardware, so that they can maintain their obscene margins.

        I have no problem paying more for Apple hardware, but right now, they are simply gouging customers. What's worse is that none of that rev

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by c_forq ( 924234 )
          At least their Macbooks are competitively priced. I am currently pricing laptops, with a focus on portable, and I have found nothing with close to the bang for the buck as the MacBook, the closest I've found are refurbished machines with Core Solo chips (however my requirements include a screen under 14" and the weight to be around or under 5 pounds. My bang for the buck analysis also takes into account student discounts, which some manufacturers don't have. I have found if I was willing to go for a 15"

          • Look at the Thinkpad X60 (and/or Tablet). They're more expensive than the MacBook, but not by all that much considering the current sale, and if you're a student the tablet is wonderful for taking notes (I love mine!).

            • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

              by c_forq ( 924234 )
              The only Thinkpad in my requirements and price-range is $250 more than a Macbook, with a slower processor, smaller hard drive, and doesn't include bluetooth. (The X60 is $1,251.75 at sale price, and the Macbook is $1,000 after student discount).
              • The MacBook weighs 5.1 lbs. The ThinkPad X60 weighs 3.1 (small battery; 3.6 with 8-hour battery). That's what you're paying for.

                When I was shopping for laptops I wanted to look at Macs, but my weight requirement threw them all out of the running. I ended up getting an X60s which weighs 2.7 lbs (3.3 with big battery), and every time I carry it I'm glad I did. IMHO the long-rumored MacBook Thin can't come soon enough.

                • Re: (Score:2)

                  by c_forq ( 924234 )
                  If I had the budget for one with better specifications I would do the Thinkbook, but $1,000 is at the very top of what I have budgeted. I was looking at a smaller, lighter refurbished Gateway (MX1027) at just under $800, but decided that the extra $200 was worth it for having new hardware, having the Apple Warranty, and having the better specs. I would take a good Thinkpad over the MacBook Pro, but both are way out of my budget.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by guruevi ( 827432 )
          I think you're just bashing Apple, but ok. Yes their hardware is a bit more expensive, but the return is also much larger in forms of better fit-together hardware, service and when you can write off your hardware.

          Especially once you go into businesses. The difference in price between Apple and Microsoft starts getting huge once you spec out an environment for >50 people. With Apple you know your clients cost you $129, your server $999, Remote Desktop for $499, no limits, everything integrated with Kerber

          • Re: (Score:2, Troll)

            by drsmithy ( 35869 )

            Especially once you go into businesses. The difference in price between Apple and Microsoft starts getting huge once you spec out an environment for >50 people. With Apple you know your clients cost you $129, your server $999, Remote Desktop for $499, no limits, everything integrated with Kerberos + LDAP. With Microsoft you got that and then you have to start calculating CAL's for Exchange, CAL's for your Terminal Server, CAL's and server licenses for your SMS and WUS, and each little piece that will ma

    • Re:Did Apple make a mistake? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by l0ungeb0y ( 442022 ) on Sunday May 20, 2007 @09:32PM (#19203753) Homepage Journal
      "Did Apple make a mistake?"

      No. Not at all.

      The Power series was the high end server class, meant for big iron.
      The PowerPC series was the vastly scaled down little brother intended for the desktop class.

      IBM wasn't all the interested in making chips for Apple.
      And who can blame them? Lower profit margins and less units sold.

      Intel is a much better match for Apple, which is a consumer grade CPU manufacturer. And since the switch, Apple has not had the embarrasment of lower performing CPUs and long waits on CPU upgrades that IBM and Freescale saddled Apple with.

      If Apple had stayed with IBM, they would have been pushed to the Cell processor. And that would be a bad PR move, running on the same CPU as your game consol runs on. And there would of course be no gaurantee switching to that processor family would result in better product cycles from IBM.

      Apple made the right choice, The relationship with IBM was no longer viable.

      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by LWATCDR ( 28044 )
        Unfortunately true. The new Power series could work in a desktop or workstation but it will be expensive. I am sure that with enough money IBM could make a Power6 that was better than the Core 2... Except they wouldn't make a profit on it. As much as I hate loosing yet another better then the X86 ISA from the desktop Apple did the right thing.

      • If Apple had stayed with IBM, they would have been pushed to the Cell processor. And that would be a bad PR move, running on the same CPU as your game consol runs on.


        Oh? You mean like how the XBox uses a Pentium 3? How embarrassing for the rest of us that we're just using a chip that's suited for video games.
      • Apple could consider enterprise customers by porting OS X to IBM's hardware (or just rebrand it like they used to do when Apple sold laser printers.

        suggested names:
        XXXx2 Serve
        Xx6 Serve
        Apple POWERServe (just makes you think of a ball doesn't it?)
        ZServe
        iPOWER
        XPOWER
        POWER X (advertise using a comic book theme)
        Enterprise G6-07
        G6 Cube
        NeXt Cube
        X007 (2007)
        SuperMac (cant use BigMac)

        X-Frame (as in mainframe with virtualization; my favorite)

        iVapor (apple will never seriously target enterprise)

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Short Circuit ( 52384 ) *
      I'll wait until the specs come out Tuesday* before I decide if the Power6 is interesting. Sure, it's got GHz. But how many ALUs does that cover? FPUs? What about its SIMD instruction capabilities? How long is the pipeline? Is it insanely long a la NetBurst?

      Not to mention that IBM didn't seem to be putting any resources at all into a low-power verion of the POWER5; What makes you think they would for the POWER6? Without a low-power chip, Apple would have a hard time making laptops with a decent battery

    • Power isn't PPC (Score:5, Informative)

      by Sycraft-fu ( 314770 ) on Sunday May 20, 2007 @09:36PM (#19203783)
      Despite the similar name, and somewhat related architecture, IBM's Power line are not PPC chips and aren't suited for desktop use. That's not to say that some technologies from them can't go in to other chips, but drooling over what is essentially a minicomputer/mainframe chip is silly.

      The reason Apple switched is because, despite all the hype, Intel continues to make really fast chips for a good price. When Apple was on PPC I saw never ending arguments as to how much faster the chips were. All those never seemed to pan out in actual operation. Why that's the case isn't important from Apple's standpoint, they just want fast chips for low cost.

      I suppose if you want to long for the days of Altivec and talking about tech stuff you don't fully understand, that's great, however Apple has to be a bit more pragmatic and realise that while Altivec might sound cooler than SSE3, SSE3 is an API for a damn fast vector unit and that's all that really matters. Most people don't care about contrived benchmarks, they care about the wall clock benchmark, meaning how fast does the system do what they want, and further how cheap can they get that system for.

      • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

        by DreadSpoon ( 653424 )
        "IBM's Power line are not PPC chips and aren't suited for desktop use"

        Yes, yes they are PPC chips. In terms of core instruction set, they're the same. The PPC970 that Apple used for a short while were derived directly from the Power design, as I recall.

        The PC in PowerPC doesn't mean "Personal Computer." It means "Performance Computing." PPC is an instruction set, and Power is an IBM brand/product name. Many companies make PPC chips besides IBM, and the majority of those chips are embedded chips not at

        • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

          by Usquebaugh ( 230216 )
          No they are not!

          Power != PowerPC

          PowerPC has a subset of the Power op codes.

          PowerPC is seen as a embedded/desktop platform
          Power is used in AS/400 and RS/6000 boxes

          Power code does not run on the PowerPC, lack of certain op codes

          I'm sure a better explanation is available on wiki, but they are not the same.

      • Despite the similar name, and somewhat related architecture, IBM's Power line are not PPC chips and aren't suited for desktop use.
        Meaning what? For years, Sun and Silicon Graphics tried to convince everybody that their inherently "high end" hardware was in no way comparable to mere PC hardware, no matter the benchmarks. Eventually everybody woke up and realized it was hogwash.

        • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

          by 1lus10n ( 586635 )
          I'm still waiting on the 128 way Intel/AMD ... or anything greater than 16 way that can keep up with the RISC, Sparc or POWER based systems.

          When your running apache it doesnt make a difference. If you can get onto Oracle RAC then it will matter less, but for right now there is still a ton of business to be done on the high end of things. Sun's T1 chip is also a metric fuckton better and running web apps. Especially java. 32 threads, low power and so on.

          x86 has always been designed for mass use, and
        • Actually the benchmarks show a different picture. Hardware designed for server computing is not the same as hardware that is designed for commodity use (e.g. home/low cost).

      • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

        by PipsqueakOnAP133 ( 761720 )
        SSE3 damn fast?
        Even Apple's dev docs mention to developers who are planning on using SSE that there will be plenty of problems:
        http://developer.apple.com/documentation/Performan ce/Conceptual/Accelerate_sse_migration/migration_s se_translation/chapter_4_section_8.html [apple.com]

        From what I recall, there were discussions which mention that moving from well-optimized Altivec code to well-optimized SSE3 code will result in a significant performance drop.

    • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      POWERn != PowerPC

      They (mostly) share a common ISA but the chips themselves have always been quite different.

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Cadallin ( 863437 )
      I'm going to give the very uncommon answer: Yes. Definitely.

      Why? If they were going to switch to x86, they waited way too long to do it. By the time the first Intel Macbooks shipped, IBM had had low power G5's available for months. These could have absolutely been user for a Powerbook G5. The desktops, of course would have been shipping POWER5 parts, what would have been the G6 (By the time these POWER6 machines made into Macs, they would have been the G7). The correct solution to many of the oth

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by DurendalMac ( 736637 )
      Nope. This is the POWER6, not a PowerPC. IBM made the G5 (aka 970) as a derivative of the POWER4. IBM told Apple that they didn't want to make a derivative of the POWER5, so they were SOL on an upgrade path. This is not the kind of processor you would EVER see outside of a top-end workstation, server, or mainframe. It's not something Apple would have used.

    • Perhaps they had a sweet deal with Intel that made it the right thing for Apple.

      Remember: Apple is out to make Apple shareholders happy. And, of course, the same is true for Microsoft, Sun, Intel, Oracle, IBM, Google, Amazon, and all the rest of them. The fact that from time to time they make a great product for their customers is a means to an end, not the end itself.

  • Yeah, but... (Score:3, Funny)

    by wcspxyx ( 120207 ) on Sunday May 20, 2007 @09:25PM (#19203679)
    ...does it run Vista?

  • an IBM p570 server showed an average response time of .625 seconds when handling requests from 2,100 users. That compares to a p570 with 2.2GHz Power5+ chips that handled .983 requests per second for 2,000 users.
    not bad, they were about due for a speed increase from those standard 3Ghz CPUs.

  • That's old school (Score:3, Funny)

    by Burdell ( 228580 ) on Sunday May 20, 2007 @09:45PM (#19203871)
    I had a 4.77MHz IBM years ago. Oh wait, you said G, not M.
  • They apparently want to emphasize this chip's gonna make quite the power bills.
  • Putting the db on solid state drives would do much much more than running on faster processors. I'm all for more processing power, but reduce the worse bottleknecks first. Heck, raided iRAMs are cheap (comparatively).

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Heembo ( 916647 )
      Huge write operation applications such as a database are not viable in terms of drive longevity when compared to old-school hard drives - at least for now.

  • Comment removed (Score:3, Interesting)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Monday May 21, 2007 @08:47AM (#19208003)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion

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