Looprumors-"970 before Fall"

That is what I am thinking. More and more confirmation of this gives me hope. :) But what if Apple sees that we are all expecting the 970 in July, and then changes the release date just to play mind games with us hopefuls? :D

I think the fact IBM has announced their own servers using the 970 leans towards an earlier that previously expected release date for new PowerMacs.

Does any one think it could be as early as WWDC. Imagine a new top of the line system pictched at developers at the same time Quark for X is released?

Also any speculation on what the branding will be? G5? 970?

Actually Looprumors mentioning Fall is not going out on a limb. The 970 pdf clearly mentions

Samples 2Q 2003, Production 2H 2003

Of course 2H 2003 could mean anything but the peope saying things like "we won't see these until 2004" are far more pessimistic than IBM.

July would be great though. That would easily beat most estimates and probably mean that yield rates are excellent on these chips.

I'm glad to see a healthy amount of 'hints' coming from 'Apple sources'.

Just like all those leaks we got for 'X' before the 'final' candidate came out.

Apple may well be feeling verrrrry confident about the '970' and when it can deliver it in 'POWER'Macs. It's good to see Apple recognises that the lack of mhz (no doubt coupled with the lack of bandwidth and actual performance...particularly without altivec optimisation...) compared to x86 land has cost them one helluva lotta 'power'Mac sales. 2 year lag? I'd say! It aint just the economy. Dell and HP et al all sell plenty of towers. They NEED to get their 'sales engine' back online and firing on all cylinders. They need to really OWN that workstation market.

I think they can do it.

You can't fool people with an under performing chip. The G4's progress and performance have clearly struggled to keep pace. Especially in the 3D workstation end of things.

It's a moot point. Anyhow, Apple know what the problem is and are confident of fixing it before the fall.

I like the sound of that.

I'm gagging for it.

A decent tower, that is. From Apple. That is!

Lemon Bon Bon <img src="graemlins/surprised.gif" border="0" alt="[surprised]" />

And the new case? Sounds exciting. Maximise the impact of a new chip. A stunning new tower case. I'm hoping this is more than an el cap' tweak. It's got to be the 'full monty'.

A cube-esque stretch limo' transparent, ice and chrome masterpiece. Bring it on Mr. Ives.

Give it to me!!!

This is getting out of hand everyone. Someone is starting a new 970 thread every day with new information. Future Hardware is flooded with 970 threads. Please contribute them to an existing thread.

This is the last one that gets by...

;)

[quote]Originally posted by Ed M.:
<strong>Check out this recent article that counterbalances some of what Hannibal's latest X86-64 article mentions.

Amorph and Programmer: any comments?

Dave usually accepts e-mail to discuss any issues.

<a href="http://www.igeek.com/articles/Opinion/x86-64.txt" target="_blank">x86-64. Corrections to Ars-Technica By: David K. Every</a>
</strong><hr></blockquote>

I kinda sorta see David's point, but faulting Hannibal for not taking a more holistic view in an article aimed fairly narrowly at the changes wrought by x86-64 seems to me to be tilting at windmills. It's a narrowly aimed technical article written by an engineer and published on a site that publishes narrowly aimed technical articles. If there's a bit of a slant toward PC technology, well, Ars Technica is well known for that. Everyone has their own spin on things, not least David K. Every.

It seemed clear to me that Hannibal took a cautionary tone in the one paragraph where he addresses Mac users because he's just got done describing a bunch of architectural changes that are unique to the x86-64, not the result of a generic 32-bit to 64-bit transition. He doesn't say that the 970 won't be faster, and he does use the phrase "no cleaned up addressing scheme," which acknowledges (however implicitly) that there's no addressing scheme to clean up in the first place. It's clearly not spun to David's liking, but I don't see that that's worth a whole article - unless David would like to take Hannibal's paragraph as a starting point and write a supplementary article explaining where the 970's speed improvements will come from, if they're not coming from the transition to 64 bit.

Hannibal has been preparing a followup article on the 970 for some time, and it seems that it has only failed to appear because he hasn't been able to research it as well as he'd like to. Given that, I see no reason to presume bad faith on his part, or a pro-x86 slant steeper than can be explained by simple familiarity. The proof will come, of course, with the arrival of his examination of the 970.

[ 03-13-2003: Message edited by: Amorph ]</p>

I've heard that Adobe is testing next generation chip box's form Apple.

What's inside the box's exactly, I don't know. I do know that they are not G3's or G4's.

[ 03-13-2003: Message edited by: tink ]</p>

No word on how they are running, what software or OS version they're running or at what stage they are at.

They are under lock and key and have very restricted access to them.

That's all I know.

If the 1.8 ghz chip doesn't make it in the first release, I am going to be very pessimistic about future updates. Because if the 1.8 doesn't make it, that is an omen that Apple won't push the potential of the 970 to its limits, but instead live off the 970's novelty and recognition to get sales. If a DP model doesn't make it to market at first, that's fine and to be expected. But if Apple doesn't really want to give the Wintel world a run for its money, bad times will ensue. :( But if Intel gets its ass wipped very hard and thouroughly, then I'm all for it! :D <img src="graemlins/lol.gif" border="0" alt="[Laughing]" /> :) :p :cool:

Hmmm...but which of the 52 Tuesdays will it be? :D

[quote]Originally posted by Amorph:
<strong>

I kinda sorta see David's point, but faulting Hannibal for not taking a more holistic view in an article aimed fairly narrowly at the changes wrought by x86-64 seems to me to be tilting at windmills. It's a narrowly aimed technical article written by an engineer and published on a site that publishes narrowly aimed technical articles. If there's a bit of a slant toward PC technology, well, Ars Technica is well known for that. Everyone has their own spin on things, not least David K. Every.

It seemed clear to me that Hannibal took a cautionary tone in the one paragraph where he addresses Mac users because he's just got done describing a bunch of architectural changes that are unique to the x86-64, not the result of a generic 32-bit to 64-bit transition. He doesn't say that the 970 won't be faster, and he does use the phrase "no cleaned up addressing scheme," which acknowledges (however implicitly) that there's no addressing scheme to clean up in the first place. It's clearly not spun to David's liking, but I don't see that that's worth a whole article - unless David would like to take Hannibal's paragraph as a starting point and write a supplementary article explaining where the 970's speed improvements will come from, if they're not coming from the transition to 64 bit.

Hannibal has been preparing a followup article on the 970 for some time, and it seems that it has only failed to appear because he hasn't been able to research it as well as he'd like to. Given that, I see no reason to presume bad faith on his part, or a pro-x86 slant steeper than can be explained by simple familiarity. The proof will come, of course, with the arrival of his examination of the 970.

[ 03-13-2003: Message edited by: Amorph ]</strong><hr></blockquote>

If a hypothetical next generation PPC system added only 64bit execution capability but held everything else constant (FSB speed, pipeline depth, functional units, clock rate, cache sizes)... then to claim that there would be no speed boost on 32-bit code would be very reasonable.

But: we already know that the 32/64 bit switch is not the only trick under the 970's hood.

An alternative statement: "64-bit mode will not directly contribute to the performance gains expected on 970 systems in comparison with G4 systems."

[quote]Originally posted by Mac OS X Addict:
<strong>Macwhispers says that there is bidding going on for two new Apple motherboards which are completely new and that one is a dual config and the other is a single config. Could it be the fact that we can see single 970s and dual G4's because of cost? Almost like a two processor line for the PMs or could it be the fact the we could see a 1.8 dual 970 on the fastest and single 1.4 ans 1.6 970s on the fast and faster? </strong><hr></blockquote>
I think it will be more the latter. The PM line will be all 970 with a low cost entry level single processor 1.4, -dual processor mid 1.4 or 1.6 and -upper level dual 1.8. Even the single processor 1.4 would be an awesome replacement for my single 800 G4.

I have started saving for whatever they bring out. :D

Regarding Apple pushing the limits of the 970 or not.

With the variable bus mulitplier of the G4 the same motherboard, buss and memory could be used for G4 runining 350 MHz as well as a 3.2 GHz G4 (3.5x and 32 x a 100 Mhz bus. So with that design a faster CPu appear to be easy to put in, just increase the bus multiplier and off you are!

With the fixed 2x bus ratio of the 970, some questions arise. With the bus speed rising along with the CPu speed of the 970, what does that mean for Apple in terms of technical problem and cost of memory chips etc?

Or in more practial tems , how much more expensive would a 900 Mhz or 1.25 GHz bus be than say a 700 MHz bus?

And how about dual implementation? Can a dual MB with slower bus become cheaper than a single really fast?

[ 03-14-2003: Message edited by: DrBoar ]</p>

maybe i just do not get it..but can somebody confirm ..the 970s architecture is 2times faster than a g4 and therefore almost 4 times faster than a pentium4?

i mean worst case...1.4ghz single (in imac too?!)

would be equal to a 2.8ghz g4 or a 5.6ghz pentium4?

and then..maybe a dual 1.8ghz equal to 14.4ghz pentium4?

which is about 4 times faster than the best pentium money can buy?

err..am i nuts?

[ 03-14-2003: Message edited by: cycle ]</p>

[quote]Originally posted by gar:
<strong>

about your last question: i don't know

about your first question: i don't know eighter <img src="embarrassed.gif" border="0">

i thought it's more about twice as powerfull than a G4 instead of twice as fast.</strong><hr></blockquote>

ummm..whats the difference?

[quote]Originally posted by gar:
<strong>

the difference between a weightlifter and a atlete:
the atlete is twice as fast as the weightlifter and the weightlifter is twice as strong as the atlete. but they are both human and able to talk, something like that but than completly different.

there is also a car analogy about small european cars with big diesel or gasoline engines.</strong><hr></blockquote>

well...whatever...so powerful doesnt mean faster? it means it can drain more power...how cool!

[quote]Originally posted by Transcendental Octothorpe:
<strong>

Remeber, the 970 has a companion chip which would be between the CPU and memory. Thus you don't need to worry about memory speed if you want to increase the CPU clock. (well, except for the obvious concern of feeding data) Apple would, however, have to have a companion chip able to run the CPU bus(es) at the higher speed. But since Apple is involved with its design and such, they should know very well what the availablity of those faster-bussed chips would be.

Did that make any sense?? :confused: </strong><hr></blockquote>

It did and Apple has already done it. It's called the "System Controller" which has been part of the motherboard architecture since the Xserve was introduced. For the PPC970 it will be updated, but did anyone think that this architecture was developed just to give us the current lame DDR implementation? <img src="graemlins/oyvey.gif" border="0" alt="[oyvey]" />

BTW - It also shows how long ago Apple was planning for the PPC970 - it's coming sooner than later. :D

[quote]Originally posted by gar:
<strong>

no einstein... it means that it can do more complicated tasks per clockcycle than a P4, so clock for clock it could indeed be faster like in photoshop or premiere. but in simple tasks like email or office etc. the p4 is definitly faster.
take yourself for instance: you can think very fast, your a smartass, but obviously not very deep: so your a pentium 4. :p </strong><hr></blockquote>

man..that wasnt nice :(

[quote]It did and Apple has already done it. It's called the "System Controller" which has been part of the motherboard architecture since the Xserve was introduced. For the PPC970 it will be updated, but did anyone think that this architecture was developed just to give us the current lame DDR implementation?<hr></blockquote>

Except that the 970 is such a different beast from the G4+ in terms of memory interface. It would be like trying to take the drive train from an Corolla and put it in a Ferrari. The principles may be similar, but if you don't redesign from scratch, you'll be wasting 3/4 of the potential...

That, and from what I understand, the 970 memory controller is a beast to design, although admittedly any rumours I've heard about Apple's difficulties with it are now quite old.

[quote]Originally posted by jwdawso:
<strong>
It did and Apple has already done it. It's called the "System Controller" which has been part of the motherboard architecture since the Xserve was introduced. For the PPC970 it will be updated, but did anyone think that this architecture was developed just to give us the current lame DDR implementation? <img src="graemlins/oyvey.gif" border="0" alt="[oyvey]" />

BTW - It also shows how long ago Apple was planning for the PPC970 - it's coming sooner than later. :D </strong><hr></blockquote>

The "extra" bandwidth of the DDR333 memory exceeds the processor's 167 MHz bandwidth, but that doesn't mean it goes unused. Its interesting to sit and play with the system because you can see that even when the processors are both have the shared, bandwidth limited MPX bus going at full tilt the GPU can still be streaming vertex & texture data from main memory, and the ATA bus can still be read/writing data to the disk(s). Since Quartz Extreme is constantly using the GPU to stream textures, this is very relevent to current MacOS X performance. The system is not a "hack", it is the fastest system Apple could build given the limitations of the processor they had to use.

It will be interesting to see what the architecture of Apple's new machines looks like -- they might start from their existing system controller, instead just canabilize some of the design elements from it, or throw it away and completely start from scratch using lessons learned. It could stay as one chip, or it could become a north/south bridge pair. There might be one companion per 970, or a ring of 970s with on companion. I have no doubt that it'll use at least DDR333, but I'm not holding my breath for anything more than that (at least in version 1).

[quote]Originally posted by cycle:
<strong>maybe i just do not get it..but can somebody confirm ..the 970s architecture is 2times faster than a g4 and therefore almost 4 times faster than a pentium4?

i mean worst case...1.4ghz single (in imac too?!)

would be equal to a 2.8ghz g4 or a 5.6ghz pentium4?

and then..maybe a dual 1.8ghz equal to 14.4ghz pentium4?

which is about 4 times faster than the best pentium money can buy?

err..am i nuts?

[ 03-14-2003: Message edited by: cycle ]</strong><hr></blockquote>

It's 1.5-2x times faster then a G4 at the same speed. The 1.8ghz 970 is on par with the P4 2.8-3.0ghz.

In that case, Apple is on a good road. 2.5 ghz? Those suckers aregone. :D But what I want to see is how the PPC 970 compares against the Xeon. Does anyone know of a 970-Xeon comparison? <img src="confused.gif" border="0">

Yes, but ME want to see truth. <img src="graemlins/hmmm.gif" border="0" alt="[Hmmm]" />

Hyper threading is making the processor think that it is two. This is strange, because aren't dual processors usually slower than their net speed? Like 80% of their net speed or something like that.

The next switch ad will mos likely feature the Pope... <img src="graemlins/lol.gif" border="0" alt="[Laughing]" />

[quote]Originally posted by Gizzmonic:
<strong>What are the real world benefits of hyperthreading?</strong><hr></blockquote>

HT offers some of the benefit of multiple cores (or standard SMP) at a much lower cost in die size. Roughly, if the percentage increase in performance is larger than the percentage increase in the number of transistors needed to implement it, it's a net gain. Unless my memory is failing me, the HT P4 gains a 20% performance boost running threaded code for a 5% increase in the number of transistors required.

How much of a benefit that is boils down to quality of implementation.

[quote]<strong>Is it buzzword compliant crap or something that could actually be useful?</strong><hr></blockquote>

It's useful to the P4 largely because the P4 is single-core, and it can't do SMP. It's much less useful to the POWER4 because the POWER4 does multicore and SMP already. Its usefulness to the P4 is limited by the paucity of multithreaded applications on Windows, but to the extent that it makes up for Windows' miserably inefficient thread management it might encourage multithreading on that platform. (Note that a HT P4 is a bit slower than a non-HT P4 at running single threaded apps.)

On Macs, SMP has been a reality for some years now, OS X has excellent support, and Cocoa apps almost all have at least two threads, so SMT has an immediate practical application on the Mac, especially in machines that are unlikely to ever get dual processors.

Originally posted by Amorph:
[quote] (Note that a HT P4 is a bit slower than a non-HT P4 at running single threaded apps.) <hr></blockquote>

Wait...if that is true, then why not get "real" multiprocessor Xeon systems, instead of settling for this faux-MP solution? Who is the HT P4 marketed towards?

[ 03-14-2003: Message edited by: os10geek ]</p>

[quote]Originally posted by Amorph:
<strong>
Its usefulness to the P4 is limited by the paucity of multithreaded applications on Windows, but to the extent that it makes up for Windows' miserably inefficient thread management it might encourage multithreading on that platform. (Note that a HT P4 is a bit slower than a non-HT P4 at running single threaded apps.)
</strong><hr></blockquote>

I just upgraded our MS SQL machine (running Windows Advanced Server and SQL 7 (going to 2000) to a Dell 2650 with dual 2.4's. We tested SQL with HT on and with HT off. We were actually very suprised that Windows and SQL did better with HT on.

My BIG dissapointment was that SQL wouldn't even run with more than 2G RAM installed. We knew that SQL was limited but we have some other applications that run on the machine as well and we were wanting to keep 6G RAM for use with the other apps...NOPE...SQL won't even start up with more than 2G RAM in the machine. Grrrrrr.

Usually the beurocratic licensing riffraff doesn't get that technical.

[quote]Originally posted by os10geek:
<strong>Usually the beurocratic licensing riffraff doesn't get that technical.</strong><hr></blockquote>

The licensing riffraff can get extremely technical if it's enforced in software, which is one reason why MS snapped up Virtual PC. IBM actually has software that divides its physical hardware up into virtual machines with 1 or two processors for the sake of licenses like this: An application with a single CPU license can thereby run happily on a gigantic, massively MP beast of a computer because it's only made aware of the existence of one processor.

The bottom line is that if the per-processor line is software enforced, and the software has no way to tell a dual-threaded CPU from a dual-core CPU from two CPUs because of OS hardware abstraction, it'll treat them all as dual CPU machines and enforce the license accordingly.

Mike: FYI, you are aware that MS doesn't recommend that you run more than one server app per machine, right? SQL Server appears to have hardcoded that recommendation. <img src="graemlins/lol.gif" border="0" alt="[Laughing]" />

[ 03-15-2003: Message edited by: Amorph ]</p>

[quote]Originally posted by Amorph:
<strong>

Mike: FYI, you are aware that MS doesn't recommend that you run more than one server app per machine, right? SQL Server appears to have hardcoded that recommendation. <img src="graemlins/lol.gif" border="0" alt="[Laughing]" />
</strong><hr></blockquote>

Wha?!?!?!?! :eek:
GTFOH! <img src="graemlins/bugeye.gif" border="0" alt="[Skeptical]" />
NS? <img src="graemlins/surprised.gif" border="0" alt="[surprised]" />
BWA-HA-HA-HA-HA ... !!!!!!!!!!!!! <img src="graemlins/lol.gif" border="0" alt="[Laughing]" /> <img src="graemlins/lol.gif" border="0" alt="[Laughing]" /> <img src="graemlins/lol.gif" border="0" alt="[Laughing]" />

... why do corporate IT departments buy MS crap if that's the case? Why don't they just screw it and go Linux or some other Unix solution [our favorite would be nice of course] ...

Cost of migration?
Cost of training?
Plain stupidity?
Blinded by Marketing?
Open Bar At The MS Golf Course of Choice?

By the hahnd of Zeus, what manner of deviltry is this? I mean ... what gives?

[edit, freakin' spelling]

[ 03-15-2003: Message edited by: OverToasty ]</p>

[quote]Originally posted by hmurchison:
<strong>Mike,

Isn't HT causing licensing problems? For instance say my company is running ISA Server and it's license is Per Processor. Won't HT or any SMT system cause problems with these apps? Has Microsoft already fixed this?

It's quite obvious that Per Processor licenses will have to be dramatically changed. Imagine a 32 Way Server with 4 threads per proc and it's licensing ...OUCH!</strong><hr></blockquote>

Yes and no. So far all companies we deal with for high end software only charge us for the actual number of physical cpu's. Where you are talking $7,000.00/cpu that means a whole lot!

A side note with all this discussion about MS app licensing:

I have switched nearly 100% of our operations from Windows to Linux. What's odd about this is that MS is a client of ours :)

The ONLY reason I was so dependent on Windows is that I purchased this company from out of Sunnyvale CA (belly up dot com) and they were 110% pro-Microsoft, vb, etc. Myself and the original team I put together was and is 110% pro Linux, php, etc (exept for my SQL DB administrator) so we slowly migrated 100% of our front end to Linux and about 50% of our back-end to Linux.

We had two primary reasons for switching:
1 - Performance - I knew that we could write a system that was MUCH better than our current system in both features and performance if we did it on some Unix variant with PHP/C etc.

2 - Price - Microsoft wanted $40,000.00 to license SQL on our database server about 2 years ago. There was no way I was going to spend that much money on software. I don't run the company like a dot com...I run it like a bricks and mortar company...maybe that is why we are 2.5 years down the road and profitable ;-)

Bottom line -- Mircrosoft made it easy for us to do business elsewhere.

So, back to the 970...

I will say this! Apple had better do something. If you have ever used a PIV Xeon you know what I am talking about!