How different will G5 be to IBM's PPC970 workstation

B

bookem

danno
The post about the rumoured DarkStar project made me think about how closely Apple and IBM are sharing their developments.

Will the G5 mainboard be practically the same as IBM's PPC970 workstation? Will it have the same cooling system etc....
 
I think that's where development is not THAT near. Apple and IBM both needed a fast 64bit CPU of their own for each company's plans. However, they're doing different stuff with them.

It's just a guess, but I'd say IBM's workstations/blades/servers will be Linux based. The cooling system of the G5 is software based (Mac OS X), and it's yet unclear whether YDL (Yellow Dog Linux) will soon be able to actually support this on their own.

Thus, I'd think, if you want to go Linux and PPC 970, you'd be better off with an IBM box.
 
Originally posted by fryke
Thus, I'd think, if you want to go Linux and PPC 970, you'd be better off with an IBM box.
Click to expand...

First of all it should be noted that the PowerPC processors are only used within IBM's workstation and server lines. The lowest end PowerPC workstation that IBM sells today is using a 375 MHz PPC604e and sells for $8,805.00. Can you imagine what a PPC970 system would be going for from IBM?

Secondly, the primary reason IBM needed the PPC970 was for transitional hardware for their AIX clients who are still using the 32-bit PPC604e, POWER3 and POWER3-II based systems. We may be up in arms at the high price of our software (like the $900 for QuarkXPress), but for IBM's clients the investment in software is in the tens to hundreds of thousands of dollars. Even though IBM has brought the price of their POWER4 based workstations way down, that is not enough to get many of their clients to give up their 32-bit ways. The PPC970 offers a way to move from the 32-bit PPC604e, POWER3 and POWER3-II based systems to the 64-bit POWER4, POWER4+ and POWER5 systems without giving up their software investment.

As for how close the hardware is going to be between Apple and IBM, I would point out that no version of the Mac OS has ever run on IBM hardware and the only Apple hardware that could run AIX was unable to run the Mac OS (the 604/604e based Network Server 500 and 700).

If you are planning on getting an IBM PPC970 based system, expect to pay three to four times what Apple is charging.
 
ArsTechnica's newest PPC 970 article confirms that the chipset that Apple developped for the G5 (yes, they did that themselves) is only fabbed by IBM. Maybe there's some technical deal there, but I'd guess that means that IBM will have their own...
 
From what I understand, Apple designs or assists in designing much of the hardware they use. I think Apple designed their own chipset or system controller but is manufactured by IBM. IBM will likely develop their own chipset/system controller. The Darkstar project, if true, indeed would be very cool for scientific research and serious number crunching.
 
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