Incase a G5 PowerBook isn't over the horizon

[Oscar Castillo]

Dual core G4s would certain me over until I can get a G5 PowerBook.

 

[Cat]

Cunningly, the 8641D can not only appear to the host OS as two processors, but is capable of running a separate operating systems on each core.

The 8641D - and a single core version, the MPC8641 - will sample H2 2005

Dual core G4's ... shipping in 2006? The PowerBooks G5 will ship in ... second half of 2005?

However, being able to use Dual-boot contemporarily would be very interesting ...

 

[Viro]

To be honest, I'd rather have dual core G4s than a G5. But to each his/her own.

 

[ScottW]

I'd rather just have new PB period... even a current model.

 

[Oscar Castillo]

I'd get a dual core now if it were available, but only if the G5 is so far away it's not worth the wait.

 

[Satcomer]

How about having G5 PowerBooks and Dual core G4's for iBooks?

 

[Lycander]

Dual core sounds great on paper, but the G4's FSB tops off at 166 MHz. I said it once, I'll say it again: putting DDR RAM into G4 systems does not help anything. Might as well overclock PC133 RAM to 166 like they did to the FSB. The 166 MHz system bus would not be enough to feed data to both cores, unless they put a lot of cache memory onto the die.

 

[WeeZer51402]

Wouldn't it be a more intelligent move for apple to move away from G4 as soon as possible, especially in their "Pro" line of products. I'm also pretty sure I read somewhere that the G4 costs more to make. Apple is using "64 Bit" as a big marketing thing with the G5 right now, the next step is to completely back up their claims by migrating to it sooner. Though a dual core G4 would probably perform very well and use small amounts of power how long can apple even offer that for until they release a G5 powerbook? 6 months maybe. There has to be a point where they completely phase out the G4 but on the other hand it wasn't until relatively recently that the G3 was totally phased out.

 

[fryke]

Lycander: You should read that press release. The dual core e600's FSB runs at 667 MHz, the MPC 7448 that will probably be in the next PowerBooks has a 200 MHz FSB. Not as good as hoped for, but certainly better than a fixed ceiling.

 

[Viro]

Dual core sounds great on paper, but the G4's FSB tops off at 166 MHz. I said it once, I'll say it again: putting DDR RAM into G4 systems does not help anything. Might as well overclock PC133 RAM to 166 like they did to the FSB. The 166 MHz system bus would not be enough to feed data to both cores, unless they put a lot of cache memory onto the die.

This should answer your misgivings.

To minimize chip-level bottlenecks, the MPC8641D processor offers low-latency access to its dual e600 cores through a high-bandwidth integrated MPX bus that is designed to scale to 667 MHz. In addition, the MPC8641D features an integrated dual memory controller that enables low-latency, high-bandwidth access to DDR and DDR2 memories.

In addition to that, each core will have 1 MB of cache

 

[hulkaros]

Well, maybe a "low" speed of a G5/1.5 GHz in a PowerBook will solve any problems that Apple is facing of putting that monster in the PowerBook slick design and dual core G4 will head into the low-end lines of eMac and iBook?

 

[fryke]

Be reminded that this dual core G4 processor will see the light of day (or products) at the end of 2005. I _really_ hope that we'll be G5 by then - even for eMacs and iBooks.

 

[Oscar Castillo]

Dual core sounds great on paper, but the G4's FSB tops off at 166 MHz. I said it once, I'll say it again: putting DDR RAM into G4 systems does not help anything. Might as well overclock PC133 RAM to 166 like they did to the FSB. The 166 MHz system bus would not be enough to feed data to both cores, unless they put a lot of cache memory onto the die.

Actually the article mentions the 7448 has a 200Mhz FSB. Per core? Don't know. Anybody?

 

[fryke]

_read_ the thread before answering, please. The 7448 is _not_ a dual core processor, the MPC8641D is. So: Yes, the 7448 has 200 MHz FSB per core. But it only has one core. ;-)

 

[Lycander]

Right then. Time for dual core G4 laptops to take over the world.

 

[WeeZer51402]

quick question about dual core. By having two cores on the same dye do the share processor resources. ie. GPR's. Also I can understand the advantage of dual cores in a laptop application but does using multiple processors with an OS that supports SMP in a desktop mean high performance because of seperate busses etc.

 

[Lycander]

quick question about dual core. By having two cores on the same dye do the share processor resources. ie. GPR's. Also I can understand the advantage of dual cores in a laptop application but does using multiple processors with an OS that supports SMP in a desktop mean high performance because of seperate busses etc.

Dual cores is almost litterally 2 processors crammed into one. So each core has it's own GPRs, ALU/FPU/Vector execution units, cache memory, etc. But both cores are on the same bus.

When your OS is SMP aware, that just means that it will handle load balancing between seperate applications. When an application itself is SMP aware, it will do load balancing across its own threads and increase performance for itself. But this implies that the application developer knows what parts of code to split up into seperate threads and how to organize data optimally for multiple threads to share data.