New IBM Desktop Computer PowerPC Chip

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gkhanna

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IBM is disclosing the technical details of a new 64-bit PowerPC microprocessor designed for desktops and entry-level servers. Based on the award winning Power4 design, this processor is an 8-way superscalar design that fully supports Symmetric MultiProcessing. The processor is further enhanced by a vector processing unit implementing over 160 specialized vector instructions and implements a system interface capable of up to 6.4GB/s.
 
This is what I've been hoping for and predicting in previous posts. Apple can now cut its ties to Motorola and let it die. I knew IBM would come through.
 
Depending on how close their Vector Unit is, in terms of semantics, to AltiVec, this could be a very nice solution to the processor problem.

It is still a bit of a ways off before it could be put in a computer anyway, but it shows some definate promise.
 
Actually, since the processor is fully 64 bits, Altivec will provide less of a performance gain than it does in the G4. It makes me wonder if IBM has developed a turbo-charged version of Altivec.
 
if CPUs are 32 bit now. and the new chip from IBM is 64. would developers have to re-write software? again ?
 
No, I think I saw an article somewhere that said the new CPU would provide support for 32-bit code for backward compatibility. But unfortunately, we'll have to wait until Oct. 15 to get the full details - and we don't even know if Apple will be using this chip in the future! But undoubtedly, only programs recompiled for 64bits will see the big performance increases everyone is craving for.

But I think the interest in the new IBM chip shows that people are seriously getting Motorola G4-weary. When the gigahertz gap extends to 2 while Motorola sits on their butts promising but never delivering higher performance chips, a jump to the IBM chip seems tantalizing indeed.

(Okay, so Motorola isn't sitting on their butts - they reorganize too often to do that!)
 
There's also another good analysis of the new IBM chip at ArsTechnica

http://arstechnica.com/wankerdesk/3q02/power4-apple.html

Gee, I hope Apple adopts this chip and I hope the design is such that it's low-power enough to go into notebooks. I'm frankly sick and tired of Motorola's wimpering neglect with regard to PowerPC.

If Apple thinks 1.5 GHz G4's will be good enough by MacWorld SF, then we Mac lovers have a lot of praying to do. Nothing less than a "G5"-class processor will pass the muster at this point, sadly, because of the pace at which AMD and Intel are churning out new chips.
 
Well, all the real _info_ is in the original link of the thread. But The Reg's speculation isn't bad at all. :)
 
Originally posted by fryke
This is what we're _really_ waiting for. It'll be almost a year - or more - to market, of course. Don't forget that. The link actually _works_ at http://mac.fryke.com :)
Click to expand...

Seems deja vu all over again. IBM did the same thing with the 750FX last year. Show their work off in a couple of forums last October to November time frame, then in June we had new iBooks. What do you want to bet this thing shows up in XServes first. They aren't usually needed to run canned apps such as Photoshop. Most people who use these servers, run programs they compiled themselves or some version of Apache webservers. These are easily recompiled and because Altivec is actually a library in Mac OS X, a different vector processor would only need a library update (as opposed to Mac OS 9 where every program would need to be compiled). Someone will come up with a Mac OS 9 emulator to run the old apps because Mac OS 9 won't be able to run under 64-bit.
 
Where do you have that number from? And compare 1.2 GHz to other 64bit CPUs offered, like the 900 MHz Itanium processors, or the 1 GHz SPARC III processors. We _will_ see the day when MHz goes back again: Intel, AMD, ... they all have an interest in actually _stopping_ the MHz myth when they want to move to 64bit (and sell all new motherboard chips and everything around it).
 
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