Go3iverson
Registered
Oh sweet sweet day, how I've longed for thee....
Credit macosrumors.com for this baby!
Most details are embargoed at this time, but we've received some very detailed information about aspects of future Xserves, including G5 versions. One thing we can say: quad processors are in the cards, and perhaps a significantly sooner than we had expected. Four GHz-range frontside busses are certainly an impressive thought....
Apple is thinking about scaling its multiprocessor systems beyond two CPUs, and bringing MP to the laptop space, in order to increase the volume of processors it buys from both Motorola and IBM at times when both companies need additional demand to sustain innovation (yes, we used Motorola and innovation in the same sentence....keep a close eye on where the G4 will go in the next year or so). Quad processors may be seen first in the Xserve, but they will definitely reach the PowerMac within about a year, and we may see even more CPUs than that in extremely high-end workstation/server configurations (the oft-speculated Xstation perhaps?) by the end of 2004 or very early 2005.
With the advent of the PowerPC 970 and its successors including the 980, we will see clock speeds that begin to keep pace, at least in ballpark terms, with those of Intel and AMD chips. But Apple's main advantage is the excellent scalability of its software, and now hardware, platforms. When you start to look at the performance of even a Dual 2GHz PMG5, and begin to consider how that could scale to a four- or eight-way 3GHz system....or even an Xserve cluster of such systems....you begin to see the room for scaling that Apple has.
Jaguar is already a very well-designed system for multiprocessing; based on early analyses of Panther and the Darwin 7.x kernel by developers we keep in touch with (anyone's opinion on this or any other topic is of course always welcome) it looks like we can expect even greater use of multithreading and multiprocessor PowerPC optimization in the future.
More CPUs in the desktop and server, possibly also including a dual-processor high-end iMac at some point, will be a welcome advancement but not quite so dramatic as one of the main reasons behind Steve Jobs' claim this past January that 2003 was the "Year of the Laptop" -- dual G4 and later G5 processors in a laptop, almost certainly the 17-inch model as it offers the most space for the second processor and additional cooling hardware.
Expect mucho updates this week, including a few surprises.....
Credit macosrumors.com for this baby!
Most details are embargoed at this time, but we've received some very detailed information about aspects of future Xserves, including G5 versions. One thing we can say: quad processors are in the cards, and perhaps a significantly sooner than we had expected. Four GHz-range frontside busses are certainly an impressive thought....
Apple is thinking about scaling its multiprocessor systems beyond two CPUs, and bringing MP to the laptop space, in order to increase the volume of processors it buys from both Motorola and IBM at times when both companies need additional demand to sustain innovation (yes, we used Motorola and innovation in the same sentence....keep a close eye on where the G4 will go in the next year or so). Quad processors may be seen first in the Xserve, but they will definitely reach the PowerMac within about a year, and we may see even more CPUs than that in extremely high-end workstation/server configurations (the oft-speculated Xstation perhaps?) by the end of 2004 or very early 2005.
With the advent of the PowerPC 970 and its successors including the 980, we will see clock speeds that begin to keep pace, at least in ballpark terms, with those of Intel and AMD chips. But Apple's main advantage is the excellent scalability of its software, and now hardware, platforms. When you start to look at the performance of even a Dual 2GHz PMG5, and begin to consider how that could scale to a four- or eight-way 3GHz system....or even an Xserve cluster of such systems....you begin to see the room for scaling that Apple has.
Jaguar is already a very well-designed system for multiprocessing; based on early analyses of Panther and the Darwin 7.x kernel by developers we keep in touch with (anyone's opinion on this or any other topic is of course always welcome) it looks like we can expect even greater use of multithreading and multiprocessor PowerPC optimization in the future.
More CPUs in the desktop and server, possibly also including a dual-processor high-end iMac at some point, will be a welcome advancement but not quite so dramatic as one of the main reasons behind Steve Jobs' claim this past January that 2003 was the "Year of the Laptop" -- dual G4 and later G5 processors in a laptop, almost certainly the 17-inch model as it offers the most space for the second processor and additional cooling hardware.
Expect mucho updates this week, including a few surprises.....
