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Amiga News and Community Announcements => Amiga News and Community Announcements => Amiga Hardware News => Topic started by: eddit on April 29, 2002, 11:25:41 PM
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"The new chip - the IBM PowerPC 440GX - was designed by IBM using the company's ASIC methodology to combine the PowerPC 440 processor core and other key functions on a single chip. The new embedded processor, an upgrade to IBM's PowerPC 440GP, is targeted to support CPU speeds of 466 to 600MHz.
The PowerPC 440GX also includes a 128-bit CoreConnect system bus enhanced to run at speeds up to 166MHz, along with a 256KB block of on-chip software-controlled SRAM memory, 64-bit 133MHz PCI-X support, a 64-bit 333 MHz Double Data Rate (DDR) memory interface, and a high level of integrated communication interfaces."
IBM PowerPC page (http://www-3.ibm.com/chips/products/powerpc/)
NOTE: This G5 class processor is for the embedded market. However, it looks like it won't be long untill desktop chips come out with DDR memory and FAB'ed at 0.13 micron. :-P :-P
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I'd never got around to checking the IBM PPC site (I'm kinda lazy like that :-P ) Looks like the PPC750FX is the one to watch for the desktop - planned clock speeds up to 1Ghz and built at 0.13 micron.... hmmm, native AmigaOS at 1Ghz...... :-D
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I wonder if AMD would consider creating a multiprocessor chip that was half x86-64 and PPC--sort of a two in one, like they recently announced for the x86 side of things. But then I guess there would have to be a reason for it ;-)
Amiga needs to get that OS running on the Hammer series. :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D
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It is not G5 class processor.
(and I know it, I program for it, we use those in our products, we have had engineering samples for long time)
There might not be too long time untill IBM brings these technologies to a desktop PPC chip.
And this might be a clue to what Ben Hermans hinted at moobunny... on-chip functionality is rising and system prices will drop.
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It's not having a 1Ghz PPC that will bring performance; it's the faster bus. What the heck are you going to do with 1GHz if the bus chokes it to 133MHz (not counting inefficient x86)?
CPU registers aren't forever, neither is cache. The demanding stuff needs bandwidth and it's the demanding stuff we want to run faster. But then there's people who thinks they really can get a 10 times faster computer by switching from a 1GHz to a 10GHz processor, still using the same 100MHz bus.
It would be fun having a cutting edge Amiga using f.ex. 333MHz DDR as main RAM (128-bit wide) and some nice GFX chip (Matrox perhaps) soldered to the mobo. Not excluding the option of having some 3D monster working seamlessly toghether with the 2D Matrox through an AGP bus.
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What about the Power4 chip.
It looks impressive and is aparently PPC Compatible
http://www-1.ibm.com/servers/eserver/pseries/hardware/whitepapers/power4.html
Quote"Maintain binary compatibility for both 32-bit and 64-bit applications with prior PowerPC and PowerPCAS systems: Several internal IBM task forces in the first half of the 1990s had concluded that the PowerPC architecture did not have any technical impediments to allow it to scale up to significantly higher frequencies with excellent performance. With no technical reason to change, in order to keep our customers software investment in tact, we accepted the absolute requirement of maintaining binary compatibility for both 32-bit and 64-bit applications, from a hardware perspective."
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What about the Power4 chip.
extreamly hot, extreamly expensive - it's only good for mainframes/supercomputers ATM
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It IS a G5 class processor! Have a look at IBM's roadmap. What are the key features of G5:
Roadmap (http://www-3.ibm.com/chips/products/powerpc/rdmap/roadmap_small.jpg)
MultiCore Superscalar
SMP
SIMD Engine (ie Altavec type operations)
RapidIO
n way Crossbar CoreConnect
With perhaps the exclusion of the SIMD, this processor fits the bill
:-D
Edwin
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Oh, IBM's generation 5?
Those should not be mixed up with Motorolla 64-bit G5 CPUs.
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For those who remember the "transputer" computer to come out for Atari and Commodore, that was more exciting than any Amiga Anywhere ping pong games for hand-helds. I hope Amiga has an eye on Apple. If they don't jump into the mult-processing OS game then Apple will. Apple has a "duel processing computer". What will Apple do in the future? Have more than two? But IBM's multi-core is like FOUR G3 CHIPS shrunk down in ONE chip. I want power.
Carl w.
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According to Motorola's roadmap (http://www.macrumors.com/forums/showthread.php3?threadid=4517) the G5 can be either 32 or 64 bit.
By the way, the IBM and Motorola's roadmaps do seem to be merging (or geting close to) at the G5. Both have RapidIO, and IBM is adding a Altavec type engine. Also, the BookE spec. should help design components to be mixed between IBM and Motorola.
Edwin