PPC is better better better!!!!

[HyperionMP]

Quite some time ago I posted here that I had seen the future of PPC and that I was impressed.

I was obviously referring to the 970 and the fact that Mai is working on the required chipset to support it as they have now revealed on the IBM PPC developer conference the other day.

The 970 is still somewhat slower that the very fastest x86 CPU's from Intel and AMD, at least in integer performance.

It does however have Altivec which is far superior to SSE2.

It also has far lower power-consumption despite being a Power4 derivative.

Top of the line 3.2 Ghz Intel CPU's consume a "mere 82 Watts".

It offers execution of 32 bit code without any significant speed penalty.

What it will also do  is to ignite competition between Motorola and IBM again as IBM is now clearly encroaching on Motorola's turf with the launch of the 750 GX, the prospect of a G3 with Altivec from IBM and now the 970 which gets them the Apple high-end business.

You can expect Motorola to react.

All of this is good for PPC.

[HyperionMP]

The 970 is not only intended for Apple, IBM also plans to sell it into the workstation and low-end server market and possibly even for certain embedded applications.

Writing off Motorola is a mistake. Sure, their CPU's are primarily intended for embedded systems but let's face it, a 1.3 Ghz G4 is nothing to sneeze at.

Especially not when it only consumes around 10 watts.

Ideal for multimedia embedded systems.