PPC 970: Apple, Thendic, Eyetech

[ksk]

@strobe
"If anything it will run 32bit software slower than a comparable 32bit processor."

That might be true with some of the 64 bit variants of future x86 CPUs where there might be no full backwards compatibility. But PowerPC has been designed to be 64bit in the very beginning, so I would not expect any slowdowns with 32bit code.

( Hyperion guys at OS4 list about 64bit PPC.
"64 bit PowerPC architectures *can* run their 32 bit subset code with no
speed penality (as opposed to IA-64), and only marginal changes in the
OS code and no changes in user code needs to be done to achieve this.")

[DethKnight]

of motherboard interests;....
here's something IBM emailed me today.

IBM Cu-11 Voltage Islands:
This presentation will provide an overview of voltage islands, a new capability first being made available in IBM Cu-11 ASICs. The capability allows groups of internal circuits, called islands, to be operated at different voltages or even powered down.

Plus they go on about APIs for PCI-X

[trgse]

this is not new, IBM as talked about that for quite some time and motorola have had it implemented in
some of it's cpu's.

I wonder when IBM will relese their optical CPU or
the 'startrek' CPU :-D

[Minion]

mips_proc wrote:
Minion traditionally a cpu's 'bittage' has been deemed by its ALU and when they say 'its 64bit' they mean ALU...wich would allow for apps to be allocated more then 2gb of memory.......

ALU=Arithmatic Logic Unit i.e. the bit that does the calculations.  It has nothing to do with the memory(addressing) interface.
This means you could have a 64 bit processor that can only adress 4GB of memory if it has a 32 bit memory(address)interface.  You can also have a 32 Bit processor that can address 16 exabytes of memory if it has a 64 bit memory(address) interface.

[blubbe]

@minion
Well with PPC it has. As there are no special
address-registers, but just general purpose
registers. You use the ALU to compute
adrresses with theese regs, in this case
64 bit regs. So its 64bit integer math/logic/addressing. The FPU is already 64bit
in the 32bit PowerPCs. And the Altivec is 128bit.
The differences should be zero, compared to
32bit cpus. Unless you do math on 64 bit integers.

@all

And when we are at Altivec:
Altivec is vector processing.
Theese vectors (always 128bit,16bytes)
may containg either 8bit/16bit/32bit integer or 32bit float values.  You can fit 4 32bit values in one vector.

People seem to think its just about floats regarding
Altivec, but it handles integers just as well.
Altivec adds 160+ new instructions to the original instructionset of 220+.

[Minion]

blubbe wrote:
@minion
Well with PPC it has. As there are no special
address-registers, but just general purpose
registers. You use the ALU to compute
adrresses with theese regs, in this case
64 bit regs. So its 64bit integer math/logic/addressing. The FPU is already 64bit
in the 32bit PowerPCs. And the Altivec is 128bit.
The differences should be zero, compared to
32bit cpus. Unless you do math on 64 bit integers.

You missed my point.  Ignoring the 64/32 Bit thing the PPC970 should be a lot faster than a G4 for example because the CPU itself is a lot faster, 64 or 32 bit.  I.e. if it wasn't 64 bit capable, then then it would still be faster then other PPC CPU's (baring in mind it will run at 1.8 GHz and is a lot "wider"( not in terms of bits, but execution units etc) than say a G3 or G4.  i.e. clock for clock it is faster and as an added bonus it runs faster.

[blubbe]

You missed my point. Ignoring the 64/32 Bit thing the PPC970 should be a lot faster than a G4 for example because the CPU itself is a lot faster, 64 or 32 bit. I.e. if it wasn't 64 bit capable, then then it would still be faster then other PPC CPU's (baring in mind it will run at 1.8 GHz and is a lot "wider"( not in terms of bits, but execution units etc) than say a G3 or G4. i.e. clock for clock it is faster and as an added bonus it runs faster.

I hear you, and I agree. It will be faster, but not
much because its 64bit. The new memory-interface
sounds quite interesting, and should boost performance alot too.

[DethKnight]

@self (yeah why not)

when we are at Altivec..... then we are usu. on G4
when we are at PPC970....then we are usu. on VMX
 just to be nitpicky


how does an SMP setup compare I wonder ...theoretically anyway Head2Head

2 x (32 bit anything) with 2 x (PPC970@1.8ghz)

[Hattig]

The IBM 970 has a completely different FSB to the one in use by the G3 and G4. It will require a new motherboard and chipset to make use of it effectively.

I imagine that it would be possible to make a CPU card that had on it the processor, a northbridge, fast DDR memory interface, and then logic to interconnect with an existing Artica S northbridge using the old G3/G4 processor bus. Of course then you would have an ultra modern CPU stuck on a motherboard with features 2 years old.

I imagine that IBM will be making a supporting chipset to go with the processor at the very least, hopefully supporting multiple 970 CPUs (I believe the 970 can scale to 16 CPU's in a system), supporting fast DDR / DDRII memory, and connecting to a modern and upto date southbridge featuring USB2, Firewire, NIC, SATA-150, etc.

I think that Thendic are using Pegasos as a brand name for their product range, not just to refer to the current motherboard.

[asian1]

>16 CPU PPC970

I hope this machine can be partitioned, similar to IBM 16 CPU Pentium Xeon machine. The Partitioned machine can run several different OS on separate CPU at the same time.

PPC970 is 64 Bit PowerPC and I hope Amiga Inc can reach an agreement with IBM on porting AIX to the future Amiga motherboard (similar to Bull agreement).

There are several serious applications for AIX OS such as RDBMS, HRD, Accounting, Back Office etc.

[THEONE]

Minion wrote:

strobe wrote:
@olegil

Good points but I would also add that the uses of a 64bit CPU are limited especially when dealing with all our legacy titles. If anything it will run 32bit software slower than a comparable 32bit processor.

64bit gives you what, memory addressing over 4Gigabytes? Is this useful? On the other hand AltiVec has a lot of applications especially in multimedia, encryption, networking, encoding, and compressing. None of these things are improved with a 64bit CPU.

I'd put a lot of money on the fact that the PPC970 will run 32 bit PPC software a lot faster than any PPC CPU today, not because it is 64bit, but because it is a much faster and more powerful CPU.  You will most likely find that it runs 64 bit software SLOWER than 32 bit software, most likely about 5% slower (quoted form some CPU designer guy).

The point is who cares, 64 bit is a nice buzzword that gets people to buy stuff (presumably thinking 64 bit=twice as fast as 32 bit)
A 64 bit CPU has nothing to do with memory = thats the memory interface that deals with that.  Remember the EC020 that came with the A1200?  That was a 32 bit CPU with 24 bit adressing so it could address 2^24 = 167777216bytes or 16 MB of RAM.  If you want to just talk bits, then bare in mind that the Pentium4 has some internal parts that run at 256 Bit and I believe the AthlonXP in parts runs at 512.  A 64 bit CPu in this sense deals with accuracy - it can deal with 2^32 (ie 4 billion) times the number of integers of a 32 bit CPU.

wrong wrogn wrong

ever seen wintrek run on a 486 from win 95 it was made for win 3.11 . It ran so dam fast I couldnt play it . Data will be goign in so to dam fast on the Hombre clone. Add to the fact that you have 8 cpus cores on each chip.  ther is speed.  Its evdent in all the othergames that you play like the earleir A500 games on a a4000 oh yeah im sure it goersslower on an A4000 sure whatever.

[THEONE]

And the Altivec is 128bit.

wrong wrong wrong
dam emmulated dam guys you admit one thing then not another double stnadard here. Im suprisde you dont call the G4 a 128bit.

[Minion]

THEONE wrote:
Lots of crap

You're as thick as two short planks, aren't you.  You just dont get it. :-?  :-?  :-?

[THEONE]

Minion wrote:

THEONE wrote:
Lots of crap

You're as thick as two short planks, aren't you.  You just dont get it. :-?  :-?  :-?

nope you dont get it you dont have the #### that god gave a snake for brains. ppc is dead so who cares . motorola deosnt ,Ibm doesnt,and Mac doesnt. itanium is where everyone is going. And what I explained is the way you guys think . Besides if you are lookig for speed then dammit man look at the itanium.  its been in the advance server area fro a while. soon to be cheap enough for end users. Its goign to hit the streets at 6ghz real-time. oh thisChrismas or by the end of feburary . MERRY CHRISTMAS :-D

[AmigaMac]

nope you dont get it you dont have the #### that god gave a snake for brains. ppc is dead so who cares . motorola deosnt ,Ibm doesnt,and Mac doesnt.

Yeah we've heard that conspiracy theory before!  PPC is far from dead!!

itanium is where everyone is going. And what I explained is the way you guys think . Besides if you are lookig for speed then dammit man look at the itanium. its been in the advance server area fro a while. soon to be cheap enough for end users. Its goign to hit the streets at 6ghz real-time. oh thisChrismas or by the end of feburary . MERRY CHRISTMAS

Ah the Itanic... the chip that can't get out of its own way (much less anything else)!  You need to get with the facts, that Itanic isn't going to reach 6 GHz anytime soon, but hey at least you're overly optimistic :-P

[THEONE]

Thats it im goign to get that coleco adam and have the best computer around . SO STICK THAT IN  YOU PIPE AND SMOKE IT.

 :-P  :-D  :-)  :roll:  :lol:  :idea:  :roflmao:  :python: