As many of you may know by now…IBM has announced BLADE servers using the PowerPC 970 at speeds up to 2.5 GHz.
Keep in mind that this is on the initial 130nm process.
IBM is currently transitioning to 90nm with 65nm planned for next year (fall 2004/spring 2005).
Also keep in mind that PowerPC 970 like the G4 was designed with multiprocessing in mind (in fact it is even more optimized for SMP than G4).
Also keep in mind that PPC970 is much faster per clock than any current desktop chip avaliable on any platform AND it also has Alti-Vec.
Don’t forget the FSB that operates at up to half the CPU speed either (1.25 GHz on a 2.5 GHz part).
This will not only “put up a respectable showing against x86- or x86-64-based systems from Intel and AMD” (Ars Techinca), it should absolutely destroy anything else out there.
Dual 2.5 GHz PPC970 vs …probably single 4 GHz P4 or Athlon-64 at 2.5 GHz…
Not a fair comparison? Well I guarantee that Apple will ship 970 in dual configs at similar pricing to today’s dual G4s. And dual Athlons and P4s are still the stuff of dreams on the desktop due to extremely high power dissipation (almost double that of a 970 for current Athlons).
Hopefully IBM will get some white papers out soon after they finalize the chip for production…I need good “reading material” for those long trips to the bathroom :D
March 1st, 2003 at 3:33 pm
PowerPC 970
Looking forward to it, Tycho. If it’s really as good as we think, it’ll be th first brand new Mac since 1989 for me.