Moving off IBM’s drawing board into testing stage is code-name Antares, a dual-core version of the PowerPC 970. The forthcoming PowerPC 970MP chip will join AMD & Intel in the race for dual-cores.
IBM Readies Dual-Core PowerPC G5 Processor
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Intel is quite secret about their dual-core but they already have HyperThreading. AMD’s Ruiz has pointed to dual-core K8 CPUs at the end of 2005.
So IBM may be slightly ahead of its competitors on this one.
Sun is shipping dual-core UltraSPARC IV CPU’s in their SunFire 4900 and 6900 servers.
Besides, wasn’t IBM already shipping multi-core SMP frames, but enabling only 1 core for benchmarks, due to a bottleneck in the memory bus?
Sun may be shipping a dual-core proc in some of its high-end servers, but Apple will without a doubt be putting these into future power macs. A dual processor system with these could blow the workstation market wide open for Apple.
7 years ago i was holding a 32 core chip in my hand.
2 cores are so exciting….
7 years ago i was holding a 32 core chip in my hand.
2 cores are so exciting….
What processor was that?
The company producing them was MASPAR (dont know how it’s spelled). IIRC they were bought by Thinkingmachines.
The chip had 32 32bit risc cores, and the smalest setup they sold had 32 of these chips (=1024 cores).
I know that 64bit cores are more complex, but nothing near 16times that of a 32bit core.
humm ibm sells dual core power4 since a long time in the server market …
This is big because the g5 is a low end desktop or small server cpu.
but at first I think apple will keep single core in the low end Power macs and the iMacs and put these multi core chips be placed in high end power macs and the Xserver systems.
I made this comment on another board about this rumour:
I’m not convinced by this rumour. The early rumous of the G5 were along the lines of “IBM are developing a new 64 bit chip”. Completely devoid of any details.
Subsequent rumours of the 975 / 980 etc. are the same, 975 based on POWER 5, 980 dual core is as much detail there is.
This is the other way around though, full of all sorts of details even giving the die size to 3 decimal places.
I’ve no doubt they are working on dual core devices (they’ve almost said as much) but it makes more sense to base it on the POWER5.
The biggest bit which suggests it’s wrong is the bus speed, which is lower than the current top end Macs. Also, at 3.0Ghz in 90nm a dual core chip will produce *vast* amounts of heat, you’re talking Max power figures approaching 200 Watts, it may be physically impossible to cool such a chip.
I’m not sure but I don’t think the additional logic required would actually fit in the size given.
No, I doubt IBM will go dual core until 65nm (for PowerPC Gx).
not that much compared to Intel chips. the 2.5 GHz G5 puts out around 55-60 Watts and when the 90 nm design comes out it will put out around 40 Watts.
the G5 uses Insulator on Silicon technology to keep the leakage to a minimum, intel does not. the more leakage the more power it need to maintain itself and more power means more heat.
Wel… the MasPar used SIMD cores not MIMD… which reduces the control overhead significantly. Plus there was no floating point and the cores were not RISC (most operations took a ridiculous number of cycles to complete).
In fact that is not that impressive there have been projects that have packed 100’s of processing elements (not cores) into a single chip.
There is still the problem of the bandwidth requirements associated with CMPs (chip multiprocessors)…..
The 2.5 GHZ G5 is already at 90nm
http://www.apple.com/g5processor/ibmprocess.html
>not that much compared to Intel chips. the 2.5 GHz G5 puts out
>around 55-60 Watts and when the 90 nm design comes out it will put
>out around 40 Watts.
I believe the 90nm G5 2.5GHz is rated at 55Watts average.
The 130nm 2.0GHz G5 is rated at 66 Watts Average, and something close to 90 Watts max. Pentum 4 prescott max figures are rather hard to come by, probably because they are scary!
It follows that a 3.0GHz G5 even in 90nm is going to be using the same or more than the previous 2.0GHz. That means approaching Max 100W, now add more cache and dounle this figure…
>The G5 uses Insulator on Silicon technology to keep the leakage to
>a minimum, intel does not. the more leakage the more power it need
>to maintain itself and more power means more heat.
Seen the power figures for the new Pentium-M?
In 90nm they give all the PPC manufacturers a run for their money.
Don’t consider this a bad thing, it means more competition and better processors for all of us.
P.S. I’m using a PPC right now.