For Super Bowl weekend pipe smoking - "fumes" of a 580 mz PowerPC
But 1st : Litigation = @ , Y2K = @ , No AAPL SB advt = @
Back to the future , the future of AIM (AAPL-IBM-MOT) sure looks promising considering AAPL has rights to the 1st desktop versions:
"
Motorola to debut 450MHz PowerPC G4 next month
Motorola looks set to debut its next-generation PowerPC processor, codenamed G4,
processor at next month's 1999 IEEE International Solid-state Circuits Conference, to
be held in San Francisco.
At the same time, IBM will unveil a 580MHz PowerPC 750 (aka G3) based on
Silicon-on-insulator technology, according to US newswires.
The G4 will be introduced at 450MHz and will be the first PowerPC to contain
Motorola's AltiVec vector processing instruction set extensions, rivals to Intel's Katmai
instructions. Reports suggest the copper-based chip (the first Motorola has offered;
fellow PowerPC producer IBM began shipping copper CPUs last September) will
contain 10.5 million transistors at 0.18-microns.
That suggests the processor Motorola will unveil at the conference is the version of the
G4 known as Max, which is due to offer all these features and ship in the 300-500MHz
range. With PPC 750s already clocking in at 400MHz, with higher speeds to come,
450MHz would make an obvious starting point for Max -- for a given clock speed, Max
is estimated to be 30-50 per cent faster than the 750.
According to details seen by The Register last year, Max will also contain two 32K
on-chip L1 caches and support up to 2MB of backside L2 cache. A 1.8V processor
core will offer reduced power consumption. The chip will also provide a new 128-bit
'MaxBus' bus technology, which allows CPUs in multi-processing configurations to
communicate directly with each other.
The IBM processor, meanwhile, appears to be a variant on the standard 750, the last
design IBM and Motorola co-operated on before falling out over AltiVec. Comments
made last year by Mike Attardo, general manager of IBM's Microelectronics division,
suggested the two are once more firm friends, a fact possibly confirmed by Apple
interim CEO Steve Jobs' comments at MacWorld Expo earlier this year that the Mac
makers would be sourcing CPUs from both companies (though the poor fellow still
managed to call Big Blue "Intel").
The 580MHz CPU will be based on the silicon-on-insulator process in which
conductive material is wrapped in an insulator to minimise noise from other circuits --
a major performance sap at 0.18 microns. ® "
Can't wonder that AAPL's SB advt will have something "innovative"
Jim K.
PS: Thanks Soup defining the meaning of " @ " |
