[CUBE] G5 Upgrades In G4 Macs WILL NEVER HAPPEN

[Tom Davidson]

you may be right about a G5 in the cube 'will' never happen, but
I can say that the statement that the 'can' never happen is not true.
The G5 encapsulates the G4 bus protocol in the Hypertransport
bus interface as I understand it. So, you would only need a FPGA
to de-encapsulate the data and convert it to normal G4 bus signals.

Would this be easy? No, but is it impossible? No.
A better solution would be a processor-ram board, so at least the
system RAM could run at G5 speeds.
It probably have to be watercooled, and obviously need more of a
power supply than the standard cube brick. The additional board
space would be handled by removing the internal core heatsink and
replacing it with a mounting frame for the dual G5 board and it's RAM
and waterblocks. And then there's the software mods..

The question is, would people be willing pay nearly as much for this
as they would for a full G5 tower and not get the performance of the
tower? A few might, but I doubt enough to pay off the engineering
costs of such a project.

If, say some agency had 2000 cubes and just HAD to have them G5's
and was willing to buy 2000 upgrades at $2000 each, it could happen.
Although it's more likely that Motorola would figure out a way to make
a 2Ghz G4-1/2 that had 1meg of L3 and few extra execution units.