[G4] Aha! 970's!

[Mel]

Well all of this is rumor to start with, but yes, the new 970s will 
provide a much needed speed boost, but it's too simplistic to say the 
the OS will get a 2x boost from a 64 bit processor. Just having a wider 
data and/or address path does not automatically generate a speed boost. 
Things that benefit from Altivec (aka Velocity Engine) will find gains 
from the OS being optimized for 64 bit operation as well. What I am 
really looking forward to is the much faster front-side bus and 8x AGP. 
Memory bandwidth has been a performance damper on the Mac for a long 
time and you seldom hear much about it. Between a wider bus path and 
much faster bus speed, Quartz should feel much snappier. The 8x AGP 
will allow the Mac to generate the kind of video frame rates that PC 
users can get.
If you want a very thorough look at the 970, go to Ars Technica, Part 1 
here: http://arstechnica.com/cpu/02q2/ppc970/ppc970-1.html and Part 2 
here: http://arstechnica.com/cpu/03q1/ppc970/ppc970-0.html
Hannibal does a great job and will tell you more than you probably want 
to know.
Mel

On Tuesday, June 10, 2003, at 07:30  PM, CJ Scaminaci wrote:

> Hey,
>
> Continuing the discussion of the 970's, as pointed out by Macintosh 
> News Network the new 970's are rumored to be 64 bit processors. You 
> can find the article here: http://www.macnn.com/news/19694.  This 
> could mean a lot for Apple....particularly...64 bit processors would 
> give the average user a 2X increase in speed right off. But only for 
> the operating system. Applications would have to be re-written to take 
> advantage of of chip. Not to mention a virtually unlimited amount of 
> memory. Two to the 32nd power gives you about 4GB of possible physical 
> memory as demonstrated by our limit of the same amount. But 2 to the 
> 64th power gives...well.....a really big number. So you would be 
> limited to the amount of memory you can shove down your computers 
> throat. Now that IBM makes the processors instead of Motorola we can 
> have faster speeds as well as more processors available to us. Now 
> imagine 64 bit 1.8Ghz machines....please excuse me while I 
> drool.....This is what is rumored to be on the top of the line. 
> Anyway...Panther is supposed to be optimized for 64 bit machines. See 
> this article http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,3959,1121736,00.asp. Alas 
> our current 32 bit processors will still run it but the 64 bit 
> machines would just be sweet. These machines are supposed to release 
> in 2 weeks at WWDC. But Panther won't ship on them. Instead they will 
> ship with a hybrid Jaguar that will run on 64 Bit machines. But this 
> will only be temporary until Panther is released and all is well in 
> the universe.But everything I say is based on those two links plus 
> some other input from other sources. So I could be wrong...
>
> CJ
>
>
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