970 Is Shipping

[Charles Martin]

> From: Matthew Guemple <mo.og at verizon.net>
>
> No... It's the next big thing...
> you will now want to buy a new machine, you will now want to buy a new
> machine, you will now want to buy a new machine, you will now want to
> buy a new machine.

Here's some more antidote to the unsubstantiated nonsense that a 
970-powered Powerbook is right around the corner:

http://haxor.dk/

Summary for the click-impaired: According to Microdesign Resources 
magazine (a trade journal for chip designers) who recently did a big 
and technical article on the subject of the PPC 970, the portable 
version of the chip is called the 980 and is not expected to appear 
until the late 1st half of 2004. That's perhaps as much as a YEAR from 
now.

I certainly believe a microprocessor trade mag that actually has access 
to the chip in question over the rantings of a 
publicly-humiliated-on-multiple-occasions rumour site. I think we can 
lay the 970-Powerbook idea to rest now, it's just nonsense.

Interestingly, the article backs up my longstanding contention that due 
to improvements in both the chip and the logic board, a PPC 970-based 
machine should be around (as in "rule of thumb") twice as fast as a 
same-speed G4 doing the same tasks. IOW, a 1.4GHz 970 should *smoke* a 
1.4GHz G4, largely due to much faster bus speed, better FPU units, and 
better utilization of DDR RAM as much as the chip by itself.

This is very welcome news. Currently it is widely held that the dual 
1.42GHz G4s can just barely keep up with 3GHz P4s, and in fact fall 
behind in a number of areas (though they still seem to excel at 
Photoshop and non-Premiere video editing, among other things). If these 
reports on performance are later verified by benchmarks, then a single 
1.4GHz PPC 970-based system should be able to challenge a 3GHz P4 
easily, and in many cases surpass it. A dual PPC 970-based system 
should be able to run rings around a single 3GHz P4. Or a 4GHz P4, for 
that matter.

One thing that still concerns me is the cost of the chips. New chips 
are traditionally very expensive (remember when the P4s debuted?), and 
although the PPC 970 is based on an existing chip (the Power4), it is 
likely to come at a premium at first. I fear Apple will probably be 
forced to raise prices when they debut these new systems, which could 
be a seriously limiting factor for all the pent-up demand. I hope they 
are able to hold the line or keep price increases modest. This is a 
question that NO source of speculation about the 970 has been able to 
answer. What would YOU pay for a system that was reputed to be at least 
twice as fast as your present one? Would you be willing to take on a 
big price hike?

Let's hope that the good news and buzz coming from RELIABLE industry 
sources proves true. My machines are not yet starting to feel "slow" to 
me except when I'm re-coding video streams, but by late summer/early 
fall I might feel differently. Time to start putting a little aside for 
a new machine later this year, methinks. :)

_Chas_

"Executives in the PC business use the word "sexy", in such a way that 
I'm always surprised to discover that their children aren't adopted. 
The Mac interface is not "sexy", and it would be grotesque to want it 
to be. It is, in fact, playful, often well over the line into 
frivolity. The bouncing icons (and the puffs of smoke and the 
pipe-organ speech synthesizer and the way dialogs tidily resize and the 
drop-shadows on the windows and the jellybean buttons and the eject key 
on the keyboard) are not individually rationalizable on utilitarian 
grounds, and they do not pretend they mean to be. They are there to, in 
aggregate, change the nature of your relationship with the device. They 
are joyful, and they hope their joy is infectious." -- Glenn McDonald