[Ti] Apple defends new PowerBooks' lack of L3 cache

[John Griffin]

bofus? typed this message on 9/24/03 12:41 PM:

> Apple defends new PowerBooks' lack of L3 cache
> 
> By Nick dePlume, Publisher and Editor in Chief
> 
> September 23, 2003 - Apple excited customers last week at Apple Expo
> Paris with the introduction of new 12-inch, 15-inch, and 17-inch
> PowerBook G4 models.
> 
> Some mobile professionals, however, have pointed out an omission in
> the new portables' tech specs -- L3 cache.
> 
> Across the entire product line, the new PowerBooks feature a 512K
> SRAM level 2 cache, but the old 17-inch PowerBook featured a 1MB L3
> cache. Even the aging Titanium PowerBook G4 featured a high-speed L3
> cache, also at 1MB.
> 
> Internally, Apple has recognized that the lack of an L3 cache may be
> an issue with some buyers. In fact sheets on the new PowerBooks that
> the company provided to sales reps in the field, the issue was
> raised, but Apple defended the omission, calling L3 cache unnecessary.
> 
> "When performing day-to-day tasks, such as reading email, browing the
> Web, and typing Word documents, an L3 cache does not provide
> significantly improved performance over the already fast PowerPC G4,"
> the company told sales reps, pointing to the acceleration provided by
> the Velocity Engine."The removal of the 1MB L3 cache may cause
> concern among members of the video editing community because video
> encoding to MPEG-2 made use of our L3 cache. Some members of this
> community have come to look for L3 cache in products that they
> purchase," Apple acknowledged.
> 
> "However, the faster processor and doubled L2 cache will compensate
> for the slower L3 cache. This should make the overall experience
> faster."

Pretty lame IMHO!

Has anyone tried VPC on one of these? I was told that VPC made considerable
use of the L3 cache.

Aha! So maybe this is a swipe at Microsoft (Kidding).

jg