Anand, How significant is the new IBM PowerPC 970FX. IBM is going to announce the full specs this Monday or Tuesday at the Intel Developer Conference. Are there any advantages this could give Apple in terms of small form factor for notebooks or other appliance like devices. What do you think of the performance and flexability roadmap for the IBM process vs what you know about Intel and AMD chip technology.
What your thoughts on the following pundent's thoughts: That is the real exciting part of IBM's SOC technology. Since most of the power is needed for the processor core (the ALU, the FPU, VMX and the SRAM/DRAM) the other components in a SOC design do not need the same level of power. On a traditional motherboard, it is straightforward to send different levels of power to different components. Thus your processor may get up to 1.8V, whereas your USB controller gets <1V. On everyone else's SOC technologies, the power of the most significant component dictates that all parts of a SOC get the same high voltage.
This is where IBM's SOC leapfrogs the others: IBM developed a technique generally called Voltage Islands. IBM refers to this and other power saving technologies as PowerTune (as found in the 970FX.) With Voltage Islands, an IBM based SOC can be partitioned into various islands, sections that each can have their own Voltage. Thus an SOC with a PPC Core and a communications controller on it, can give to the PPC core section 1.3V while giving the communications controller .8V. But there is more. Since the PPC core is not at full use all the time, the PPC V can be slewed down. such that the PPC core during light usage can go down below 1V.
What does this mean? It means that a SOC design will use very very little power, produce significantly less heat, and due to the elimination of most inter-chip communications, the system be significantly faster. (And, when MRAM starts being used instead of S/D-RAM, there will be no What makes the SOC potential so great is the recent 970FX developments. You can consider the 970FX as a sort of SOC. It is composed of three core parts:
1. The ALU (the two integer unit, boolean logic, the two load store units, the registers, etc.) 2. The FPU (the floating point unit, basically the part that does decimal math) 3. The VU (the vector mat unit, IBM calls VMX, Apple calls Velocity).
The 970FX has a 64-bit ALU, a 64bit FPU known as FP2, and the VMX vector unit all wired together done in the 90NM process using IBM's PowerTune technologies to allow for voltage and frequency slewing through the processor. (the 970FX will dynamically scale between 1-1.3V and 1.4-2+ GHz to significantly reduce power and heat).
So why is this so exciting for SOC designs. First, the 970FX specs tell us that the core processor at 1.4GHz will operate with only a 1V requirement. There is no way to know at what frequency the processor requires 1.3V. So maybe we are looking at initial designs that will allow a SOC design to operate at 1.6GHz with only 1V! That would be huge for Apple's future notebooks and even smaller form factor PCs. Don't forget that the iMac requires very stringent thermal characteristics.
In smaller devices, Apple can choose to fore go the 64-bit ALU, since it is highly unlikely such devices will need more than 48GB of RAM in the next 10 years. They can however keep the 64-bit FP2 unit since double precision math is needed for emerging video and cinematic consumer technologies. This way Apple can highly optimize the SOC to the smaller form factor personal devices.
This level of SOC customization and the adding of proprietary ASIC designs to the SOC, such as hardwiring key portions of the OS X core system is very exciting. The latter part could allow key OS X frameworks like core audio/video, quartz and quicktime encoding/decoding to receive boosts in performance of an additional 10 to 20 times, significantly reducing the main processors utilization keeping it at low power levels and free to do other things. On top of that IBM's PowerTune technology doesn't stop at voltage slewing.
PowerTune also allows software developers to better manage power usage. For example, IBM demonstrated a DVD Player that more than halves the power requirements of the processor. Basically, since the processor can work faster than the 60FPS that HD playback requires, the PowerTune API allows the DVD player to decode the video file frame, nap the processor during that idle period between when the next frame is needed and then wake it up just in time to decode the next frame. Thats how fast the processor is and how quickly the processor can scale its power usage. This could allow for DVD playback on a notebook to exceed 10 hours, those East asian flights seem more attractive all of a sudden.
The near future is pretty exciting considering Apple is past the development cycle and ready to use these chips in production.looking back.)
What makes the SOC potential so great is the recent 970FX developments. You can consider the 970FX as a sort of SOC. It is composed of three core parts:
1. The ALU (the two integer unit, boolean logic, the two load store units, the registers, etc.) 2. The FPU (the floating point unit, basically the part that does decimal math) 3. The VU (the vector mat unit, IBM calls VMX, Apple calls Velocity).
The 970FX has a 64-bit ALU, a 64bit FPU known as FP2, and the VMX vector unit all wired together done in the 90NM process using IBM's PowerTune technologies to allow for voltage and frequency slewing through the processor. (the 970FX will dynamically scale between 1-1.3V and 1.4-2+ GHz to significantly reduce power and heat).
So why is this so exciting for SOC designs. First, the 970FX specs tell us that the core processor at 1.4GHz will operate with only a 1V requirement. There is no way to know at what frequency the processor requires 1.3V. So maybe we are looking at initial designs that will allow a SOC design to operate at 1.6GHz with only 1V! That would be huge for Apple's future notebooks and even smaller form factor PCs. Don't forget that the iMac requires very stringent thermal characteristics.
In smaller devices, Apple can choose to fore go the 64-bit ALU, since it is highly unlikely such devices will need more than 48GB of RAM in the next 10 years. They can however keep the 64-bit FP2 unit since double precision math is needed for emerging video and cinematic consumer technologies. This way Apple can highly optimize the SOC to the smaller form factor personal devices.
This level of SOC customization and the adding of proprietary ASIC designs to the SOC, such as hardwiring key portions of the OS X core system is very exciting. The latter part could allow key OS X frameworks like core audio/video, quartz and quicktime encoding/decoding to receive boosts in performance of an additional 10 to 20 times, significantly reducing the main processors utilization keeping it at low power levels and free to do other things. On top of that IBM's PowerTune technology doesn't stop at voltage slewing.
PowerTune also allows software developers to better manage power usage. For example, IBM demonstrated a DVD Player that more than halves the power requirements of the processor. Basically, since the processor can work faster than the 60FPS that HD playback requires, the PowerTune API allows the DVD player to decode the video file frame, nap the processor during that idle period between when the next frame is needed and then wake it up just in time to decode the next frame. Thats how fast the processor is and how quickly the processor can scale its power usage. This could allow for DVD playback on a notebook to exceed 10 hours, those East asian flights seem more attractive all of a sudden.
The near future is pretty exciting considering Apple is past the development cycle and ready to use these chips in production.
I dont know if someone already answered this, but here you go: if safari has a website stored somewhere, as a bookmark, in history, or whatever, it will fill it in for you. just type in anandtech in the url field and itll go. i just tried it out, and it was fine. when you do get around to the vid card comparison, post it, please! also: the excellent insidemacgames.com site posts links to anandtech occasionally, when its relevant to the mac gaming community. itd be very cool if you returned the favor every now and then. im not affiliated, but i do have that fanatical loyalty we mac users have. (i swear, i only have the pc for the games!)
Thanks for the link on David Courtsey review of Garage Band. Man, everyone seems to love this program. I can't wait to hear what Anand thinks about it. I itching to buy a Mac. I am buying one for my daughter for college graduation. She can be my test case.
Tip- in Safari go into preferences to Auto-Fill and check all
Using info from my Address Book card (in address book you must note which card is your information so that it can auto-fill)
Auto-fills your personal information ________
User names and passwords
It can hold multiple n/p for the same site all you have to do is begin typing the letter of the name and it will auto complete. ________
Other forms
I love this one. It Keeps information of the user when at a specific site, it saves the user time by not having to repeatedly enter info. Its exactly like the auto complete for urls in browsers but isn't as annoying. This is particularly useful for sites like Versiontracker.com, google and yours. :)
I type S....bam!......SmurfTower I type in N......bam!....no@spam.com
Incorrect. You can use almost any burner out there, all you have to do is pop it in.
"he integration continues with iMovie and iDVD, the Mac-only software that uses Apple's proprietary SuperDrive DVD burners "
True but you can always extract your music and use another program without hassle. Highlight all your music in iTunes window drag-n-drop to a folder on your desktop.
"When you link to the iMusic store and download music, it is saved in Apple's proprietary iTunes software that handles playback and playlist making."
Launch Safari, open Preferences, select Auto-Fill and select "user names and passwords".
This is ENTIRELY different functionality then in Windows. It's not cookie based, it's keychain based. You can delete your cookies and it still auto-fills your name/password for web accounts.
Even better, if you are concerned about security, you can create independent keychains. One is all for the crap sites you don't care about and one keychain for the important sites. So when you go to the important site, it will prompt you for the keychain password before it auto-fills the login form.
Killer feature.
Enjoy The Best
I'm a Straddler. Mac for everything, PC for games.
Here is a review on Apple and iLife. I know you are objective and the best. I am not sure if this author is biased. In your final review, can you please comment on the new Mac digital experience. http://www.goerie.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/2...
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joe - Friday, February 13, 2004 - link
Anand,How significant is the new IBM PowerPC 970FX. IBM is going to announce the full specs this Monday or Tuesday at the Intel Developer Conference. Are there any advantages this could give Apple in terms of small form factor for notebooks or other appliance like devices. What do you think of the performance and flexability roadmap for the IBM process vs what you know about Intel and AMD chip technology.
What your thoughts on the following pundent's thoughts:
That is the real exciting part of IBM's SOC technology. Since most of the power is needed for the processor core (the ALU, the FPU, VMX and the SRAM/DRAM) the other components in a SOC design do not need the same level of power. On a traditional motherboard, it is straightforward to send different levels of power to different components. Thus your processor may get up to 1.8V, whereas your USB controller gets <1V. On everyone else's SOC technologies, the power of the most significant component dictates that all parts of a SOC get the same high voltage.
This is where IBM's SOC leapfrogs the others: IBM developed a technique generally called Voltage Islands. IBM refers to this and other power saving technologies as PowerTune (as found in the 970FX.) With Voltage Islands, an IBM based SOC can be partitioned into various islands, sections that each can have their own Voltage. Thus an SOC with a PPC Core and a communications controller on it, can give to the PPC core section 1.3V while giving the communications controller .8V. But there is more. Since the PPC core is not at full use all the time, the PPC V can be slewed down. such that the PPC core during light usage can go down below 1V.
What does this mean? It means that a SOC design will use very very little power, produce significantly less heat, and due to the elimination of most inter-chip communications, the system be significantly faster. (And, when MRAM starts being used instead of S/D-RAM, there will be no What makes the SOC potential so great is the recent 970FX developments. You can consider the 970FX as a sort of SOC. It is composed of three core parts:
1. The ALU (the two integer unit, boolean logic, the two load store units, the registers, etc.)
2. The FPU (the floating point unit, basically the part that does decimal math)
3. The VU (the vector mat unit, IBM calls VMX, Apple calls Velocity).
The 970FX has a 64-bit ALU, a 64bit FPU known as FP2, and the VMX vector unit all wired together done in the 90NM process using IBM's PowerTune technologies to allow for voltage and frequency slewing through the processor. (the 970FX will dynamically scale between 1-1.3V and 1.4-2+ GHz to significantly reduce power and heat).
So why is this so exciting for SOC designs. First, the 970FX specs tell us that the core processor at 1.4GHz will operate with only a 1V requirement. There is no way to know at what frequency the processor requires 1.3V. So maybe we are looking at initial designs that will allow a SOC design to operate at 1.6GHz with only 1V! That would be huge for Apple's future notebooks and even smaller form factor PCs. Don't forget that the iMac requires very stringent thermal characteristics.
In smaller devices, Apple can choose to fore go the 64-bit ALU, since it is highly unlikely such devices will need more than 48GB of RAM in the next 10 years. They can however keep the 64-bit FP2 unit since double precision math is needed for emerging video and cinematic consumer technologies. This way Apple can highly optimize the SOC to the smaller form factor personal devices.
This level of SOC customization and the adding of proprietary ASIC designs to the SOC, such as hardwiring key portions of the OS X core system is very exciting. The latter part could allow key OS X frameworks like core audio/video, quartz and quicktime encoding/decoding to receive boosts in performance of an additional 10 to 20 times, significantly reducing the main processors utilization keeping it at low power levels and free to do other things. On top of that IBM's PowerTune technology doesn't stop at voltage slewing.
PowerTune also allows software developers to better manage power usage. For example, IBM demonstrated a DVD Player that more than halves the power requirements of the processor. Basically, since the processor can work faster than the 60FPS that HD playback requires, the PowerTune API allows the DVD player to decode the video file frame, nap the processor during that idle period between when the next frame is needed and then wake it up just in time to decode the next frame. Thats how fast the processor is and how quickly the processor can scale its power usage. This could allow for DVD playback on a notebook to exceed 10 hours, those East asian flights seem more attractive all of a sudden.
The near future is pretty exciting considering Apple is past the development cycle and ready to use these chips in production.looking back.)
What makes the SOC potential so great is the recent 970FX developments. You can consider the 970FX as a sort of SOC. It is composed of three core parts:
1. The ALU (the two integer unit, boolean logic, the two load store units, the registers, etc.)
2. The FPU (the floating point unit, basically the part that does decimal math)
3. The VU (the vector mat unit, IBM calls VMX, Apple calls Velocity).
The 970FX has a 64-bit ALU, a 64bit FPU known as FP2, and the VMX vector unit all wired together done in the 90NM process using IBM's PowerTune technologies to allow for voltage and frequency slewing through the processor. (the 970FX will dynamically scale between 1-1.3V and 1.4-2+ GHz to significantly reduce power and heat).
So why is this so exciting for SOC designs. First, the 970FX specs tell us that the core processor at 1.4GHz will operate with only a 1V requirement. There is no way to know at what frequency the processor requires 1.3V. So maybe we are looking at initial designs that will allow a SOC design to operate at 1.6GHz with only 1V! That would be huge for Apple's future notebooks and even smaller form factor PCs. Don't forget that the iMac requires very stringent thermal characteristics.
In smaller devices, Apple can choose to fore go the 64-bit ALU, since it is highly unlikely such devices will need more than 48GB of RAM in the next 10 years. They can however keep the 64-bit FP2 unit since double precision math is needed for emerging video and cinematic consumer technologies. This way Apple can highly optimize the SOC to the smaller form factor personal devices.
This level of SOC customization and the adding of proprietary ASIC designs to the SOC, such as hardwiring key portions of the OS X core system is very exciting. The latter part could allow key OS X frameworks like core audio/video, quartz and quicktime encoding/decoding to receive boosts in performance of an additional 10 to 20 times, significantly reducing the main processors utilization keeping it at low power levels and free to do other things. On top of that IBM's PowerTune technology doesn't stop at voltage slewing.
PowerTune also allows software developers to better manage power usage. For example, IBM demonstrated a DVD Player that more than halves the power requirements of the processor. Basically, since the processor can work faster than the 60FPS that HD playback requires, the PowerTune API allows the DVD player to decode the video file frame, nap the processor during that idle period between when the next frame is needed and then wake it up just in time to decode the next frame. Thats how fast the processor is and how quickly the processor can scale its power usage. This could allow for DVD playback on a notebook to exceed 10 hours, those East asian flights seem more attractive all of a sudden.
The near future is pretty exciting considering Apple is past the development cycle and ready to use these chips in production.
zach - Friday, February 13, 2004 - link
I dont know if someone already answered this, but here you go:if safari has a website stored somewhere, as a bookmark, in history, or whatever, it will fill it in for you. just type in anandtech in the url field and itll go. i just tried it out, and it was fine. when you do get around to the vid card comparison, post it, please! also: the excellent insidemacgames.com site posts links to anandtech occasionally, when its relevant to the mac gaming community. itd be very cool if you returned the favor every now and then. im not affiliated, but i do have that fanatical loyalty we mac users have. (i swear, i only have the pc for the games!)
John Blink - Friday, February 13, 2004 - link
Your best post yet ;)joe - Friday, February 13, 2004 - link
Thanks for the link on David Courtsey review of Garage Band. Man, everyone seems to love this program. I can't wait to hear what Anand thinks about it. I itching to buy a Mac. I am buying one for my daughter for college graduation. She can be my test case.GTaudiophile - Friday, February 13, 2004 - link
Have you heard back from ATI yet? Will they be sending you a Radeon 9800 MAC Edition along with that R420 sample???:)
SmurfTower - Friday, February 13, 2004 - link
Tip- in Safari go into preferences to Auto-Fill and check allUsing info from my Address Book card (in address book you must note which card is your information so that it can auto-fill)
Auto-fills your personal information
________
User names and passwords
It can hold multiple n/p for the same site all you have to do is begin typing the letter of the name and it will auto complete.
________
Other forms
I love this one. It Keeps information of the user when at a specific site, it saves the user time by not having to repeatedly enter info. Its exactly like the auto complete for urls in browsers but isn't as annoying. This is particularly useful for sites like Versiontracker.com, google and yours. :)
I type S....bam!......SmurfTower
I type in N......bam!....no@spam.com
:D sorry couldn't resist, I love that feature.
Anonymous - Friday, February 13, 2004 - link
If that auther is biased then so is David Coursey :). Its a good product and succeeds at what it does.http://reviews-zdnet.com.com/AnchorDesk/4520-7298_...
SmurfTower - Friday, February 13, 2004 - link
http://www.goerie.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/2...Incorrect. You can use almost any burner out there, all you have to do is pop it in.
"he integration continues with iMovie and iDVD, the Mac-only software that uses Apple's proprietary SuperDrive DVD burners "
True but you can always extract your music and use another program without hassle. Highlight all your music in iTunes window drag-n-drop to a folder on your desktop.
"When you link to the iMusic store and download music, it is saved in Apple's proprietary iTunes software that handles playback and playlist making."
the best - Friday, February 13, 2004 - link
This'll make your day then...
Launch Safari, open Preferences, select Auto-Fill and select "user names and passwords".
This is ENTIRELY different functionality then in Windows. It's not cookie based, it's keychain based. You can delete your cookies and it still auto-fills your name/password for web accounts.
Even better, if you are concerned about security, you can create independent keychains. One is all for the crap sites you don't care about and one keychain for the important sites. So when you go to the important site, it will prompt you for the keychain password before it auto-fills the login form.
Killer feature.
Enjoy
The Best
I'm a Straddler. Mac for everything, PC for games.
joe - Friday, February 13, 2004 - link
Here is a review on Apple and iLife. I know you are objective and the best. I am not sure if this author is biased. In your final review, can you please comment on the new Mac digital experience.http://www.goerie.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/2...