Forget the Cell Processor, What Other Chip Options does Apple Have?
When you buy a new Mac your choices are limited when it comes to the processor: G4 or G5. It is akin to walking down the salty snacks aisle at the supermarket and finding only Doritos and Pringles. There is nothing new about this situation, Apple computer seems to be terminally bereft of adequate chip supply on the top end and lacking chip options in general. Standard PC manufacturers aren’t faced with this issue, there is a massive amount of chip diversity and a seemingly inexhaustible supply. A comprehensive list would be far too long but a few quick options: Pentium IV, Pentium M, AMD 64, Centrino, Celeron, Xeon, Itaniums, the list could go on forever. The upshot being that for almost any particular task you can find the right balance of performance versus energy use/case size/cooling requirements. I suppose the plethora of choices drive the R&D department at Dell a little crazy…Wait, scratch that. After all the Dell R&D is Apple computer. I meant to say that the careful balancing act probably drives the R&D department at Alienware to distraction.
Right now it is difficult not to consider Apple a little behind in this area. As previously mentioned you’ve two basic choices: Hot and powerful (G4) or very hot and very powerful (G5). Some might take issue with the notion that the G4 is hot. Indeed compared to the G5 it is positively artic in temperature but compared with ultra low power chips (Pentium M1400) the G4 is fairly scalding. All that heat has to get there from somewhere, conservation laws of the universe being what they are and all, and that somewhere is the power supply. No big deal if you’re using desktop machine but if you’re using a notebook more heat generally means less battery life.
Things might be very different in the future. You are undoubtedly aware of the Cell Chip developed jointly by IBM, Sony and Toshiba. It is a very exciting technology and possibly scalable all the way from cell phones to the render farms used by film pros. The scalability of the Cell chip means it can be all things to all people, at least in theory. The eventual adoption of the Cell chip is not without significant technological hurdles and it may never be appropriate for the kind of tasks required by the Macintosh so it is too early to call it a done deal. Cell chip dreams aside there are plenty of other choices heading Apple’s way.
Let us begin with the portable segment. Apple’s notebooks have been mired in chip stagnation for some time. The processors get slightly faster with each revision but the bumps are meager. It is not the case where Apple could simply request that the manufacturer ratchet up the speed to the highest possible frequency because the top of the line PowerBook is saddled with a seemingly paltry 167 MHz frontside bus (the connection between the RAM and the chip). This wasn’t a problem when the G4 topped out at 500Mhz but as the CPU speed increases at some point the processor becomes starved for data. So the processor could, in fact, be capable of running at some arbitrarily high frequency but it can’t get enough data to actually use all that speed. This problem may soon be alleviated. Freescale (formerly a division of Motorola) recently introduced a G4 variant that features dual cores, minimal power consumption and a bus that runs at a comparatively speedy 667 MHz. Additionally the chip is pin for pin compatible with current G4 chips so, if Apple chooses, the transitional difficulties should be minimal. Unfortunately the chip is still 32 bits so for all you folks craving mobile 64 bit goodness are out of luck.
On the desktop side of things besides the Cell Processor you’ve got IBM’s Power 5. Recalling that the G5 is based on the Power 4 it is not too much of a leap to think that at some point Apple will request a Power 5 variant with the Velocity Engine added. The Power 5, by all accounts, is one impressive chip. Slap the aforementioned Velocity Engine on it, call it a G6, run it through a few benchmarks and Apple will have people drooling for the thing.
Taking all the new chips possibilities into account and noting that the G5 and G4 still have life left in them it is easy to imagine Apple having a happy problem: Which chip where? For consumers the benefits are obvious: more power for the desktops and less power consumption for the laptops. The only negative side of the issue might be one of consumer confusion. With two chips the decision is forced upon you conversely with a myriad of chips choices can get muddled quickly. On the bright side Apple is very good (at least since Steve Jobs returned) at minimizing customer bewilderment.
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“Pentium IV, Pentium M, AMD 64, Centrino, Celeron, Xeon, Itaniums, the list could go on forever”
You are trying too hard to extent the list of PC processors. Pentium 4, yes, Pentium M, yes AMD 64, I assume you mean the Athlon64, Centrino, there is no such chip and you already listed the Pentium M, Xeon and Celeron I will come to these in a minute, Itanium, this is no more a PC processor than a G5 is.
You have listed the Xeon, Celeron and P4 as if they are different chips when they are really the same in the exact same way as the G4 exists in with 256k L2, 512K L2 and L3, Apple just does not give each one a different name.
In comparison to Apple it would be fairer to state that there is the AMD K7 and K8, Intels “netburst” and the Pentium M all available with varying L2 and FSB speeds. Also there is the Via C3.
That is still more choice than Apple but hardly a “list that could go on forever”
vortigen,
you are correct, there is no centrino processor. My mistake, gosh I need better sources.
As for the other processors being essentially the same, well I have fallen for the marketing dreck. There are differences but, apparently, they are not so large.
I should have more accurately simply pointed to the various chip manufacturers: Transmeta, Intel, AMD, Via…I am sure there are some I’ve missed.
Thanks for the info Vortigen
Let us not forget that there is a smaller market for RISC processors, not to mention they are a “younger breed” of processors, so inevitably there will be a smaller degree of variety. However, too much variety can be bad thing, and I like the consistency Apple creates; when I buy Apple, I know what I am getting (good and bad). If there was an Apple clone, would it be an Apple?
I hadn’t heard of the G4 variant from Motorola, but I have heard that IBM is developing a less power hungry G5 that some hope will make it to the PowerBooks (sorry, I can’t recall the link). I would be pleased with either one myself, as they sound like major improvements. But of course, Apple (aka Steve Jobs) will have the final say.
I’ve been a life-long Mac owner. I recently had to buy a PC laptop for testing purposes. And I was shocked at how confused I was.
All these vendors. Which one is the best in terms of quality? Then all these choices for processors! Which was the best for what I needed to do?
I ended up buying an Athlon64 Compaq laptop, but it took me a long time to settle on it. I was definitely bewildered.
To me, consumers (*consumers*, not geeks) don’t really care what’s under the hood. They just want to know that it goes fast and will do what they need.
I appreciate Apple for making the choices for me (in most cases). I don’t need another equivalent type of chip. Deciding on what speed is choice enough.
I’ve been a life-long Mac owner. I recently had to buy a PC laptop for testing purposes. And I was shocked at how confused I was.
All these vendors. Which one is the best in terms of quality? Then all these choices for processors! Which was the best for what I needed to do?
I ended up buying an Athlon64 Compaq laptop, but it took me a long time to settle on it. I was definitely bewildered.
To me, consumers (*consumers*, not geeks) don’t really care what’s under the hood. They just want to know that it goes fast and will do what they need.
I appreciate Apple for making the choices for me (in most cases). I don’t need another equivalent type of chip. Deciding on what speed is choice enough.
The Beginners Guide to:
Apple’s selection of current and upcoming processors (Freescale edition)
Freescale was Motorola’s chip division, and is now an independent company. They have a very good track record on designing really nice chips, and a very bad track record at producing and scaling them. To some extent this is because Motorola’s fabs (where chips are made) were pretty bad; dirty and old. This has been solved with a move to the ultramodern Crolles fab in association with several other companies. Their design team on the other hand was always considered one of the best, a major reason the G4 was able to best Intel’s chip offerings despite slower clock speeds and a weaker bus.
IBM’s chip division has been around for a very long time. Currently they use the modern fab at Fishkill to produce chips.
Both companies have presumably had problems with the transition to 90nm from 130nm which allows chips to be faster, use less power, and be produced in larger numbers in the same size area. In theory. IBM’s (and Intel’s) problems have been fairly widely publicized. Freescale hasn’t said anything, but their roadmap seems conservative unless they have had problems. However Motorola had an ongoing problem meeting their roadmap targets, any roadmap published by Freescale should be taken with a grain of salt.
They are Apple’s two suppliers for processors. IBM will not be covered, because frankly I don’t know enough about their chips.
Freescale supplies the 7447 and 7447A for use the eMac, the Mac Mini, iBooks, and Powerbooks (The new Rev C (15”)/D(12”/17”) PB’s are probably using the 7447B).
The 7447, 7447A, and 7447B are all similar chips. They have a 512 kb L2 cache with no L3 cache. Their max bus speed is 167 MHz. The 7447 has a top clock speed of 1.33 GHz, the A model can hit 1.5 GHz, and the B model can reach 1.67 GHz.
Although they use DDR memory, the slow bus speed prevents utilizing the full speed of the fast DDR memory.
The 745x series has a L3 cache but does not scale as well as the 744x series. The 745x is used by a number of upgrade manufactures such as Powerlogix and Sonnet.
Upcoming is the 7448 with a top clock speed of 1.8-2.0 GHz and a bus speed of 200 MHz along with a larger 1 MB L2 cache.
The 7448 is currently being sampled, with production sometime in the next 6 months. Could be less, could be more.
After the 7448 (which is basically a final upgrade to the 744x that is years late in some respects) comes the advanced e600 series.
The e600 has a large number of very nice features and comes in single and dual core versions that are pin compatible with each other.
It comes with 1 or 2 PCI Express I/O interfaces.
It has a 1 MB L2 cache per core.
4 10/100/1000 Ethernet controllers (needed for embedded hardware use)
A memory controller for each core, allowing full speed use of DDR2 memory.
A 667 MHz integrated MPX bus. Far faster then external buses.
It has 4 integer, a floating point, and 4 Altivec units per core.
Rapid I/O interface.
This chip is sampling in the second half of this year, with production sometime in the first half of 2006.
After that comes the e700 core, 32/64 bit with clock speeds beyond 3 GHz. It is unknown when this chip will be sampled or produced.
“All that heat has to get there from somewhere, conservation laws of the universe being what they are and all”
Object!
The law of physics do not apply to Apple.
(check Reality Distortion Field)
Auh yes so easy to be simplistic when half truths and distortion is your means to the desired end.
Heheh.
Wow. I want to get a PowerBook soon (next couple of weeks, 15” 1.67 model with some upgrades - aftermarket, to save money), but it’s now very tempting to wait until this time next year in the event that Apple adopts the e600’s in future G4-based products.
On the other hand, I could buy a PowerBook, and then when the e600’s start shipping, build myself a fun little PPC Linux box! Woo!