g5 laptop query...


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well now that 90nm 970 processors are being produced, offering faster speeds, lowe heat, and obviously smaller size, aren't they now at hte point they need to be to be placed into the powerbooks? It seems 90nm is hte laptop processor size standard, just wondering what you guys think.

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The xServes (or is that XServe, or Xserve?) still have 8 fans - and have dropped down to only 3 serial ATA disks (from 4xpATA disks before). A lot of the guts of those systems are dedicated to cooling.

I wouldn't call .90nm a standard yet. Intel's centrino chips are still on .13 and amd doesn't ship any .90nm chips (i don't think intel does either, but I'm not so sure about their 64-bit offerings). I'm fairly sure the ppc7457 chips are still being done on Motorola's 130nm hipermos soi process. I'm willing to bet these will be in G5s in no more than two months and that the G5 powerbook will be here by this time next year (wwdc or a summer-macworld introducion at the earliest).

Remember that we're not overly concerned about die size (it just has to fit in the chassis) - we care a lot about power consumption. Power consumption is what eats battery life and produces heat. Even if the 90nm G5 is twice as effiecent as the 130nm at 2ghz it's still going to be chewing down around 30w. For a notebook that needs to be halved again. turning clockspeed down to 1.3 ghz might do the job.

Also, the xserve is a low volume product (they don't sell many), I'm willing to bet apple is leaving IBM time to ramp-up production so it can actually meat the demand for G5 powerbooks in addition to the demand for powermacs. I'm pretty sure they don't want customers playing the waiting game again and a G5 powerbook will definetly be a hot seller - even at original TiBook prices ($3500 for 500mhz)

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http://maccentral.macworld.com/news/2002/10/16/ibm/

"At 1.8GHz, the PowerPC 970 will consume 1.3-volts and dissipate 42-Watts. At 1.2 GHz, the PowerPC 970 will consume 1.1-volts and dissipate only 19-Watts. For comparison, a 1GHz G4 consumes 1.6-volts and dissipates 21.3-Watts."

that article was from a time before ibm started making 90nm g5's. now that we are down to 90nm, i expect that apple needs just lower the clock (remember that the fastest g4 in a powerbook is 1.33ghz). i would suspect, that in benchmarking, a 1.2ghz g5 handily whoops a 1.33ghz g4, mostly because the g5 has a MUCH better fsb.

i expect to see g5's in powerbooks soon, not like next month, but certainly before the year is over.

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From what i gather from a couple of interviews at MacExpo Steve Jobs said that they are hoping to have the G5 Powerbook in production by the end of the year, so were that means that they will be out this year or early next is anyones guess... But i'd have to say it'll probably be very late 2004 before we hear anything else on them.

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yea, but i think they will want to get to the point where they can sell the g5 powerbooks at comparable speeds to the centrino offerings. so the line up should run 1.3, 1.6, and 1.8 or 2.0. if they put a little more work into it maybe just start at 1.6 like the desktops and go up. they will be amazing laptops to say the least.

ryan.

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centrino is intels answer to hte g4 ;) apple has been doing what hte centrino does forever, now if apple does it with a g5, they can easily crush a centrino at nearly any speed, so i dont feel thats an issue.

Good information in this topic, thanks guys :)

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IBM already has a much beefed up new G3vx processor that supports up to 2.4 ghz - if Apple are going to release a centrino beater then they will probably use that, hopefully they will. Imagine a new iBook running at 2.4 gig :D

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The 7457 in the current ibooks uses 1.0 volts and consumes <10w at 1.0ghz (neat how those numbers line up). With apple going to 46 watt-hour batteries for their portables using 15-20watts for your processor means you would get a 2 hours of battery life - not including the energy used by screen, rotational storagee, ram, etc. The 7447 in the powerbook is feature-identical to the 7457 but has no L3 cache support.

Don't confuse the generation of G4s in the powermacs and the ones in the powerbooks.

here is the product page for the 7447 (powerbook g4) processor:

http://e-www.motorola.com/webapp/sps/site/...sp?code=MPC7447

EDIT:

And the 7457 (iBook G4) processor

http://e-www.motorola.com/webapp/sps/site/...=018rH3bTdG8653

/EDIT

I can't find the power details for the 7447 running at 1.3v/1.33ghz in any motorola product details. Apple could go back to using something like the original powerbook battery (55 watt hours) but I really don't think that's enough to maintain the four+ hour battery life they're famous for in the powerbooks. The remaining option is to make the G5 powerbook bigger to accomidate a larger battery: somehow I don't think that's a very likely option.

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The 7457 in the current ibooks uses 1.0 volts and consumes <10w at 1.0ghz (neat how those numbers line up). With apple going to 46 watt-hour batteries for their portables using 15-20watts for your processor means you would get a 2 hours of battery life - not including the energy used by screen, rotational storagee, ram, etc. The 7447 in the powerbook is feature-identical to the 7457 but has no L3 cache support.

Don't confuse the generation of G4s in the powermacs and the ones in the powerbooks.

here is the product page for the 7447 (powerbook g4) processor:

http://e-www.motorola.com/webapp/sps/site/...sp?code=MPC7447

EDIT:

And the 7457 (iBook G4) processor

http://e-www.motorola.com/webapp/sps/site/...=018rH3bTdG8653

/EDIT

I can't find the power details for the 7447 running at 1.3v/1.33ghz in any motorola product details. Apple could go back to using something like the original powerbook battery (55 watt hours) but I really don't think that's enough to maintain the four+ hour battery life they're famous for in the powerbooks. The remaining option is to make the G5 powerbook bigger to accomidate a larger battery: somehow I don't think that's a very likely option.

:o didn't think of that. damn, you're good.

still, i don't think a g5 appearance in a powerbook is very far off.

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:o didn't think of that. damn, you're good.

still, i don't think a g5 appearance in a powerbook is very far off.

You do realize the 90nm 970 is in the xserve right? With 8 fans and two blow holes just to keep it cool, there's no way. Even if you bump it down to a 1.3ish speed, it will still be putting out a crapload of warmth.

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Isus: tx.

The question is whether those 8 fans are for the G5/power supply, hard disks, other cards, or just to be quieter than using half as many fans (I'd bet on a combination of all).

Until apple posts the hardware documentation for the Xserve on the developer sites or IBM posts some details about the performance and requirements of the new G5s it's not really worth speculating. There are really only two camps:

- The Low power G5 at 90nm (AKA 970FX) and running it's lowest clock speed (estimated around 1.2 GHz) is rumored to disipate 12w of heat. This is suffiecent to put in a powerbook and apple will move to ship units with them. Probable time to market is at least 4 months.

- The G5 does not exist in any state that would allow it to run in a portable machine (too hot / too power-hungry). We've got about a year to wait until the 970 stops being a power-hungy pig compared to the rest of the PPC line.

I'm in the second camp for the reasons above, but like the rest of you I'm really no more an authority than our kid-brother in grade-school. If we're taking bets I'd bet on about 9 months from now and that we've got 1 powerbook update before then. There is the possibility Apple has something amazing in a lab somewhere but I'll leave that in my dreams.

Last thing we want is to hype up the next apple event only to be dissapointed by "crappy" G4 upgrades. I'd rather be thrilled by G5 powerbooks ahead of "schedule".

(I know that doesn't add much new, but I've been reading "Optimizing C++" for a few hours and I felt like musing about something techincal - deal with it ;))

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After some catching up over at arstechnica today (the 2nd perpetual Power970 architecture thread) I realized we've all overlooked something that should be obvious: the system controller.

Remember back when apple was demonstrating the G5 at WWDC they made a very big deal of the capabilities of the system-controller. Hyper Transport up to 6.4gb, dual 1ghz busses, made on the same 13nm process as the G5. That's all fine and well, but what they didn't mention is that it's hungry for power. The current apple system controller (often called U3) eats 30 watts. Obviously this is unacceptable for a powerbook, even if the G5 is drawing 1 watt per day that system controler would drain the battery in about an hour and a half.

It looks like we'll have to wait for some revisions to that chip or something entirely new. They could easy decrease the capabilities and slow things down a bit for use in a powerbook and it would still be very competitive. Single bus (no hope in hell of running dual G5s in a laptop any time soon), slow down hypertransport, slow down the system bus to say 500mhz and use ddr333 memory. etc.

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evn: As you may or may not have noticed, I used some info from a post of yours in this thread and posted it at the 970 thread at Ars. I could have sworn I typed in and gave credit to you, but I can't find it anywhere. My apologies. I'll try to rectify it when I get back from work.

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After some catching up over at arstechnica today (the 2nd perpetual Power970 architecture thread) I realized we've all overlooked something that should be obvious: the system controller.

Remember back when apple was demonstrating the G5 at WWDC they made a very big deal of the capabilities of the system-controller.  Hyper Transport up to 6.4gb, dual 1ghz busses, made on the same 13nm process as the G5.  That's all fine and well, but what they didn't mention is that it's hungry for power.  The current apple system controller (often called U3) eats 30 watts.  Obviously this is unacceptable for a powerbook, even if the G5 is drawing 1 watt per day that system controler would drain the battery in about an hour and a half.

It looks like we'll have to wait for some revisions to that chip or something entirely new. They could easy decrease the capabilities and slow things down a bit for use in a powerbook and it would still be very competitive.  Single bus (no hope in hell of running dual G5s in a laptop any time soon), slow down hypertransport, slow down the system bus to say 500mhz and use ddr333 memory. etc.

another thing is that the system controller is matched to the cpu. so at 1.6ghz, it might draw 30w, but when you scale it back for a 1.2ghz cpu, it should use less power obviously... the 1.6ghz would be 800mhz fsb, the 1.2 would be 600mhz. mathematically, it would use 3/4 the power, so for a pbook the system controller would only use ~22w. but i doubt the 1.6ghz system controller uses 30w...

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