More Dual PowerPC 970 Info...

mmmm..pseudo-4-way PowerMac...A shame that I just bought a dual 2.5 GHz. Maybe, I will upgrade to one of these when they become avaialable.

Woooh, now this sounds interesting.
Even FASTER than 2 processors running at the same clock speed? The last info said that they would be running around 3-3,5 Ghz so if you put 2 and 2 together the new ones would be running faster than a dual 4 Ghz.
This is mind boggling :D Me wants one...
I guess that also means that this will be the end of dual proc. powermacs.

Yeah,

to me this seems to spell the end of dual processor powermacs. That way apple can save money by only putting one processor in without sacrificing power and it will reduce the heat problems they have been creatively challenged to deal with. The trick will be selling these machines with one physical processor to a customer base that has come to believe that dual procs are the way to go for best performance.

I guess that also means that this will be the end of dual proc. powermacs.

At the bottom end I suspect you might be correct, but I wouldn't be surprised to see the top end retaining dual processors, along with the Xserve. The existing dual-core Power 4/5 machines are all multiple CPU for example, although admittedly they are a different market and price range. I think dual core is being seen as a replacement for increasing clock speed, rather than replacing multi-cpu.

Yeah my dual 2.5 is on its way, but no way am i prepared to put up with the waiting for an unreleased mac again. I almost got a dual 2 in decemebr of last year, but put off until the eventual release of the rev B's..........and i am still waiting....it will all be better once it arrives

Yeah,

to me this seems to spell the end of dual processor powermacs. That way apple can save money by only putting one processor in without sacrificing power and it will reduce the heat problems they have been creatively challenged to deal with. The trick will be selling these machines with one physical processor to a customer base that has come to believe that dual procs are the way to go for best performance.

If they are really this fast it is going to be a breeze. I mean seriously, if they had a processor out by the same time next year that was about as fast as a dual 4Ghz would be right now.... how many people would be cheering and wetting their pants? :D

Powermac : Dual-Core-Dual-Processor @ 3 GHz :cool:
iMac / Powerbook : Dual-Core-Single-Processor :cool:
iBook / eMac : Actual G5 :cool:

????

Yes! Bring them up! Go IBM! Go apple! :p :p

Even FASTER than 2 processors running at the same clock speed?

The IBM statement most likely means "more efficient at SMP than 2 separate processors", not faster at a single-threaded task.

The reason is that a lot of "chatter" occurs between CPUs in an SMP system, for example interlocked instructions need to be coordinated and processors have to check each other's caches. (If one CPU changes a chunk of memory, if that chunk is in the other CPU's cache the cached version is no long correct.)

In standard SMP, this "snooping" occurs on the FSB (or the coherent HT link in the case of Opteron).

In a dual core chip, the snooping is within the chip itself, at full core speeds.

Although many of your are getting all excited with the thought of dual dual-core chips going into PowerMacs, has anyone every contemplated that perhaps, once these chips are ready, they won't go into dual processor machines? Perhaps the fabled 3 GHz PowerMac will not be an actual DP system, but instead have only 1 of these dual-core 970s. Sure, the effect will be the same (and from the sounds of it, it will actually be faster), but I wouldn't automatically assume that whenever these chips are ready to go, Apple will be able to simply keep their dual processor PowerMac config and slap these dual-core chips in place of the single core chips for gobs of power. I don't see this as being too likely.

As Chaywa said, this, if anything, will spell the end for the DP PowerMacs.

... this, if anything, will spell the end for the DP PowerMacs.

Will everybody please stop repeating this nonsense about this being the end of dual processor Macs.

A dual-core is nothing but two processors on one chip, there are still two processor cores in the computer. The OS and all programms will see two processors, you will even have a somewhat better performance than with a two processor computer.

If you think that the wide public and maybe yourself would perceive a dual-core Powermac as somethink less powerful than a dual-processor Powermac, you should for once accept that the opposite is the case and also rest assured that Apple marketing would try its best to correct that impression.

Naturally, everybody who said this would make it relatively easy for Apple to create a four-way computer is absolutely right.

BTW, the timestamp on the eWeek article is 26 July, three days after the Thinksecret story and three days before macrumors picked it up.