The new Apple Macintosh models! Now we know!

[elektro80]

Apple has seemingly inadvertently posted specifications of upcoming Power Mac models on its online Apple Store. Under the Power Mac G4 section, a list of specifications describes list of specifications describes "the world's fastest personal computer" as containing 1.6, 1.8, or 2.0GHz PowerPC G5 processors. Update: The Apple Store went offline at 12:05 a.m.; it is back online as of 12:25 a.m.; the image in question has been removed, but can be found here: Power Mac G5 specs http://www4.macnn.com/macnn/newsphotos/powermacg5specs.jpg

The G5 is, based on the specs, an IBM 970 Power 5 cpu design.



The specifications read:

- 1.6GHz, 1.8GHz, or Dual 2GHz PowerPC G5 processors
- Up to 1GHz processor bus
- Up to 8GB of DDR SDRAM
- Fast Serial ATA hard drives
- AGP 8X Pro graphics options from NVIDIA or ATI
- Three PCI or PCI-X expansion slots
- Three USB 2.0 ports
- One FireWire 800, two FireWire 400 ports
- Bluetooth & AirPort Extreme ready
- Optical and analog in and out

Below is the pix from Apple Store.




The design cannot really be compared to ordinary desktop PCs. This is a UNIX workstation. As always the speed of the CPU does not reflect how nasty this one is. I guess this one will be just the thing.

I forgot this piece of info. You guys have probably heard about the Altivec in the G4. The 970 has the same.. almost.. the socalled Velocity Engine.. which used to run in the Altivec section of the G4. The velocity Engine is implemented in the 970 too.

With the Midi and Audio implementation in OS X,, the benefits will really show up on hardware like this.

Apple has leaked info previously which suggests that the 970 family of CPUs will later show up in the laptop range. And the possibility of multiprocessing [editor's note: probably means multiprocessors] in a laptop has also been suggested. This will probably not happen until next year or.. rather quarter 3 next year.

But from my point of view the current laptop range is quite OK at the moment.

[elektro80]

A comment at http://www.macosrumors.com/



With only five days to go before the start of one of the most anticipated events in Apple's history -- WWDC 2003 in San Francisco -- the rumormill has shifted into overdrive. Our heads are spinning after having read today's episode of As The Apple Turns alone. This is to say nothing of the countless articles, BBS threads, email discussion list topics, and only Steve knows what else besides all across the 'net today leading up to this year's WWDC.

Apple's has already publicly promised major changes to the "Mac platform" in addition to a preview release and full details on Panther, the next major release of Mac OS X. Hardware updates haven't been promised, but all signs -- not the least of which being Apple's approach to the attention focused on the hardware rumors leading up to WWDC; specifically, quiet acceptance and a handful of Cease-And-Desist letters -- point to something huge in that department.

We all know about the PowerPC 970 from numerous public documents and press releases out of IBM. Its design is blatantly specific to Apple's needs (Altivec, leading bus bandwidth, multiprocessor support, full-performance backward compatibility with 32-bit PowerPC code, designed to match well up to Apple's new interconnect bus of choice, performs well with existing G3/G4 optimized OS X applications, HyperTransport....among several other things) and technology plans. The 970 has sweeping implications that very clearly back up Apple's statement that this would be the "Year of the Laptop". The 970's lower cost, operating temperature, and power drain than G4s at similar clock rates -- not to mention much better performance -- make it a perfect candidate not only for the entire Powerbook family, but also for the long-rumored dual-processor 17" Powerbook

[mosc]

What is Altivec? You don't need to explain if you know of a link that does.

[elektro80]

Right... best place to start out is here:
http://developer.apple.com/hardware/ve/

Altivec is a Motorola hardware implementation of the hardware side of "the velocity engine". The IBM CPUs have a similar support for the VE.

This is kind of an internal CPU coprocessor which can handle certain types of computation done on certain types of data. Well.. you will get the drift of it if you read the developer info. There is really a whole lot more to it than that. The velocity engine does in fact allow developers to rethink how tasks are done in an app and figure out alternative approaches. There is an abundance already of vectorized math libraries for a wide range of functions. The speed gains provided by the velocity engine can at times be mindblowing. But of course.. in general terms.. implementing such features in a CPU is nothing new.

Right.. forgot this piece of trivia. When DVD players for computers started to show up it was not uncommon to have decoders installed for the mpeg2. Typically Apple did it all in software and on G4s ( the ones with the Motorola Altivec ) . So.. just stuff a DVD drive into the mac and run the playback in software. No hardware acceleration. iDVD and other Apple apps uses the velocity engine for encoding of mpeg2. Pretty cool.

IBM has a 970 page somewhere and that info is really interesting.

[mosc]

Thanks, Altivec probably gets it's name from Vector Processor, which was the term we used before Array Processor, which was replaced by Digital Signal Processor. We are seeing general purpose microprocessors moving into the domain of DSPs. Probably these days, if cost is not a consideration, a GP microprocessor can compete with a single DSP. Where DSPs have a striking advantage is when you want to build an array of them, like 8 in the Nord Modular synthesizers. They have very simple I/O and memory access ports. Thus, building multiprocessor engines is quite easy, and inexpensive.

With the move towards soft synths and computer based processing, we need standardized multi-dsp auxilliary processor boxes connected via high-speed networks to work as adjuncts to the main computer. Kyma comes to mind, http://www.symbolicsound.com/brochure/index.html, or actually the hardware of the system which is the Capybara, http://www.symbolicsound.com/capybara1/index.html. The Capybara connects with the processor via Firewire as well as their proprietary PCI interface. Kyma is not an open standard, and it's not inexpensive, but it is pointing to the future. But this is another topic, isn't it?

[elektro80]

The processor lineage is pretty much like that I guess. Having a thingie like Altivec inside a CPU makes alot of sense .. at least for desktop computers like the MAC.. and PCs. I suspect we will see extend use of stuff like mLAN, DSP, embedded G4s and such in new audio hardware. Agreeing on mLAN. which is quite decent when it comes to specs and options, might be a start. Having an firewire plug or an USB 2.0 in every new toy is the way to go. Howard.. just for the hell of it.. you might want to find the techie firewire page at Apple´s site. The 1394 design is very interesting and I understand why Yamaha wrote their mLAN on top of this.

I suspect we are pretty much at the start of the analog modeling boom. New processors and bus designs.. at a better price.. will allow instrument and efx designers to make gear which will be really something else. We can imagine designs like a scalable computing device that we buy instrument interfaces for. You have the "x-synth monster computer"? You want the new Buchla instrument for that platform? Go buy the Buchla boxes and plug it in via the mLAN cable to the "x-synth monster computer".. and play....


hehe.. dunno.. just guessing. Probably several new threads in the making here.


Back to the topic.. not much to say really.. but Apple just might be delivering a lot more than we dared to wish for. Well done.