Scusate se posto qualkosa in inglese.. ma potrebbe essere interessante:
As the G5 is (almost) a reality in our Mac, we have just received interesting info on the next generation processor, the PPC980. It is maybe too early to call it G6, but we think that?s the way Apple will name it.
First, our source wanted to make some points clear. At the contrary to what has been published on-line on other web site, the PPC980 will not be based on the Power4+, but on the Power5. The Power4+ is only an evolution of the Power4, taped out with a thinner process which allows higher frequencies. We hope we did not make any mistake while interpreting those technical data.
- In the PPC980, IBM has doubled the processing capacity (fpu) when compared to the PPC970.
- The PPC980 will have 3 Altivec units, instead of 2 for the PPC970
- L2 cache will be increased from 512kB (PPC970) to 1MB.
- IBM has integrated in the PPC980 a dynamic instruction selection an issue unit, which corresponds to Intel?s Hyperthreading. With this system, the processor can behave as a multicore unit, which results in an increase of the processing capacity, gain up to 20%.
Instructions will have a priority order, from 0 to 7, 7 being the most urgent one. The processor will treat those instructions according to their respective priority flags. In practice, the processor will have cooperative multitasking capacities, allowing less pressure on the OS by removing most of the priority management works.
The PPC980 prototypes have already been taped out, and underwent the first preliminary tests. The expected performances are there, even if it is too early to have some benchmarks. However, the increase regarding performance could be so high that Apple could have difficulties to still name it G5.
We will have to learn, as for the Wintel world, that our computers will became (theoretically) obsolete much faster as in the past. Today, we are still complaining to Apple regarding the speed of MacOSX on 4-years old computers. As in the Wintel world, we will have to accept that entry-level Mac will not be able to run the most recent OS, the most recent games,?.
Some will find it sad, but it might be the price to pay to see Apple going out of this terrible stagnation against which the company is fighting since years.