PPC 970MP

Now that Apple is bowing down to Intel, does anyone have any plans to
make a Power PC 970MP Mobo?

l'indien

2005-07-21 21:26:23 UTC

Post by stork
Now that Apple is bowing down to Intel, does anyone have any plans to
make a Power PC 970MP Mobo?

IBM, for sure:
they sell server with PowerPC 970 inside.

Timothy J. Bogart

2005-07-23 00:50:15 UTC

Post by stork
Now that Apple is bowing down to Intel, does anyone have any plans to
make a Power PC 970MP Mobo?

they sell server with PowerPC 970 inside.

What machines does IBM presently sell with PowerPC. Last I looked,
after the 43p-150, everything was Power.

l'indien

2005-07-23 06:58:21 UTC

Post by stork
Now that Apple is bowing down to Intel, does anyone have any plans to
make a Power PC 970MP Mobo?

they sell server with PowerPC 970 inside.

What machines does IBM presently sell with PowerPC. Last I looked,
after the 43p-150, everything was Power.

In fact, POWER is just a commercial name for high-end PowerPC.
IBM PowerPC 970 based machine that I know are JS-20 blade center:
<http://www-03.ibm.com/servers/eserver/bladecenter/js20/more_info.html>

Timothy J. Bogart

2005-07-25 02:23:18 UTC

Post by stork
Now that Apple is bowing down to Intel, does anyone have any plans to
make a Power PC 970MP Mobo?

they sell server with PowerPC 970 inside.

What machines does IBM presently sell with PowerPC. Last I looked,
after the 43p-150, everything was Power.

In fact, POWER is just a commercial name for high-end PowerPC.
<http://www-03.ibm.com/servers/eserver/bladecenter/js20/more_info.html>

No. POWER is POWER and PPC is PPC. Blades are a different animal. None
of the Low, Mid, or High end servers use PPC. Blade is a category all
in itself. You can get blade servers with Intel in them - but note you
can't get Pseries boxes with Intel in them either.

For packing density, PPC can have advantages. Simply not used in
standard lineup.

Cheers.

l'indien

2005-07-25 22:27:42 UTC

Post by stork
Now that Apple is bowing down to Intel, does anyone have any plans to
make a Power PC 970MP Mobo?

they sell server with PowerPC 970 inside.

What machines does IBM presently sell with PowerPC. Last I looked,
after the 43p-150, everything was Power.

In fact, POWER is just a commercial name for high-end PowerPC.
<http://www-03.ibm.com/servers/eserver/bladecenter/js20/more_info.html>

No. POWER is POWER and PPC is PPC.

Take a closer look to POWER specifications, please.
POWER was and original architecture from IBM, used in the early RS/6000.
They extended it with POWER2.
Then, IBM, Motorola and Apple developped the PowerPC specification, based
on IBM work on POWER. The first PowerPC, (PPC601) was fully POWER
compatible.
From this point, IBM developped 4 lines of products have been developped
on PowerPC specifications:
- 32 bits embedded PowerPC: was 401, then 403 & 405.
- 32 bits generic PowerPC, as 603, 604, 750, ...
- 64 bits RS/64 PowerPC
- 64 bits POWER.
The two last ones are extended PowerPC. They follow the whole 64 bits
PowerPC specification. RS/64 adds tagged memory access and was mostly used
in AS/400 line of products. POWER3 & POWER4 were most designed for
mainframes, with multicore and hypervisor features.

Nowadays, PowerPC 970 & POWER5 use the same core unit. But POWER5 is
multicore and PPC970 has hypervisor feature disabled (though all
needed registers are still present).
And IBM uses POWER name for _all_ their PowerPC based products.

The difference between POWER & PowerPC is quite the same than between
Athlon XP & Athlon64.

Post by Timothy J. Bogart
Blades are a different animal. None
of the Low, Mid, or High end servers use PPC. Blade is a category all
in itself. You can get blade servers with Intel in them - but note you
can't get Pseries boxes with Intel in them either.

I was talking about one model of the IBM eServer Blade Center.
I said "JS-20 blade is 970 based". I never said _all_ blades are Power
based.
Please try to read before arguing...

Timothy J. Bogart

2005-07-26 06:32:05 UTC

Post by stork
Now that Apple is bowing down to Intel, does anyone have any plans to
make a Power PC 970MP Mobo?

they sell server with PowerPC 970 inside.

What machines does IBM presently sell with PowerPC. Last I looked,
after the 43p-150, everything was Power.

In fact, POWER is just a commercial name for high-end PowerPC.
<http://www-03.ibm.com/servers/eserver/bladecenter/js20/more_info.html>

No. POWER is POWER and PPC is PPC.

Take a closer look to POWER specifications, please.
POWER was and original architecture from IBM, used in the early RS/6000.
They extended it with POWER2.
Then, IBM, Motorola and Apple developped the PowerPC specification, based
on IBM work on POWER. The first PowerPC, (PPC601) was fully POWER
compatible.
From this point, IBM developped 4 lines of products have been developped
- 32 bits embedded PowerPC: was 401, then 403 & 405.
- 32 bits generic PowerPC, as 603, 604, 750, ...
- 64 bits RS/64 PowerPC
- 64 bits POWER.
The two last ones are extended PowerPC. They follow the whole 64 bits
PowerPC specification. RS/64 adds tagged memory access and was mostly used
in AS/400 line of products. POWER3 & POWER4 were most designed for
mainframes, with multicore and hypervisor features.
Nowadays, PowerPC 970 & POWER5 use the same core unit. But POWER5 is
multicore and PPC970 has hypervisor feature disabled (though all
needed registers are still present).
And IBM uses POWER name for _all_ their PowerPC based products.

OK, I may have missed something here - you are claiming that the
instructions dropped by the PowerPC after the 601 have now been dropped
in POWER? That would be news to me ... common-mode is not needed any
more? It would be news to me if the POWER included the graphics related
functions (I read them as MMX like stuff that Apple wanted) - I can't
find the article right off, but IIRC it was related only to the PowerPC.

I would have to look up the history of 64 bit PowerPC, because PPC
disappeared from the IBM machine line up. At one point, the most
powerfull box RS6K was PPC based - the J50. Yet, the first 64 bit
machines, and all RS6k/Pseries boxes since, don't use PPC. They use POWER.

Here is what IBM told me over the years - they were going to get speed
and performance improvments going to smaller packaging. All there boxes
headed in that direction. Ooops. POWER came back to the forefront
because they could put the servers line back into a performance range
that was competative and PowerPC could not.

Post by l'indien
The difference between POWER & PowerPC is quite the same than between
Athlon XP & Athlon64.

That is quite a stretch. Let's see, if the Athlon 64 spec was developed
not by AMD, but by a consortium which included other vendors, and then
broke backwards compatability ..... And that of course completely
ignores the real point - these are two different microprossors and the
POWER vs PowerPC are completely different packaging animals ...

I was talking about one model of the IBM eServer Blade Center.
I said "JS-20 blade is 970 based". I never said _all_ blades are Power
based.
Please try to read before arguing...

"In fact, POWER is just a commercial name for high-end PowerPC."

In fact, PowerPC is just a commercial name for a low end POWER. It has
failed in it's orginal intent. How long it will remain alive is a good
question. I am sure IBM will milk what it can out of it's investment,
but for the original poster - good luck finding MBs so folks can build
'clone' systems as was done with the G5 stuff. IBM no longer used it in
their main product line, and with Apple dropping it, who is going to
build then next MB we could put in a desktop? Embedded and specialty
devices like the blade server seems to be the only life left in it.
It's a pity, really, but there it is.

Andrew J. Brehm

2005-07-27 21:09:11 UTC

Post by Timothy J. Bogart
OK, I may have missed something here - you are claiming that the
instructions dropped by the PowerPC after the 601 have now been dropped
in POWER?

Now, as he said POWER is a superset of PowerPC.

Post by Timothy J. Bogart
That would be news to me ... common-mode is not needed any more? It would
be news to me if the POWER included the graphics related functions (I read
them as MMX like stuff that Apple wanted) - I can't find the article right
off, but IIRC it was related only to the PowerPC.

Some PowerPC chips, notably the G4 and G5 have a vector processing unit
(Altivec). POWER and most PowerPC implementations do not.

Altivec is not a part of the PowerPC specfication but an add-on.

--
Andrew J. Brehm
Marx Brothers Fan
PowerPC/Macintosh User
Supporter of Chicken Sandwiches

Timothy J. Bogart

2005-07-28 02:36:15 UTC

Post by Timothy J. Bogart
OK, I may have missed something here - you are claiming that the
instructions dropped by the PowerPC after the 601 have now been dropped
in POWER?

Now, as he said POWER is a superset of PowerPC.

Yes, well, as he noted, POWER came first, and the first PPC was an
identical instruction set - then PPC dropped some instructions and broke
all sorts of code. To say that the new chipsets are 'based on' the PPC
specification, but are a 'superset' - if that 'superset' is indeed the
instructions that have been there all along - am I the only one that has
a problem with that logic?

Some PowerPC chips, notably the G4 and G5 have a vector processing unit
(Altivec). POWER and most PowerPC implementations do not.
Altivec is not a part of the PowerPC specfication but an add-on.

Thank you - that was of course what I was trying to remember.

Andrew J. Brehm

2005-07-27 21:10:00 UTC

Post by Timothy J. Bogart
In fact, PowerPC is just a commercial name for a low end POWER. It has
failed in it's orginal intent. How long it will remain alive is a good
question.

Probably very very long. Most game consoles use PowerPC now.

--
Andrew J. Brehm
Marx Brothers Fan
PowerPC/Macintosh User
Supporter of Chicken Sandwiches

I R A Darth Aggie

2005-07-28 01:30:06 UTC

On Wed, 27 Jul 2005 22:10:00 +0100,

+
+ > In fact, PowerPC is just a commercial name for a low end POWER. It has
+ > failed in it's orginal intent. How long it will remain alive is a good
+ > question.
+
+ Probably very very long. Most game consoles use PowerPC now.

I see them popping up in printers, too.

James

--
Consulting Minister for Consultants, DNRC
I can please only one person per day. Today is not your day. Tomorrow
isn't looking good, either.
I am BOFH. Resistance is futile. Your network will be assimilated.

Shyamal Prasad

2005-07-28 01:51:10 UTC

Post by Timothy J. Bogart
In fact, PowerPC is just a commercial name for a low end POWER.
It has failed in it's orginal intent. How long it will remain
alive is a good question.

Andrew> Probably very very long. Most game consoles use PowerPC
Andrew> now.

And lots of embedded systems. The Motoroal MPC860 and variants (all
with a powerpc core) are much loved in communications applications.

/Shyamal

Timothy J. Bogart

2005-07-28 02:40:06 UTC

Post by Timothy J. Bogart
In fact, PowerPC is just a commercial name for a low end POWER. It has
failed in it's orginal intent. How long it will remain alive is a good
question.

Probably very very long. Most game consoles use PowerPC now.

???? I remember reading about the new Xbox hoorah - but as I don't
exactly follow game consoles - in fact I only know of Xbox and PS2, or
maybe if Nintendo is still around? Are any or all of these what you are
referring to?

And I assume these are the embedded models - which would also make sense
to me as having the longest life. I vaguely hear that they are rather
popular (though I hadn't heard of game console use!) - the other models
are the ones that I haven't heard anyone exactly lining up at the door for.

Andrew J. Brehm

2005-07-28 17:47:43 UTC

Post by Timothy J. Bogart
In fact, PowerPC is just a commercial name for a low end POWER. It has
failed in it's orginal intent. How long it will remain alive is a good
question.

Probably very very long. Most game consoles use PowerPC now.

What other game consoles do you know? The three major ones use PowerPC
now (or with the coming incarnation).

Post by Timothy J. Bogart
And I assume these are the embedded models - which would also make sense
to me as having the longest life.

The Xbox uses three 2 GHz 64 bit PowerPC chips (presumably G5
variations).

Post by Timothy J. Bogart
I vaguely hear that they are rather popular (though I hadn't heard of game
console use!) - the other models are the ones that I haven't heard anyone
exactly lining up at the door for.

It's been in the news for over a year that all consoles switch to
PowerPC. Where have you been hiding? (And can I come?)

--
Andrew J. Brehm
Marx Brothers Fan
PowerPC/Macintosh User
Supporter of Chicken Sandwiches

Alex Gibson

2005-08-03 11:39:52 UTC

Post by Timothy J. Bogart
In fact, PowerPC is just a commercial name for a low end POWER. It has
failed in it's orginal intent. How long it will remain alive is a good
question.

Probably very very long. Most game consoles use PowerPC now.

What other game consoles do you know? The three major ones use PowerPC
now (or with the coming incarnation).

Cell isn't just a powerpc, the ppc is just one part of the core.
Have a read of the docs.

Some good articles here
http://arstechnica.com/articles/paedia/cpu/cell-1.ars
http://arstechnica.com/articles/paedia/cpu/cell-2.ars

http://arstechnica.com/articles/paedia/cpu.ars