). Curiously, the 1.5GHz PowerPC 7447A processor Apple is using in its latest PowerBooks is missing. It's also unknown whether Apple will seek to use e600/e700 processors in its future products.
Comments
... can they deliver? Motorola has announce grand plans before. Will calling themselves "Freescale" make a difference? The expected delay in getting G5s into PowerBooks may provide an opportunity, but the window will be short.
Try "Free fall" instead. M *must* come out with faster processors or die.
Um M *doesn't* have to do anything. They don't control Freescale. It's been sold off.
The name is alittle ironic though. Their chips arent free and we've seen how well they scale....
Anyone remember Exponential Technology back in the mid 90's? They had 500 MHz PowerPCs that never appeared, and Apple never insisted on using. I think this is along the same line.
Then Apple could use these processors. Let's hope that Motorola can do it, and ship enough quantities of these chips for Apple...assuming that these are compatible with Apple's architecture of course.
How many YEARS will it take for them to release the 3.0GHz? Will they abandon it halfway through, like Motorolla did with the G4?
I coudn't see any indication that their new e600/e700 would move away from motorola's MAX bus technology which is the real bottleneck.
Give a 1.5GHZ G4 a decent bus to access memory and you'll see it give even G5s a run for their money at similar clock speeds (let alone P4s).
That 167Mhz FSB (which is realy only an out of sync 133MHz bus) is the part to work on in top priority, not the megahertz. the only problem is that, if indeed they increase the FSB speed, Apple will have to redesign the motherboards (which could take time). Given that and the fact that R%D on the G5 motherboards and chipset has already been spent, I don't see Apple being very interested in Freescale's products.
Today they announced a ROADMAP... where they don't even consider putting dates onto anything past what is currently available. Nothing to see here, folks. Move along.
If it's cheap and powerful enough, it could be just right thing for laptops, especially for iBook. G4 is really power efficient, it propably takes a while before G5 gets any where close. Remember, you have to carry those batteries with...
Apple has already DDR capable, southbridgeless design. It's brilliant engineering in many ways. All current Macs are based on this Intrepid-northbridge. Should the e600/e700 have double-pumped 167MHz or 200Mhz bus, I think Apple can quite easily change Intrepid to support it. Afterall, the "output end" is already running at 333/400Mhz.
Remember, most highest-performance x86s are AMD Athlon XP-based and it has only 200MHz double pumped bus, which in marketing is 400MHz. P4s running "800MHz bus" have only really 200MHz bus (quad pumped). Everyone knows that AMD easily beats any P4 in most tasks, while running at lower clock rate.
This analogy kinda proves (IMHO) that e600 and e700, if they do materialize in timely fashion and are what they are supposed to be (scaling, yield and clock rate mostly), it might be good solution for certain Apple models.
Freescale is going to be separate company. It's not just Moto's semiconductor business any more. They have to develop real products and sell them, if they want to have income. They need products someone is willing to pay for. That's the good thing :)
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Fresh-Faced Recruit
Joined: May 2003
Nice Vaporware
Instead of going quietly into the night. Motorola is trowing out vaporware to get their names in print again.