 |
Nov. 23 - Nov. 30, 2003 |
New Power Mac G5
Rumour has been realized in the long-awaited surprise
Originally Published: 2003-07-06
Very few of us have probably noticed that the MacWorld has been cancelled, or at least replaced with something else. Abandoning its policy of announcing important news, such as the introduction of new hardware or software, at the MacWorld, Apple unveiled some of the hottest novelties of this year at the Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) in San Francisco.
The showstoppers were the new Power Mac G5, the first 64-bit Macintosh equipped with IBM's PowerPC 970 CPU (derived from the server versions), much rumoured about ever since their announcement last November. A long-awaited surprise, due to a little mistake.
It's ironic that Apple's most significant desktop announcement since the arrival of the original iMac was heralded by a distinctly uncharacteristic information leak. For less than 30 minutes last week, the specifications and prices of the newly announced Apple G5 were accidentally posted on the Apple Web site.
The new Power Mac, called by Jobs "the fastest personal computers in the world" are expected in the next 12 months. They adopt one or two PowerPC 970 processors ranging from 1.6 and 2 GHz, a 1 GHz front-side bus, 400 MHz DDR SDRAM, PCI or PCI-X bus, AGP 8X port, Serial ATA interface, USB 2.0 and FireWire ports, and support for IEEE 802.11g and Bluetooth 3GHz models.
The new G5 are a significant turning point for Apple, as the growth of the previous generation, the G4, had been going slowly for some time now.
The PPC970 can run the current 32-bit applications as well as 64-bit ones that will of course require some rewriting in order to unlock the full potential of the new architecture.
Leaving technicalities aside - on Apple's Web site, to be precise - it is worth noting that the new processor includes an optimized Altivec unit and 2 floating point units. Also, the architecture of the new system includes a 1-GHz front-side bus for each processor (a remarkable improvement over the PowerMac G4), with a controller moving data among the various subsystems without penalizing performance. Moreover, the new PowerMac G5 can manage up to 8 GB 400-MHz, 128-bit SDRAM DDR (throughput of 6.4 Gbps), with strong benefits for the whole system.
Page 1/...Page 2
|
| Home / Back to Top |
|
|
 |
|
|
</ td>
