IBM, NEC and others begin 64-bit processors push, rien que du bonheur.
The 970 would give Apple Computer Inc. a chance to deliver high-performance 32-bit systems that could later be upgraded to full 64-bit computers.
Besides the 64-bit capability, the PowerPC 970 includes IBM's first support for what Motorola calls the
Altivec instruction set and Apple refers to as its Velocity engine.
The 970 also sports a cache-coherent, 900-MHz processor bus capable of
data rates up to 6.4 Gbytes/second.
It will support
symmetric-multiprocessing configurations of up to 16 CPUs.
Unlike the original Power4, from which the CPU was derived, the 970 supports
only one internal processor core.
"Its performance will be in the upper reaches of any CPU."
Peter Glaskowsky, editor-in-chief of the Microprocessor Report
"Is the desktop crying out for 64-bit? Maybe not," said Peter Sandon, manager of PowerPC architecture at IBM Microelectronics. "But maybe that's because it's just not been available or it's been seen as expensive. I certainly think we are implementing it the way it should be done."
"Apple's in a better position than AMD to use it aggressively since they control their own OS."
Dean McCarron, principal of Mercury Research