Terrasoft has pre-announced a PPC-based workstation.

4 "power architecture cores". This is most likely the same board IBM has showed at power.org events for the last 2 years, that's finally coming to market. That had 2 970MPs and a U4, i.e. similar to the quad G5 design.

Pricing and more detailed specs on June 10th. Until then, this is all that's known:

# 4 Power architecture cores.
# Deskside tower chassis.
# Surprisingly quiet.
# Up to 32 GB RAM.
# Up to 4 SAS drives.

No price yet.

I think, it's the IBM designed machine.

Interesting will be:

+ Pricing
+ Speed
+ Which memory controller
+ power consumption
+ Hack for X?

CPC945, there is no other option for 970MP.
Lots. 32W at 1.7GHz and 100W at 2.5GHz.

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Matt Sealey

hmm, that looks interesting. lacking hardware specs or info. pics would be nice.

but if its the only powerpc deskop, what choice is there, gotta have one :-D

matt

You'll have specs next week.

Most likely it is more or less the same hardware that IBM p185, but with a full 4 cores and U4 (CPC945). SAS provided with the IBM IPR controller, etc.

Firmware will most likely be SLOF, it'll be interesting to see if they do a newer source release for it though.

CPC965 unavailable?
Also I would love to see two of them in the PowerStation. For each PPC970MP (Quad channel DDR2).
No progress since 2005?

I see no evidence that this chip ever existed beyond a release date (March 2007) and zero word after that. Even the 970GX (lower-power, lower-clock single-core chip) disappeared after sampling, despite having been "released". They were supposed to be companion devices, the CPC965 apparently being a single-core compatible northbridge.

It's therefore unlikely that a quad-core workstation uses a 970GX (the only update after the 970MP) and a CPC965.

As far as anyone on the outside is concerned, IBM dropped them to concentrate on POWER5+ and POWER6 which would net them far more valuable business.

Nobody's seriously using the 970 lines since we worked on the OSW, besides IBM themselves. Maybe they will make a comeback. The TSS deal sounds a lot like a PASemi-went-down-the-pan reaction - I had some rumours about a PASemi system coming out through them but that just isn't going to work. TSS need to satisfy people they promised these systems to..
You seem to know more about it than I do; what do you think?

Since Apple dropped the chip, development also seems to have been dropped. Our efforts through Power.org and with IBM actual came to nothing much but a board design that was too expensive and too hot (have you ever tried drawing 200W of heat off a motherboard? I'm surprised the Apple G5s don't glow like light bulbs..) to ever build - not because of our design but because of IBM's extortionate pricing (if you check the prices for a 2.5GHz 970MP you'll notice it's $300 a chip. Add a $60 Northbridge, add more for Broadcom support chips..), and nobody cared enough about to want one to test, evaluate and sell as TSS want to with this new board. Except TSS.. but we couldn't afford to make the splash just for them, we needed IBM and Power.org behind it.

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Matt Sealey

Have a look...

www.genesi-usa.com/files/power.org/DP-WG.pdf

There is the plan. We hope it helped/helps them in some way. TSS was in Power.org at the time we prepared that document -- and in the same Working Group. They were developing their tabletPC idea at time.

We decided not to go ahead with the OSW. First, the 'Disruptive Technology' argument has two parts. There are sustaining technologies and disruptive technologies. BTW, who is being sustained? The industry leaders. Certain technologies reinforce the power of the industry leader. Others disrupt that position. Upstart companies that are trying to break into the big leagues either sustain or attempt to disrupt. There is a scoring system about whether something 'new' is a sustaining or disruptive. A developer workstation/desktop machine was not in synch with the bigger IBM vision. We decided fitting into the smaller IBM Microcontroller framework to be a 'sustainer' was not that rewarding. The latest Tundra situation (and the general status of Power.org) is further evidence of the level of serious interest from the industry/ecosystem leader.

IBM has its head in the clouds. In spite of IBM, we wish TSS success.

R&B

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http://bbrv.blogspot.com

Before or after Apple purchased them?
I know nothing ... it was _only_ a question ...
The only thing I know is, that the power consumption was 100W (in 2005, one CPU).

Though I would really like such a system a couple of years ago, is it still relevant now? The current trend is towards good CPU performance/power ratio, and from what I understand the PPC970 just doesn't cut it. It would perhaps be much more efficient (AND cheaper) to have a low-power SMP system using 8641/8640/whatever CPUs. 64-bit is only relevant in *some* cases -in fact, compiling apps for 64-bit when there is no need can in fact degrade performance. Unless someone needs absolutely *huge* amounts of memory, I doubt that 32-bit will not suffice. 32-bit is anything but dead. In any case, I too wish them luck, if the price is right, I might think of buying one too.

Also, IMHO the greatest show-stopper for such a system would be the uncertainty about the future of the specific CPU. It would be nice to have TSS and/or IBM commit to a future revision of PPC970, perhaps at a higher frequency/more cores/less power/etc. Otherwise, it will be outperformed very soon -if not already.

I love PPC, but I need more than I did 2 years ago.

I would like to have a dual 8641D 1.33GHz system and a PWRficient-style eeePowerPC Notebook

i would like to have a dual 8641D 1.33GHz system and a PWRficient-style desktop, file server, and laptop :-D i dont see myself buying another pc or x86 computer.

matt

The funny thing is, a Power6 4.0 GHz system (JS22) needs less power than a 970MP 2.5 GHz one (JS21).

tarbos:
I'm not surprised at all.

I mean, the G5 is ancient 2003 technology.. I can't understand
why anyone would want that CPU today.

Alot has happened since 2003.. Even in the PowerPC market.

funny, they say its an ideal replacement for an apple powermac g5, but its the same thing. 100 watts per cpu :(