Author: Will Singleton
Date: 19:17:14 10/18/99
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On October 18, 1999 at 21:38:14, Ray MacFadyen wrote: >In an australian magazine there is a story about the new Powermac G4,it says it >is a 128 bit machine that can calculate one billion floating calculations per >second and is reported to outperform the pentium 3 600 by roughly three times. >Does anyone know anything about this machine,would it be three times as fast for >chess programs. >My next question is slightly off topic,I hope no one is offended,in australia >3 months ago 64 megs of sdram was $80,it has now risen to $250,an increase of >over 3x,is this happening in the rest of the world and if so what is the reason >for it. >Hope someone can answer these questions. >Ray MacFadyen Well, firstly, they are talking about the "real" G4, not the 400mhz version on sale now. The 450-500mhz versions have the new design with the faster throughput. I don't believe they will be available until Jan or Feb, if then. Apple is and has been famous for its inability to get product out on time, losing customers en masse. The machine has a vector processing unit which allows it to deal with the fp calcs 128-bits at a time. I believe this also affects integer processing, but not as much relative to other processors. Why, I don't know. But you have to use special variables and programming techniques to fully exploit its capabilities. I do not believe it is three times faster than the p-600 for integer apps, more like about the same or slightly slower. Also, the Athlon-700 is out now. :) Memory prices go up and down. Earthquakes in Taiwan, etc. Will
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