Powerbook G5 . . . where are you?

Thoughts?

Good point, there should be something new soon, I would think.

Feelings?

Hurt that I will not be able to buy one anytime soon, but indifferent in that I have already taken on a very full task load of other projects and efforts.

Psychic Predictions?

I think we can expect a PB with a lid that swivels around and locks down allowing it to be used as a tablet.

Recriminations for speculating on future Apple projects?

You should be burned at the stake :ebc: and I should be used as kindling :cry: for participating in the speculation by contributing my own predictions. Curse you for luring me into you evil trap! >:(

--DDTM

...support for extended desktop and NOT just mirroring...

...and two words: S/PDIF

tony b.

The power requirements and heat generation of the G5 make it ill-suited for portable applications. If you look at the G5 iMac, you can tell that its three fans are their for a reason and that it would be hard to shrink the thing to a more portable form-factor. I'm sure G5 powerbooks will come, but it make take time to create lower power G5 processors and compact systems to deal with the heat/power issues. And even if a first gen G5 powerbook appears, I'd avoid it until both the design and G5 processor technology matures a bit more. Just remember the Powerbook 5300 -- it was the first PPC powerbook, it appeared more than 2 years after the first PPC desktop and was not one of Apple better machines.

The first powerbook G5 might appear in 6 months, but the first good powerbook G5 might take more than a year to show up.

Theres also the sheer size of the iMac. It may be small, but its about 2 inches (5cm) thick, so it would weigh a ton. The battery would last about 30 min, and I get on just fine with my G4 PB, and if you really need the power, get an iMac or PowerMac for home.

I know you're all carried away with the G5 thing, but I still think dual-processor, low-speed(1GHz?) or single-processor, high-speed(eg 1.6GHz-ish) G4 PowerBooks are Apple's only option. The G5 iMac doesn't even have the G5 tower's surging, holy-crap-this-thing's-amazing feeling, most likely due to cooling tradeoffs. So, in reality, a G5 PowerBook would probably have to be really slow to keep it from giving people third degree burns, and therefore defeat the purpose of "upgrading" from the G4 to begin with.

Nothing says POWER like scars on my lap (conveniently matching the scars on my inner thigh from scalding hot McDonald's coffee) from a laptop that can makes a neat sizzling sound as you fingers type on the keyboard. Burns? That's what callouses are for!

--DDTM

Disco Inferno's right, theres no point to having a G5 PB for a while, because you would either lose so much power (reduce Freqency to about 1ghz, probably) to keep it cool, or you would set yourself, table, room, etc... on fire by turning it on. Plus, theres no real point to having a G5 PB, as those who could afford it, would already have a PM G5 or iMac G5, and wouldnt need power on that scale. Its a long way off, and untill whenever, pointless in developing, as it would be too expensive, and would give AMD64 performence. Stop fantasising. It doesnt exist, and wont do for a few years. So stop!

BURN! BABY, BURN!! ;ebc:

--DDTM

A 1.5GHz G4 is plenty fast for a portable IMHO. I see no "need" for a G5 powerbook. And of course there is the heat and power consumption. Heck my 800 G3 iBook works fine as a portable for me. I do big stuff on the desktop anyways.

Burrn baby burn... PowerBook infernoo!

You'r not gonna find a G5 'book until you can deal with the heat generated by the procc.

I registered only so I can make this point. The reason for having a portable with a G5 is so that you can use the more advanced programs that companies are developing especially for G5's as we speak. It's not only a question of excessively greater processing speeds required to run the programs adequately, it's that sometimes there's a limit to the generation of processor that you can use. For instance, I have a G3 iBook right now. Not only is it too slow to run Final Cut Pro, which is understandable, I couldn't if I wanted to, because for some reason it only runs on G4's and higher. If there were a fast enough G3, it stil wouldn't work. I want a laptop because of my lifestyle (I tend to be moving around a lot, and use my laptop in all sorts of places, not to mention am only living in one place for maybe 6 months at a run). But, I want a higher processor generation, and higher processor speeds, for the programs I KNOW I want to run once they're made.
And so they clearly should eventually make a G5 portable, and not just faster and faster G4's for portables and keep upping the generation of the towers. True, it will be a while before they manage. But speculating's just fun in the meantime. Like shaking the presents under the tree

I predict the powerbook G5 in 2005.. probably in May or June. Or, maybe more realisticly, they will be announced January 11th and ship around May. The PPC970fx doesn't generate that much heat, it's the very small space it generates heat in; that makes it hard to spread the heat around in tight quarters. I'm quite sure that the 970gx will make its debut in the PBG5 as well.

...and you'd have your "G5 to go."

I'm surprised there isn't a third-party suitcase for the G5 iMac.
Did I miss it?

tony b.

In order to properly cool the G5 CPU in a portable application Apple would need to extensively re-design the internal working of the notebook to accomodate the cooling system. With space being tight, that's a tough bill to crack.

One theory is that a small tunnel could draw cool air from the front of the powerbook and vent it out the back and sides, but in any case most users complain when thier notebooks have loud fans, and the G5 will almost for sure need to have the fan on at all times. Not to mention any cooling methos takes up valuable space in a notebook which is one reason why many notebooks tend to run on the warm side after an hour or so compared to a desktop which has room to spare for airflow.

I agree most people don't need a G5 laptop yet. The greatest thing about Apple's G5 systems is the throughput. The ability to use fiber-optic NICs and additional PCI-X cards for pro video editing, or even high capacity RAM. All of which require expandability, something laptops are always limited at offering. The G5 is capable of so much more than just running high end software. People that harness all the G5s power need expandability. Most other people will be more than happy with dual-core G4s for the time being.

I disagree. The G5's improved effeciency and the improved AltiVec makes it worth it alone. 64-bit is also a nice thing to have when processing large amounts of data.

I disagree. The G5's improved effeciency and the improved AltiVec makes it worth it alone. 64-bit is also a nice thing to have when processing large amounts of data.

A: 64bit does not in itself make the machine any faster. It can actually be slower in some ways. What it does do is alllow the machine to access more memory.

B: The altivec call are all the same as those on the 745x as I recall.

The 970FX does not run cool enough to be in a powerbook, it disipates about 30% more power then 7447 (current processor used). The next round of updates will be faster G4's in the 1.67GHz range (the next multiplier up).

Right, it does produce more heat. The 970gx would probably be used in any upcoming Powerbook G5 however.
The AltiVec in the G5 is actually two regular 128-bit altivec units linked so they can be twice as fast and process 256-bit vectors as well.
I agree that 64-bit is slower sometimes, there is too much overhead when processing 32-bit. 48-bit processing would have been my pick for memory-performace balance. As far as I know though, the 970 series is built to process 32-bit instructions about twice as fast because 2 can be put in a 64-bit path. I know this always doesn't work like that, but it results in an overall performance increse.

That is nothing but a load of bull for two reasons:
1)2 32bit strings do not equal one 64 bit string. 4294967297 32bit strings equal one 64bit string. If 2x32bit = 1x64bit, then a DP G4 would be 64bit, and the DP G5 would be 128bit. They aren't.

2)It treats 32bit code the same way a G4 does, meaning when using 32bit code, its nothing but a 1.8-2.5ghz G4.

Also, for the same reason, 2 128bit Altivecs do not equal a 256bit Altivecs. 2x128bit Altivec = 2x128bit Altivec. One for each processor.

No, 32+32 does not equal 64. I'm just telling you what I read, not what I spin on it. The performance boost from the PPC7455 to the 970 is in the architecture; the 970 when doing 32-bit isn't an emulation of the G4, but rather a code-compatable version with improved architecture. The 970 in 32-bit mode actually would probably be most like a G3, considering that IBM made the 750 chips.
The 970's altivec unit is a more robust and extended version of Motorola's that does not have 256-bit vector capability, you're right. I was confusing it with a future version of AltiVec. It is a fact that there are 2 VMX units in the 970, effectively doubling performance. There are 2 of them per core, not the cumulative number in the system.

I'm thinking that they could use maybe an earlier generation of the 970, by using maybe a slower proccessor (like maybe a 1.4 or 1.3GHz Proccessor.) it is a possibility that the could just lower the speed of the Proccessor. But here's the thing, it will still out-perform the 1.4 / 1.5GHz G4 due to the fact of the high bus speed. so... they could just lower the voltage so it would be cooler, but it will still be able outperform the G4 due to not only the 64-bit architecture, but also the fast Frint-side bus, and a large amount of cache would help too....

A G5 has only two speed adjustments, not a whole list of PLL settings like G4's do with the 60x bus. G5's run at 2x or 2.5x the bus speed. So you cant have just any speed. The newer G5's run cooler thent he first ones, but still not cool enough. The G5 also right now only has a 512K L2, no L3 cache. The memory is fast enough so that it isnt needed so much. The whole purpose behind a big L2 and L3 cache is so the CPU doesnt wait on the memory (like in a G4 with its slow bus).

And yeah, a 64bit machine doesnt work like that. You can have 32bit addressing mode and 64bit on the 970, you cant make 32bit strings into 64bit like that. And saying it will be like a 750 because they are both made by IBM is kind of dumb. IBM also made 7400's, does that mean they are like a 970 also? no. The 970 is based off the Power line of chips, not the 750 or 74xx line of chips.

The 970 is a PPC. The whole PPC architecture was designed from the start to be 64bit compatible. And it is just like an overclocked G4 in 32bit, nothing more. Trust me on this one, I've got one.

You cant say a G5 is just an overclocked G4, because it isnt. Yes it uses the PPC instruction set, just like previous PPC chips, but it is NOT based on the same core in any way. Go read the documents on IBM's site and compair them to those from Mot. The only thing that is the same is the instruction set.

I said it was a G4 in 32bit mode. In 64bit, its completly differnt.

Shut up, quit squabbling and get back to the topic.

I can see how you lot got down to arguing about G3s, G4s and G5s but you really shouldn't have... this is a thread about PowerBooks, not processors' differences.

When I said that the G5 would outperform the g4 at lower speeds. that would only be in 64-bit apps which would take advantage when more come out. and like I said... Because of the speed of the bus and the ram, It would out perform the G4. However, for all we know, apple could be helping to develope an SATA Laptop Hard drive, and Superdrive. Plus, they may even have removable Modules and Video chip and ram upgrades available, just like Alien-ware.

i'm guessing that we will get 1.6 and 1.9 models revealed this january, and that they will be damn good performers as well

if you guys spent some time reading about what IBM is doing, notebook specifically you would have realized that by looking at the heat and power consumption of the G5 in a desktop is in many ways irrelevant.

whats being implemented in the G5s is a "powertune" system, similar to that found in the dothan (aka pentium M, which i might add would out perform the absolute top of the line athlon64s and pentium 4s when clocked at about 2.6+ghz, unfortunetly there is no motherboard support to do it) basically the powertune system drops the speed down to one 64th of the speed after 3 cycles, so that it uses less power, with virtually no effect on performance.

the G5 went from 66 to 50 watts with the new 90nm proccess, that is a very significant drop, when AMD dropped their cores down to a 90nm proccess i beleive it did next to nothing

anywho, a 970fx with powertune is more than cool enough to fit into a notebook, prolly wont even need fans unless there is some heavy proccessing

on top of that, it seems that things are further along than that, it seems apple is having trouble getting the heat situation worked out in conjunction with 256mb of nvram, something i'm a litle exited about myself being the graphics lover i am. but a gpu with a good deal of ram gets too be quite the hot little bugger

http://www.powerpage.org/cgi-bin/WebObjects/powerpage.woa/wa/story?newsID=12723
http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1759,1616985,00.asp

If you look at things that both IBM and Freescale are doing, I am really thinking the laptops wont have 970's in them at all. There is other processor lines being developed for use in a mobile application. And 50W is a ton of power dissipation for a laptop. Consider a 1.2GHz 7447 puts out about 19W if I recall correctly.

i dont know what you guys are all worried about, a G5 laptop really isnt that hard to imagine, while yes, i had my origional ideas that there would be some sort of G5 mobile based off of a 64 bit G3 based cpu, but thats not gunna happen.

" In fact, Apple has decided to officially respond to this talk, with Tom Boger, director of Apple's worldwide product marketing, telling The Mac Observer, "You're not going to see a G5 in a laptop anytime soon." He says the G5 itself is not thin enough, and that there are "great challenges" in shoehorning it into a laptop. Boger says he doesn't expect one this year, and wouldn't even guess as to when they might hit shelves. The funny thing is, as As the Apple Turns recalls, Tom made similar statements about the iMac G5 in June, citing a "heck of a challenge" getting the G5 into something as small as the previous iMac design. Interestingly enough, the iMac G5 was originally slated for July. "

"Either Apple makes no qualms about fibbing in order to surprise its customers, or it keeps engineering and marketing separated by lock and key"

http://www.geek.com/news/geeknews/2004Sep/bma20040902026776.htm

http://www.lowendmac.com/misc/05/0124.html#1 ?

What would be the point of releasing a G5 Powerbook at this point? The majority of people use their laptops (either x86 or Mac) to surf the web, play MP3's, do light office work (word processing, presentation graphics) and occasionally watch DVD's. I understand that there are high-end programs which demand a G5, but for the money, you'd be better off to get a desktop machine for that. Even if Apple were able to put a G5 in a laptop, there would be a massive speed hit. Not to mention the potential costs which would accompany such a G5 laptop, as if a complete retool of the interior of the machine is necessary, higher R&D costs will have to be recovered.

Does anyone remember the IIfx? That was a radical new design for it's time. It was blazingly fast. It pulled stumps compared to anything the big players had on the market. It elicited gallons of drool from computer aficionados (especially those in the Mac world). It cost, however, in excess of $10 000USD when it was introduced.

Apple is doing well with it's current line of machines. The G5 is an exciting development in the Macintosh world, however, it is a very new development. Apple is playing it smart keeping this processor family out of it's notebook line for the time being. Does everyone remember what happened when Apple rushed a laptop to market that wasn't fully prepared for the task? (Can you say Powerbook 5300*?) It's better to watch how the G5 does in a desktop, where if it does burn out, Apple can replace it relatively simply (as compared with trying to replace a laptop CPU). Right now, Apple has fairly strong customer confidence. Rushing a machine to market right now could be disasterous for Apple, not only in the notebook market, but for the company as a whole. In such fierce competition in the computer and portable music player market, Apple can't afford another Powerbook 5300 situation on it's hands.

Just my $0.02.

The Czar

* I do realize that the main issue with the PB5300 Series was the batteries provided to Apple by Sony. However, you ask an end consumer what happened and he'll respond "My computer broke." He associates the computer with Apple/Macintosh. He doesn't care that it was Sony's fault, Apple's image is already tarnished in his eyes.

The majour difference now compared to then is that there are 2 seperate laptop lines. The iBook is the place where everything is econominical and proven, the powerbook is the breakout platform. And don't say that the Powerbook G5 would be too drastic, either. It's been at least over 3 years since Apple first got a G5, I'm sure they've made one by now. The situation would be different if we still had the same giant chip the first 970 was back in 2003. That ate up about 40 watts of power, and PC makers find ways to cool 3.6 GHz 100 watt intel beasts in a laptop's chassis.

Uhm... there isnt a laptop with a 3.6GHz P4 in it. There are some with 2.8GHz P4's, and lots of cleeries at 2.8GHz, but the celery is of course gutless, but still hot. My HP has a sticker on the bottom saying to NOT use it as a laptop because it will burn you. I have measured the heat sink (which is visable through the side of the case) and it runs at about 65-73C when I check it with one of our thermocouples at work. If you read around, the iMac G5's have been reported to have cooling problems, and they are thicker then a powerbook is, and they are up in the air where its easy to get cool air through them.

Uhm... there isnt a laptop with a 3.6GHz P4 in it.

Oh really?

http://reviews.cnet.com/HP_Pavilion_zd8000/4507-3121_7-31213300.html?tag=tab

Ok, I stand corrected. Although, I would not classify that as a laptop, more of a moveable desktop. It weighs *12.1 pounds*, thats almost twice the weight of the 17" powerbook, and its half the weight of an iMac. I suppose if you want apple to make a laptop that weighs as much as their desktops, then yes they could make a G5 powerbook right now. However, a laptop is a portable computer. Its not designed for heavy crunching and intense graphic work. Plus, lets say apple didmake one, what would the real world purpose for it be? What is it that you do on a powerbook that requires so much processing power that it requires a G5? G4 are clocking up close to 2GHz, and run FAR cooler then a G5, and cost a lot less as well. If your doing something that a G4 that fast wont do, then your going to need a dual proc desktop anyways. Oh, and lets not forget the other bottle necks in a laptop. Besides the slow hard drives (you would need a 10k rpm 2.5" drive to equal the performance of a 7200rpm desktop drive), you also have a slower video chipset, and battery life to worry about. The battery life of that HP is laughable (hell even my HP laptop mentioned above only runs for 1.5 hours off a battery with its energy saver features on, my iBook will run for 4 hours).

Why ever in the world would you need a G4 in a portable computer when a G3 is almost as fast? Wasn't the G4 of 2000 considered too power-hungry to be put in a notebook? Yet the 1 inch Powerbook G4 came out of it. And yet again, why in the world do people think the G5 is so hot? It's not! As for the G5's cost, IBM makes and also uses them, providing what probably is a lower cost considering the volume they make. Put this in perspective with Freescale's dual core G4: They currently have 0 volume (or really any other kind) buyers for that chip, while IBM has at least 3, not including their own server lines. IBM is also ancient for a computer company, they hold so many patents that the reduced cost in licensing for various fabbing techniques probably reduces the cost of the G5 below the G4 by itself.

A G3 is not almost as fast as a G4. OSX uses altivec pretty heavily for many functions. G4's also have the availability of a L3 cache. I prefer a G3 for a small laptop, because of battery life.

As for the titanium, G4's of that era did not run hot. Apple used passive cooling in the towers, because the procs put off practically no heat. The 7410 at 500MHz put consumed 9.5W peak, 4.2W typical. A 1.2GHz 7457 is 15.8W typical and 22W peak. The 7447 at 1.42GHz consumes 18.3W typical and 25.6W peak. Thats how apple can use them in a machine that is 1" thick, compared to high end PC laptops that are in the range of 2-2.5" thick.

*Power Consumption numbers obtained from Freescale Semiconductor.

EDIT: Forgot to add information on the PPC970. The 970 has some pretty advanced power management. The high side to this is that it can stay cool if needed. The downside is it looses performance. The way it is able to cool is because of its nap modes. At 2.5GHz, the 970FX consumes 100W peak, while in standard nap mode it consumes 40W, and in deep nap mode in consumes 30W. These nap modes not only adjust the frequency of the processor, but also the core voltage. On a G5 system, there are selections for power management, much like apple laptops. When it automatic, it goes into nap mode when ever it can, and you go to do something, it ramps up and does it, then goes back into nap mode. But this makes the machine feel sluggish in some cases, especially games. If you look at benchmarks, the difference in benchmarks between the "automatic" and "performance" settings can be huge, by as much as 40% in some cases. Now if they released say a 1.6GHz G5 Powerbook, power consumtion would obviously be lower then the 100W peak of the 2.5GHz chip. I am sure apple is working with IBM on a G5 Powerbook, but there are faster G4's available, so I doubt the next speed jump will be to a G5, but rather to a faster G4, up to 1.7 or 1.8Ghz maybe.

Where do you get the number 100 watts? My own testing running many loops of altivec fractal, gcc, and Maya shows a peak power consumption under 60 watts. Thank you, however, for giving me numbers for the G4s. I did not know that about the early G4 processors. 14 watts is the peak number I have seen cited for the 970gx, from multiple sources.

That number is straight from IBM's website. You can get lots of info on the 970 here:

http://www-306.ibm.com/chips/techlib/techlib.nsf/products/PowerPC_970_and_970FX_Microprocessors

And as for your machine, if you have a dual 2.5, and it shows the power consumption, you need to go to energy settings and set it to performance, instead of automatic. with automatic you have the cpu going in and out of nap mode. run dnetc to get the cpu really working, the others that you listed dont feed the processor non-stop, its spurts of data. dnetc (distributed.net client with ORG disabled via the work precesdence option in settings) will feed it a solid stream od data.

That link didn't prove very useful, but after searching on the rest of the IBM website, I see that the 100w figure is the theoretical maximum of the 970fx running 1.3 volts at 2.5GHz. I don't exactly know what Apple does now, but I'm pretty sure that they run them at 1.2v, and the theoretical maximums are not ever reached. However, when the G5's clock and voltage is dropped, heat output drops in an exponential curve. This whole power usage thing looks fishy, because I know for a fact that the original 970 emits less than 90 watts at full load. It's more like 55. The whole issue of the desktop G5's heat is not that important in this thread, however.

Just imagine for a minute that a 970gx powered the next powerbook. They called it a G5 (which it is), made a slighly different case design to freshen things up and make everything widescreen, have the 13" run at 1.5GHz and the others at 1.8GHz and your battery life is still the same. Would you complain?

Oh I would only complain if it was some huge bulking machine. Which apple wouldent do, they would just wait until the processor is ready for that application.

And as I said, in the desktops (tower and iMac) they use a pretty aggressive power managment curve. They go to nap whenever they can when on automatic mode, and they run very cool when in this mode. But if somebody was really working their machine, they need to set it to performance, so the processor doesnt go into nap mode. However, when you do this, heat output goes up a lot, and you can hear the fans spin up to compensate when your loading it up (when running dnetc for instance). I am not sure what core voltage apple runs the procs at when at peak, but the core voltage doesnt stay at any one voltage afaik. It changes with the processor speed. The bus speed also changes, the 1.25GHz bus for the dual 2.5 only runs at 1.25 when the proc is fully ramped up. Otherwise it also declocks, thereby reducing heat (and performance). The G5 systems are really complex machines, almost too complex in some ways.

For the links, here is the exact page that I got the 100W info from. It was with the 2.5GHz 970FX set to 1.3V core:

http://www-106.ibm.com/developerworks/library/pa-powerenv/

It has a full description on how the napping mode works.

Also, i am not saying apple wont come out with a G5 powerbook tomorrow, as I dont have that kind of inside info. I am just saying that people should be more patient then they are. A 1.5GHz G4 powerbook is more then enough for most people. If your doing heavy video editing or something then I can see the need for a faster proc, but stuff that is that heavy should be done on a desktop anyways. There are technical reasons why a G5 powerbook isnt out yet. I am not sure which version of the 970 the iMac G5 uses, but they run fairly warm under heavy load and they are much thicker then a powerbook would be.

I know that. What I was trying to say is the Powerbook G5 is to be powered by a PPC 970gx which runs at 14 watts. I don't know if that's peak or average, that's the number they gave me.

Where did you get that number? I cant find much anything in ways tech specs on a the 970GX on IBM's site. Just brief mentions of it as an upcoming chip.

Internal sources at Apple forwarded me an overview of Apple's 2005 product considerations.