Thursday, March 10, 2005

CHUD tools reveal Apple's 970MP Quad Power Mac

Apple's newest CHUD 4.1.0 toolset includes an updated MONster.app. This updated version includes clues for a new Apple Quad G5 Power Mac, which would utilize two dual-core 970MP chips.



The above picture shows the older version of MONster.app on the left and the new version on the right. Note the added capability for up to 4 processors (or cores). Also, if one searches the new MONster application, one can find a reference to "970MP". Typing grep -binary 970MP MONster.app reveals:

MONster.nib/keyedobjects.nib:879:71755:YPPC 970MP

Quad (dual dual-core) Power Macs (and Xserves) are coming. It's now just a matter of when. Hopefully they will be here by WWDC 2005.


[Update 2005-03-10]

The Processor pane in the Mac OS X System Preferences has also changed. With version 4.0.1 of the CHUD tools (top), the pane shows only the existing processors, and lists a "Clock Speed". With version 4.1.0 (bottom), the pane has changed to include 4 lines for (up to at least) 4 processor cores, and now lists a "Core Freq". (Note that the clock speed/core frequency is zero for my Cube, since its 1.42@1.7 GHz G4 7447A is not properly recognized.)

21 comments:

Anonymous said...

look like Chud 4.1 disepear from Apple web site....

Anonymous said...

Uh oh... I can hear Apple's lawyers getting ready to pounce.

Anonymous said...

Don't be stupid. This is stuff that Apple PUBLICLY released

Anonymous said...

Again Apple inovates as it was one of the 1st companies to bet on parallel processing while PC industry was "overclocking" CPUs till the melt point.
For the sake of the rest of us there still exists a company like Apple to point a light at the end of the tunnel. Surely, if Apple one day would sell quad CPUs the next week we will see frankenstein-PC-makers selling the same. And they're are not shame to copy what Apple do.

Eug said...

Apple is a great innovator, but I should point out that multi-core chips are nothing new. It's just new for Apple. (It's not as if Apple makes CPUs anyway.)

Anonymous said...

I think the point is that Apple is the first mainstream PC maker to do it. After all...

When Apple shipped the Power Macs, overnight they became the largest seller of RISC machines. Were they first? No, but they made the biggest impact.

When Apple shipped USB-only on the iMac, they jumpstarted the USB peripheral market. Were they first? No, but they pretty much started the market.

When Apple shipped OS X, they overnight became the largest UNIX vendor. Plenty of other UNIX systems, but none with the volume of Apple. Apple showed how UNIX on the desktop could work (and the Linux guys *still* don't get it).

When Apple ships dual-core processors, and effectively quad-CPU computers, it will further push software vendors to make their software as MP-aware as they can. I predict this will push the whole industry away from the "one big hot processor" model (finally!).

So Apple's not first, but they're the first large-scale deployment, big enough to cause shifts in the industry.

Eug said...

Well, both AMD and Intel have already announced dual-core desktop CPUs for 2005. In fact, benchmarks for some of them are already out. Now, even if Apple ships dual-core desktops first, it's not as if x86-land was caught off guard.

Indeed, I've always viewed Apple's emphasis of duals in the G4 Power Macs as more of a symptom of low clock speed woes with Motorola's chips rather than foresight into today's dual-core push.

Furthermore, I don't see an Apple quad (dual dual-core) machine as truly a mainstream machine. It's going to have very specific uses, but it will be (justifiably) high cost, and will compete with the similarly low volume PC quad market which already exists. In essense, it will help Apple penetrate into a workstation market for which it as been at a disadvantage. Maybe you're partially right in that it will somewhat expand this market too, but the bottom line is that Apple's core (no pun intended) Power Mac line will still be two cores per machine for the foreseeable future. The same will be true on the x86 side. Dual-core x86 will help the quad cause, but the single dual-core machine will be the bread and butter of the x86 workstation market.

The other question is... How important are quads to the Xserves? I think very much so, but can Xserves go quad and still be 1U? Or is Apple going to be releasing a new form factor for the Xserves?

Anonymous said...

Hi, do you know where I can find CHUD? I can't download the 4.1 version from anywhere!

Eug said...

Matt, the link for CHUD 4.1 on MacUpdate no longer works:

http://macupdate.com/info.php/id/8506

It seems the tools have been pulled by Apple. See my post here:

http://everythingapple.blogspot.com/2005/03/everything-apples-chud-story-on.html

Anonymous said...

And you don't know another website where I can download it?
You can't upload it on the web and post the link can you? :)

Eug said...

You can't upload it on the web and post the link can you?

No.

Anonymous said...

I guess you guys are pretty young, so perhaps you don't remember that there already was a Quad Processor Mac...around TEN YEARS AGO. Yeah, that's right. During the short-lived Mac Clone Era, a company called Daystar, which was originally known for building 68040 accelerators, came out with a quad-processor Power Mac. Of course, you only got full horsepower using applications that were optimized for it, and it was insanely expensive. Something like 10,000 or 12,000.

Anonymous said...

Not all of use are youngsteres. I remember drooling over the Daystar quad processor Mac very well.

However, as you stated, these systems were incredibly expensive, high-end photoshop/RIP workstations. Far from the from mainstream.

Currently, 3/4ths of Apple's PowerMac lineup is dual processor. Quite impressive. With the release of the 970MP, I wouldn't be surprised if every PowerMac, including the low-end model had at least one dual-core processor.

And with rumors that a 3GHz 970MP package generates the same amount of heat as it's lower-clocked ancestors, it's quite possible that 1.5-2GHz 970MPs may start showing up across Apple's entire product line, including Powerbooks.

Anonymous said...

Here's the new link to the updated version 4.1.1.

ftp://ftp.apple.com/developer/Tool_Chest/Testing_-_Debugging/Performance_tools/CHUD_4.1.1.dmg.bin

Eug said...

Here's the new link to the updated version 4.1.1.


Thanks Sonny, but I have already posted about it here.

Anonymous said...

I thought the point of dual core processors was that one dual core CPU would be recognized as ONE CPU.

That would negate the need to make software MP aware. I also thought that with OS X (and maybe only 10.3.X) the OS is what decided how to handle the processors and the applications would only see ONE but take advantage of BOTH.

So if/when apple launches a twin CPU machine that has two dual core CPUs, software manufactures will NOT need to write their applications to take advantage of four CPUs, the OS will handle that.

Did I miss the boat here?

Anonymous said...

"rumors that a 3GHz 970MP package generates the same amount of heat as it's lower-clocked ancestors, it's quite possible that 1.5-2GHz 970MPs may start showing up across Apple's entire product line, including Powerbooks"

Does this mean that dual core G5 PowerMacs may not need water cooling?

Anonymous said...

"rumors that a 3GHz 970MP package generates the same amount of heat as it's lower-clocked ancestors, it's quite possible that 1.5-2GHz 970MPs may start showing up across Apple's entire product line, including Powerbooks"

Does this mean that dual core G5 PowerMacs may not need water cooling?

Anonymous said...

"rumors that a 3GHz 970MP package generates the same amount of heat as it's lower-clocked ancestors, it's quite possible that 1.5-2GHz 970MPs may start showing up across Apple's entire product line, including Powerbooks"

Does this mean that dual core G5 PowerMacs may not need water cooling?

Anonymous said...

"rumors that a 3GHz 970MP package generates the same amount of heat as it's lower-clocked ancestors, it's quite possible that 1.5-2GHz 970MPs may start showing up across Apple's entire product line, including Powerbooks"

Does this mean that dual core G5 PowerMacs may not need water cooling?

Anonymous said...

The wispers on the street are all about the new Hybrid Power Mac.

The Hybrid Mac will had one Pentium D chip, and one IBM G5 970MP chip. (A Total of 4 cpu cores).

With the 'Universal Binary' code from Xcode, Rosetta and Microsoft Virtual PC, the new Hybrid Mac will be able to run Windows XP-64 and Mac OS X software seemlessly,at full 64-bit speed. With the included graphical themes, you won't know (and won't care) if a program is running on the Windows XP base, or the OS X base. The whole software world is yours...

Since both CPUs are Dual Core CPUs, the new Hybrid Mac will be firing on all 4 CPU cores at top speed!

The Hybrid Mac is an amazingly powerful tour-de-force, a ''Hell, YA - we can do Anything!'' coming soon from Apple.

With updated high speed DDR2 RAM, Serial ATA-300 3Gb/s Hard Drives, and your choice of nVidia 7800 or ATA 800 XL best of breed Graphics Cards - the Hybrid Mac is one wicked fast machine.

The big sell of the Hybrid Mac will be that the base model costs about the same as a 'regular' top-of-the-line PC, but it can do the job of both a PC and a Mac...