"The all-new iMac"

Apple has no iMac to sell at the moment, but you can give Apple your email address and they'll email you as soon as more information is available on the new iMac G5.

This iMac email notification page is linked from their main iMac page. I guess it's better to link to this than to the Apple Store, which only has this to say:

Apple has stopped taking orders for the current iMac as we begin the transition from the current iMac line to an all-new iMac line which will be announced and available in September. We had planned to have our next generation iMac ready by the time the inventory of current iMacs runs out, but our planning was obviously less than perfect. We apologize for any inconvenience to our customers.

It's likely we'll hear more about the iMac G5 on August 31.

1500 lineup for iPod mini in Tokyo

The introduction of the iPod mini worldwide was today, and 1500 of those crazy Japanese lined up in front of the Ginza Apple Store to get theirs. One man even braved the streets from 8:30 the night before, a wait of more than 12 hours. When the store finally opened the lineup was several hundred metres long.

Antares PowerPC G5 970MP dual-core?

Think Secret has posted an article outlining a rumoured IBM "Antares" processor. It is reported to be a dual-core version of the 970FX, with 1 MB L2 cache per core (versus 512 KB on the 970FX), as well as Altivec. The rumoured time frame for its rollout is sometime in 2005, with a clock speed of 3 GHz.

The original discussion is here, and the description of the rumoured chip is as follows:

The IBM PowerPC 970MP RISC Microprocessor is a dual-core, 64-bit implementation of the IBM PowerPC ® family of reduced instruction set computer (RISC) microprocessors that are based on the PowerPC
Architecture. This dual microprocessor, also called the PowerPC 970MP, includes a Vector/SIMD facility which supports high-bandwidth data processing and compute-intensive operations. The 970MP is also designed to support multiple system organizations, including desktop and low-end server applications, up through 4-way SMP configurations.
Note: The IBM PowerPC 970MP incorporates two complete microprocessors on a single chip, along with some common logic to connect these microprocessors to a system.

No mention is made of an integrated memory controller. An integrated memory controller is something many have been predicting for the next generation G5, but for a desktop it may not really be necessary. It may be more desirable for laptops however, to reduce overall power consumption.

And so it begins again for Virginia Tech

Benchmarking has begun on the new and improved 2200 CPU G5 Xserve based System X supercomputer at the Terascale Computing Facility at Virginia Tech. From their webpage:

System X Upgrade In Progress:

* Assembly - Completed!
* System Stablization - In Process
* Benchmarking - In Process

We can follow the progress of the benchmarking in this PDF (Table 3: Highly Parallel Computing), which is frequently updated by Dr. Jack Dongarra, one of the authors of the Top 500 Supercomputer Sites list. Public tours of the Terascale Computing Facility also begin today.

For those of you interested in the history of System X, there is a good article about it by Virginia Tech here (in which ironically they credit Dell for planting the idea in their heads), and a video by Apple here.

Virtual PC 7 details?

Scott asks, "Any news to what VP7 might include besides G5 support?"

Microsoft has not released full details about the upcoming 7th version of Virtual PC. However, besides the G5 compatibility, it reportedly will also feature increase overall speed compared to Virtual PC 6, as well as improved usability.

One rumour site claims that VPC7 will also include full native 3D graphic card support, but I will be very surprised if this turns out to be true. We'll see in a few months, but I definitely wouldn't count on it.

IBM measures power use of the Power Mac G5

IBM does provide some new G5 power data in a recent research article, titled Power Measurement on the Apple Power Mac G5.

Using a series of different benchmarks with a dual G5 970 2.0 Power Mac, the article provides various power usage ratings at different levels of CPU utilization. We see a maximum power dissipation of 79 Watts, with the MS_hot benchmark, which "executes exclusively out of the L1 cache, performing a tight loop of square root instructions".

As I mentioned in a previous article, the published typical power utilization of the G5 970 1.8 GHz (130 nm) is 51 Watts, and the maximum power has been estimated by some at 90+ Watts. (IBM doesn't usually publish maximum power ratings for the G5 for public consumption.) Given that the G5 970 2.0 GHz has a maximum power of 66 Watts, one might estimate the maximum power at well over 100 Watts. However, this IBM research article disputes those estimates, and measures the maximum power dissipation of the G5 970 2.0 at 79 Watts.

The truth may lie somewhere in between. The benchmark likely does not maximize power utilization completely, but it is possible the estimates of 100+ Watts for the G5 970 2.0 and 90+ Watts for the G5 970 1.8 may be too high. However, even if we were to assume the effective maximum power of the G5 970 1.8 is say 85 Watts (which is higher than the measured 79 Watts for the faster 2.0 GHz CPU), then we might guess that the effective maximum power of the G5 970FX 2.5 is also close to 85 Watts (since the typical power of the 970FX 2.5 is almost identical to the 970 1.8).

Extrapolating, one might guess that the G5 970FX 3.0 at the same voltage (as the 970FX 2.5) might come in at just over 100 Watts. And even if the voltage for the 3.0 needed to be boosted, it still could come in at the 110 Watt range, which although hot, is still quite acceptable for a desktop CPU.