©Joe Carson 8-14-00

Recently I was reading through some of those web reactions to the announcement by Extrem, a Swedish startup company of their plans to provide specially rebuilt G4 computers overclocked to 1.2 Gigahertz. Xtrem plans to use the same technique that Kryotech uses to force AMD processors up in speed, Peltier heat-transmission and liquid cooling. Ordinarily an announcement of a small company in effect buying Macs and reselling them as hopped up machines should have gotten some interest, but only in passing.

After a bit of reflection I realized that the only reason there is so much interest in Extrem in the Mac oriented media is for the simple reason that they are promising Macs that have clock speeds exceeding a gigahertz at a time when the Wintel world is bragging of up to 1.13 Gigahertz processors and the best Apple can provide is a plodding 500 Mhz. Apple announced 500 Mhz G4s back in August of 1999 and that is still where we are stuck at the present, albeit in dual processor Macs.

Since Extrem claims they are able to push a G4 from 500 MHz to 1.2 MHz (assuming they are correct...) this tells us something very interesting. Kryotech is only able to get at best about a 25% speed boost on an AMD processor by cooling it to -40 degrees Celsius. Extrem is getting a more than 100% speed boost on a G4 using the same technique. First, this tells us that an AMD processor (and an Intel processor as well...) is already heavily overclocked as a production unit. Why else would it produce so much heat and require up to 65 watts of power to drive it? It also tells us that the G4 is heavily underclocked. Why else would it run so "slowly" and require so much less wattage than an x86 processor? To be sure, the inherent inefficiencies of any CISC processor, such as the x86 designs, do require more power and they do produce more heat but 65 Watts for one model of AMD processor is rather extreme, even for something based on obsolete technology as is any x86 processor.

Now that brings up a question: what is the future of Apple and the PPC? Since we have seen no production G4 processors from Motorola faster than 500 MHz, there has been a call to get rid of Motorola and go elsewhere, to IBM and return to the G3, or even go to Intel and drop the PPC altogether. Of course this seems to me to be panic reactions since Motorola in fact has been sticking pretty much to its own schedule on its plans for the PPC family. It's just that it's not particularly fast enough to satisfy us at present. However, faster and more powerful PPC processors are still on the way. Motorola's Road Map for their processor design strategy is still unchanged and available at their web site as a downloadable PDF file.

There are hints that Motorola's announced G4e (the successor to the current G4) will be a watershed design in the battle between Intel and everyone else. AMD is forced to ape Intel's design so that they can make a processor that anyone will be willing to buy. Remember the slow and horrible death of the DEC Alpha as a viable processor? It was a good try and was even a good processor, but since it wasn't an obsolete x86 based CISC variant, it was effectively ignored by the computer industry. Only Apple has succeeded in surviving in such a bone-headed environment dominated by a love of obsolete technology. In effect, it is Apple's PPC choice against Intel's processor monopoly.

MOSR (Mac OS Rumors) reported on May 24, 2000 that Motorola had plans to release the G4e processor in September of 2000 at speeds of 600-750 MHz initially and they planned for it to reach 1 GHz by the end of 2000. MOSR was skeptical, but I personally have no reason to doubt that Motorola is pretty much on schedule for this rollout.

If Motorola does release the G4e as a production processor this September as has been planned, Apple will have something to tell us at Seybold. In fact, Jobs hinted in one magazine interview during MacWorld NY 2000 that Apple had some great products coming down the pipeline over the following six months. Jobs knows something and he is holding his cards close to his chest and putting on his best poker face.

Okay, so what will we see?

Time for me to pull out my Magic Seer's hat, put it on, chant the magic words... "Eenie Weenie, Chili Beanie, The Spirits are about to SPEAK!" (Apologies to Rocky and BullWinkle.)

Hmmm... well, Apple has already released dual processor Macs sooner than most of us expected, and there have been rumors for some time that "Mystic", a six slot Mac has been under development, and Motorola has not announced any changes from its plans to release the G4e processor around September. Also, they have already demo'd a G4e processor running at 780 MHz twice, once in late 1999 and again in early 2000. So, I will guess that we may see a dual processor Mac with six slots (3 standard PCI slots, 3 double speed slots) using the new G4e processor running at around 700 MHz, possibly faster. This machine will appear at Seybold and be a BIG hit. It is exactly what the pre-press publishing and graphics industry crowd have been screaming for ever since the end of the dual processor PowerMac 9600.

The cube may be released using a low speed (a mere 450 MHz and 500 MHz) G4e in place of the demonstrated G4. The G4e uses only 10 watts of power and not only will it perform about 20% better at a matched clock speed than a standard G4, it runs cooler making it a sensible choice for the compact and fanless "Cube".

Speaking of cooler running processors, the G4e will also be an ideal chip in lower speed versions as a processor for future iMacs and PowerBooks partly because it is a killer in performance but because it runs on so little power and produces so little heat. These new Macs will also appear sometime in the next 6 months.

In short, Steve has good reason to try to suppress a grin while holding those cards to his chest. I think he is going to show them to us over the next few months and if he doesn't say, "Read 'em and weep", he should. There will be much gnashing of teeth in the Wintel Hegemony when they scramble to try to find new ways to dismiss Apple as irrelevant again.

Oh yes, the current doom-sayers will have egg on their teeth and spinach in their teeth.

Better them than us.

joecarson@applelust.com