More than 2 Processor Support in Panther?

[Sun Baked]

Dual processors are probably the limit for the current U3 chip (think of all the pins on the darn memory controller for a 3 or 4 CPUs). Remember the pin/trace counts go up with each CPU, they're no longer shared.

To scale beyond a couple CPUs may require a NUMA architecture, RIO or HT fabric switch, etc.

 

[tpjunkie]

um...

I don;t think apple would make a 4 processor Pmac. Imagine having to pay $6000.00 entry-level for a 4 processor pmac

If its got 4 processors, it ain't an entry level mac- it would be a midlevel workstation, and that isnt an unfair price

 

[Pete_Hoover]

Re: um...

Originally posted by tpjunkie
If its got 4 processors, it ain't an entry level mac- it would be a midlevel workstation, and that isnt an unfair price

I know alot of people can't afford it(duh). I was simply stating that the entry level of the four-processor variety of Powermacs would be that expensive. I did not specifically state that these four processor pmacs would be the entry-level for the whole powermac line. Sorry you misunderstood me.

 

[PowerBook User]

Re: Re: woot!

Originally posted by crenz
My auntie's friend has a brother whose postman is a cousin of the grandma of a senior engineer at Apple. This very reliable source told me of an exciting new product at Apple for kids: The iBake will be a totally new multifunctional toy for children, featuring a total of four G5 processors, overclocked to run at 2.5 GHz. Two G5's each are teamed up to power one of two black circular interfaces seen on the product whose purpose has not been determined yet. The best is that Apple manages to run those four G5's without any fan at all! Jonathan Ive commented to a selected group of reporters that "this time, we're not avoiding heat issues, we're creating them on purpose". Whatever that is supposed to mean.

The picture (stolen from Apple's secret labs) seen at

http://www.erzi.de/katalog/images/products/10690_Kochplatte-KLgr.jpg

clearly shows that a number of bluetooth accessories will be available as well since I see no wires attached. Also, there don't seem to be any mouse buttons anymore -- another innovation from Apple.

SCNR

Cool! Now we can cook dinner on our Mac as we use it!

 

[PowerBook User]

It will be intersting to see the configurations of the next Xserves. We just might end up with a quad processor version (although I wouldn't count on it). Even just adding a G5 to the Xserves would really improve performance.

 

[nuckinfutz]

I'm not suprised to see support in the OS for n Processors. There's an assumption that we're talking "Physical" Processors but in 5 years we'll be using "Physical" Processors split into "Logical" CPUs.

Someday soon you will have a Dual Processor machine that has two cores per processor and Multithreading to each core for the equivalent to an Octo CPU system. The OS will need to be able to handle this and schedule threads accordingly.

I'm reading that Sun is working on future processors with 4 cores and multithreading to each core. Hows a 32CPU "Logical" system sound? Sounds pretty yummy to me. The beauty to is you keep the packaging low and to the applications...they never know the difference.

 

[ddtlm]

tpjunkie:

$6000 for a quad G5 sure is unfair, for Apple! It would need a complex custom memory controller (imagine 4 FSB's and 4 channels of RAM on one chip), and complex custom motherboard (imagine supporting all the lines for above mentioned chip), and it would have to deal with the effects of being a small-volume item. Very expensive.

G5's are not suited to affordable quad-CPU machines IMHO. Opteron does better because the CPUs each have a manageable number of pins and there is no separate memory controller. Xeon is less costly to go 4-way, but also a lot slower with a 4-way shared FSB.

 

[ffakr]

Originally posted by Pete_Hoover
I don;t think apple would make a 4 processor Pmac. Imagine having to pay $6000.00 entry-level for a 4 processor pmac.

that's not a very good argument.
YOUR REAL argument is 'who will pay $6000 for a Mac'. That makes sense considering the current personal computer market.
The real questions you should be asking are, do people pay $6000 for computers, and is $6000 a good price for a very fast unix box??

The answer is a resounding yes to both of those questions.
I have researchers in this building who would buy these like hotcakes if they only cost $6000. It's a much better deal than this $99,000 four cpu Sun workstation or even this $18,000 Dell quad xeon 2.5GHz server without an Operating System
(I had to pick a Dell server because they don't make quad processor workstations. the server had 4 mid-power Xeons, 512MB of memory, no raid, one 15K 18GB hard drive and a scsi card for the drive, 1 CDR/DVD combo drive, and NO OS because it would be Redhat or a very expensive Windows Server license and I didn't want to make the Dell more expensive just to bolster my point)

 

[ddtlm]

ffakr:

Yeah I would have bought a $6000 quad G5 the day it became available. Probably a lot of people would. This coming from a guy who decided not to get a dual G5 for $3000.

Now wandering off topic, speaking to noone in particular...

Apple could actually have done a quad-G5 semi-affordably if they had designed the dual-G5 memory controller chip with a fast hypertransport (or similar) connection that would go unused in the duals, but would allow two such memory controllers to be linked to make a quad. However this extra complexity would increase average memory latency for the quad, so it would be somewhat slower at single-CPU tasks than duals or singles. Most companies doing quad-CPU machines have large-cache chips to put in them to offset that memory slowdown, for example all Opterons are 1MB L2, Xeon MP's all have at least 1MB L3, and other companies like Sun have chips with 8MB L2's each.

 

[Rincewind42]

Originally posted by ddtlm
$6000 for a quad G5 sure is unfair, for Apple! It would need a complex custom memory controller (imagine 4 FSB's and 4 channels of RAM on one chip), and complex custom motherboard (imagine supporting all the lines for above mentioned chip), and it would have to deal with the effects of being a small-volume item. Very expensive.

I think you may be over engineering a bit. You could do a 4xG5 system and the only chip you'd have to change would be the U3 controller to have pin outs for 2 more CPUs and internal logic to route to two more CPUs. You wouldn't need to change the pin outs to the memory system. I don't imagine this would be cheap, but between this redesigned U3 and 2 more G5 CPUs I would expect this to come in around $1K retail. Now if you want to throw in a quad-channel memory controller (4 RAM chips per upgrade) then that would increase the cost also, but probably not to the tune of another $2K.

So I think that if Apple really wanted to do a 4 way G5 system they could do it for four to five thousand. The third and fourth CPUs almost certainly wouldn't give as much bang for the buck as the second one, but when you need more speed you need more speed. Should Apple actually build such a system, I doubt that they would build it expecting it to be a small volume item, and even if you can just compare to the Xserve - it is also a small volume item but completes in the same space as the PowerMac and at similar prices.

 

[Rincewind42]

Originally posted by KingArthur
I remember reading a long time ago when MacOS X came out that it had support for up to 32 processors. Is this still the case or not?!

Ah, you speak of support in the kernal for up to 32 processors. I suspect this hasn't changed (but don't remember how to verify that either) but this article just mentions some strings found for the "About This Mac" dialog, which references the practical number of CPUs that Apple may support. Of course, what I don't understand is why there isn't a string for single CPU and for n-CPU boxes rather than seperate strings for each number of CPUs

 

[ffakr]

xstation

This is basically a rehash of the old xstation rumor.

Personally, I'd guess that Apple isn't ready for a quad proc machine anytime soon. I think it could become a reality in the future, but not now. It does fit in with their market moves though.

Right now, Apple has just announced the G5, but it isn't even shipping yet. It is the number 1 seller at store.apple.com.
Now is not the time to release another product that will, in effect, constrain the supply of G5 chips.
Strategically, the next G5 machine (IMHO) will be and should be the xServe. Personally (no evidence) I feel that the xServe will either ship right after the G5s make it to customers hands... or it will be announced and ship with Panther Server.
I'm leaning tword the first possibility.

That rounds out Apple's product line for a while. Legacy desktop G4s (mainly for edu), G5s, and a new powerful server with large memory support (and rev'ed notebooks in calendar q3, 7457s?)

Once these product lines fall in and are selling, then it's time for 'one more thing'.

The G5 is wicked fast (I've used them
but there are a lot of areas where wicked fast isn't enough... where you can never be fast enough. Look to the areas that Apple is trying to seriously court... sciences (especially life sciences) and film. Scientists can always find something to do with more CPU power (and they often get fat grants to blow on hardware).... and video houses never have enough power. I think a 'workstation class' machine would be a good fit here. They have the OS. They have the architecture. They can blow the competition out of the water on price/performance (opteron possibly excluded). This type of machine would compete with a single cpu Itanium on price and it would destroy it on performance.

I'm totally guessing that mid-august, the first G5s will show up on doorsteps (ok, a little insight from inside apple on this one). I think the duals will arrive right around the end of August.. the very end. I think xServe G5 will be announced in September and ship shortly afterward if not immediately... by the end of Sept in any case. I see the 1.6GHz legacy board dumped in October and the full desktop line refreshed. If IBM is really cranking on the chips, they may go dual across the board and speed bump, but they will likely want a single in the low end if the G4 tower is killed by that time. All duals are feasible since the 970 cpus seem to be cheaper than G4s, but they may want to keep the low end as cheap as possible.

If all this happened, I think the existing products would sell well and keep everyone essentially happy... but there would still be a market for 4 processor, high bandwidth boxes with monster computational capabilities. That market is low volume but high margin (very high margin right now). I could see Apple releasing something like an xStation later in Q4 as an addition to the product line. I could envision a market for a sub $10,000 quad processor workstation class machine. With the inherent high bandwidth design of the G5 from top to bottom, it would perform MUCH better than a cluster of 2 dual processor machines and it would allow people to do some amazing things from their desktop, like film effects and complex simulations that you would currently need a cluster to model.
so, I'll guess a quad 2.4or 2.6 GHz 970 box by the end of the year? Low end price of.... i don't know... $8K just to make people take it seriously. Fully pimped out, over $20K

Bring it on Apple.

 

[nichrome]

Originally posted by Rincewind42
what I don't understand is why there isn't a string for single CPU and for n-CPU boxes rather than seperate strings for each number of CPUs

1. There are string items for specific CPU counts because some configurations are commonly referred to using words as opposed to numbers. It's more sensible to say "dual G4" than "2x G4", since there is a commonly used and short word (dual) that accurately depicts what the configuration is. If Apple only had strings for "1 chip" and "n chips" setups, the About box wouldn't be able to say "Dual". It would say "2 x".

2. There actually is a "n chips" string item later on in the strings file.

 

[bryanc]

Re: xstation

Speaking as a life scientist who just got a grant, I have to respond to this

Originally posted by ffakr

The G5 is wicked fast (I've used them
but there are a lot of areas where wicked fast isn't enough... where you can never be fast enough. Look to the areas that Apple is trying to seriously court... sciences (especially life sciences) and film. Scientists can always find something to do with more CPU power (and they often get fat grants to blow on hardware)

You're absolutely correct that there are applications where we'll be bottlenecked on CPU speed for the foreseeable future, and that life scientists are positively drooling over the G5s. But I do have to reign in your speculation that many life scientists get 'fat grants' to blow on hardware. Every lab I've ever worked in has been constrained primarily by cash, and one of the first places people try to save money is in the computers they buy.

I've worked in several labs that switched from Macs to PCs not because people wanted to, but because we had to save a few bucks (and show the accountants that we were doing everything we could to do things as inexpensively as possible). I'm currently in a lab were we've held onto our Macs, but we're running beige G3s from 1996 (which, incidentally, run OS X just fine if you're not in a hurry).

We've been planning on upgrading our computers for a long time, and now that our money has come through, we'll probably get at least one new system. But I doubt that we'll be able to afford a G5 for the lab.

However, I agree with the rest of your analysis, and certainly some of the better-funded labs (esp. in industry) will be buying G5s as fast as Apple can make them.

Cheers

 

[crenz]

Re: xstation

Originally posted by ffakr
but there would still be a market for 4 processor, high bandwidth boxes with monster computational capabilities

Not sure. For video editing and rendering, a Dual 2-3 GHz should be nice for most applications. Once you go beyond that, clustering becomes attractive rather quickly -- especially for life science and movie rendering. Have a somewhat fast workstation for the preview (or the simpler tasks), then let your 20-30 node Linux cluster take care of the real thing.
A quad-G5 probably would be beyond €6000,- (the dual G5 costs €3200+ in the German store). You could get one Linux cluster node for about €500.

 

[ffakr]

Re: Re: xstation

Originally posted by bryanc
But I do have to reign in your speculation that many life scientists get 'fat grants' to blow on hardware. Every lab I've ever worked in has been constrained primarily by cash, and one of the first places people try to save money is in the computers they buy.

I actually wasn't refering specifically to _life_ scientists in this regard. Just to researchers at institutions with some name recognition.
I support machines at a fairly prestigious University and we have some researchers who pretty much get every NSF grant they ask for. Others just don't have the touch and they are still using Powermac 7200/75s. On one hand, some researchers intentionally buy desktop systems over $5000 to avoid paying a support overhead on them (too complicated to explain), while others can't replace 6 year old computers.

This was an unfair generalization as all generalizations tend to be
I should have said that enough of them get those big fat grants to provide a market.

A quad-G5 probably would be beyond €6000,- (the dual G5 costs €3200+ in the German store). You could get one Linux cluster node for about €500.

you do pay a premium for Apple stuff in Europe and you could build a cluster node for cheap in europe for cheap... but you'll end up with a cheap node if you only spent 500 eur. I could build a system for roughly $500 usd, but it would be a biege box that wouldn't come close to comparing with a dual 2GHz G5 in performance. Your $500 node certainly wouldn't be a dual processor box.

One thing to remember is, the dual G5 uses less total power (at the plug) than the previous G4s. quite a bit less. A quad processor G5 would likely use less than a typical dual proc x86 computer.

There are several advantages to a 4 way 970 box over other solutions (and absolute low price isn't one of them).
* high bandwidth between 4 fast cpus and their associated sub-systems. You skirt the latency issues present in clusters, especially budget ones with 4 single processor boxes on a 100Mbit network
* relatively low enviornmental load. Run one, or many without upgrading your power and cooling. In my office, I keep the air running for the computers. If we go through with rehabing our server room for the proposed clusters, we need to pull new 220v lines in and we need to add a new 8-12 ton cooler to the room (with all PPC hardware, requirements would be quite a bit smaller and cheaper)

Sure, you might get more power out of a dozen $500 barebones athlon rigs in a cluster (for some tasks) but your maintenance (physical), administration, setup, and environmental costs will be significantly higher.
In other tasks, the ultra low latency and ultra high bandwidth of a quad processor G5 system could outweigh the potential benefits of a dozen fairly descrete computational nodes.

I was trying to stress these points earlier but I didn't do a good job.

 

[crenz]

Cluster vs. xstation

ffakr, I agree that there might be a market for a quad-G5; however, the market is sandwiched between "what a Dual G5 can handle well" and "what a quad-G5 can't handle and must be handled by a bigger workstation/cluster". That market might be not too big... OTOH, a quad-G5 might be competition for e.g. Sun workstations.

As for clusters vs. single machine: That really depends on the application. For computationally expensive tasks that don't handle much data, you could set up a cluster of net-booting diskless nodes. Another advantage of the cluster is dynamic reconfiguration. If one node fails, you can easily replace it. If your quad-G5 fails...

I agree on the environmental issues, though; it is easier to have one machine in terms of cooling, power etc.

 

[jaedreth]

Quad PowerMac G5's

(I hate IE, I just lost my entire post because I hit cancel to log into an unrelated site... Yes, I'm at work so I'm on XP, not my beloved 10.2 and Safari.)

A Quad G5 is possible. Would need 2 main system controllers. I would like to see 2 AGP 8x slots on this machine, one on each system controller's bus, 3 PCI-X slots on each bus, 5 DDR RAM slots on each system controller bus, the HDs on one bus, the Optical drives on the other, one channel for the IO on each bus.

Also if each bus controller and subcontroller has links to its "partner", one bus could take up the slack for another. It might be easier to see what I'm describing if you were to look at http://www.apple.com/powermac/architecture.html .

The computer would not be as easy to service as the G5, and it would probably be quite a bit wider, but its target market would be for high end workstation use, eg. competition for SGI's, would be great for gaming, scientific uses, and a cluster XServe configuration could be made if they stripped out all non-essential features. However, I wouldn't expect such a machine until we're using a true 64 bit OS instead of a 32 bit OS with 64 bit hooks to the hardware and translation of 32 bit code via 42 bit translation.

So, is it possible? Yes. Would the machine rock? Yes. Would it be bought? Heck yes. Will Apple make it? Don't think so, which makes me very sad.

 

[jaedreth]

Quad PowerMac G5's

Ok, that frownie at the subject was unintentional.

There was a lot more info in the post I lost, so since I just remembered it, I'll post it again...

For such an XServe cluster as mentioned in my last post, they could take out all the things a cluster really doesn't need.

1) Why have ethernet cards in a cluster box if it's connection is a fibre channel?
2) Is Firewire really necessary on a cluster? Each cluster should all be completely controllable from a main XServe server that is decked out with such features.
3) The HD on such a cluster doesn't have to be large at all, and only one would be needed, thanks to XRaid.
4) If OS X Server were a mature enough operating system, and could configure clusters simply by plugging them in, including restore, initialize, and install functions over the network, an optical drive would not be needed on the cluster machine.
5) Graphics card? Why would a cluster need a display connected?

Again, if Apple realized that they should sell clusters assuming that no one in their right mind would use them for anything else *other* than clustering, they could make far more powerful clusters without any unneeded features, and actually make them cheaper than regular XServe boxes.

But again, that's assuming one thing... Apple Intelligence. Infer as you will.

Also, the main reason why XServes are not seeing more migration is that it is not a serious enough Unix server. Apple needs to do what it takes to get OS X Server (server only) certified as POSIX compliant. Also, Apple needs the option in the OS to use all the wonderful OS X server features, even if they must be turned on in the OS X GUI, to be able to switch to a non-console (which gets interrupted console reports on your shell) TUI login, and the ability to log in purely into an X11 environment, no OS X overhead at all. Eg. login: >x11 and >shell.

I work for a company that makes extensive use of unix servers, and there is no way that XServe or OS X could do what we currently do with our servers. It's not mature enough as a unix operating system. So I can't in all honestly suggest anyone leave their current servers for XServe unless they plan to only use the GUI.

Jaedreth

 

[WM.]

Re: Re: Re: xstation

Originally posted by ffakr

One thing to remember is, the dual G5 uses less total power (at the plug) than the previous G4s.

Apple doesn't provide real, in-use power consumption specs, but certainly the G5 power supplies are rated for a much greater load than the G4s. http://www.apple.com/powermac/specs.html sez: "Maximum current: 6.5A (low-voltage range) or 7.5A (high-voltage range)"

I think that's backwards, but in any case we're talking about something like 840 W max (yeah, yeah, power factor, but it should be in the ballpark). The older MDD power supplies were rated for 400 watts, and the FW 800 and MDD-replacement ones were 360. So we're talking about maximum power consumption of more than double that of the G4s.

OTOH, the G5 has to supply up to 75 (?) watts for the AGP slot (which the G4 doesn't), and maybe there are other things designed into the PS that wouldn't be used in a stock configuration...but I think each 2 GHz processor uses almost 100 W...

FWIW
WM

 

[WM.]

Re: Quad PowerMac G5's

Originally posted by jaedreth
However, I wouldn't expect such a machine until we're using a true 64 bit OS instead of a 32 bit OS with 64 bit hooks to the hardware and translation of 32 bit code via 42 bit translation.

??????????????

Please explain.

Thanks
WM

 

[WM.]

Re: Quad PowerMac G5's

Originally posted by jaedreth
For such an XServe cluster as mentioned in my last post, they could take out all the things a cluster really doesn't need.

1) Why have ethernet cards in a cluster box if it's connection is a fibre channel?
2) Is Firewire really necessary on a cluster? Each cluster should all be completely controllable from a main XServe server that is decked out with such features.
3) The HD on such a cluster doesn't have to be large at all, and only one would be needed, thanks to XRaid.
4) If OS X Server were a mature enough operating system, and could configure clusters simply by plugging them in, including restore, initialize, and install functions over the network, an optical drive would not be needed on the cluster machine.
5) Graphics card? Why would a cluster need a display connected?

Again, if Apple realized that they should sell clusters assuming that no one in their right mind would use them for anything else *other* than clustering, they could make far more powerful clusters without any unneeded features, and actually make them cheaper than regular XServe boxes.

But again, that's assuming one thing... Apple Intelligence. Infer as you will.

But the Xserve Cluster Node has many of those features (#3-5) already, and the lower price.

Also, the main reason why XServes are not seeing more migration is that it is not a serious enough Unix server. Apple needs to do what it takes to get OS X Server (server only) certified as POSIX compliant. Also, Apple needs the option in the OS to use all the wonderful OS X server features, even if they must be turned on in the OS X GUI, to be able to switch to a non-console (which gets interrupted console reports on your shell) TUI login, and the ability to log in purely into an X11 environment, no OS X overhead at all. Eg. login: >x11 and >shell.

I'm not sure what a TUI is. If it stands for "terminal interface", isn't that what >console (or holding down cmd-S during boot) gets you? As for X11...well, if you don't need the OS X GUI, why not just install Linux on your Xserve?

My confusion knows no bounds. What are "interrupted console reports"? And I'm confused by "Apple needs the option in the OS to use all the wonderful OS X server features...to switch to a non-console [dunno what that is either]". Maybe I'm interpreting your commas the wrong way...even so, I'd appreciate it if you'd clarify a bit.

Finally, you say that you referred to an Xserve cluster in your previous post, but I only see two posts of yours in this thread, and in the other one you only mention the possible 4-CPU machine. So I'll need some clarification on that too.

Sorry, and thanks in advance
WM

(edits: removed first part of quote to make post slightly less massive and fixed tag mix-up)

 

[Analog Kid]

Originally posted by nuckinfutz
I'm not suprised to see support in the OS for n Processors. There's an assumption that we're talking "Physical" Processors but in 5 years we'll be using "Physical" Processors split into "Logical" CPUs.

I think you nailed it Nuck.

980 is SMT and is supposed to be out in the next year-- dual 980s will look like 4 logical processors...

They've just tooled Panther to be ready for the new CPUs.

XP treats "hyperthreaded" Pentiums as dual processors (real nightmare if your license is per CPU, by the way). OS X is probably going to do the same.

 

[jhj]

Macbidouille was actually talking about Jaguar and not Panther.

Jaguar capable de gérer plus de 2 processeurs

 

[ffakr]

Re: Re: Re: Re: xstation

Originally posted by WM.
So we're talking about maximum power consumption of more than double that of the G4s.

OTOH, the G5 has to supply up to 75 (?) watts for the AGP slot (which the G4 doesn't), and maybe there are other things designed into the PS that wouldn't be used in a stock configuration...but I think each 2 GHz processor uses almost 100 W...

Apple discussed this at WWDC. They said the new G5 uses, on average, much less power(current) than the MD G4. I believe they said half but I don't recall the numbers.

In average use, the system clocks the G5s down when they are not under load. I _believe_ they said the dual 2GH clocks down to around 1.2GHz when taking naps (not going to sleep). It is, however, lower powered even when it is running full bore.

As far as 100W/cpu, not even close. The Athlon isn't even that hot, and the massive Itanium2 is only slightly hotter (125watts).
For the 2GHz G5, think south of 50watts max per cpu. Power consumption goes down rapidly as frequency decreases too. When the G5 is running scaled back, you should expect something slightly over 10watts per cpu.