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Design The PowerPC 970 is built using a 130 nm manufacturing process, and the PowerPC 970FX and 970MP are built using a 90 nm fabrication process. They are based on the core from IBM's POWER4 processor. The 970 and 970FX feature over 58 million transistors, while the 970MP contains two cores, consisting of over 116 million transistors. They feature IBM's VMX vector engine (a.k.a. AltiVec or Velocity Engine, also used in Freescale's PowerPC G4). They are able to process both 32-bit and 64-bit PowerPC instructions natively. PowerPC 970 The PowerPC 970 was announced by IBM in October 2002. It was released in Apple Computer's Power Mac G5 in June 2003 (in keeping with its previous naming conventions, Apple termed the PowerPC 970 the G5, for the fifth generation of PowerPC microprocessors). IBM released its first 970 blade servers, the BladeCenter JS20, in November 2003. The 970 had 512 KB of full-speed L2 cache and clock speeds from 1.6 to 2.0 GHz. The front side bus ran at half the processor's clock speed. PowerPC 970FX The PowerPC 970FX used a 90 nm manufacturing process, which made it more power efficient. Apple released their 970FX-powered machines throughout 2004: the Xserve G5 in January, the Power Mac G5 in June, and the iMac G5 in August. The Power Mac introduced a top clock speed of 2.5 GHz while liquid-cooled (eventually reaching as high as 2.7 GHz in April 2005). The iMac ran the front side bus at a third of the clock speed. PowerPC 970MP IBM released the PowerPC 970MP, code-named "Antares," in the 3rd quarter of 2005. The 970MP is a dual-core processor with clock speeds between 1.4 and 2.5 GHz. Each core has 1 MB of L2 cache, twice that of the 970FX. Like the 970FX, this chip was produced at the 90 nm process. When one of the cores is idle, it will enter a "doze" state and shut down. * The 970MP replaced the 970FX in Apple's high-end Power Mac G5 computers, while the iMac G5 and the legacy PCI-X Power Mac G5 continued to use the 970FX processor. PowerPC 970GX The single core version of 970MP, the PowerPC 970GX, was released in October 2006. The 970MP and 970GX share characteristics such as 1 MB L2 cache and speeds from 1.2 to 2.5 GHz and are made with the same 90 nm fabrication process. * Northbridges There are three dedicated northbridges for 970-based computers, all made by IBM: Problems See also | ||||||||||
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