Apple Launches New G4s, Using Motorola's AltiVec PowerPC.

Apple Computer Inc brought forward the launch of its Power Mac G4 desktop computers yesterday in order to enjoy, at least for a short while, what Apple CEO Steve Jobs claimed was a two-times or more performance lead over current Intel Corp 600MHz Pentium III-based systems in some applications. Intel, of course, is already preparing to fight back with faster chips of its own (see separate story). Jobs introduced the systems at the Seybold publishing conference in San Francisco, in front of the usual ecstatic audience. Defying most commentators, who had predicted the first shipments early next year, Jobs said the first 400MHz G4s were shipping immediately, with 450MHz due in September and 500MHz versions in October.

The new machines use Motorola Inc's new MPC7400 PowerPC microprocessor, also launched yesterday. The chip includes Motorola's AltiVec 128-bit vector processing technology, called by Apple "the Velocity Engine." Motorola first began talking about AltiVec in May 1998 (CI No 3,406). The AltiVec engine runs concurrently with the PowerPC's floating point and integer units, using SIMD single instruction multiple data parallel processing, enabling it to execute up to 20 operations per cycle, according to Motorola. That renders processor comparisons based on clock speed "virtually useless" Motorola claimed. The new chip also uses Motorola's .15 micron copper HiPerMOS technology. A new high-bandwidth MPX bus operates at frequencies above 100MHz, and the chip supports up to 2Mb of Level 2 cache, twice that of the current MPC 750 PowerPC. The chip is available in 350MHz, 400MHz and 450MHz versions, with 500MHz soon, priced at $210, $275, $355 and $475 respectively in quantities of 1,000. Aside from Apple, Motorola will push the chip at embedded systems developers.

The two top Apple models, in 450MHz and 500MHz speeds, have support for up to 1.5Gb of PC100 SDRAM, the 100MHz system bus for up to 800 Mbps of data throughput, ATI Rage 128 AGP/2X graphics, Ultra ATA/66 disk drive interface, and Apple's Airport wireless networking system as an option. All the models have 1Mb Level 2 backside cache, dual USB and FireWire ports, internal drives from 10Gb to 27Gb and removable storage including Zip, CD-ROM, DVD-ROM and DVD-RAM. Instead of the blue color of the G3, the new boxes come in clear, silver and graphite gray of the same design. Apple also launched a 22-inch LCD display, the largest available on the market. Because of limited availability, it will only be available bundled with the top two G4 systems. Prices are $1,600 for the 400MHz, $2,500 for the 450MHz and $3,500 for the 500MHz version. A build-to-order option is also available. Two new server G4s running the Mac OS X Server operating systems will be available in November.

Adobe Systems Inc said it had already produced a module optimizing the recently launched Photoshop 5.5 for the new architecture, and CEO John Warnock pronounced the machine "the fastest that runs our software." Motorola said that software can be optimized for the 128-bit vector processor through C/C++ language extensions for vectorizing applications, resulting in average speed-up times of between 1.5 and 6 times that of traditional scalar applications.