Apple Inc (AAPL)

[Altaire4_2dot0]

PPC 980 3 GHZ Rumor

An unconfirmed report spelling out some interesting future possibilities about Apple and their PowerPC progress and development:

"Following the microprocessor forum, IBM presented Apple with a handful of PPC 980 alpha samples to begin work on the next generation Powermac due out in 9-12 months. Initial compiler tests showed specfp base 2000 of 1400 and specint of 1200 at 3Ghz. The PPC 980 will have double the L2 cache of the 970, and will still not have an L3 cache option, owing to the fact that the 980 will have a 1x, 2x, 3x, and 4x bus multiplier, which will allow an FSB to run at the chip clock speed if need be, but the plans are to stick to a 2x multiplier, which would mean a 1.5Ghz FSB. The reason why the 980 is appearing only 12 -16 months after the 970 is that Apple chose to engage in parallel development with the Power 5, rather than wait 12-18 months after the fact. The 980 samples that were given to Apple were 90nm chips, as opposed to 130nm chips for the PPC 970 and the Power 5.

http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=44781