There's nothing stopping them from designing a new northbridge, or even building it into the CPU like the A64. The problem lies in the fact that at best you get 60% extra performance for each extra CPU. So 4 CPUs would give at best 220% of the performance of a single CPU. Not really worth it considering the extra power.
Something else that's interesting to note about the G4s is that somewhere around the 867MHz mark Motorola decided to trade clockspeed for efficiency. So apple was finally able to break the 1GHz mark but there wasn't a significant performance gain. (Which is what Intel has been doing with the P4 for a long time). So that brings the extra performance out of the speed increase even lower. What the G5 seems to be is a new architecture that supports higher clock speeds more than anything else. Of course that is a good thing, as higher clock speeds means better performance, but I think an Alpha-like focus on efficiency would be preferable. 64-bit doesn't offer much of an advantage either, as it's been demonstrated that it is slightly slower than 32-bit anyway (but not by a significant margin). On 1/28/04 10:54 AM, "Paul Nicholson" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > On Jan 28, 2004, at 10:33 AM, Jim wrote: >> C'mon, Apple, give us some quadruple processors at higher speed! > > That not so easy to do as the northbridge chip only has ports for two > CPUs. > > Paul > -- G-Books is sponsored by <http://lowendmac.com/> and... Small Dog Electronics http://www.smalldog.com | Refurbished Drives | -- Check our web site for refurbished PowerBooks | & CDRWs on Sale! | Support Low End Mac <http://lowendmac.com/lists/support.html> G-Books list info: <http://lowendmac.com/lists/g-books.html> --> AOL users, remove "mailto:"; Send list messages to: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To unsubscribe, email: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> For digest mode, email: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subscription questions: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Archive: <http://www.mail-archive.com/g-books%40mail.maclaunch.com/> --------------------------------------------------------------- >The Think Different Store http://www.ThinkDifferentStore.com ---------------------------------------------------------------
