Power Mac G5 Technology Overview October 2005 Technology Overview Power Mac G5 2 Contents Page 3 The Power of Four Inside the Power Mac G5 Outside the Power Mac G5 Quad-Core Processing Two Dual-Core PowerPC G5 Processors Bidirectional Frontside Bus 64-Bit Processor Architecture Eight Double-Precision Floating-Point Units Four Velocity Engine Units Multiple Cores and Mac OS X PCI Express Architecture 533MHz DDR2 Main Memory PCI Express Graphics PCI Express Expansion Dual Gigabit Ethernet High-Performance I/O Workstation Graphics Advanced Graphics Options Apple Cinema Displays Support for Multiple Displays Real-World Advantages Film and Video Science and Technical Computing Design and Print Music and Audio Configurations and Options Technical Specifications Page 6 Page 10 Page 15 Page 20 Page 29 Page 31 Technology Overview Power Mac G5 3 The Power of Four The new Power Mac G5 Quad delivers groundbreaking performance compared with the fastest previous Power Mac.1 Creative application performance After Effects Rendering Final Cut Pro SD encoding LightWave 3D Rendering Photoshop 45-action test Final Cut Pro SD rendering Dual 2.7GHz Power Mac G5 69% faster 60% faster 59% faster 43% faster 40% faster Baseline Power. It gives your creativity room to play. It takes the edge o supersized projects and looming deadlines. It challenges you to seek more demanding work and gives you the confidence to execute with brilliance. Introducing the Power Mac G5 Quad. Now you can blaze through your work, deliver ahead of schedule, wow your clients, even transform your business--because this quad-core system really moves. It runs creative applications up to 69 percent faster than the fastest previous Power Mac, the 2.7GHz dual-processor Power Mac G5.1 Quad-core processing With two dual-core processors, the Power Mac G5 Quad doubles the computational power of its dual-processor predecessor. Do the math: Quad-core processing means four 64-bit PowerPC G5 processor cores, four Velocity Engine units, and eight doubleprecision floating-point units for blistering performance of up to 76.6 gigaflops. That means you can manipulate mountains of images or miles of footage. Crunch enormous data sets. Encode HD video or audiophile-quality music. All at speeds you never imagined possible. PCI Express architecture An all-new PCI Express architecture opens up a world of high-performance peripherals to the Mac platform. This modern industry standard allows you to customize your Power Mac G5 to the special needs of your workflow--providing tremendous power and productivity in a single system. As your needs change, you'll have the flexibility to add emerging solutions for networked storage, digital signal processing (DSP), video management, data acquisition, and more. Workstation graphics Graphics assume a new level of realism with the latest PCI Express graphics cards. The optional NVIDIA Quadro FX 4500--the first workstation graphics processing unit (GPU) for the Mac--accelerates 3D content creation, special eects, animation, and scientific visualizations. How much reality can you handle? Try adding up to eight all-digital Apple Cinema HD Displays to your Power Mac G5 and enjoy a veritable dreamscape. You can even experience full-screen stereo 3D for immersive game play or stereo-in-awindow for scientific workflows. Quad-core processing, PCI Express architecture, and workstation graphics are only the beginning. Find out how the new Power Mac G5 can streamline your work, unlock opportunities, and deliver results that exceed your grandest expectations. Technical computing performance Xcode Project build BBSv3 Genomics analysis Mathematica MathematicaMark Dual 2.7GHz Power Mac G5 39% faster 22% faster 40% faster Baseline 76% faster Technology Overview Power Mac G5 4 Inside the Power Mac G5 The Power Mac G5 is loaded with state-of-the-art technologies that translate into blistering performance. Take a tour of this power-packed interior. SuperDrive with double-layer support The SuperDrive built into every Power Mac G5 reads and writes a wide variety of DVD and CD media. You can even author media or archive data on double-layer (DVD+R DL) discs capable of holding up to 8.5GB of data. Serial ATA storage Two Serial ATA hard drive bays with a 1.5-Gbps interface provide up to 1TB of fast internal storage2--ideal for video, audio, and high-resolution graphics. Software RAID in Mac OS X allows you to stripe the drives for increased performance or mirror them for high reliability. PCI Express expansion Three PCI Express expansion slots with four or eight lanes allow you to add PCI Express cards for video capture and playback, audio DSP, and other special tasks. For massive storage, just add an Apple Fibre Channel PCI Express Card and Xserve RAID, Apple's high-performance storage system. Up to 16GB of main memory Eight DIMM slots hold up to 16GB of fast new 533MHz DDR2 SDRAM. For mission-critical and compute-intensive environments, you now have the option of ECC (Error Correction Code) memory for automatic correction and detection of data errors. Dual-core PowerPC G5 processor Two independent cores on one processor, each with 1MB of L2 cache and running at clock speeds up to 2.5GHz--it all adds up to awesome power in your choice of configurations, including the groundbreaking quad-core Power Mac G5 Quad, which runs key applications up to 69 percent faster than the fastest dual-processor Power Mac G5.1 PCI Express graphics The 16-lane PCI Express slot holds your choice of the latest consumer and workstation graphics cards. The new standard for high-performance graphics, PCI Express delivers throughput of up to 4 GBps--twice that of its AGP 8X predecessor-- for ultrafast 3D, glorious onscreen details, and immersive visualization. Technology Overview Power Mac G5 5 Outside the Power Mac G5 Handsome good looks combine with a user-centered design that includes convenient ports and an easy-to-open (and easy-to-lock) side panel. All configurations of the new Power Mac G5 come with a comprehensive suite of integrated innovations. Easy-open side door A removable side panel provides quick access to slots and bays, so you can install additional memory, a second hard drive, or a PCI Express card. To secure internal components, simply add a lock to the panel latch. PCI Express slots Connect your choice of 16-lane PCI Express graphics cards to one or two displays, and install up to three PCI Express expansion cards to add cutting-edge devices to your Power Mac G5 system. Dual Gigabit Ethernet ports Two Gigabit (10/100/1000BASE-T) Ethernet interfaces allow you to connect the Power Mac G5 to both a public and a private network--ideal, for example, for simultaneous access to the Internet and an Xsan network. Dual Gigabit Ethernet also enables server-class features such as support for VLAN tags, jumbo frames, and port aggregation. SuperDrive Read and write to most types of CD and DVD media using the built-in 16x SuperDrive with double-layer support. Antenna for wireless connections A built-in antenna and optional AirPort Extreme3 and Bluetooth technologies make wireless networking easy. Create or join AirPort wireless networks, exchange files wirelessly with another AirPort-equipped Mac, or connect to Bluetooth-enabled mobile phones, PDAs, and printers-- and to Apple's wireless keyboard and mouse. Analog and optical digital audio Optical digital audio ports support stereo and 5.1 surround sound speaker systems, while analog stereo audio line-level input and output ports allow you to connect analog audio decks and devices. FireWire and USB 2.0 ports Plug in your choice of peripherals and devices. Each system has one FireWire 400 port on the front, one FireWire 400 port on the back, a FireWire 800 port on the back, and four USB 2.0 ports--one on the front and three on the back. There are also two USB 1.1 ports on the keyboard. Convenient front I/O ports The front panel of the Power Mac G5 features an integrated speaker, headphone minijack, FireWire port, USB 2.0 port, and power button. Technology Overview Power Mac G5 6 Quad-Core Processing Enter the dual-core PowerPC G5 processor: one silicon chip with two independent processor cores. Now take two of those dual-core chips and you have the Power Mac G5 Quad, for groundbreaking quad-core processing. Quad-core processing means more 64-bit resources: more L2 cache, more Velocity Engine units, and more double-precision floating-point units. Videographers can edit more footage, filmmakers can produce more real-time eects, designers and photographers can process more higher-resolution images, and researchers can crunch through data sets for faster results. Compare a quad-core Power Mac G5 to the fastest dual-processor G5 ever built, and you'll experience up to 69 percent faster performance running popular professional applications.1 With two independent cores on one processor, the new PowerPC G5 packs tremendous processing power on a single chip. Two Dual-Core PowerPC G5 Processors The new PowerPC G5 combines two processor cores on a single silicon chip, providing double the computational power in the same space as a single-core processor. What's more, each core has its own 1MB of L2 cache memory--double the size of its predecessor--so you'll have ultrafast access to twice the amount of frequently used data. With two dual-core PowerPC G5 processors, the Power Mac G5 Quad doubles the ante. Applications can take advantage of four 64-bit processor cores, including four 1MB L2 caches, four 128-bit Velocity Engine units, and eight double-precision floating-point units, for a radical increase in desktop performance. Comparison of PowerPC G4, single-core PowerPC G5, and dual-core PowerPC G5 processors PowerPC G4 Architecture Addressable memory Frontside bus Processor cores Velocity Engine units Floating-point units Integer units L1 data cache L1 instruction cache L2 cache 32-bit 4 gigabytes Single One One One One 32K 32K 256K Single-core PowerPC G5 64-bit 4 terabytes Dual One One Two Two 32K 64K 512K Dual-core PowerPC G5 64-bit 4 terabytes Dual Two Two Four Four Two sets of 32K Two sets of 64K Two sets of 1MB Technology Overview Power Mac G5 7 Bidirectional Frontside Bus Leveraging the dual frontside bus architecture pioneered in the original Power Mac G5, each dual-core processor has an independent data path to the system controller running at up to 1.25GHz. Unlike conventional processor interfaces, which carry data in only one direction at a time, this dual-channel frontside bus has two 32-bit pointto-point links (64 bits total): One link travels into the processor and another travels from the processor, which means no wait time while the processor and the system controller negotiate which will use the bus or while the bus switches direction. This enables data to move in opposite directions simultaneously--a dramatic improvement over previous processor interfaces. In Power Mac G5 Quad systems, each dual-core PowerPC G5 processor has its own bidirectional frontside bus. In Power Mac G5 Quad systems, each processor has its own bidirectional interface to the system controller, unlike traditional dual-processor systems, which constrain throughput by placing all processor resources on one bus. Each G5 processor has a dedicated interface to main memory for total bandwidth of up to 10 GBps per processor, or a total of 20 GBps for a quad system. This high-performance frontside bus architecture also enables each core to discover and access data in the other cores' caches--further increasing performance on quad-core systems. 64-Bit Processor Architecture The dual-core PowerPC G5 joins forces with Mac OS X v10.4 Tiger to enable 64-bit computation, including the ability to address vast amounts of main memory and to perform double-precision floating-point calculations. Support for massive amounts of memory The move to 64-bit processors results in a dramatic leap in the amount of memory supported. In practice, memory addressing is defined by the physical address space of the processor. The PowerPC G5, with 42 bits of physical address space, supports a colossal 242 bytes, or 4 terabytes (4TB), of system memory. Although it's not currently feasible to purchase 4TB of RAM, the advanced architecture of this processor allows for plenty of growth in the future. More practical and still far more than a typical PC, the Power Mac G5 can be configured with 16GB of addressable memory. Such large quantities of memory enable the system to contain a complex 3D model, massive digital images, a scientific simulation, or a sequence of video entirely in RAM. When data is stored in memory, the processor can access it 40 times faster than from the hard drive, drastically reducing the time to manipulate, modify, and render the data and making it feasible to tackle gigantic projects on a desktop system. 64-bit computation power The other advantage provided by the 64-bit Powe ...