Rumor: IBM Plans Dual-Core PowerPC 970MP for January


IBM is planning to debut its dual-core PowerPC970-based processor, code-named Antares, Think Secret reports.

Editor Nick de Plume's article says that the chip will be given the official name of PPC 970MP, and it will feature two interconnected processors on a single die. Each processor core will have 1MB of L2 cache, but there will be no support for a L3 cache.

The big news is that Apple is a customer for the 970MP, and it will run at up to 3GHz on a 1GHz bus. This is not, however, a low-power chip designed for notebooks; it is expected Apple will use it in the Power Mac G5 and the XServe G5. However, the 970MP does have power-saving modes built-in.

An anticipated production date of January 2005 means Apple could conceivably put the 970MP into shipping product by Q1 2005, although the second quarter is more likely.

Analysis: As Think Secret notes, IBM, Intel and AMD all plan to bring dual-core chips to market, with the likelihood being that 'two-processors-in-one' means there is less pressure upon chip companies to keep upping the ante on raw clock speeds.