Power Mac G5
Technology Overview
October 2005
Technology Overview |
2 |
Power Mac G5
Contents
Page 3 The Power of Four
Inside the Power Mac G5
Outside the Power Mac G5
Page 6 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
Page 10 PCI Express Architecture
533MHz DDR2 Main Memory
PCI Express Graphics
PCI Express Expansion
Dual Gigabit Ethernet
High-Performance I/O
Page 15 Workstation Graphics
Advanced Graphics Options
Apple Cinema Displays
Support for Multiple Displays
Page 20 Real-World Advantages
Film and Video
Science and Technical Computing
Design and Print
Music and Audio
Page 29 Configurations and Options
Page 31 Technical Specifications
The new Power Mac G5 Quad delivers groundbreaking performance compared with the fastest previous Power Mac.1
Creative application performance
After Effects |
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69% faster |
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Rendering |
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Final Cut Pro |
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60% faster |
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SD encoding |
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LightWave 3D |
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59% faster |
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Rendering |
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Photoshop |
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43% faster |
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45-action test |
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Final Cut Pro |
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40% faster |
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SD rendering |
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Dual 2.7GHz |
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Power Mac G5 |
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Technical computing performance
Xcode |
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76% faster |
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Project build |
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BBSv3 |
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39% faster |
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Genomics analysis |
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Mathematica |
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22% faster |
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MathematicaMark |
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Dual 2.7GHz |
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40% |
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Power Mac G5 |
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Technology Overview |
3 |
Power Mac G5
The Power of Four
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 e∂ects, 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-a- window 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.
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.
Technology Overview |
4 |
Power Mac G5
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.
Serial ATA storage |
PCI Express expansion |
Two Serial ATA hard drive bays with a 1.5-Gbps |
Three PCI Express expansion slots with four or |
interface provide up to 1TB of fast internal |
eight lanes allow you to add PCI Express cards for |
storage2—ideal for video, audio, and high-resolu- |
video capture and playback, audio DSP, and other |
tion graphics. Software RAID in Mac OS X allows |
special tasks. For massive storage, just add an |
you to stripe the drives for increased performance |
Apple Fibre Channel PCI Express Card and Xserve |
or mirror them for high reliability. |
RAID, Apple’s high-performance storage system. |
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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.
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.
Technology Overview |
5 |
Power Mac G5
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.
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.
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.
With two independent cores on one processor, the new PowerPC G5 packs tremendous processing power on a single chip.
Technology Overview |
6 |
Power Mac G5
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 e∂ects, 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
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 predeces- sor—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
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Single-core |
Dual-core |
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PowerPC G4 |
PowerPC G5 |
PowerPC G5 |
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Architecture |
32-bit |
64-bit |
64-bit |
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Addressable memory |
4 gigabytes |
4 terabytes |
4 terabytes |
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Frontside bus |
Single |
Dual |
Dual |
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Processor cores |
One |
One |
Two |
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Velocity Engine units |
One |
One |
Two |
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Floating-point units |
One |
Two |
Four |
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Integer units |
One |
Two |
Four |
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L1 data cache |
32K |
32K |
Two sets of 32K |
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L1 instruction cache |
32K |
64K |
Two sets of 64K |
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L2 cache |
256K |
512K |
Two sets of 1MB |
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In Power Mac G5 Quad systems, each dual-core PowerPC G5 processor has its own bidirectional frontside bus.
Technology Overview |
7 |
Power Mac G5
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 point- to-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 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 PowerPC G5 is the ability to perform multiple simultaneous 64-bit floating-point and integer calculations. The PowerPC
G5 features full 64-bit data paths and data registers, allowing it to express the extreme precision needed for floating-point mathematics and to express integers up to 18 billion billion. By contrast, a 32-bit processor must break these types of computations into multiple pieces—requiring multiple passes through the processor and slowing down application performance.
Linpack
A measure of a computer’s floating-point execution performance, the Linpack benchmark solves a dense system of linear equations. The Power Mac G5 Quad executed the double-precision equations 88 percent faster than the dual 2.7GHz Power Mac G5 and an amazing 626 percent faster than the dual 1.42GHz Power Mac G4.
Power Mac G5 |
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21 gigaflops |
Quad 2.5GHz |
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Dual 2.7GHz |
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11.1 gigaflops |
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Power Mac G5 |
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Dual 1.42GHz |
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2.9 gigaflops |
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Power Mac G4 |
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Gigaflops
The gigaflops test indicates a system’s vector processing capability by measuring the maximum number of floating-point operations it can perform. With four Velocity Engine units, the Power Mac G5 Quad
completed the test 85 percent faster than the dual 2.7GHz Power Mac G5 and 260 percent faster than the dual 1.42GHz Power Mac G4.
Power Mac G5 |
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76.6 gigaflops |
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Quad 2.5GHz |
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Dual 2.7GHz |
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41.1 gigaflops |
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Power Mac G5 |
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Dual 1.42GHz |
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21.3 gigaflops |
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Power Mac G4 |
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Technology Overview |
8 |
Power Mac G5
Eight Double-Precision Floating-Point Units
The PowerPC G5 core contains two double-precision floating-point units, each capable of performing a multiply and an add at the same time. This means a Power Mac G5 Quad, with four processor cores and a total of eight floating-point units, can complete up to sixteen 64-bit floating-point operations in a single cycle.
Such immense 64-bit computational power accelerates applications in many fields, including audio creation, 3D content creation, and scientific visualization and analysis— resulting in performance levels far beyond those of previous Power Mac generations.
Fused multiply-add example
The floating-point units in the PowerPC G5 can complete both a multiply and an add operation as part of the same machine instruction—accelerating matrix multiplication, vector dot products, and other scientific computations. Referred to as fused multiplyadd, or “fmadd,” this instruction is considered a building block for data-intensive floating-point computation.
The following computation can be completed by a fused multiply-add instruction in one pass through either of the two floating-point units in a PowerPC G5 core:
T = (a * b) + c
On other processors, two instructions are required. The first is a multiply instruction:
U = (a * b)
The product “U” is used by a second instruction, an addition, to complete the computation:
V = U + c
In processors with comparable clock speeds, the computation of “(a * b) + c” is completed twice as fast using fused multiply-add. It also delivers a more accurate result, because round-o∂ occurs just once in the computation of “T”—while on other processors, round-o∂ occurs twice: in the computation of “U” and in the computation of “V.”
Four Velocity Engine Units
A dual-pipelined Velocity Engine in each processor core is optimized with two independent queues and dedicated 128-bit registers and data paths for e∑cient instruction and data flow. This 128-bit vector processing unit accelerates data manipulation by applying a single instruction to multiple data at the same time, known as SIMD processing. Originally implemented in the PowerPC G4, the Velocity Engine in the PowerPC G5 uses the same set of 162 instructions, enabling it to accelerate existing Mac OS X applications that have been optimized for the Velocity Engine.
Vector processing is useful for transforming large sets of data, such as manipulating an image or rendering a video e∂ect. For example, when a designer uses a filter to apply a motion blur to an image, each pixel of the image must be changed according to the same set of instructions—a highly repetitive processing task. Each Velocity Engine
pipeline speeds up this task by processing up to 128 bits of data, in four 32-bit integers, eight 16-bit integers, sixteen 8-bit integers, or four 32-bit single-precision floating-point values, in a single clock cycle. That works out to 16 simultaneous 32-bit floating-point operations on a Power Mac G5 Quad.
The Power Mac G5 comes with Mac OS X v10.4 Tiger, Apple’s UNIX-based operating system, including powerful new features such as Spotlight, Dashboard, and Automator.
Technology Overview |
9 |
Power Mac G5
Multiple Cores and Mac OS X
Mac OS X is ideally suited to leverage the power of quad-core systems, since it was designed from day one for multiple processors. With symmetric multiprocessing, preemptive multitasking, and multithreading capabilities in Mac OS X, a Power Mac G5 Quad delivers groundbreaking performance.
Symmetric multiprocessing (SMP) in Mac OS X dynamically manages tasks across multiple processors—and multiple processor cores—without requiring any special optimization of the application or any special action on the user’s part. With SMP, you can run a processor-intensive task in the background while you work with another application. Mac OS X assigns each of these tasks to a di∂erent processor or core, allowing the tasks to execute simultaneously, and automatically balances the load between processors. Preemptive multitasking further optimizes performance by allowing Mac OS X to prioritize tasks on each processor or core.
Applications can take even greater advantage of multiple cores when they are written to generate multiple threads (or self-contained tasks), known as multithreading. Many of today’s applications are multithreaded, achieving up to 69 percent faster performance on a Power Mac G5 Quad right out of the box.1
As a user, you don’t need to worry about symmetric multiprocessing or application threading—you’ll just enjoy the enhanced performance.
Technology Overview |
10 |
Power Mac G5
PCI Express Architecture
The new Power Mac G5 introduces a modern PCI Express architecture to the Mac platform, opening up a world of high-performance system technologies and peripherals. PCI Express paves the way for emerging solutions for media and networking, making it a future-savvy choice for your lab or studio.
Built into the Power Mac G5 architecture is an all-new system controller. This fast application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC) integrates a new lower-latency memory subsystem with support for ultrafast DDR2 main memory—plus 16-lane PCI Express graphics and the dual-channel, bidirectional frontside bus that made its debut in the original Power Mac G5.
Dual-core PowerPC
G5 processors
Dual bidirectional frontside buses
System controller
533MHz DDR2 memory
PCI Express graphics
PCI Express |
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Dual Gigabit |
expansion |
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Ethernet |
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SuperDrive with |
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Serial ATA |
double-layer support |
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storage |
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High-performance I/O