Donate Here By Secure Server
Posted on 04/05/2004 2:56:01 PM PDT by HAL9000
We've posted similar rumors in the past, but more recently we've begun to gain a clearer picture of what may really be going on behind the considerable delays of PowerPC 970FX-based Macs.Large-scale purchases of Xserve G5s by high profile educational and scientific customers like Virginia Tech are well known to be playing a part in the shipping delays affecting Xserve G5s - particularly the dual-processor model.
According to new reports out of Cupertino, Austin, Apple's contractors in Southeast Asia and elsewhere, demand for those publicly acknowledged purchases is definitely strong, stronger than Apple's already optimistic projections.
But Apple appears to be using some "creative" means to keep massive purchases of new systems (mostly dual-processor Xserve G5s, but also preorders of faster 970FX-based PowerMacs as well) for several arms of the United States government under the radar.
In most cases, this appears to be for purposes of not alarming the general public about supply-and-demand issues and the fact that so many clients are "ahead of them in line." A PR move, essentially, until the time is right to tout these agencies' adoption of Macs.
However, in at least three separate cases (and we can't get into too much detail here because our sources don't want to find themselves in small, dungy rooms with bright lights shining on them....) it appears that part of the reason is because Apple has been asked to keep the purchases off the normal books, hidden behind some creative (but legitimate) accounting.
Apparently one emerging government agency (possibly Homeland Security) has pre-ordered huge numbers of new PowerMac G5s and plans to use the new systems to built several operational sectors entirely on the Mac OS X platform in order to be more attack-resistant.
Another, far more classified buy is from some arm of the Department of Defense, and involves an Xserve G5 cluster significantly larger than the one being (re-)built at Virginia Tech. This will apparently be for general-purpose supercomputing, but "nuclear testing models" were mentioned by one source.
The third purchase we've heard about is reportedly for a law enforcement agency located in the Washington D.C./Virginia area, possibly the FBI. This is a smaller purchase, but is a mix of Xserve G4s, Xserve G5s, and PowerMac G4/G5 systems.
A pre-order for 970FX PowerMacs is being considered but has not been finalized, we're told; this may be contributing to the PowerMac holdup, but not to the degree that other factors are.
Problems at IBM's Fishkill, NY facility with high-speed PowerPC 970FX yields -- as well as delays in acquiring other updated PowerMac components including new Firewire controllers -- are still believed the primary cause of the wait for new PowerMacs. Nonetheless, these little-known buyers may be having a considerable influence on the situation.
Some PowerPC 976/980/900 updates: After our most recent rumor post regarding future IBM PowerPC processors, we've developed some corrections and updates that bear mentioning.The POWER6-based PowerPC 976, despite being based on an architecture that will not ship in volume until early 2006, is still believed slated for a late 2005 (or at latest, Macworld SF January 2006) introduction to the Mac platform as Apple's G6.
The POWER7-based PowerPC 980 may ship in 2007, rather than 2006 as previously suggested at Rumors.
As for the 990, we neglected to mention it in that last update -- it is based on the far-off POWER8 architecture.
This chip, which at this point is even for IBM themselves little more than educated guessing about their capabilities almost five years down the road, sports incredible feature lists like a 32-nanometer manufacturing process, 10GHz+ clock speeds, up to four processor cores on a single CPU chip....and won't ship until 2008.
Nice!! Takes SMP to a whole new level.
Yes, but they're more accurate than crazyapplerumors.com
I think macosrumors.com is improving now that Ryan Meader is not the sole correspondent. And this rumor seems consistent with recent reports that Apple is working on a "killer app" for enterprise computer security.
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