CompuServe Messages

> The 060 has not shipper yet, but the preliminary beta chips are > indeed very fast and their specs as published by motorola are > as impressive as the powerpc, especially at a fraction of the price. These are the offical IBM prices for PowerPC chips as of two weeks ago. Chip Price 66Mhz 601 $198 ( 25% faster than 68060) 80Mhz 601 $275 (> 40% faster than 68060) 66Mhz 603 $165 ( 15% faster than 68060) 80Mhz 603 $195 (> 25% faster than 68060) Last I checked the 50Mhz '060 cost _more_ than the 66Mhz 601 and yet is a fair bit slower. I've also been told to expect even more agressive price drops in the next few months from IBM and Moto for the PowerPC. Also, while the '060 is near as fast as PowerPC at the same clock, PowerPC is available at _much_ higher clocks. PowerPC is available at 80Mhz, sampling at 100Mhz, and I saw a 120Mhz 601 in May. Also '060 is very poor for floating point compared to PowerPC. (compare SPECfloat numbers!) The '060's 32 bit bus is also a crippler. The small cache (16K) tends to make it starve for memory. The PowerPC has a 32K internal cache _and_ a path to memory which had twice the bandwidth (64 bits). This allows the PowerPC to burst more often and for longer durations. The 604 which is in sample (ships Q4), is _TRIPLE_ the speed of the fastest sampling '060. Moto has been silent about a future '070, and '080, yet they will talk about 601, 604, 620, and beyond. Moto knows it's future is PowerPC. Apple, and others, will buy _millions_ of them. I bet there are less than 10,000 '060's in desktop machines by years end. BTW, IBM has already shipped over 1 million PowerPC chips. Apple has shipped near 300,000 machines with them, and is projecting one million shipped by March. How many desktop machines do you think will be equiped with '060's? And at what cost per chip? No matter how you cut it, the '060 costs _more_ and is slower. I really do like the '060, it's just a year late, overpriced, and not available in high enough clocks. —– Andrew