Mega-GigaHertz
One of the best rumor sites for upcoming Apple Computer products is MacRumors. And what they’re saying about the future Apple CPUs is rather surprising.
For the past couple of years, the Mac has drifted rather listlessly in the Motorola doldrums, getting no faster than 1.4 GHz. Now, with the G5, we get an immediate bump up to 2 GHz, though that chip may max out at about 2.8 GHz. In a year, IBM’s PPC 980 chip will be running at 3 GHz, and will max out at about 5 GHz.
If that sounds like a lot, wait till you hear about the following two generations: the 990 (2005-6), which is supposed to range from 6 GHz to 10 GHz, and then the 9900 (2007-8) which, if you can believe it, will run somewhere around 20 to 25 GHz.
Yikes!
But that kind of follows Moore’s Law fairly well, and let’s remember that the features of the G5 were pretty damned surprising to many of us, and yet were indeed true. Still, 25 GHz. Man.