Speaking of Friday the 13th, word has it that before the date became associated with a nigh-unstoppable supernatural killing force with a penchant for protective sportswear and introducing wayward camp counselors to the business end of a machete, it was more commonly associated with the phenomenon of bad luck. How appropriate, then, that at least one industry pundit thinks that Intel and AMD must have broken a whole lotta mirrors recently. The message we're getting is that if those companies weren't scared of the G5 before, they sure oughta be shaking in their boots when the next version officially debuts next week, because it's definitely bad luck-- and bad news-- for its competitors.

Faithful viewer Erebus sent us over to an article at The Register, which reports that IBM's PowerPC 970FX (the 90-nanometer successor to the chips in Apple's current Power Mac lineup, destined to ship in those new Xserves any day now) has just scored the "Microprocessor Report Analysts' Choice Award for Best Desktop Processor." Neat trick for a chip that isn't even expected to be introduced until the IEEE Solid-State Circuits Conference next week. But then again, the 970FX is no ordinary chip and deserves special dispensation: according to The Reg, Microprocessor Report's Peter Glaskowsky seems to think that "Intel and AMD had better watch out."

Why? Well, power consumption, for one thing: the original G5 processor (the 130-nanometer 970) running at 1.8 GHz chews up 51 watts, while the new 970FX running at 2.0 GHz only sucks down 24.5 watts. That bodes well for eventually squeezing one into a PowerBook, but more importantly from a chip race perspective, it gives the 970FX room to grow into much faster clock speeds without catching fire and vaporizing all matter in a twenty-foot radius: "The 970FX should yield well at 2.5 GHz, up from the 2 GHz speed of the 970... this 25 percent increase in clock rate will not soon be matched by Intel or AMD." Moreover, Glaskowsky thinks that Steve's original promise for the G5 to hit 3.0 GHz this summer is "aggressive" but "achievable," and "at 3 GHz, the 970FX should outrun the chips we expect from AMD and Intel in the same time frame."

So, low power consumption, high clock speed, and world-beating performance... is there anything else about the 970FX to gush about? Well, yes: cost. The 970FX is reportedly teeny-tiny, and as such, Big Blue can stamp a ton of 'em out of a single wafer-- more than the number of 90-nanometer "Prescott" chips Intel can punch out at once. That translates into a "large cost advantage" for IBM, which might someday translate into cheaper Power Macs or, more likely, higher margins for Apple. (Oh, don't act so shocked. It's the way of our world and you know it. That operating system you love so much costs money to develop, you know, and someone has to pay for Steve's increasingly expensive pudding habit.)

So we're looking at PowerPC processors winning chip-of-the-year awards, costing less than x86s, and (theoretically) outperforming them, too. It's a truly confusing time to be alive, but hey, we'll take it. We can hardly wait to see how a dual 2.5 GHz 970FX stacks up against Intel's and AMD's finest in independent testing later in the year. Go, Speed Racer, go!