Apple Is Buyer of New 64-Bit IBM Chips

ohmygod2 wrote to us with a story from SF Gate that Apple, unsurprisingly, is going to be one of the purchasers of IBM's PowerPC 970. At this time, though, it's unclear where Apple is going to actually *use* said chip.Update: 10/14 15:53 GMT by H : Follow-up to Tim's story.

urr

[peterpi]

"it's unclear where Apple is going to actually *use* said chip"

I predict that Apple will use the chip in a high end personal computer.

where is Apple going to actually *use* said chip?

[Anonymous Coward]

psst someone tells them to use it on a motherboard

Re:urr

[noewun]

Wait a minute - let's not jump to conclusions.

where are they going to use it?!?

[Anonymous Coward]

There are so many options:

• Stacked up to make that annoying table in the engineer's break room stable
• Ceramic heat thingys for toaster ovens
• Dropped out of airplanes over Alaska as a NORML protest
• Thrown at people pumping gas
• As party favors at Job's next all-night coke party
• The latest thing in West-Coast gansta rapper accessories

I mean, seriously, where the fuck else would you use a new CPU than in ... your computers as a new CPU?

hmmm....

[Anonymous Coward]

Now all we need is a good portable 64 bit OS. ;-)

>SELECT * FROM users WHERE clue > 0
0 rows returned

Apple Employee Reads Slashdot

[tunabomber]

I predict that Apple will use the chip in a high end personal computer.

Wow! That's an even better idea! ...but the 64-bit iPod project is already in high gear, so we can't stop now, can we?

Re:urr

[froseph]

For all we know, it might be used one hell of an expensive Apple branded silicon chip cookie

Re:If only they would... go out of business

[The Government]

Do you realise Apple got 92% of their revenue last quarter from hardware sales?

Many people don't get the strange position they're in where from one point of view they use the Mac OS to sell their hardware.

If they 'opened up' the hardware, they would quickly run out of resources to develop the OS, and the whole thing would fall apart.

Re:urr

[noewun]

Or perhaps the world's most bitchin' iPod.

Re:my favorite line

[Peyna]

But the 2.8 Ghz processor "makes the Internet faster!" Duh.

Critics

[ultraslide]

"Critics -- notably Intel -- argue that most desktop users have no need for 64-bit processing"

Critics -- notably Microsoft -- have argued that most desktop users have no need for more than 640kb of memory. :-)

the 'slide

"Corporate rock still sucks. What are you gonna do about it?"

Re:my favorite line

[Isldeur]

>>Critics -- notably Intel -- argue that most desktop users have no need for 64-bit processing.

>then to be redundant, Intel should face up to the fact that most users have no need for 2.8 Ghz processors.

Ah Grasshopper! You've obviously never tried to compile the KDE source tree.

Apple to buy, but not use

[banky]

Cupertino, CA - Apple Computer (AAPL) is expected to buy a record number of the new "PowerPC 970" CPU, but in a suprise move, isn't expected to actually do anything with them.

"We're doing great with the iPod, the warehouse is totally empty," said Apple VP Phil "All your Jaguar" Schiller. "Steve thought it would look more lived-in if we had some big boxes of stuff in there."

Steve Jobs was hard at work developing a new way to mispronounce the name of the new CPU and was unavailable for comment.

Re:Power 4, here we come

[PsychoSpunk]

but when it does, imagine a dual processor of these (with of course, quartz extreme pushing all of the video over to the Graphics processor).

and then... imagine a Beowulf cluster of these...

Narrowing it down...

[ebuck]

I imagine that thoses Apple computers will only be sold to the inhabited continents.

Re:urr

[Anonymous Coward]

You see, you have this mat, with different CONCLUSIONS written on it that you could JUMP TO!

Reminds me...

[trudyscousin]

"it's unclear where Apple is going to actually *use* said chip"

This reminded me of an exchange from the animated series "Freakazoid," when Douglas Douglas received a long-coveted computer chip for Christmas.

"Can I put it in, Mom?" he asked.

"Okay, but only in your computer."

(Well, I thought it was just as silly...)

Re:only 1.8 GHz?

[stratjakt]

They can just make up speeds like AMD to account for the slower clock.

Mac 3600+, etc.

Re:Enough is Enough

[Mononoke]

Is there nothing else to really talk about other then some proprietary piece of equipment.

Sure. Let's try a few topics:

• Itanium (Nope. Proprietary.)
• Windows (Nope. Proprietary.)
• AMD (Nope. Proprietary.)
• Sun (Nope. Proprietary.)
• nVidia (Nope. Proprietary.)
• Slashdot (Nope. Proprietary.)
• Java (Nope. Proprietary.)
• Diablo II (Nope. Proprietary.)
• BeOS (Nope. Proprietary.)
• ...

Damn, I think we're stuck.

(Hint: Look up the word.)

Forget the cluster...

[ebuck]

This kind of technology can be more easily implemented by burning porn directly into ROM reducing lookup times to almost the speed of the bus.

Apple could appeal to the hardware hackers with offers of ROM upgrades packaged in convienent easy-to-bend pinned chips using tightly machined push-down sockets. Withing months there would be a "Burn your own Porn ROM howto" and instructions on how to mill the pin thickness down to permit easy insertion!

(puns, unfortunately, were intended)

Re:Well...

[PCM2]

All that it needs is the layers above it to run on PC hardware and it'll work.

I don't think it would be too hard to do, either...

Awesome! Get right on that...

Re:no proprietary RAM

[killmenow]

I would guess that IBM would build a multichannel switched memory interface to DDR SDRAM.

But what would IBM call such a MultiChannel Architecture?

Re:Apple Employee Reads Slashdot

[SoupIsGoodFood_42]

*Gasp* My gawd, it's!....The Newton!!!.

What other rational explaination is their?

Re:Go back to SQL school...

[SoupIsGoodFood_42]

DELETE FROM users WHERE userID = 170660;
1 rows affected (0.01 sec)

;)

Re:It hasn't been said,

[dbrutus]

Actually, in this case, it would be an Appleseed [ucla.edu] cluster.

Imagine clustering for anybody.