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.
Well... (Score:0, Insightful)
good this processor is excellent (Score:2, Insightful)
my favorite line (Score:5, Insightful)
then to be redundant, Intel should face up to the fact that most users have no need for 2.8 Ghz processors.
+1 insightful (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:If only they would... (Score:5, Insightful)
Microsoft is not Apple's competitor. In many way, Apple depends on Microsoft. Having Office v.X for Mac OS X is a good thing and all, but Apple has also spend considerable time and effort developing features that allow OS X systems to integrate into Windows workgroups easily; they even fully integrated Samba into OS X in Jaguar!
Apple's competitors are Dell, HP, and other PC makers. If Microsoft were to evaporate and those companies were all to start selling only PCs running Linux tomorrow, you can bet your bottom dollar that Apple will start running new Switch adds by Thursday morning.
Because of these facts, Apple would be committing corporate suicide if they were to, as you say, "open up the hardware." (What you mean by this, of course, is to allow competitors to build computers that can run Mac OS X.) Apple is successful only in proportion to the number of Macs it sells. If other companies sold Macs, or Mac clones, Apple would be less successful, not more.
Re:good this processor is excellent (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Apple becomming much larger... (Score:3, Insightful)
Dreams in this case will most likely remain just that (no matter how bad I want them to come true
Just my worthless
Re:Power 4, here we come (Score:3, Insightful)
Still not confirmation! (Score:5, Insightful)
Okay, actually read the stories. "According to industry sources..." is what it says. Nowhere is there confirmation from Apple or IBM that Apple has comitted to purchasing them. This is not new, this is just the same news as the last story, only centered on one specific rumor, instead of the main story.
As soon as Apple or IBM officially states that Apple has committed to purchasing these processors, don't title the story 'Apple is Buyer...' since we still aren't sure.
Yeah, I'll admit, I've been expecting it since IBM announced the chip, and I fully expect that Apple will be the main customer. BUT, my belief (or the belief of any 'industry source', without hard proof) doesn't make it a fact.
I'm not asking that you not to rumormonger on it, I'm just asking that it not be presented as fact when it is still just rumor.
(Bah, and now I've forfietted three of my moderator points by posting in a thread I moderated in... :-( It just got me pissed off when I finally noticed that there still isn't any proof.)
Re:good this processor is excellent (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:good this processor is excellent (Score:3, Insightful)
Arg? (Score:5, Insightful)
It's like he never even thought about what he wrote. Someone conveys the thought that marketing hype may be costing you money, but let's ignore that and perpetuate the marketing hype.
On the other hand, the "Megahertz Myth" is marketing hype aimed at opposed marketing hype, so who really cares what either Apple or Intel offer as the "fastest"?
My PowerBook G3 runs just fine, my Pentium III runs just fine. If you need the power, go for it, but if you don't, go refurbished.
Just my opinion.
Re:Well... (Score:4, Insightful)
More likely they will start in the Xserve. The server crowd is much more likely to be able to use 64-bit and much more likely to be able to afford the new chip.
altivec repurcussions? (Score:4, Insightful)
I remember part of the reason apple went with motorla G4's was for the altivec engine. Back when Motorala and IBM split they forked the powerpc chip (the then G3), when this happened the definition for the chips changed slightly.
Motorola's definition of the G4 was a faster chip with the altivec engine. This is what allows for superfast processing during high floating point calculations (similar to MMX only phatter). This was also the part Apple was talking about when they used to advertise "twice as fast as pentium pc" because during those moments of super-intense number crunching, they were. IBM's definition of the G4 was a chip made with copper, shorter pipelines things like that. How is the switch to an IBM chip going to affect altivec? Since it's motorola technology I think it's safe to assume it won't be on the IBM chip. Will the IBM chip suffer at all during those slowdowns? Or will the extra 32 bit data path, in conjunction with copper, etc... be more than enough to make up the difference?
Re:1.8ghz... Ignoring Pipeline Length (Score:2, Insightful)
Let us assume that the PowerPC 970 (AKA GPUL) will have a 10-stage pipe (AFAIK). "Average code" is 20% branch instructions, and a good branch prediction unit can give 90% correct predictions. So this leads us to need a pipeline flush every 45 instructions (on average). We then need to add the pipeline length to this number to get the number of cycles that the chip needs to be fully ready for the 46th instruction.
So:
PPC970 = 56
G4 = 53
P3 = 56
P4 = 66
On the first run of a piece of code the branch prediction unit will only get a 50% prediction rate (i believe). This prediction rate would also be the case if the cpu was running complex code that had random branching. The string of instructions before a pipeline flush would then be 10 instructions.
In this case the numbers look a little different and the g4/p3/PPC970 camp looks really good:
PPC970 = 20
G4 = 17
P3 = 20
P4 = 30
So to run this code at the same speed, the P4 would have to run 50% faster then the P3/PPC970 and 75% faster then the G4. Remember, when you are doing serious multi-tasking, the branch prediction unit will not get a 90% prediction rate as its resources will be split between several different applications.
Need? (Score:4, Insightful)
And IBM said no one needed the power of the 80386. Then Compaq released their 386 monster and IBM stopped mattering in the PC world.
you mean INTERGRAPH itanium.... (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:How does this relate to the G5? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Dear Apple (Score:1, Insightful)
That's not how it works... otherwise the pipeline of a PPC would be longer than a Pentium4... the opposite is in fact true.
http://www.apple.com/g4/myth/
Fewer stages means "less bubbles" when cache misses and branch prediction fails. G4's have shorter pipelines.
Intel didn't believe in the 8008 either. (Score:4, Insightful)
By the time you factor in biometric security, voice recognition and Christ's own gaming engines, VR generation, desk-top video editing and so on, 64 bits gets chewed up pretty fast even if you offload some processing to custom chips (and anyway who wants to build boxen with more ASICs that cost more money?)
64-=bitrs on the desktop? In five years it may be the majority of new box builds are 64-bits and 32-bit will be for poor for folks stuck on Windows without a migration path.
Re:Should compete with Pentium 4. Even at 1.8GHz. (Score:3, Insightful)
The IBM processors are RISC processors. The Intel ones are CISC. RISC do less per instruction, therefore, it is stupid compare the way you do.
Re:my favorite line (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Need? (Score:3, Insightful)
What a load of bullshit!
First, what's this crap about 64-bit processors not working? There are plenty of MIPS, Alpha, Sparc and PowerPC based 64-bit systems that work just fine. Aren't the current crop of Nintendo game consoles powered by a 64-bit MIPS? How much more low-end do you need to go?
Second, what's this crap about most variables having less than 8 significant bits? Most variables have a minimum of 8 significant bits. The average length of a character string is in the 8-12 byte range (64-96 bits!) and integers and pointers are all (at least) 32-bits wide in modern systems (Windows, MacOS, and all unices).
Third, what's this crap about it being "too expensive" to transfer 64-bits of data in from RAM? All modern processors have 64-bit wide data busses and transfer data in 4-beat blocks (meaning 4*64-bits, or 256-bits at a time). This is true for the Pentium as well, at least since the Pentium II!
Finally, what's this crap about "paging in 64 bit code"? Just because Alpha (or Sparc, MIPS, or PowerPC) have 64-bit wide data registers doesn't make the code any bigger! Both the 32-bit and 64-bit variants of Sparc, MIPS, PowerPC and PA-RISC use the same size instruction words (32-bits), so there is no difference in code size.
Whatever your job description might have said, you clearly don't know what you are talking about.
Re:urr (Score:3, Insightful)
Headline: Apple employees seen putting new IBM chips into new computer cases
It is still unclear whether Apple is going to sell these computers, or switch to Intel at the last second for no good reason.
Give it up people! Apple is stuck with PowerPC chips whether they like it or not. What are they going to do, release OS X for Intel and realize suddenly that there are *no* applications or drivers available for it? It would take a while for the application base to build up again, and some older applications would never be recompiled. Then would new applications continue to be released both in Intel and PowerPC versions? If there's something Apple cannot afford, it is to lose market share due to a messy transition.
Re:Apple Employee Reads Slashdot (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Apple becomming much larger... (Score:2, Insightful)
Given the insane rush to the bottom of the barrel by the entire PC hardware industry, Apple has done surprising things to stay innovative and at the top of the game in price, features and "quality".
Price: At the low end, on any given day of the week, Apple's machines cost no more than $100 more than the equivalent Dell junk-box, at best Apple will best their price by $100.
Features: At the integration level, you're guaranteed to have the best interconnectivity with an Apple computer. Apple packages the best USB and Firewire support available. With expandability options that run from ATA/133 and 4xAGP to Gigabit and Wireless Ethernet, you're unlikely to find something in the real world you can't connect to [apple.com].
"Quality": Clearly, on a hardware basis, Apple offers more...
To make the point, in todays market, there's only one other way to offer "superior value and/or price", and that happens to lead directly to your disappearance from the market a la Compaq, Packard Bell, Acer, Gateway, etc [infoworld.com].
From what we can tell [bbc.co.uk], there's not going to be much of a business left for whoever is left standing. There's no support for the already-razor-thin profit margins of the PeeCee maker.
You'll have to forgive Apple from taking the road less-traveled for their customers' sake!
Re:Should compete with Pentium 4. Even at 1.8GHz. (Score:2, Insightful)
Wouldn't it more useful and accurate to compare it to compare it to Intel's 64bit Itanium 2?
I guess most of us are more familiar with the P4 but for someone try to choose a platform for a future 64bit app, the choice will be I2, G5 or Hammer. To a great extent, how these compare to their 32bit cousins will be moote if your app actually has 64bit precision or memory requirements.
and to wonder... (Score:2, Insightful)
I hope Apple has great plans for this chip...