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• Intel x86 P3 - 29W
  
• Motorola PowerPC G4 MPC7455 (p15) - 30W
  
• AMD Athlon Model 4 - 55.1W
  

Many people would be happy to sell you a board with a G4 on it. Maybe even 2 G4s!

Marvell makes ATX boards with 1 or 2 7450s.

MotorolaMakes a very nice ATX board with 2 7450's on it. They also have the Sandpoint platform which you can use with many different PPC chips.

Merlancia seems to have some good stuff.

There's a bunch more too, Tundra, GMS, Force, just do a search on google. You'll likely find though that Apple has the best prices. If you want to play with a PPC (I'm assuming you want to do some low level stuff for fun or profit) you'll end up spending $1500 on just a board from somewhere else, or $1500 on a complete system from Apple. The Apple systems retain their value for a long time too.

Motorola's Accompli 009 is a great all-in-one phone/PDA/email device that has a color display, supports GPRS, and is tri-band (international travel-savvy).

You can find the exact text of the original "research", such as it is, here. Google dwells in the sky and rules us.

The thing is a glossy advertising sheet which motorala purchased - NOT a research paper. The word "Data" DOES NOT EVEN APPEAR. Likewise, the words power, mean and measurement, and the letter n, are nowhere used in any statistical sense. The "research" seems to involve no hard numbers WHATSOEVER. The report has no references, although the author has peppered it with the names of her friends, along with vague, sweeping claims about the results of their "research" (if you can find evidence anywhere of where this supposed work was reported, by all means, post!) If there was ever any primary data associated with this report, it is not here and I cannot find it, although Dr. Plant includes a dozen glossy photographs she took herself. Dr. Sophie Plant, the author of the article, has quit her job at the University of Warwick's cybernetic culture research unit (a fact reuters also glosses over) in order, supposedly, to write full time.

Incidentally, the cybernetic culture research unit, established by Dr. Sadie Plant (author of the report), seems to do a lot of, yes I will keep the quotes, "research" into the experiences of people abducted by UFOs. Their homepage reads like the ravings of a new age schizophrenic.

This paper is absolute vapor; even in the field of Sociology is stands out for it's lack of substance.

I was sure at the time the article was different!

Perhaps it has mutated? :-)

Then again, in an earlier refererence to Plant's studies, the acquired thumb skills seem to play only a minor rôle.To quote from the article:

• Personal Power: Cell phones have given people a new-found personal power, enabling unprecedented mobility and allowing them to conduct their business wherever they go.
• Gender Differences: Females tend to value their cell phone as a means of expression and social communication, while males tend to use it as an interactive toy. However, evidence suggests that males are becoming far more chatty and communicative as a result of cell phone use.
• Male Status Symbols: Men have a tendency to display their cell phones more proudly, using them to display their aggression in front of other men, and almost like a mating ritual in front of women.
• Stereotypes: Dr. Plant identified six distinctive types of cell phone users based upon common traits and characteristics, and compared these types with six different kinds of birds. Owls, for example, tend to keep their cell phone use to a minimum, making and taking only necessary calls, while starlings tend to be more aggressive, pushing their way through crowds while talking loudly on their cell phones.
• Innies and Outies: There are two distinct types of cell phone users - ``innies'' are quiet, discreet and unobtrusive with their mobile conversations, while ``outies'' are louder and less concerned with the perceptions of people around them.
• Secret Phones: Many cell phone users keep a secret second phone to conduct love affairs or clandestine business deals, or even just as a hotline between friends.
• The Thumb Generation: Texting has had a profound effect on the way teenagers use their thumbs in some regions. Because they are used to tapping out numbers and messages with their thumbs, they now point and even ring doorbells with their thumb instead of their forefinger.

Thus the thumb dexterity is mentioned as the last item on the list, and the word mutate doesn't appear at all...

What Java phones can I get in the US now? The Motorola i85?

Motorola i85s, i55sr, i90c, i50sx, i80s.

Do any US Java phones let me send my own custom packets? Meaning, could I write a wireless tic-tac-toe game once I learn midlet programming?

Yes, but They make you jump through hoops first.

I agree, one of the reasons I shoot my girlfriend don when she tries to plug the "accompli" is the lack of palm OS (Full sized screen too). I might as well get a Palm 705 (449$). That seams a better deal for me, but the all time killer: The Handspring Treo! If I put these two up for the battle against eachother, I can't see why I would want this Accompli thing. After all the accompli is 649$! (Without service plan). I'm kinda hooked on this service plan here for the Treo, too bad I have to wait a bit for it to be available in Canada (A week or few?).

If you choose not to press "skip intro", I challenge you to make it through the whole intro without laughing. Keep your headphones on.

$649

What I have in mind specifically is how one will be able to interact with the device, possibly using a non-MS operating system.

Technically their device runs their own proprietary OS called Wisdom OS. The documentation of their windosw-based application (TrueSync Desktop) suggests that open protocols are used, such as POP3, SMTP etc.

However for your calendar / contacts database app, Outlook seems to be the only choice...

What I have in mind specifically is how one will be able to interact with the device, possibly using a non-MS operating system.

Technically their device runs their own proprietary OS called Wisdom OS. The documentation of their windosw-based application (TrueSync Desktop) suggests that open protocols are used, such as POP3, SMTP etc.

However for your calendar / contacts database app, Outlook seems to be the only choice...

Desktop PC Partner Suite
* For use in Microsoft Windows 95/98/2000 and Microsoft Windows NT 4.0 environments.

I wonder what does this means exactly.

Features are explained in greater detail on the Motorola site.

I like the idea of PDA/Cell phone combos, but only if they reduce the amount of crap one has to schlep around in the long run.

From what I could gather, to use the phone, you MUST plug a headset into the thing. While some people may find it "cool" to have an ugly black cord running from their ear to their pocket all the time, I sure don't. Either that, or you've got to pull the headset out of your pocket, unravel the cord, and stick it in your ear before the party on the other end hangs up.

This reminds me a lot of the Motorola V200 which also suffered from the same shortcoming... but at least it has a speakerphone.

Almost perfect... but not quite.

Instead of duct-taping a horribly designed chip in with water-cooling and refridgeration units, why not just use a more efficient chip architecture? It's not like they aren't available. And the market's large enough to support more.

Call me stupid, but why can't they use the same material in PCs to increase the chip speed? Are there some limitations/incompatibilities other than the comparitively slow speeds of memory and I/O (I guess we can all see why I never got very far in that EE major...)

First of all, the IBM transistors are not MOSFETs, the tiny switches used in CPU's and other logic-based circuitry. They are instead heterojunction bipolar transistors (HBTs). HBTs are lightning fast and can be used as low-noise amplifiers for high frequency signals, which makes them great for wireless and Gigabit optical communication applications, but they are relatively large compared to MOSFETs and so are not really suitable for making CPU's. (Notice that the IBM press release never mentions CPU applications, but instead focuses on 100 Gigabit optical communications networks).

Now, you may wonder why SiGe can't be used to make super-fast MOSFETs. The main problem is that MOSFETs require a dielectric, such as SiO2 to act as an insulating layer between the "gate" and the channel. However, attempting to grow a layer of SiO2 on SiGe results in separation of the Ge from the Si, ultimately causing device failure. Currently, people are trying to find ways to deposit new dielectrics with higher dielectric constants, such as ZrO2, to replace the SiO2. Once this is acheived it may be possible to put such a material onto SiGe to allow creation of a MOSFET using this technology. However, development of such high-k dielectric technology is probably 3-4 years away and adaptation of this to SiGe will be a few more years beyond that, so don't expect SiGe-based CPU's anytime soon.

One last thing. I don't understand why IBM gets all the press. Motorola announced 110 GHz HBTs last October. IBM is really not as far ahead of the curve as they would like you to believe.

hope its MIPS based and 64bit and not PowerPC which ISA IMHO is pants and only IBM produce chips

Motorola says hi.

Their motto is "Things are starting to talk to other things". But how long until the "thing" your PDA/sweater/whatever is talking to is in the hands of a crooked cop? Their "explanation" even shows the police getting evidence from a digital device without a warrant! Read the Fourth and Fifth Amendments to the U.S. Constitution to see where I'm coming from.

To go along with your foot-powered laptop, you might want to check out the Freecharge windup generator due out for Motorola cellphones this quarter. It won a Time Product of the Year citation.

I know that he said that, but perhaps he didn't see the the PPC roadmap on Motorolas website recently. The G5 is 64-bit and is 32-bit backwards compatable.

That's not true. There will be a 64-bit version with 32-bit backwards compatibility and a 32-bit version (just like with the PowerPC 620 vs 601). That is what it says on the roadmap. Since programmers are still transitioning to OS X, I wouldn't expect the switch soon, at least not until the high-end users start complaining about a lack of RAM. Don't forget, 64-bit will hardly make a difference in speed for most uses, especially since the G4 already has a 128-bit processing unit (Altivec). Any application that would benefit greatly from 64-bit instructions already supports Altivec. On the other hand, 64-bit instructions/data means moving twice as much data, even for 32-bit instructions. Given that modern CPU's are for a good part limited by bandwith issues, this may make a 64-bit CPU slower than the 32-bit version.

The larger registers and caches will increase the size of the die and thus the cost of the chip. So I'm not looking forward to it yet, my next computer will probably not (need to) move beyond 2GB of RAM, so I can wait.

Wow, no one saw THAT coming!

Are you trying to be sarcastic, or are you just hopelessly out of touch :-) ? Motorola announced that they would make ARM-based DragonBalls more than 6 moths ago, and the final product has been out for a few months. Probably the reason for this is that Palm forced them to ;-)

I helped build this one...
http://www.vanguardms.com/technologies/remotevu.ht ml
http://www.motorola.com/LMPS/pressreleases/page167 0.htm -- Rick

All right, I'll concede on the gate count issue. I'd be interested to see how many are dedicated to cache as opposed to processor logic.

Athlon, for instance, is already copper and is moving to SOI by 2004. I think Intel is already SOI, but is slower moving to copper. I guess what I'm saying is that neither of those two factors are likely to be an issue going forward.

The G5 is an upcoming 32-bit embedded chip made by Motorola (like the G4 and G4+), and does not resemble the (64-bit) Power4's internal architecture in the slightest. Whether this chip will be the basis of the next generation of Macs is of course not yet known.

According to the Motorola PowerPC roadmap, the G5 will be available in both 32 and 64 bit versions. How much it resembles Power4 isn't clear, but it's supposed to debut at up to 2 GHz. Are you still so confident it won't have world-class performance?

Because Apple does not have the integrity (nor, according to the oft-repeated excuse, the FORTRAN compiler) to submit SPEC runs for a G4-based computer, there are no official SPEC scores for the G4. However, we do have Motorola's *estimated* *SPEC95* scores for the 7450 (a.k.a. G4+) at 733MHz. (Here [motorola.com], second page, on the left.)

For what it's worth, I agree that Apple should do SPEC benchmarking itself. Especially now that MacOS is Unix.

On the compiler front, I did find a seemingly decent FORTRAN compiler for MacOS X, so that issue is addressed at least. ;-) (Absoft is a respected compiler company.)

I must say I'm surprised at how low that 'estimated SPECfp95 score' is. I'd really like to see more information on G4 fp capabilities. The Absoft compiler claims to have auto-vectorizing capabilities using Altivec, which might have considerable impact on some of the benchmarks. (The new dual-processor 1 GHz G4 is claimed to have 15+ GFlops of computing power, using Altivec I presume.) I guess my next step should be to actually purchase a Mac and get busy benchmarking. ;-)

As to your estimated SPEC scores, I appreciate the effort but I doubt those are worth much.

Power4 is simply not a desktop chip design. Even using one of the 4 dies in the MCM as the basis for a desktop CPU is a shakey proposition, since they're too big (again, 400mm^2 on .18um), and include a bunch of integrated I/O stuff and the L3 TLBs, all stuff which would be worthless in a desktop machine. The actual datapaths are quite simple, and indeed are optimized to work in an 8-way MCM, not as the sole CPU of a desktop machine.

The integrated I/O might or might not be worthwhile, but Apple's current pro machines use L3 cache. What would really be of interest on the desktop, of course, is the execution efficiency that manages to retire so many instructions per clock. If that single Power4 CPU was really "optimized to work in an 8-way MCM", it truly did a stellar job as a uni-processor.

Rumor also has it, BTW, that the G5 will include an on-chip memory controller allowing memory bandwidth to scale in SMP systems, similar to the scheme used in Hammer. I wonder when Apple will release SMP boxes with more than two CPUs...

At any rate, thanks for a more interesting discussion than usual. :-)

299,792,458 m/s...not just a good idea, its the law!

The 1 GHz G4+ that powers the current generation of Macs would probably score about the same as the R14k on SPEC, or a bit lower

GPRS would be ideal for this kind of terminal!

Something like this perhaps?
I've heard that RIM also has a similar thing in the pipe, also GSM/GPRS. (standard "real soon now"/vapourware dislaimers apply)

Well, it's my business to know... (or actually predict ;-)
I work on wireless games (I'm managing the games group at a wireless VLSI company). We already have a (proof-of-concept) DOOM port on a wireless device. It's already here.
Additionally, in Germany games by In-Fusio are a huge success; In-Fusio even signed a deal with Motorola to provide a (J2ME-based) game engine on all Motorola devices.
Wireless carriers see games as one of the driving forces for the adoption of next-generation (2.5G and 3G) devices.
So, wireless games (and SDKs) have great momentum. Which ones will succeed -- this is another question; I'd certainly bet on the Java-based ones, and ExEn (In-Fusio's offering) is already succeeding.

Motorola and Apple really have the jump on this one. And it is about time, because the g4 has not been holding its ground for a while now.

Apple is going to use an MPC85xx. Here is one, if not the, chip apple will use MPC8540 info

64/32 bit processing, 333mhz DDR, Rapid I/O, etc.

Hypertransport will probably also find it's way into the new motherboard designs. That's been done for a while now.

check it check it yo

motorola is already using them
(and i swear that Sanyo or someone will be releasing full-color phones shortly in Japan with 'em.)

eMagin has beautiful dk's available. i want one!

some talk from a year ago.

do you like to dream?

umm... soOOoo cool

From what I read on alot of tech sites, there are several devices on the way which will have the keyboard/PDA/Cellphone thing. I can't resist to tell you that I am working on such a device at Motorola. You probably haven't heard about it yet but it's called the Accompli 009 and has been in a few press releases. Accompli 009. Google also has a good image archive of it here. But anyway there are more devices on the way from Samsung, Nokia, Sharp, ... pratically anyone who makes gagdets. Lots of them run Linux too, like the Sharp SD500L.

Motorola Specs for PowerPC's

Linux capable and OpenBSD to boot!

Technical Library

PowerPC FAQ

Lightsoft: Beginners Guide to PowerPC Assembly Language

March 95 - Balance of Power: Introducing PowerPC Assembly Language

PowerPc Architecture

PowerPC Library

The Metroworks Code Warrior documentation also has some helpful stuff. I found a copy online a while ago, but it's gone now.

Technical Library

PowerPC FAQ

Lightsoft: Beginners Guide to PowerPC Assembly Language

March 95 - Balance of Power: Introducing PowerPC Assembly Language

PowerPc Architecture

PowerPC Library

The Metroworks Code Warrior documentation also has some helpful stuff. I found a copy online a while ago, but it's gone now.

I'm working on an embedded PowerPC 603e and was able to find some descent documentation on the 32-bit PowerPC instruction set in general from Motorola's home page. I know you said you checked there, but I had a difficult time tracking it down myself. So in case you missed it, the name of the document is PowerPC Microprocessor Family: The Programming Environments for 32-Bit Microprocessors . I ordered a printed copy from their literature center, and a week later I got a nice little green book that has already proven to be indespensable.

yup - know exactly what your talking about.. it'a little big but quite nice. If anyone is interested I know where you can get one of these.. just e-mail me. Also the Motorola's i90c is quite nice as well - MIDI Ring Tones, Java 2 ME, Date Book, Address book - not to mention the whole internet access thing.

-neil

RapidIO is in the PPC G5 roadmap and will be in moto's first g5-based chip. I've been drooling for some time now...

RapidIO is in the PPC G5 roadmap and will be in moto's first g5-based chip. I've been drooling for some time now...

What really constitutes a name anyway? Take the communications giant Motorola for example, a name derived from the beginning automotive era. Victrola record players were popular for the home, so Motorola was made a record player for the car. It didn't work that well (naturally) but they kept the name.

IMO, what establishes your image as a business should stay the same. The name "Linux" itself can mean so much than just an operating system. Linux has allowed them to build a decent-sized business with little overhead. Why not just give Linux credit?

So you mean a name like Dragonball MX1 isn't cool enough? ;-)

BTW, don't Palms run on 68000s?

Yes, they are both PPC chips but the POWER4 is made by IBM. The PPC consortium was founded in the early 90s by Apple, IBM and Motorola. The main difference between them is that the POWER4 is a server chip while the G4 is a consumer chip. Because of this, cost, performance etc are VERY different. Basically the POWER4 is much better than the G4 but it costs a hell of a lot more.

A stack of 6800's? Do they have eight chips in a cluster to make a 64 bit machine? Perhaps they'll move up to the MC680x0 line soon -- that would show the Macintosh SE who's boss!

check this out, motorola announced cisco will use the g4 in their routers... check it here. also, here is the motorola powerpc roadmap.

check this out, motorola announced cisco will use the g4 in their routers... check it here. also, here is the motorola powerpc roadmap.

Of course, this system relies on software to do all the work. A real system clock would just be the same thing implemented in hardware.

My phone's batteries typically last over a week even when I leave it on all week long, but then, battery life was one of my main concerns when I was looking for a phone.

The idea of a free (libre), Unix-oid system is and was the core of the GNU project. RMS was hacking on this before the Linux kernel was a gleam in Linus's eye - since 1984, for crying out loud.

Just because someone had an idea first, and started working on it first, does not necessarily mean they should get the credit for doing it first. GNU got most of the way there, but then dropped the ball on the kernel.

Linus didn't "borrow" from the GNU project. He fit the last piece into a puzzle that RMS and the GNU Project had been working on for over a decade. RMS would like this to be known and understood

The GNU project had a bunch of pieces of an OS lying around without a kernel. Linus (and the group that popped up around him), took those pieces, and combined them with a working kernel and a bunch of other software from other places to produce an actual functioning operating system. Many manufacturers take parts from many other sources and assemble them into products, but you don't see a IBM/Motorola/Power Mac G4. Apple gets to name the whole system, because Apple is the one that actually assembles everything into a working package. If you build your own x86 machine from parts, you can call it the Frobnitz if you want, and Intel isn't going to try to get you to call it the Intel/Frobnitz just because they made a few important pieces of it.

Either way, his request hardly makes his a raving loon.

I never said he was a raving loon, and at least on this issue, don't think he is (raving maybe, but not a loon). I just think his way of trying to get recognition for his work is clumsy, exclusionary, and ultimately too late. If RMS wanted people to think of Linux as being a kernel for the GNU project, rather than GNU being the support software for Linux, he should have acted sooner, and chosen a name that sounds better than 'guh-new lih-nucks' for the talking heads on CNBC to say.(Your pronunciation may vary)

This is really old news. Motorola has already demonstrated working transistors using these types of materials, see this article from 1999.

Motorola is the #1 supplier of chips to the the communications industry, makes processors for Macs as well as Palm Pilots and licenses a lot of its process technology, such as copper interconnects and SOI, to AMD, so don't worry this technology is not likely to get lost in the shuffle.

Since you sound like you know something about this work, I'd like to ask a few questions.

1. How does this perovskovite material differ from that used previously by Motorola (see reference here)?

2. What will be the primary limitation for bringing this technology into a manufacturable process and how far off in the future is this?

Thanks.

See: this page for information about Motorola's MX1, Dragonball + ARM9.

AT-SDR=4

Sending that command to your modem (presumably as part of the init. string) will tell your modem only to answer on a triple ring. It will report this as "RING 3." If you wanted it only to work for the single rings, you'd use AT-SDR=1 ("RING 1") and for dual rings, AT-SDR=2 ("RING 2".) Some modems will send "RING A," "RING B," etc. -- I gather that there's no such thing as a standard message for this.

Some of the places that I gathered this from include Motorola, FaxTalk, Fosh Australia and Dell Europe. This google was the most useful one.

Good luck -- you should have pretty much all of the info that you need at this point, I hope.

-Waldo