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Will Darwin be Ported to the IBM Power 4?

Posted by Cliff on from the any-port-in-the-storm dept.

eadint asks: "I have heard rumors thorough the net that Apple plans to port Darwin to the Power 4, 64 bit chip. Currently I work for a university. We are using Apple computers and are considering the platform for our number crunching capabilities. According to this Motorola has no plans on producing a 64-bit chip. Does anyone know if Darwin can or will be ported to a true 64 bit platform."

4 of 45 comments (clear)

  1. Power4 by MonaLisa · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Have you considered Itanium-2 under Linux for
    your "number crunching" platform? The McKinley
    (Itanium-2) is faster than the Power4, and also
    cheaper (although you'll need to buy the Intel
    compilers for a few hundred if you want great
    performance).

    1. Re:Power4 by Guspaz · · Score: 2, Interesting

      What about waiting for the Hammer to come out? I thought the Hammer's compiler was free.

      Regards, Guspaz.

  2. AMD hammer for apple? by brejc8 · · Score: 3, Interesting

    These are just roumors but I heared this from several sources that apple are talking to AMD about a 64bit only OS.
    Apple might need to get faster chips to compete but making something so close to a PC will allow clones.
    Alternatively apple could just port their OS to the hammer PCs and keep making their own PPC machines.
    The OS is sexy enough to make a large wodge of money.
    Especially if it comes with M$ office which is the only reason a lot of people dont wish to use anything other than windows.

    --
    Mouse powered Chips, Open source Processors and Lego
  3. If you want it, start writing it. by dbrutus · · Score: 3, Interesting

    The quickest way to determine if this is a live product would be to start the port using opendarwin.org and see what happens. If you start to get odd or wierd static from Apple, you probably tripped across a secret Apple project and you'll know. If not, then you might just turn it into a live product anyway.

    It would certainly be smart both for IBM and Apple to support this as a first step to Mac OS X on RS/6000. Apple could use the increase in its upper end and it would help IBM push some more boxes.