Intel Inside For Apple?

iomud writes "Bear Stearns analyst Andrew Neff predicts that there's a better than 80 percent chance Apple will make the jump to Intel in two to four years. As the relationship with Motorola seems to be weaning the question may be what chip would you like to see in next-generation Macs and why?" It seems important to note that Bear Stearns owns shares of Intel and Dell, and has a banking relationship with Dell and HP. Oh, and even if it didn't, that I can't see any reason why anyone should care what Andrew Neff says. But that doesn't mean it can't be fun to talk about!

Comments

"Performance Boost" a result of the MHz myth?

[Theaetetus]

"Neff, for instance, predicted Apple, which uses chips from Motorola and IBM that currently top out at 1GHz, will switch to Intel, whose chips run at 2.5GHz, to get a performance boost and gain more customers. There's a better than 80 percent chance Apple will make the jump in two to four years, he said." This seems to imply that the 2.5 GHz P4 is 2.5 times as fast as the 1 GHz G4... Which is a joke. However, a lot of people (primarily the ones buying their PCs at Walmart) are great believers in the MHz Myth and will compare the two chips based just on clock speed. This indeed might make more gain in terms of customers for Apple, but at what cost? Chips that run hotter and process fewer instructions simultaneously? How about instead of advertising chips in terms of clock speeds, start marketing them in terms of calculations per second (start comparing gigaflops... in which case, last I checked, G4s were way ahead of Pentiums). -T

Re:"Performance Boost" a result of the MHz myth?

[Anonymous Coward]

You're right, a 2.5GHz P4 isn't 2.5 times as fast as a 1 GHz G4. It's about 1.5 times as fast. Face facts: the G4 is a more efficient chip. But it's not *2.5* times as efficient.

The tougher fact is this: The 2.5GHz P4 is significantly cheaper than the 1GHz G4. You can buy 1GHz G4's in top-of-the-line Macs. You can buy 2.5GHz P4's at Costco.

The ratio is, literally, "bang for the buck". At some point the bang for the buck for Intel will so outstrip the PowerPC that Apple simply won't have any choice but to make the jump. Thankfully, once Apple's got everyone on board on MacOS X, the procedure isn't too evil. NeXT did it once already.

Re:"Performance Boost" a result of the MHz myth?

[Toraz Chryx]

The Altivec hardware in the G4 is still _extremely_ impressive, but it seems bandwidth limited.

I seem to recall some Xserve benches that showed a single processor Xserve being right on the heels of a DP Quicksilver in some processor intensive tests?

Can't remember where, was a german website I think?

Re:"Performance Boost" a result of the MHz myth?

[frooyo]

How about instead of advertising chips in terms of clock speeds, start marketing them in terms of calculations per second

You mean, cycles per second WHICH is Hz. Thus a Pentium IV at 2.5 MHz is 2.5million cycles per second.

Enough said

Re:"Performance Boost" a result of the MHz myth?

[Toraz Chryx]

No, calculations != cycles

Different processors can handle a different number of instructions per cycle.

and hence, require a different number of cycles to perform the same calculation.

Re:"Performance Boost" a result of the MHz myth?

[DiscoOnTheSide]

yes, but dont forget that the XServe has a redesigned northbridge and bus, it also has DDR memmory which helps things.

Re:"Performance Boost" a result of the MHz myth?

[Toraz Chryx]

...

That was my point, the Xserve has more memory bandwidth, although the FSB is the same, it seems be better equipped to keep the processor fully fed whilst also servicing the NIC/disk controllers etc.

(and AFAIK the CPU northbridge on the Xserve was still 133Mhz SDR? )

Re:"Performance Boost" a result of the MHz myth?

[Mr. Piddle]

But it's not *2.5* times as efficient.

Other CPUs, such as the UltraSPARC III and Power 4, are this much more efficient than the Pentium IV.

However, these chips have reliability, SMP, and bandwidth features above and beyond the Pentium, which is part of why they are more than 2.5 times more expensive.

It really is sad that the Intel marketing machine has put so much emphasis on Hertz. The G4 and the other mainstream RISC chips have always been so much simpler, more elegant, and have withstood the test of time without becoming a kludge like x86 has.

What would be ideal would be for Apple to ensure the G4 Macs routinely beat x86 machines and, then, market them like mad.

Re:"Performance Boost" a result of the MHz myth?

[Tom7]

It's true that you can't compare chips directly, but try an actual benchmark (ie, not a photoshop filter commissioned by apple) and you'll see that the 2.5 GHz P4 beats the 1 GHz G4 pretty easily. Try cpuscorecard.com, for instance, which says a 1 GHz G4 is a little worse than the 2 GHz P4.

Re:"Performance Boost" a result of the MHz myth?

[DavidRavenMoon]

(and AFAIK the CPU northbridge on the Xserve was still 133Mhz SDR?)

The specs

Processor Single or dual 1GHz PowerPC G4 processors Velocity Engine vector processing unit Full 128-bit internal memory data paths Powerful floating-point unit supporting single-cycle, double-precision calculations Data stream prefetching operations supporting four simultaneous 32-bit data streams 256K on-chip L2 cache running at processor speed 2MB DDR SRAM L3 cache per processor with up to 4GB/s throughput 133MHz system bus supporting over 1GB/s data throughput

Memory

256MB or 512MB of 266MHz PC2100 DDR SDRAM with up to 2.1GB/s throughput Four DIMM slots supporting up to 2GB of DDR SDRAM using the following: -- 128MB or 256MB DIMMs (64-bit-wide, 128Mb technology) -- 512MB DIMMs (64-bit-wide, 256Mb technology)

Re:"Performance Boost" a result of the MHz myth?

[DavidRavenMoon]

The ultimate smackdown: Mac versus PC

Dual 1GHz G4 versus 2.2-GHz Sony Vaio RX690G Digital Studio.

"Rather than argue the point, I decided to conduct my own comparison. Apple even provided the actual Photoshop picture used, a full-color photo over 44 megabytes in size, depicting seven bike riders with colorful bikes and helmets. This is the sort of file that graphic artists have to manipulate on a daily basis.

"Apple also sent me a copy of its actual test protocol, including a Photoshop Actions file, a set of scripts that automated the various rendering functions. They also provided a high-end twin-processor desktop Power Macintosh on which to run the tests.

"The Mac was upgraded to the latest version of Mac OS X, 10.1.5. The Sony had Windows XP. I installed the standard retail versions of Adobe Photoshop 7 on both computers."

"Running the tests proved exceedingly simple because Photoshop displays the actual timing of a rendering process rounded off to tenths of a second. Per Apple's directions, I conducted each test four times to deliver the most accurate results.

"Like all Adobe applications, Photoshop is a bit slow to launch. It took 15 seconds on both computers to get ready for the main event.

"In the nine test runs, the Mac came out on top five times, besting the Sony by up to 8.1 seconds. Where the PC emerged victorious, the margin was usually less than half a second.

"In all, the Mac took a total of 35.5 seconds to complete the nine rendering steps. The PC took 50.1 seconds, making it 41% slower according to my calculator's reckoning.

...

"The upshot of all this, however, is that, when someone tells you a Windows box is always faster than the Mac, point them to this article and tell them it isn't necessarily so."

Of course the PC beat the Mac in a game of Quake ;)

Re:"Performance Boost" a result of the MHz myth?

[Golias]

The tougher fact is this: The 2.5GHz P4 is significantly cheaper than the 1GHz G4. You can buy 1GHz G4's in top-of-the-line Macs. You can buy 2.5GHz P4's at Costco.

The ratio is, literally, "bang for the buck". At some point the bang for the buck for Intel will so outstrip the PowerPC that Apple simply won't have any choice but to make the jump. Thankfully, once Apple's got everyone on board on MacOS X, the procedure isn't too evil. NeXT did it once already.

P4's are cheaper to buy, yes. However, they consume more power and run hotter, which makes the G4 a vastly superior choice for laptops (even in bang for the buck comparisons).

As for the notion that the gap will widen and Apple will be forced to switch, keep in minds that in the desktop market the x86 archetecture has always had a ! for $ edge over any Motorolla/Apple system (with the exception of the original Apple ][, in which Woz chose a Moto knock-off over Intel chips because they were cheaper). I'm fairly sure that no Mac has ever given you more flops-per-dollar than whatever the prevailing Wintel box of the day was... Not so much because the chips are so much more expensive (although the do cost a little more), but because Apple's superior operating systems have let them sell their boxen with a much higher profit margin than companies like Compaq (RIP) and Packard Bell (Ditto), who had no way of really making their computer stand out from the budget systems from your local neighborhood screwdriver shop (or the no-name vendors who get all their sales from good scores on Pricewatch.com).

So yea, Apple could (in theory) save about $50 a system (their cost) by moving everything over to Intel. But they would also end up increasing the odds that somebody could reverse-engineer their ROMs (as Compaq once did to IBM), and suddenly all those "Pricewatch Special" shitbox PC's and PC Mo-Bo kits (and I say that as a big fan of "Pricewatch Special" shitbox kits) will be able to run OS X after a simple chip-mod, and Apple would die a horrible death shortly thereafter, making version 10.5 (or whatever) the last Mac OS ever.

Nobody can make enough money to sustain a company by writing operating systems for commodity PC's sold by other vendors. Microsoft doesn't; they make the big bucks selling their Office Suite (which is MS's Real Monopoly if you ask me). Red Hat also doesn't; they sell and support an OS that they did not have to write or buy, and is being constantly dev'd by people they don't pay. Remember when we were told in the pages of "In the Beggining Was the Command Line" that Be would be the wave of the future? Be is gone. Remember when they tried to revive the Amiga OS? Remember when Gateway bought it to port to x86? Remember when the chumps they sold it to were going to release something?

Apple learned the hard way during their 1-year attempt at "clone" licensing that the only way they can develop a desktop OS and make money doing it is if they sell every single computer that runs it. By using a chip that is not a commodity part, they raise the barrier of entry to somebody that wants to copy their ROM settings and make a rival motherboard. Switching to an x86 archetecture jeopardizes that plan. Some think that this is part of the reason why Apple became interested in StrongARM technology last time their relations with Motorolla became strained. If they were to drop Motorolla, I'm guessing that they would be far more likely to contact some other chip maker (i.e., IBM, Siemens, TI, Lucent, AMD, whoever) and contract them to make another non-x86 chipset for them... maybe even one that already understands the existing G3 instructions. For that matter, buying those high-performing G3's that IBM is already making for their servers might even make more sense than moving to Intel.

Still, I can't help but think that a lot of these rumors get started by Apple turf-layers, who are hoping to light a fire under the asses of Motorolla engineers.

Re:"Performance Boost" a result of the MHz myth?

[Anonymous Coward]

Apple also sent me a copy of its actual test protocol, including a Photoshop Actions file, a set of scripts that automated the various rendering functions.

Right. Read the test setup carefully. The result is:
When Apple Computer selects exactly which filters to run, a DUAL top-of-the-line PowerMac beat a SINGLE cpu medium-cost x86 box 5 times out of 9. Not to flattering...

Re:"Performance Boost" a result of the MHz myth?

[Anonymous Coward]

You fucking Altivec ZEALOT loon tune.

The SpecCPU2000 says it all. apple never submits ebcause Altivec or not, they SUCK SHIT.

Stop being a fucking fool who ignores a fact, the sky is blue, the G4 is slow. PISS OFF.

Athlon XP 1800MHz ("2200+") : 738 / 624
Pentium4 2533 MHz : 893 / 878
Power4 1300 MHz : 804 / 1202
Itanium2 1000 MHz : 807 / 1356
G4 1000MHz: 306 / 187

The dual G4 gets its ASS KICKED in benchmakrs by a Single P4-2.5Ghz. HAHAHAHA.

The differences are sometimes very surprising. Well, are they so surprising? Let's have a look at the 3 major "vendors" of CPUs systems, Intel, AMD and... Apple (because Motorola doesn't seem to gloat about the performance on the PowerPC G4, only Apple does).

AMD has recently released their new Athlon XP 2200+. Is it really faster than a 2200 MHz CPU? On integer stuff, the AthlonXP is good for 738 points. The funny thing is, a Pentium4 at a mere 2GHz scores the same 738 points. Oh, yes, I know, that's because AMD has a superior floating-point performance. Sure. CFP2000, AthlonXP goes as high as 624 points. And the poor little Pentium4 at 2GHz with its slow FPU only gets 744 points. Please read that again. So, how much floating-point power is there in an Athlon XP 2200+ running at 1800 MHz? Well, about as much as in a Pentium4 running at 1600MHz. Man I wouldn't want to have just read that if I was an AMD zealot, that's gotta hurt.

Don't worry, my AMD friend, your CPU performs more than adequately. Wait until I talk about the "super-computer" G4 that is used by Apple.

G4 1000MHz: 306 points in integer. Just like a PIII at 667MHz. But, as you all know, The G4 is extremely good in floating point, capable of doing billion operations per second. G4 1000 MHz: 187 point in floating point. That's the level of a PIII at 500MHz. Oh my God, if I overclock three-year-old my dual-PIII from 450 to 504 MHz (where it is perfectly stable), I get as much FPU power as a top-of-the-line Mac. I don't know if I should laugh or cry. I just feel sad for all the people who fall in for Apple's propaganda. If a Mac can do all that a "Wintel" PC can do (yeah, right), well, it'll be doing it much much much much slower.

A few comments before people flame me. Or maybe a few comments that'll cause people to flame me...

A few comments before people flame me. Or maybe a few comments that'll cause people to flame me...

I picked the baseline results over the peak results. Because I only had baseline results for the G4, and because I think that they are more realistic to show real-world speed: if you're a developer, just use the same compiler flags as Intel, Dell or AMD used, they are published in the benchmark report.

The fact that the G4 benchmarks come from a magazine and are not official results. I would normally have put a disclaimer about that. Well, if you're not happy about the results, please go and put some pressure on Apple to publish official results. I monitor the SPEC results on a regular basis, and I'll be more than happy to take any official results into account.

Some zealots will say that the G4 can do better than that because gcc doesn't use Altivec. Well, now, it's not my fault if you don't have a decent compiler, is it? Do you think that someone with a mind would go spend some time hand-optimizing his/her code in assembly for a CPU that only has a few percent of market share? Imagine a team of 30 engineers trying to release an application simultaneously for Windows and MacOS. 28 engineers write the portable core of the application (and they all develop on Windows with Visual C++ and Purify), 1 engineer is responsible for the Windows adaptation layer and Windows optimization (like, tweak the compile flags for the intel compiler), 1 engineer is responsible for the MacOS adaptation layer, MacOS-specific issues and MacOS optimization (like, deal with a compiler that doesn't support the Visual C++ extensions, deal with a CPU that orders bytes differently, deal with an OS that'll do some things differently, like not have drive letters, use slashes instead of backslashes as a file separator, not support MDI, put the menubar at that top of the screen, and when there's a little bit of time left, re-write in assembly a routine that the original programmer will modify so much before the release date that it'll have to be re-written in assembly 5 times in the coming year). I wouldn't want to be the MacOS guy.

Oh yeah, I've also read that running SPEC benchmarks for PowerPC was unfair because the benchmarks are x86-specific. Well, I guess that the same benchmarks are also unfair for HP-PA CPUs, Itaniums, Sparcs, MIPS, Alphas, POWER... which all manage to beat the G4. The only reason why they're "unfair" for PowerPC is that those benchmarks are written in C, C++ and Fortran, and that the measure as much the compiler as the CPU. Got a sucky compiler? You'll get bad SPEC results. Guess what? Got a sucky compiler? You'll get bad results on everything but the 3 routines that Apple will optimize by hand to make Altivec shine... Eugenia Loli is a fat pig fascist bitch ;p

Re:"Performance Boost" a result of the MHz myth?

[stux]

The trick is, the XServe's memory subsystem can saturate BOTH processors...

just because its saturating the processors doesn't mean they're not stalling waiting for memory accesses.

I've written quite a lot of altivec code, and the single largest problem with ALL G4s is that they DO NOT have a DDR type memory bus.

AltiVec code is almost ALWAYS stalled waiting for main memory.

But when you actually finding something compute intensive enough that the memory bandwidth is not really an issue, only then, do you truly see how impressive AltiVec is.

Damn, I wish they made G4s which had DDR!

Re:"Performance Boost" a result of the MHz myth?

[Tom7]

It's true that Photoshop has filters optimized for the Mac, and the benchmarks for those are somewhat irrepresentative of general performance. Most programs do not have this kind of parallelism available, and even fewer are actually optimized to use the processor's vector capabilities. (A better benchmark would compile the same C program using the vendor's compiler on both platforms and measure how the two stacked up. Or at least allow both vendors a shot at optimizing the filters in question...)

But the main problem with this test is that he's testing a dual processor G4 against a single processor Pentium in a multi-threaded app doing highly parallelizable work!! How can we make sense of those results?

Re:"Performance Boost" a result of the MHz myth?

[Anonymous Coward]

you moron.... you don't know what you're talking about

"Enough said"

Re:"Performance Boost" a result of the MHz myth?

[1 (smarterThanYou)]

funny...a performance boost might refer to render times...i've seen measures of dual P4s, dual AMD MPs, and dual 1 ghz g4s in a comparison test of adobe photoshop 7 and premiere 6...and the P4s and MPs blow away the dual g4s. here...
So there appears to be a performance benefit from switching over...at least as far as rendering goes.

Re:"Performance Boost" a result of the MHz myth?

[tunah]

And all of those cycles put together won't tell you why the hell you would want to underclock your P4 to 2.5MHz.

Re:"Performance Boost" a result of the MHz myth?

[UranusReallyHertz]

I think the fact that G4s STILL don't have DDR even after it has become more or less standard on PC's is indicative of what is wrong with Apple. Apple will probably be just beginning to use DDR when PC's will be using DDR-II

Re:"Performance Boost" a result of the MHz myth?

[Hes Nikke]

But the main problem with this test is that he's testing a dual processor G4 against a single processor Pentium in a multi-threaded app doing highly parallelizable work!! How can we make sense of those results?

easy, it is 2 off the shelf systems, you plug it in and see that one system performs better then a diffrent system. (last i checked, there wern't any dual P4 systems avalible.) this test shows that apples high end system beet out sony's system (i'm asuming it's their high end system but i didn't read the artical)

the test i'd like to see is apples high end system up against a high end athlon system 1, 2, 4 CPU's it doesn't matter, the athlon will smoke the apple in perfomance, but the apple will smoke the athlon in usability.

Re:"Performance Boost" a result of the MHz myth?

[Anonymous Coward]

I just realized that Apple is doing a really bad job in debunking the Megahertz Myth. Why, for instance, do they not print their specs like this:

Processor and memory
- 700MHz 4.2 Gigaflops PowerPC G4 processor with Velocity Engine
- ...

Re:"Performance Boost" a result of the MHz myth?

[m0rph3us0]

They already have a processor benchmark, its called SPECint or SPECfp, and i dont see any apple results on that. Probably a reason for that, check this link I think that will give you a bit of insight into why they don't publish benchmarks, I mean even with their Altivec improvments they still lag far far behind AMD, as apple says, it doesn't matter how fast your chip runs, or how many instructions per second it does, it matters how fast it runs applications and for how much. And clearly the G4 is loosing this battle.

Re:"Performance Boost" a result of the MHz myth?

[jbarket]

While I agree that frequency is not the only important factor when talking about speed, the bottom line is that you can only use that excuse for so long. The 1ghz G4s may whip the pants off of a 1ghz AMD or Intel chip, but I don't think anyone is going to claim that a single 1ghz G4 will overtake a 2.5ghz P4 in anything--even rigged Photoshop filters. I love Apple, and I don't necessarily support the jump to x86 chips, but somebody needs to force Motorolla and IBM to get on the damn ball and throw stuff out.

Re:"Performance Boost" a result of the MHz myth?

[DavidRavenMoon]

It's true that Photoshop has filters optimized for the Mac

Actually the filters are optimized for Intel processors too. Intel gave Adobe the assembly code needed (for MMX at the time, and I'd imagine newer code since). IIRC only two or three PS filters are optimized for AltiVec. I think Photoshop is used a lot because it's the same code base on both platforms.

And this isn't all about filters. There was a lot of transforming and compositing going on.

But I agree that some things run better on one platform or another, and it might have more to do with the OS than the CPU type, and how well a program has been written for that OS (i.e. MS Word).

But the main problem with this test is that he's testing a dual processor G4 against a single processor Pentium in a multi-threaded app doing highly parallelizable work!! How can we make sense of those results?

But the single Pentium was more than twice the clock speed, and we know that a dual 1 GHz computer is not 2 GHz, right? :) Photoshop is kind of buggy on dual G4s... its been known to lock up a lot, and some people remove the MultiProcessor Support Extension. In some tests single CPU G4s outperform the duals.

And as the tests showed, the PC did better at Quake, and other tests on the 'Net have showed PCs outperforming G4s in Adobe After Effects tests (AE runs like a dog in OS X)

The bottom line is that clock speed isn't everything.

Re:"Performance Boost" a result of the MHz myth?

[Tom7]

> easy, it is 2 off the shelf systems, you plug it in and see that one system performs
> better then a diffrent system. (last i checked, there wern't any dual P4 systems
> avalible.) this test shows that apples high end system beet out sony's system (i'm asuming
> it's their high end system but i didn't read the artical)

Uh, fine, but the poster's point was that G4s perform better than P4s despite their lower clock speed. This article definitely doesn't corroborate that claim.

> the test i'd like to see is apples high end system up against a high end athlon system
> 1, 2, 4 CPU's it doesn't matter, the athlon will smoke the apple in perfomance, but the
> apple will smoke the athlon in usability.

If there's some way to objectively test usability, the results might be as you suggest ... but since this is about the possibility of apple using intel chips in their computers in the future, what does that matter? Does anyone actually think that the processor in the computer somehow affects "usability"?

Re:"Performance Boost" a result of the MHz myth?

[stux]

The problem is Apple's, but it is not Apple's fault.

Motorola needs to update the G4s to have a DDR memory controller.

Apple has done about as much as they can by moving their motherboards (at least the XServe's) to DDR even though the actual CPUs don't know what DDR is.

The truth is, DDR mobos with a single non-ddr cpu is practically useless.

Its motorola's fault and they need to do something about it :(

Re:"Performance Boost" a result of the MHz myth?

[MoneyT]

They just need to ditch motorola.

Re:"Performance Boost" a result of the MHz myth?

[Lars T.]

1) All valid benchmarks show that PCs are faster than Macs.
2) All benchmarks that show something else are thus invalid.

Re:"Performance Boost" a result of the MHz myth?

[UranusReallyHertz]

Sounds like another good reason for Apple to want to switch to another CPU vendor.

Re:"Performance Boost" a result of the MHz myth?

[Lurker]

Could you at least please spell "Motorola" correctly? Thanks.

Re:"Performance Boost" a result of the MHz myth?

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, the UltraSPARC III is notoriously *inefficient*. I wonder why Sun even bothers manufacturing this CPU any more.

Re:"Performance Boost" a result of the MHz myth?

[Hes Nikke]

Uh, fine, but the poster's point was that G4s perform better than P4s despite their lower clock speed. This article definitely doesn't corroborate that claim.

i still haven't gotten around to reading the artical (don't you love hearsay!) but what i gather from it isn't that the PPC G4 is faster, it's that the PowerMac G4 is faster. i'm not claiming anything more. having a proccessor that runs cool enough that you can stuff 2 into a system with minimal cooling alows for things like this ;)

Does anyone actually think that the processor in the computer somehow affects "usability"?

have you ever used a TiBook in your lap? my 500 MHz PowerBook G4 gets pretty warm, i'd hate to see what would happen with a desktop P4. (like most high end P4 notebooks!) i think a hot notebook definatatly reduses usability, yes, even with the G4 CPU :P

Re:"Performance Boost" a result of the MHz myth?

[KillerKane]

>>the athlon will smoke the apple in perfomance, but the apple will smoke the athlon in usability>>

Thank you. For many of us, that's the point. For those of us who use computers as tools to make money, that's always been the point.

Focusing on abstract hardware capabilities is missing the point. In business, anyway.

Re:"Performance Boost" a result of the MHz myth?

[Tom7]

Man, you mac guys are just incredible!

It IS TRUE that MHz are not a good way to measure performance. It IS TRUE that a G4 is faster than a Pentium or Athlon that's similarly clocked. But that DOESN'T MEAN that all G4s are faster than Pentiums or Athlons!

Show me any sensible, general-purpose benchmark (not something commissioned by Apple) that shows the G4s are faster, and I'll shut up. But it's insane to be extending this "MHz myth" to essentially that BECAUSE the P4 has higher clock speeds, it is SLOWER!

Re:"Performance Boost" a result of the MHz myth?

[tuxedobob]

I see the PC got 194 fps at 640x480 to the Mac's 111. Now, last time I checked (i.e., now), my Mac's monitor's refresh rate at 640x480 was 154Hz. Last time I looked at a PC's, it was about 85 or so. Heck, at 1024x768 it's only 99Hz, which at that point is less than the fps for that resolution. And an entry-level Mac card will give me more fps than my monitor's refresh rate? Why does fps beyond the refresh rate matter? Who cares if it's rendering 100+fps if you only see 85 or so?

Re:"Performance Boost" a result of the MHz myth?

[BitGeek]

And it costs less too!

Thing is, nobody is ever going to convince a PC bigot that the PowerPC is a faster chip, they just cant' get the MHz out of their mind.

And nobody is going to convince a Mac fan that the Pentium is a bigger chip- the benchmark "standards" are so obviously contrived to distort the situation...

And nobody accepts applications resutls-- avid isn't optimized for the mac, PC people think nobody uses photoshop.

But if you look at the architecture, the physics, and the hardware, rather than relying on benchmarks, its obivous which ship provides higher performance for less cost.

Re:"Performance Boost" a result of the MHz myth?

[Reality Master 101]

This is so laughable. I'm still waiting for you to prove it... come on, the challenge awaits!

But if you look at the architecture, the physics, and the hardware, rather than relying on benchmarks, its obivous which ship provides higher performance for less cost.

LOL!!! So we should ignore ACTUAL PERFORMANCE and go by "theoretical" superiority??

In any case, PROVE IT. If what you say is true, it should be trivial to prove these things.

I'mmmmmm stilllllll waitinggggggg.......

Re:"Performance Boost" a result of the MHz myth?

[DavidRavenMoon]

But the main problem with this test is that he's testing a dual processor G4 against a single processor Pentium in a multi-threaded app doing highly parallelizable work!! How can we make sense of those results?

Part II

Here's something interesting:

Cheaper & faster, too
Several readers, including an Apple sales rep, sent me references to a set of Xserve benchmarks on the Apple site. All of these show the Xserve beating competitive models from other companies, including IBM, Sun, and Dell.

What makes two of these results particularly interesting is that they show the value of optimizing software to take advantage of the hardware, reversing an effect I think of as "regression to the dumb" to achieve impressive results.

"Regression to the dumb" reflects, I think, the marketing tendency to focus on simple things that are easy to communicate in a volume market and elevate these simplifications to the level of de-facto standards. Engineers then have to accommodate these standards in product or process design.

The "megahurtz" wars, long a sore point for both Mac and Sun users, seem to illustrate this perfectly. Each new generation of x86 CPUs does less per cycle than the one before, but it drives the claimed megahertz number up because that's the number that moves product. Along the way, some very good technologies have been abandoned, and software developers have been taught to avoid making their code dependent on chip-specific features that could easily go away with the next iteration.

What happens if you look carefully at the technical advantages you've got and optimize your code and hardware accordingly instead of just going with industry-averaging practices?

1. Apple's PowerPC has an underappreciated facility marketed as the "velocity engine." This is actually a short-array processor with powerful features such as hardware FFT, but, like SPARC's VIS/SIMD, it's more honored in the breach than the observance.

   In this case, Apple's Advanced Computation Group, working with Genentech, modified an application widely used in genetics and related research to make maximum use of the facility. As a result, the Blast benchmark, which searches a genetics database for matches, shows the dual 1-GHz Xserve beating an IBM x330 with dual 1.4-GHz P3 CPUs by factors ranging from 5.8 to 21 (and a Sun V100 by up to 52 times) depending on the length and precision of the matches.

2. Internally, the Xserve has DDR (double data rate) memory feeding a 4-gigabytes-per-second data path to the CPU cache along with four ATA controllers -- one for each disk -- that operate as one. Using Bonnie to compare I/O to a Dell 1650 with dual 1.4-GHz P3 CPUs; SDR (single data rate) memory; and, a single Ultra160 RAID card with 128MB of buffer, Apple finds that the Xserve can be more than twice as fast as the Dell.

   Technically, I believe that there are two factors at work here: the Xserve has faster memory and a cleaner data path to the CPU, and Apple's four-way ATA design is both faster and cheaper than the single-path RAID card.

In both cases, better technology used in smarter ways wins. As in, duh? But managerially what they've done here is pretty cool because they're standing up for excellence instead of collapsing the technical tent and going off in search of volume.

Re:"Performance Boost" a result of the MHz myth?

[BitGeek]

Been there, done that, you ignore what you don't like to hear.

There's no point in wasting time with you... hell your handle is the first clue.

Anyone who thinks a bus that is a quarter as wide but runs at twice the clock rate is "faster" is not worth wasting words on.

Bye.

Re:"Performance Boost" a result of the MHz myth?

[Reality Master 101]

Been there, done that, you ignore what you don't like to hear.

And you always accept the truth, even when you don't want to hear it?

Face it, you don't want to "waste time with me" because YOU CAN'T. You are the typical Mac advocate that can't face the fact that Mac is an overpriced, underpowered machine. People have been posting comparisons of REAL APPLICATIONS, yet you refuse to accept the fact that the G4 is only 20% faster clock-for-clock with a P4.

How long are you going to knowingly put that LIE in your bio, when you know it's not the truth?

But hey, maybe I'm wrong. So far, you haven't posted one SHRED of evidence in your favor. Many people have posted evidence NOT in your favor. PROVE US WRONG.

If the Mac is as superior as you claim, it should be EASY.

OK, enough games. You and I both know why you won't ever take this challenge. It's because if you did any real research, you couldn't honestly put that bullshit in your bio. As long as you honestly "think it's true" without any facts, you can put it in your bio and continue to make claims so as to fool people into buying a Mac. But as soon as you try and get real facts, that game will be over, won't it? You won't be able to advocate the Mac anymore, because you'll be knowingly putting forth a lie.

Look, I have no problem if want to like Apple. You might like the design. You might like OS X. You might think that twice the price is worth it, and the performance is adequate. And that would be fine.

But this bullshit that your spewing doesn't do Apple any good. It just makes everyone think that all Apple advocates will say ANYTHING to get people to buy Apple. That's the biggest problem I have with Steve's advertising. He has to mislead people into buying Apple, instead of just focusing on the positive points of the Mac.

Re:"Performance Boost" a result of the MHz myth?

[MORTAR_COMBAT!]

please post a comparison of distributed.net stats for Athlon XP, Pentium IV, single g4, and dual G4.

rankings:
1. dual g4
2. single g4
3. athlon xp
4. pentium iv

since all geeks care about is racing up the charts on distributed.net, what other rankings really matter?

Re:"Performance Boost" a result of the MHz myth?

[Alan Partridge]

it's always darkest before it goes completely black?? So completely black is LESS dark? RIIIIIGHT. Oh yeah, PowerPc vs x86 - PowerPC is a worthwhile and powerful architecture, x86 systems have a lead at the moment, but this has a lot to do with Motorola being a fucked company (Iridium??) and not any underlying deficiencies in the PowerPC ISA. Look at the records IBM has set with the Power4. I think the G4's still got legs - sure, it needs DDR (or better?) badly, but that should come within the month. Irrespective of software benchmarks that can prove blue is green, the PowerMac G4 is a powerful system, more or less than a PC for more or less money. The fact that a single company can even stay vaguely in touch with the rest of the PC industry says a lot. In certain, limited applications, Atlivec is CRUSHINGLY fast. Look at distributed.net for a G4 best case scenario, it's certainly interesting.

Re:"Performance Boost" a result of the MHz myth?

[Type-IIa]

Xserve has a 4 gig data path to the CPU? I think not. Even with DDR it is 2.2 gb/s to the CPU, which only has a 133 MHz FSB so most of the bandwidth is watsed. And supposedly two processors are meant to operate on the same 2.2 gb/s bus. Check out the diagrams that Steve Jobs put up during the Xserve launch, which show this clearly. I seriously hope the new powermacs do something about this. The Xserve's DDR set-up is ok for a server, where there may be a lot of I/O to Ram DMA's that bypass the processor entirely. But for a desktop it almost pointless. Rumours that the new ProMacs have an Nvidea nForce2 northbridge better be true, at least.

Re:"Performance Boost" a result of the MHz myth?

[serendigital]

Apple Switches Processors and Steve Jobs Gets Vindication!

I can't help but speculate...

Two pundits have predicted recently that Apple will go to Intel within two years. Steve Jobs, when asked if Apple would go to another processor, said that once the transition to OSX is complete we'll have options, and we like options.

Most OSX apps are written in Carbon right now. Jobs has been in love with Object Oriented Programming since he started NeXTand now that the OOP benefits of NextStep are part of OSX he should be thrilled, right? Wrong. Most current OSX apps are written in Carbon, not the slick Object Oriented OSX Native Cocoa environment.

If Apple "switched" to another processor, (pun intended) they could use that transition to force app developers to rewrite in Cocoa since Carbon is (correct me if I'm wrong, and you know you want to) OS9/PowerPC dependent.

Jobs' beloved Cocoa, the current incarnation of the NextStep development environment he's been preaching about for lo these many years, would become the Mac standard. Objective C would be the rage and Steve would be vindicated.

Watch it happen!

----------------
http://blogs.salon.com/0001159/

Re:"Performance Boost" a result of the MHz myth?

[Anonymous Coward]

Nope, Apple will move to the IBM PowerPC 64 - 8 way superscalar processor with Altivec unit.

Re:"Performance Boost" a result of the MHz myth?

[Golias]

Sorry. My first IT job was for a brokerage, so I'm used to spelling it "MOTO".

Re:"Performance Boost" a result of the MHz myth?

[good soldier svejk]

So yea, Apple could (in theory) save about $50 a system (their cost) by moving everything over to Intel. But they would also end up increasing the odds that somebody could reverse-engineer their ROMs (as Compaq once did to IBM), and suddenly all those "Pricewatch Special" shitbox PC's and PC Mo-Bo kits (and I say that as a big fan of "Pricewatch Special" shitbox kits) will be able to run OS X after a simple chip-mod, and Apple would die a horrible death shortly thereafter, making version 10.5 (or whatever) the last Mac OS ever.

Actually, Apple no longer uses proprietary ROMs or firmware. Not physical ones anyway. The what used to be iin ROM is now loaded into memory at boot. Makes it very easy to run recent versions of the OS under Mac On Linux (MOL). In fact I think it means you can run OS 9.x on an RS6000 under MOL.

The firmware is IEEE 1275 Open Firmware, just like a Sun.

Re:"Performance Boost" a result of the MHz myth?

[KillerKane]

>>it's always darkest before it goes completely black?? So completely black is LESS dark? RIIIIIGHT.>>

It's a gag, ok? You know, "It's always darkest just before the dawn"? The inversion of the message and the logical lapse is what makes it funny. Well, to some people, anyway. Yeesh.

Re:"Performance Boost" a result of the MHz myth?

[iggie]

Hmmm... Yeah... Transmeta...

Re:"Performance Boost" a result of the MHz myth?

[Mr. Piddle]

Actually, the UltraSPARC III is notoriously *inefficient*.

A statement without basis. Good job.

False Information

[Sandman1971]

It's hard to take this article seriously when it attempts to spread false information.

Neff, for instance, predicted Apple, which uses chips from Motorola and IBM that currently top out at 1GHz, will switch to Intel, whose chips run at 2.5GHz, to get a performance boost and gain more customers. There's a better than 80 percent chance Apple will make the jump in two to four years, he said.

Everyone knows you can't compare speeds of Intel and Motorolla chips, as they do not equate to the same thing. I lost all respect and believability for the article after reading that piece of rubbish.

Re:False Information

[Anonymous Coward]

Which is the reason why recent benchmarks of After Effects between Apple and PC hardware had the PC thoroughly trouncing the Apple platform. Now, I will hand it to you, the antiquated bus on the Mac might have had something to do with it, but don't make it sound like they are neck and neck. Maybe you SHOULD take a comment like that seriously.

Re:False Information

[Tom7]

Well, it's not false information, just misleading. Though you can't compare the clock speeds directly, it IS true that because the P4s run at 2.5 GHz, they are a performance boost over the G4 (which would need to run at around 1.25 GHz to get equal performance).

Re:False Information

[vipw]

Comparing microprossors to other microprocessors seems like an excellent idea to me. They equate to the same thing much more than a microprocessor and a toaster for instance.

Yeah, right.

[Henry V .009]

Neff, for instance, predicted Apple, which uses chips from Motorola and IBM that currently top out at 1GHz, will switch to Intel, whose chips run at 2.5GHz, to get a performance boost and gain more customers. There's a better than 80 percent chance Apple will make the jump in two to four years, he said.

I'd like to make a brief, stunningly persuasive, riposte to his argument:
Yeah, right.

Nope

[Anonymous Coward]

Apple likes to build cool stuff. Noise is not cool. I don't think we'll see Intel based Apple machines any time soon unless there are drastic strategic changes at Intel.

Re:Nope

[Maserati]

And Intel chips aren't 'cool' in the temperature sense. TiBooks already get pretty hot. Add the extra heat from a P4 and the sucker will just about melt.

Re:Nope

[Anonymous Coward]

I've never heard of an x86 based laptop catching on fire, unlike certain PowerBook models.

64bit

[Anonymous Coward]

Is it just me or does Motorolla have no plans for 64 bit cpus? I thought that I'd heard something like that somewhere.

The only reason I don't buy an Apple is the price. Ya gotta love the *nix backend and the Mac GUI. If moving to x86 hardware makes it cheaper, all the power to them. And if we're talking about Intel, let's not count out AMD.

Re:64bit

[Anonymous Coward]

Ok, couple points here:

1) I have no idea about Motorolla and 64-bit CPU's, however PPC cpu's do exist that are 64-bit, they are just made by IBM. (The POWER4) While I doubt Apple will team up with IBM, you never know. (Apple + IBM, boy wouldn't people have afield day with that one...)

2) What with Apples innovative design strategies regarding space, I doubt we'll see AMD CPU's inside Apple computer's even more so than I believe we'll see Intel CPU's. (No space + lots of heat != A Good Thing(tm))

3) Steve Jobs ran NeXT. NeXT sold both hardware and software. Before the end of NeXT they stopped selling hardware, and began making their software available for what's known as 'white boxes' or x86 machines (as opposed to NeXT's 'black boxes') This didn't save NeXT from dying, and I doubt we'll see Steve do it unless Apple enters into dire financial peril. Last I checked, this wasn't the case, and last I checked Apple made more money from hardware than from software, a financial source they lose if they switch to x86's. (This of course assumes that Steve learnt from his experience at NeXT)

Re:64bit

[Toraz Chryx]

Just FYI, Apple currently ship IBM processors, the IBM "Sahara" PowerPC 750FX (G3) is used in the iBook

They are quite sweet little chips too :)

Re:64bit

[Anonymous Coward]

Thank you, I was unaware of that and thought that all of Apple's CPU's came from Motorola. So there are possibilities for a 64-bit Mac then... *drool*

Re:64bit

[noewun]

Apple has already teamed up with IBM - all Apple G3s are IBM G3s, which is why we're seeing clock speeds above 500 MHz (and rumored for 1GHz for the next revision of the iBook, provided Motorola can get the G4s in the TiBook up to 1GHz).

My best guess would be the G5 as a POWER-based chip, losing Moto altogether. From what I've read, the Apollo is looking good for 1.5 MHz, which might buy Apple some time to make the switch. Also, remember that a) Apple brought some of the PPC development in-house after the last G4 fiasco, and b) IBM/Apple has already secured from Moto a liscensing agreement to make AltiVec chips. IBM has the fab facilities and the gumption to push the PPC architecture to higher clock speeds, and, unlike Moto, are not so dependent on the embedded chip market.

Re:64bit

[Golias]

You were close to being right. All G4's come from Motorolla, because what makes a G4 a G4 is Motorolla's "AltiVec" layer.

G3's are also made by IBM, as the chip was jointly designed by the same "AIM" alliance (AAPL/IBM/MOTO) that came up with the PPC chip in the first place. For that matter, Apple could, in theory, just make their own G3's if they spent the money on the infrastructure to do it.

Jobs seems to like AltiVec, though, so everything except the iBook and the $899 "budget" iMac has been moved to the G4, which creates the vendor lock that Apple is currently dealing with.

Re:64bit

[Anonymous Coward]

Apple wouldn't necessarily lose hardware sales if they switched to x86s. Apple owns industrial design in this industry: they could sell *more* hardware if they had x86s and could run Windows. How pissed would MS be if they had an Apple logo on machines running Windows which could dual-boot OS X out of the box? If my TiBook were x86, I'd still own it. what else is out there that has this screen and runs Final Cut Pro? Eh?

Re:64bit

[jbolden]

Why would this piss off MSFT? They get their foot in the door with Apple customers, they probably sell them Visio and maybe Access; they sell a copy of the operating system. MSFT is in to selling stuff and gaining market share not pride of workmanship.

Re:64bit

[blakespot]

Apple wouldn't necessarily lose hardware sales if they switched to x86s. Apple owns industrial design in this industry: they could sell *more* hardware if they had x86s and could run Windows. How pissed would MS be if they had an Apple logo on machines running Windows which could dual-boot OS X out of the box? If my TiBook were x86, I'd still own it. what else is out there that has this screen and runs Final Cut Pro? Eh?

If Apple went x86, the boxes would not run Windows (well, not without some sort of VirtualPC app anyway). They would absolutely not use PC BIOS,.they would still use OpenFirmware. Why, oh why would Apple place around their neck the 20 year old albatros that is the PC BIOS / architecture??

They would share a similar CPU with PC's -- and that's the end of it.

blakespot

Re:64bit

[mkldev]

Motorola has built and continues to build 64-bit PowerPC CPUs for the embedded market. Whether Motorola has any plans for 64-bit desktop CPUs is another question, and I have no idea either way.

Re:64bit

[mkldev]

Depends on how you define PowerPC. Do you mean the PPC architecture or the PPC instruction set? Power4 is an architecture, and is not considered to be part of the PPC architecture, but then, the PPC 601 is generally not considered to be PPC architecture, either. (Scary, eh?) In both cases, this is due to major differences in the supervisor mode instructions.

The PPC user space instruction set, however, is another issue, and historically Power* architectures have been "close enough" for binary compatibility to be trivial with appropriate compiler flags.

Describing Power4 as PowerPC, though, is a bit of a stretch. IBM's documentation describes it as being "compatible" with the PowerPC user space instruction set, but does not describe it as being a PowerPC chip.

Just to pick nits.

Re:64bit

[dadragon]

Apple also uses IBM Travelstar 40GN hardrives in the iBook.

What's the point?

[Anonymous Coward]

Why think about this now? Apple just moved to a totally new operating system in which only 20% of their user base has switched.

Additionally, the size of the Mac user base has steadily eroded but there are marked decreases around both the introduction of System 7 and the PowerPC chip. To switch now would be suicide! Apple may indeed want a different processor, but doing so would probably mean that applications would have to be rewritten and we all know how long it took to get Photoshop out the door and many people are still waiting for Quark.

If they do switch, then good for them. History would suggest they should wait a while before undertaking such an effort and in the meantime this is just intellectual masturbation, IMHO of course.

Unfortunately this gentleman raises no good points other than the disparity between the processor speeds. Don't get me wrong, I am not someone who has been blinded by the MHz Myth as brought to you by the Reality Distortion Field, but his arguments are nonexistent. The fact that he has predicted a few other industry actions is anecdotal at best and irrelevant at worst.

Short version: Take this guy worth a grain of salt. Wait a year or two and see what the processor landscape looks like.

Re:What's the point?

[BitGeek]

Additionally, the size of the Mac user base has steadily eroded

I don't think you can say this. I'm aware of no information that expresses the size of the mac user base.

you often see the "%5 of the market" figure, but that is actually %5 of NEW PC SALES, (so it ignores the fact that People turn their PCs over every 18 moths, but macs are performance competitive a lot longer) oh, and these numbers also ignore most mac sales. So even saying "%5 of new sales" is a lie-- they count Dell, Ingram Micro and CompUSA. They ignore the Apple store, the Apple stores, and the hundreds or thousands of independent apple dealers around the world.

Put a better way, Apple has %5 of the Intel PC market- - because that's the market they count-- and of those people, %5 of the pcs they sell are actually apples!

The total addressable market-- that is, Macs out there in active use-- is much larger, probably %20.

Last time I had any reliable numbers, it was %30, but that was because they were the only company selling CDROM drives for computers and so you could look at the number of those sold and know how much market share apple had... so that would have been the early 90s.

I'm not saying I know what the TAM for Macs is, I'm just saying I've never seen any reliable figures, and the %5 one is clearly unreliable. ( But makes for good copy for those with "Apple is dying" stick who want to beat that dead horse.)

Re:What's the point?

[Golias]

Actually, the "Apple is dying" crowd usually say 2%-3%. The 5% figure has often been displayed prominently in Apple's own ads. If that figure ignored Apple's in-store and on-line sales, don't you think Apple would have commissioned another study by now, or demanded a correction from the companies doing these surveys, rather than run adds on their website saying, "now if we can just convince 1 out of every 19 PC users to switch to a Mac, we would double our market share!"

Re:What's the point?

[Anonymous Coward]

Do you have any references for those astronomical figures? Apple themselves claim they have 5% of the US market and 2.8% of the world market. I find it hard to believe that Apple don't include sales in their own stores.

Re:What's the point?

[Anonymous Coward]

Just curious, is there any kind of study (preferrably 3rd party, i.e. not commisioned/supported by Apple) that shows Macs to have a longer life than x86 hardware?

Or, is it just a private opinion/guess?

Re:What's the point?

[BitGeek]

I've only ever seen apple use the %5 figure when they were JOKING.

"Now to get the other %95" is a clear joke to me, though most people seem not to get it.

They are playing on the perception that they have %5 of the market.

Anyway, the fact is that the %5 figure comes from a fundamentally flawed study of the marketplace, and I have not seen any better research.

Re:What's the point?

[Anonymous Coward]

Once Again, this is your claim, but could you please point us to firm information to support it?
Apple demanded and got a new study done just because of the way Quicktime streaming server downloads were counted. Do you really think they would silently accept dozens of market share estimates year after year that didn't include their own sales?

Re:What's the point?

[Alan Partridge]

I think I read something to that effect some time ago - the gist of it was that Macs had a useful life of around 5 years whereas PCs were more like 3. It's been claimed many times that Macs require less support as well, which I've certainly found to be true in my business.

Not clawhammer

[Perdo]

Sledgehammer. Opteron. Whatever.

Not Itanic.

Not Pentium 4

Not C3 (heh, I just benched a C3 800. It performed about as well as a 266 PII except with the P4's weird imbalanced interger performance. the numbers looked about like a P4@500mhz)

Stick a few Opterons in an Apple and you take Apple back to the good old days where their hardware actually outperformed the x86 boxes and was still somewhat unique.

Let Apple shine again... not just on the outside, but on the inside too!

Re:Not clawhammer

[Anonymous Coward]

Stick a few Opterons in an Apple and you take Apple back to the thermonuclear days where everything rapidly overheats and dies.

Dumbass.

Re:Not clawhammer

[Perdo]

And IBM Power 4 dissipating 160 watts is better? Or the G4 that will not scale because of heat issues?....

Well?

How do you propose Apple exits the doldrums?

Prossesing information generates heat.

Do we let Apple slide into complete obsolesence because YOU don't like hot processors?

Whatever.

Switch and die

[jpt.d]

if ([apple switchTo intel])
[apple killSelf];

Re:Switch and die

[Anonymous Coward]

NXTypedStream* s = ...
int myint = 4;
// don't remember the syntax exactly, any more, but it's around this:
NXWriteType(s,"c","Hey, NeXTSTEP has had the ability to compile the same program on different CPUs, with the same file formats for, oh, twelve years! And MacOS X cocoa aps can do the same trivially!");
NXWriteType(s,"c","Watch, let's write some data and not need to care about endian problems!");
NXWriteType(s,"i",&myint);
NXWriteType(s,"c","How cool was THAT?");
NXWriteType(s,"c","Don't you feel foolish now?");

Re:Switch and die

[Anonymous Coward]

You might consider putting apple into the autorelease pool, so that it calls it's own dealloc method when no longer needed.

God I need a break from my computer :)

Re:Switch and die

[tb3]

I think your Objective C is a bit off. Try:

if ([apple switchTo:"@Intel"])
[apple dealloc];

Re:Switch and die

[bnenning]

No, you should never call -dealloc directly. Use -release or -autorelease.

Re:Switch and die

[zephc]

"or -autorelease."

but only if you added the object 'apple' to the autorelease pool, right? *tries to remember objc*

Re:Switch and die

[Senjaz]

Would this not be better done using an assertion?

NSAssert(![[apple processorFamily] compare:@"x86"], @"Apple Switch to x86 family")

Of course this would as default raise an exception if they switched to Intel and log a message to the console.

If you need more specific or drastic behavour might I suggest subclassing NSAssertionHandler to exhibit the following behavour under this condition:

[apple fireHardwareVP];
[[apple jobs] activateRealityDistortionField];
[[apple jobs] controlMedia];

This way you can ensure that the correct messures are always taken to prevent things.

May [apple release]; never be executed.

Re:Switch and die

[Anonymous Coward]

Nope. autorelease is what adds the object to the current autorelease pool. And it's @"Intel", not the other way around.

Re:Switch and die

[medcalf]

I belive that you mean @"Intel". Ah, debugging.

Re:Switch and die

[tb3]

Yeah, yours is much more elegant than mine. I was just trying to clean up the quick hack that would be made if they suddenly switched to Intel :)

Re:Switch and die

[pohl]

I don't get why the tacit assumption is that Apple would switch to Intel. What if they merely added Intel machines to their hardware line and used the same fat-binary approach that NeXTstep used to run on sparc, pa-risc, x86, and m68k processors? This way they could continue to use the G4 for low-power situations like the notebook line.

Re:Switch and die

[bnenning]

-autorelase means "add this object to the current autorelease pool's list of objects". When the autorelease pool is deallocated, all of the objects it has collected are sent -release messages (at which point they will be deallocated if their refcount becomes 0). In order for -autorelease to work, there has to be an NSAutoreleasePool in place. In normal Cocoa/GNUstep/OpenStep apps, an NSAutoreleasePool is created as the first step in handling an event, and freed as the last step, so any event handling code that you write can assume its existence. There are cases where you have to create your own pools, such as if you're writing a command line tool or if you create extra threads.

The real question is...

[BitGeek]

We all know that PowerPC chips get far more done in a given clock than x86 chips.

This was the great promise of the PowerPC, actually. By going to a superscalar Risc architecture, IBM and Motorola spent the effort to get a chip that really did more per clock.

The clock rate, however, is less of an engineering issue than a process issue. Intel has processes that increase their clock rate rather fast-- and so rather than re-engineering their processors (and paying the backwards compatibility penalty that apple paid when they switched from 68k to PPC) they have simply increased the clock rate and integrated more on chip cache, etc.

The thing is, this means that the PPC was at a very significant competitive advantage-- its really hard to beat architecture engineering, which the PPC has in spades, but pentiums lack. Design is hard. Process is easy. So, the Processes that Intel was using should have migrated to Motorola and IBM, and we should be seeing PowerPCs that run at 2GHz and leave no question as to the fact that the powerpc is much much faster.

So, the real question to my mind is-- why hasn't the process side of the house for PowerPCs kept up with intel? Certainly motorola and IBM have the know how, and they have the motivation-- competition with each other for the sizable sales to Apple, and the possibly even larger embedded and workstation markets.

I can think of two possibilities:
1) The increased complexity of a super scalar architecture on the order of the PPC makes timing more problematic and while process is there for higher speeds, the synconization of the clocks hitting all the subcomponents of hte processor at the same time is an issue. At these levels, the speed of light is a real factor when one signal goes a little further than the other, they arrive at the same place at different times due to the relative slowness it takes for the signal to go down the longer path.

2) Conflict. Motorola created Altivec and apple jumped all over it, and I don't believe IBM has a license to Altivec, giving motorola a bit of a monopoly. This combined with apple embracing altivec so much means that Motorola may not have sufficient incentive to grow the speeds. Plus, since the PowerPC has not had the widespred platform support that was expected-- NT for PPC has gone away, other Unix box makers aren't using it extensively, the market is smaller than was originally intended.

This creates quite a problem for apple. As long as they suffer from the perception- despite the reality-- that their processors are slower because people think MHz = speed-- they are going to have trouble not being seen as more expensive. Hell, even people who post here make this mistake.

So, I think Apple is planning something big. But it won't be a switch to x86, certainly as we know it.

I can imagine a couple possibilities:
1) Apple teams with AMD and brings the PPC instruction set to a future AMD processor that can handle it and the x86 instructions simultaneously. Gets AMD's process speeds, along with PPC compatibility running at native speeds (rather than emulated.) The downside is that IBM would have to agree to this, and its not clear what IBM's upside is-- unless IBM is part of the alliance and gets a competitive advantage to using this technology in its products (maybe low end power workstations)-- but still Motorola which controls altivec would have to be involved.

2) A new AIM partnership, this time its the AAIM partnership, all four companies collaborate on a new chip that will run OS X and Windows, IBM and Moto make PCs that dual boot, AMD gets Altivec and Power4 Multichip module technology, and IBM and Moto get AMD process technology, and IBM, Moto fab the chips for AMD. This gives IBM a weapon against windows, namely OSX, gives AMD the backing of two big competitors- IBM and Moto, along with a new customer, gives Moto a new jumpstart into the box making business that it gave up when Apple stopped subsidizing the clones industry.

3) The Death By Numbers Approach -- Apple goes to IBM and gets the four chip Power technology and migrates there from PowerPC, greatly increasing the volumes of these chips for IBM which is only currently using them in their servers and workstations. This drives down the costs, apple doesn't have to rewrite software (like quicktime) that was never part of the NeXT OS, and at the same time can emphatically claim the "fastest PCs in the world" title it now holds but nobody recognizes. Oh, and they sell them with 2 to 4 processor units per box.

4) Death By Numbers part 2-- apple starts shipping quad and 8 way PowerPCs running at moderate speeds, 1-2GHz using Motorola (or IBM) chips, and being competitive on price because the powerpc costs them so much less per cpu than Intel CPUs. Thus people will instinctively know that 8 1GHz CPUs are going to get a lot more done than one 3GHz intel cpu.

5) The Second Rebel Alliance-- Apple, AMD and Nvidia team up on an x86 processor that uses NVidea and AMD Hyper IO (or is it rapid io?) technology, and apple does go the x86 way..

The thing is, 5 seems least likely to me. apple has just migrated accross platforms for the second time-- the first was 68k to ppc, and the second is classic Mac to OS X. Applications have to be re-written.

Are they really going to ask their developers to re-write their apps yet again, in only a few years? I really doubt it.

So, I think there is a new processor architecture or solution coming-- I'm sure apple recognizes that the PPC has not given it the marketability it needs.

But I think that solution will be PPC compatible natively.

Re:The real question is...

[Cyclone66]

It costs billions to change the process of a chip. They need to build new fabs, cope with a high defect rate and use components that are within tighter specifications. This is very expensive, would you spend this money for Apple users? (There aren't THAT many.) And if a 1Ghz Apple box is just as fast as a 2Ghz P4 then there really isn't much need except for those in video editing/professionals. That's an even smaller group of people.

Re:The real question is...

[iomud]

What about spec benchmarks? I know ppc is a fast chip but I just dont think it's as fast as it used to be. Along with moto's reluctance to put out literally anything lately makes me very concerned about the future of the chip. There's only so many ways you can repackage year old technology, apple.. aside from the xserve is struggling in the hardware department. The price goes up but the performance doesn't. That being said, I own a 933g4 powermac, I bought it about three months ago, it's system bus is slower than the pc system I built last year, just a bit discouraging.

Re:The real question is...

[BitGeek]

It costs billions to change the process of a chip.

Yes and no. It costs billions to develop new processes, or to build a new fabrication plant.

But it doesn't cost that much to move a chip from one process to another-- quite a lot less in fact. Intel, Motorola and IBM regularly develop chips for one process and move them to other processes and feature sizes.

Plus the cost isn't for one chip, or even one model of chip, but for a whole line-- in other words these costs are borne by not just the processors but the GPUs, network processors and any other chip that the company in question makes. all of them benefit by the process improvements.

I'm not sure Motorola has the size to make this investment, but IBM definitely does, and AMD *has* to-- even if it can't afford it.

Re:The real question is...

[danielwright]

You're oversimplifying things a little too much when you say that if a PowerPC chip were made with the same process that Intel uses for it's new P4s, it would have the same clock rate.

Modern CPUs are all pipelined, so they divide each instruction into several pieces - say Instruction Fectch, Instruction Decode, Execute, Load/Store, Write Back for example. Then, they interleave the execution of the different stages, so while one instruction is being decode, the next is already being fetched.

At a very rough approximation (it's much more complicated than this), the clock rate has to be low enough that the largest of the pipeline stages can execute in one clock tick, so if tou divide up the execution into more, smaller stages, you can raise the clock rate higher. However, there's a lot of complex machinery to avoid "hazards" where instructions depend on each other, so they have to stall some of the instructions, and this gets more complicated and slower with a longer pipeline. (This would be a gross simplification 10 years ago, and today's CPUs are much more complicated, but it gets the main point across).

The designers of the current PowerPC implementations chose fairly short pipelines (I'm not sure of the number of stages, but I think it's around 5), while Intel uses 20 stages for the P4. That means that the P4 can run at a higher clock rate, but get less done per cycle because more of the instructions are stalled.

So, my point is, at least IBM has CPU processes at the same level as Intel's, if not better - it's due to the fundamental design of the chip that the GHz number is lower, which makes the GHz a very uninteresting measure - hence the "MHz Myth".

Also, PowerPC is an instruction set, like IA32 or IA64, it's not a chip architecture. IBM and Motorola currently make chips that implement the PowerPC instruction set (and IBM's chip, the Power4, is currently the fastest chip available, BTW).

Just to add to the list of totally unfounded predictions, here's mine:

IBM released the Power4 a few months ago, as the fastest chip on the market. They want to use it for every server platform they make (AIX boxes, mainframes and AS/400 boxes). It's designed for servers, and that shows - you need something like 1 ton of force to attach it to the motherboard, and a pretty impressive cooling system as well. This makes it unsuitable for small desktop machines like the imac, and for laptops. Also, it doesn't support Altivec. I figure, they'll work out some licensing agreement so they can make a special, slightly slower version for Apple that does support Altivec.

The merits of this: they could use basically the same CPU design and processes (which are very, very good), and now software changes.

I don't think Apple can change to Intel chips because that would require new versions of all the software. They've just asked all their customers to replace old OS9 software with OS X software. If they came back in 2 years and said everyone should replace all their software again, their customers would start to get rather irritated by it...

Re:The real question is...

[g4dget]

We may all "know" that, but it seems to be a myth. At least on SPEC benchmarks, a 1GHz G4 PPC doesn't do a whole lot better than a 1GHz Pentium III. The SPEC benchmarks are a pretty good mix of real-world code. What Heise got on them is probably what you and I can expect when we compile our programs. One might also note that, despite Apple's constant claims about how powerful the G4 is, they have never submitted a SPEC benchmark result for the chip themselves.

I think the PPC is a dead end for Apple. Lack of a 64bit migration path is a problem. Intel's Itanium doesn't need to fear comparison architecture-wise with PPC either. But the mainstream will go to 64bit AMD and Pentium. That's perhaps where Apple should go as well.

Re:The real question is...

[jmordoj]

Or, Apple buys the PPC from Motorola (who its semiconductor division is losing money period after period), and Steve Jobs, starts "torturing" his new PPC division until Apple gets a 5GHz CPU, and not only have a better hardware/software undestandig, it also has the posibility of deciding when a procesor is going to ship, what caracteristics it should have, and how much it will cost...

Re:The real question is...

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't think you understand the amount of research and development Intel & AMD are investing in. It's not like Motorola doesn't WANT to make a faster CPU, they just can't afford the development costs. The research budgets of Intel and AMD are larger than Apple's total budget.

Re:The real question is...

[Anonymous Coward]

I heard that G4 chips have lousy yield due to their size and complexity; that is, many/most of the chips printed end up being discarded.

Re:The real question is...

[derubergeek]

So, the real question to my mind is-- why hasn't the process side of the house for PowerPCs kept up with intel?

That's an easy one. Intel isn't getting these speed increases purely through process. They're busy making longer pipelines so they can crank up clock speed. I.e. they're sacrificing performance for GHz. Take a look at the P4 arch & you'll see what I mean...

Re:The real question is...

[Mr. Quick]

The thing is, 5 seems least likely to me. apple has just migrated accross platforms for the second time-- the first was 68k to ppc, and the second is classic Mac to OS X. Applications have to be re-written.

Are they really going to ask their developers to re-write their apps yet again, in only a few years? I really doubt it.

i believe that you have hit the nail on the head with this point. architecture shifts are huge and take a long time to complete. apple has pulled it off once, 68k -> ppc was quite well done. os9 -> os x has just started, but is going quite cleanly, given it's drastic nature.

i think your 2nd option is the most likely, but nvidia needs to be in there somehow. (AMAIN??? ;)

what i think would be quite interesting, is if apple took an even bigger roll in developing chips. they have alot of knowledge in-house, and partnering even closer to people like amd and ibm might be a good idea.
so servers/workstations get those giant power4 chips, and portables/consumer machines get the g(4||5).

a remaining question is what is apple's 64-bit strategy?

Re:The real question is...

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, take a look at any benchmark and you'll see that they aren't exactly "sacrificing performance" :-)

Re:The real question is...

[pohl]

I don't think Apple can change to Intel chips because that would require new versions of all the software. They've just asked all their customers to replace old OS9 software with OS X software. If they came back in 2 years and said everyone should replace all their software again, their customers would start to get rather irritated by it...

Perhaps, but what if doing so were as easy as clicking a checkbox that included x86 instructions in the fat binary? NeXTstep had this for four different achitectures (sparc, pa-risc, x86, and m68k) and it worked beautifully.

Re:The real question is...

[Elwood P Dowd]

Also, PowerPC is an instruction set, like IA32 or IA64, it's not a chip architecture. IBM and Motorola currently make chips that implement the PowerPC instruction set (and IBM's chip, the Power4, is currently the fastest chip available, BTW).

No. Power4 uses a slightly different instruction set. Running PPC code on a Power3 or Power4 chip would require recompile or emulation. It's a lot closer than x86 or something, so emulation might not be the worst idea, but it's definitely different.

Re:The real question is...

[Lars T.]

What Heise got on them is probably what you and I can expect when we compile our programs.

Depends on the compilers used.

One might also note that, despite Apple's constant claims about how powerful the G4 is, they have never submitted a SPEC benchmark result for the chip themselves.

One might also note that for years SPEC simply didn't run on Macs (not even running any *NIX). It may still not work too well on OS X (or Linux PPC).

I think the PPC is a dead end for Apple. Lack of a 64bit migration path is a problem.

PPC has been designed from the start to have both 32 and 64 bit implementations. And IBM does consider Power4 to be a PPC chip.

Intel's Itanium doesn't need to fear comparison architecture-wise with PPC either.

If you don't mind only being able to use one and only one compiler. At least if you want any speed.

Re:The real question is...

[BitGeek]

I don't consider the "SPEC benchmarks" to be a very good citation-- there are a variety of benchmarks in SPEC, and they certainly don't reflect the instruction mix of modern applications.

For instance, penitums are really good at doing integer calculations but very poor at floating point, yet almost all applications that are CPU INTENSIVE use floating point. Yet Spec gives integer a much higher rating, and generally ignores floating point optimizations that are used in real world situations.

Re:The real question is...

[BitGeek]

Well, compared to pentiums, they are tiny.

that's one of the great features of the PowerPC, much smaller area, making it much cheaper to manufacture.

If Motorola isn't getting at least a factor of 4 price edge, then their process really is behind... the pentium is a much much harder chip to manufacture.

Re:The real question is...

[Bingo Foo]

What Heise got on them is probably what you and I can expect when we compile our programs.

Depends on the compilers used.

Where can I find the compiler that changes FFTs on complex doubles into integer instructions? That would sure speed things up a bit around here....

Re:The real question is...

[Junta]

Though I agree the pipeline lengthening is mostly for the sake of marketing, the technical reasoning behind it, accepting their presumptions, is sound and not merely sacrificing performance for clock.

The thinking is that Intel further complicated the instruction set with SSE2. The nature of the SSE2 lends itself to be more predictable on branches. So if intensive operations are more accurately predicted at the branches, there are fewer mispredictions (duh) and thus the pipeline need not be flushed. As more companies jump on the SSE2 bandwagon, pipeline flushes will decrease and P4 behaves as it should rather than how it does currently...

Re:The real question is...

[MarcQuadra]

Hmm, would it be possible for IBM or AMD to make a PowerPC chip on a ZIF riser and then Apple can buy an AltiVec unit (like an FPU in the old days, a seperate chip) from MOTO and stick it on the backside or next to the main CPU. Hell, you could order a mac with 1 CPU and 2 AVUs (AltiVec Units), 2 CPUs and 1 AVU, whatever the daughtercard can fit on it. That would be cool because file/DB/print/web servers don't need AltiVec, but workstations do. It would allow apple to fine-tune the tool for the job.

IBM

[Toraz Chryx]

My wishful-thinking-cap is still firmly pointing at Apple ditching Motorola and going to IBM for their processors.

a POWER4-Lite would be vaguely feasible (eg, pair of G3 cores + SMP logic + Altivec execution hardware + 1MB of L2 cache) on .13, and I'd reckon it would be rather rapid :)

Of course, the chances of that happening are something like my chances of winning the lottery, which incidentally is also the only way in hell I could afford a PowerMac equipped to my liking :p

Old news Taco and friends. Old news.

[Anonymous Coward]

I read this days ago. DAYS.

This is what happens to fascist regimes, they lose touch with reality. Fascists don't have to be quick, witty, informative, useful to the populace or even correct. Like Hitler, Taco and his cabal of editors are losing touch with reality. The "Americans" are going to have to come and kick the shit out of them, just as before; Taco, Your fascist totalitariansim and disregard for free internet, free posting and expression is not wanted here! I'll bet Taco wakes up in a sweat dreaming of a Über-bomber to destroy England, just as Hitler did.

You fascist brand of totalitarianism and censure is not welcome on the free internet Taco. Cry baby IP banner, post limiter and the worst affront to poster, "lameness" filter. The term lame is rather subjective, but Totalitarian TACO doesnt care. Fuck you, the readership, thinks he. He only needs us plebians and proletariats to eat up and mass consume his FUCKING banner ads while he FUCKS OUR FREEDOM TO EXPRESS OURSELVES. Eugenia Loli is also a fat pig fascist.

Re:Old news Taco and friends. Old news.

[Anonymous Coward]

> Eugenia Loli is also a fat pig fascist.

Oh come on, lay off the pig fascists!

Re:An Apple user makes the switch!

[BitGeek]

MMM Twinkies. Tasty.

I read today that the reason guys wear baseball caps backwards is that it makes it much easier to give blowjobs. IS that why I see all those young boys with backwards baseball caps?

Sure gay people use apples. That should be a clue- if you want to be manly too, switch to a Mac!

Why don't you just get a REAL computer...

[Anonymous Coward]

...instead of yearning for the day when you can buy a decent processor?

Take my advice: Intel and Microsoft make a winning team on any computing platform!!!

Intel as a Co-Processor?

[zulux]

It is feasable for Apple to put a Pentium on it's motherboards as a co-processor. The extra prossessor could get used by apps that need another floating point unit. Normall, non processor-intensive apps could just ignore it.

It would be a stupid hack, but woulden't require any recompiles for curent apps and gould get rid of the 'MHZ Myth' once and for all.

Of course this would be non-elegent, and mostly for marketing reasons.

Re:Intel as a Co-Processor?

[Toraz Chryx]

It would be extremely non-elegant, and if the 68k / PPC hackjobs for the Amiga are anything to go by, it would be hellishly slow too..

Maintaining cache coherency between two processors that are opposite-endian... eek *shudder*
it was bad enough with the 300+ _Micro_second context switches on Amiga's with PPC accelerators

Re:Intel as a Co-Processor?

[Tom7]

"Feasable" in what sense? Most general-purpose processors don't like to share a bus (etc.) with another chip, especially one with a different architecture and endianness!

Re:Intel as a Co-Processor?

[mkldev]

Ahem, you mean like the PC-compatible PowerMac 6100? :-p

Re:Intel as a Co-Processor?

[Anonymous Coward]

Your forgetting something... a Risc processor is BETTER at floating point. More importantly most risc processors take floating point numbers to more decial places making the calculation more accurate. Look at the i64 chip.. its 64 bit but only does like 48 bit floating point. They have overhead for memory addressing.

"MHz Myth" is a myth, MHz do matter ...

[AHumbleOpinion]

The "MHz Myth" is a myth, or more accurately RDF. MHz do matter but they are not everything. Historically the PowerPC has held up extremely well against Intel. Some programs really do excel on the PowerPC but in general you get about a 20-30% increase when comparing PowerPC and Intel of the same clockrate. Assuming properly compiled and equivalently optimized programs, no Apple PR games like using old 486 optimized code on a Pentium (ByteMark), G4 vs. Pentium 4 comparisons where the Mac code uses Altivec and the PC code does not use SSE2, etc.

If someone wants to argue that there is practically no difference between a 1.0 GHz G4 and a 1.4/1.6 GHz Pentium 4 I would readily accept that. You need a benchmark program or a good stopwatch to tell the difference. However with Pentium 4's up to 2.5 GHz (and 2.0/2.2 GHz being pretty inexpensive) you will find that raw brute force MHzs does matter. It may not be the 2.5:1 that the non-technical might assume, but it is noticable.

Comparing CPUs in terms of operations? Well that's what SPEC is all about. However Apple does not like SPEC since it is not RDF friendly and contradicts the arguement that MHzs don't matter.

Re:"MHz Myth" is a myth, MHz do matter ...

[Lars T.]

Comparing CPUs in terms of operations? Well that's what SPEC is all about.

Well, that's what SPEC is supposed to be about. But as long as a 1 GHz P3 is 30% (or more) faster than a 1GHz P3 depending on the compiler used...

The future

[TheOnlyCoolTim]

I see Apple making Mac OS XI for x86 but only allowing it to work on special Apple motherboards. Apple won't hype the switch that much. They will instead sell some sort of VMWare-like or dual-boot stuff and market the x86 Macs as being able to run Windows at full speed.

Then someone will hack Mac OS XI to work on any motherboard, or some company will reverse engineer the special Apple motherboards and make their own Mac compatible motherboards, and Apple will call out the lawyers.

Tim

Re:The future

[feldsteins]

I see Apple making Mac OS XI for x86 but only allowing it to work on special Apple motherboards.

I think that is exactly right.

Apple won't hype the switch that much. They will instead sell some sort of VMWare-like or dual-boot stuff and market the x86 Macs as being able to run Windows at full speed.

Can't see it. What I do see is that Apple will make the switch when a next-gen Intel or AMD processor comes out - and they will wait for it for two reasons. 1. Presumably one of them will find a way to make their stuff a little smaller and cooler. Apple likes things like TiBooks and fanless iMacs. Can't develop shit like that with brick-sized P4 modules can you? No. 2. Apple won't want to pull a "New Coke" on their market. Mac users are loyal to their brand and to their processors. They won't like seeing a switch to a part that has been touted as inferior for so long. This effect will be lessened when a next-gen part comes out which doesn't have quite the history of being bashed by Apple as the current one's do.

Then someone will hack Mac OS XI to work on any motherboard, or some company will reverse engineer the special Apple motherboards and make their own Mac compatible motherboards, and Apple will call out the lawyers.

Apple would never, ever make such a switch unless they were supremely sure that this couldn't happen. If the ability to sell proprietary hardware for the OS went bye-bye then so would Apple itself and they are fully aware of this. It's not just a dinosaur clinging to the old ways...it really is at the core of Apple being able to innovate the way they do. They have to control the OS and hardware of the platform to do what they do. That is the only reason why Dell or Microsoft can't be an Apple. it's not because Apple is "cooler" or even "smarter." It's because they control the entire platform.

Hell, if I worked at Apple I would want to make damned sure that those crown jewels never got lost. I'd rather run the boxes with hampsters in plastic wheels than risk that.

AMD?

[TriCCer]

I have a hard time to believe that Apple is going anywhere NEAR Intel. Intel is soo representative of PC hardware. And they have made it clear that Pentiums are the opposite of G4s in their test. But as an earlier slashdot post said. AMD 64bits are plausable. since they too are competing agains the 'Giant' (They don't call it Microtel for nothing)

Re:AMD?

[Anonymous Coward]

(They don't call it Microtel for nothing)

They don't call it Microtel at all. I've never encountered that word outside of one or two /. posts. Some people say Wintel, but that's kinda lame too.

Either name is less lame than the commonly accepted term PC, which came about when Microsoft began urging the press to stop saying "IBM Compatable" back in the early 80's, and say "PC" so Microsoft's favorite partners wouldn't sound like they were just making cheap IBM knockoffs to siphon away IBM's business-computer monopoly (which they were).

"PC" stands "Personal Computer". Macintoshes are personal computers, as are desktop Linux systems, and even the old Amiga in the back of your garage. The word "PC" is meant to apply to all of them. Leave it to Microsoft to decide to appropriate the term which refers to all home computing systems in order to specify those which run their OS. We should have seen what a bunch of market-manipulating assholes MS would eventually become back then. Now we have the Word .doc "standard", and web sites which try to filter out Opera and Mozilla browsers as non-compliant. Looking back, it was pretty obvious this would happen.

Re:AMD?

[pfdietz]

Microtel is the company that makes the Windows-less x86 PCs that Walmart sells online.

Re:AMD?

[TriCCer]

wintel, microtel, whatever.
I'm just having a hard time believing that Apple would willingly collaborate with their "arch enemys" (as stated in the 'swich' commercials and jobs keynotes, et.c.)
I have never seen them publicly off AMD tho.

I Honestly Can't see Apple doing this

[frooyo]

My understanding was that Apple's core profits came from his Hardware sales NOT software. So for Apple to dump Motorola (which I think they should and go with IBM solely) and convert to the most inefficient processor in the world, the Pentium IV would impact them greatly.

But, nevertheless - if Apple were to do this, they would bring a whole new meaning to their ad campaign to Switch

20% of user base on OS X?

[Theaetetus]

"Why think about this now? Apple just moved to a totally new operating system in which only 20% of their user base has switched."

Only 20% of their user base has switched... in a year's time.
Can Microsoft argue the same for XP? How about ME? In fact, is anyone using ME? Then, how about the figures of people still running 98 or 95? Or even 3.1?

Hate to say it, but where I work, the IT department is proud of the fact that they finally upgraded all but 10 of the computers to Windows 98... as of last month.
You should see how much flack they got from administration who said "Isn't this the year 2002? How come we're on a 4-year old system?"

-T

Re:20% of user base on OS X?

[DavidRavenMoon]

Then, how about the figures of people still running 98 or 95? Or even 3.1?

This is true. I think many people buy a PC, or a Mac, and just leave on what ever OS it came with.

These are not people like us mind you.

My brother and his wife are perfect examples.

They each had a PC, my brother a whitebox PC running Windows 3.0 (!) and his wife an old Compaq laptop running 3.1.

This was fine for them, they mostly used it for writing (they are art teachers and poets) until they wanted to get online.

The laptop was the most capable, so they went and got a PCCard modem, but lacked the drivers, and MS removed all the Win 3.1 downloads ... so they bought a 333 MHz iMac (green) and are still running Mac OS 8.6... until I get around to upgrading it to 9.2 :)

They came over one day and looked at my G4 running OS X, and had this bewildered look on their faces... like a dear in the headlghts. Ha!

Most of my PC using friends are still running Win 98, and one runs NT 4.

Re:20% of user base on OS X?

[Junta]

It's easier to have 20% of a small number switch over, especially if that small number of users is ver saavy and knowledgable about their platform. Mac users tend to be enthusiasts of a sort, and of course want the latest and greatest. Just like nealy every linux user keeps their system up to date with the distribution of their choice.

Windows users on average just want it to do something, and as long as it does, why switch?

False Information comes from both sides

[AHumbleOpinion]

Everyone knows you can't compare speeds of Intel and Motorolla chips, as they do not equate to the same thing. I lost all respect and believability for the article after reading that piece of rubbish.

Of course you have blown your credibility with the above as well.

MHz can't be used as a precise measurement but it can not be completely disregarded. Especially when the ration is over 2.5:1. Is a 1.4GHz Pentium 4 faster than a 1.0GHz G4, for all practical measurements probably not. A 2.5 GHz Pentium 4, yes, raw brute force can overcome elegance and efficiency.

Re:False Information comes from both sides

[ealar dlanvuli]

Of course you have blown your credibility with the above as well.

It can be completly disgarded if the G4 performed 2.5x more instructions per cycle than the P4.

Re:False Information comes from both sides

[AHumbleOpinion]

Of course you have blown your credibility with the above as well.

Nope, you are merely misinformed. :)

It can be completly disgarded if the G4 performed 2.5x more instructions per cycle than the P4.

Only if x86 and PPC instructions are doing equal work which is not necessarily the case (CISC vs. RISC), only if these instruction do not need to access RAM or other resources outside the CPU, etc. You are substituting one erroneous metric, instructions per cycle, for a different erroneous metric, cycles per second.

Re:False Information comes from both sides

[Anonymous Coward]

oh good point, hehe wasn't even thinking that far ahead, was just pointing out the obvious counter-argument

anyway, it is possible that a 1g chip can outpreform a 2.5g chip, even significantly.

Also I believe we are only talking about the G4 vs P4 here, not the rest of the archetecture (which I will admit does need some help)

I'm not a mac user btw, just saw a falacy that 2.4g performs more decisions(work) in a 1 minuite peroid than a 1g processor in all situations and wanted to correct it

Re:False Information comes from both sides

[AHumbleOpinion]

... it is possible that a 1g chip can outpreform a 2.5g chip, even significantly ...

Absolutely, it's just a pretty rare event. In general PowerPC seems to do 20-30% better than x86 of an equal clockrate.

... I'm not a mac user btw ...

I use both Macs and PCs which is why I recognize Apple PR events where Macs run twice as fast for what they are. :)

Crusoe?

[Nyarly]

Wasn't the nifty about Crusoe that the actual processor interface was all microcode, that it could emulate anything? Why not Apples with Crusoes in them?

Re:Crusoe?

[dbrutus]

Even Better, why not just put out a PPC compatibility layer as a free upgrade and then all crusoe's shipping can run Mac OS X?

Re:Crusoe?

[Valdrax]

A) It wouldn't net Apple any more hardware sales.
B) The components of a Crusoe that contain the x86 instruction translation are probably not flashable. They're probably in ROMs.

Intel? Nah.

[PierceLabs]

That would buy Apple absolutely nothing. Apple loves to innovate, and the love to make money off their hardware. If they went to the 'build your own' x86 market they would be stabbing themselves in the throat as they would have to rely solely on their software to stay afloat and while Apple does make some interesting software, Apple would die on the vine as a software company. It would also be akin to throwing away almost all of their R&D dollars. Their fancy Altivec enhanced software would be trash, their fast soon to eb OpenGL accelerated Java system would have to go back to the poard to powrt for a new class of hardware which would require more software dollars, and they would have to pretty much rearchitect their entire digital hub around a currently unfriendly MB/CPU architecture. It is *far* mroe likely that they will find a new pimp daddy in IBM who has both the capacity to fab, and the desire to make high end chips in volume (something Motorola completely sucks at these days). IBM is capable and currently producing chips greater than 1Ghz - and if memory serves they have that new .1 micron fab in Fishkill. All signs point to IBM having both the desire and the capability to eat Motorola's lunch and relaunch themselves as a meaningful player (at least through shipping chips) in the desktop space. Who knows, maybe they will just buy Apple and finally ship a decent computer instead of this horrid crap they are pushing upon the computing public.

Re:Intel? Nah.

[feldsteins]

If they went to the 'build your own' x86 market

There is a huge leap between "using Intel processors" and what you're talking about. Using an Intel or AMD processor does not by any means mean that one could make a Macintosh out of off-the-shelf parts. No way, no how.

Apple could quite easily use totally off-the-shelf parts to build their own Macs and yet prevent you from doing it too...by adding one small thing: an additional chip (or chips) to the motherboard. Proprietary ones. One's that you couldn't buy anywhere, who's exact specification was unknown outside of Cupertino.

One's that the Mac OS specifically looked for before booting. Get the picture? No proprietary chip, no booting Mac OS. No build-your-own Mac. Someone feel free to correct me if I"m wrong but isn't that basically the reason why nobody could make Macintosh clones? Because of some proprietary ROMs or something? (Excepting the brief period when some companies were licensed to use them.)

So you see, Apple moving to an Intel processor doesn't mean that one could make a Mac by buying parts at some local white box dealer.

Re:Intel? Nah.

[RevGregory]

Apple could quite easily use totally off-the-shelf parts to build their own Macs and yet prevent you from doing it too...by adding one small thing: an additional chip (or chips) to the motherboard. Proprietary ones. One's that you couldn't buy anywhere, who's exact specification was unknown outside of Cupertino.

Which could then be reverse engineered just like the PC BIOS was years ago. You can slow down cloning by this process but you could never stop it. Literally, the only thing stopping Mac clones from being made right now is that Cupertino will not license the MacOS to be run on clone hardware. It has nothing to do with hardware, CPU's or ROM issues - all of which can be freely purchased or reverse engineered in ways that circumvent litigation.

The problem a clone manufacturer faces in trying to duplicate a Mac is that since they have such a small market share, unless Apple is playing nice with them - the R&D costs to clone the systems are way too high and since they would not get inside information from Apple, they would ALWAYS be behind the developmental curve. Also, Apple is under NO obligation to assure that future OS releases would run on these platforms meaning that clone systems could become orphans overnight. The possible profits are far outweighed by the risks involved - there is NO other reason why Mac clones are not being made...

Re:Intel? Nah.

[feldsteins]

Why would a clone maker have to license the OS necessarily? They could be a white-box Mac maker and ship linux or nothing on the machine. heck they could even sell you a retail boxed copy of OS X along side it if they wanted. I can't imagine that it's OS licensing that's preventing clones.

Your point about reverse engineering is a good one though. But the proprietary widgets can be reverse engineered now can't they? I mean, you could reverse engineer those parts and then buy G4s from Motorola and some off the shelf parts...and preseto, clone Mac. Perhaps your point is that the only real thing stopping them is that as soon as that happend all the reversen engineering would be for naught because Apple would just break it in the next OS patch. The "unauthorized" clone maker would always be spending tons on R&D to reverse engineer...every six months potentially. Isn't that the real reason there are no clones today? Not that the reverse engineering can't be done...but that nobody wants to do it every few months because Apple isn't cooperating?

X86 != cheap PC parts

[AHumbleOpinion]

A switch to x86-based hardware does not mean Apple will be killing their hardware business. They do not have to switch to off-the-shelf PC parts. They can continue to use custom and proprietary designs, just substituting an x86 for a PowerPC. They can have the same high standard and reliability.

The real problem is getting developers to compile for both CPUs, and this is a big problem. I don't expect emulation to work as well as with the 68K to PowerPC move.

With respect to your efficiency comment, that's irrelevant. High overhead and brute force at 2.5G overcomes elegance and efficiency at 1G. Your suggestion to ditch Motorola for IBM may make things even worse if I am correct that IBM has no interest in Altivec. Perhaps this has changed, or are all G4's still Motorola?

Internal Contradiction - HPQ

[Shabazz]

I love how the article states that Neff says that the HP Compaq deal was a bad idea:

HP, meanwhile, has problems in the PC realm. Rather than try to become a low-cost leader, the company instead tried to bulk up by buying Compaq Computer. History in the computer market, though, shows that "the key is not scale, the key is low cost," he said in an interview.

And then later in the article they talk about his positive track record, including his recommendation for HP to buy Compaq:

While Wall Street analysts have created a cottage industry out of making grandiose (and often ultimately incorrect) predictions and recommendations, Neff can boast of a fairly strong track record of the industry adopting at least some of his ideas. In January 2001, he said that it would behoove HP to purchase Compaq. At the time, most analysts--and even some HP and Compaq execs--warned against buying PC companies, saying it was better to let them fade away.

So, if he's such a brainiac, why did he think it would be a good idea for HP to buy Compaq, and then call it a blunder after it actually happens.

It's not a great track record if you recommend something that you end up calling a mistake once it comes true. Bottom line, maybe the world would be a better place if the industry doesn't adopt his ideas.

What creds does this guy have?

[gmhowell]

Okay, he's a staff writer for 'news.com.com'. What journalistic credit does this guy have? "Hi, I own shares of Dell and Intel. Can I write a 'story' that would pimp their stock prices?" Gimme a break. Perhaps the 50 page report has more info in it, but this is incredibly lame.

Apple has historically gone to great lengths to be compatible. First they could read PC floppies. Then fat binaries let 68k machines last for a long time after they were no longer sold. There is the compatibility layer in OSX. The idea is simply absurd.

I know next to nothing about compilers, but doesn't it stand to reason that Apple would have to redevelop most/all of their libraries, to say nothing of the compilers themselves? Particularly if they go off for some 'pseudo-x86' architecture like some are suggesting.

At that point, what will be the difference between Mac and Windows? Would companies even bother with MacOS ports, or would they just make some bit of middleware, so that the same binary could use the ABI of either system? (I'm talking way beyond my knowledge, so if it sounds like I don't know what I'm talking about, I don't.)

What would be gained by this? Go from 5% market share to 6%? Not worth the effort. Having access/drivers to PCI/AGP slots, USB, IDE, etc. makes sense. Not for the main architecture.

Hell, even Transmeta makes more sense than this sort of malarky. Get it to emulate PPC for old apps, ia64 for new stuff, or something like that. But straight Intel hardware? I think not.

Remember, even though they don't say it, the Mac is the 'computer for the rest of us'. While it's no longer the company line, don't doubt for a minute that Steve likes being a member of the elite. He likes it that cool Hollywood types use iMacs for computer scenes. He likes it that the kids of yuppie hipsters carry iPods.

Steve is not a commodity guy. Ask the owners of StarMax machines.

This article (and the one 'proving' the existence of super-duper-top-secret military aircraft) prove that in the eyes of the editors, today was a slow news day. Not slow enough to answer the question "what happens when VA is delisted" but slow, nonetheless.

Re:What creds does this guy have?

[norwoodites]

I do not totally disagree with this post but:
The compiler bit is a little off the only part Apple will have to compile for ia32 (which they do not do already publicly) is the all libraries that go with Mac OS X instead of Darwin, this includes Cocoa, Carbon (since Cocoa is using Carbon for menus and other things) and the window server.

The kernel is almost compiled fat so is most of the UNIX apps for both ppc and ia32 for Darwin.
In fact you can compile gcc so it will make fat binaries with one command line.

Re:What creds does this guy have?

[gmhowell]

So you are saying that:

a) it's possible for Apple to make fat binaries so that same proggy runs on ia32 and PPC macs?

b) gcc can already do this more or less?

If so, I must say that's cool as hell. Wish I knew a little more about such matters. It also seems that that would mean a switch would be much easier on developers.

Although, IMHO, still somewhat pointless from Apple's POV.

Re:What creds does this guy have?

[norwoodites]

It is only possible because of the file format apple uses for executables, mach-o, no other OS uses it.
And it is apple's extensions to gcc to have the ability to make phat (as apple calls it in the source of gcc) binaries.

Re:What creds does this guy have?

[GnorpH]

> a) it's possible for Apple to make fat binaries so that same proggy runs on ia32 and PPC macs?

NeXT did that for m68k, x86, PA-RISC and SPARC - it is made possible by the mach-o format, and yes, it is very cool!

Re:Hey SPEC marks done lie

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh, it may be "inefficient", but the P4 northwoods sure clean up on the fucking SPEC marks. HAHAHA. The g4 sucks so much dick at them. I've run lots OSs on lots of hardware, and by far the Mot-PPC is the worst piece of shit. You SUCK.

You fucking Altivec ZEALOT loon tune.

The SpecCPU2000 says it all. apple never submits ebcause Altivec or not, they SUCK SHIT.

Stop being a fucking fool who ignores a fact, the sky is blue, the G4 is slow. PISS OFF.

Athlon XP 1800MHz ("2200+") : 738 / 624
Pentium4 2533 MHz : 893 / 878
Power4 1300 MHz : 804 / 1202
Itanium2 1000 MHz : 807 / 1356
G4 1000MHz: 306 / 187

The dual G4 gets its ASS KICKED in benchmakrs by a Single P4-2.5Ghz. HAHAHAHA.

The differences are sometimes very surprising. Well, are they so surprising? Let's have a look at the 3 major "vendors" of CPUs systems, Intel, AMD and... Apple (because Motorola doesn't seem to gloat about the performance on the PowerPC G4, only Apple does).

AMD has recently released their new Athlon XP 2200+. Is it really faster than a 2200 MHz CPU? On integer stuff, the AthlonXP is good for 738 points. The funny thing is, a Pentium4 at a mere 2GHz scores the same 738 points. Oh, yes, I know, that's because AMD has a superior floating-point performance. Sure. CFP2000, AthlonXP goes as high as 624 points. And the poor little Pentium4 at 2GHz with its slow FPU only gets 744 points. Please read that again. So, how much floating-point power is there in an Athlon XP 2200+ running at 1800 MHz? Well, about as much as in a Pentium4 running at 1600MHz. Man I wouldn't want to have just read that if I was an AMD zealot, that's gotta hurt.

Don't worry, my AMD friend, your CPU performs more than adequately. Wait until I talk about the "super-computer" G4 that is used by Apple.

G4 1000MHz: 306 points in integer. Just like a PIII at 667MHz. But, as you all know, The G4 is extremely good in floating point, capable of doing billion operations per second. G4 1000 MHz: 187 point in floating point. That's the level of a PIII at 500MHz. Oh my God, if I overclock three-year-old my dual-PIII from 450 to 504 MHz (where it is perfectly stable), I get as much FPU power as a top-of-the-line Mac. I don't know if I should laugh or cry. I just feel sad for all the people who fall in for Apple's propaganda. If a Mac can do all that a "Wintel" PC can do (yeah, right), well, it'll be doing it much much much much slower.

A few comments before people flame me. Or maybe a few comments that'll cause people to flame me...

A few comments before people flame me. Or maybe a few comments that'll cause people to flame me...

I picked the baseline results over the peak results. Because I only had baseline results for the G4, and because I think that they are more realistic to show real-world speed: if you're a developer, just use the same compiler flags as Intel, Dell or AMD used, they are published in the benchmark report.

The fact that the G4 benchmarks come from a magazine and are not official results. I would normally have put a disclaimer about that. Well, if you're not happy about the results, please go and put some pressure on Apple to publish official results. I monitor the SPEC results on a regular basis, and I'll be more than happy to take any official results into account.

Some zealots will say that the G4 can do better than that because gcc doesn't use Altivec. Well, now, it's not my fault if you don't have a decent compiler, is it? Do you think that someone with a mind would go spend some time hand-optimizing his/her code in assembly for a CPU that only has a few percent of market share? Imagine a team of 30 engineers trying to release an application simultaneously for Windows and MacOS. 28 engineers write the portable core of the application (and they all develop on Windows with Visual C++ and Purify), 1 engineer is responsible for the Windows adaptation layer and Windows optimization (like, tweak the compile flags for the intel compiler), 1 engineer is responsible for the MacOS adaptation layer, MacOS-specific issues and MacOS optimization (like, deal with a compiler that doesn't support the Visual C++ extensions, deal with a CPU that orders bytes differently, deal with an OS that'll do some things differently, like not have drive letters, use slashes instead of backslashes as a file separator, not support MDI, put the menubar at that top of the screen, and when there's a little bit of time left, re-write in assembly a routine that the original programmer will modify so much before the release date that it'll have to be re-written in assembly 5 times in the coming year). I wouldn't want to be the MacOS guy.

Oh yeah, I've also read that running SPEC benchmarks for PowerPC was unfair because the benchmarks are x86-specific. Well, I guess that the same benchmarks are also unfair for HP-PA CPUs, Itaniums, Sparcs, MIPS, Alphas, POWER... which all manage to beat the G4. The only reason why they're "unfair" for PowerPC is that those benchmarks are written in C, C++ and Fortran, and that the measure as much the compiler as the CPU. Got a sucky compiler? You'll get bad SPEC results. Guess what? Got a sucky compiler? You'll get bad results on everything but the 3 routines that Apple will optimize by hand to make Altivec shine... Eugenia Loli is a fat pig fascist bitch ;p

Is this part of Apple's 'Switch' campaign?

[Hummercash]

"My name is Craig Barrett and I'm the CEO of a major corporation."

http://www.apple.com/switch/ads/craigbarrett.html

Intel processors suck at battery life

[Anonymous Coward]

every intel laptop I've ever used has had a pathetic amount of battery life. I would rather have a slower, quiter machine than ran on battery longer, than a fast machine I always had to plug in.

Can't wait to pirate it

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah dude, the only thing that's been preventing me from downloading OSX for free has been I got no hardware to run it on! Once it runs on Intel I'd gladly ditch my pirated Windows for pirated OSX! GO APPLE!

I am not saying it is not possible

[frooyo]

I must admit, the above arguments are convincing. And as I understand, Apples use of the Mache kernel with an abstraction layer, allows the kernel to somewhat run processor independent.

But, I must say that I would love to see OS X on x86 platform. And, as mentioned above with respect to the kernel being processor independent - would Application developers necessarily have to recompile for the new platform - or could Apple add support for the x86 into the kernel and use that module when an x86 processor is present (I am not referring to emulation). And if so, could you theatrically have a multi variant processor. Say a motherboard with both a G4 and P4 running OS X?

Re:I am not saying it is not possible

[Anonymous Coward]

That is a very interesting idea, I don't know

maybe others do...

RDF?

[Anonymous Coward]

what does RDF stand for; what does it mean?

Re:RDF?

[BeProf]

RDF = Reality Distortion Field.

80% sure.

The MHz myth myth

[g4dget]

It would be really nice if Apple, in fact, showed some real, industry-standard benchmark results to support their performance claims, but they don't.

When others have looked at the G4 performance on a standard benchmark suite like SPEC (e.g., here), a 1GHz G4 is not significantly faster than a 1GHz Pentium III.

I just want to run software... What a headache.

[dpbsmith]

Oh, jeez, what a headache if they change.

Emulation sucks.

The transition from 68K to PowerPC went better than anyone might have expected, but it was still a headache. As it happened, I was using two Macs at the same time. One was the latest of the 68K generation, the other being the first of the PowerPC generation, and--although it did great on pure-processor benchmarks--the PowerPC was distinctly more sluggish. And crashed more. It really took about two or three years before PowerPC's FELT fast again, and before everyone had native PPC versions of their software.

I use Virtual PC on my Mac. It works, sort of. For $200-odd it's a great product. It works better than anyone might have imagined, in fact. But it's no substitute for a real PC.

So what will happen if Apple goes Intel? I assume they'll do their best to provide some kind of PowerPC emulation so that old software will RUN, but I'm sure it will be slow. And buggy.

And, darn it, old software is IMPORTANT. It's not just a question of the cost of upgrading; I have significant amounts of software that I still use whose companies are either out of business or not upgrading their products.

And it's always the beloved GAMES that don't run in emulation...

Another possible thought

[GORDOOM]

The really frustrating part of this whole mess is that IBM has been able to get G4s up to some mightily impressive clock speeds - not as high as the P4, perhaps, but certainly higher than any of Motorola's G4s - but they're not allowed to sell them. Why? Because Motorola doesn't want IBM selling G4s faster than it can make them, because that would make Motorola look bad. And since Motorola owns the Altivec routines, IBM has no recourse. And so, now Apple is caught in the middle of this mess, stuck with slow G4s!

But Motorola has been having problems of late, and may be willing to sell off parts of the semiconductor division... if Apple could buy the code for the Altivec routines from Motorola, and then licence that code to IBM, but without the restrictions on processor speed... I wonder how fast IBM could get the G4 running then... :)

PowerPC already went to 64 bits

[flimflam]

IBM is already on the second generation of 64 bit PowerPCs (POWER4). They can run either 32 or 64 bit code. Basically, PowerPC already made the transition that x86 is just beginning now.

Re:PowerPC already went to 64 bits

[Anonymous Coward]

No, IBM made the 32->64 bit transition for their PowerParallel architecture, which nowadays is called PowerPC too. The only thing this CPU has in common with e.g. a G4 is that it supports some of the 32 bit PowerPC instructions (not Altivec, for example).

There is absolutely no indication whatsoever that IBM will let Apple use their POWER CPUs (or that Apple can afford it).

None of the CPUs from the Apple/IBM/Motorola PowerPC project support 64 bits yet. There is no 64 bit CPU on the market (not even announced) that will run OS X.

Re:PowerPC already went to 64 bits

[Lars T.]

PPC has been designed from the start to have both 32 and 64 bit implementations. And IBM does consider Power4 to be a PPC chip.

Re:PowerPC already went to 64 bits

[Anonymous Coward]

You have to consider the difference between instruction sets and CPU architecture:

* The PPC instruction set was designed with both 32 and 64 bits in mind from the beginning.
* The POWER4 is the latest incarnation of IBMs PowerParallel CPU architecture. It is partially compatible with the PowerPC instruction set, but it is not really a PowerPC architecture and shares essentially nothing with the low-end PowerPC chips when it comes to hardware.

2 Reasons that would never happen

[Leimy]

1) Apple needs to sell the total package to make money doing what they do. They do a really good job of it right now IMHO. If I could buy a PC clone and load OS X on it Apple only gets a *very* small portion of that total package. For Apple to make money doing this the cost of OS X would have to be more that even Microsoft Office!

2) Do you think Microsoft would sell Office for a new "competing" OS? I think they would drop support for OS X in a heartbeat if they did this.

I don't like to spread rumors of any kind about Apple but I think if they do choose a new CPU it *should* be derived from perhaps the IBM Power series. It has PPC compatibility and is 64bit. Existing software *should* be able to work on it and Apple users would have a lot to look forward to in next generation software.

The big issue is how much are those mothers gonna cost? In reality I know I don't *need* 64bits to get my work done and that CPU makers are really just cramming it down my throat because they feel the need to sell me something.

I bought a dual AMD MP 1600 system in the last 6 months and I tend to use my powerbook more often than that [which is only 667 Mhz G4]. I think that says a lot about what I need and what the industry wants me to want.

I can wait and so can 90% of the public wait for either faster G4's or 64bit Apples.

Re:2 Reasons that would never happen

[protohiro1]

This is so true. I had, until recently, a screaming AMD system and a two year old 300mhz G4. I ended up using the G4 for all my "day to day" usage, email, surfing, mp3s, quicken, word, etc, and using the AMD system for Maya and photoshop, etc. The fact is win2k is such a pain in the ass its not worth it. OS X, even slow, is much more painless to use day to day.

In the long term, anything could happen, but...

[jht]

I don't see this as likely, especially in Neff's timeframe. Here's why. The G4 processor doesn't have the legs that the P4 has right now, but Moto is known to be making at least 1.4 GHz parts right now.

Apple also has a policy of running duallys at the high end, and given XServe, we know they have a motherboard/chipset in-house that supports reasonably modern features like DDR and ATA-100. And unless all the rumor sites are wrong, there's a new PowerMac due no later than Seybold in about a month - possibly this month.

So I figure a high-end Mac with dual 1.4 GHz G4 processors, DDR PC2100 RAM, and ATA-100 support is in the cards shortly. That's going to be a reasonably competitive machine for a while, though not quite up to bleeding-edge Wintel specs. There's also likely a little bit more leg in the G4, at least enough to get up around 2 GHz.

Beyond that, Apple's got some options. They can go to quad processors pretty easily, or by next spring they have a good shot of being up on G5 processors, which are reputedly now in sampling. Should they be making the move to G5, that'll probably carry them another couple of years, so we're talking 2005 at the outside before they have to have the next stop in mind.

A lot can happen in that time. The likeliest thing is that they jump to a 64-bit contender that emerges by then - possibly AMD but who knows? Migrating to the IBM POWER processors would be another logical move because minimal work would be required and the additional volume would drive IBM's own costs down significantly. Remember, Apple sells more RISC systems in a year than Sun, SGI (though they don't control MIPS anymore), and IBM do combined - yet all those companies see it as worthwhile to continue investing in alternative architectures. If Apple decided to move their volume systems to a slightly scaled-down version of one of these workstation chips it would have a major impact on cost.

Or Motorola could get serious and start working hand-in-hand with IBM again - IBM's fab capabilities are way beyond Moto's, and IBM could probably build the same G4 as Moto at a higher clock rate with better yields. There is one key reason, though, why Apple doesn't have to worry too much about PowerPC dying - it's huge in the embedded marketplace. Versions of PowerPC are used in all sorts of devices, and I believe it's pretty popular in automotive and networking. That gets your volumes up, too.

Re:In the long term, anything could happen, but...

[Anonymous Coward]

So I figure a high-end Mac with dual 1.4 GHz G4 processors, DDR PC2100 RAM, and ATA-100 support is in the cards shortly. That's going to be a reasonably competitive machine for a while, though not quite up to bleeding-edge Wintel specs. There's also likely a little bit more leg in the G4, at least enough to get up around 2 GHz.
A major problem is that the G4 doesn't support DDR memory on the CPU bus. You won't see any improvement whatsoever in the throughput between CPU and memory. On a server box like XServe it still makes some sense to have DDR, since there are cases when we are only pushing data between memory and disk or memory and network, but it won't improve performance on a workstation.

I'm still pretty sure they'll include it, but it won't come closer to the memory throughput of an x86 system, and it won't help the Altivec bandwidth problem.

WHY didn't NT non-ports hurt MS?

[dpbsmith]

Speaking of OS ports...

In the early nineties, one of the knocks on Windows, versus UNIX, was that Windows locked you in to a specific processor architecture.

When Nt was announced, Microsoft was at great pains to blunt the appeal of UNIX by asserting that NT was highly portable and promising that it would be available on lots and lots of processor architectures.

I'm not sure I remember all of them, but certainly MIPS, Alpha, and PPC were among them. (Remember the ACE initiative, anyone?)

All of the versions for non-Intel hardware were late, or had problems, or weren't supported, or never materialized at all. I believe PPC never materialized at all. Alpha never made it past NT 3.5. The promise that NT would be available for multiple processors was pretty much broken in a surprisingly short period of time.

I keep wondering why this didn't hurt MS in the marketplace. Windows locks you in twice--to Microsoft and to Intel architecture. Admittedly there are viable non-Intel sources for Intel architecture, but still...

Re:WHY didn't NT non-ports hurt MS?

[mr_teem]

Alpha never made it past NT 3.5.

Alpha made it to NT 4.0. But that took considerable pressure and releases almost always lagged Intel releases.

They might switch...

[BeProf]

... but not for the reason's this idgit stated in his predictions.

My gut tells me that Apple is waiting to see how the Itanium shakes out. It seems to me that that's much better than porting Aqua and the APIs to x86 and then having to port to IA-64 in another year or two.

Any thoughts from the gallery?

Great Questions

[Spencerian]

Excellent, most excellent presumptions.

It should be noted that, of any personal computer, only Apple can even consider such moves without significantly affecting (adversely) the potency of their computers. No other mobo spec maker can, or has, dramatically changed their systems in the way that Apple does.

I presume the same, that is, that Apple is seriously considering a processor change. It may be for performance, but the decision will also be for a cost advantage. ANYTHING to reduce the cost of a Macintosh yet provide the same performance and convenience is a Good Thing for Mac sales.

The only way this would be more of a dog...

[Snart Barfunz]

would be with an Intel OS and a Microsoft CPU

PowerPC IS the consumer version of IBM Power chip

[johnpaul191]

on your first point.... Apple and IBM do currently play nice.... the PowerPC chip is a team effort (to simplify it) of Apple, Moto and IBM. there is something that Moto added to the equation (mind failing right now) that they own patents on. maybe the velocity engine? if Moto is left out of the next lineup, they would have to work out a deal. *if* Apple and Moto part ways i do not think it would be because "intel chips are 2.5 times faster", it would be because Moto is going through a lot of restructuring, layoffs and plant closings. it's possible Moto is not seeing the revenue it wants out of Apple's chipsets, or some top execs just want to refocus their efforts into other areas. they have some integral technology in G3 and G4 chips that they could probably contract out to Apple/IBM and just get checks every quarter instead of actually dealing with manufacturing. IBM has great state of the art manufacturing facilities, and Apple has gotten a bit more involved in the design of the processors.
there has been some talk for a while of Apple working out a deal and teaming up with IBM to make the "G5" or whatever chips. IBM supposedly has better manufacturing facilities, the have been producing G3 and G4 chips all along.
as for the IBM Power chip, every spec i have seen indicates it is too power hungry and hot to run in a desktop machine, let alone ever fitting into a laptop. from my understanding, the PowerPC chip IS the consumer version of the Power processor (hence the "PC" aka "personal computer" suffix).

would this invoke M$ nightmares? why add hot chips

[johnpaul191]

*if* Apple switched to Intel chips, would this somehow invoke some sort of pressure from MS on Intel? youu figure if OS X ever ran on straight up PCs (doubt it) then they would be going head to head with Bill Gates and i see him fighting back. if they used a modified intel chip (doubt it), then i wonder if it would matter if M$ has their foot int he door of the plant that makes Apple's chips. also, why bother? Intel chips are hot as hell and use tons of power. these are the days of power usage concerns, and Apple's dislike for fans and noise. if anything they should be pitching the power usage of the LCD iMac vs some P4 with 19" CRT device. granted on one user's house it isn't a big deal but when you have clusters and clusters of them in schools and offices it adds up.

Intel inside Apple

[TonyMillion]

I think the only way we'll see intel inside apple computers is if they decide to fab G4/G5 processors....

If Apple goes to Intel chips...

[greygent]

If Apple goes to Intel chips, it doesn't necessarily mean they become PC compatible. There are many other things to an architecture...

I imagine if they did go to Intel chips they would do something similar to what SGI did with their x86-based machines, and use a custom architecture with a Pentium chip.

I'm all for Apple going to Intel chips and a custom architecture. I firmly hope that Apple doesn't EVER start making PC compatible machines, and I would wager that if they did, it would lead to their eventual death. I absolutely despise the PC architecture, and aside from OS X, was a major reason for my jump. It's just so... clunky.

Intel machines are faster. Mhz Matters!

[Offwhite98]

I have a white iBook with a G3 500Mhz processor. I also had a Pentium II 350. I found that I could do things much better on my lower Mhz PC than my iBook, but I have to assume that is largely because Windows has evolved and been so well tuned over time when OS X is still just a hog. OS X 10.2 may help, but just so I can get things done I upgraded my PC, not buy another slow Mac.

Now I have a P4 1.7Ghz processor and it smokes my 500Mhz G3 easily. Even a 1Ghz processor would smoke the iBook because what seems to be inherent to increased processor speeds is increased bus speeds. This iBook has a 66Mb system bus while the P4 runs on a motherboard with 400Mb speeds. That is the biggest impact on the performance and while the Mhz for the processor is not the only factor for speed, it does help indicated what speed the system bus is going to be.

When I play Warcraft 3 it totally drags on my iBook. So I put it onto my upgraded PC and it works great. The internal bandwidth to move all of that data around inside the machine just has to be extremely high in order for it to play well.

So Apple needs to catch up and better do it quick. I will not be buying a new Mac unless the processor can match the speeds of a Pentium/AMD system. Use Altivec or a really fast system bus, or whatever trick is up the sleeve, but do it so I can actually use OS X. I love having a few great web browsers, a great mail client on the same machine as apache, mysql, java and perl so I have all my development in one place, but I need decent speeds.

Apple has a long road ahead. Make the processor, system bus and OS faster. And while they are doing that, they have to make it as cheap as a PC, but easier to use. I have tried WinXP and I no longer believe MacOS is the only easy to use system out there. That was 6 years ago. Now we have 2 good interfaces and Apple needs to shut up and get to work.

Though you miss one thing

[thetonka]

I can not run Mac OS X on an intel or Amd powered system. Mac OS X is what I WANT to run at home. I have plenty of Compaq ProLiants, and Sun Ultras and E450s at work. I spend way to much time fighting Windows, and I want an OS that can run the major apps I need, and my wife can use(she HATES Windows with a passion because of her experiences at work). Performance is one thing but providing a quality affordable product that suits the customers needs is the way you sell stuff(that and advertise). This is how Microsoft got to the top of the heap. For this customer a PowerMac G4 is the right price point, quality, and setup I WANT. REgardless of performance the bottom line is that that Mac FEELS better than all the Windows and Linux workstations I have EVER used. When I am at home I do NOT want to work on a computer.

Linux is close but not quite there. I do however have it on my Athlon system (with the 1G of ram, 200GB of HD, fast video card, blah, blah, blah) alongside Windows, just in case.

Mike
DrunkBunch

IBM

[Buskaatt]

As the relationship with Motorola seems to be weaning the question may be what chip would you like to see in next-generation Macs and why?

How about the Cell chip in 2005? The article above says IBM plans to use elements of it in high-end computers, yet it's also going to power the Playstation 3. Seems like a Mac falls between those two extremes quite nicely.

Both reasons offered fail

[AHumbleOpinion]

A switch to x86-based hardware does not mean Apple will be killing their hardware business. They do not have to switch to off-the-shelf PC parts. They can continue to use custom and proprietary designs, just substituting an x86 for a PowerPC. They can have the same high standard and reliability. Nothing really changes, x86 Macs are still a different target architecture and MacOS X does not pose any more threat than before to Microsoft.

One possible exception to the above. Virtual PC's emulation becomes a much more practical option. However Microsoft could buy them out, much simpler than dropping Apple support. Apple support helps with that DOJ monopoly thing.

Re:Both reasons offered fail

[Leimy]

Of course you are right. I think it would be ideal for Apple to do something like use the Crusoe processor core [128 bit VLIW? need to double check] or work on a new unique CPU with AMD or Transmeta or something. Perhaps IBM would want to get in bed too.

If anything is known about new CPU details Apple is keeping the information in an air-tight container.

nVidia

[arloguthrie]

With all of the rumors going around that Apple may start using nVidia manufactured chipsets, and with nVidia GPUs being as powerful as they are, and with the CEO of nVidia telling WIRED magazine that he wants nVidia to take over CPUs since the bulk of a computer's work for the average user nowadays is rendering the graphics, and with the advent of QuartzExtreme in Jaguar...well, it seems to me that the next manufacturer of CPU's for Apple could very well be nVidia. And then all you gamers could quit whining about Macs. Hell, OS X or OS XI could come with a Cg compiler.

Hey, it's possible. After all, all we're doing here is throwing around and debating CONJECTURE.

WinNT cross-platform an MS success, Apple failure

[AHumbleOpinion]

WinNT 3.1 was initially developed on MIPS and x86. The WinNT 4.0 retail CD sitting on store shelves had x86, MIPS, Alpha, and PowerPC binaries. I recall seeing ads for dual PowerPC 604-120 machines running WinNT 4.0 long before I purchased a PowerMac 8500. Byte magazine reviewed these dual PowerPC machines and showed how they scaled much better than dual Pentium machines.

Microsoft was entirely successful in delivering cross-platform WinNT up through version 4.0. The problem was that no one purchased the non-x86 machines in signifcant numbers. Nearly everyone preferred low cost and stayed with x86. The few who cared about peformance picked Alpha.

PowerPC did not have performance and it did not have price. The only thing going for it was the hope of being able to have one machine that could dual boot into WinNT of MacOS. WinNT was basically running on machines built to the PREP spec. A superset of PREP added Apple extensions, this was referred to as CHRP. Solaris, OS/2, and WinNT could run under PREP or CHRP but MacOS required CHRP. Apple kept having delays and MacOS for CHRP missed deadline after deadline. This may have also been about the time Apple began rethinking the Mac clone decision. The reversal on Mac clones may or may not have affected the delivery of MacOS on CRHP. The end result is that without the ability to dual boot to WinNT or MacOS there was little point to WinNT PowerPC. Poor sales led to its demise.

Want intel on mac? buy OS X

[Anonymous Coward]

aint going to happen until apple gets the majority of is base on to OS X. And even then, they probably would turn to IBM before intel.

Missing the point...

[batobin]

I think that most people here are missing the point. I've scanned the discussions, and forgive me if I'm wrong, but everybody is sticking to the argument about speed. This machine is faster, that machine is faster. Apple will do this because of speed, and Apple will do that because of speed. Whoah, whoah! Apple doesn't really care that much about speed!

Think about it. Sure, they try to ship the newest and the greatest processors when they can, but do you honestly think they'd still be in the AIM partnership if all they cared about was speed? Of course not. The key to understanding Apple is knowing what they value. What do they value? Being the God of their customer's computers.

Think about it. Apple is constantly building walls between itself and the community. They control all hardware. They are the sole producers of the OS. They approve all drivers. They produce many of the basic Applications one might use (Office Suite, photo program, movie making, burning software, music player, calendar program, scanning software, chatting program, email program). They produce a server that has heavy integration with Macintosh clients. They have a web hosting business that integrates heavily with OS X. The list of internal Apple ties is endless. Sure, you could make the argument that Apple has lots of ties to outside companies and products, but Apple branches out to them (for example, see the digital hub) instead of the companies coming to Apple.

Apple is building a contained Mac world. They have been forever. Switching to x86 chips would mean losing a lot of control. If they can sacrifice a little bit of speed for a lot of containment, they'll do it in a heartbeat. If you go by Michael Kanellos's stupid argument, Apple will dump their current sound cards and switch to Creative cards within the next couple years as well, because of their better performance. Do you honestly think Apple will want to start relying on another company to produce drivers, tech support, etc.? Apple will produce everything that they can, and when they can't produce it they will invest heavily in a company that can, and set up a strict partnership.

Earlier I mentioned the AIM partnership. Apple doesn't just buy their chips from the cheapest dealer on the street. They were integrating when that partnership was created, and they continue to integrate today. They won't throw away years and years of work to form a new integration with Intel as a part. It would go completely against Apple's plan.

Serious question

[jchristopher]

Serious question - If PowerPC is so fast, then why is OS X so slow? I'm not trying to incite a war, I really want to know.

It has been said that the PowerPC chips are twice as fast per Mhz. (Implying a PowerPC 600mhz does as much work as a 1.2ghz PIII). However, all of us know from firsthand experience that both Windows 2000 and Linux will fly on a 1.2 ghz PIII. OS X, on the other hand, lags seriously on a PowerPC 600mhz. So what is the problem?

I'm inclined to believe, based on my own anecdotal evidence, that it takes about a PowerPC 1ghz just to begin to be as speedy as PIII 500mhz, for basic computing tasks. (Web browser, word process, etc).

So what is the problem? Does the chip really suck and Apple is just blowing smoke? Or is the chip good and OS X sucks?

Re:Serious question

[piznut]

"Serious question - If PowerPC is so fast, then why is OS X so slow? I'm not trying to incite a war, I really want to know." Or better yet, if the PPC is so fast and advanced, why would people even think of switching? I mean, since a 1 ghz G4 is 2.5 times faster than a P4 chip according to some of the posters here, there should be no reason to switch since it is *obviously* the fastest cpu around.

Re:Serious question

[rjung2k]

Best answer is probably "the chip is good, the OS is immature." After all, we're talking v.1.1.5 of a new OS; it's going to take Apple some time before they get to the level of optimization and maturity that 10+ years of Windows (or even MacOS Classic) has reached.

Support for this comes from the early reports of the upcoming 10.2 "Jaguar" release; even without "Quartz Extreme" hardware acceleration, the OS is supposed to be noticably faster and more responsive, thanks in large part to optimizations, improved code, and the new gcc compiler they're using.

Give 'em time.

Re:Serious question

[Anonymous Coward]

for some altivec operations its probably 8 times faster at same mhz rate as a p4, but the fact is not every operation uses altivec and even though its faster at same clock speed as intel chip, its not fast enough to make up the mhz gap that exists in reality. then again, hte p4 is said to be slower then a p3 at same clock speed, which means much of the mhz in a p4 is there for marketing, not performance.

Re:Serious question

[tuxedobob]

Well, that depends. Are you using the 600MHz chip or the 500MHz chip. If it's 600MHz, that makes it a G3 (right?), and there is a significant advantage in OS X to using a G4 (or two) over a G3. OS X is sometimes slow on my iBook, but on my dual G4 (450) it's pretty speedy. Even when playing a DivX in a minimizing window when holding down the Shift key. Oh, and running SETI. :)

Re:Serious question

[Anonymous Coward]

It would also be more fair to compare Windows XP to Mac OS 10.1 and not windows 2000. Windows 2000 is faster than XP. I would guess if you ran just darwin (unix core of osx) and did not load a gui that darwin would be faster than linux (or at least comparable). As someone else pointed out, Windows is based on an older code base and therefore has had some optimizations. Windows NT has been out since the early 90s and Win 2k/ Win xp are both based on that.

I'd also like to point out that in my opinion Mac OS X appears faster than windows running on reasonable hardware comparisions. For example.. lets say that there is a 2 to 1 comparision in mhz for cpus (i doubt its that straightforward but lets go with it). An 800 mhz intel chip vs a 400 mhz g3 imac. I think the performance is going to be comparible... especially if you load XP on the wintel and Mac OS 10.1.5 on the mac.

Re:Hey SPEC marks don't lie

[mkldev]

-Bad- benchmarks frequently lie, as your post proves. By publishing the 1p information, the article's author basically proved that their test was, whether intentionally or unintentionally, skewed heavily against the Mac.

Why? Simple. A 1p x86 machine should not perform anywhere near as well as a 2p x86 machine unless the tasks do not scale well to SMP. If a task doesn't scale well to two processors, it's even less likely that it would be improved by a SIMD architecture like Altivec.

It's all too easy to construct a benchmark that "proves" that Altivec doesn't improve performance, and that the Mac is slower than the PC. The only real benchmark is a customer sitting in front of the machine and doing his or her daily work, whatever that might be. That's why Apple doesn't publish benchmarks. They don't mean anything unless they accurately represent your workload.

The only thing this article shows is that for operations that Altivec doesn't significantly speed up, a single P4 or Athlon is faster than a single G4, which is not at all what the article's author claimed, nor is it at all interesting, which is, of course, why the article chose to sensationalize its findings....

Also, SPEC doesn't show -any- Mac benchmarks for SPEC CPU2000. That tells me that the results you show above are... at the very least of questionable origin.

If you're going to troll, at least do a good job of it....

Dual motherboard?

[Anonymous Coward]

I must admit, the above arguments are convincing. And as I understand, Apples use of the Mache kernel with an abstraction layer, allows the kernel to somewhat run processor independent.

But, I must say that I would love to see OS X on x86 platform. And, as mentioned above with respect to the kernel being processor independent - would Application developers necessarily have to recompile for the new platform - or could Apple add support for the x86 into the kernel and use that module when an x86 processor is present (I am not referring to emulation). And if so, could you theatrically have a multi variant processor. Say a motherboard with both a G4 and P4 running OS X?

I am wondering the same question, does ANYONE know?

BAD ASS IDEA

[Anonymous Coward]

Frooyo,

that is interesting in the idea of a joint motherboard. Have P4 for floating point, etc and G4 for integer. I have often wondered about that mach kernel too

Does anyone know more about this?

No recompile

[Anonymous Coward]

AMD all the way!!!

64-bit is da shit

Two liget to quit

[Anonymous Coward]

hey hey

this is an interesting idea ... is it possible, for I don't know

Re:Intel machines are faster. Mhz Matters!

[javax]

The PowerPCs aint twice as fast as modern x86 like the Athlon or P4;
I've found a (est.) spec-value for the G3 750FX that comes in the most recent iBooks:
http://www-3.ibm.com/chips/techlib/techli b.nsf/tec hdocs/2FF4861D6755A6CA87256BB1006B1DE6/$file/PPC75 0FX_PB.PDF

if you compare this to other values from spec it lets the powerpc look rather bad :(
but the G3 is an awesome mobile-processor: my iBook doesnt make much noise and has battery for over 4 hours working time.
Dont play WC3 on your iBook - a x86 Notebook with comparable qualities would look just as bad;
you also have to remember that all Apple Computers have to be compared to a Dell or IBM PC, not a homebrew low budget one...

But Motorola really should double the speed of the G4 and also speed up its FSB to at least 133MHz DDR!

Kernel - No Recompiles

[Anonymous Coward]

Frooyo: As I understand, Apples use of the Mache kernel with an abstraction layer, allows the kernel to somewhat run processor independent.

But, I must say that I would love to see OS X on x86 platform. And, as mentioned above with respect to the kernel being processor independent - would Application developers necessarily have to recompile for the new platform - or could Apple add support for the x86 into the kernel and use that module when an x86 processor is present (I am not referring to emulation). And if so, could you theatrically have a multi variant processor. Say a motherboard with both a G4 and P4 running OS X?

Interesting frooyo, I'm not sure if that is entirely correct...

Re:Kernel - No Recompiles

[javax]

nope, sorry but this wont work; a program is always compiled for a specific architecture.
The binary needs to know about instructions, registers and stuff of the processor;
otherwise you need a virtual machine, emulator or something.
So to answer your question:
There will never be a mobo with a x86 and a PowerPC running in SMP Mode; (async MP machines would be possible)

Fresh figures

[Anonymous Coward]

Just check out MacCentral. Or, do you assume that a Macintosh site would gladly publish numbers that were completely skewed?

The good news is that it is actually increasing. The bad news is that it is less than half of 5%:

For the current quarter (Q1, 2002) IDC shows Apple as the number six computer maker with a 3.48 percent market share. This is an increase of 0.4 points over Q4 2001 and a 0.25 point increase year over year. Worldwide, Apple is in ninth place with a 2.4 percent market share.

(http://maccentral.macworld.com/news/0207/03.marke tshare.php)

There is no indication whatsoever that they aren't counting Apple store sales. In case they didn't wouldn't it be a little strange that Apple's market share has been almost constant since before the opening of the Apple stores, although these stores should have taken >75% of the market according to your argument? Or, do you claim that Apple's market share miraculously increased fourfold just when the stores opened?

Re:Hey SPEC marks don't lie

[Anonymous Coward]

That's why Apple doesn't publish benchmarks. They don't mean anything unless they accurately represent your workload.
Well, I would accept that if the didn't publish any benchmarks at all. The problem is that they do, but only a handful a tuned special cases where they are faster. An example: They claim to run Photoshop X% faster, but don't disclose any details. When third party testers try a general set of photoshop actions they find that the G4 is actually much slower...
This isn't about publishing benchmarks or not, it's just marketing that is very close to lies. Sure, a lot of other manufacturers do it too, but at least they also submit SPEC results. I don't have the slightest problem to accept that you might get better performance by handtuning code for Altivec (or SSE), and that this isn't covered by SPECbench. However, the problem for the G4 is that all other modern CPUs perform reasonably well on compiled code too, while the G4 is the slowest personal computer CPU manufactured when it comes to compiled code.

Once again, that might not matter if all you are running is photoshop or music editing, but for anybody using a computer to run his own compiled code the G4 is currently an EXTREMELY bad choice. Whether it is the CPU or compiler is of less importance to the user - the resulting code will be SLOW unless you handcode altivec, and that's a bad excuse since every single other CPU does it much better!

I have a great alternative to intell for apple.

[SuperCal]

I was reading this http://news.com.com/2100-1001-948493.html?tag=fd_t op article at news.com and it hit me, this could be a great new processor line for Apple. Now befor you mod me as an idiot (this post was made several days after the story aired so I don't think anyone will read this anyway) I don't think that this is apples future chip. I am just pointing out that there are new processors coming out all the time and IBM or Motorola could easily poduce a solution for apple.

look at your webserver logs for an answer

[Kaneda]

have a look at how many macs hit a large, non-partisan website. Like a news portal, or an isp homepage. This will give you a much better idea of how many macs are in active use on the desktop, regardless of sales, how many pc's are run as servers etc.

Re:look at your webserver logs for an answer

[BitGeek]

If you grab unique IPs that might be good...

but part of the problem is many if not most, mac browsers out there pretend to be IE because for awhile there many websites wouldn't load if the browser didn't indicate it was IE on a PC. (Even though the pages would render fine on a Mac.)

Apple Cell?

[thatguywhoiam]

I'm a little surprised this hasn't been mentioned yet (so I could find, anyways...)

Could Apple use the IBM/Sony/Toshiba Cell chip?

I know it might be meaningless speculation given the paltry amount of info (and signal-to-noise ration of marketing), but, c'mon.. just ponder a moment.

Apple has a sizeable investment in Toshiba, one would think primarily for LCDs. Sony and Apple don't seem to have any trouble playing together (FireWire). IBM probably wants Apple's chip business back - and they will be using the Cell in servers.

It's supposed to be engineered with multimedia in mind. Apple even seems to embrace the massively parallel approach to solving hard media-oriented computing tasks as Sony (Altivec vs. VMUs.)

?

Re:Intel machines are faster. Mhz Matters!

[hawksmoor]

I wonder if the reason Warcraft III drags on your iBook is that it's not a supported machine for that game, due to its 8MB graphics card, while your desktop machine probably has something a bit more substantial, if you built it recently.

FYI, I have a 600 mHz iBook, and it's quite usuable with OS X.

Exactly, do you ever see them compare Intel vs Sun

[Anonymous Coward]

I have a SPARC Ultra 360MHz which is 64bit and runs like a bat out of hell. It also came with a 2mb cache, which apple ships their XServe and higher end workstations with 2mb caches. Try that with intel.

In the end 99% of the time you get some dipshit commenting on "Apple should do this or Apple should to that" when all the person making the comment should do is STFU.

I have a G3 333, G4 733, P-133, P3-450, Dual P3-933, AthlonXP 1.33, SPARC IIi 360, Celeron 1.2, and a Dual AthlonMP 1.73.

I guess i'm trying to say i've used all types of processors and realistically they are all fast enough to do what they were meant for (server, workstation, and game pc). The only ones I don't use are my Apple //e from when I was a kid and my Apple IIc. Hell I have a couple of P-60's that I use for firewalls (surprisingly they have never caught fire! P-60 BUG!!!)

In the end it really doesn't matter. Pick the platform you like. My favorite is OS X closely followed by Linux then Windows (oh yeah forgot Solaris which i'm not too fond of).

Jobs and Itanium

[jerkyjunkmail]

I can't remember what the source of it was but I vaguely remember a story when Intel was either unveiling the Itanium or demoing some trial silicon. Jobs was at the event, has made some public comment that they were watching the new processor very carefully and were very interested in it. Maybe that rings a bell with someone else? or maybe my memory is just hosed.

Re:Intel machines are faster. Mhz Matters!

[Chaset]

This may be blasphemous to the Slashdot crowd, but I suggest that the original poster reboot in OS 9 to run his games, if he were actually interested in doing so. I've seen that all of the Carbon games (the ones that run in both 9 and X) perform much better under OS 9. (Assuming OS 9 is installed at all, of course.)

WCIII drags on my 400MHz Pismo under X, but runs just fine in OS 9 (the Pismo also has a 8MB Rage128). Ditto for Myth III. RTCW is just on the unplayable side under OSX, but barely crosses over to playable under 9. (still extremely poor fps, though)

The truth is, most games are optimized for x86/Win32. The Mac porting houses probably can't afford to spend nearly as much on assembly level optimizations and such. I get Mac versions of my games for my Powerbook as a nicety, but for serious gaming, I'd use a x86 desktop.

To bring this back on topic, I'd agree with all the other posters that say that the switch won't happen any time soon. Apple had heck of a time getting developers over to OS X. Asking them to support another platform (even with the same APIs) at this point would be suicidal in terms of developer relations.

I also think the x86-32 is just inelegant. There's thousands of transistors just sitting there converting a legacy ISA to a modern RISC-like ops. There's thousands more transistors just sitting there making its 30+ registers look like 8. Thousands more transistors sitting there trying to hide the inefficiencies of the stack based FP model to conform to the actual modernized architecture. This only works because Intel effectively higher die size limit that makes their processors economically viable. Just imagine what Intel could be doing with all those transistors and die area if it didn't have to support the crappy ISA. In any case, given Apple's arrogance/like/obsession regarding "elegance" of its products, I'm not sure they'd go for it.

If the playing field (in terms of shipping volumes) were level, there'd be no whay the x86 could have won out, especially in the days of G2 (603/604) PowerPCs. The die size differential between them and the contemporary Pentium was something like 4x. The power consumption was also something like 4x. But the peroformance was equivalent or slightly favored the PowerPC. I'm still peeved that the "inferior" architecture won out.

Final thought:

• 8088 = Ox-drawn cart
• 8086 = Ox-drawn cart with horses tied in the front.
• 80286 = Ox-drawn cart with horses tied in the front with a steam boiler and steam engine.
• 80386 = Ox-drawn cart with horses tied in the front with a steam engine and an internal combustion engine strapped on. (the internal combustion engine can emulate multiple steam engines in a special mode)
• 80486 = Ox-drawn cart with horses tied in the front with a steam engine and an internal combustion engine strapped on. The engine now has a turbocharger and fuel injectors.
• Pentiums = Ox-drawn cart with a steam engine and an internal combustion engine strapped on. They strapped on another turbo-charged, fuel injected engine next to the other one. The oxen and the horses are still there, being dead carcasses that are dragged along for backwards compatibiliy.
• PPro/II/III = Ox-drawn cart with a steam engine, several internal combustion engines bolted together. The maggot-ridden oxen and horse carcases are still tied to the cart. A gigantic jet engine is strapped on with some spit and baling wire.
• P4 = Like PPro, but several rocket engines are duct-taped to the sides.

Point: It's fast, but it's not pretty.

Re:Intel machines are faster. Mhz Matters!

[Offwhite98]

Not supported? It is one of the white iBooks and I bought it this last year. It is 500Mhz and should be able to handle playing the game. And this is just meant to illustrate the difference in new Mac hardware vs new PC hardware. Another simple test would be to watch how much processor the iTunes application uses to play mp3 files while a Linux system uses far less processing resources to do the same thing.

The point was that it works better on a PC which is still much cheaper. Sure you can blame it on video memory, but I thought this Mac hardware is supposed to be superior. The video card I have in the PC is just an old Voodoo 3 card from over 2 years ago. So old PC hardware beats out new Mac hardware.

I prefer to use a Mac, but I do not like the situation where the hardware, combined with the poor OS X performance, makes it necessary to retreat back to a PC.

I do also not want to boot into OS9 which will just prove again that OS X is not ready for prime time.

want a faster mac

[BiggyP]

well, if you want a faster mac strap a set of Power4s in there and just hope it doesn't melt through the desk :P

i remember a while back some talk about the "G5" on a mac rumour site saying that very soon there would be an Apple designed 64bit SOI PPC chip powering next gen macs, well, the end users place far too much faith in their hardware manufacturers (or god as they call apple) on the Mac side of things.

Re:WHY didn't NT ports hurt? Because they sucked!

[feloneous cat]

First, one can look at the machines that Microsoft DID port NT to - in general it was machines that did not have a large user base. Basic business practices tend to do this: expand your base, but not so much that it kills your main base, i.e. X86.

Second, Microsoft makes money on every box that ships with Windows preinstalled. From their point of view, they sell a license and the rest of the work is up to the hardware manufacturer (we used to call them OEM's, but now they're called every thing to VARs to GoddamSonofaBitches). Apple doesn't make a cent if it can only sell the OS. In fact, they would LOSE money.

Third, IIRC, those NT ports were pretty crappy (except for the Alpha). Most things I heard about the PPC ports were pretty dismal. And once you got the OS, well, you had the OS. Without applications, it is still just a paperweight.

Finally, NT sucked when compared to the Unix alternative (yeah, I know, MS said when they FIRST introduced NT that it would combine Unix, etc. etc.). I (at work) use a 1 Ghz Pentium and the damn thing crashes every three days. I use a Bondi Blue Mac running OS X and it just keeps ticking.

Let's get real. What is the current driving force behind the Mac OS X phenomena and what is making people say "port it to the x86" is that it IS what Linux should have been. Linux is closer, but I have yet to see the "one-click" install.

As someone said before, make Apple a software-only company and Apple will die.

Re:Intel machines are faster. Mhz Matters!

[Anonymous Coward]

Warcraft III REQUIRES a 16mb video card. It will run on a 400 mhz iMac DV (8mb ati rage128 pro). It is playable. A 400 mhz home built amd k6-2 with 16mb ati rage 128 pci is NOT playable. Since a home built is usually faster, I think that proves mhz are NOT important. (also note the amd system has a ata 100 hdd and 256mb of pc100 ECC memory!)

Now if you are comparing a desktop to a laptop (which it sounds like) then you know nothing. A desktop is always faster! What next, want me to compare my iMac to a 1.3 gig celeron compaq with an ati rage 128? Hmm.. my compaq was made 2 years newer... i hope its faster.

NEVER HAPPEN

[flynn23]

Apple will never go Intel, despite the fact that the Mac OS has existed on Intel in one way, shape, or form for over 10 years in various R&D projects within Apple. Because Jobs will never allow it. To do so would be admitting that Apple is just an OS vendor, and not a creator of Insanely Great tools. Jobs has and always will think of the product as the BMW of the computer world - highly refined and engineerd and priced as such. There's no economic benefit to go Intel, there's no (real) market benefit to go Intel, and it would violate Steve's ego too much. This is a rumour that comes out once every 2 or so years so that Apple stock can make some volume on the stock.

Recompiling isn't as bad as you may think

[SlimFastForYou]

If your a software developer, then you know that recompiling is simply issuing a few commands and then waiting for your program to finish being built. Plausable Scenario: I am running Mandrake Linux on a PC and on a Mac. On both computers, I download/extract the source code to a folder, run a command prompt, navigate to that folder, and type the word "make". For all you pro-Mac people, the Mac should finish first because of the processor, right? ;). You can now run the same exact program on the same exact operating system by taking the same exact steps. Now why can't Apple develop OS-X for PC? If my memory serves me correctly, it is based on FreeBSD, an operating system that mainly runs on x86 platforms. The most difficult part would be coming up with drivers, but I'm sure they could scoop up some Linux driver source codes, and recompile since many will probably work with few tweaks. I look forward to OS-X on PC. I hope that happens. Heh, I don't care about not having "mac hardware performance", because then I could use Mac-OS X and still be able to pay the bills ;).

Re:Recompiling isn't as bad as you may think

[Anonymous Coward]

"Based on FreeBSD..."

Recompiling isn't as big an issue for linux, or even the Darwin kernel. FreeBSD can obviously run on several different chip architectures, but Darwin isn't the only component of the OS. Anything that depends on Altivec instructions (which is a substantial portion of the Quartz layer among other things, as I understand it.) could not be simply ported in this manner.

While a functional OS X could be built without Altivec, it is doubtful that software emulation of the Altivec instructions would be very effective. It also removes the vector-processing capabilities that are an inherent advantage to the mac design, making it less suitable for media, streaming, and scientific work, and basically relegating it to the status of a normal, type-a-word-document-and-check-your-email computer.

Altivec isn't the only incompatible component, but it's the clearest to simply demonstrate and would also have a large impact.