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PowerPC Goes 64 bit
prostoalex writes "ExtremeTech runs a story about IBM planning to introduce a new 64-bit PowerPC architecture for desktops in October at the Microprocessor Forum. The conference agenda tells us that "this processor is an 8-way superscalar design that fully supports Symmetric MultiProcessing. The processor is further enhanced by a vector processing unit implementing over 160 specialized vector instructions and implements a system interface capable of up to 6.4GB/s"." There's also a News.com story.
There is also an eWeek story.
There are a few pages of good discussion here.
The "cue the foo posts in 3, 2, 1..." posts will commence with no subsequent foo posts in 3, 2, 1...
PowerPC has been available in 64 bit since the introduction of the A10 in 1996.
Here's some proof.
The new multi-code die is very interesting though...
Because the existing Power4 design is an expensive chip to fabricate! Those dual core versions are mucho heavy on the transitor count.
;-)
This is designed to be a "lite" Power4 platform for low-end servers and desktops.
Actually, if truth be told, it's probably being fairly and squarely pitched at Apple as their new CPU
-psyco
PS, the specs quoted are not for the new processor, but for the existing, very expensive Power4. The CPU will be a scaled back version.
Head over to Ars where there's a good discussion running about this new processor, its intended market and the differences and similarities it has with existing the POWER and PowerPC ISA's including 32 bit code execution, AltiVec/SIMD implementation and such like :-)
If IBM wanted to have any hope at all of wooing Apple, they'd have to support AltiVec as is. There's now way that Apple would recode their OS for a different set of vector instructions and THEN try to convince Adobe, Mayasoft, etc. to rewrite their apps as well. Not likely.
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So, yes, its very likely that the specialized vector instructions are exactly the AltiVec instructions. There is *supposedly* an alliance between Motorola and IBM on the PowerPC platform
There's a fair amount of discussion in comp.arch on this chip. Guesses are that it's adopting the Motorola e500 vector instructions, ones that work on general-purpose registers. Considering that the Power4 has a very, very, very good floating-point unit that works with the memory units to get vector-like performance, I doubt if they need FP vector ops...
IBm has already built G4 chips with Altivec on the mask. I've seen 'em and used 'em - but only in prototypes of 2 year vintage.
Point is, IBM is well-versed in building high performance PowerPC-style chips (invented the core architecture, after all) and has the werewithal to continue as a strong supplier for Apple. Motorola is a badly-run has-been in many respects, and the morale in Austin and their other fabs has been low for many years.
I wouldn't be surprised to see Apple swap the Mach 3 Kernel in Jaguar for something a little more 64-bit savvy down the line.
RISC philosophy says nothing about the number of instructions in an ISA, only the type. the goal is to include only simple instructions that execute in ~1 cycle, and that are of general frequent use. There is no restriction on how many instructions in an ISA, only the kind of instructions. See: hennissey/patterson texts...
You're not getting particular great answers to this question. :-)
The PowerPC is a completely different chip architecture (search for explanation of RISC vs. CISC if you want more detail) in comparison to the Intel x86 architecture. There is a lot of complex discussion on this, but theoretically speaking the Power PC architecture is more advanced and efficient at the same processor speed.
At any rate, the Mac OS is optimized for this processor type. I guess it could be rewritten to run on x86, if Apple wanted to do that.
With the help of an emulator, Win32 programs can be executed in the Mac OS environment. (Virtual PC is the one that I can think of off the top of my head.) It's a testament to the architecture of the Power PC that the performance of Windows in an emulated environment is pretty good. (Not a computer science person, but my understanding is that Virtual PC makes Windows thinks that it's on an x86 computer...and it's an elegant hack.)
I think other posts here are discussing how Apple can/will migrate Mac OS X to the 64 bit processor, and whether or not 32 bit programs need to be recomplied/redesigned for the new processor, or if they can run directly on it in some sorta emulation mode.
PowerPC was designed from the POWER architecture to replace it, and has been designed from the beginning to support 32-bit and 64-bit versions. The architecture is actually designed from the beginning to be a 64-bit architecture, and the common desktop implementations are only the 32-bit subset of the original design.
Here's some additional background info:
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
But the control Apple has over functionality would cause headaches for Apple, HW vendors, and users alike.
Apple would spend time agonizing over the conflicts and driver issues that the PC world just accepts as the price of business because they would ruin everything Apple is. There's a reason everything they make is smooth white plastic. Because it looks good - like there won't be any hassle.
Vendors would have to do one of three things.
- Develop drivers for Win/x86, Mac/PPC, Mac/x86 (and Linux/x86 + whatever else they feel like)
- All get together and produce unified drivers for their products (yeah, right)
- Give up on a low-income portion of the market (Mac/x86)
While it's possible, and in some ways mutually beneficial, to produce a single driver for all CD-RWs, it would be huge, and it would make innovation difficult. Vendors would probably go to war with Apple over disabling of buggy devices (Apple HW generally works or doesn't - have you noticed?) and they don't want to spend time appeasing Apple SW engineers. They're much more likely to say "Apple can build some friggin drivers for MacOS X86."Apple also isn't in a position to piss off Microsoft. Part of the appeal of MacOS X is that Office now integrates seamlessly across Windows and Mac (accepting Access *grumble*). They need Microsoft's continued support if they wish to grow.
Anyhow, I'm not sure Microsoft isn't slowly pushing themselves away from Windows. Sure, it's easy to build everything to work all in-house, but with more emphasis being placed on server-based applications, Microsoft probably alreadly sees the day when it's not the OS that you're running on the desktop, but the applications you run on your server. They are making a big push to be a key player in server-side application development - .Net has the promise of a dozen languages all working seamlessly together, and there's already a section in Barnes & Noble for .Net programming.
Apple wants people to see simplicity when they use Macintosh, and yet feel the power of the function. You can import, edit, and export an entire movie without ever having a dialog box open in iMovie (accepting upon launch to create a new movie), but you can do so much. I don't see Apple going x86 (at least not beige box) for some time because they can't have that there yet.
That what was all this school was for... to teach us how to solve our own problems. -- janeowit
You've got the wrong kind of "proprietary" in mind. Compaq used proprietary boards so that you couldn't upgrade with standard parts, were locked into their upgrade path. For a standard user, this did not offer any additional functionality.
Apple uses proprietary boards so they can offer features like autoswitching networking (just plug in an ordinary ethernet cable between two macs, and the two computers show up on each others local network), target disk mode (use a scsi or firewire cable between two macs, and one computer becomes a HDD on the second computer), instant dynamic network configuration (change your IP/ or configure multiple network devices with just a few clicks, no restarts), dynamically driving multiple monitors with multiple cards (I can plug in two graphics cards, and two monitors, then tell the mac which monitor to drive with which card, while its on.), and USB/Firewire plug and play ease that's still years ahead of windows (oh look, it's the windows hardware manager, again...). On the portables, multimonitor/external monitor support is so slick, it's enough to make a Wintel laptop user cry.
There are plenty of things you _can't_ do as a result of proprietary HW, such as move as quickly with the industry as new HW comes out (lets see how long it takes apple to get AGP 8x...*roll*), but the main differences in functionality between MacOS9 and Win9X/ME/XP is the hardware tweaks that you don't realize by using "open" HW. In the Wintel world, the peripherals people don't work with the OS people, who don't live on the same continent as the BIOS ppl, etc. etc.
Mac admins live for these tweaks, since it means hours less frustration and "pointless clicking" to set up an office of computers, or get them networking just so, using external devices, while adapting the systems to individual work flow and idiosyncrasies.
This is where I get my recommended daily allowance of "Foot in Mouth."
IBM doesn't need an Altivec license for the Gekko extensions. As you point out, Gekko can treat a single 64bit FPU register as a pair of single-precision numbers. Altivec, instead, uses an additional set of 128bit registers. Gekko's paired-single extensions target one particular application, 3D graphics, and are pretty much like the MIPS3D extensions that SGI created some ten years ago. Altivec is much broader and is more like MIPS' MDMX (MaDMaX) extensions on steroids. Pretty much everything is done differently; even the programming model for condition codes is not the same.