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Apple and IBM Working Together on 64-bit CPUs
Currawong writes "eWeek reports that IBM Microelectronics is working with Apple on a 64-bit PowerPC processor called the
GigaProcessor Ultralite (GPUL). Unlike previous reports, eWeek now reports that Apple is testing the chip for use with future hardware. IBM apparently also plans to use the processor in linux-based servers. It's believed IBM will disclose some details of the processor in October at the upcoming Microprocessor Forum in San Jose, California. While this story is similar to recent stories about Apple using Power4-based IBM chips in future Macs, the GPUL, unlike the Power4, is smaller, runs cooler and consumes far less power, making it suitable for desktop machines and small servers. The processor is described as having the same 8-way superscalar design fully supporting Symmetric MultiProcessing." We had a previous story about these new chips.
hardware choices for GNU/Linux perhaps?
the GPUL, unlike the Power4, is smaller, runs cooler and consumes far less power, making it suitable for desktop machines and small servers
Does anyone know if the chip would actually be cool enough so that it would not require a fan? One of my favorite features of the G4 is that it requires no fan whatsoever. My PowerMac G4 makes so little noise that sometimes it's hard to tell if its running or not without looking at the little glowing power button on the front.
I think this is one of the nicest features of Macintosh computers and if they need to add a fan I think that will be a real shame. On the other hand, Motorolla really hasn't gotten their act together, so Apple may not have a choice.
Karma: Chevy Kavalierma.
Or, wait, let me think, the people have been brainwashed to use windows. Oops. It might be really nice for us, but unfortunately I don't think it'll really take off with the major consumer market for a looong time...
http://www.virtualvillagesquare.com/ Online Communities: The Next Generation
A key question: will this chip have DRM (aka Digital Rights Reduction) features built-in? If NOT, there could be a good market here for IBM as the free alternative to Intel.
sPh
Apparently, this chip can flash-fry a buffalo in fourty seconds.
I want it now!!!!
or in an Apple Store. I've heard about the G5's for years and I know they are the next best thing. However, seeing is believing.
I'm not a processor expert or anything, but this can't spell anything but good competition with Intel (not that they're evil or anything, but they haven't had a reason to make their chips better performers, and no, increasing clock cycles doesn't count). Won't hurt Apple either unless it requires their developers to rewrite stuff (haven't they done this enough already with the Mac OS X transition?)
Multiple processors in a chip? Good. AltiVec or similar number-crunching in combination? Great. If Apple pursues this, their boxes might--might achieve a performance that easily blows away the still-powerful SGI workstations and their slow-clocks-but-very-powerful processors (MIPS? Alpha? Can't remember right now).
I hope that some other enterprising company works up a PC mobo that can handle it for those not inclined to Apple products. That would light a file under Wintel's corporate ass to build something better.
Vos teneo officium eram periculosus ut vos recipero is.
In addition, IBM plans to offer the processor as the centerpiece of future Linux-based systems
Hopefully IBM will offer reference mobo designs for the new GPUL line. This may spur alternate price conscious server alternatives (along with x86-64). Especially if Intel is still dragging their ass...
just not mounted on the heatsink. Notice that in the sidewall next to where the processor sits there is a huge fan that lines up exactly with the processors.
I don't understand the problem people have with fans. Is it really that big of a deal if a 2GHz processor needs cooling?
I've had this feeling in the last few days that Apple is finally and totally screwed. New processors are a year or more away. Motorolla is a proverbial dirt-bag. Apple's lies about DDR. What incentive do I have to move to a faster machine when all that's really faster is the clock speed (SP 500 G4). Hasn't Apple been saying all along that clock speed doesn't matter, yet that's the only thing going for them.
Sorry for the rant.
see the power of OSX and with the 64bit chip
I take that chip any day but I'm not leaving my penguin behind.
Yes, a new 64-bit PPC processor would be great, because the G4 is really showing its age. But I don't think this will be something to drive Wintel users over to Apple. If anything, it will just help Apple hang on to its existing marketshare.
The thing to remember is that "switching" is expensive, and not just for the new hardware. When a longtime PC user switches to Apple, they have to replace all of their software with Mac versions (and in a lot of cases, say goodbye to certain titles altogether). A new PPC processor isn't going to make that any less of a reality (unless of course, it allows VirtualPC to run fast enough that it's actually usable).
A 64-bit PPC would almost assuredly be backwards compatible with 32-bit PPC applications so for current Apple users, it will be a big boost in speed without having to reinvest in all of their software immediately (although, if you want the most speed, you'll eventually need to upgrade to the 64-bit versions of your apps).
Great news for Apple, but it's not a "Windows killer".
So what is Apple's plan for all this horsepower? It seems that the current 7450/7455 G4 chips have more than enough "under the hood" to comfortable kick the likes of Photoshop and Illustrator around, not to mention the iApps, and everybody's favorite Final Cut Pro. So this news begs the question: where does the GPUL fit in to Apple's master plan?
Perhaps, just perhaps, has Apple something up their sleeve? Like a purchase of Alias|Wavefront to go along with their other recent acquisitions, and fully stack the high-end graphics deck? Or maybe pro-E has finally gotten their act together and is releasing a Mac client? Or are there going to be some new Xserves based on this chip, and maybe we'll actually see some type of installed base start to grow in the Apple-branded server market.
Who knows... but as big as this news is (for Apple-heads, at least), the upcoming developements this GPUL (potentially) foreshadows loom much larger.
Just a question, Penguin or Platapus if the processor is great how much difference is there (seriously I wanna know, before I was running OS X I was running a SuSE (power PC) box and a RedHat Box (pc) and now I gave them both up for OS X but can do everything I did on the others)
And why, you wonder?
Because we were GPUL before this.
(Kidding, of course, in case someone didn't notice :-))
My weblog in spanish
That was true in the past but with the Unix core in OS X now, you may not get as much performance down the road (but a 4 year old computer never does)but the apps will still run and the developers still get to develop in an open environment so I don't think they'll get screwed, just my opinion.
So, does this mean that to compete, intel will have to migrate itanium down to commodity hardware in a hurry? What about recouping their R&D costs, and what about the cooling issues and prduction costs?
Stick Men
is the 2 or 4 cores per die. AFAIK this is the first time a multiple core die has been used for a consumer level ship. It is really cool that OSX with its unix underpinnings combined with the great design of the Power ISA will be able to handle the transition to 64bits and the additional thread handling etc needed for the 2-8cores per system (assuming apple will use the 4way core chips in smp mode).
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
1) That "state-o-the-art" Powerbook you just bought won't run the next version of the OS.
Maybe, but then again it might just be a different version (like Windows XP has both a 32-bit version and a 64-bit version).
2) All of your current software will still work but in some sort of wierd "Compatibility Mode" that is ten times slower than it runs today.
Not likely. Just as the forthcoming AMD Hammer will have 32-bit backwards compatibility, I expect the IBM/Apple proc would do the same. You won't have to boot to "32-bit mode" it will just run 32-bit apps. And while it won't run them as fast as the 64-bit apps, it should run them at least as fast as a native 32-bit processor.
3) Developers will get screwed (again).
Only in the sense that they may have to decide whether to program only in 32-bit (for the widest compatibility with the least effort) or expend the extra effort to support two versions.
Um, no. It would mean that your "state-o-the-art" PowerBook wouldn't run the previous version of the OS.
Doubtful, if a 1GHz GPUL processor runs 2x faster than a 1GHz G4 processor.
Yea, right. Since Apple has done such a poor job of allowing old apps to continue to function with a new their new OS, NOT!
Go back to sleep, you clearly need it.
Ended up being "If you can't beat them join them"
Again thank you Motorola for screwing us! I have a small feeling that IBM can be counted on a little more that motorola, because IBM sells its power pc based chips to more that just apple, where if I am not mistaken motorola only sells to Apple so when times gets tough for Motorola like they have for the past few years the R&D for power PC chips drop.
it's quiet as can be. The new G4 Towers are loud (actually as loud as my Dual 933 Intel).
Fans just don't bother me. Probably because I have a huge one running in my office since the 6 computers get the room kind of warm in comparison to the rest of the house. Great in the winter but no fun in Oklahoma summers!
that there is an AMD add right smack in the middle of the page.
-ted
The difference is X vs Aqua. As always. I prefer X. Other prefer Aqua. I know darwin can run X, but I see no point in it. Linux is mature.
The hardest thing for me to swith arcitecture is that I run quite a few closed source games (including wine), which wouldn't work at all on Linux "anything but X86". So it would probably have to wait, who knows what the future brings.
So I click on the story's link and this is what I see. Interesting, indeed.
Targeted advertising at its best
I wish my lawn was emo, so it would cut itself.
My PowerMac G4 makes so little noise that sometimes it's hard to tell if its running or not without looking at the little glowing power button on the front.
That's interesting. In PCs we actually have something called "a screen". It's sort of like that little light in the front but is can shine in different colors.
Everyone knows that V'ger (the current G4 processor) originally had 4 cores, but Motorola axed it to 2, and then 1, right?
We could be buying a 4-core consumer part today...
See macedition.com/nmr/nmr_20020914.php
(Disclaimer: Naked Mole Rat Reports are usually hilarious. But for the first time, on Sept. 14 there was a "guest columnist," who wrote a lame parody of those Nigerian spam messages.)
That that is is that that that that is not is not.
I am generally not a big fan of Richard Stallman's whole "libre" schtick, but I think it should be clear that I mean free as in civil rights, not free as in price!
sPh
This chips' project doesn't even complete until summer 2003, that doesn't even imply it'll be ready to fabricate or be in any kind of production then, even if it DOES pan out to be a useful design. I imagine by tomorrow Macosrumors will be touting it to be in the new uber-G4 to be released next month.
How long has the G5 been 'almost ready' as far as rumor sites go? Two years now? It's great to spin up your readership with crap like that, but it really does a disservice when it's untrue.
Apple is working with IBM? I guess Steve Jobs doesn't think IBM is "Big Brother" any more, or maybe he has joined them, and we can now call him "little brother."
How ya like dat?
I honestly have grown to love the steady white-noise of a running computer... I find it difficult to sleep if my computer is shut off, and I know of several others who have found the same thing holds true for them. I have several systems running in my bedroom, and combined, the noise from them would probably drive someone like yourself insane. Myself, I find it comforting.
Even my PS2 has a cooling fan in it, and it's audible from across the living room.
Modern systems (especially modern systems running at 2-3ghz speeds, unlike the G4) are going to require active cooling, and unless you're shelling out $$$ for liquid cooling, you're going to have to deal with some noise.
Anyone know if "they" are working on 128bit, and higher?
www.oobersworld.com - For those that ride.
"New processor Z has just been released. Sources say the processor is so fast typical users won't have a need for it, but is expected to be popular among engineering and CAD users."
I first started reading this line when the 386/25 came out. Replace CAD with 3D Graphics for this decade. Every time a new processor comes around, they say almost exactly the same thing - watch for it in the press. So far the prediction hasn't shown to be true.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
Most companies would have said: "sorry Motorola - you are out of gas. We just signed with Digital (Alpha) [or IBM or Intel]. Thanks for the memories". Instead Apple force-fed the entire PowerPC thing.
I wonder what their motivation was? And did Apple truely benefit in the long run?
sPh
Currently, OS X's SMP abilities scale only to two processors. If they want to employ a 4-way chip, the OS is going to need some work. Is this a limitation imposed by Mach or BSD? Does BSD scale up to more than 2 chips?
Look, I'm sorry but I'm sick of these posts. The PPC instruction set was designed to be a 64bit architecture. There is a 32bit subset that all current mac programs use and Mac CPUs understand. Theoretically, running 32bit code on a 64bit PPC should be as simple as setting a bit in a special register in the CPU, putting it in 32bit mode.
In fact it might make sense to make 64bit mode an option to the developer. If they don't need very large integers or 4+GB of address space, they could use 32bit mode. This would mean that you don't waste RAM and memory bandwidth using 64bit pointers when you don't need them. The OS would still be 64bit of course.
All applications should run flawlessly (if they did before :-). There is no emulation. And even if there was, how would that hurt the developers? The only time Apple has switched processor architectures before was 68k->PPC. I can still run a 1984 68k copy of MacPaint in Mac OS X's Classic environment. Hell, their 68k emulator was so good that they didn't update all of the OS to PPC straight away! Yes, the jump from OS9 to OSX was difficult for developers but this wont be, even if Apple had to use some sort of emulator (which they wont).
Where is a new FPS with original goal that doesn't use the Ray Tracing BSP method
I agree with your post, and I hate to nit-pick it, but the "ray tracing BSP method" pretty much died with Quake 2, though fanboys and amateur game developers are a bit slow to realize this.
I think your factor of two from Quake 2 to Quake 3 is way high. More like 0.25, or 0.5 at most. It was a complete yawner in so many ways.
I don't see the big problem with fans and the noise that they make.
www.oobersworld.com - For those that ride.
If you read the article you'll notice that ibm is developing the cpu.
/. - never mind.
oh wait, this is
Um, no. It would mean that your "state-o-the-art" PowerBook wouldn't run the previous version of the OS.
... yes, they got "Steved".
Clearly your sarcasm detector is set too high. When I said "the one you just bought" that means today (as in just, as in not 64 bit). So when Steve Jobs gets up and says "32 bits is dead" your screwed. Just ask all the people who bought quadras so they would be able to run OS X. Then it didn't appear for a few years and
Doubtful, if a 1GHz GPUL processor runs 2x faster than a 1GHz G4 processor
Clearly you have a short memory. The "emulated" 68k mode of PowerPCs (which were also supposed to be waaay faster) weren't because the emulator didn't fit in the cache. And for christ sakes, who the hell believes what chip companies say about speed anymore?
Yea, right. Since Apple has done such a poor job of allowing old apps to continue to function with a new their new OS, NOT!
I hope your fucking kidding. Clearly your not a Mac developer if you haven't been repeatedly screwed by Apple.
Go back to sleep, you clearly need it
So what's your excuse?
I am not a number! I am a man! And don't you
I think he's alluding, not to the OS9->OSX upgrade, but the 68K -> PPC conversion. The compatibility mode was, in my opinion, a tour de force, but they screwed developers by the Lisa Pascal to C switch. It wasn't just that C became the preferred development enviornment, it was because they decided not to support Pascal at all. This was a horrible miscalculation, because it put developers using what up to then was the preferred development environment at a huge disadvantage. They had to retrain their programmers and port their applications. This left some applications stranded in emulation land for two years or more.
I think he may also be referring to the death of OpenDoc, which badly burned many developers and for which I too still have not forgiven them. OpenDoc was brilliant and so, so close to being ready for prime time when it was killed. This was a one-two punch for many small developers -- once they spent perhaps eighteen months in their C conversion, they then spent another eighteen months or two years redesigning their application for an architecture that simply went up in smoke. I knew some small innovative software developers that had, perhaps, a two or three year lead over similar applications on the Windows end, who ended up behind, a place you simply can't afford to be if you are on a niche platform like the Mac. This experience soured many developers on Apple, and prepared many of them to be well disposed to open source.
Bitterness for past misdeeds aside, I expect a 32 bit to 64 bit conversion to go more smoothly than the 68K to PPC conversion, or the equivalent conversion on the Windows side.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Yeah. Another Processor. Cool. Even more Mhz and stuff. Ye-haw. Now I can run poorly written, crappy software even faster.
Systems exist for automatically marshalling software into behaving, or for helping developers write better software. The problem is they tend to be exceedingly slow. So, faster processors are a necessary step in reducing crappy software. It won't help with useless software or ugly software, but at least it helps with crashing and having l33t hackers 0wn your machine.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
Except that the GPUL is not the next best thing. If you read the eWeek article, you'll find that the projected time-line reads, basically, the G5 first and then the next best thing after that. And it is very much up in the air what that next best thing will be. I know that Apple has had a long history of working with IBM and Motorola, and that adds a certain amount of probability to the conjecture that the GPUL will be the next best thing, but the existence of Apple's Marklar project shows that we cannot discount the possibility of a switch to x86 architecture. I think the most likely candidate within the x86 world is AMD's Hammer -- it will be available at desktop-processor-level prices, and will also be available in versions more suitable for servers. Since both markets are areas Apple has targeted, this makes the Hammer more appropriate than, say, a combination of Intel's Pentium4 on desktop and Itanium for servers.
Again, though, let me reiterate that this is all just conjecture until "The Steve" makes some sort of formal announcement.
While this story is similar to recent stories about Apple using Power4-based IBM chips in future Macs, the GPUL, unlike the Power4, is smaller, runs cooler and consumes far less power
Uhm, GigaProcessor and POWER4 is the same thing, different names. GP was the internal name. It still sounds like GPUL is POWER4-based, just not a repackaging of the exact same processor.
how much address space do you need exactly? If you're just talking about register size, the Altivec core in the G4 already does operations on 128-bits at a time, and this new chip will have that.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
I think you've been playing with consoles a bit too much. 64-bit here refers to the size of general-purpose registers and memory addressing.
With 64-bit you can address over 4 terabytes. Do you feel the need for more than that?
You can also work with integers up to 18.446.744.073.709.551.615, and floating-point numbers up to 1.7976931348623158 E+308. Feel the need for more than that?
There are wider registers in the CPU (such as the dedicated SSE2 or Altivec registers), but for normal operation I think 64-bit should keep us going for quite a few years.
RMN
~~~
Steve Jobs announced that everyone wishing for cheaper Apple systems not built around grossly overpriced CPUs and related hardware can "...just go to hell...."
So it may be a long wait! I got my G4 Tower a few months ago to see if I even would like Apple OSes. To my delight I love OS X (hell even OS 9) and OS X is everything X-Windows/Linux should have been striving for. I was going to sell my G4 and get a dual 1.25 but the one I have is more than enough for now and 1 to 1 1/2 years isn't too long to wait for the next Mac (besides I've still got to save for the 22" display!).
I've tried to use Linux on the desktop since 0.98 (Slackware in '96) and never found it to my liking. I don't like to tweak and read man pages for hours, I just want the damn thing to work. That being said all my companies servers run Linux (killed the SPARC the other day) and being able to sftp/ssh to my servers from a terminal in OS X was great. Plus using Dreamweaver to do my JSP development makes a great environment.
Hopefully 1 to 1 1/2 years is all I'll have to wait. I'm patient so I'll start saving now.
Everyone likes it a different way, but the only reason that most people like the noise is that they're used to it. If you had never had a fan in your room before, you probably wouldn't like it at first.
This idea was invented by Shampoo.
G4 chips have more than enough "under the hood" to comfortable kick the likes of Photoshop and Illustrator around, not to mention the iApps, and everybody's favorite Final Cut Pro.
You have *got* to be kidding. Enough power for FCP? Dude, I routinely run 30+ minute renders for a 3 minute chunk of video on a 933MHz G4, and I'm not even doing all that much. A few filters, some text generation, a mask or two and it's walk away from the machine time.
Apple could be shipping 8-way 2GHz G4s and it still wouldn't be enough.
"Seven Deadly Sins? I thought it was a to-do list!"
soapvox wrote:
.....
> And I thought my Titanium rocked now. If IBM can
> picck up the slack that Motorola has created maybe
> everyone in the wintel world would wake up and see
> the power of OSX and with the 64bit chip
> Wow!!!
OS X Jaguar is so named because Jaguar is the most powerful feline in the Americas, adaptable to any environment, capable of killing a Longhorn (Microsoft's codename for its next OS) by crushing its skull with its jaws. But to do that, it needs a more powerful body...
There once was a Moth, who loved an Apple tree.
She saved it, gave it gifts, taught it many things.
This Moth fought the god of destruction;
Gave her life to save a baby dragon.
Then she did a wondrous thing.
Her spirit entered the dragon, made it grow and change.
Its scales gleamed gold, bright as the sun!
Three heads raged, spat lightning at its foe.
With the help of humans,
It destroyed the god of destruction;
Protected the future.
Apple, have you learned the lesson the moth is teaching you here? Time for the gentle moth to become the raging dragon. Protect the future!
"Mosura, Ya! Mosura, Ya! Ah-ah! Ah-ah!"
Song "Deity of the Sea: Mothra" (and plot synopsis above)
from "Godzilla, Mothra, King Ghidora: Giant Monsters All Out Attack" December 2001
Wake up! It doesn't foreshadow anything! In case you hadn't noticed, current Macs are DOG SLOW compared to current PC's in most of the software available today. There's more to the world than Photoshop and Maya. These new chips will simply help Apple KEEP UP with the speed experienced in the PC world.
Mac OS X and Windows XP working side by side to fight back the night.
That is why they are saying the G5 will be offered in 32bit and 64bit flavors. The design team that built the GX processors planned on 64bit like Sun did with the SPARC processors. This is what has given Sun a great advantage in the Enterprise market. When apps were built on older Sun servers, corporate customers like to avoid recoding for a new platform so SPARC is binary compatable with previous processors. That old code running on a SPARCStation II runs without modification on a E10000. That is good planning and implementation on the part of Sun.
Even if the new chips are clock-for-clock identical to the current G4, the mere fact that they're running on a newer bus will make the machines much more powerful.
For more info about this, head over to Ars and check out the posts in the Mac Achaia by BadAndy from earlier this summer ("Altivec, anyone?" I think it was titled). He knows a hell of a lot more about this stuff than I do; it makes for fascinating reading, and you can really understand why faster CPUs alone won't cut it for Apple.
There's one little problem you aren't mentioning.
Code for desktop-class PowerPCs often assumes a 32-byte cache line size for operations like filling memory. That includes some of Apple's own code, too. Unfortunately such an assumption doesn't apply to some embedded PPCs (16-byte line size) or to the RS64/POWER3/POWER4 (64- and 128-byte line size). This is probably the one serious flaw in the PowerPC architecture.
Some code, especially the fine-tuned bits using a few specific PPC instructions to improve performance, WILL need to be tweaked, unless IBM reworks their Power4 derivative to use 32-byte lines - probably not a good idea.
With all of the rumors about OSX being ported to the x86 platform, i wonder when the rumors about this new processor running x86 natively are going to pop up. After all, OSX is just as likely to be compatible with x86 as these GPUL's are.
i could not think of anything clever.
Actually, I think that Motorola sells far more processors in the embedded market than they do to Apple - which is why, in my opinion, Apple has been low on the totem pole for a few years now.
Cheers.
Since when does Apple have any hardware engineers?
Umm... Since Woz started working in Steve Jobs garage? One of their divisions is the "Hardware Engineering Division"
Even their boards are outsourced
I'm pretty sure that the design is done in-house. some manufacturing may be outsourced.
let alone the actual chips.
I don't know if they STILL have any chip designers (I sort of doubt it) but when AIM first got started the Somerset chip design facility was a joint venture between all three partners including Apple. I believe some of the chip designers at the facility were technically on the books as Apple employees. At the very least the chip designers at Somerset worked closely with Apple.
If Apple had any ability to develop their own CPUs they wouldn't still be stuck with the pre-historic G4, they would simply ditch IBM and use their own chips.
Despite the fact that they DO have hardware engineers, and may even have a few that specialise in chip design to evaluate & work with the other two AIM partners it is obvious that they are not themselves, and are unlikely to become, a chip designers. Though because of the way patent and license agreements between the AIM partners they probably could get into it. But that would be a nightmare, they would bear all the costs and still be stuck with a single supplier (themselves) that would likely fall behind the competition.
Will the 64 bit hammer boot in 8086 real mode so it has to be tricked into upgraded to 32 bit mode and then tricked again to go to 64 bit mode? I have to hand it to Intel for such a clean design when they hacked the 286 up to 32 bit mode. With the Intel stuff you can take assembly code for the 4040 and run it on the latest machines and it migth even work the same way. Not so with the motorola stuff. Their 6800 had a good instruction set but it was much different than the 68k which is much different than the PPC.
Who bought a Quadra to run Mac OS X, and are they interested in upgrading to a slightly used state-of-the-art PowerBook 3400? The last Quadra was discontinued in 1995, long before there was ever any speculation about X. The official minimum requirement for X is a beige G3, introduced in 1997, but there are hacks to get it installed on earlier PCI-based Macs, which date back to 1995. How far back should Apple have gone? Should Mac OS X be able to run on my 15.9 MHz SE/30?
does this have anything to do with this (http://www-916.ibm.com/press/prnews.nsf/jan/FFBB4 B222F4DBFE585256A0D0056C7AC)?
"640k of RAM should be enough for anyone"
William Gates
Microsoft Corporation
www.oobersworld.com - For those that ride.
Yeah fans are not too bad but I sleep in the same room as my server, which contains a fairly old 10k rpm SCSI disk. Its like living with a gas turbine.
sPh
I've never fiddled with anything that requires me to know cache line sizes. Anyone more knowledgeable have any info?
..It can easily adapt and grow with new hardware and new architectures.
Microsoft has been dependant on Intel for a long time. Their one foray into another architecture (WinNT for the Alpha) was just a proof-of-concept, and didn't go anywhere, IIRC.
The Linux kernel covers several architectures. SGI, x86, Alpha, PPC, and StrongARM are just a few.
It's really nice to finally see a real, immediate threat to Microsoft's dominance. Apple and IBM have enough revenue to run a massive advertising campaign. Even if it just involves OS-X, it'll still produce a large shift away from Microsoft's domain.
What's this Submit thingy do?
Speaking as a luke-warm Apple fan & potential switcher, this sounds cool...but so have most of the daily "ray of hope" rumors that serious Apple fans have been kicking around for years.
IBM has known for many years that an Intel/MS monopoly ain't good for IBM. (Anyone recall OS/2 for PowerPC?) Pumping up Apple with better CPU's would be good strategy, even if they make no money on the chips. But what's taken them so long?
My impression is that Motorola's attitude & situation are so bad that Apple couldn't get much out of 'em with "we'll switch to IBM" threats.
Now if someone can actually SHIP substantial quantities of non-defective chips BEFORE Intel is cranking out Pentium 6's & Itanium 4's at 10GHz...
It's easy to make up & spread cool- and credible-sounding stuff. Finding & checking hard facts is hard work.
Just remember that OS X has been in concurrent development for use under x86.
What's this Submit thingy do?
If written to take advantage of the larger registers, applications could be up to twice as fast. This all depends if you can use intrinsics on the code.
When IBM says desktop, they mean a machine that mmmakes less than 34 decibels of noise. Corporate standard!
IBM can do all the work related to getting the chip designed, fabbed, tested and at the right price, on schedule etc.
Apple can work out precisely which shade of blue the chip's plastic housing should be.
Ever see the copyrights when you boot an RS/6000 from IBM? Apple is in there. I don't see any Apple software... must be hardware :)
Motorrola has no one to blame but themeselves for this. If they innovated and tried to keep up with the industry like everyone else, they would of not had this problem. They figured mac users are suckers and will always buy anyway so who cares. They guessed wrong.
Believe it or not, consumers do look at the mhz rating as an indicator of performance and value for what they are paying for. Even some look at the mhz rating for internet speed! If they see an expensive box that has a low mhz rating, they will just shake their heads and move on to another pc. Consumers aren't real bright and apple needs to boost the mhz peed on these new chips and not just have them perform fast. Palladium scares the hell out of me and I want no part in it.
Kudos to apple. As soon as palladium is out and when these babies find their way into powerbooks, I will be one of your first customers.
ALso MacOSX is one of the easiest versions of unix out there! No rpm hell, no spending hours configurating text files, no waiting for gentoo to compile everything, and all of the binaries like Windows include the dependancies. I will still keep a copy of linux around for the hell of it but I would love MacOSX!
http://saveie6.com/
The 32 bit instructions are *binary compatible* throughout the PPC lineup-just you really want to recompile to optimize for different processors/types of program, to account for frequency of branching, etc., of your code versus the optimization of that particular cpu for branching, etc. The 64 bit set are a binary superset of the 32 bit instructions. You can run circa 1990 IBM workstation binaries on PPC 601 and usually on 604 chips, and probably they will run on a current G3/G4-although they might not run very fast given the generation differences between cpu's, code optimization for different cache sizes, etc.
Actually, WinNT also ran on the NEC MIPS and Motorola PowerPC platforms.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it."
- Evelyn Beatrice Hall
There was a time that Apple was an innovator. Now, unfortunately, they follow Microsoft and in this case they're chasing Intel. Intel's Merced will be better positioned when the 64-bit market takes off simply because they'll have been out longer and so will have better tool support.
Fans aren't that bad until you realize you can't hear as well as you used to. I work in the server closet alot (moving offices right now) and I sometimes grab a pair of earplugs.
The whine isn't bad until you realize you used to watch TV on 12, and now it's got to be 15.
In fact, our whole world (mine, anyway) is like this - far more noise than we were intended to hear regularly, and it slowly causes us to lose frequencies and ranges...
Do you find yourself trying to figure out what people said?
That what was all this school was for... to teach us how to solve our own problems. -- janeowit
True, to some extent. But keep in mind that Motorola sells to Apple - and Apple will certainly attempt to keep Motorola's prices down to a minimum as well (not anything like $5/cpu, but you get the idea).
.. :)
What's most important here, I think, is that Intel/Windows has created a culture that believes that when Intel releases a new CPU, everyone needs to upgrade. This is great for Intel, as it guarantees an ROI for their research.
The Mac crowd, however, is not like this. Mac owners will typically keep their Macs for 3-5 yrs w/o upgrading. OS X isn't doing much to change that, as every release of OS X is progressively faster than the previous release on the same hardware. While people may need to upgrade now to take advantage of OS X's best features, an upgrade now will mean no more upgrades for the next few years.
I think Motorola was aware of this and realized that for the amount of R&D they needed to compete effectively with Intel/AMD, they weren't able to sell enough CPUs to make up for the cost of bringing a new chip to market.
Just my thoughts, though
Actually, besides x86 and Alpha, NT4 was also available for PPC and MIPS.
:-)
Now let's see if I can get a few more acronyms in there
Fascism starts when the efficiency of the government becomes more important than the rights of the people.
And if you append "for a few years" to that statement, it most certainly was true at the time.
The G4 Cube Apple made was a good start in that direction, as was the iMac.
With a central "convection column" we could put the processor low in the box (it would need a stand like the G4 Cube to allow airflow underneath) and position components around the column, we might be able to do it.
Of course, if you just want to leave out fans, and don't want to explore liquid cooling, you could use Peltier effect (Ars Technica has some details) coolers with heat sinks and the "convection column" or a heat distribution "tree" that spread heat out along sinks until it could be expelled along the case sides...
It's possible, it would just take more effort than many are interested in.
Of course, you could always pipe Central Air into your case...
That what was all this school was for... to teach us how to solve our own problems. -- janeowit
Hold up!
;)
You have no idea how long I've been trying to figure out what they are saying!
I've had that song stuck in my head since I was 6 when I first saw that movie.
Maybe now I can finally rest easy at night....
Wake me up when they port to x86.
What did you say!, Yea, I do actually. That is not cool.
www.oobersworld.com - For those that ride.
Motorola's market is the embeded market. This is why Apple is bottom of the list. Profit per unit is meaningless when Motorola ships so many more embebed cpus then desktop cpus.
> Should Mac OS X be able to run on my 15.9 MHz SE/30?
Luxury. Back in my day we published magazines on a 8MHz Mac 512k and if we didn't like it we could lump it. But if you told young people today that that computer would become a multiprocessor RISC-based unix workstations made of translucent plastic they wouldn't have believed you.
you don't have to, you may dual boot as necessary thanks to Open Firmware!
That was classic intercourse!
Yes, but as usual the /. title is wrong. This is, after all, Slashdot...
Well, you can run X in rootless mode with Aqua. And, of course, MacOS X has better commercial application/games support, though still not a patch on Windows/x86.
Aqua makes a much better desktop than... well, just about anything else to date.
There's always virtualpc for the must-have x86 stuff... processor speeds are rapidly reaching the point that soon it won't matter what arch you're actually running for the vast majority of software; emulation will be sufficient for most software with arguable exceptions of, say, 3D rendering and very high-end games.
Of course, if the software you want to run is all x86, that's the way to go.
According to this, NT was originally developed for the i860 so it wouldn't be tied to x86. It's a pretty smart idea for somebody developing a portable operating system, and I applaud Microsoft for the good decision.
OK, folks, a 64-bit address goes up to 2^64, which is 2^4 * 2^60. Crudely, that's about 16 * (2^10)^6, or 16 * (10^3)^6. Now let's review our metric prefixes, shall we?
So, yes, a 64 bit processor can address more than 4 terabytes. Roughly 4 million times as much as that, actually. That could be of some importance. :-)
More seriously, I can foresee within 5 years the certainty that addressing 4 terabytes would not be enough. Indeed, you could predict somebody would whine about gnu tar's 4 terabyte limit, and how they now can't back up their RAID full of pr0n. :-)
Babar
I believe (although I am not 100% certain, so take this with a grain of salt) that the reason Apple is credited in the RS6k boot screen is that Apple did the port of OpenBoot/OpenFirmware to the PowerPC/POWER platform.
News for Nerds. Stuff that Matters? Like hell.
The jump from 640 KB (which was an OS limit, not a limit on the memory controller itself) to the amount of memory found on most computers today (128MB to 1 GB) was about an 800-fold increase. And that took well over ten years.
Going from 32-bit to 64-bit addressing raises the memory limit four thousand million times (that's four billion if you're american). That's eighteen petabytes (although early models of AMD's "Sledgehammer" will be limited to 40- and 48-bit addressing, which is still a lot, especially when you consider that, on SMP systems, each CPU can have its own addressing space).
It's highly unlikely home computers will even need to go beyond 4 GB in the next couple of years. I think it's pretty safe to say they won't need more than 1 terabyte (40-bit addressing) within the next ten.
I mean, there's a limit even to how bloated MS Windows can get...
RMN
~~~
VPC runs PERFECTLY acceptably on any modern (read 500Mhz and up) G4 with a complement of ram. (>400MB). i just sold a dual 867 to an architect (he designed the australian opera house, i would say he is 'big-time') and he not only brought the models in, he RAN THEM UNDER VPC, with only 256MB ram. apparently he felt it was fast enough, cause he bought it to replace his peecee, 'IT CRASHES ALL THE TIME', (his words, not mine.) just dont expect to run games on it- get a PS2. there is an option to up the VPC ram to 512MB now, so performance is much less an issue.
good day, and remember, it is better to keep your mouth shut and be thought a fool, than to open your mouth and remove all doubt.
This would have happened years earlier were it not for "surfing the web". Complex real time rendering systems (browsers) required much more power than the office productivity apps and this is what drove the last round of upgrades.
IMHO two things are out there which could drive the next round:
a) Java becoming popular. If most binary apps are running inside of virtual machines this could do it.
b) We move to 3D desktop environments. Everything is always available but the things you are thinking about are "more there" then the ones you aren't a 3D finder Apple and SGI have led the way here.
I don't have a DVD player at home, but I just got the new Monster's Inc. DVD (yes, I know I need to buy a player, but I'm cheap...). I happened to bring a brand-new ThinkPad home from the office to do some work. No RCA out, just S-Video. Cool, I can work with that.
So I pull out my S-Video cable, my computer speakers, and subwoofer, and get it all hooked up. Pop in the DVD and play it. Hmm... the TV is mirroring the laptop screen, but the video doesn't show up. After playing around with it for half an hour (and trying two different software players), I finally notice this little warning that says that "Copy protected DVD's will not output to the S-Video port" (or something like that).
WTF? Why even have a DVD drive and an S-Video port if I can't combine them? Note to everyone: Don't buy a ThinkPad if you think that there's EVER a chance you'll want to play a DVD through the S-Video port. If IBM is so damned concerned about DRM, they need to put a big sticker on the laptop that this is a DRM-enabled system. I guarantee that I will never buy another ThinkPad.
Anyway, next night, I bring home the Apple PowerBook. Hook everything up, pop in the DVD, hit play. No problemo.
The three IBM/Apple projects were PowerPC, Taligent, and Kaleida. The two software projects failed. The chip project was well on its way to outstripping Intel when IBM lost its nerve, decided Apple was going to go out of business almost immediately, and handed off the PowerPC to Motorola. Motorola was not capable of handling such an advanced chip design and the PowerPC fell way behind Intel. The IBM execs who had blinked later moved on to other companies, and IBM got reinvolved in the PowerPC, but they're still suffering from the Motorola handoff.
As for Apple's early attitude to IBM, they saw IBM as The Enemy due to the IBM PC. Remember that IBM used to be the big personal computer maker, before the clones ate its lunch? There is embarassing video footage showing Steve Jobs introducing his friend Bill Gates as Apple's white knight in the war against IBM. Apple didn't have a clue who the real enemy was, and it was at that point that Jobs granted Gates a permanent royalty-free license to the Mac look and feel, for use in an obscure little program called "Windows."
Some years later, Apple finally figured out who the enemy was, and decided to join forces with IBM, who were disgruntled with Microsoft's handing off the PC business to the clone makers. But the software cultures of the two companies never meshed, and the only successful project was the one that was almost completely IBM's doing and well within its core competencies -- until IBM blinked, that is.
I mentioned 4 terabytes because the current limit is 4 gigabytes, and because the processor that's likely to become the first 64-bit "home" CPU (AMD's Sledgehammer) will start with a 40-bit limit (1 terabyte), and later be expanded to 48-bit addressing (roughly 280 terabytes). And I'm willing to bet "home" versions of Windows will be locked at something lower (to force you to buy the "server" version if you want to use all your memory).
If you want the exact number that full 64-bit addressing can give you (2^64) just see my first message (it's 18446744073709551615 bytes).
And anyway, this doesn't apply to drives or files (that depends on the drive interface and the file system), only to memory. Current ATA-133 drives can go up to about 144 petabytes.
If one of your pr0n pictures is over 4 TB, I suspect you need some "compress your penis" pills.
RMN
~~~
Um, quadras were pre-steve's return. No one bought a quadra to run OS X.
T Money
World Domination with a plastic spoon since 1984
Apple's next "Best Thing" has been heavily dependent on "Dilbert Office Award Winner" Motorola being able to develop faster chips in a timely manner.
With IBM entering in this equation, I have no doubt that they will be able to keep pace far, far better than Motorola.
You mean chip designers like these
Or this
Apple does do hardware, and they do have their own chip designers. They're just sensibly not interested in making their own CPU.
I'd love to see this powering a souped-up version of the beautiful but woefully underpowered iMac. All that holds me back from switching is what you might call the Agony of Id-fluence: if you spend $2000 on a desktop in this era of cut-rate electronics pricing, it damn well better be able to run Doom 3.
Apple used the 68K series from 8 MHz to 80MHz (40 really). They used the G1 PowerPCs (PPC601) from 60MHz to 132MHz. Then the G2s (PPC 603/604 series') from 75Mhz to 350MHz.
The G3s came in at 233MHz (blowing the G2s away) and they've currently reached over a Ghz. The G4 is, for all intensive purposes, a G3 series.
There's a change due. Who knows where.
The penguin runs fine on Itanium2. Redhat is almost ready to ship an Itanium2 distro. If you are using the penguin you can have the chip now.
Motorola warned people against
a) assuming that all processors in the 68000 family would always address 24 bits at most and
b) abusing the upper 8 bits of addresses to store extra data
Yet, where did Mac developers learn the dirty trick above? From Apple's own system software (this is in the pre-MacII days).
Operations which benefit from knowing cache line sizes and using dcbz include
1) clearing memory regions (especially if you are going to access them again right after you are done clearing)
2) preventing unnecessary reads on the first write to a cache line, if you know you are going to replace anyway the entire contents of the line
Most developers won't have to worry about this problem, sure, but there are some that will have to tweak their compiler/library/optimised routine.
Their forte is embedded systems. They're really getting dragged kicking and screaming into the desktop market.
Deleted
I have yet to find a reason to upgrade my computer and internet connection. My computer is a Packard Bell Legend 2000 486SX 25mhz, 4MB ram, sound galaxy pro soundcard, and Windows 3.1. My connection is AOL 14.4k. I can do spreadsheet and word processing with MS Works, browse the web with IE 5, chat on IRC, FTP, play midi, and a lot more. I can't even remember how long I've had this computer, Packard Bell really does make comps that last.
And wake me up when I can run OS X on my Z80.
Also note that MCL already supports "infinite precision" arithmetic with rational numbers as ratios of integers (each of whose size is limited not by the register size, but by the amount of memory in the machine).
-- I speak only for myself
A 500Mhz PowerBook encodes MPEG-1/2 video faster than a dual 700Mhz P3. I have verified this myself using mjpegtools which is both AltiVec and MMX/SSE optimized. The same 500Mhz PowerBook can encode as fast as an 800Mhz Athlon.
I'm using an Eden 5000 right now for my DSP work. Together with VIA's low power chipset, you can build a fanless system for less than $400.
...-.-
How the hell do you port a PowerPC chip to x86?
It sounds (!) to me like you're just getting old and starting to lose your hearing as is not atypical. I'm aware of much evidence that loud sounds can damage hearing. I'm not aware of any evidence that low level white noise of the sort found in a server closet can do the same.
Unless your server closet has an unsually high decibel level, I think the problem is far more likely to exist solely in your ears and not as a result of your environment.
"Giga" is so 20th century. It has the ring of Dr. Evil's "One Million Dollars" to it (imagine backwards pinky to corner of mouth). The new marketing-compliant prefix is "Peta". Please take note.
Yes, but it's much slower than loading the values into the CPU. Current x86 FPUs can handle 64- and 80-bit values directly ("double" and "long double", in C), and that's enough for most situations.
RMN
~~~
At some point though, Apple's gotta throw us a frickin bone. Something to let us know that the platform has a future. Judging by the course of development on the Hardware side for the past two years, wrt not only bus speed, but CPU development, with AltiVec being practically the ONLY high point, the Macintosh Hardware landscape is incredibly bleak. The only thing selling Macs now on the Hardware side is Gee-Whiz fancy cases, DVD burners, and LCD monitors.
The SOFTWARE story, on the other hand, is BRILLIANT. But what the fuck are you going to run this tremendously asskicking OS on in 5 years?
I don't give a crap what the rumor sites say - I'm *not* going to invest $3500 in a pro Mac until Apple brings it's system architecture into the 21st century. I'm talking about bus bandwidth. I don't care if I have to squeeze another two years of life out of my heavily upgraded Beige G3. Apple's not getting my money, until they offer a system that's worth it to me.
If I see developments - rumors, in the positive direction, I'm more likely to wait for the worthy upgrade, than I am to say "FUCK Steve Jobs, I'm building an AMD box, and running Linux". It's as simple as that. A platform that has a future, that I can afford, versus one that does not have a future, that I can't buy at any price.
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
> I wonder what their motivation was? And did Apple
... a PowerBook fits the bill for all kinds of people, even in audio/video.
... no UNIX compatibility in Windows, lack of internationalization in Windows (there is only one Mac OS X for the whole world, fully Unicode), the unstable NT kernel. After using Macs for a while, you come to expect FireWire and Gigabit Ethernet and Wi-Fi and you get all kinds of things done that you wouldn't otherwise, because there is a whole system there, designed and qualified and tested and well-supported by a single support team.
> truely benefit in the long run?
Their motivation was to be in on the design of the CPU, to make sure it was small, low-power, highly-efficient. Apple has always had a good chunk of their business in portables, since the first PowerBook many, many years ago, and also they were making or working on Newtons and such, and small, quiet, desktops. If you are used to x86, there are a whole host of compromises that you don't question, but Apple's systems have been smaller, lighter, quieter, and have had MUCH longer battery life for years and years and years now.
The G4 gets dissed for only one reason: it was introduced just as Intel started their marketing-driven pursuit of clock speed, clock speed, clock speed. Before the low-power G4 could ramp up in clock speed, Intel was overclocking their big fat hungry chips and talking GHz. When you examine the actual performance of G4 and P4 systems, you see that there is so much more to the story. My PowerBook G4 has 5-hour battery life while Intel portable struggle to give you 2 hours, and the PowerBook is fast, fast, fast (I use mine as a portable recording studio, for example, and it is widely used as a portable TV studio with Final Cut Pro by CNN and many others). There is one company making a "luggable" P4 system now that's like a big briefcase with no batteries at all, simply so they could use a real P4 instead of the "mobile" P4m. You take its 20-pound self somewhere and plug it into wall power and get to work. Nobody is so power-starved on the Mac side that they want that
The big beige box PC seems like such a dinosaur to me after using Macs for the past few years. The huge fans, the noise, the lack of ports, the 15-hour USB MP3 transfers, the USB Ethernet adapters, no Wi-Fi built-in on most notebooks, even today
Why should Apple compete with M$ on the desktop that's ruled by the x86 architecture?
It can just be where M$ doesn't seem to be able to go. Window's doesn't run on anything else but the x86 and I predict it never will. Not for technical reasons but for administrative and political ones.
The server market has always been mainly 64 bits. (Sparc w. Solaris & other Big Iron,) The portion that wasn't (Linux boxen) is migrating to 64 bit.
The desktop is goin to follow. Its gone from 8 bits (where CP/M and Apple OS were king) to 16 bits (where Mac OS and M$ got their start) to 32 bits and the next step is 64.
Linux is already there, its part of the kernel tree.
Mac OS X is already there its also part of the BSD tree.
Linux has the necessary developper base ready, willing and able to create distros and port everything to the new architecture. Since they have the source, they CAN.
Apple has complete control of the hardware and OS. When Jobs decides the user base going to 64 bits, then they'll accomplish it like they did the switch to the PPC (680x0 -> ppc60x) and the switch to OS X (OS1..9->10.2).They have control and a track record of doing it successfully.
Windows is going to be trapped by its own installed base and stymied by the internal difficulties of managing and maintaining development teams across architectures.
I'm not even going to mention the quality and security, or lack there of, of M$s offerings.
M$ will bog down in the platform shift and will disappear with the x86 architecture as surely as CP/M did and for the same reasons (which WEREN'T technical.)
Say bye bye, Bill. Though with billions in cash, M$ will be around in some form or other. And he'll probably abuse a Mac on his desktop because it works there.
In case anybody has any doubt, the desktop is NOT where Jobs wants Apple to play. There are more bedrooms and kitchend and living rooms and dens and hovels in the world than there are corporate desktops.
M$s credo "A computer on every desktop"is very limiting.
Apple's credo might be "computing everywhere else."
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
ever tried copying songs onto an ipod then onto another computer? apple doesn't LET you do it.
Liberty.
Actually, Apple co-designed the G3 (I think it was the last of the sommerset designs) and more recently had the lead in designing the 7450 series. I know (second hand) that Apple stayed with Motorolla based on Mot's agreement to build the 7450 for Apple. Apple now gets the G4s for a steep discount because they shared R&D with Mot.
And just a quick response to some earlier posts:
The 7450 does only have one Floating Point pipeline, but the altivec unit acts as a second Floating Point unit when not running altivec code. It's only single precision, but it does make a difference. This is part of why the 7450 is faster than the previous G4, even on un-optimised code. If I recall correctly, and I may be wrong on this part, the altivec unit can be used as a general purpose unit that can handle any calculation (integer or float) when it's not doing vectors, if there is enough code parallelism.
Anyone care to correct me? I won't take offense if you're at least polite about it.
I found this at: http://wmf.editthispage.com/2001/03/04
Jeff Rupley, PPC designer:
As a side note, on the [PowerPC] 7450, even non-vectorized single precision floating point is better done in the Altivec floating point unit than the normal FPU. This can be true even if only 1 of the 4 SIMD slots in the vector can be utilized, because the latencies are better. Altivec load is 1 cycle faster than float load (3 vs. 4), and the execution unit latency is also 1 cycle better (4 vs. 5).
StillaCoward wrote:
> I've had that song stuck in my head since I was 6
> when I first saw that movie.
I doubt it was the one I quoted, since that is the words to the vocals in the movie from last December.
I'm guessing the song was probably "Mosura No Uta" (Mothra's Song), used in 1961, 1964, 1992, and 1996-98 to call Mothra. Below is my own romanization and translation from the original Malay (hopefully remotely accurate considering how many hours I worked on it):
Romanized Lyrics:
Mosu-lah, ya, Mosu-lah!
Dongeng kasad ku yang ing doa mu.
Rut tok wira doa hamba-hamba, mu ya.
Randa, bangun, radang tong yu, kang-lah!
Kasad ku yang.
English Translation:
Mothra, yes, Mothra!
I wish to chant to your divinity a prayer for you.
Heroic, wonder-working deity, endure the prayer of your servants, yes.
Go about, rise up, become angry at this barrel of sharks, Kang-lah!
I wish this of your divinity.
"Kang" is the highest title of royalty or divinity in Malay. "lah" is a particle used for emphasis.
Okay, I've used and liked Mac for years, and I've certainly done evangelism of my own, but this is stretching it.
The big beige box PC seems like such a dinosaur to me after using Mac for the past few years.
You can get x86 machines in all sizes, shapes, colors, and designs. The beige box is simply popular because it's cheap. Apple doesn't *offer* a beige box -- you *must* pay a premium for their cases.
The huge fans, the noise
I have a PII/266 and a PPC 6100/60. The 6100 is noticeably louder, though it also has older bearings. And the Klammath was a pretty hot chip.
the lack of ports
You're crazy. Your typical new PC has 2 serial ports, a parallel port, (with OEM models) frequently modem and Ethernet ports, two or four USB ports, two PS/2 ports, and sometimes Firewire. The only leg up Macs have is that they always have Firewire. Apple left SCSI behind a while ago on most models, so that isn't in the cards any more (and if you really use SCSI, you can get a $25 card in the PC world). Consumer-level Macs have been ragged on for having too few ports, as a matter of fact.
the 15-hour USB MP3 transfers
So get a Firewire player. Same story if you plug a USB MP3 player into your Mac.
the USB Ethernet adapters
Oh, yeah, those are *really* common. How about Apple's AAUI-to-10BaseT Ethernet adaptors, if we're going to be getting into corner cases?
no Wi-Fi built-in on most notebooks
Why the hell do people keep calling 802.11b "Wi-Fi"? It sounds like a home electronics fixation. Anyway, this is increasingly less true, and many people just get the cards. Were you really out of PC card slots? GSIA students at CMU have Thinkpads with three PC card slots and built in modem, wired Ethernet, and 802.11b.
no UNIX compatibility in Windows
Well, I solve the "Windows problem" by using Linux instead, but what do you mean by that? Grab cygwin or mingw + UnixUtils.
lack of internationalization in Windows
Oh, knock it off. Apple pimps their i18n, but the fact is that Windows and the Mac OS both speak Unicode just fine. Linux less so, but if you're using modern KDE or GNOME, you're pretty well off (particularly GNOME -- *hell* of a lot of translations there).
the unstable NT kernel
Bullshit. You can add a flaky driver to it -- NT today runs drivers in kernel space, *just like the Mac OS and Linux*, but the vanilla kernel is fine from a stability standpoint. The same claims are just as valid with respect to *BSD, Linux, or Mac OS.
May we never see th
Do you find yourself trying to figure out what people said? What?
Windows 2000 is fully Unicode based, the only nationalization is the different languages in which the documentation files are included. And newer notebooks don't have a port problem.
Black holes are where the Matrix raised SIGFPE
You can get a Mac and run most of the popular flavors of Linux on it (notable exception: RedHat)
Red Hat does put out a PPC distro, though I'm not sure if it's for Macs or IBM's PPC line.
May we never see th
It wasn't just that C became the preferred development enviornment, it was because they decided not to support Pascal at all. This was a horrible miscalculation, because it put developers using what up to then was the preferred development environment at a huge disadvantage. They had to retrain their programmers and port their applications. This left some applications stranded in emulation land for two years or more.
hmm, that sounds an awful lot like Steve Jobs' plan for forcing application developers to use the "Yellow Box" or Cocoa. Apple introduced the backwards compatible Carbon APIs only after people (rightly) complained.
I think Steve Jobs is sometimes TOO eager to drop legacy hardware/software.
cpeterso
You wanted sub-2 minute boots?
My Mac Plus showed a bootup screen featuring a tiger, played a startup sound, loaded all of its extensions, loaded the Finder and was completely ready to use in seven seconds from hitting the power switch.
My much newer Linux box takes much, much longer.
May we never see th
huh? WHAT?!
GigaProcessor Ultralite? Sounds like something a cheezy anime character would name his mech.
This message brought to you by the Council of People Who Are Sick of Seeing More People.
The PowerPC architecture has been 64-bit from the start. There is no 32-bit to 64-bit transition. Current PowerPC chips already have some 64-bit and some 128-bit portions. The architecture is less than 10 years old, and it started at 32-bits ... the designers knew that they would want 64-bits later. There are 64-bit POWER chips already, and they are all related (they have the same instruction set). This is not like Intel, whose 32-bit chip grew out of a 20 year-old 8-bit chip.
... maybe you're used to seeing the consumer side of Apple and don't realize the kind of resources that their pro desktop users are into. Audio and video means great big files, huge amounts of data ... the platform is ready for 64-bits.
In addition, Mac applications are actually special folders that can contain just about anything a developer likes, including multiple binaries, one for each platform or whatever, so these kinds of transitions can be hidden from the user with a patch at the worst. Apple just rewrote their entire OS over the last five years, so I'm sure the idea of 64-bit computing was on their minds. Steve Jobs is also the CEO of Pixar, and I'm sure the Pixar programmers know how to take advantage of 64-bits
Thanks. I didn't know that.
I almost ran one over once. The fucking thing was probably 150 pounds.
So far, I've run over 2 squirrels and a raccoon.
The squirrels I ran into were both when I was coming home from delivering pizza. I killed them both in one week.
I'm not an animal hater. In fact, I really regret killing those animals, but when you drive as many miles as I do, it's inevitable. That's why I don't like cars.
I've been hit three times now by cars, twice as a driver, and once as a pedestrian. I'm lucky that I was thrown from the accident as a pedestrian or else I wouldn't be alive today.
Did you know that over 43 thousand Americans die a year due to automobiles?
Thanks again for the info. If more people were smart like you, I'd be even smarter than I am already.
Now that IBM and Apple are collaborating on a nice CPU, they should get together and make an OS to go with it. Collaborating together they could make this OS, and call it Maligent! It'll be a big success. Two large tech giants collaborating. How could it fail?
Oooh. I just had some deja vu.
> Clearly you have a short memory. The "emulated"
... they're just too different from modern apps to run natively on a modern system (different event model, different multitasking model). Similarly, "Classic" Intel apps (32-bit x86 architecture) are going to run in a special mode on 64-bit chips because they are just too different from modern ideas about chipmaking. After 20 years, you have to scrap some things, which means you don't get perfect compatibility.
... they've been so future-focused (Mac OS X) that many of their traditional user base are still using three and four year-old machines while they're currently selling to "Switchers" and UNIX people.
> 68k mode of PowerPCs (which were also supposed to be
> waaay faster) weren't because the emulator didn't fit in
> the cache. And for christ sakes, who the hell believes
> what chip companies say about speed anymore?
The very first PowerMacs ran 68K software faster than it had ever been run before. You are completely wrong.
The 32-bit compatibility mode your'e talking about is an Intel thing, to make up for the fact that they've been bolting things onto their chips for 20 years, going from 8-bit to 32-bit currently. PowerPC is younger and benefits from a much more mature industry when it was designed. There are already 64-bit POWER chips, and some parts of the current 32-bit PowerPC are 64-bit and some are 128-bit. The switch to 64-bits was designed into PowerPC.
"Classic" Mac software runs in a partial emulator (some hardware is emulated, but not the CPU) on Mac OS X because Classic Mac apps have a 20 year history
The important thing to remember is that Apple has been on their current CPU for only a little more than five years, and on their current OS for only two years. They are RISC, they are 64-bit, they are UNIX, and they are ready for the future like nobody else. Every Mac sold for the past two years has had a Wi-Fi slot in it and antennaes built-in, as well as FireWire, and also Gigabit Ethernet on all pro machines for the past 18 months or so. The platform is in a great place for the future. In fact, that's the only thing holding Apple back for the past few years
Codex The Sloth is so far off on his Mac knowledge that he is in troll territory. Give us a break. Read something before you post. So many times people who only have experience with x86 make fools of themselves publicly by assuming that the myriad problems of the Intel platform exist on other platforms as well. No, they don't.
Hey dude, join the 21st century!
You're quoting me as having said what the parent said. Non-kosher.
And, BTW, I do use a Mac (I have 4, actually), and it does crash occasionally. Applications like Internet Connect crash every time I use them. 10.2 has locked up on me twice. There are a couple of libraries that crash too, but not since I put 10.2.1 on. Look in you ~Library/Logs folder and see if you have any there. Some crashes aren't reported by the OS. You do have crashreporting turned on in Console.app, right?
It's a dream compared to 10.0, though.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
Most companies would have said: "sorry Motorola - you are out of gas. We just signed with Digital (Alpha) [or IBM or Intel]. Thanks for the memories". Instead Apple force-fed the entire PowerPC thing.
I wonder what their motivation was? And did Apple truely benefit in the long run?
I think that Steve Jobs simply didn't want it that way. He has a lot of control over that, and loves to micromanage (You will use *this* kind of ram in your imac! You will use OSX, not OS9!)
As a follow up to me ealier response, I finaly have the time to sit down and read th earticles you linked. From the first one:
We could move forward powerfully, but to do so, we are going to have to let go of a lot of old ideas that aren't serving us well.
That mean OS X can't support the quadra natively, my iBook can't support OS 3 natively, and when we start moving forward and 32 bit becomes a hinderence, 32 bit will die. Plain and simple. Unlike PC users, mac users don't always hang on to the old. Case in point, until Win2k, windows still relied havily on DOS. That became a hinderance. In the same way, OS 9's legacy code was becoming and hinderance, hence OS X. OS 9 chews up resources, and developers have had a long time to get to X compatability. It's time to move on, and part of that step is not booting into OS X.
The second article had no evidence of developers getting screwed at all, with one exception of a brief foray into the early 1990's of Apple's history which was a dark time.
Same with the third article. None of your references point to devlopers getting screwed with the switch to OS X. I think you're just looking to bash apple, bu tyour really reaching here.
T Money
World Domination with a plastic spoon since 1984
Apple hasn't made a desktop without an RJ-45 Ethernet port for seven years. Likewise, what do the relative volumes of a 1994 6100 and some circa 1998 PII have to do with this guy's point? I think it is pretty obvious he was talking about reasonably recent hardware.
It is cowardly, and a betrayal of whatever it means to be a Jew, to act as a white man
-James Baldwin
It takes 75.8 pounds to crush a processor.. that is a block of aluminum (machined into fins at a 50% fin 50% air ratio) that is 24 inches by 48 inches by about 8 inches tall.
you are really stupid arent you...
please before you make obviousally dumb comments get a clue... I'm betting you're maybe 13 years old and nobody likes you, or you're 18-26 and still live at home with mommy and daddy and rarely go outside, and have never even seen a woman naked in person (OTHER THAN YOUR SISTER OR MOTHER!) let alone touched one.
get a life.... or better yet, go away.
Apple could have cared less what Jobs over at NeXT thought about anything at the time that PowerPC was being laid out.
Also as for Jobs forcing OS X on you -- it's a miracle Apple is even here, peddling a OS all these years that is, from a kernel perspective, the inferior of Windows 95.
Get some knowledge.
blakespot
-- Heisenberg may have slept here.
iPod Hacks.com
Apple designs one of the bridge chips on it's motherboards (I can't recall if it is the North or South). The article also mentions a new bus architechture that Apple is working on specifically for what comes after the G4. So yes, Apple does engineer silicon. That doesn't necessarily mean they could replace Motorola themselves.
Ha ha now it's high time this happened to all those Apple people. The X86 platform has had to put up with a string of idiotic processor names, Pentium, Pentium Pro, Pentium II, P3, P4, etc.
I can see it now : GPUL, GPUL Pro, GPUL2, GPUL3, etc. and you can't pronounce any of them!
In Soviet America the banks rob you!
Apple designs one of the bridge chips on it's motherboards
I realized even as I hit submit that Apple does probably design some of their own chips, just not the CPU. The post above your own asserts that Apple even works on the CPU in conjunction with Motorola (and apparantly IBM). I knew they used to do that, I just thought they didn't any longer (I guess I was wrong). Steve slashed a lot of R&D back when they were bleeding red ink - especially homegrown stuff they could outsource and the really out-there speculative research (the Advanced Technology Group). Of course they didn't totally stop (though they did kill the ATG). Now that they are back in the black I would imagine they are also back to investing heavily in R&D. Hopefully that will even include some of the more speculative stuff the ATG used to do.
Your TV goes to 15!!!? WOW! Mine only went to 11.
nonono,
windows is much more convenient on the international side, ever since win2k.
I'll remind you that OSX doesn't speak arabic or hebrew, or any right to left languages; and apple doesn have any plans to include support!
They are citing lack of market demand, fair enough, whatever. But speaking from experience, windows internationationalisation, even in chinese & japanese, is better.
yours ever, fz.
Here is the future: the dark lord in Redmond is going to create a large unwitting/unwilling installed base of DRM implementations, and there's not a damned thing anyone can do to stop it. Once that installed base exists, then various mass-market media will be made by the "big players" (the ones with all the money, who are able to put asses into seats in theaters worldwide, the ones who can buy slots for radio play) and you can only play it if your computer implements DRM.
Apple, the company that cares enough about multimedia that they got the studios to release movie trailers in their Quicktime format and the exclusively-licensed-to-Apple Sorensen codec, can either be a part of this or not. They can either throw up their hands and say, "Well, you need to be running Windows on x86/Palladium boxes to play that movie trailer" or they can say, "Yes, of course you can play that music "CD Next Generation" media on Macs too."
Do you really have the slightest doubt which way they are going to go?
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
"Pascal at all"? Huh?
pascal OSErr QuitAppleEventHandler( const AppleEvent *appleEvt, AppleEvent* reply, SInt32 refcon );
This is a Carbon callback for OS X.
Big companies making products like Photoshop should have the cache line size as a #define anyway or preferably, autodetect it. I'm assuming the programmers of large pieces of software with a lots of optimized code know what they're doing and have at least partially planned for a change in line size
Smaller outfits won't have as much to do. Let's hope they get started soon.
No, the G4 gets dissed because it is *slow* and because it has run into a brick wall. Except for a few corner cases using Altivec that benefit a small proportion (in the grand scheme of things) of users, the G4 is completely outclassed by P4s, P3s, Athlons and the rest. Yep, you might need a 1.4-1.6GHz P4 to convincingly beat a 1GHz G4 in the general case, but that's rather moot when the current CPUs are over 50% faster than that again, and are still increasing in speed on a regular and fast basis.
My PowerBook G4 has 5-hour battery life [...]
Of course, you neglect to mention that to get that impressive battery life you have to resort to the POS MacOS 9. A PowerBook running OS X is comparable in battery life to a much cheaper PC laptop running Win2k or XP, and the PC laptop will be *much* more responsive to use, if perhaps only about the same speed in benchmarks. And I have an example of both sitting on my desk right now, do don't try and tell me otherwise.
[...] the PowerBook is fast, fast, fast [...]
Funny, the only way I could describe my PB 667 is slow, slow, slow. A similarly priced PC laptop simply blows it away. There is literally no comparison. I have recently discovered a way to make my PB feel fast for an hour or two, however, and that is to sit in front of a Biege G3 running OSX for a day beforehand.
The rest of your rant is similarly rose tinted and ill-informed. It's hardly even worth replying to Mac zealots like you.
Apple have a few great products - OS X is fantastic, despite its bugs and general slowness. The iApps really are killer products in the consumer space. Their laptops look fantastic and have excellent form factors. The LCD iMac is brilliant in terms of physical engineering, as is the G4 tower.
However, their hardware is weofully underpowered. Even the fastest Macs can't run OS X as quickly as a 5 year old PC can run Win2k, and it's *extremely* noticable in doing _basic_ GUI functions like resizing windows, scrolling text and browsing the web. Their CPUs are slow and suffer from signficant bottlenecks in the bus. Their chipsets are average at best. Apple now are in much the same position the (Windows) PC world was ca. 1995. A flashy new OS that, properly setup and running on good hardware with up-to-date software is a quantum leap over that which it is replacing. However, the hardware is behind the curve and simply can't provide the oomph necessary for decent performance. Back then, PCs clearly had somewhere to go and a light at the end of the tunnel. Right now, where Apple is going to get the powerful hardware required to live up to its software ambitions, is somewhat unclear.
eWeek is crap. They're trying to get the crown of top rumor mill away from Think Secret. Unfortunately they have no sources at all, just speculation.
/. picks up every piece of crap they come up with.
But it's apparently selling well because
Doesn't anyone seem to get this?
Providing a Pascal-style ordering for parameters to a system call is not "supporting Pascal," it's just providing backward compatibility to routines which were *written* in Pascal.
If you're a Pascal programmer who is familiar with existing Pascal tools, this is about as much help as doing a "#define BYTE unsigned char"
Idjit.
There never was a sudden transition from Lisa Pascal to C. Pascal was a fully supported language under MPW from 1986(?) until as late as 1997 - by which time it made sense to 'drop Pascal' and standardise on the PowerPC C compiler (Pascal on any platform, let alone Lisa Pascal, was decidedly not in widespread use by that time). There were also many other fully supported non-Apple Pascal environments during the 68K era, including THINK Pascal and TML Pascal.
(BTW, the 68K MPW Pascal compilers still work fine under the latest PowerPC MPW environment.)
you had me at #!
I'll remind you that OSX doesn't speak arabic or hebrew, or any right to left languages; and apple doesn have any plans to include support!
OSX HAS Arabic and Hebrew support. I honestly don't know how their Chinese & Japanese support compares to Wintel but it looks pretty good and is one of the things they are touting as an advantage over wintel.
I didn't use an example of a system call, it was a system callback. I specified that. I used an example from Cabon in OS X to point out that even Apple's own routines were written in pascal so I don't see how you could actually say that they provided "no support".
Very likely. They have their own CPU unit. Just saw some job openings for it on their site a year ago or so.
The Cable provider in our area (was Excite, now is AT&T) apparently used these adapters rather than install cards in customers machines. My next door neighbor had that set up and constantly complained about it.
He is your typical home user and had no need for an ethernet card until broadband access came along. The cable provider probably saved a few $$ in installation time per customer (while losing customer satisfaction - we can't get DSL in our neighborhood and they knew it)
"Form should follow function...unless it's just plain ugly."
The fact they fucked up, doesn't negate the fact they tried to restrict my fair use.
Liberty.
The complaint I've always heard from developers is that PPC could not be targeted under MPW in Pascal, and that they were forced to rewrite their code in C. Of course they could have rewritten their code in Think Pascal, but this still is a porting situation.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
No, the way Apple killed the clones was by denying them ROM licenses. It wasn't the OS -- it was, in fact, proprietary hardware.
May we never see th
Yep. Unfortunately, since Windows (NT) isnt a hobbyist OS like NetBSD or Linux, there has to be business justification for each port. (No fun, I know, but maybe if something like Palladium catches on, maybe MS will be willing to allow source distribution and hobbyist ports).
Intel won the RISC wars overwhelmingly, so the 32-bit RISC ports of NT all died. CE is a different story, but StrongARM is increasingly looking the like it will be the x86 of the embedded market.
The Alpha port of NT probably would have lived (an been upgraded to 64-bit NT) if DEC hadnt run into trouble and been bought out by Compaq. At the end of the day, it just didn't make business sense for Compaq to continue investing in Alpha (versus IA64).
I have yet to see anything from Linux that touches OS X. I started with Slackware (as you could have read in my previous post) and have used RedHat, Gentoo, FreeBSD, Caldera (which was surprisingly good with the exception of updates), and Suse.
...) That would give Linux a fighting chance on the desktop. Until that day, OS X kicks the shit out of XWindows. And I'll take Photoshop, InDesign, Acrobat (full), and Illustrator over the junk that people try to get working with Linux any day. $1000 for Design Studio and greater productivity is worth a lot. So while you're tweaking KDE3 to work the way you want I've got real work to do.
...) and an Ultra SPARC 440MHz IIi. So you keep on developing your "real software" and when you get out of high school give me a yell.
There is no desktop in linux that comes close to Aqua and here is the reason why. There is no standard development API between window managers and there isn't 1 direction but 1000. Try to make anything worth a shit for that. Why do you think all the "Real" applications that need a good UI are missing on Linux? Because it's a piece of shit. The killer app for Linux is a whole new implementation of XWindows. If a company can do that and have backing from the biggies (Adobe, Macromedia, Sun,
Oh and by the way dipshit my applications are server side apps running on Apache/Tomcat on top of RedHat Linux. My arguement isnt that Mac is great and Linux sucks, it's Linux on the Desktop sucks. However, there is no better OS for servers in my opinion than Linux, although OS X Server is gaining ground quickly and has a great UI (again).
One more thing AC, I've got 3 Macs (180/333/733) 8 PCs (P4-2.4GHz, AlthlonXP 1700, Dual P3-933, Celeron 1.2GHz, P3-450, P3-1.13GHz,
Again, you're providing an example of a Pascal-compatible *interface.* These are old interfaces they had to include to be "universal" pre-OS X. Great help if you have a third-party Pascal compiler for OS 9 or earlier.
Apple hasn't updated their MPW Pascal compiler since 1995. They don't use it, it won't even generate PPC code. GCC doesn't do Pascal. Apple doesn't support Pascal, period. Pascal is DEAD at Apple.
If you program in Pascal, Apple provides no current docs, no support and no tools. So in nutshell, you are just full of shit.
</flame>
You're quite right, of course. My post failed to address the issue of the lack of a PowerPC Pascal compiler in MPW circa 1993. (In Apple's defence, by then, there must have been relatively few serious projects using Pascal. The big boys - e.g. Quark, Adobe - were using THINK or MPW C a long time before this.)
I was mainly clarifying that there was no sudden shift from Lisa Pascal to C - Lisa Pascal was obsoleted by MPW, and MPW Pascal was obsoleted by PowerPC, only much later.
(THINK/Lightspeed Pascal was 68K only, IIRC.)
The history of C compilers on the Mac is even more complicated - I remember using Whitesmiths C (integrated with the Apple Editor/Assembler in about 1986), Aztec C, Lightspeed (then THINK) C, gcc 1.37 under MPW, MPW C/PPCC, then MPW SC/MrC, now gcc/Darwin... etc. And I've left some out I think.
you had me at #!
Only 11? Better buy a new one then!
OS 9 version of Outlook 2001 does work in 10.2.
(-1, Raw and Uncut is the only way to read)
I'm not so sure.
Lars T.
To the guy who modded me down from perfect to terrible Karma - Apple haters still suck