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IBM to Release 64-Bit, 1.8GHz Processor in 2003
Professor_Quail writes "A Forbes article supposed to be released tomorrow gives some details about the new PowerPC processor that IBM and Apple have been working together on; the chip is slated to be introduced at the end of next year. The introduction of this chip should put to rest any speculation that Apple is moving to an Intel platform."
All it really says is that they plan to go into production of the 64 bit chips toward the second half of next year. "Industry" experts say that it would be used in the Mac. This is certainly a far cry from Jobs saying it - if anything, I think it makes the race between the two competing chip manufacturers all the more interesting. Apple, I should think, will select the company which will allow it to compete most effectively in the marketplace - not the first one who says in a press release that they plan to release bigger, faster, more powerful chips sometime next year..
But that's a big *IF* . But it would be cool to have another option out there.
I'm sure they'll spin the 64-bit thing as being 'better' just like they've convinced their loyal followers that the mhz-myth makes an 800mhz G4 perform like a 2+ Mhz Athlon or Intel processor. By the time they even finish developing this 1.8ghz chip, those of us using 32bit chips will be chuggling along at 4ghz or so and waiting for the 5ghz on the horizon.
C'mon ... Mac OS/X for x86 doesn't really have much to do with Intel, but with Microsoft. A Mac OS/X running on Intel hardware is nothing but Microsoft's worst nightmare in terms of what it can do to its market. So it's just a trumpcard in negotiations with Microsoft (i.e. "If you stop Office/Mac, we drop the atomi^M^M^M^M^M Mac OS/X for x86").
The Raven
The Raven
How can a Mac possibly have a lower TCO for the home user? First things first, they cost twice as much as a comperable PC. Second, if the logic board or one of the other pieces of proprietary hardware breaks you have to replace it with Apple parts from an Apple authorized vendor, and that will cost a fortune. I cannot possibly see how an Apple can end up with a lower TCO than a PC. I'm very curious. Please explain the logic behind that statement to me.
Can you give us an example of any car that is faster then a car with an engine where the peak RPM is more then 2.2 times as high?
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
I'd rather have a Power4 (which is available now of course) than wait a year for a crappy stripped Power4.
-Kevin
For Apple, I'd say large image processing, and video editing.
The key is going to be HUGE memory support when Apple comes out with it, 16Gb or more.
It's the efficiency of the processor that matters, which is measured in IPC, the "instructions per cycle" that it can execute.
Be careful. Some architectures require more instructions to do the same thing. For instance, on 6502 or x86, you can load an integer from memory and add it to a register in one instruction, whereas on ppc, arm, or mips, this takes two.
Will I retire or break 10K?
"Further proof that OS-X is NOT an unix OS is the fact that you can't backup HFS+ files using standard GNU tar."
/etc/fstab and so forth."
GNU is not UNIX.
"Also, OS-X doesn't include simple items such as
fstab does not a UNIX make. Besides, fstab is there and useable if you want. NetInfo is used as first choice only.
OSX is as much a UNIX as Linux is, if you wish to be pedantic. Both use GNU/BSD tools on top of a kernel.
Why bother bickering over which is the most UNIX-like or UNIX-based? This isn't a pissing contest.
-- Jared Earle | "There is no spork"
Well, let's see, pay more and it works or pay less and babysit it ... gee, what's my time worth again? More than about $3,000 once every five years or so, for sure. (Yes, I said five years. I'm on a three-year-old machine now any my previous two Macs held up for five years each before they were just plain obsolete.)
Isn't this the same reason most of us are moving away from Sun to begin with?
No, it's because they cost $40k each just for the right to win the pissing contest with the ISP next door. EVERY situation I've seen a large Sun used it could have been handled with Linux on a couple of Xeons or on an Xserve and MOSXS. There's no compelling reason to use a Sun anymore other than to win the pissing contest with the sysadmins of the competitor (what competitors are left, at least).
Most of that burden will be handled by the compiler. A few developers will need to be concerned, but not the majority. Apple maintains a version of gcc, and I am certain if there is any truth to this rumor, that they are also working with Metrowerks to make sure their compilers will support the new chip (which raises all sorts of interesting prospects, since Motorola owns Metrowerks).
There ain't no rules here; we're trying to accomplish something.
First things first, they cost twice as much as a comperable PC.
;-)
Yes, but you only have to buy them half as often.
And, incidentally, no they don't. You can find cheaper PCs, but most often a prebuilt system with the same features as the Mac-- like a widescreen LCD, or a Superdrive, or Gigabit Ethernet, whatever-- will be within 15% of the Mac's price.
Second, if the logic board or one of the other pieces of proprietary hardware breaks....
Speaking as a long-time Mac owner... doesn't happen. I have seen a couple of systems fail while under warranty, but those of course get repaired for free. If you're really worried about it, buy a five-year AppleCare plan. By the time your warranty runs out, you'll be ready to buy a new computer.
Please explain the logic behind that statement to me.
In order to fully understand the math, you have to assign a dollar value to your time. I find that about $250 an hour is a good number for me during the week; since I value my weekends more, I arbitrarily assign a value of $500 an hour to Saturdays and Sundays. Since Macs require essentially no farting around to make them work or keep them working, while PCs-- no matter what OS they run-- require considerable set-up and maintenance time, the Mac comes out as a big winner.
I write in my journal
They're jealous and insecure. They've spent ten years breathlessly screaming that Macs are toys and it's not an operating system if it doesn't have a CLI, then when Apple releases the coolest UNIX on the block, they don't know what to do with themselves.
Amusingly, these are many of the same people who used to spend hours trying to make their Linux installs look like NEXTSTEP. Now that NEXTSTEP is back in a kickass operating system, it's not UNIX anymore.
Sad, really.
There should be a moratorium on the use of the apostrophe.
Max V.
NeXTMail/MIME Mail welcome
"This "megahertz myth" crap was around when I had a 33 MHz 68040 Performa 640, and my 486/DX2 66 blew the shit out of it.
"... "I wish you Mac people would quit making a bunch of shit up instead of talking about the strong points of the Mac like you should be."
Heh. It's a funny thing, really. It's even more complex than the IPC/MHZ debate.
At home I had a 486 33 mhz with 8 meg of RAM. At school I had access to a Mac that was running at 75mhz with 16 meg of RAM. In theory, that thing should have mopped the floor with my 486, right?
Nope.
I was far more productive on my 486. I think I was running Windows 3.1 (it might have been 95, but I'm not 100% sure of that) with PhotoStyler. The Mac was running whatever OS was popular at the time and Photoshop. It took like half an hour to print to the printer on that thing. At home, I'd hit print and moments later it was going.
So wtf, why was the Mac so slow compared to my piddly 486? Well, I'm not 100% certain, but I think it had to do with the apps more than the hardware. Whatever OS I was running, the Mac OS was significantly more sophisticated. Photoshop was multi-layered, vs. Photostyler was more like "Paint and forget about undoing it". On top of that, I think one of the students overloaded the Mac with Fonts. (sadly, Apple had the philosophy of "we'll load everything at once instead of only loading what we need right now".) My PC was tuned specifically for what I wanted to do, and it ran circles around the Mac. I definitely did not have a very high opinion of Mac back then.
Today, Mac OSX is a little processor heavy with its UI. A friend of mine bought one of their notebooks about a year ago. It was pretty and all, but it got a little lagged while drawing the fancy flashy stuff on the bottom. I have no idea what that does to overall system performance, but it makes me wonder if it'd eat into rendering times in Lightwave, for example. Maybe it's all FUD, I dunno.
Frankly, I don't give a rat's ass how many IPCs it does or how fast it is. I want benchmarks. I'm sure that processors can have all kinds of advantages and disadvantages to each other, but real world conditions always change everything. In the case of the Mac and 486 I mentioned earlier, technical superiority meant nothing. Whatever speed advantage the Mac had was lost with the apps it was running.
"Derp de derp."
I remember this same discussion about 32bit processors. What's important is once it is in production, we can start developing applications that take advantage of it. Remember the run on Memory in 1995 when Windows 95 hit the shelf. Everyone had to go and upgrade their 486's and Pentium's so that they had 4-8Mb ram... now look at us, a machine with less than 128Mb what a joke. (I run 1Gb myself (yes I have dual processors too)) Having a couple of Gig of RAM is not that far off, and software that can take advantage of it isn't either.
AF-Design, web development.