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Intel's Itanium Will Get x86 Emulation
pissoncutler writes "Intel has announced that they will be releasing a software emulation product to allow 32-bit x86 apps to run on Itanium Processors.
According to these stories (story 1, story 2), the emulator is capable of the x86 performance of a 1.5Ghz Xeon (when run on a similar speed Itanium.) Who said that no one cared about x86 anymore?"
If Apple starts producing AMD based systems, which I doubt will happen, don't expect an open architecture. You can bet that there will be proprietary elements to the platform and OS/X won't run on commodity x86 hardware.
Am I missing something? After extensive discussions/explanations on Slashdot and all of the Mac sites, why do some people still think MacOS will ever be released for the x86 platform?
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These same thoughts wandered through my mind and then out again, simply because apple have Been There Done That over and over before. there were PC compatibility cards for Pluses, for the Mac II, for the Quadras, and for PCI PPC macs... none of which were particularly succesful
Then again the fact they've done it so many times before could mean they're likely to bash their head against this particular wall one more time
I like it, I want it, where can I buy it? And can I get it as a PCMCIA card for my TiBook? Would that work??
Wild speculation or not, it's fun to think about.
A programmer is a machine for converting coffee into code.
Me and a few friends have long held the belief that Apple releasing OS/X for the x86 platform would KILL Apple. Unlike Microsoft, Apple's 'coin' is their hardware platform, rather than software. The software is just there to sell the hardware. If they released OS/X for x86, then their hardware sales would plummet.
:) But... that's still 'talks', isn't it? :)
Yes, they could make some money off selling OS/X. However, they would then have to become MUCH more interested in ensuring their software is not being pirated, and that means some kind of DRM. A lot of folk love Apple because of their anti-DRM stance, and a lot of that love would disappeaer if Apple went down this route. As it is, Apple don't seem THAT concerned about piracy of their software, instead relying on those that want to 'do the Right Thing' with Apple, which is a fair percentage of their user base.
Instead, this is my theory on the Apple/AMD relationship, if there is one.
- It would be STUPID of Apple to rely on a single-source for their new processors, so, who better than to ask as a 'second source' than AMD? Yes, I'm sure Apple/IBM will get a leetle percentage out of all the chips that AMD make, but I'd bet my dollars that's what's going on.
Of course, the other possiblity is that AMD HAD talks with Apple, and they consisted of "Hey, lets go do lunch." "No."
Why do we have to have a story about "MacOS on x86" every few months on Slashdot?!
-psy
...because Apple would be like Microsoft if they had the marketshare. In fact, worse: try doing anything to Apple hardware or software (excluding the open kernel) and see count the hours until the C&D nastygram.
So Apple says this is the year of the laptop, right? If I'm not mistaken, AMD chips run hotter than just about anything out there. So who wants a laptop with 15 minutes of laptop life and the capability of burning your wang to a small, blackened stump of carbon (or for the ladies a sizzling fajita)?
Besides, are they or any of the Mac software vendors going to support two versions of their Mac products? No.
Yup, that's right. Keep perpetuating the myth. Have you looked at the Apple Store lately? iBooks are <$1K ... compare to a Dell or similar notebook and you'll find that Apple matches or beats their pricing.
... as are the Dell, Compaq, HP, IBM and Gateway machines.
True - the desktops are still somewhat pricey. $1000 more? No. Not if we're talking iMacs, and if you're comparing them to a machine purchased from a major manufacturer like Dell or Compaq - If you're talking beige-boxes, well then yes. Apple computers are $1000 more than a beige box
But keep in mind, Apple is really focusing on the portable market segment this year, so that's where most of the value is going to be.
Does nobody remember that both AMD and Apple sit on the consortium for Hypertransport? If you look at Apples current lagging hardware specs you'll see a need for two things. A faster Bus and a faster CPU.
AMD == Hypertransport && IBM == P970
Define "lucky". You mean, not only having to find Mac software, but now having to find software for your particular Mac platform? appleppc.slashdot.org along with appleamd.slashdot.org? Developers throwing up their hands in disgust and walking away when confronted with a platform redesign two years after the last one? Sounds lucky to me.
Seriously, give whatever Jobs has up his sleeve a chance. If he wants a decent PowerPC chip, he'll get one.
Not everyone wants to roll up their sleeves and start coding just to use "desktop" software. There *are* people out there who just need to write documents/work on spreadsheets/balance their checkbook, and not all of them share the Open Source agenda: do you really think they all ought to participate in Open Source, instead of just switching to some OS they feel suits them better ?
Apple has heavily optimized OS X and the so-called iLife apps (iTunes, iPhoto, etc.) for AltiVec, the special vector instruction set that the G4 has. That's why OS X runs much more nicely on G4's (which have AltiVec) than on G3's (which don't). The reason all the buzz started about Apple migrating new Macs to the 64-bit IBM chips in the first place was that IBM introduced AltiVec workalike instructions for their new chips, so Apple could move up without sacrificing the AltiVec optimizations. Moving to x86-ish hardware would mean that they'd lose all the AltiVec optimizations they've made, so it seems unlikely to me.
If we do, I think it would probably be only for a brief transition period, like when they switched from the 68K line of processors to PPC. But who knows. I really hope they don't switch to AMD, that would make people less inclined to write software that is still compatible with the PPC architecture I own (assuming they don't make binaries compatible with both... i don't think they can, can they?).
This is the biggest reason I've doubted the Apple/Opteron rumors from the start. When Apple switched from 68k to PPC they chose a processor that was capable of emulating the old platform at full speed to ensure a seamless transition from the user perspective. I doubt Apple would be interested in anything but a seamless transition this time as well. Opteron, however, doesn't have enough registers (among other problems) to do a good job at emulation the PPC architecture. I would guess that there would have to be AMD chips that are 10x faster than PPC chips (they're getting there, but PPC isn't that far behind yet) or Apple would not be satisfied with the PPC emulation experience. I would believe the use of Itanium more that the use of Opteron, just because Itanium is much better suited to PPC emulation. Unfortunatly a single Itanium CPU costs more than most complete Apple systems right now, so that's probably unrealistic as well.
As for all the people that say the 970 is vaporware because of the lack of hype, well there's always been much less hype from IBM and Motorola about their new CPUs than from Intel, AMD, and (formerly) Digital (remember the old Digital Alpha CPU ads back in the late 80s/early 90s? "We're on our third generation 64bit architecture. Our compitition hasn't even started designing their first." It was the first CPU specific TV ad I remember seeing. Classic). IBM markets to manufacturers, not to end users, so unless you're a developer you don't see the hype. IBM and Apple are well suited for each other because IBM has a history of licensing portions of their CPU cores and using them to put together custom processors for the customers. Apple would love to have that kind of control, and they won't get it anywhere else.
Come on, don't hide behind "not ready yet". Just spit it out: "I don't like the Linux desktops". Now, that wasn't too hard, was it?
That's fine, I don't like the OS X or Windows desktops either. That's why they make so many different kinds. But let's not pretend that there is a single desktop that is oh-so-much-better for everybody than any of the others.
Your statement makes about as much sense as saying that "vanilla ice cream isn't ready yet for the kids of America, but strawberry, which is clearly so much better, is too expensive".
For Apple to run OS X (or it's descendants) on Apple branded computers, they would have to create serious confusion and frustration among Apple users. Apple users don't want to think about "what processor version installer should I run." Sure there are so-called fat binaries that include binary code for multiple platforms, just as Apple used when transitioning between Motorola 680x0 (aka 68K) processors and PowerPC processors. However, that was a one way transition. People knew that PPC was the future or all Apple as well as an upgrade. PowerPC processors could run 680x0 code through emulation quite well with no user intervention. With a transition to x86, however, Apple would have a huge problem with backwards compatability for existing applications. PowerPC emulators are in the works for x86 (actually, at least one will work on most modern architectures), but believe me, they are not an acceptable solution for production use - especially among most Mac users.
Using two simultaneous platforms is a big problem for sales and developer relations. Which is better? Why even bother with the other platform then? Or, why is the new platform so much better yet it has little available software? Why bother porting to the second platform when sales are sluggish on that platform? Then existing customers get angry. Why is my platform being abandonned? New customers feel the same if the gamble doesn't pay off and gets killed. The only partial exception is if one platform does not substitute for the other, say appliances vs. desktops and servers. Think Sun's purchase of Cobalt.
linux desktops have had "a lot of promise" for the last decade.
It's always been a case of "just wait, the next release will solve everything!". Zealots chant it as their mantra.
It's not going to happen. FOSS, by it's very nature, will never produce anything more than a patchwork clone of other desktops.
There's no technical reason that a desktop as slick as OS/X couldn't be built on top of linux the way OS/X is on top of BSD, but that kind of effort requires management and discipline. Only a corporate effort can pull that off.
In the OSS world, if you dont like the way a projects going, you go ahead in your own direction. And that's fine, after all, its unpaid hobbyists doing the work.
But in a corporate environment all the coders have to be thickskinned when their nifty super-duper new subsystem proposal gets nixed, and buckle down and get the job done. If linux desktop was a corporate project, there would be no KDE vs Gnome vs Enlightenment vs blah vs blah discussions. There would be one project.
Short of some for-profit coming in and getting it done (which I think may eventually be the case), I just cant see it happening.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
A common claim. Unfortunately it's wrong. Athlon XP doesn't really run any hotter than Pentium 4 does for example. In fact, you coulöd say that XP runs cooler than P4 does.
For facts on this issue, go here:
http://www.aceshardware.com/read.jsp?id=5000036
Lesbian Nazi Hookers Abducted by UFOs and Forced Into Weight Loss Programs - -all next week on Town Talk.
sorry but apple is a hardware company not a software one. If you check there income you'll see they make very little on there OS and ilife products. If Apple came out with a new computer using an AMD chip they would be hurt drastically by those building there own apple computers instead of spending the premium in the apple store. The ibm 970 will happen, AMD might be involved but only with helping Apple on hyperthreading i think...
this means that apple must do something drastic and something soon. but what are the alternatives?
What are you talking about? Didn't you at least read the post? Aren't you a little curious about the PPC970 and what kind of performance to expect? Why would you even write a three-paragraph post on a subject you have no clue about? I hope you're just trolling.
if MS can port windows to handhelds, why can't Apple do it?
Apple did it before anyone. Ever hear of the Newton?
If Macs could suddenly run Windows applications (without something like VPC), why would anyone write anything except Windows apps? The big companies that now target both platforms could just drop their Mac software and tell Mac users to buy the Windows version. Companies that now specialize in the Mac market could start making Windows apps and sell to both platforms. Apple would totally lose control of the integration that has made the Mac experience what it is today. I just can't see any other reasonable result of what the poster suggests.
In short, NO.
Firstly, as everyone knows, Apple makes money off one thing, and one thing only - HARDWARE. They make great software only to sell their hardware.
The benefits of controlling the hardware are
- A better user experience
- Lower tech support costs
- Better quality control
- Specialized/customized designs with an eye toward aesthetics
They CANNOT allow others to create hardware upon which their software will run. This means that they have to use a special BIOS, and manufacture their own boards. IF they switch to an OS that can be run on an x86 processor (and custom mothboard/bios/etc), you will find, the very next day, a crack for the software which will allow it to run on any generic motherboard, and further down the line a BIOS image which will allow an unmodified software to run on a non-custom motherboard.Right now they can control it because a 'commodity' PPC motherboard costs more than the same apple motherboard. It would surprise me if Apple wasn't applying some pressure to various suppliers to prevent the widespread availability of commodity PPC equipment which is very similar to Apple's own. This is common in the industry. Furthermore, they may even have a slightly altered/customized version of the various PPC chips they use.
The only way for Apple to play against WINTEL is to not compete - not competing means selling essentially different products. Apple would die if they had to sell their OS and try to make a profit at it - the company is simply not designed to compete against MS. (Although if they did Windows would improve dramatically)
Put another way, Apple is a whole user experience company. They don't want the user to go to a generic theatre, sit in seats made by some strange company, eat food purchased from GFS, and watch a movie made by three different movie studios. They want you in their theater, their seats eating their food, and watching their entirely controlled movie.
This is good for those who only want to deal with one company, and are willing to pay for it. They know their market. They may be trying to expand it a little towards the geek segment that play with software but don't care about hardware (we run unix!). It is unlikely that they will ever capture the imagination of the hardware geek, they know it, and they aren't courting us.
So stop posting freaking stories about OS X on any commodity hardware, ok?
-Adam
Could someone please explain to me why there is such a "need" to have Mac OS X on an x86 processor? Why is it a good thing to run on a processer with 4 registers (8 if you use the address registers for non address calculations) and an outdated asm languages when 32 registers and risc is just so much fun? Their are a lot of different processors out there and I really don't think x86 is the best in the world. Why would anyone what to run any code on anything made by intel. I'm not trying to start a flame here, I just want to know why so many people want x86 over anything else (mips, sparc, hp-risc, power-pc).
Actually I think there is a very good reason for Microsoft to buy VPC that has nothing to do with Apple. Intel has indicated they are switching focus over to the Itanium line, and over the next 5+ years the limits of the x86 platform are going to become more troublesome (things like 64 gig limit of addressable memory...).
The Itanium's x86 emulation is only so-so. VPC makes a product which allows an entirely alien architecture to run x86 apps almost perfectly providing you have an x86 OS. It would be possible for the VPC guys to take their PPC code and recreate it for Itanium to create the same level of compatability for Itanium architectures. That would be functionality that Microsoft would want to offer their customer base.
Except that all G3s used by Apple are made by IBM.
I am a believer of momentum and curves.
The PowerPC isn't a proprietary processor. If you'd like to design a motherboard that uses it, go ahead. No one's stopping you (unless it infringes on an Apple design, that is). The hard part would be selling it...
Apple will not destroy its PPC customer- and developer-bases by tossing them aside after all the time, money, and effort expended on Mac OS X. Apple will adopt the PPC 970, take Motorola out of the CPU development loop, and provide Mac OS X for a tightly proscribed x86 configuration (including its own branded boxes--almost everything but the CPU in a Mac is now commodity parts, so that perceived barrier is long gone).
Steve Jobs is a patient man when it comes to the world-at-large. He knows that Apple probably won't ever replace Microsoft as the dominant player in the x86 market, but he also knows that this is probably the perfect time to give them some competition. Microsoft faces a number of challenges to its dominance: its attitude toward DRM, its "trusted computing" initiative, the quiet debacle it's weathering vis-a-vis virtual weekly security updates to XP and other critical software, the growing popularity of open source software, its enterprise licensing scheme, and the increased scrutiny it's under after losing the anti-trust case (like IBM before it, the loss itself will prove more damaging than the punishment).
Apple will continue to produce Mac OS X for PPC. The x86 version would be--in the beginning--a loss-leader. It would get noses into the tent from every market segment. That interest would fuel developer interest (notice how quickly the "there's no software for the Mac" discussion abated in the flood of Open Source offerings it now enjoys).
Once that interest is cultivated, Apple has a whole slew of products/ideas "on the shelf" that would benefit from this renewed interest. There's an advantage to being ahead of your time if you survive long enough.
I think very few people are anxious for Apple to jump ahead of the game. Contrary to what the /. crowd makes the tech marketplace look like, very few people want plexiglass windows, neon green alien decals, hard drive cables that glow under blacklights, the latest 7ghz processor and a $400 video card.
/.)
I think everyone(*) wants their computer to be able to take care of what they want it to, and everyone(**) is probably pretty happy with where Apple's hardware is right now, because everyone(***) knows how much more efficient they are on those computers.
(* everyone except the vocal minority of computer users represented on
(** everyone who isn't in college living off Mom and Dad's money so they've got cash to burn on the latest and greatest hardware)
(*** everyone who's actually used a modern Mac day-to-day, and just smiles knowingly when they see stories talking about how Macs are overpriced, underpowered, or destined to fail when Linux wins the desktop on Slashdot)
One thing you're forgetting is the NeXT basically failed. They were nearly irrelevant.
Remember that the feasibility of something is quite apart from the practicality and advisability of following that course.
I have to comment on this:
"For those of us wanting to get away from Windows, but feel Linux is still not ready for the desktop yet, this might make Apple a more viable alternative."
You have to be kidding me, Linux(and FreeBSD) are ready, and are being used for the desktop! I am irate!
Blasphemer!
The only thing that Linux needs to improve on is games, and that is not important.
GET A FREAKING CONSOLE!
Who writes these posts anyway?
Exactly. A year ago it might have made sense for Apple to switch to x86, but with the impending 970 release it would be silly. It would substantially reduce the currently huge demand for the 970, as buyers would fear the machines being obsoleted if Apple abandoned the PowerPC entirely. But HyperTransport is win-win for everybody (well, not MS and Intel, darn).
How to solve most of our problems: 1.Lots of nuclear plants. 2.Cure aging.
Except, that it was bought by Apple and essentially took it over. MacOS X is OPENSTEP with a different GUI.
I know. The point I was making was that just because you can it doesn't mean you should.
Where would Apple place Opterons on their marketing? Would they market to the high-end desktop crowd? If they did, would the makers of high-end software actually create two versions of their code, one optimized for each platform (Opteron might be fast but it won't have Altivec)? Even assuming that development for the two environments would simply be a checkbox away ("Compile for PPC or Opteron?") Apple would basically be either killing PPC or dooming Opteron to failure. Software companies would probably pick one system to optimize for and ignore the other (heck, many don't even optimize for Altivec now).
And with all this risk, what exactly would the reward be? What is the prize? Avoiding some future that may never come where IBM doesn't produce a fast enough PPC chip? Not worth it. Why kill the company over a pipe-nightmare?
Exactly. At least with the Dells et al. you have an alternative where you can be in the same league. People keep going on about how much you get for your money with a mac. I don't dispute that. I also don't want half that crap.
If I just want an x86, to run linux, I have to spend about $300.
If I want anything that will run OSX, it's going to cost me at least $1000. I don't have that kind of money. And if I did, I could sure as hell think of something better to spend it on than computer hardware.
Yes you can make the same Ferrari argument as everyone always does, but I wish people would stop preaching at me to use OSX.
Do you go around saying Ferraris aren't expensive?
Do you go up to an econobox driver and start preaching that they should get a Ferrari?
I don't care about value, I care about price.
Malike Bamiyi wanted my assistance.
Classic has no value to most OSX users
Yeah, except those OS X users who use QuarkXPress or need to connect to an Exchange server for mail and calendaring (so no, turning on IMAP or POP/SMTP and using Mail.app wouldn't cut the mustard). Almost all of my clients are now in this category. I could not in good conscience let my clients pay the ripoff prices Apple is charging for their G4s that still boot into OS 9, so they got X-only G4s and I thought Classic would work well enough for them to tide them over-- it's only two apps, right? Wrong! They not only crash with amazing frequency, they often can bring down the whole Classic environment in the background, without the Mac even telling me-- I don't notice until I want to switch back to do something in one of them, and notice the "active app" triangle under the dock icon is gone.
I always thought Quark were a bunch of customer-hostile dicks, but lately the amount of grief I've had to endure because their fucking app still isn't OS X-native has changed my opinion: Now I think they're bunch of customer-hostile dicks who need to die, as slowly and painfully as possible. And Microsoft, while the state of their Mac apps has improved dramatically in recent years, deserve to eat shit over not starting an X-native Exchange client for so long. People were clamoring for it since 10.0 was released, for Christ's sake. It was probably a strategic decision, to keep OS X from gaining a foothold in businesses for a while.
I have a better reason: AMD can fab those CPUS easily and IBM has better things to do than fab chips for Macs. Apple needs to make sure it doesn't have to stop the assembly line for IBM to fab more CPUs. My guess is that Apple will have AMD produce IBM 970 chips alongside IBM. IBM probably doesn't want to be the first in line for Macintosh CPUs, there's not enough money in it for a multi-faceted operation like IBM. AMD can produce ample chips and they might be able to make a profit doing it
I think you have this backwards. AMD just recently signed up to use IBM's new manufacturing plant to increase production yield on chips and allow for higher process manufacturing (.09 micron.) IBM wouldn't be disrupting anything to "just" manufacture chips for Apple. Since AMD will be booming in the embedded business when/if HyperTransport takes off, they'll need the extra manufacturing space to produce their chipsets.
You're also overlooking a very obvious clue to the PowerPC 970 being the chip of choice for Apple: the fact that IBM has included an AltiVec engine (and by that name, too.) IBM has stated before and stated again that they will not be using AltiVec, that it's simply there for 2nd and 3rd party vendors to take advantage of.
Can you name one practical vendor that utilizes AltiVec other than Apple? I highly doubt IBM is catering to Amiga.
The whole thing about Apple being in talks with AMD is more plausible if it's put in terms of HyperTransport chipsets and software compatability, and not switching their entire platform over to AMD64. As noted before, IBM and Apple are both on the HyperTransport consortium, it's only reasonable that they need to talk to each other now and again regarding HyperTransport issues. If you see on The Register or some other place about Apple being a purchaser for chips from AMD, please keep in mind that it's most likely HyperTransport chipsets and not Opterons.
Okay, regardless of whether or not Apple ever designs X86 computers, if they did it wouldn't lower their profits. Why? They can still charge more their computers if the OS only runs on their version of x86 hardware! If it runs faster, the Mac faithful will be pleased. Sure someone is likely to hack it to work on a white box PC, but as far as average end users are concerned, it is not a big issue and any piracy issues would be easily offset by the number of new people buying slightly cheaper Windows compatible Macs. (Heck, I might even consider it.)
I also suspect that OSX (if written properly for a small set of sound/video cards) would be faster than Windows on the same machine. Even if it isn't, people crave the Mac experience. Mac users have never minded paying more. They don't even care that Macs are the slowest on the block right now. It's about the user experience folks. Plain and simple.
Niche marketing can be counter-intuitive, but it's also the classic question of whether you want to be a big fish in a little pond, or a little fish in a big pond. Apple chose the former, exerts great influence in its chosen market, and makes a profit in probably some of the worst years ever in the industry.
There are far worse business models, and technically it's nearly impossible to provide the kind of hardware-software integration that Apple currently sells without controlling the hardware. It's not so much they like being a hardware and software company as that they can only distinguish themselves in the market by also selling hardware.
Let's examine your business plan, where:
Apple could make a very nice transition to Opteron/Athlon64. [...] I also feel Apple should stick with PPC on the notebook side.
which in effect nearly triples the development effort for a Mac software vendor. First, you need to build and test an Athlon version (which is not going to be compatible with the Windows version), build and test a PPC version, and then test the PPC emulation version. Thereby making Apple's already small marketshare even more fragmented, when the obvious sensible thing to do is to get a new high end PPC CPU, drop the G3, and improve G4 compiler optimizations.
If PPC 980 (or whatever) turns out to be a big win over Opteron2, it's not that big of a deal to switch back.
That would be plainly insane. Apple's third party software vendors tend to be smaller, and would have a very hard time hopping from platform to platform. Even some big ones have not completed the OS X transition, and you're talking about going to x86 and back?
What I personally would like to see out of this is Apple releasing their own BSD distro.
And what, exactly, would Apple gain by doing that?
Pretty much OSX without the ability to run Mac apps. I'd buy!
Ok, so there would be one customer. Unless you're willing to spend about $50M for your copy, it's really not a good prospect for Apple to release a BSD with X windows on intel.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
I think Cocoa programmers must be masochists, or perhaps Apple are sadists.
Spoken like someone who has absolutely no idea what he's talking about.
If you can't make the shift to OO concepts in programming, then yes: Cocoa's not going to be any fun for you. For those of us who don't like doing the same work over and over again for each app we write, Cocoa is a godsend.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
I don't think you are entirely correct. First of all, IBM manufactures the G3 as far as I know. Secondly rumour has it that the G3 can go much much faster than it currently does. Apple does not buy faster G3's from IBM because it would look rather silly if your G3 had a higher clock-rate than your G4. (This is ignoring of course that the G4 has that altivec unit which means that it would still beat a faster G3 on altivec optimized apps. But your average consumer probably does not understand these things.) Advantage of getting everything from IBM? You keep your G3 line going, but ramp up the speed considerably. The G3 goes into low end laptops. You drop Motorola completely and put a powered down version of the 970 into your high end laptops. (Rumour again is that at 1.4 GHz the 970 consumes energy at the same rate as the current G4's). The downside? As you correctly observed, Apple then has all its eggs in one (IBM) basket. But the situation does not seem to be as bleak as you make out.
The problem with your plans is market share. Software makers already claim they can't find the financial profitability in porting their software to Mac becuase of such a small audiience.
If Apple splits its market in to two incompatible processor technologies, it would be even LESS likely that new software would be ported, and it would have to be ported twice. That means twice as many SKUs, twice the inventory and shipping problems, twice the testing issues, all for what? Perhaps 20% grater market share?
Article X: The powers not delegated... by the Constitution...are reserved...to the people
I was under the impression that fat binaries worked by having specific code for all supported architectures, not by being very high level, and thus could be as optimized as the programmers cared to make it.
Nicotine free Amish .sig.
It's a very nasty situation when an OS has two different processors (and two different sets of binaries).
Linux, the cousin of BSD (the parent of OS X) runs on many processors, as do many of the other *nix varients. It would be much easier to run a *nix based OS on multiple platforms than Windows, because it already runs on other platforms, and was designed to from the very beginning. Berkeley designed 4BSD to do exactly this. Windows' support of other CPUs, is a less sucessful story.
Even though the one article focuses on 4 to 8 way desktops, the server market would be the likely first target: You can get more per unit out of the gate, and less application support is need to get them in the field. Put a 4 to 8 way box, with 16 to 64 gigs of ram, and you have a great web server. It might take longer to get all the multimedia and other desktop niceties up to snuff, but I would bet that support for apache, bind, sql, and other OSS services would come fast, since OSS can potentially develop faster when properly motivated.
Since the 970s are designed specifically for SMP and to be reasonably priced, and the server market is not sold purely by the gigahertz rating, but rather by real world performance, AND it being produced by IBM who is very likely to support Linux and *nix in general on this CPU, these could get popular fast.
I wouldn't want to own any SUN stock when it comes out.
Tequila: It's not just for breakfast anymore!
There are several big differences though.
1. Most people using Unix on non-i386 platforms (or just Linux at all), are far more advanced than your average Windows/Mac users.
2. Most applications used on Unix are open source... That means the CPU hardly matters at all.
For Windows/Mac OS X, most software is binary-only, and companies are going to decide that it's not worth the effort of supporting processor X, when it only has a fraction of the users. So, which ever gains popularity will be the defacto only system to use, and users of the other will be out of luck.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
A 1.8 GHz Opteron or a 3 GHz P4 consumes about 80 W, compared to 40 W of a 1.8 GHz PPC 970.
More importantly, a 1.2 GHz PPC 970 burns only 19 W, which makes it possible for Apple to design cool and sexy fortables without huge heat sinks or noisy fans.
The low energy consumption is also critical for 24/7 servers, it reduces electricity bills and hardware failures. So I can't really see why Apple or anyone else should be too excited about the hot chip.
This is great and all, but it's still EMULATION. x86 support in the Itanium seems very 'tacked on', unlike AMD's idea of simply extending the regular x86 instruction set to the realm of 64 bit. The way I see it, AMD chips will always be faster than Intel at x86 stuff. And when everyone is changing over, that's CRITICAL.
I am a filthy pirate.
This actually reminds me of when Apple's emulation strategy back when they migrated from the old 680x0 series to PowerPC. It was well orchestrated and was actually something of a triumph for them. I hope that bodes well for Intel's attempt.
For Intel to have a long term future without the embarassment of junking the whole architecture, they need Itanium x to run IA32 credibly. Advances in x86 performance keep coming at such increasing development costs that I think they would have to be able to migrate the market to IA64 within 5-10 years from now.
I would like for both the IA64 and the Hammer architectures to flourish, but Intel's taken an extremely bold step with EPIC, and I don't want to see them get punished in the market for that alone. I like the spirit of aiming higher.
-- John Truong
Anybody got the technical details on this "emulation" versus the x86 compatibility in Opteron?
JIT compilation or instruction for instruction?
How small a thought it takes to fill a whole life
The epic architecture is flawed in the sense that it can not run anything not in parrallel without having optimizations lost.
:-) I think what you're referring to is interleaving.
I don't think you really mean parrallel
Compilers that support interleaving can achieve parrallelism up to the number of stages on the pipeline (something ridiculus ia64 like 13 or something).
Now of course, if a compiler can optimize for interleaving without programmer intervention, a JIT can optimize for interleaving.
int func(int a);
func((b += 3, b));
To run existing applications on the 970, an IBM emulator would have to have a bit more to it than just emulation for the IA32 instruction set. Applications depend on an operating system and an actual API (as opposed to a "documented" API). If we want to run Windows applications to run on PPC, IA32 emulation is only a small part of it and most of the rest is already under development by other projects such as WINE.
It would help PPC for IBM to produce a software emulator for IA32, but it would also need to put some resources into helping Open Source projects fill in the gaps with the rest of the platform. I think Intel's IA32-on-IA64 emulation has a bit of an advantage here because the IA64 chips are supported by Windows, which hides the rest of the hardware platform from the applications.
-- John Truong
Having been the right school-age to had dealt with the first "PowerPC" Macintoshes, running System 7.5, this is a going to be a huge fiasco. The biggest problem that 7.5 had was that it was not running natively, the OS itself was being emulated. It sucked for performance. Yes, Apple did eventually get an all-PowerPC version out, with 8.0 or so, but at that point, it was geared toward the hardware of the time, which weren't 601's. School districts are still dealing with the effects of this screwup, and if they had simply built the OS in time to the hardware, this could have been averted.
And if you think that the commercial OS providers, all one of them that are mainstream, are going to have a version of their OS available to the general public for this machine, you're on something. They didn't even have support for more than 512 MB RAM in Windows Millennium, with a processor that can address 4GB.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
Actually Java and .NET bytecode style applications are likely to beable to be better optimized than their C and C++ equivelants with a decent virtual machine when running on Itanium.
A VM bytecode program contains alot more structural information of how the original program looked than C or C++ programs. On the Itanium the compiler has to take a "best guess" or some profile data to compile for the most common program-flow, this is one of the largest factors that limit Itanium peformance since alot of the run-time hardware optimisations are n't and cant be there.
A VM could analyse program-flow and compile different versions of the same function, dynamically changing which is used for example.
Of course this does n't help the vast majority of C/C++ code out there, but your assertion is hardly correct.
Yep that's the difference between CS and the real world. The x86 ISA may not be the most elegant or clean but it is kicking the snot out of everything except maybe Power. Sure it can be seen as kludge on kludge but yet no one seems to be able to come out with something that beats it for perfomance without costing many times more.
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
You can easily recompile your apps to run at full speed, while all the nasty propietery stuff gets bogged. Now where did my gentoo for intanium install disc go?
Back before Bill Gates and IBM's Entry System Division thrust Intel microprocessors into every other home on the planet, electronic systems designers were actively courted by Intel by their claim to developing products that won't invalidate all existing design work in one swell foop. And, for the most part, they held up on their end of that promise, which is why the Pentium 4 still has a little bit of the 8080 in it.
Now, when the i432 came out, it was a completely different beast -- and the i432 died a justified death. The i860 didn't fare that well, either. The i960 has seen quite a number of design-ins, because the solution base the i960 was geared to was sufficiently different from the 80x86 that designers didn't try to replace 80x86 chips with the RISC-based i960.
Intel, that was a clue.
What Intel didn't foresee, but should have, is the great technological bust of 1999 put a number of companies under. Source code has flown to the four winds, in some cases the foreclosures also nailed every single backup. In short, the migration path via recompilation was no longer an option. (Not to mention that there were no dollars to make even the most trivial changes to the source to deal with 64-bit processors.)
So this announcement is surprising only in that it comes so late in the product development cycle, as Intel is coming out with its second generation of IA64 chips.
Competition. It's a good thing.
What agreement with Microsoft?
Don't kid yourself. Microsoft and Intel are in bed together and have been for a very long time. Once again, I don't have primary sources much like the parent (I'm sure someone will post some) but I know that Microsoft works very closely with Intel, moreso than they do with AMD if they do at all.
"Everything you know is wrong. (And stupid.)"
Moderation Totals: Wrong=2, Stupid=3, Total=5.
"Any problem in computer science can be solved with another layer of indirection."
--- David Wheeler, chief programmer for the EDSAC project in the early 1950s.
Scarily, it's still just as true today...
rm -rf / is the evil of all root
The point of the Opteron isn't the fact that it can do 32bit fast, but that it can do 64bits in a way that everyone understands and has been hammered out for decades.
The Itanium is a marvelous piece of work however, how's going to adopt something so unknown, vs something so familiar? That is the point Intel missed, 32bit is dead, 64 bit is here, which one will be chosen?
3000 dead over past 2 years, still no free Palestinians, still
In 64-bit mode, do they finally use constant-width instructions or at least limit themselves to 2-byte and 4-byte instructions? AMD has done some very smart things with x86, like 3DNow being much cleaner than MMX. I hope they continue to do nice clean things with the x86 instruction set (and depricate the kludge).
Copyright Violation:"theft, piracy"::Anti-Trust Violation:"thermonuclear price terrorism"<-Overly dramatic language.
If you make the emulator separate enough from the core of your new architecture, you can switch the power off when you're not using it. A number of big pieces of silicon in our lives do this, including mobile video solutions (I think the latest mobile radeons, and maybe some of the desktop chips as well?) and some CPUs.]
The only really good thing about a software solution is that you could have a microcode update, as you say, and of course it takes up space, that's always a bummer.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
From I read in the article, I think it is not an emulator per se. It is more like a just-in-time compiler/translator. Probably it is something similar to what the Transmeta Crusoe or Alpha FX!32 does. Both of these products already proved that you could do it in software implementation pretty efficiently.
It will be almost exactly like what FX!32 does, because that software is no longer "Alpha FX!32", but rather "Intel FX!32". Intel bought pretty much all of the old Alpha technology, software and design teams, as well as the plant that Digital used to build the chips in. This occurred over quite a number of years (starting just before Compaq bought Digital), but this is the first really obvious sign of Intel technology to come out of it.
You might want to read over those tech-docs again, or more specifically the "AMD64 Architecture Programmer's Manual Volume 1:", in section 1.2: Modes of Operation.
<quoting sub-section 1.2.3>
Compatibility mode--the second submode of long mode--allows 64-bit operating systems to run existing 16-bit and 32-bit x86 applications.
<end quote>
However, I think what you're looking for is a little earlier in the section.
<quoting sub-section 1.2.1>
Long mode does not support legacy real mode or legacy virtual-8086 mode, and it does not support hardware task switching.
<end quote>
Now, this may seem like a bit of a loss, since DOS was run in real mode, and Linux 1.xx made use of the hardware task switching, but neither of these operating systems are ever going to run in Long mode on an x86 chip since they're both long since being EOLed. Even running DOS programs under Win2003 won't require real mode (unless I'm really off as to how the DOS window works).
In short, this is just cruft that would never be used in x86-64 long mode anyway.