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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?"
I haven't seen enough info on the new IBM PowerPC 970 CPU expected shorty.
watch who you're calling shorty, farm boy.
The wise follow a damned path, for to know is to be forsaken.
http://www.macslash.org/comments.pl?sid=03/04/23/1 82250&cid=3
First off, the disclaimer: this is my pet theory, i.e., a total, wild, pulled-of-out-my-*ss speculation, okay. I have no inside info or contact with people who might know this, but here is my speculation of why this AMD thing keeps coming up despite the fact that the use of the IBM 970 is almost a certainty.
Put this AMD thing into a bigger context of recent events.
We've heard that 10.3 will include a more integrated Classic environment where Classic Mac OS apps will be given many of the benefits of Aqua.
Apple quietly releases their implementation of XWindows system, X11. Despite the fact that this news set Slashdot buzzing for days on end and probably should have had some mention from Steve Jobs in the keynote he'd given a few days prior, it was released very quietly. Interesting.
Next, the somewhat unexpected news that Microsoft was buying Virtual PC. What on earth could Microsoft want with VPC? We can speculate that they want greater control over emulation of Windows on the Mac, but that sounds weak. They still control the operating system that gets installed on VPC so from that perspective they've gained nothing by buying out VPC.
And then these weird, peristent, inexplicable rumors that Apple is in talks with AMD about something or other. Who knows what. It's very doubtful that it's about a chip that would replace the PPC since we've read many, many well-informed examinations of such a move and the technical hurdles would likely ruin Apple.
So what could all this possibly point to? Apple has given us a system that can basically run software from three different operating systems: the classic Mac OS, Mas OS X (the Next OS), and Unix. They recently brought the Unix world closer with the release of X11. Wouldn't it be amazing if hardware in the near-future included an "add-on" chip (something like Altivec that works in conjuction with the PPC processor) that emulated the x86 hardware? Maybe it would give Mac users the ability to run Windows and PC software, not via software emulation, but with hardware assistance. Imagine the interest Apple could draw if they presented the world with a machine that runs the Classic, OS X, Unix and Windows applications... all in one environment and almost seamlessly.
Now does Microsoft buying VPC make sense? Maybe? Maybe not. Maybe MS Mac Business Unit caught wind of this and wants to one-up Apple somehow. Any thoughts?
AMD would be a likely partner is such a move since one could imagine the problems with Intel assisting Apple with this. If it was popular, Intel would be killing their own business. AMD, on the other hand, wouldn't, if I understand the situation correctly.
Anyway... like I said... wild speculation, but that's what all this says to me.
If Apple can control the hardware on which it will run, an Opteron doesn't seem too out of the question. Running an opteron != Apple on PC board/hardware.
The party's over
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.
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?).
today is spelling optional day.
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?
The story missed a major source of information about the 970 directly from IBM:
PowerPC 970 2002 Microprocessor Forum presentation
This contains a link to IBM Senior PowerPC Architect Peter Sandon's detailed presentation in PDF format.
Please mod story as (-1, Flamebait).
Comment removed based on user account deletion
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 forgot "and have the extra cash". Lets face it. The only reason I haven't gotten myself an iMac, is because I don't have the extra grand or so to buy one.
Now if AMD jumps into the mix, things may get interesting...
Good quote, too many chars. Seriously, the slashdot 120 char limit sucks!
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."
It's not exactly Mac OS X, but it's the Darwin core -- http://www.gnu-darwin.org.
Apple did make an "x86-compatible" Mac a few years back, I think it had a 486 chip alongside the PPC (or even 040?) I don't remember too much about this, I think it worked by pressing Cmd-return, at which point it would switch to the 486, while maintaining state on the PPC. Essentially like the Orange Micro PC compatibility cards they used to make. (NuBus what!)
I'd love to see an Apple/AMD collaboration, either a licensed port of the whole Mac OS X to x86 architecture, or a dual-processor machine. It'd be pretty badass.
I mod down pyramid schemes in sigs.
What's more, the PPC 970 is not shrouded in secret, (at least from an apple hardware point of view) If you think the 970 is shrouded in secret and is vaporware, I wonder what you think of the Moto G5.
Quid festinatio swallonis est aetherfuga inonusti?
Africus aut Europaeus?
I am a little ignorant on this, so please enlighten me. Can instructions for the PowerPC 970 be migrated to the Power4 chips without too much trouble? The point being, is there the prospect that Apple will put the Power4s in some new, really high end Xserves?
If so, that could let Apple break out of just the 1U market and compete with 2U and 4U servers with more than just two processors.
Cole's Axiom: The sum of the intelligence on the planet is a constant. The population is growing.
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.
Remember, Motorola didn't even release the PowerPC 7400 (G4), much less any information about it, until apple introduced the Power Mac G4. Does that mean it didn't exist?
Apple probably can't play those same kind of "keep it secret until we announce our product" games with IBM, but keep in mind the only thing IBM has really done was introduce the concept for the processor at MPF. Judging from how Apple has rolled out new processors in the past, it wouldn't be surprising to find if further information about the 970 is being withheld at Apple's request (Apple being a potentially huge customer for this chip).
Also, remember that before CeBIT, IBM posted press releases on its German site talking about 970, the fact that it featured AltiVec, and how IBM was going to be demoing several 970-based blade servers at CeBIT. The press release suddenly got pulled and there was no further information about the 970 from IBM.
One way this could be interpreted is that the 970 is vaporware.
The more likely scenario, however, based on how apple has done releases of new processors in the past, including several iterations of the 7400 family, is that more information is being withheld until Apple releases a system featuring this processor. Then the floodgates will open.
The only reason we may know anything of it at all is that IBM felt it fundamentally important enough to present at MPF - we haven't heard a peep since.
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.
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
While it's extremely unlikely that Apple would pursue two completely different platforms at the same time, I think we would be most likely to see different processors in different markets, i.e. the 970 in the consumer line, the Opteron in the server line, or some division like that.
That what was all this school was for... to teach us how to solve our own problems. -- janeowit
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.
ScienceSeeker.org
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".
The Huge Future Apple CPU Thread. A very informative read focusing on the PPC 970, 980, and Moto 7457.
I hope you die painfully and alone.
I think everyone(*) is anxious for Apple to jump ahead in the GHz game. Considering how fast the Intel/AMD folks are cranking up the chips, it feels like we're being left behind.
We can talk until the cows come home about how CISC/Hybrid MHz are not RISC MHz, but the fact is we all want our machines to be faster. Even if they're already really, really fast.
But I can't see Apple making a transition to a platform that's not binary-compatible with PPC. It was painful enough when they went from 68xxx to PPC, and then to force everyone to buy all their applications again with the transition from OS 8/9 to OS X.
To do it again, within a year or two of the last major transition, would be disastrous. While I'm sure the software companies wouldn't much mind forcing everyone to buy a new version of all of their applications, how many users would put up with this? How long would people wait for Photoshop 8?
(* at least all the Apple users, and maybe a fair number of Unix/BSD users)
Eloi, Eloi, lema sabachtani?
www.fogbound.net
It is certainly possible that we will see Mac OS X on x86 at some point in the future. It is another question, however, if Mac OS X x86 will be able to run on any x86 hardware and not just proprietary hardware from Apple.
It is rumored that Apple do currently have Mac OS X running on x86 in the form of project Marklar and that it is kept up-to-date with the PPC version. It is also true that NeXTStep ran on 68K, x86, Sparc and PA-RISC so this shows that the Mac OS X team is likely to capability to easily port this software.
I suppose all we can do is wait and see...
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...
Or, instead a bunch of wild speculation, why not realize that Apple and AMD are both a part of the HyperTransport consortium and are (presumably) both very interested in 64-bit computing on the desktop, and that:
1. One of HyperTransport's most commonly supported speeds is 6.4GB/sec;
2. Apple is desperately in need of a revamp of the entire desktop architecture, especially memory and system bus (aside from processor itself);
3. The IBM PowerPC 970 cooincidentally supports a system bus speed of 6.4GB/sec.
Doesn't the HyperTransport relationship seem a bit more logical than all this off-the-wall stuff about Marklar, Apple switching/adding processors, etc.?
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).
I think it was back in '95 or '96. IBM and Motorola were in development of dual-platform supporting processor called CHRP or Common Hardware Reference Platform.
The Common Hardware Reference Platform (CHRP) Specification describes a family of machines based on the PowerPC(tm) processor that are capable of booting multiple operating systems including Mac OS, Windows NT, AIX® and Solaris(tm).
Wouldn't that have been cool? What ever happened to that idea? Here's the old documentation.
It appears that IBM has some information on their site that is still recent, dated Sept. 2002. Weird. I'd love to have one of those machines. PowerPC 970? Forget about it.
Mr. Bond, they have a saying in Chicago: Once is happenstance. Twice is coincidence. The third time is enemy action.
The biggest reason those cards weren't "wildly successful" was their price, if I recall correctly.
In the heyday of these offerings, it was about the same price to buy a complete, seperate PC system. Many folks said "Where's the logic in adding PC support to my Mac when I can own a full PC system for the same money?"
The only market they really captured was the niche of people wanting to run both PC and Mac applications, but not willing to give up any more space in their home or workplace for another computer.
Also, these devices were still add-on cards, which always lack some of the integration of having the compatibility truly "built in" to the system. The beauty of a PC, in many ways, is the "box of slots" nature of the thing. You have thousands of possibilities in the way of PCI, AGP (or in the past, ISA or EISA) cards. Want a special purpose graphics card? Just buy it and drop it in! Special high-speed serial ports for a multi-line BBS system, perhaps? Just buy a "Digiboard" and get 8 or more ports. With a PC on a card, you're limited to what's actually on the card itself, or what it's able to use on the Mac's own board.
While I'm not so sure Apple has any interest in going the "PC compatibility" route again - I do think it would be a much different story if the compatibility was truly on the motherboard.
ArsTechnica to the Rescue:
0 -1.ht ml
4 5.htm l
* Inside the IBM PowerPC 970 Part I: Design Philosophy and Front End
http://arstechnica.com/cpu/02q2/ppc970/ppc97
* Ars Technica Newsdesk A Brief Look at the PowerPC 970
http://arstechnica.com/archive/news/10347562
* Ars Technica - CPU and Chipset Guide
http://arstechnica.com/cpu/
Hope it helps fill that Gap.
*** Suerte a todos y Feliz dia!
If you read the IBM link, you can see that the 970 is multiprocessor enabled. Once apple gets their hands on it they can easily create 2 way systems, and probably 4 way systems and up. I'm not sure about benchmarking, but linking processors in this way will help offset the x86 processor speed advanatge. And with IBM technology behind them, I'm sure it's easily possible.
BTW, I think AMD are trying to pull off a similar trick with the multiproc. Opterons, and eventually Athlons.
Apple need another supplier so they limit their risk. They maybe getting AMD to fab a PowerPC type chip.
Alternatively....
Maybe they are just going to use AMD64 chips to build 8 and 4 way XServes?
NeXT used to have fat binaries compatibility across NeXT Black hardware, Intel, Sun, HP and Alpha.
Anthony
Apple need another supplier so they limit their risk. They maybe getting AMD to fab a PowerPC type chip.
Alternatively....
Maybe they are just going to use AMD64 chips to build 8 and 4 way XServes?
NeXT used to have fat binaries compatibility across NeXT Black hardware, Intel, Sun, HP and Alpha.
Anthony
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.
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.
This has nothing to do with Macs and x86, AMD produces a LOT more than just athlon chips, they'll be pumping out AMD-970s with their extra capacity.
"Sometimes, I think Trent just needs a cup of hot chocolate and a blankie." -Tori Amos on Nine Inch Nails
if you're looking for 970 info, Hannibal has a decent article over at Ars Technica, and a followup is on the way. also there's a +1 thread of deth in Ars' forums.
Just raise the taxes on crack.
IBM is another of those companies that fabless chipmakers (such as Cyrix, when they were building chips) came to when they needed extra capacity. IBM makes an unbelievable number of chips, from PPC processors to x86 processors (there are still a *lot* of embedded designs that use 80186's, for example) to memory controllers, to you name it.
In fact, AMD doesn't have a lot of capacity for their own stuff. Their biggest problem is on the high end: .13 micron fabs. They have lots of lower-end fab capability, but it's unlikely that Apple needs that kind of capacity...
Linux IT Consulting and Domino Development in Michigan
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.
They signed a deal with Motorola to only buy from Motorola any chips that Motorola builds. IBM has faster G3 and G4 processors than Motorola, but Apple can't buy them. Why? Their deal.
Why doesn't Motorola ramp up the speed of the G4? AltiVec. AltiVec is *critical* for things such as DSP operations. It's AltiVec that makes PPC a powerful option for switch and router designers and other embedded marketplaces. These applications don't need 2GHz CPU's, they need efficient 400MHz CPU's. Motorola focuses on that marketplace. And *that* is why Apple can't get a CPU faster than 1.2GHz.
IBM, though, builds lots of PPC computers: AS/400's and RS/6000's (excuse me: eServer i-series and eServer p-series). They need fast CPU's, and they don't care about the DSP garbage. Though it seems that with the 970 they've included both.
Linux IT Consulting and Domino Development in Michigan
Sticking with the PPC 970 gives Apple an easy way to maintain backward compatability for its current market of folk unable to break their addiction to legacy, non-native Mac software.
Moving to an AMD or Intel chip gives Apple an easy way to attract the business users looking for cutting edge innovation like 64-bit compatability and a Unix based OS.
My guess is that because they'll have two well defined audiences, that won't overlap it would be right up Apple's alley to do both. Here's our line of computers for the "Classic" mac crowd unable to leave Quark 4 and PixelPaint. But here's our line of cutting-edge, Classic-free boxes that you can order with your choice of AMD or Intel chip inside.
The wilder rumors of a "Classic" like environment on AMD or Intel processors may have a bit of truth, but they're anxious to ditch the Mac legacy crap so if anything it'd be a Classic environment designed to boot your copy of Windows, OS/2, or other legacy 80x86 OS. I still don't believe them, but once you dump the Mac legacy stuff, moving to a different processor is much simpler.
I know smaller die fabs allow for cooler chips etc, until you start filling everything in with more transistors etc.
.13micron process could you make a very cool running chip as compared to the P4's?
If you produced a Pentium 1 core or even a 2 using a
Just something I never figured out. Thanks for any replies.
-- taking over the world, we are.
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.
Yes, it IS for desktop computers. To read the spec:
IBM PowerPC -- In the Hand, On the Desk,
and Everywhere else
Lisa Su
Director, PowerPC and Emerging Products
PowerPC 970 is the first in a family of new 9xx 64-bit Microprocessors
Key Features:
Based on award-winning Power4 technology
Up to 1.8 GHz
Proven 64-bit microprocessor architecture with native
32-bit application compatibility
Up to 6.4 GB/s system interface
Implements SIMD coprocessor
Full Symmetric Multiprocessor (SMP) support
Target Applications
64-bit Linux Applications
Desktop/Workstation
Entry Server
See where it says "Target applications: Desktop?"
http://www.ibm.com/jp/chips/forum0/pdf/05.pdf
I suggest you take a look at some of the OS/2 threads on slashdot for stories. I was a huge fan of OS/2 from version 1.3-3.0. But for example I got 1.3 for $99 from an 800# you needed to learn about via. word of mouth. IBM's OS/2 division spent millions running commercials telling people to demand OS/2 on their next desktop while their hardware division wouldn't ship OS/2 with the systems.
There were some good OS/2 native apps at different times. You really need to be specific about years here. Lan manager was a perfect example Dos / Windows systems couldn't handle modem + 1 app very well yet OS/2 286 systems did modem + ethernet + multiple apps fine. That created all kinds of neat lan server based apps (like POS systems).
By the 2.0/2.1 days Lotus 1-2-3 for OS/2 could support something like 512 megs of ram while Windows spread sheets could support 16 megs. OS/2 word processors handled huge documents much better than Windows ones. OTOH there wasn't really much demand for this functionality. The key home / small business advantage of OS/2 was it gave people in 1993 the ability to multitask windows and dos apps in a way that wouldn't be possible with windows until NT 4.0.
Take that away and what would OS/2 have brought to the table? It wasn't as good a server / network OS as the 386 Unixes like SCO (which was a very good product 10 years ago) and not nearly as app rich as windows.
Why? Well maybe because it's easier to program in Cocoa and use Project Builder and Interface Builder than Visual Studio, besides which, they're free. The only thing I miss in switching from Visual C++ 6 to Project Builder is auto-completion.
Karma: Ran over your dogma.
Will we see Mac OS X running on two different platforms/CPUs?
It sure looks like it. Heck, they did it before with Mac OS 7 and 8, it ran on both Motorola 680x0 and PowerPC architecture. There was a bit of growing pain then, given that PowerPC binaries wouldn't run on 68k machines, and then there were "fat" binaries (which would run on both), but it wasn't terrible and people got through it in one piece in the end. Now, obviously that wasn't the same as a shift from 32-bit to 64-bit computing, but it looks as if there will be similar binary compatability issues again, so it's probably worth looking backwards in time to the introduction of the Power Macs with their new-fangled PowerPC processors.
In the early 1990s, Apple decided that the Motorola 680x0 series was not keeping up with the Intel 80x86 series, largely because PCs were Intel's primary market, while Motorola CPUs were used more in embedded systems. RISC designs were simpler and could be improved with less effort, so Apple switched to the PowerPC CPU in 1994 (after prototypes in 1991 using the 88K), but to maintain compatibility, needed to emulate the 680x0. The initial emulator interpreted 68LC040 (without FPU) code, and a later version stored translated blocks of code, and ran faster than Apples previous high end Macintoshes.
This impressed IBM engineers enough that a project was started to emulate the 80386+ architecture on a PowerPC (known as the PowerPC 615), but the project was cancelled (apparently after successful versions were completed - possibly because of performance, problems with efficiency using the PowerPC architecture (the 80x86 much more awkward and complicated than the 680x0), marketing decisions, or strategic/management decisions - I don't know, but the computer industry was very volatile at the time, and the path of the future was not at all clear). However development on the conncept continued with the DAISY project (Dynamically Architected Instruction Set from Yorktown), which translated to a hypothetical VLIW CPU instead of the PowerPC. Both the DAISY system, and a later project called Dynamo from Hewlett-Packard (which ran PA-RISC on PA-RISC), could optimise code as it ran (Dynamo could improve PA-RISC performance by up to 20% over non-emulated code).
Several engineers (many from Sun, such as David Ditzel, designer for Sun's UltraSparc CPU, and Bob Cmelik who wrote instruction profiling tools for SPARC programs) helped found Transmeta, which created the missing VLIW processor, and created a new dynamic translator (called a "Code Morpher" by Transmeta) to emulate the 80x86. [...]
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.
Fun. So now they realize after they create the chip that they want 20 years of backwards compatibility. The PowerPC knew they wanted this, according to this slashdot article.
Mirrors:
story 1
story 2
A programmer is a machine for converting coffee into code.
Or something like that... =)
-dave-
Get BearShare! for your p2p needs!
The pig browse. With Google. Sigh is to the chicken. Chicken is fool. Giggle. The DailyWTF giggle.
Sounds like a defensive reaction to the release of the Opteron. If AMD is offering a 64-bit chip with support for full-speed 32-bit x86 software, then Intel has to have a competitive answer *before* industry adopts the AMD64 over IA-64 for future migration.
Peace and love, y'all
Is it really emulation or does it convert x86 assembly so it can run on the Itanium? If you can get 1.5ghz worth of performance out of EMULATION on the Itanium, then I need a new processor.
using namespace slashdot;
troll::post();
Here's a more detailed C|Net story.
(Yes, it's linked from the posted C|Net story).
The Itanium had a lot of good ideas, but no matter how much you want to drop an old architecture and start over from scratch like the goal of that project was, you've got to provide a transition period. Athlon's doing this with the Opteron, Apple is doing this with OS X using the Carbon Toolkit, etc etc. The *key* to getting a user base to switch from an older architecture to a newer one has to be a compatability layer.
Perhaps that is what doomed Itanium 1 to failure form the start. (Well that combined with the horrible heat output and power consuption of the Itanium 1).
- tristan
Also, it's worth noting that Itanium has always supported running x86 software without emulation. It just turns out their hardware implementation is slower than emulating the same thing in 64-bit IA-64 mode.
Peace and love, y'all
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.
Wow, I mean WOW.
NOOOOW I can watch my old dos demos from Unreal and The Humble Crew in less time than my brain can percieve them. Just what topped last years christmas list.
pm
** "It's not my job to stand between the people talking to me, and the ones listening to me." -- Pego the Jerk
And I thought it was just going to be a space heater.
Social Contract? I don't remember signing any Social Contract!
Ultimately, all an emulator does is convert instructions from one architecture to another. It's almost always more efficient to translate instructions in blocks
To come up with a really primitive, simple example, imagine a simple instruction set with a load, add, and branch if zero-set.
Code might look like this:
lda avar
add bvar
bre label
Now imagine we were translating to an instruction set that had mostly the same instructions, but needed a compare instruction to set our conditional flag
Instruction-by-instruction conversion might turn out like this:
lda avar tstz
add bvar
tstz
bre label
Now if the conversion was done on the entire block, we might end up with this:
lda avar
add bvar
tstz
bre label
Granted, this is a pretty simple example, but I hope it makes my point. Block conversions allow a great deal more optimization than instruction conversions.
This optimization might sound like a lot of work for the host processor, but if the block in question is a tight loop you more than make that up.
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
I'd wager that this is FX32! (allowed you to do the same on Alpha) reworked for the Itanium. Considering Intel purchased all Alpha related technology I would n't be surprised. This is not really that bad a thing since FX32 was quite good at what it did (within its limits).
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.
EPIC (or VLIW, which is pretty much the same thing) atchitectures define instructions to be executed (or, at least, that can be executed) in parallel in the encoding of the instructions. Most superscalar machines evolved from single-issue architectures (PPC, Alpha, x86) only have sequential instructions.
That being said, there are almost always instructions that can be executed in parallel. The only difference between EPIC/VLIW and sequential dynamically-parallel machines is whether the hardware or the assembler/compiler/optimizer determines whether or not instructions can be executed in parallel.
Now, software that interprets (for instance) java can utilize parallelism, because it can do things like lookup the place to jump for the next bytecode while it's executing the code to handle the current bytecode.
Software that translates (for instance) java to native code can utilize parallism, both in the translation phase, and in the native code output. Of course, scheduling code is a complex thing, but it doesn't mean it's impossible. And given that you have the scheduler for a good compiler for your architecture (which Intel does) you may have many of the problems already solved.
Translating x86, or PPC, or any other architecture is very similar... you have interpretation (usually somewhat slow), and varying levels of translate-to-native (which ends up with varying quality of output). Some architectures are easier to interpret than others (Java is nice, because it has no flags), but in the end the problem is pretty much the same between architectures.
Itanium's flaws are not in it's EPIC/VLIW nature. VLIW chips can be very small and efficient. Most high-performance embedded chips are migrating towards VLIW (see: TI DSPs, StarCore DSP, TransMeta) because you can get parallelism without having to add hardware complexity for out-of-order execution, hazard detection, etc. At the very least, you can get a VLIW that performs the same as a single-issue computer.
The problem with the Itanium is that it has lots of features. It's very complex. It has lots of predicates, lots of cache prefetch instructions, etc. that make it very cycle-efficient for either a hand programmer or a compiler that knows everything.
Unfortunately, the complexity makes design rather challanging, and many of the features aren't being used by production compilers, because they're hard to implement. Normal instructions are easy.
Sigh. It would be really great to see a good, simple VLIW with a good compiler on the market. In the end, however, it would only be a little more cycle-efficient and a little less costly than a superscalar chip with similar features. And the superscalar has the code base and the existing, proven compiler. Guess which one wins?
Your architecture prof for the day,
-- Erich
Slashdot reader since 1997
Does this mean they can now take the ia32 hardware implementation out? I never liked that idea in the first place.
.doc format you used, or that built-on-contract accounting system you didn't obtain the source for, these days it's usually by your choice that you are in this predicament.</preachy>
And, really, can't plenty of us just roll our eyes and go back to compiling our systems from source? I mean, once there's a linux kernel + glibc + gcc port, thousands of applications are instantly available to you.
<preachy>Every time you find yourself strapped to a single architecture, ask yourself why you have all this proprietary baggage holding you back. Whether it's that Word
Typo
Actually the RISC crowd was primarily right, they were just targeting the wrong area. All x86 cpus since the Pentium have been RISC internally with CISC externals. This works well because the larger words work well to minimize cache latencies (if you can fit more into each fetch then the impact waiting for it to arrive is minimized) and the RISC internals make it easier to ramp up the speed of the actual execution units. As you pointed out the PPC is seen as a "RISCish" cpu yet it shares many traits with the "CISCish" x86 cpu's. Pure RISC cpu's are a thing of the past, but it did have quite an impact on the overall design of CPU's.
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
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.
The first Itanium was basically designed by Intel. Itanium 2 was HP's attempt to fix it (much better). Intel has lost it. They have great manufacturing and competent marketing, but they let all the best engineers leave (to AMD, IBM, Transmeta, etc.). And now they're starting to behave like Microsoft (threatening OEMs to try to stop them from using competing products). But their grip on the chip market isn't half as strong as Microsoft's on the OS market, so there's a serious risk of backfiring.
If you add AMD's engineering (Dirk "Alpha" Meyer & co.) to IBM's manufacturing (fabs nearly as good as Intel's and a lot more R&D), you have a pretty respectable force. Now all they need is decent marketing. And I suspect they'll get that from Microsoft (from Microsoft's point of view, anything that keeps Intel from growing too large is a good thing).
The fact that AMD is now insisting that "x86-64" be renamed "AMD64" might mean they know Intel is working on a "x86-64" CPU, and want to force them to use the new name. Wouldn't it be funny, an Intel CPU marked "AMD64 compatible"...? Now, does Intel care more about its money or it's honor? As Sir Francis Drake said, "you should fight for the one you have less of"...
Is this modded as +4 100% interesting???
Why why why?
Pity there is no -1 100% wrong choice huh?
many, many linux programs have been 64bit clean for some time as linux runs on all of the major 64 bit platforms and has for quite a while. Sure there are a lot of small projects that are not 64bit clean but all of the core services are.
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
I would not be too hopeful about a software emulator. This sounds a lot like FX!32, the software binary translater that let you run x86 Windows programs on the DEC Alpha. While FX!32 was impressive for its time, and certainly a workable product, for most of its life it was not nearly performance-competitive with real x86 hardware. And the Alpha in its heyday was a MUCH faster chip than the Pentium. It's not clear to me that the Itanium CPU is inherently superior to x86 or x86-64 (if you optimize code specifically for it, sure, but that's a time-consuming, expensive proposition). IMHO Intel at this point is just trying to re-clothe the emperor before it's too late. Given their huge R&D investments it could certainly pay off, but I wouldn't put too much stock in that possibility.
Whatever happens, even if the Opteron was 100% full backwards compatible and 2x faster than Itanium, nobody in the server segment or even the high end workstation segment will buy an Opteron because they think that AMD makes unstable cheap processors targetted at the nerdy overclocking enthusiast.
I personnally don't agree, but my opinion isn't worth jack inside the corporation and I already know the system's administrator has a "Intel Inside" sticker on his forehead, even if the chips cost 2x as much. They say they pay for "quality". Psssh, what a load of bull.
Trolls dont like to be Flamebait, because they burn so well. Protect our Troll heritage!
From what I've seen, I would argue that their motive is the latter. Intel has show on several occasions that, these days, they simply don't give a damn about the end user. They care about market share, profits, and their precious stock price. Let's not forget the fact that "Pentium" was coined because Intel wasn't allowed to trademark the number 586.
Remember when they released an overclocked Pentium III to the public, and Tom's Hardware had that nice little article exposing it for the failure it was? It choked on GCC, among other things, while Intel steadfastly denied the problem. Then they actually recalled the processors. Competition at the expense of the end user... wonderful!
It is clear AMD is still going to come out on top in performance on this one, unless "software emulation" doesn't mean what I think it means. It is also clear to me that Intel has to do a lot more than throw some software emulation at an issue before I ever buy another Intel processor.
"To confine our attention to terrestrial matters would be to limit the human spirit." -Stephen Hawking
I don't think so.
I had read multiple rumors about Intel having something up their bunny-suited sleeves, but most of these rumors had Intel supporting x86-64 -- that is -- copying AMD for the first time. This announcement takes away one of the unique advantages of the Opteron/Athlon64 without following AMD's lead.
If you think running 32-bit code half as fast (1.5 GHz. Xeon vs. 2.8 GHz. Xeon) on a processor that costs four times as much takes away any advantage you're confused.
To me it looks like Opteron is around 8x more cost effective at running 32-bit code.
Further, even on head-to-head TPC-C results, the least expensive Itanic system was only half as good. The Itanic running a non-Linux OS was only 1/7 as good.
Intel is in trouble.
Galileo: "The Earth revolves around the Sun!"
Score: -1 100% Flamebait
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
I wonder if the emulation technique they'll be using will be similar to Transmeta's 'code-morphing'. I always wondered why intel didn't license that idea & use it on their Itanium. 'Code-morphing' achieved middle-of-the-road x86 performance on a VLIW (sound like a familiar goal?), but it was still far better than what Itanium gets with its current x86 support.
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.
An interesting thought is that the instruction format and register set of AMD's x86-64 is just an extention of x86, so if Intel has a good emulator for x86 running on IA64, then it should be (from a technical standpoint, not a licensing standpoint) fairly trivial to emulate x86-64 at speeds similar to the x86 emulation. THAT doesn't bode well for AMD.
And as for licensing, a clean room implementation should be very easy considering it is simply an extention of x86.
Itanium has always had x86 emulation, just before it was done in hardware, and very very slowly. (The Itanium 1, at 800Mhz, ran x86 software at the speed of a 150Mhz pentium or so.)
A story at The Register, here explains that this new software will translate some of the x86 assembly to IA-64 assembly at runtime. (See picture)
This is the same way that HP's Aries works -- which translates HP-PA instructions into IA-64.
That works pretty well actually, delivering about 80% of the nominal speed most of the time. (We've used it a lot during development of HP-UX on Itanium, and actually ran a lot of the system binaries (ls, grep, etc.) on it until they were ported. Worked pretty well!).
What they still haven't done is implement something like this in hardware, but efficiently, like Transmeta does -- they translate x86 to a RISC core in hardware, and get really good performance. :)
But hey, this is Intel we're talking about
You can get it from here. At least I think that's it... I haven't had NT4 running on my alpha in years, and that file's an Installshield self-extracting EXE for NT Alpha, so I can't run it.
The IA-64 instruction set is not similar to IA-32. It's very, very, very, very, very different. Instead of being CISC (like x86) or RISC (like PowerPC) or VLIW, it's EPIC. The IA-32 compatibility is provided by special compatibility circuitry. If you're looking for a 64-bit instruction set that's similar to x86, you want AMD-64.
But they say this emulator will run faster then using the built-in x86 decoder.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
The Itanic always had full 32 bit x86 compatibility and a significant percentage of its die real estate is spent on it. It just sucks so much that it's outperformed by software emulation. Needless to say, if you use the software emulation layer you would *still* be paying for the hardware emulation.
No they're trying to spin this story as if it's actually something good and not a patch for a white elephant.
See this story on The Register
Stop worrying about the risks of nuclear power and start worrying about the risks of not using nuclear power.
For those who don't know (I graduated in '97 and my computer architectures course had no mention of it, so it must be a fairly recent development...) EPIC standards for 'Explicitly Parallel Instruction Code' and basically means (as far as I can tell from a 5 min google) that stuff like instruction reordering for the parallel execution cores is handled by the compiler, rather than the processor (the theory being that the compiler should be better at it).
I think this makes it orthogonal to RISC/CISC/VLIW architecture and I believe Itanium owes the most to RISC, although this isn't explicitly acknowledged anywhere I've found and my theory might be a bit rusty...
but certainly, dynamic recompilation _has_ to beat emulation (except for startup speed). Apart from anything else, the new CPU has more registers to take advantage of so redundant store/load (or push/pop) cycles can be eliminated in the recompilation with a little data flow analysis...