More on the PowerPC 970

functor writes "Ars Technica's Jon Stokes has a treatise up covering the microarchitecture of the high-performance 64-bit PowerPC 970 microprocessor, due to be released by the end of the year, that goes over in detail how this chip is put together, and how we can expect it to perform. This is the follow-up to Stokes' article detailing the PPC 970's design philosophy. 'It appears to hold quite a bit of promise in bolstering Apple's currently almost obsolescent product line, and it appears to have been designed explictly to fulfil Apple's requirements. To say the least, the second half of this year looks to be pretty interesting as Apple's product line promises to become competitive performance-wise with IA-32 and x86-64-based PCs again.''

Comments

Inaccuracy, Part 1

[11223]

Unfortunately, the vector performance of the G4e has been consistently bottlenecked by Apple's lackluster motherboard and chipset designs--specifically the anemic frontside bus and memory subsystems that Apple has saddled the PowerMac line with.

This implies that the decision of how much bus bandwidth to give the G4e was up to Apple - which it was not. Motorola designed the processor (for Cisco, depending on who you believe), and Apple made do with the anemic MaxBus at 133mhz that they got from Motorola.

Apple'd be putting DDR400 on the G4 right now if they could. None of this (well, except the decision to go Moto) was their fault.

Re:Inaccuracy, Part 1

[whovian]

As far as I know, none of the other IA-32 motherboard manufacturers are making *dual* processor boards with 166 MHz (333 DDR) bus for use with 333 MHz DDR memory. Sure, there are plenty of IA-32 single cpu boards running bus and memory synchonously at DDR333, a few at DDR400, and even a few running DDR266 bus/333 memory asynchronously.

So my point is that Apple's offering, though somewhat expensive, is unique.

Re:Inaccuracy, Part 1

[dreamchaser]

In a way that is a sort of a cop out. Apple could have invested in better chipset technology. A quad-pumped 133mhz FSB has already been done by Intel. What was to stop Apple from doing the same? Lack of a good chipset, that's all.

Re:Inaccuracy, Part 1

[11223]

You're completely wrong. The maximum speed of the FSB and whether it supports DDR (or QDR) is determined by the processor, not by the chipset. For the G4e, the maximum known speed at which MaxBus can operate is 167MHz - precisely what Apple uses.

They can't make the FSB DDR or QDR without appropriate support from the processor, and that's exactly what they haven't been getting from Moto.

Re:Inaccuracy, Part 1

[functor]

No, but IA-32 motherboard manufacturers go a good number of steps further. ;) I recommend that you investigate Intel's Placer (E7505) chipset and motherboards based on it (several of Supermicro's offerings, as well as offerings from Tyan and other manufacturers, e.g. the Iwill DPL533 and DP533. These motherboards support 133 MHz QDR system buses (coming to 533 million transfers a second), matched (quite well) with two channels of PC2100 DDR SDRAM (resulting in 4.267 GB/s of memory bandwidth that is actually utilizable by the processors, since the memory bandwidth matches the system bus bandwidth, unlike Apple's offering, which is bottlenecked by the system bus at just 1.333 GB/s, whether you have one processor or two). (And I'm certain that 200 MHz QDR Xeon chipsets are not far off in the future, since Intel in general appears to be headed in that direction.)

Re:Inaccuracy, Part 1

[Hannibal_Ars]

I should've been more clear on this point. My real problem with the current G4e situation, aside from the 167 SDR FSB, is the fact that it's a shared bus topology, which is just ridiculous. To my knowledge, there's nothing stopping Apple from putting out a chipset that gives each G4e a dedicated FSB (even if it's still 167MHz SDR) to the chipset.

As far as the low MHz and SDR situation, I've also never been totally convinced that Apple wasn't partially to blame for this either, unless they just have zero clout with Moto SPS.

Re:Inaccuracy, Part 1

[haxor.dk]

What do you expect from a geek whose introductory piece some years back was in essence, a claim that the PowerPC G3 wasn't a RISC chip?

AT has always had an anti-Apple bias. Only now, they have trouble maintaining it.

Re:Inaccuracy, Part 1

[PCBman!]

How is calling a processor Post-RISC claiming that it is not RISC? IIRC, his statement was that RISC has grown beyond it's original design philosophy and now includes added complexity that increase performance. What's so bad about evolving to increased complexity anyway?

Moreover, how is this claim anti-Apple? Are they the ONLY company in the world using processors built on Post-RISC design philosophies? Doesn't IBM also use PPC750's in workstations supporting their servers?

Re:Inaccuracy, Part 1

[11223]

unless they just have zero clout with Moto SPS

In effect, that and the intense pressure on SPS to perform up to profit numbers and reduce headcount combined to do just that. When Apple was stuck with Moto as an exclusive supplier (which the introduction of AltiVec effectively did), justifying cost spent on improving performance for a customer who will order the same number of chips anyway is hard to do.

As far as the shared / separate FSB issues, I'm not too familiar with this myself. Does the cache coherency protocol used by the G4 assume that the second processor is connected to the same FSB?

Re:Inaccuracy, Part 1

[pjt48108]

Yeah, Apple has a penchant for using decent chips and then locking them down with slow board and bus implementation. It's frustrating. It's a pisser.

Nice GUI, though...

Re:Inaccuracy, Part 1

[LionMage]

My real problem with the current G4e situation, aside from the 167 SDR FSB, is the fact that it's a shared bus topology, which is just ridiculous.

Thank you for clarifying, Hannibal! I agree, the shared bus topology sucks dead donkey d*ck, and I have suspected for a while that it was simply the result of poor engineering at Apple. After all, they touted their new motherboard chipset in the latest G4 towers and Xserves, which supports DDR RAM and other goodies. Why couldn't they simply have designed their Northbridge-equivalent to have a separate data path to each CPU in a dual processor machine?

The only conclusion I've been able to come to is that this is the result of engineering laziness, coupled with a desire to use the same motherboard chipset on single- and dual-CPU configurations. This way, you force both CPUs on a dual processor system to cohabit on a daughterboard and reduce costs by forcing them to share a single bus out to the rest of the system; for a single-CPU setup, one processor gets the entire bus to itself. I believe (though I'm not 100% certain of this) that the low-end single-CPU G4 tower machine that Apple sells shares the same motherboard design with the middle- and high-end models which have dual processors.

Re:Inaccuracy, Part 1

[fitten]

Yup... If you look at Apple's history, they have (many many times) had very poor memory subsystems tied to their CPUs. Look back at all the 68030/68040 machines that had no L2 cache and were tied to slow main memory. Even the PPC machines showed these same design decisions.

Re:Inaccuracy, Part 1

[Anonymous Coward]

"justifying cost spent on improving performance for a customer who will order the same number of chips anyway is hard to do"

Surely you don't belive that. Yes, for a year they could supply Apple with the same product. However if a better PPC came a long from IBM they would sell none to Apple.

If IBM wasn't there they would either court Intel for a special cost effective IA64 chip or simply adopt x86 (or x86-64 and tie themselves to AMD?).

Either way motorla knew that if Wintel chips gave Apple a large enough price/performance ratio deficit they would lose Apple as a customer.

Not to mention they won't gain new embedded customers. As embedded applications become more and more demanding eventually a G4 won't cut it and customers will switch to ARM or MIPS or even x86. At least if you're buying an embedded chip and see there is already larger/more expensive/more power hungry chips in the PPC family you know those chips, without much redesign will be able to power your future products even if all they do is use a smaller manufacturing process.

Also Apple is a large customer everybody sees. You don't want to have them saying PPC can't compete and they're switching to x86. It makes life harder for you marketing department when large customers switch to a compeditor.

IBM is selling millions of G3 processors a year to Nintendo. In a couple years Nintendo will be looking for a new processor, the G4 won't be viable option, but a Power4/Pentium/Hammer may be.

Sure, short term you can cut R&D costs and make more profit.

But that'll only last a year.

It reminds me of GT Interative (publisher of Doom). id developed a great game and GT was lucky enough to beat out Activion, EA, Sierra, etc to be the publisher. They became a billion dollar company overnight based on publishing one hit they had nothing to do with. Then they couldn't maintain profit levels. So to make more profit they canceled projects they were funding and changed the quarterly results to call that profit!

No real company, especially a tech company, belives they can stop improving their products.

Re:Inaccuracy, Part 1

[rtechie]

IBM is selling millions of G3 processors a year to Nintendo. In a couple years Nintendo will be looking for a new processor, the G4 won't be viable option, but a Power4/Pentium/Hammer may be.

Unlikely, as Nintendo has already said that the GameCube will be their last console.

Which is a very good move considering how badly the GC is tanking, it's evolving into a glorifed GameBoy accessory (which is also a good move because GB is where all the money is).

Nintendo's next project will be the successor to the GameBoy Advance and it will probably be using ARM.

Worst timing ever

[Space Coyote]

Why this had to be posted the morning before my presentation to my supervizor is a clear indication that the universe is against me.

Time to hide my network cable until the end of the day.

Re:Worst timing ever

[Anonymous Coward]

> Why this had to be posted the morning before my presentation to my supervizor ....

That's nothing - did you see the date on the
article itself ?

Re:Worst timing ever

[k2enemy]

Agreed. I'm holding Hannibal responsible for lowering my marks on an econometrics test I have this evening. I've been impatiently waiting to read this article for a lonnnng time.

Re:Worst timing ever

[functor]

Hey, if I hadn't submitted it, someone else would have anyway. :p

waiting for this to arrive....

[Anonymous Coward]

I sold my G4 tower some time ago becuase it was not fast enough to compete with my winders boxes. I'll jump back on the Apple platform when the 970 ships, assuming it's all that. Lets just hope the entry level unit is ( for Apple ) somewhat affordable.

The current pro line of G4 is a joke. They cant come out with 970 computers fast enough.

Re:waiting for this to arrive....

[vilms]

Compete with your Windows box?

Compete at what?

Re:waiting for this to arrive....

[skinfitz]

Compete with your Windows box? Compete at what?

The fact that you ask that question shows your ignorance.

Re:waiting for this to arrive....

[Anonymous Coward]

All questions demonstrate ignorance. But those who don't ask remain ignorant. And those who critisize asking questions are doubly ignorant.

Re:waiting for this to arrive....

[bigman2003]

Looking at the thread, I assume the competition is about 'being fast'.

Re:waiting for this to arrive....

[Alan Partridge]

Compete at downloading from warez sites and looking at free porn, of course - the absolute acme of HPC!

Oh, and IM too.

Re:waiting for this to arrive....

[skinfitz]

All questions demonstrate ignorance. But those who don't ask remain ignorant. And those who critisize asking questions are doubly ignorant.

And people who refuse to believe facts because they do not like them choose to remain ignorant.

Re:waiting for this to arrive....

[TheRaven64]

I sold my G4 tower some time ago becuase it was not fast enough to compete with my winders boxes.

I'm intrigued. What do you do that makes a 1.25GHz G4 feel slow? I'm still using a 1.33GHz Athlon and it feels quite fast. I keeps thinking about upgrading the CPU, but really can't see the point. I rarely use more than 20% of it as it is...

Re:waiting for this to arrive....

[Anonymous Coward]

woah.

I know kung-fu.

Re:waiting for this to arrive....

[Doc Hopper]

I concur. The only times I feel the age of my 933MHz Pentium III is on certain levels in Unreal Tournament, and when I'm compiling a new kernel and realize it takes three times longer than the newest benchmarks.

The 970 looks exciting, but I personally am anticipating the release only for the dramatic price reduction it should bring in the older Macs. At that point, I'll go get that Powerbook -- once I can pick up a decent one for less than $2,000.

Re:waiting for this to arrive....

[Anonymous Coward]

And those who critisize asking questions are doubly ignorant.

I'm like rubber, and you're like glue or something.

Re:waiting for this to arrive....

[Anonymous Coward]

I sold my G4 tower some time ago becuase it was not fast enough....

What on earth were you using it for? Did you have a lot of RAM? OS X gobbles up RAM.

Re:waiting for this to arrive....

[Anonymous Coward]

I think it's the price/performance ratio that he is really comparing. He knows that for the price of a single 1.2GHz G4 CPU, he can buy an entire x86 PC (monitor seperately). Or for the price of a single 1.2GHz G4 CPU, he can buy an AMD XP 3000+, or an Intel P4 2.6GHz CPU.

I concur that a 1GHz CPU (or there about) feels fast enough, for me at least. But there's no way I'm going to pay Apple's outrageous prices for hardware. Which is extremely unfortunate because I would love to check out Mac OSX.

Re:waiting for this to arrive....

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, I was using my G4 ( 733 ) to do everything I now use my 2 windows boxes for. I was able to buy parts and assemble 2 windows AMD boxes both running 2400 + processors with 9500 Pro video with the money I got from selling my 733 G4 and monitor.

I love Apple, love OS X, just hate slow overpriced hardware. I want Apple to succeed becuase I dont want MS and Intel to run the computing world. I will buy into Apple again when they start making 970 machines and get back into the race hardware wise. And yes, it is a race. If it was not, then the G4's would still be selling.

Re:waiting for this to arrive....

[drunkenbatman]

I'm intrigued. What do you do that makes a 1.25GHz G4 feel slow? I'm still using a 1.33GHz Athlon and it feels quite fast. I keeps thinking about upgrading the CPU, but really can't see the point. I rarely use more than 20% of it as it is...

One thing to remember about Apple's machines is that while the G4 processor, if the code is really tuned can hold it's own with processors at a much higher clock speed on OSX not very much is very tuned and the overhead associated with running OSX demands a lot more horsepower for the same tasks compared to X86.

Some examples might be compiling- while the compiler in 10.2 made big strides, it's still no speed demon. Apple did move from 2.95 to 3.1 for 10.2, and while that does have better PPC support it's still *cough* really basic, especially compared to how tuned it is for X86. A ton of apps intensive apps either don't support altivec, or don't support dual-processors, or both. Got lots of windows going on a high-res display? QE helps with the compositing, but everything first has to be generated in software in order to be handed off to be composited... on my tibook it's not uncommon to see the windowmanager taking up 30-35%+ of the CPU to do its thing. Have a few apps open and depending on what they've been coded with (cocoa, carbon, etc) and how tuned they are you can easily see CPU cycles just draining away.

iTunes on a 667 G4 machine I have here hovers between 13-35% CPU, on my 733MHz P3 playing an MP3 in winamp is more like 3%... On my 500MHz iBook it hovers between 17-40%... no it doesn't skip, even while I'm doing semi-intensive stuff but the whole machine sure does slow down... even on my G4: with iTunes playing MP3's, something download in the background, and the sorry state of things like dreamweaverX, golive and photoshop I often feel like I'm using a 250MHz machine. It's getting better- Ie, with 10.2 and some updates to some apps I don't type faster than a stupid processor very much anymore but it still happens.

Then there's iCal, iPhoto... these things, while pretty, take more CPU power than you'd think if you're coming in from the x86 world.

The other thing to keep in mind is the gigantic speed-gaps that occur in Apple's product lines due to the processors not scaling up gracefully. IE, Unreal2003 tech demo was just released for OSX. It barely runs on any Apple machine well, you need a top-of-the-line G4 tower with a Geforce Ti (or close) to run it. I swear, why would they want to port any graphics-intensive games when only the multi-thousand dollar machines Apple sells will run them and even at that only the newest breed?

If you have oh, let's say a G4 867 or 1GHz that shipped with a crappier card Apple charges you $400+ to get the OEM Apple card of choice... Apple only sold 500MHz machines for a long time and there are tons and tons of those out there that people bought for $4k+. For iBooks and Powerbooks, Apple basically announced 10.2 and said "oh yeah, and here are new powerbooks and iBooks that will make QE work... sorry about what we just sold you a few weeks/month ago for a few thousand..."

Since they're so expensive and have a decent resale value, it can be easier to just sell it and use the money to get a decent PC plus a bunch of extras. Hell, get one plus a spare. In many cases it's just more cost-effective to get a PC. Not for a lot of what I do per se, but for the things I used to do... I've watched a ton of content professionals leave the mac due to the speed (either of the processor, or the apps they want not being optimized) even as I've watched a bunch of geeks migrate to it...

drunkenbatman

Re:waiting for this to arrive....

[Anonymous Coward]

You can already pick up a 12" PowerBook G4 that has a built-in DVD burner for $2,000.

Re:waiting for this to arrive....

[Anonymous Coward]

No you don't, Keanu, it was all wires and special effects. Remember?

Re:waiting for this to arrive....

[Arker]

Nice troll. Lots of truth in the stuff about the compiler needing improvement. But my 667 tiBook runs itunes, mozilla with a dozen tabs open, two or three emacs windows, apache with php/mysql (not a lot of action on it, just for development of course), calculator, mail, and a game or two simultaneously and I've never seen the load get much above .3 for a peak. The difference between it and my athlonxp 1700 machine is negligible - it's there, but hardly ever apparent. iPhoto and iMovie work much better for me than the PC equivelants, and do their work quite quickly. You're obviously just making crap up.

It is competitive !

[Fefe]

Who knows whether it will still be competitive in several months when they actually want to offer it.

On the other hand Apple users won't have much of a choice, and neither has Apple.

Re:It is competitive !

[mirko]

Actually, since Jobs got back to Apple, he's not especially disappointed Apple users : there was the iMac, the iBook, the iWhatever, the Airport, the G4...
Each time there was a leap forward so I guess this will give the concurrence some nightmares.
But you are right, until then, Apple took huge risks.
It's just a good think someone did, otherwise the market would still offer prehistoric beeping-XT.

Re:It is competitive !

[SN74S181]

And since the market doesn't feature prehistoric beeping XT's, we're not forced between the choice of using those, or dinkyscreen black-and-white squawking Macintoys.

Re:It is competitive !

[dasmegabyte]

Sorry, that's bullshit. Apple has whatever choice apple wants to make, and they've had talks with other chipmakers including AMD. If the 970 fell through, they'd go with something else. If they had to, they could switch to an x86 architecture without batting an eye. It worked pretty well for SGI.

Not that it would necessarily be in their best interest. Apple, as a company, represents an ALTERNATIVE, and therefore they try to maintain alternative hardware choices: SCSI over IDE, ATI over NVIDIA, USB over PCI, the one button & metakey paradigm, Flat Panel over CRT -- and the big one, RISC over CISC. Some of these choices have panned out great. Some have flopped miserably...yet despite the doomsayers, Apple is still afloat after 30 years of "forcing" people to buy "crazy" proprietary gear. With "only" 3% of the market, but it's a huge freakin' market, and their margins are gigantic. Part of the reason for this huge margin is that they are the only hardware player, and are therefore able to name their own prices.

As for Apple users having no choices, that's also crap. We always have choices: buy Apple, or buy something else. Keep the current machine and upgrade it, or buy a new one. And Apple will still make the old chips for a long time after the 970 has started smokin' competitors...at least, that's what they did every other time they made a generation jump in processors.

Apple users vote with their dollars and so it's in Apple's interest to do whatever people are most receptive to, which is what they as a company seem to be best at anyway. After all, they got me to spend $538.72 on an mp3 player. This whole "no choice" thing is BS -- you choose the platform, not the hardware. That's the Apple way.

Re:It is competitive !

[mikedaisey]

"If they had to, they could switch to an x86 architecture without batting an eye. It worked pretty well for SGI."

No, they couldn't. Every app would need to be rewritten, right on the heels of the 9 to X transition that isn't even finished yet. Switching to x86 is a complex nightmare that may be Apple's doomsday plan, but it is far from simple.

Re:It is competitive !

[bnenning]

Every app would need to be rewritten

Mostly just recompiled, but even that would be a major pain.

Re:It is competitive !

[Shuh]

No, they couldn't. Every app would need to be rewritten, right on the heels of the 9 to X transition that isn't even finished yet. Switching to x86 is a complex nightmare that may be Apple's doomsday plan, but it is far from simple.

It's probably not as hard as you would think technically, considering that the NeXT OS that OSX is based on ran on x86 hardware for a while. Additionally, Apple already has experience from it's CISC->RISC processor transition in 1994. Except this time it would be RISC->CISC.

That being said, I don't think it would be a good business move for Apple. The last thing Apple needs to do is become a pure software company on the x86 platform. The only proprietary OS that survives in that desert is Windows (Linux is not proprietary).

Re:It is competitive !

[Keeper]

Endianness of x86 and PPC CPUs are different. Any app that needs to work with binary data will need some work. That's just the tip of the iceberg...many other more subtle problems are likely to crop up.

Re:It is competitive !

[doinky]

x86 is completely different from PPC - recompiling isn't even the half of it; and I shudder to think of attempting to run an OS on x86 which doesn't have a ton of its kernel written in assembler.

Re:It is competitive !

[bnenning]

Properly written Mac apps shouldn't assume processor endianness. There are built-in functions to convert binary data to the processor's native format.

By no means am I saying Apple should switch to x86. There are still technical problems (e.g. Altivec) and it would be a marketing and logistical nightmare.

Re:It is competitive !

[Keeper]

"Properly written" is the key word. How many lazy coders do you think thought to themselves "we'll never have to worry about this"? I don't think I really want to get into the potential problems with badly casted pointers ...

MacOS Apps are likely to have the same problems as unix apps the first time they're built on platform different than the one they're coded on...

Re:It is competitive !

[Anonymous Coward]

"It worked pretty well for SGI."

That's a joke, right? SGI's first attempt at x86 boxes was a dismal failure and they've been going downhill ever since. More recent attempts have been more successful in the short run, but they're still eroding their core business in the long run and overall the company has been doing terrible, and they will probably continue to do terrible until they eventually go out of business in the not-so-distant future.

Not to say that perhaps an x86-64 Apple machine wouldn't make sense. On a lot of levels I'd say it would. But it's a very different situation.

Re:It is competitive !

[mikedaisey]

It would be hard--I don't have the time to go check out the links, but folks at appleinsider.com will dissect in great detail how problems like endianess and wishy-washy support could quickly bury the platform.

If they have to, they would. But it's a final soulution.

Re:It is competitive !

[Unregistered]

More likely they'd get AMD to make a PPC proc.

Re:It is competitive !

[andrewski]

Not really. Considering that the compiler is GCC, it would be easy.

Re:It is competitive !

[gfilion]

Apple, as a company, represents an ALTERNATIVE, and therefore they try to maintain alternative hardware choices: SCSI over IDE, ATI over NVIDIA, USB over PCI, the one button & metakey paradigm, Flat Panel over CRT -- and the big one, RISC over CISC.

I don't want to nitpick but, well okay, I want to nitpick. Apple has been using IDE drives for years. I got a beige G3 and it has IDE drives. And also I would say that Apple proposes Firewire against USB, rather than USB against PCI, but I sure everyone understood what you meant anyway.

competitive, sure...

[Anonymous Coward]

The PPC 970 will not really make the Macintosh competitive with modern PC's. It will make it competitive with PC's from the beginning of this year, which are not the fastest available any more, and will be even slower when compared to the machines that are available when the PPC 970 ships, which is the very earliest that Apple machines based on it can ship. It will however go a long way to catching up, and take off a lot of the pressure caused by the abominable performance of today's dual processor G4 machines when compared to even inexpensive PC's.

The other unkown in this is the price. PPC 970 based Apple computers may be significantly more expensive. Motorola loses hundreds of millions of dollars each year on their semiconductor business, and IBM does as well. Still, IBM may want to look at Apple and the PPC 970 as a PROFIT center, rather than a LOSS center, like Motorola does with Apple and the G4.

The PPC 970 is great news for Apple, but it is still a bone thrown to them while the x86 PC is feasting on the meat of the Intel and AMD processors.

Re:competitive, sure...

[Trurl's Machine]

The PPC 970 will not really make the Macintosh competitive with modern PC's. It will make it competitive with PC's from the beginning of this year, which are not the fastest available any more, and will be even slower when compared to the machines that are available when the PPC 970 ships

"Being competitive" does not equal to 'having more computing power". Look how small is this thingy's power consumption! I guess when 970 ships, we will have similar situation as we have right now. x86 machines will consume enormous amount of power and dissipate enormous amount of heat, what usually results in this nice "quadruple augmented turbofan" sound that accompanies most PC desktops or "not enough battery life even to watch a full DVD" laptops. Not to mention that if you actually put this laptop on the top of your lap, you might get your testicles hard boiled.

And Apple will launch yet another series of slower but cool machines - both in terms of look and heat dissipation. Which actually is pretty much what we have already.

Re:competitive, sure...

[11223]

The PPC 970 is great news for Apple, but it is still a bone thrown to them while the x86 PC is feasting on the meat of the Intel and AMD processors.

As Nethack would say, "Ugh! This meat is tainted!"

The 970 is fundamentally a 64-bit processor, and its performance must be evaluated in that context. The fact that the 970 will pull off amazing speed in the 32-bit arena only shows how well-designed this processor is.

Keep in mind, the Hammer is only shipping at 1.4, 1.6, and 1.8 GHz - the same speeds the 970 is targeted at. And the 970 has the advantage of an ISA that was designed from the beginning to do 32 and 64 bit addressing, versus one that's a 64-bit extension of a 32-bit extension of a 16-bit micro with full compatibility to an 8-bit redesign of a 4-bit processor.

Re:competitive, sure...

[spRed]

I personally can't wait .. this will require Mac zealots to up the ante on the rhetoric.

If you've been saying a dual G4 currently beats anything Intel/AMD hands down, what do you say when PPC970 arrives?

"My PPC970 Mac is fully sentient. He's talking about running for president in 2008."

Re:competitive, sure...

[Anonymous Coward]

64-bit extension of a 32-bit extension of a 16-bit micro with full compatibility to an 8-bit redesign of a 4-bit processor

...used by a 2 bit company that can't stand 1 bit of competition

(for completeness)

Re:competitive, sure...

[dicka_j]

...and as the processors become faster and faster, speed becomes less of an issue.

When you can compile the kernel or compress a movie in 2 mins, who will really care that it can be done in 1?

The only reason for getting the 4 gig over the 2 would be to have the ability to play your games at the cinematic detail level.

Re:competitive, sure...

[dicka_j]

Not true, the 970 is a Desktop processor, and must be evaluated in that context.

The fact that it will kick ass over most 64bit processors is good, but 64 bit processors will not rule the desktop market for a while yet...

Re:competitive, sure...

[Anonymous Coward]

The G4s are still fairly competitive with PC from the beginning of this year at most things. What are you talking about?

Will it spit out the most FPS of Unreal 2003? No because it's a PC game optimized for x86, does that mean it can't perform? No. It's taken 18+ months for an x86 to outperform the G4 at a lot of Photoshop stuff, that doesn't seem to matter to the chumps at places like arstechnica (I've read Petterson too, Jon..) but it does to the 75% of Mac owners that depend on it.

Just like the opeteron, PowerPCs don't need to run at 4Ghz to perform a lot of operations.

Bottom line is, I've got a dual 2.6Ghz Pentium IV Xeon system sitting next to a dual 1Ghz pentium III both with 2G of RAM and you know what, the real performance difference is on the other of 30%-50%. In terms of compiling speed, serving up web pages and crunching data the system that is clocked twice as fast (533Mhz bus) isn't even close to twice as fast.

Re:competitive, sure...

[pianophile]

When you can compile the kernel or compress a movie in 2 mins, who will really care that it can be done in 1?

I will care. No system is ever "fast enough" until whatever I want to do is done instantaneously. I want kernel compiles in 1 second, not 1 minute. I want to compress a movie in the same time it takes my system to execute the date(1) command. Until it can do that, system speed can be improved.

Re:competitive, sure...

[Trurl's Machine]

When you can compile the kernel or compress a movie in 2 mins, who will really care that it can be done in 1?

Damn, I wish I had my copy of "Moon Is A Harsh Mistress" right now with me. I remember that there was a quote almost exactly the same as yours (of course, Heinlein did not mention specifically "compressing movies" or "compiling kernels", just something about calculations and miliseconds). Who says science-fiction predictions for XXI century are not accurate? Robert A. Heinlein predicted the spirit of Mac community 40 years ago :-).

Re:competitive, sure...

[be-fan]

The PPC 970's power consumption at 1.8GHz is 42 watts. If it debuts at over 2GHz like many people predict, it will easily be over 50 watts. At that point, the extra 20 or so watts a P4 consumes hardly seems like a big loss. Also, it is entirely possible to make whisper quiet 3GHz P4 monsters. The newest Dells don't even put a CPU fan on the heatsink. They have a huge heatsink, and cover it with a closed heat tunnel. At the end of the tunnel, they attach a very large, but very slow, and thus very quiet, running fan. As a result, the CPU stays cool, and the machine is barely audible from a few feet away. The "jet engine" sound you get from most PCs is a result of poor case design (particularly the use of small, high-RPM fans) more than anything else.

Re:competitive, sure...

[be-fan]

How about this. It takes my P4 2GHz more than 8 hours to compile KDE. If I can compile it in 4 hours rather than 8, I'd say that's a huge savings. If my 3D CAD software runs at 20fps rather than 10fps, it's the difference between interactivity and watching a slideshow. The fact that many users do nothing more on their machines than surf the internet and use MS Office doesn't change the fact that there are a whole lot of users who do computationally demanding work with their machines. These users are also, in general, willing to pay more money for computer hardware, as evidenced by the profitibility of high-end 3D card manufacturers. Instead of ignoring these types of users, companies interested in their profit margins should be courting them.

Re:competitive, sure...

[bedizened]

I came upon this article, "PPC 970: is it enough?", when looking into the 970 a while ago, which looks at the performance of the chip using SPECfp and SPECint tests. There are a few similar articles on the web as well. It goes through a bit of performance testing, but here's the spoiler:

... if the PowerPC 74xx/75xx running at 1GHz roughly equals the performance of a 1.6 GHz Pentium 4, a PowerPC 970 at 1GHz equals a 2 GHz Pentium 4.

This means, a 1.8 GHz 970 would compare to a 3.6 GHz PIV, putting the two chips on very close to the the same standing when the 970 is released.

Of course, it appears that the tests do not look at the Altivec optimized code, which could make a huge difference, especially considering just how much Altivec (or "velocity engine") code has been integrated into Apple software.

The chip could still be quite impressive, especially compared with the g4 ... I was a little disappointed, though, being under the impression that it would blow everything else out of the water, when in reality, all the 970 does is compete favorably.

Re:competitive, sure...

[ipjohnson]

That reminds me of the simpsons episode where Moe changes the bar to a family resturant.

Moe: And I got this deep frier from the Navy. It can flash fry a buffalo in 3 seconds.
Homer (in a whiney voice): But I want it now.

Re:competitive, sure...

[Anonymous Coward]

"it will easily be over 50 watts. At that point, the extra 20 or so watts a P4 consumes hardly seems like a big loss."

LIsten to yourself, you are saying that adding an extra 40% isn't going to have an effect on a laptop battery?

"As a result, the CPU stays cool, and the machine is barely audible from a few feet away."

A few feet away? I can't hear my iBook running while I hold it! Your delusional! Mad I tell you!

JohnnyX

Re:competitive, sure...

[Anonymous Coward]

Hi. You've seem to have been living under a rock. Don't worry, we all do it sometimes.

The "Athlon 64" (x86-64) is going to be aimed at the desktop market. The PPC 970 is widely believed to be the next step in Apple's desktop lineup, as well.
Both are 32-bit/64-bit hybrids.

And this is all happening around September of this year. Yes, they will face the competition of the 32-bit only P4, but it's unfair to say that these 2 of the 3 big desktop chip makers won't rule the market to some degree.

Re:competitive, sure...

[dr.badass]

Keep in mind, the Hammer is only shipping at 1.4, 1.6, and 1.8 GHz - the same speeds the 970 is targeted at.

Ah, but will it scale? I know AMD is going to be ramping up the clock speed on par with their older chips -- and the price will plummet. Can the same be said about the 970, or will we only see an extra 100MHz or so every six months? (Be it because of actual technical barriers or Motorola's (or whoever ends up making them) complacency.) I hope for the former, as no matter how well-designed the chip is, it's not going to make up a (say) 600MHz gap in raw performance.

And the 970 has the advantage of an ISA that was designed from the beginning to do 32 and 64 bit addressing, versus one that's a 64-bit extension of a 32-bit extension of a 16-bit micro with full compatibility to an 8-bit redesign of a 4-bit processor.

Yes, that sounds like a clear win on paper. Clean, new, architectures are prettier. But another way of looking at it is that x86 has evolved over many more generations than PPC, and has had much more competition. The
result is highly refined. It *works*, even if it seems like it should be clunking along by now.

For what it's worth, everything I've read about x86-64 implies that it is exceptionally well-designed and seamless. Not tacked-on or overextended as I think you're implying. I sincerely doubt that the 64-bit extension is going to be a limiting factor.

Re:competitive, sure...

[Anonymous Coward]

Go earn yourself a clue about Centrino, then come back and regret your assessment of x86 laptops.

Thanks!

Re:competitive, sure...

[Realistic_Dragon]

"The PPC 970 will not really make the Macintosh competitive with modern PC's. It will make it competitive with PC's from the beginning of this year"

Then how did a 32 way P970 system from IBM beat the shit out of a 64 way itanium 2 system from HP in the TPC tests?

Dual Itanium 2 speed for Apples? Yes please. (Hell, I'm just waiting for Linux to get ported to that hardware - should be well worth the money.)

Re:competitive, sure...

[timeOday]

I guess when 970 ships, we will have similar situation as we have right now. x86 machines will consume enormous amount of power and dissipate enormous amount of heat, what usually results in this nice "quadruple augmented turbofan" sound that accompanies most PC desktops or "not enough battery life even to watch a full DVD" laptops.

That seems like an unfair assessment, due to the Pentium-M - 24 watts at 1.6 GHz (with roughly the performance of a P4-2.4), vs 42 watts at 1.8 GHz for the PPC970 (according to another poster).

So it seems Intel has taken the low-power crown as well.

Re:competitive, sure...

[madmancarman]

...used by a 2 bit company that can't stand 1 bit of competition

It's too bad moderation isn't pseudo-logarithmic, so you could get something to +6 if 10 people gave it a +1 moderation past the +5 maximum.

First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win. -- Gandhi

Re:competitive, sure...

[haxor.dk]

The Mac's forte has never been performance.

It has been ease-of-use and it's features used in publishing. With OS X, it has the worlds best ease of use, and it's UNIX, too.

Who cares about ±20% performace.

Re:competitive, sure...

[Lars T.]

Well, Mac users are clever enough not to bother with KDE, let alone compile it ;-)

Re:competitive, sure...

[PCBman!]

He's making the claim based on desktop machines, not laptops. Keep it in mind when you're thinking about your power budget.

Re:competitive, sure...

[Anonymous Coward]

Who cares about ±20% performace.

The mac freaks who constantly compare Mac to PC's running Photoshop.

Re:competitive, sure...

[Anonymous Coward]

Show us how a Pentium-M 1.6Ghz is as fast as a 2.4Ghz Pentium 4? Isn't the "M" designation just a speed throttled regular Pentium?

Re:competitive, sure...

[Anonymous Coward]

YEah, what the fuck is this shit about mobile wireless technology I keep hearing in those damn Centrino ads? Ehh?? I thought Centrino was just a new laptop cpu. How the fuck does that have anything to do with wifi? Please comment.

Re:competitive, sure...

[be-fan]

We're not talking about laptops. We're talking about desktops. Powerful x86 laptops are noisy and have short battery life. Hell, I'd use a TiBook if didn't need all the horsepower of a desktop replacement laptop. For a high-end desktop machine, "barely audible" (meaning I can't tell it's on from my chair 3 feet away) is pretty damn good. A lot better than the new G4 towers, which have actually quite noisy.

Re:competitive, sure...

[Anonymous Coward]

No, the Pentium-4M is the alterend regular Pentium4. The Pentium-M is a completely redesigned chip specifically built for laptops, not just a converted desktop processor. I know the designations are confusing. You'd think the Pentium-4M would be the more advanced, but it's not.

Re:competitive, sure...

[Anonymous Coward]

Cause now they are putting wireless chipsets on the motherboard with the soundcard and calling it advanced...

Re:competitive, sure...

[Crazy Eight]

This makes me chuckle, but really now... Why not?

Re:competitive, sure...

[Anonymous Coward]

Centrino isn't just the processor, it's the processor (Pentium-M), Chipset (855), and wireless.

Re:competitive, sure...

[rafa]

Actually, I believe that was 32 POWER 4s, not 970s (I'm sure I've seen something about that linked from /. as well, but a quick search didn't find it.).

Rikard

Re:competitive, sure...

[dbrutus]

Apple, as the sole manufacturer of their hardware platform, is in the unenviable position of having to be both an e-machines equivalent (price sensitive, low cost supplier) and the IBM (high quality, premium price supplier) of its market as well as being the Sony (innovative cool supplier) to boot. Limited engineering resources leads Apple to shift things from one area to another. XServe isn't progressing as fast as it could if Apple was just a server company and neither are any of the other directions Apple is going. Right now it's clear that it's the desktop pro line that's going to get attention with a new chip generation and (if the article is right) a much, much better system bus. Going out on a speculative limb here, I'd like to see a system that can modularly scale processors much higher than anything on the market so if you need real time 3D CAD or instantaneous kernel compiles you can scale up to 4, 8, 16 or 32 processors in a sound proofed, super-cooled 'fat mac' cabinet. That would nicely take care of the high end as you would end up paying 3k for the first unit and then just upgrade processor numbers until you max the cabinet.

The extra scaling availability would have speed freaks drooling and anything that would have a scaling ability beyong Windows Professional (desktop level solution which currently can't handle more than 4 processors) would give Apple a real shot at bragging rights whether or not the individual chip for the Mac stays up front in the chip speed wars.

Re:competitive, sure...

[dbrutus]

The entire point of PPC/Power ISA was that it would run 32 bit code without speed penalty in a 64 bit environment. PPC up until now has been Power chips that have been cut down to *only* run 32 bit code. The distinction is disappearing and now it's a 64bit chip just like it's bigger brothers labelled Power.

Re:competitive, sure...

[rtechie]

For what it's worth, everything I've read about x86-64 implies that it is exceptionally well-designed and seamless. Not tacked-on or overextended as I think you're implying. I sincerely doubt that the 64-bit extension is going to be a limiting factor.

Actually, this really isn't true, at least in the case of the Opteron which is basically a hack of the Athlon design. It tends to suffer compared to "clean" 64bit designs like Itanium, Power4, and Alpha. It is extremely unlikely that the Athlon-64 will be significantly different. However this hacked design is the Opteron's greatest strenght, allowing it to have both great 32bit performance and good 64bit performance.

Competition..

[telax]

It's nice to see how these 64 bit systems will compete. I'm going to army for atleast 6 months and when I come back it would be nice to buy some super fast 64bit system :) Though.. I'm a bit suspicious about the x86-64-system? Yet again a system that expands it? Not so sure about it :P

Re:Competition..

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm going to army for atleast 6 months and when I come back it would be nice to buy some super fast 64bit system :)

After 6 months of army pay you'd be lucky to afford the box it comes in.

Re:Good Stuff...

[the uNF cola]

Are you saying that Gentoo sucks, since if it is ported to every machine that has a sucky OS, that Gentoo might BE that sucky OS?

Or did you just insult Mac OSX.

p.s. OS X doesn't suck, [ insert long winded flame ]

Yeah. let's depend on IBM for our future

[corebreech]

C'mon! It should be abundantly clear now -- even to Steve -- that nobody else in the universe gives a damn if Macs are the slowest desktops on the planet.

Mac developers are used to heavy lifting to accommodate change. Witness the 680x0->PPC migration (which was incredibly painful), or Mac OS 9->OS X. Adopting a new processor would be a piece of cake at this point.

Take a page from GNU/Linux and the BSD's 1 2 & 3. Target multiple architectures. Let the users decide!

Re:Yeah. let's depend on IBM for our future

[EvilTwinSkippy]

On the contrary...

Most users of Macs are in the graphics industry. Having BEEN there, I can tell you the 68k to PPC transition was a non-issue. The PPC ran the 68k code as fast as the old machines. The real transition was in restructuring applications, since they no longer needed to work around the brain-deadedness of the 68k series. Again, old apps were not affected.

The other point I would like to make is that they HAVE taken a page out of the GNU/Linux BSD page. MacOSX is an alternative window manager sitting on top of BSD!

Re:Yeah. let's depend on IBM for our future

[mblase]

Target multiple architectures. Let the users decide!

Y'know, I don't know why this keeps coming up. Apple's bottom line has always depended on keeping tight control over the hardware to allow maximum integration with their own software. And it works.

Keep in mind that Linux and BSD aren't targetted towards consumers who want to just "rip, mix, burn" or have plug-and-play that's actually exactly that. Even Windows can't deliver consistently on its promise of universal ease-of-use because so many vendors have so much hardware that may or may not work with the system and its existing drivers.

Whatever else you think about Apple's computers, they are without a doubt the easiest PCs on the planet if you're a neophyte. Take it from me, I've got two young women in my home who are all but completely computer-illiterate, and if I didn't have Mac OS X running they'd be constantly lost at sea. I'd love to try hooking up a Linux box for either or both of them, but there's no way I could expect them to use it. Macs are easy, and their users like them that way.

Yeah, I know it's a profit issue for Apple as well, because without business software sales like Microsoft relies on they'd be bankrupt without hardware profits. But I like to think it's more than just money. Apple cares about making a good and easy-to-use product, or else they'd just be chasing Windows like (sorry, not trolling here, but it's true) GNOME and KDE are instead of constantly innovating their own hardware and interface designs.

Targetting multiple architectures means that Apple's got to deal with unpredictable hardware configurations, cards, motherboards, drivers, all sorts of things that could cause inconvenient kernel panics, drive failures, or worse. Users are used to that with Windows, and they pretty much expect it with Linux. With Macs, they expect things to just work. Controlling the hardware is the best way for Apple to do that.

Re:Yeah. let's depend on IBM for our future

[EvilTwinSkippy]

Have you ever programmed for the 68000 series processors? Perhaps "Primative" was a better word to describe writing your program in 64 KB chunks.

Re:Yeah. let's depend on IBM for our future

[KefkaFloyd]

"Oh, puhlease. Nobody in the Mac community referred to it as the brain-deadness of the 68k series until the marketing fax from Apple told them it was time to."

Considering that Steve wasn't in charge at the time, Spindler was.

The 68K had serious scaling problems (gee, where have we seen this before?) and it was holding the platform back compared to Intel processors.

Re:Yeah. let's depend on IBM for our future

[bigman2003]

I've got two young women at home too. One with a Mac, one with a Windows machine. The Maccie always watches longingly as we play games, use sites like Yahoo! Launch (Windows Update too...can't forget that one man). We used to be impressed with the translucent housed monitor with alien feet- now we scoff as she fires up Photoshop yet again.

Re:Yeah. let's depend on IBM for our future

[Anonymous Coward]

In relative terms MAC is dead slow

No it isn't. You just read it from the EEPROM on the card. O.K, admitedly EEPROM is not as fast as modern DRAM, but it is hardly "dead slow". After all, you're only reading a measly 32 bits. Even on an XT bus you can still do that in a single bus cycle!

Re:Yeah. let's depend on IBM for our future

[Anonymous Coward]

The 68k was a great chip. It did have a flat memory model so the chip did not force you to write in 64k chunks. That was the Mac OS's funky but very usful virtual/overlay system that they used.
As too the scaling issues. I doubt that the 68k had any more issues than the intel X86 line. Intel was just selling TONS more and could afford to keep throwing money at it. If nothing else rember people only used the X86 when they HAD TOO. Everyone that could choose tended to pick the 68k. It still lives on.

Re:Yeah. let's depend on IBM for our future

[corebreech]

Most users of Macs are in the graphics industry. Having BEEN there, I can tell you the 68k to PPC transition was a non-issue.

Not for developers it wasn't, and it was developers of whom I was speaking. And it wasn't even painless for users, who had to sort out all kinds of compatibility issues that were often only resolved by shelling out the bucks for an expensive upgrade.

The PPC ran the 68k code as fast as the old machines.

This wasn't true for some time.

The real transition was in restructuring applications...

Which was my point, thank you very much.

...since they no longer needed to work around the brain-deadedness of the 68k series.

The 68K was a beautiful architecture, and in and of itself had absolutely nothing to do with the migration issues.

Again, old apps were not affected.

Many apps were in fact affected.

You are wrong across the board here, but hey, it's a Mac topic. :)

Re:Yeah. let's depend on IBM for our future

[corebreech]

This had little or nothing to do with the 68K processor, and everything to do with the Segment Loader.

That said, I would've made the same decision they did. Given the other complexities inherent in Mac development, organizing your code in segments was at best an annoyance.

The 680x0 was a truly *great* processor.

Re:Yeah. let's depend on IBM for our future

[IamTheRealMike]

Even Windows can't deliver consistently on its promise of universal ease-of-use because so many vendors have so much hardware that may or may not work with the system and its existing drivers.

Y'know, I have no idea why this keeps coming up. Assuming you buy from a reputable vendor, the only time you have hardware problems with a PC is if you do upgrades manually, or if something breaks (rare). The fact that Macs have a reputation for good integration is mostly marketing - if you go down to your local PC World and walk out with a new box, that'll work just fine too. If you then try and plug in ancient or super new hardware in an attempt to recycle stuff for instance, then yeah, you might get breakage. But that happens with Macs too, the only reason you don't see it is because there is practically no upgrade path outside of buying a new machine.

Whatever else you think about Apple's computers, they are without a doubt the easiest PCs on the planet if you're a neophyte.

No they aren't. Everybody I've seen who has been sat down in front of a Mac found it hopelessly confusing and non-intuitive. The only people I know who stuck with them, are those who bought them personally (they would, wouldn't they). I know I had to have the owner of said Mac sit next to me and guide me when I was trying to use his machine, and I'm far from being a neophyte. Stupid differences from Windows and idiotic conventions that had seemingly no basis in actual usability just pissed me off. Perhaps for people who have never used a computer before in their life it's easier than Windows (but I doubt it) - for people who have (the majority) it's just a pain in the ass.

Apple cares about making a good and easy-to-use product, or else they'd just be chasing Windows like (sorry, not trolling here, but it's true) GNOME and KDE are instead of constantly innovating their own hardware and interface designs.

Sorry, but you are trolling here. Apple aren't chasing Windows because regardless of what the majority of users want, their existance is justified in their customers eyes by the fact that they are different. People just take it as read that different equals better, despite a lack of compelling (objective) evidence to the contrary. Go read some usability reviews of MacOS X by long time users of the platform.

If you think it's about "more than just money" you need to wake up and smell the roses. Quite how a publically owned company, with a shrinking market share can be allowed to be motivated by anything other than money is beyond me. They're a business, their legal obligation is to their shareholders first and foremost. Wishy washy ideas about design purity might have had some merit back when it was just Jobs and Woz in their garage, but that Apple died years ago.

Anyway, if you want something that isn't motivated by money and is about building a quality product, Linux is about the only thing that qualifies. At the end of the day, the product and the ability for people to use it (in both a usability and a licensing sense) is everything. Go read and take part in the desktop discussion lists if you don't believe me. You might not like what it is today, but that's an entirely separate issue. Money isn't, cannot be, a serious motivation for these guys as the vast majority are not paid for it.

Targetting multiple architectures means that Apple's got to deal with unpredictable hardware configurations, cards, motherboards, drivers, all sorts of things that could cause inconvenient kernel panics, drive failures, or worse. Users are used to that with Windows, and they pretty much expect it with Linux. With Macs, they expect things to just work. Controlling the hardware is the best way for Apple to do that.

CPU architectures have nothing to do with driver instability, nor mixing hardware. That would only be an issue if Apple tried to write a PC version (as opposed to an x86 version) of MacOS, but hey, you know what? The world is a messy place. People don

Re:Yeah. let's depend on IBM for our future

[Alan Partridge]

yeah, who'd rather be creating images using Photoshop than playing fucking games or surfing Yahoo! ?

er... me, for one

Re:Yeah. let's depend on IBM for our future

[Gizzmonic]

Yahoo! Launch and Windows Update are definitely 'killer apps.' There's no way in hell I'll buy a Mac until they run Windows Update. Photoshop, Colorsync, etc are just toys, and so are computers that don't look like cardboard boxes!

Re:Yeah. let's depend on IBM for our future

[IamTheRealMike]

MacOSX is an alternative window manager sitting on top of BSD!

So why won't iTunes run on FreeBSD then? I tried it, it didn't work.

I think you get the point. Gross exaggurations are one thing. This is something else.

Re:Yeah. let's depend on IBM for our future

[corebreech]

Y'know, I don't know why this keeps coming up.

Macs are always slower than Intel boxes?

Apple's bottom line has always depended on keeping tight control over the hardware to allow maximum integration with their own software. And it works.

The market share is still south of 5%, and you want to tell us that selling slow computers works?

Whatever else you think about Apple's computers, they are without a doubt the easiest PCs on the planet if you're a neophyte.

This would remain the case. Nobody posted to the effect that Macs should be made harder to use.

Targetting multiple architectures means that Apple's got to deal with unpredictable hardware configurations, cards, motherboards, drivers, all sorts of things that could cause inconvenient kernel panics, drive failures, or worse.

Not at all. Man, where do you get this stuff? Apple would still be making the computers. Apple would decide on the configurations, what cards can go in, what mobos to use, etc.

Controlling the hardware is the best way for Apple to do that.

Nobody suggested otherwise.

Re:Yeah. let's depend on IBM for our future

[Anonymous Coward]

Assuming you buy from a reputable vendor, the only time you have hardware problems with a PC is if you do upgrades manually, or if something breaks (rare).

Hooboy, that's a big fat whopper of a lie. I guess you've never had to do support for Compaq or Dell, have you? I have, and they use the CHEAPEST POSSIBLE PARTS. "Manual upgrades" are the only way to ensure that you get a quality product.

You call the Mac confusing and non-intuitive, then you praise Linux? Buddy, delusional is a nice word for the kind of mental problems you have.

Re:Yeah. let's depend on IBM for our future

[jbrandon]

Most users of Macs are in the graphics industry.

You are an idiot. You can't actually believe that more than 50% of people who use Apple computers are graphic industry pros!?

Many are students. Many are just people who want to be "cool" and "different." Many are people who want something that just works.

Most are not in the graphics industry. Shit, most probably aren't in any industry at all.

Re:Yeah. let's depend on IBM for our future

[Troed]

Umm .. what?

Now my memory might be failing me, but I wrote a _lot_ of 68000 asm programs on my Atari ST - and I can't remember any 64Kb issues .. ?

Re:Yeah. let's depend on IBM for our future

[mblase]

Mac Advocacy doesn't have to just be ignorant. It can be sexist, too.

"Flamebait" is right. Where did I say that most/all women are computer-illiterate, or that most/all computer illiterates are women? It just happens that these two individuals are both.

Re:Yeah. let's depend on IBM for our future

[Anonymous Coward]

Scoff as she makes $50k a year using Photoshop while you play some moronic game. Watch longingly as iTunes blows that piece of shit Launch out of the water. Gaze in awe as any browser acceses the Macintosh Update site.

I used to be impressed with cheap, fast commodity machines, now I scoff at overpriced Nintendos.

Re:Yeah. let's depend on IBM for our future

[Anonymous Coward]

ok, where's your proof, proof of conecept, or substance?? oh yeah, there is none in your comment. excellent comment dork.

Re:Yeah. let's depend on IBM for our future

[bigman2003]

Ha-

I wish I could reply to all three asshats who think that running Photoshop means REAL computing- but I'll just choose one.

Sorry boys, but Photoshop runs faster on a Windows machine than a Mac. (Ask Adobe, not me- windows is their 'preferred platform') So you obviously assumed that the only thing we did on Windows was play games. Nope, we just got done with our work faster, and we have extra time- while the Mac is still re-drawing the screen.

The Windows box can run Photoshop (and does), and run it better. PLUS it can can run about 99% of the rest of the consumer software out there.

Oh yes...Apple has iTunes, can't forget that. When people at work on Mac's complain that they can't take part in NetMeeting presentations, I usually tell them to go play with iTunes, because that is their idea of productivity.

Re:Yeah. let's depend on IBM for our future

[Alan Partridge]

"I wish I could reply to all three asshats who think that running Photoshop means REAL computing- but I'll just choose one."

You make you ass wear a hat? Why?

"Sorry boys, but Photoshop runs faster on a Windows machine than a Mac. (Ask Adobe, not me- windows is their 'preferred platform') So you obviously assumed that the only thing we did on Windows was play games. Nope, we just got done with our work faster, and we have extra time- while the Mac is still re-drawing the screen."

Adobe does not have a preferred platform, we've been over this already.

"The Windows box can run Photoshop (and does), and run it better. PLUS it can can run about 99% of the rest of the consumer software out there."

Well why are you surfing Yahoo! on it then?

"Oh yes...Apple has iTunes, can't forget that. When people at work on Mac's complain that they can't take part in NetMeeting presentations, I usually tell them to go play with iTunes, because that is their idea of productivity."

Shit, I'd bet that 99% of people would rather play with iTunes that get involved with NetMeeting.

Re:Yeah. let's depend on IBM for our future

[noewun]

Having worked in the "graphics" industry (design/production/pre-press) since 1989, I can assure you that you are the idiot. It's all Macs, all the time.

Re:Yeah. let's depend on IBM for our future

[Anonymous Coward]

For several years the fastest Mac you could get was an Amiga with a 68060 running an emulator.
That was in spite of the fact that Motorola delayed the launch of the 68060 at Apple's request.
The first Power Macs couldn't run legacy software faster than a Mac with a 33MHz 68040.
a Mac with a 50MHz 68060 would have killed Power Mac sales stone dead.

Re:Yeah. let's depend on IBM for our future

[tenton]

There is a big difference between the graphics industry mostly uses Macs and most Mac are used in the graphics industry. One does not imply the other.

The graphics industry may mostly use Macs, but most of the Mac users don't come from the graphics industry.

Or do you the graphics professionals were the ones buying all those gumdrop iMacs?

Who's the idiot now?

Re:Yeah. let's depend on IBM for our future

[rekoil]

From what I remember when I got my first PowerPC-based Mac, there was only one lage incompatibility, but it was a real humdinger - the 68K emulator did not support 68K FPU code. Any 68K app that required a FPU did not run (none of my 3D rendering apps worked). Someone wrote an extension to "render" 68K FPU instructions to 68K integer instructions, which allowed these apps to run, but the performance sucked hard.

Probably the most amusing incident from the migration was Connectix's SpeedDoubler application, which replaced Apple's 68K emulator with its own version that ran twice as fast as Apple's. Apple implemented Connectix's emulator, abanonding their own, in Mac OS 7.6, IIRC.

Re:Yeah. let's depend on IBM for our future

[squiggleslash]

64k chunks?

You're thinking of the Intel 808x series. The 68k was fully thirty-two bit internally - 8 32 bit "A" (address) registers and 8 32 bit "D" (data) registers.

There was nothing braindead about the 68k. It was a very, very, beautiful processor to program.

Re:Yeah. let's depend on IBM for our future

[Anonymous Coward]

Dream it.

Re:Yeah. let's depend on IBM for our future

[vi-rocks]

MacOSX is an alternative window manager sitting on top of BSD!

So why won't iTunes run on FreeBSD then? I tried it, it didn't work.

Umm, because you are not running Quartz, the alternative windowing manager (and probably missing the Carbon/Cocoa Frameworks). Yes, Virgina, it is that simple.

Re:Yeah. let's depend on IBM for our future

[Anonymous Coward]

You call the Mac confusing and non-intuitive, then you praise Linux? Buddy, delusional is a nice word for the kind of mental problems you have.

He didn't praise Linux, moron.

He said:

Anyway, if you want something that isn't motivated by money and is about building a quality product, Linux is about the only thing that qualifies.

He also mentioned that you may not like where Linux is today.

He's right on, and you're a fool.

Neither Microsoft nor Apple are in the software/hardware business to make a difference. They are in it to make a buck.

Try reading the post instead of knee-jerking.

Re:Yeah. let's depend on IBM for our future

[Anonymous Coward]

How is "Windows Update" any different than the "Software Update" on OS X? And My wife runs all her Yahoo stuff just fine on our Macs - just not using IE...

Re:Yeah. let's depend on IBM for our future

[toddhisattva]

...Stupid differences from Windows...

Your mind is controlled by Microsoft.

Re:Yeah. let's depend on IBM for our future

[Anonymous Coward]

With a 24bit address bus. Still, the original poster was way off base.

Re:Yeah. let's depend on IBM for our future

[andrewski]

Not quite just an alternative window manager, it's a hacked Mach running the IOKit , with a BSD interface on top of Mach and a bunch of BSD and GNU apps along with an updated Openstep called with Cocoa, with the display engine ripped out and replaced by the (for this task anyway) functionally superior PDF-based Aqua / Quartz stuff. It's really quite modular - one can leave out the BSD during the installation process by choosing Custom... and unchecking the 'BSD Subsystem' option (for that backup OS X installation to the iPod, for example), and customize the system in innumerable other ways. It truly feels like home to me!

Re:Yeah. let's depend on IBM for our future

[andrewski]

Y'know, I have no idea why this keeps coming up. Assuming you buy from a reputable vendor, the only time you have hardware problems with a PC is if you do upgrades manually, or if something breaks (rare). The fact that Macs have a reputation for good integration is mostly marketing - if you go down to your local PC World and walk out with a new box, that'll work just fine too. If you then try and plug in ancient or super new hardware in an attempt to recycle stuff for instance, then yeah, you might get breakage. But that happens with Macs too, the only reason you don't see it is because there is practically no upgrade path outside of buying a new machine.

Your point, please? So both Macs and PCs break occasionally. With Apple it's usually NOT a hassle to get customer service. With many other companies, you encounter all kinds of BS. Like HP. If you delete the stupid XP restore partition, you will have to buy a DVD-ROM from them to reinstall a copy of Windows that you already bought! And why don't PC users balk at the $400 price tag of XP 'pro' (a questionably worse option than the older Win2K) when Mac folks shout and kick and scream at a paltry $129 fee for a vastly improved OS? It's because Windows users are so used to being fucked in the ass by MS!

Sorry, but you are trolling here. Apple aren't chasing Windows because regardless of what the majority of users want, their existance is justified in their customers eyes by the fact that they are different. People just take it as read that different equals better, despite a lack of compelling (objective) evidence to the contrary. Go read some usability reviews of MacOS X by long time users of the platform.

I call you out as a counter-troll. Apple's current vision is largely Steve Jobs vision right now. He has had a knack for pursuing and marketing great technology and quite frankly isn't as neurotic as Bill and isn't a has-been frat boy like Ballmer. Apple isn't just motivated by money, they are motivated by the money you can get by having the best computer available. Not the fastest necessarily, because the system is only as good as the weakest component. But the most integrated, capable platform out there(we're talking software and hardware integration here people)! Not just money.

CPU architectures have nothing to do with driver instability, nor mixing hardware. That would only be an issue if Apple tried to write a PC version (as opposed to an x86 version) of MacOS, but hey, you know what? The world is a messy place. People don't upgrade their hardware because they like screwing about with drivers, they do it because they want to play Doom 3 but they don't want to buy a whole new machine when 80% of it is still just fine. If they don't know what they're doing the end result is mess and instability, but pretending people don't want to do that is the reason PCs dominated in the first place.

If your old desktop Mac lacks an AGP bus, you are probably screwed, but if you have a newer Mac which needs more balls in the video department, there are quite a few options! The reason that the Mac's current drivers tend to be very stable is that they are written with the IOKit, which is very VERY easy to use!

Re:Yeah. let's depend on IBM for our future

[andrewski]

Everybody I've seen who has been sat down in front of a Mac found it hopelessly confusing and non-intuitive.

Come on, now. Did this group of people include exclusively retards and people with severe cognative disorders, or what? Shit, strike that, when I went to school (which was 'mainstreamed, or more plainly we had retarded kids and other severely disabled students in some classes with us) many of the Downs Syndrome kids were quite proficient at using the Macs, come to think of it! So, when you say you 'sat down' these people, did you really just wheel non-responsive vegetables and coma victims in front of a disused Mac 128k or something?

I have yet to meet a normal person who couldn't learn how to use a mac in ten minutes, and I haven't met a person who used one for more than a month or so who didn't like it better than a PC. Especially since OS X.

Re:Yeah. let's depend on IBM for our future

[Andre Breton]

Assuming you buy from a reputable vendor, the only time you have hardware problems with a PC is if you do upgrades manually, or if something breaks (rare).

Really don't want to flame or anything, but having worked at a support desk I really wonder why the parent wasn't modded +5 Funny... What is a "reputable vendor"? Surely not Dell and co...

Re:Yeah. let's depend on IBM for our future

[squiggleslash]

A 24 bit *external* address bus. Internally, the A registers were fully thirty two bit. The external address bus merely determined the maximum amount of memory you could attach physically to a 68000 without implementing some kind of paging.

Re:Yeah. let's depend on IBM for our future

[RedWizzard]

I wrote 68000 assembly code for the Amiga and I don't remember any need to write in 64KB chunks. Can you elaborate?

Re:Yeah. let's depend on IBM for our future

[rtechie]

Your point, please? So both Macs and PCs break occasionally. With Apple it's usually NOT a hassle to get customer service.

I haven't used Macs since OS9, but back then their support, particularly for developers, was AWFUL.

As an example, a few years back (1999 I think) I was testing our company's audio player on a shiny new iMac and I received a confusing error that was clearly a system error. It wasn't in the thin online manual, nor our developer manuals, nor could I find any reference to it in the incredibly poorly-organized support website so I tried to call Apple. They absolutely refused to offer me any support at first before I began bitching about how we were part of the developer program and were PAYING for support. Eventually, after a week of trying, I got an engineer on the phone who steadfastly refused to admit that the error message existed. By them we had hew builds of the software that didn't generate that error so I forgot about it.

This experience (compined with the general crappiness of OS9) pretty much permanently turned me off Apple.

And why don't PC users balk at the $400 price tag of XP 'pro' (a questionably worse option than the older Win2K) when Mac folks shout and kick and scream at a paltry $129 fee for a vastly improved OS? It's because Windows users are so used to being fucked in the ass by MS!

Because most of us are using free illegal copies. Duh.

Apple's current vision is largely Steve Jobs vision right now. He has had a knack for pursuing and marketing great technology and quite frankly isn't as neurotic as Bill and isn't a has-been frat boy like Ballmer. Apple isn't just motivated by money, they are motivated by the money you can get by having the best computer available. Not the fastest necessarily, because the system is only as good as the weakest component. But the most integrated, capable platform out there(we're talking software and hardware integration here people)! Not just money.

Why should I care one little bit about the "personalities" behind my computer? Do you care about the personal life of the guy who designed your toaster? Of course not. The whole notion is stupid.

And Apple is purely motivated by money, like every other corporation they are REQUIRED to ONLY care about the money BY LAW. Apple has made countless moves (like killing the clones) that screwed their customer base that the expense of making money. This current marketing/design approach of making "boutique" computers was crafted because the folks at Apple thought it would make them more money (considering the company was practically going down in flames before these changes), and snowing people like you to "Think Different" or fight the Great Satan Bill Gates is part of that moneymaking strategy. If you prefer Mac, for whatever reason, that's great. But don't pretend that Apple is somehow morally superior to Windows/Intel because it's less successful.

I find your naivete rather amusing actually.

Re:Yeah. let's depend on IBM for our future

[andrewski]

OS 9 sucked for certain reasons, but was still a lot more stable than even Windows 2K with good tuning. OS X is great, though. You are missing out if you have been turned off to them forever.

The notion of the personality behind certain technology isn't stupid. Doug Englebart, Vennevar Bush, Alan Turing and other people including, yes, Steve Jobs and even Bill Gates (but probably not Ballmer) have made their marks on computing as a whole. You are pretty ignorant if you think that a personality can't have an affect on your computer, or toaster for example. Have you ever heard of Tesla or Edison?

The "botique" look is being copied (2 years late, I might add) by every 2 bit PC manufacturer out there, and do you see their shareholders lining up and filing minority lawsuits? Fuck no, because Apple has been doing great in this fucked economy.

I would also argue that my 13 month old "botique" powerbook is quite a bit more stable and usable, than my newer, top of the line Media Center Edition XP machine from HP! It's also easier to program in Objective C than C++, and quite a bit more powerful IMHO, multihomes automatically, can interface with at least 16 different kinds of digital cameras, both pro SLR and consumer WITHOUT driver upgrades or installation of ANY kind, ditto with any video camera with a 1394 port and iMovie, etc. Which is one reason why the newer Macs are attracting a different crowd than the old Macs. You've got your mind made up, however, so have fun fondling dross and calling it gold, buddy!

Re:Yeah. let's depend on IBM for our future

[rtechie]

OS 9 sucked for certain reasons, but was still a lot more stable than even Windows 2K with good tuning. OS X is great, though. You are missing out if you have been turned off to them forever.

You're missing the point. I wasn't complaining about the technical merits of OS9 (or lack thereof) but the incredibly poor direct support and overall lack of support resources for Macs. I've only had to call Microsoft support a few times in my life (I'm a professional network enginner and IT manager) and they was usually because a Knowledge Base article told me to (You need to contact support to download certain patches, those calls are free). And just about anything I needed to know I could find in a refrence manual (If I cared to look it up) or, MUCH more often, on the Internet. In 1999 I found a distinct lack of such resources for the Mac.

The notion of the personality behind certain technology isn't stupid. Doug Englebart, Vennevar Bush, Alan Turing and other people including, yes, Steve Jobs and even Bill Gates (but probably not Ballmer) have made their marks on computing as a whole. You are pretty ignorant if you think that a personality can't have an affect on your computer, or toaster for example. Have you ever heard of Tesla or Edison?

Does the fact that Edison backed DC and Tesla backed AC have anything whatsoever to do with the technical merits of DC or AC? NO. Did Edison's and Tesla's personalities have any effect on their business? Hell yes.

Edison was a very shrewed businessman who knew all the dirty tricks. He was the first to hit on the idea of a "skunk works" for new inventions, which he all took credit for. Needless to say, he ended up rich and famous.

Tesla was a loon which didn't know anything about business. What little he had was stolen by Edison. He ended up a footnote in history.

Replace Edison with Gates and Tesla with Jobs.

Personalities can affect computer designs, like everything else, but ultimately we should evaluate products on their own merits. If the best computer in the world is built by neo-Nazis I'd buy from them. Not because they were neo-Nazis, but because they were selling the best comupter in the world. It's called "capitalism". Look into it.

What you're doing is called "hero worship".

The "botique" look is being copied (2 years late, I might add) by every 2 bit PC manufacturer out there, and do you see their shareholders lining up and filing minority lawsuits? Fuck no, because Apple has been doing great in this fucked economy.

Back when the iMac was first released, and selling quite well to the Mac devotees, within a few months a great number of PC manufacturers jumped on the bandwagon to make clones of the design. Gateway, Futurepower, Sony, etc. Several of thse companies were sued, with some success, by Apple for stealing thier design.

As it turns out, it wasn't necessary because the "clones" were a total failure. People simply didn't want an "all-in-one" PC. Now why was that? Several reasons, but mainly because they were no cheaper than tower PCs and generally less capable.

IMHO, PRICE is the reason the iMacs were popular. Mac devotees bought them because they were relatively cheap Macs, which was a novel idea at the time. That's why I bought a few for QA (see my last post) rather than Powermacs.

But the point remains that unless you want a PC that looks like a desk lamp (I'm certain Apple has patented this design), you can buy a Wintel system in every form factor offered by Apple, and countless others.

PC companies have been having problems due to fierce competition BETWEEN THEMSELVES, notably Dell vs. everyone else. Dell is doing just peachy. I've met Michael Dell and he's a fucking genius. I don't know wether or not he'll make the history books, I guess he'll have to take billions of dollars as a consolation prize.

I would also argue that my 13 month old "botique" powerbook is quite a bit more stable and usable, than my newer, top of the l

Re:Idiocy, Part 1

[Anonymous Coward]

Hmm, I guess I have to agree that the bus bandwidth on the processor isn't determined by Apple. Still, you'd think that deciding how much of it to put out to main memory is up to Apple.

After all, they have that "high speed L3 cache" using DDR memory that interfaces to the processor at high speed. Why they couldn't extend that pipe out to main memory at the very same bandwidth is anyone's guess. I'd blame it on the same thing Hannibal did--Apple's lackluster motherboard and chipset designs. That's saying a lot, since he's a dope and I rarely agree with his opinions.

Re:Assembly: Why It Will Replace C++/Java

[Anonymous Coward]

OK! You made your point
Now go back to sleep.

Dual FPUs!

[EvilTwinSkippy]

Reading through the article, its nice to see some real design going into a processor. Looking through Intel's last few chips, they've been upping ther clock speed and packing in more cache.

Yeah, yeah, they are hog-tied because you can't easily re-compile the entire windows platform to use new instruction sets. Linux users, of course, don't have this problem (muhahahah).

Did anyone else catch the bit on the twin FPU's? I'm just imagining what this thing is going to do with vector operations and frequency transforms.

For most of you non-engineers:

Most 3d vector operations are affine tranformations. Using a 4x4 array of floating point numbers you can translate, rotate, and scale. Works beautifully, but it's a lot of calculations.

The Fast Fourier Transform (FFT) is used a lot in signal processing. It's a floating point monster.

Re:Dual FPUs!

[transient]

Most 3d vector operations are affine tranformations.

Most 2-dimensional transformations can be done this way too. Apple's Quartz subsystem uses matrix transformations just about everywhere it can get away with.

Re:Dual FPUs!

[functor]

Did anyone else catch the bit on the twin FPU's? I'm just imagining what this thing is going to do with vector operations and frequency transforms. For most of you non-engineers:

• Most 3d vector operations are affine tranformations. Using a 4x4 array of floating point numbers you can translate, rotate, and scale. Works beautifully, but it's a lot of calculations.
• The Fast Fourier Transform (FFT) is used a lot in signal processing. It's a floating point monster.

I would imagine that the use of AltiVec/VMX single-instruction multiple-data instructions would be somewhat more effective in doing vector and matrix floating-point computations than scalar floating-point operations as provided by the dual FPUs -- especially on these smaller (4x4, 8x8) matrices. While, in comparison to the MPC 7450, the PPC 970 may have an inferior VMX unit (but with much more bandwidth and a higher clockspeed available), the SIMD instructions allow for more data to be processed per clock cycle than the scalar FPUs can, so I imagine that things like FFTs and vector arithmetic and transformations are better-suited to the use of AltiVec/VMX instructions -- perhaps even hand-tuned to get the best instruction scheduling and highest instructions-per-clock count (and hence computational throughput).

Re:Dual FPUs!

[tortap-0]

While dual FPUs are useful this is what SIMD operations like Intels SSE and Motorolas Altivec are used for. The dual FPUs might be good for doing other work but DSP filters and Photoshop filters will use SIMD operations wherever they can.

That is very bandwidth intensive work, moving alot of floating point numbers from memory, and this is where the 970 will be superior to the G4e. But this is also the strong point of the Intel P4 running at super high frequencies. The AMD Athlon 64 will clock for clock be competitive with the P4 running genreal code, but doing SIMD operations they can all do 4 at a time. Then the higher clocked chip always wins. The Altivec unit of the 970 will have to be alot better than the SSE2 from Intel to beat it.

Re:Dual FPUs!

[Bill, Shooter of Bul]

Yeah, yeah, they are hog-tied because you can't easily re-compile the entire windows platform to use new instruction sets.
The NT kernel was designed to be portable to any achetecture, but thats not the point. Other software would have to be recompiled to use the new instruction set( any and all applications that you would want to run on it).

Re:Dual FPUs!

[David Roundy]

I would imagine that the use of AltiVec/VMX single-instruction multiple-data instructions would be somewhat more effective in doing vector and matrix floating-point computations than scalar floating-point operations as provided by the dual FPUs -- especially on these smaller (4x4, 8x8) matrices.

For me at least (and most other scientific users), AltiVec is useless, since I use double precision floats which it doesn't support.

Re:Dual FPUs!

[Graymalkin]

Use Apple's vecLib framework, it supports single and double precision operations via the AltiVec unit. Linky linky.

Re:Dual FPUs!

[sco08y]

Another point is that no compiler can automatically accelerate floating point ops with a vector unit. So there's a huge amount of code that will never benefit from a vector unit, which is why it's extremely important to accelerate floating point.

Linux users, of course, don't have this problem (muhahahah).

It depends on whether the users are willing to use make tools. A huge amount of Linux software is distributed as binaries, and an increasing number of users will refuse to compile software.

Re:Dual FPUs!

[Anonymous Coward]

> The Fast Fourier Transform (FFT) is used a lot in signal processing. It's a floating point monster.

I bet the FFT could be implemented using 64 bit fixed point with acceptable results.

Re:Dual FPUs!

[andrewski]

Not only does vecLib support the AltiVec unit, but software built with this interface will run fine on G3 systems, too, so the programmer never has to worry about the target platform's vector processor. I would imagine that one will be able to take advantage of the 2 FPUs without changing a single bit of code, making any existing app using vecLib run much faster WITHOUT a recompile!

Now you begin to comprehend the power of ObjectiveC. Its runtime is not rocket-fast (but gets faster with every update from apple) but is solid as fuck! I can't believe how ugly C++ is in comparison. I have sworn it off completely after being introduced to nirvana!

Re:Dual FPUs!

[Graymalkin]

I wish Apple would do a bit more advertising of their low level frameworks like vecLib. One of the more common AltiVec misconceptions is that is simply will not handle double precision floating point operations. It can handle them but not at the register level like it can SP operations. If Apple would make more noise about vecLib and their other frameworks I think we might see XServes and AltiVec patches for serious number crunching apps in much larger quantities.

I agree with you about Objective-C. I'm hoping that its exposure due to Cocoa will begin to spurn more interest in it. In the open source world C++ has a horrible reputation and thus there's little emphasis on OO software design outside of Java and Ruby developer circles. When one considers the ease of extension of the Cocoa and thus OpenStep frameworks it is hard to imagine Objective-C not being more popular than it is.

For open source development OO programming to me makes a great deal of sense. Extensions to programs can be released as separate entities in compliance with restrictive licenses. Extensions can be written for applications even if they don't have a specific extension API. Bug fixes, performance improvements, and feature enhancements (especially feature enhancements) can spread throughout a system much faster than otherwise.

Re:Dual FPUs!

[andrewski]

Another interesting API is the virtual DSP. Kind of in mothballs still from hardware with DSP ports like the slab and the cube (at least I get this feeling that it is) it has nevertheless been fully virtualized for OS X.

OS X actually gets significantly faster with each release, in stark contrast with another commercial OS which I could name. It just feels better, too. At least with the spinning beach ball of death I know it'll stop eventually, and we are just having little altercations in object-land or whatever. XP has hung on me unexpectedly, usually during heavy load, on multiple systems just like its predecessors, yet I say a guy running 10.2 reasonably fast on his old Powerbook G3 (pismo, i think?).

I am just waiting for a more mature squeak interface to Cocoa. Then I will be in Nirvana.

Re:Dual FPUs!

[David Roundy]

I see that vecLib supports double precision and supports altivec, but that doesn't change the fact that altivec doesn't support double precision.

Hehe

[A Proud American]

This reminds me of an old joke one of my professors told once. Hope you don't mind that I share:

Q: Why might IBM change the name of their 970 chip?
A: Because they added 620 to the IBM 350 and got 969.999983605.

Re:Hehe

[ZorinLynx]

Awww jeez, that's just a permutation of the old joke:

"Why did Intel rename the 586 to Pentium?"

"Because they added 100 to 486 and got 585.999999878787775555"

Re:Hehe

[vistic]

...except it makes a lot less sense than the intel version

Re:Hehe

[PetWolverine]

No, each joke actually has one free parameter, one part that is totally arbitrary--they just differ in which one it is. The original starts with 586 for the name of the processor, adds a totally arbitrary 100, and comes up with the wrong number in reference to the adding error in the Pentium. The 970 version starts with 620, for IBM's first 64-bit desktop processor, adds 350 for some other processor, and the arbitrary part lies in the fact that it didn't add correctly, since there's no such bug in the 970 (as far as anyone knows yet).

Re:Hehe

[vistic]

It makes more sense though for intel because until that point, they had consistently named their new processors by adding 100 (386... 486... 586...) for each new generation and with the Pentium they sort of broke that trend.

Re:No matter how many times I read it...

[eweiland]

This is still a PPC chip. No changes to programs are necessary for them to run on it. The only change that will have to be made is if a software vendor decides to run in 64-bit mode which many don't have to do. Performance of the new chip is not dependent on whether the program runs at 32 or 64 bits. This is not a migration like moving from the 680x0 line of processors to the PPC which was an overall change in architecture.

May be sooner than we think

[Dark Paladin]

According to some rumor sites, Apple may already have ordered several thousand of these chips for new machines to debute in middle of June.

I'm not buying into it 100% myself, but as I don't plan on buying a new Powermac until next year (and turning my current one into either a Yellow Dog or OS X Server), I'm in no big rush.

My expectations is that the Powerbook/iBook line won't be updated until next year, when IBM can get the power requirements down for the 970 or its successor.

Re:May be sooner than we think

[ProfessionalCookie]

Why would it be sooner than we think?

We know apple has been working on this for at least two years.

We know the processors are most likely in production.

We know Apple is making big announcements at WWDC.

Wee know Apple needs to release a new platform soon 'cause anticipation is killing sales

Is there any reason Apple and IBM shouldn't be ready to release?

Re:No matter how many times I read it...

[entrox]

Why would it seem weird? PowerPC was a IBM/Motorola/Apple joint-venture from the beginning. Besides, all iBooks have a G3 from IBM already, so it would be nothing new.

There's also absolutely no porting required, as the PPC970 is a (duh) PowerPC! Everything will work fine, nothing needs to get recompiled and everybody is happy.

Re:No matter how many times I read it...

[functor]

The vast majority of applications ought to run without modifications, since the instruction set is backward compatible (i.e. there are instructions for 64-bit addressing and with 64-bit-wide operands, but as far as I can tell, that's all). CPU-intensive applications would benefit from a recompile using a compiler that is aware of the PPC 970's unique pipelining and queueing, and can order instructions in the instruction stream that will allow for maximum execution unit utilization.

Some applications, e.g. large databases and applications that deal with very large integers, will benefit from being rebuilt with 64-bit addressing and 64-bit instructions, but for the vast majority of (desktop) applications that run on OS X, all 64-bit binaries will do is to increase the utilization of CPU instruction cache (and often data cache), and hence reduce performance as the cache miss rates go up.

So, in the end, don't worry; your OS X applications will run fine (for the most part) on a PowerPC 970-equipped Macintosh. ;)

I'm sure Photoshop, etc., will recompile

[Quila]

It appears that there's a lot of optimization to be had by recompiling for this processor, especially in getting around various scheduling pitfalls. Photoshop and other need-for-speed apps will probably be recompiled ASAP to give them the competitive edge.

Power, PC's, and PowerPC's

[Anonymous Coward]

Is there even one PC that is powered by a PowerPC chip?

Re:Power, PC's, and PowerPC's

[telax]

I think most people use the term PC on computers that are made of parts that are cheap(something powerpc processors aren't) and parts that are easily changed to different ones. Though the new macs can nowadays be extended with pci cards and so on, so you could maybe say it's a PC.

Re:Power, PC's, and PowerPC's

[Snart Barfunz]

If by PC you mean personal computer, a phrase in common currency some time before the arrival of IBM's PC, then the answer is - Yes, many. If you mean a personal computer capable of running a Microsoft operating system natively, then (discounting early PPC NT ports) the anser is - No. But so what?

Re:Power, PC's, and PowerPC's

[Alan Partridge]

Apple have made a bunch of 'em. They have a website where you can go and gawk if you like - www.apple.com.

Re:No matter how many times I read it...

[UniverseIsADoughnut]

" it still seems weird to see IBM (creator of the PC) making chips for Apple."

No it doesn't Apple created the first PC, IBM created the AT or was it the XT later on. Any computer you personaly own wether it be a mac or a computer running windows or linux ... is a PC. Furthermore while IBM may be in the computer making business they are a hardware supplier to. They will sell to anyone who wants to buy their stuff. By your logic it's also weird they would buy an OS from microsoft when they have some they wrote to, AIX, OS/2 , that DOS version, and more.

"s well, what % of the Apple line would be switched over to the new chip..whould they have to go back to FAT archives for the lower and upper end Apple machines (if they stuck with G$ for low end and 970 for high)?"

If they went with anything but the PPC970 this would be true, but the PPC970 is a straight upgrade, no recompiles and so forth. Hense it's the chip apple is almost certainly going with.

Or let's not...

[Blocked By Sand]

Lately many things have happened to apple, and if you take a brief look at thir lineup of both computers and gadgets you'll find that they are not dependent on anyone the same way they depended on motorola.
The music industry for iMS, AMD for the chips in the airport base station (and the iPod(?) don't know), Motorola for the non-pro lineup (iMacG4, iBook and the portables until they get 970), etc. etc.

I think Apple will go a long way to make sure they don't get stuck with one provider.

Also I think they are trying to be more competitive pricewise. By having a steady stream of income from selling iPods and songs via iMS, they get more money to develop hardware and software, and we just might get Powermacs970 below the $3k mark.

Re:Or let's not...

[evil carrot]

The iPod uses an ARM processor.

iPod stats @ everymac.com

iBooks will likely be moving to an IBM-produced G3 early next year, with an Altivec-enhanced G3 available from IBM (not Motorola) late next year.

IBM+G3 info @ The Register

Re:Or let's not...

[Anonymous Coward]

Uhhh, iBooks have been using IBM G3s for a looong time now. I don't know exactly how long, but well over a year. Jeeze.

Re:Gentoo translator-o-matic

[EvilTwinSkippy]

That was funny the first 8 times I read it.

I mentioned gentoo because, short of Linux from scratch, what other distro can you completely recompile for a new platform? Hmm? (Tumbleweed)

Figures, I actually find a real application for Gentoo, and what happens...

Re:Assembly: Why It Will Replace C++/Java

[Anonymous Coward]

An interesting troll. An enjoyably subtle introductory paragraph, with only a hint of flamebaiting with the 'XP/Unix' comment. This trend is continued with the C/C++/C# evolution stanza, with its clean upfront palate, but lingering pleasant aftertaste. However, the trollish aromas start to become overpowering a little too soon with the sudden transition to assembly advocacy. A mature, well rounded troll will usually lead the reader through a gentler, more meandering path before delivering the closing fruity punch. Perhaps with a few years of cellaring, this troll may rank with such classics as the 1999 'BSD is dying' and the memorable 2000 'VB Programmer for a Fortune 500 company'.

All in all, not a bad effort for a beginner. 7/10.

Re:Idiocy, Part 1

[Halo1]

After all, they have that "high speed L3 cache" using DDR memory that interfaces to the processor at high speed. Why they couldn't extend that pipe out to main memory at the very same bandwidth is anyone's guess.

L3 cache is limited to 4MB, so there are probably not enough address lines on that bus (unless you want to make a system with only 4MB of memory of course). The main memory interface of the 7450 (and not 7440 like the article states: that one is only used in lower-end machines like the iMac and eMac) is what Apple has to use to go to the main memory, and it's that one that's so limited.

Re:Assembly: Why It Will Replace C++/Java

[telax]

Maybe he was being sarcastic.. I atleast hope :)

Dual FPUs?

[Anonymous Coward]

Is that one in each hand, or one hilt and a FPU on either end?

Re:No matter how many times I read it...

[Trurl's Machine]

it still seems weird to see IBM (creator of the PC) making chips for Apple

It's not that weird right now - their cooperation on PowerPC started almost 20 years ago. But it was weird ineed back then. I heard that on their first date, pardon, meeting, engineers of both companies wore the other company's dress code. The IBM guys came in jeans and t-shirts, the Apple guys came in suits and ties. How desperate both sides were to show each other that they have no hard feelings about past!

No PCs using PowerPC

[Anonymous Coward]

"If by PC you mean personal computer, a phrase in common currency some time before the arrival of IBM's PC"

No, they were mostly called microcomputers before the IBM-PC. "Personal computer" was a little-used marketing term, seized by IBM and used for its machines.

You know what I mean. Visit "Mac Mall" and "PC Mall". I guess there is no PC running with a PowerPC!

Thank You John

[sjgman9]

Thank you for getting this article out! I need a new Mac with this new chip ASAP!

Mac is a PC? Hardly

[Anonymous Coward]

The Mac can run hardly any software unless you run an emulator on it. It's not really a PC.

If you doubt me, go to a modern software store (or even a flea market with very old software) and pick up any box of software that says "For PC" and try to run it on your Mac (without a PC emulator). How well does it run?

Re:Mac is a PC? Hardly

[Anonymous Coward]

So, by your wording if I go to a software store and buy a piece of software 'For PC' and take it home and try to run it on my 'PC' (meaning Intel-based computer) it should run fine without an emulator.

Oh, wait. It doesn't, because that particular machine isn't running Windows/DOS (depending on the software).

So what you meant by PC was Windows, not a hardware platform. You've just answered your own question there.

Re:Mac is a PC? Hardly

[Snart Barfunz]

Hardly any software without an emulator? Microsoft Office - yes. Internet Explorer - yes. Virtual Valerie - yes. What more do you need?

Re:Mac is a PC? Hardly

[Anonymous Coward]

By that standard, an Intel box from Dell, HP, or IBM, with a standard Intel architecture with a standard Intel CPU running Linux isn't a PC either.

IBM = Alpha & Omega for Apple

[adzoox]

IBM has also had part in the hard drives from the beginning. Many of the 40/80 and 160MB drives in LCs were IBM. The RAM in MANY of the 6100's and 7100's was IBM branded memory. ViaVoice was created specifically for Macs in an enhanced version. I suppose you have to look at it this way. Microsoft makes Office, it's PC app, for the Mac. Obviously, because it makes money to add to the bottom line. The mac may sell less volume, but also sells more licensed copies to the base. (More Mac people can afford it or work in "license related fields") It's only smart business sense to make products for you and your competition. It's called "hidden market share"

Re:No matter how many times I read it...

[Anonymous Coward]

IIRC IBM created the IBM PC, followed by the XT, followed by the AT.

And then there was the PC Jr., which (fortunately) never took off.

AMD is the odd man out

[pchown]

Interesting, if you look at the pipeline design of the PowerPC it is much closer to Intel than AMD. The PowerPC pipeline has sixteen stages, the Pentium 4 twenty, and the Athlon ten.

Presumably the P4 can reach higher clock speeds than the Athlon because there is less work to do at each pipeline stage. On the other hand a longer pipeline increases the probability of a stall, so the work done per clock cycle goes down.

I'd speculate that the PowerPC ought, therefore, to be able to achieve clock rates approaching but not equalling the P4, since they are both comparatively "over-pipelined". At the same time, the PowerPC ought to deliver slightly more throughput per clock cycle because the pipeline is slightly shorter.

Meanwhile, the Athlon will be running at a significantly lower clock rate, but delivering comparable throughput.

Re:AMD is the odd man out

[bobbozzo]

You may be right, but Athlon is MUCH older than P4 or 970.

Perhaps you should look at Hammer if you want to make a comparison.

Re:AMD is the odd man out

[tortap-0]

In any comparison like this the P4 is the odd man out. The pipeline design of the P4 is like nothing else. Depending on how you count there are 20 stages, but there is an extra 8 stages in the frontend, the decode stage. The P4 saves decoded instructions in the L1 or Trace Cache, this includes branchpredicted instructions. There is no regular L1 Cache as in the PowerPC and Athlon.

Ars have an article comparing the Athlon to the G4, and there are more similarities than there are differences. The P4 works in a radically different way. Granted the PowerPC 970 is not the G4 but saying that the pipelines of the PowerPC and the P4 is similar would be a stretch. All you really can say is that both have a long execution pipeline. As the clocks ramp up, this is to be expected. The AMD Athlon 64 has two more stages than the Athlon.

Re:AMD is the odd man out

[Lebannen]

As well as the depth of the pipeline, I believe the article also says you need to look at the width of the pipeline; it points out the G4+ is wide and shallow, the Pentium 4 is narrow and deep, and the 970 is wide and deep. You will therefore get bubbles in the 970's pipeline, but their effect is minimised and you're far less likely to get stalls.

Combine this with the more intelligent branch prediction, out-of-order execution etc in the 970, and you're probably looking at a chip which is slightly less efficient clock-for-clock than the G4+, but more efficient than the Pentium 4.

Integer performance wise, it looks like the 970 will be about equal to a Pentium 4 of 25-50% higher clockspeed; FPU-wise, and of course Altivec-wise, it looks like a monster. So; it probably won't outperform the current Pentium 4s at a lot of tasks, but will kick it about on other more specialised tasks, which is a big step over the G4+. We're not looking at a Pentium-crusher, but we are looking at something that will be vaguely competitive.

Just gotta see how well it scales, after that, and whether 64-bit will mean anything for average tasks... and when it actually happens, of course.

Re:AMD is the odd man out

[proj_2501]

The MCF5307 processor from Motorola has something similar. There are two pipelines (one 4-stage and one 2-stage) separated by an 8-stage FIFO.

Re:AMD is the odd man out

[Hoser McMoose]

Just as a FWIW in case anyone is interested, the Hammer/Athlon64/Opteron processor core has a 12 stage pipeline. Longer then the Athlon's by two stages, but shorter than both the PowerPC 970 and the P4.

Of course, just counting pipeline stages and assuming a clock speed is absolutely ridiculous. Sure, a longer pipeline CAN make it easier to clock the chip higher, but that's certainly not a sure thing. Similarly, a shorter pipeline does NOT equate better per-clock performance. The length of the pipeline is only one of MANY factors that influence performance and clock speeds.

Re:AMD is the odd man out

[Jeff DeMaagd]

I'm not too worried about pipelines and such, I wouldn't use it to make a decision on whether the system is worthwhile. I'd rather use real-world performance in my particular task as a guide. While pipelines and such do affect real world performance, the end user shouldn't care too much the hows or whys, but how well the system will fit the task.

Re:AMD is the odd man out

[akuma(x86)]

What makes you think the P4 is overpipelined?

--Intel CPU Architect (not speaking for Intel)

How is Apple like Christianity?

[AtariAmarok]

Let's see....

You've got Job(s) in both.

History of being a persecuted minority.

Use of an Apple to gain more knowledge in both.

Christianity? Isaac. Apple? Imac.

Christianity? Prophets. Apple? Profits.

Re:How is Apple like Christianity?

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't forget that both have rabid zealots who bring their crusades to larges masses of people who want nothing to do with them...

Sensible argument for MAC going x86

[Anonymous Coward]

First off two points, Slow is relative. In relative terms MAC is dead slow, in real terms, dammit people these are 1ghz *ix laptops and desktops. for most things they are blindingly fast.

That being said, I can see apple working themselves into a corner. Let's say they go to a 970 based MAC in October, and it's 1.8Ghz. Perhaps then a big first jump to a 2.5Ghz machine by early 2004. Let's assume for the sake of argument that MAC is then the quickest on the block... for how long will this last? Apple are still very dependent on ONE single external supplier, being IBM. They're being forced to follow the whims of IBM and their CPU line, when that is not IBM's core business.

With an OS running on x86 architecture, not only do OS authors have the knowledge they're building for a well supported architecture, but there is choice in the market of who makes those chips, AMD or Intel for a start. Not only that, AMD and Intel have desktop CPUs as a MAJOR part of their business. There's a big point I've seen little mention of

I see the only sane option is for MAC to go x86. Everything else seems just a temporary option as long as the world works how it does

Re:Sensible argument for MAC going x86

[JoeXB]

Um, your argument for the switch to x86 is to increase Apple's CPU supplier options ...by one?
So Apple can be the tiny tail that wags the Intel/AMD dogs?

It seems to me that from Apple's viewpoint,

a) x86 is effectively monolithic, in that it is designed to serve a Windows-centric market, regardless of what you can run on it, and,

b) x86 offers Apple no hardware differentiation or integration hooks at all.

This isn't a strategy, it's just a way of surrendering.

After all, even if Apple goes all-970, Motorola still has a vested interest in providing CPUs for Apple. All that switching to x86 would accomplish for Apple is to trade two devils it knows for two it doesn't know.

At massive cost, by the way.

Re:Sensible argument for MAC going x86

[Daniel_Staal]

I see the only sane option is for MAC to go x86. Everything else seems just a temporary option as long as the world works how it does

And Apple/Mac has got exactly how far by being sane? They take chances. Big ones. Sometimes they fail. (Lisa, Newton) Sometimes they don't. (The orginial Mac, iPod, iMac, (actually, most of the i* stuff...)) The one sure thing is that if Apple stopped taking chances Apple would fail.

64-bit Adobe apps

[ruprechtjones]

How much will this help out apps like PhotoShop and AfterEffects, once they are re-compiled for the architecture?

I've heard conflicting answers, one is that 64-bit will really shine with 3D apps but do little to help the performance of 2D number-crunching.

Does this mean we'll see only nominal gains with Adobe's apps? Someone enlighten me.

Re:64-bit Adobe apps

[Anonymous Coward]

The way I see it, it will be a big help with getting multimedia data through and crunching it. It'll also help with shifting graphics data through, and perhaps compression of audio data

When it comes to number crunching however, little will change except by Mhz.

Re:64-bit Adobe apps

[Halo1]

Being 64 bit will not help 3D apps any better than 2D apps. The only real advantage of being 64 bit will be the ability to address more memory. This will be advantageous for any application (2D, 3D, database, ...) that can use so much memory. The reason is that most applications simply do not yet require many 64 bit integer operations, so the fact that a 32 bit processor executes those more slowly than a 64 bit one doesn't really matter.

The 970 will be faster for most applications not because it is 64 bit, but mainly because it runs at a higher clock speed and has a much wider/faster memory interface. Some other architectural decisions (deep pipeline with aggressive optimization logic) will help somewhat as well, probably.

Re:64-bit Adobe apps

[functor]

In fact, building 64-bit binaries willy-nilly can hurt performance, since 64-bit addresses and 64-bit integers take up more cache than 32-bit addresses and integers, so you can fit less of them in cache, and your miss rate goes up.

Combine this fact with the fact that memory is still much slower than the CPU's cache -- yes, even with the ~6.4 GB/s memory bandwidth available to the PPC 970 -- and it's still wiser to build 32-bit binaries for most applications.

Just build applications that either utilize a lot of memory or a lot of address space (e.g. memory-mapping huge files or large numbers of files) as 64-bit binaries, and you're set.

Re:64-bit Adobe apps

[Anonymous Coward]

So there will be commands in the cpu to load graphical bits and audio bits, and these are sped up, as opposed to say, the plain old boring number type bits?.

Re:64-bit Adobe apps

[darc]

Actually, the performance gain is because 3D applications tend to use floating point matrix transformations, which are helped along greatly by the vector units on the processors. It's not really 32 vs 64, so as much as the advantage of having hardware better suited to lots and lots of matrix transformations.

Re:64-bit Adobe apps

[Halo1]

That's not PPC970 specific, as the current G4(e) also has a vector unit (or 4, depending on how you look at it). Vector operations will indeed be faster, but that's mainly due to the faster memory bus.

Re:64-bit Adobe apps

[ivan256]

Did you ever think that the reason there are few consumer level apps that will take advantage of 64 bit architectures is that nobody has a 64 bit PC yet?

Re:64-bit Adobe apps

[Anonymous Coward]

Wrong.

Being 64bit also brings you any additional benefits that the new processor brings, such as additional registers/pipelines/etc.

This is why with Opteron even a 3D app will benefit for native compilation, the doubling of the number of registers, including doubling the xmm registers which are so important these days

I would guess that the 970 will offer similar improvements in addtion to the larger address space.

Re:64-bit Adobe apps

[MtViewGuy]

The only real advantage of being 64 bit will be the ability to address more memory.

Guess what? Today's multimedia applications can use 64-bit addressing because they have become VERY intensive in the use of computer system resources in general. Why do you think computers that are used to render computer animation usually have several gigabytes of system RAM and very fast hard drive access?

Going to 64-bit computing will make system resource-intensive programs like Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Illustrator, Adobe Premiere and Apple Final Cut Pro actually run a lot faster because they now have potential access to huge amounts of RAM and wider data paths throughout most of the motherboard's innards.

Re:64-bit Adobe apps

[Halo1]

Did you ever think that the reason there are few consumer level apps that will take advantage of 64 bit architectures is that nobody has a 64 bit PC yet?

No. And I still don't think that's the reason. How can you make a word processor better using 64 bit code instead of 32 bit code? A spreadsheet? A web browser? An email client? A terminal emulator? A shell? A pdf viewer? I stand by my original point that most consumer apps don't need 64 bit operations.

Some video/image editing applications may be able to get a small win out of it, but I don't think it will help a lot, since in general they operate on 8 (single color channel) or 32 (3 color channels+alpha) bit quantities. For that kind of operations, the vector unit shines. You can use the regular integer registers as well, but then you get some overhead because of all the masking that's necessary to keep the separate channels from overflowing into the next one. Of course it's possible (after all, that's all there was before altivec etc) and can be combined with the usage of the vector unit, but I doubt it will deliver a lot of extra performance over a 32 bit processor.

Having extra memory available will help everyone (if only because it can be used as a disk cache if no application needs it), but a 64 bit integer unit is not necessary or even helpful in most cases (except for being able to address said memory). As someone else in this thread already remarked, making a program 64 bit may actually make it slower instead of faster if you do it just for bragging rights or because it seems cool.

Re:64-bit Adobe apps

[Halo1]

And how exactly does this contradict the statement that you quoted? Also note that wide datapaths have nothing to do with the fact that the PPC 970 is a 64 bit processor. After all, the G4e already has a 256 bit wide path to its L3 cache and a 64 bit bus to main memory. The PPC 970 does support a much better bus architecture than the G4(e), but that has nothing to do with it being a 64 bit processor.

PS: I think you're barking up the wrong tree here. I'm not trying to bash the PPC 970 in any way, I'm just trying to prevent people from thinking that going from a 32 to a 64 bit processor will suddenly make everything automatically faster when their programs are compiled into 64 bit versions. I personally think the 970 is great and I'm looking forward to replace my aging G4/400 with one of these puppies.

Re:64-bit Adobe apps

[Halo1]

Being 64bit also brings you any additional benefits that the new processor brings, such as additional registers/pipelines/etc

You've got that backwards. It's actually "Getting a new processor may give you several new advantages, such as being 64 bit, getting additional registers, pipelines etc". This has nothing to do with the 64 "bitness" of the processor.

This is why with Opteron even a 3D app will benefit for native compilation, the doubling of the number of registers, including doubling the xmm registers which are so important these days

Since the G4 already has 32 integer, 32 floating point and 32 vector registers, the PPC 970 does not add any registers since there are already plenty.

I would guess that the 970 will offer similar improvements in addtion to the larger address space.

You may want to read the last sentence of my original post again.

Re:64-bit Adobe apps

[Roogna]

All this talk about how it won't really help things like image apps (3D/2D) must be coming from people who don't actually use them much. The biggest gain will be what everyone points out, more than 2GB+ of memory. Which it's not uncommon for those of us who actually use products like Photoshop to have files that are 500MB+ open and to have four, five, six, ten... of those files open at the same time. The great gain? Will be if Apple on their desktops when using these chips actually have the slots for > 2GB of RAM. Down with disk swaping! :)

Re:64-bit Adobe apps

[ivan256]

No. And I still don't think that's the reason. How can you make a word processor better using 64 bit code instead of 32 bit code? A spreadsheet? A web browser? An email client? A terminal emulator? A shell? A pdf viewer? I stand by my original point that most consumer apps don't need 64 bit operations.

I anticipated your short sighted response as soon as I hit the submit button. I should have realized that you would think I was talking about optimizing existing applications rather than designing new ones for new problems and I should have said all the rest of this stuff the first time... I even had a horrific vision of the word processor analogy. It was scary. Anyway:

I'm not talking about optimizing existing applications, I'm talking about new applications; programs that do things that we don't use our PCs for now. When we had 8-bit PCs nobody did photo editing or full color page layout on a PC. When we had 16-bit machines nobody used a PC for CAD. Now we have 32-bit machines and are moving to 64-bit. There will be some major tasks that will become possible with 64-bit PCs, but the software isn't there yet because the customers don't have the processors.

Also, I can think of two applications that every single computer user runs that can benefit dramatically from 64-bits, and Microsoft is waiting with the code already written for widespread 64-bit processor deployment to release them: Operating systems and filesystems. Having a 64-bit virtual address space can make your OS much more elegant and efficient since every possible I/O operation can be memory-mapped at once. Similarly, it has already been demonstrated that large relational databases benefit from 64-bit addressing even without taking advantage of the additional memory capacity, and many next generation filesystems will be relational databases.

Sure current consumer apps don't really need 64-bits. If they did we wouldn't have them. It's the PC apps of tomorrow that will benefit. If you don't care to do more with your PC then essentially what you can do today, just more quickly then keep buying 32-bit CPUs. They'll continue to be available for decades...

Re:64-bit Adobe apps

[jacken]

Well, judging from past experience, Adobe probably will not make to much effort to optimize the code for the 970. Doing benchmarks on a dual G4 machine running Adobe After Effects 5.5 and compairing it to a single processor machine shows an 10-20% increase in speed. If starting a network render on the same machine, the speed increases to about 60-80%
Its really funny reading all the benchmarks of After Effects when comparing a dual G4 to a single processor pc. The pc still kicks the macs ass in speed, but nowhere near the figures After Effects shows. Lightwave 3D is probably a better benchmark program.

Re:64-bit Adobe apps

[Halo1]

Chill out man, there's no need to lower yourself to insulting someone because you disagree. I nowhere said that having a 64 bit address space wasn't useful (on the contrary). And of course, to be able to work with 64 bit addresses, you need 64 bit operations. I was merely arguing that most consumer level apps can't be improved by changing their core logic from 32 bit to 64 bit integer operations and that I don't see that changing now that there will be 64 bit consumer computers available, because the calculations that these applications do don't require or simply don't work on such large values. I also don't see the fact that 64 bit operations will be natively supported, enable a whole new range of applications that were previously not feasable because doing 64 bit operations would require 2, 3 or more instructions instead of 1.

Your two main examples (memory mapped IO and filesystem code) are both OS-specific. Yes, you can consider the OS as just another application running on your system and it's obvious that improvements made to the OS will benefit every application, however I hope you agree that when talking about "consumer level apps", few people will consider operating systems. I don't even want to know what you'd call me if I'd start talking about "the Mac OS X application".

Also note the "most" I used everywhere in my posts. I never said there would be no cases (such as the database example you mentioned) where native 64 bit operations can come in handy.

Re:64-bit Adobe apps

[Anonymous Coward]

Story A: 64-bit is Revolutionary New Technology that will Unleash Unforseen Wonderous Applicaitons and bring forth the The Glorious Future Of Computing!!!

Story B: 64-bit is a incremental advance much like going from 500Mhz to 3Ghz. In the short term it will only allow certain already existing applications to run on cheaper hardware. 64-bit PCs will still ship with 512MB of RAM. The workstatation community has been 64-bit for years and hasn't found much use for it other than large memory support. (In fact most Solaris apps are still compiled for 32-bit.) Much like the 16->32 bit transition, it will take years before the benefits of 64-bit computing are mainstreamed, and by then a PPC970 or a Opteron will be about as interesting as an 80386 is today.

Re:64-bit Adobe apps

[ivan256]

I don't even want to know what you'd call me if I'd start talking about "the Mac OS X application".

I didn't "call" you anything. I was mearly pointing out that I realized too late that I was being unclear given your train of thought at the time...

Anyway, whether consumers consider the OS to be an application or not is hardly justification for advocating/opposing 64-bit processors. If you're going to use consumers perception as a basis, then 64-bit computing is a no brainer, because 64 is bigger than 32 and the marketing possibilities are endless.

I think that pervasive availability of 64-bit computing has the potential to allow the reinvention of HCI. We can't find out until we go there. Its quite possible that "most" of the application we're running in 10 years will benefit significantly from 64-bit integer operations. (I put "most" in quotes as you did, because by your logic "most" of what we do today didn't really benefit from the transition from 16 to 32-bit, but from clock speed increases. I think you'll agree now, though, that it would have been a mistake to downplay 32-bit computing back then). However I'm glad that AMD and IBM are making an effort to allow for 32-bit/64-bit coexistance since we really don't know when a large number of apps will benefit from 64-bit computations. Anyway, it all comes down to the following quote, which is what I took issue with and have been ranting to the contrary about:

The only real advantage of being 64 bit will be the ability to address more memory.

We don't know what all the real advantages will be, so we certainly can't say that additional memory will be the only one, or if it will be an advantage at all early on, as most 64-bit consumer machines that ship initially will have less than 3 GB of memory.

Re:64-bit Adobe apps

[Halo1]

I think that pervasive availability of 64-bit computing has the potential to allow the reinvention of HCI. We can't find out until we go there. Its quite possible that "most" of the application we're running in 10 years will benefit significantly from 64-bit integer operations. (I put "most" in quotes as you did, because by your logic "most" of what we do today didn't really benefit from the transition from 16 to 32-bit, but from clock speed increases.

That is not true. At the time the transition from 16 bit to 32 bit was made in the PC world, everyone was already using 32 bit addressing with the segment:offset notation. 64kb was not enough for any but the smallest of programs. It's not like almost no program currently fits in 2 or 2.5GB anymore and I don't see that barrier becoming a limiting factort for most programs (with programs != OS, because e.g. Mac OS X already has a problem with exhausting its address space if you have a lot ram in some cases) in the near future.

I'm not advocating "2 GB should be enough for everyone", because I do aknowledge there are applications that can easily use a lot more memory. I just don't think many of those applications are situated in the consumer space. I'm also not advocating against going 64 bit (especially not if that 64 bit processor can run 32 bit programs more efficient than current 32 bit processors, although that has nothing to do with the processor being 64 bit of course). I just wanted to make sure that people don't think that recompiling a program for 64 bit will suddenly somehow magically almost double the performance of said application.

Anyway, it all comes down to the following quote, which is what I took issue with and have been ranting to the contrary about:

The only real advantage of being 64 bit will be the ability to address more memory.

We don't know what all the real advantages will be, so we certainly can't say that additional memory will be the only one

I should have added "with regard to your recompiled Adobe photoshop and after effects and most other applications you regularly use". Back when the change from 16 to 32 bit happened in the PC world, everyone was bumping against all sorts of 16 bit limits. You could easily have more than 65536 records in a database, need more than 64k (or 640kb, or 1MB) of ram, wanted to address video memory without having to sacrifice a segment register for it, etc. I just don't see this happening currently with the 32 bit quantities we currently have at our disposal (except in some specific cases like the ones you mentioned, most having to do with large files access/processing), which is why I think the transition to 64 bit won't be such a revolution for PC's as the one to 32 bit was (although for the Mac this point is more or less moot, as the m68k was 32 bit from the start, although it had only a 24 bit address bus at first).

Re:64-bit Adobe apps

[benwaggoner]

Except most 3D applications use 64-bit floating point, but AltiVec only supports 32-bit floating point.

Which isn't a big deal, really, with the 970's two FPUs. AltiVec does 128 bits at once, so it could only two 64-bit FP operations at once anyway, if it supported it.

Final Cut Pro 4 will support 32-bit floating point for image processing, which is a very nice fit for AltiVec.

Re:64-bit Adobe apps

[PCBman!]

Are you sure? All current SIMD implimentations should be performing 32-bit ops on 128-bit registers nowadays, with the option to do double precision in 2 cycles instead of just one.

Vectors would need to be described by a start and an end requiring a full 128-bits to do work on them. Kind of foolish to provide for SIMD/Vector work without providing registers that could handle it on a load-store architecture, don't you think?

Re:64-bit Adobe apps

[benwaggoner]

Maybe others do doubles, but AltiVec is only singles. There are proofs-of-concept for how to double-up to fake doubles with AltiVec, but it isn't via native support.

Power 4/PPC970 vs Intel Architecture 64

[tjwhaynes]

With the POWER 4 chips from IBM knocking passed 1.7GHz now, it's a reasonable assumption to make that the PPC970 will clock at similar levels to the POWER 4 chips. So at release, 2GHz plus isn't out of th reach for the fastest chips. Remember that the Athlons with Barton cores aren't clocked much faster than that with the 3200XP clicking around 2.2GHz.

It's not just AMD clocking lower either. The Itanium 2 isn't clocked that fast. Given that 32 POWER 4 1.7GHz processors smoked the 64 Itanium2 1.3GHz processors configuration in the latest TPCC non-clustered benchmark, the POWER and PPC architecture is capable of putting a lot more work through in the same number of clock cycles. There are a lot of nay-sayers trotting out the GHz-is-god line and it is particularly misleading for 64 bit architectures.

Cheers,

Toby Haynes

P.S. Disclaimer - I work in SOFTWARE for IBM, not hardware.

Re:Power 4/PPC970 vs Intel Architecture 64

[k2enemy]

Quoted from Loop Rumors:

We received word that two large shipments of Power PC 970 processors went to Foxconn in Taiwan, under a purchase order from Apple computer. Twenty thousand 1.4Ghz PPC 970's and forty thousand 1.6Ghz PPC 970's have already arrived in their hands. IBM's inventory contains fifty thousand 1.8 Ghz PPC 970's, of which forty thousand are destined for Foxconn tomorrow (Wednesday).

IBM has listed as pending 2Ghz parts as well, which means that it will be in inventory within a month if their fab in East Fishkill produces sufficient volumes of them, and from what we hear they should be in stock by mid-June. Apple has stated that they need a minimum of 40 thousand in order to make a production run, and from what we understand this is for dual processors because normally their production runs are twenty thousand units. It is not IBM's policy to comment on other vendor's unreleased products. We have also been briefed that the PPC 970 will come in 2.3 and 2.5Ghz configurations by the end of the year, and as well some preliminary specs on the upcoming 980 processor, which is a Power 5 derivative.

Hopefully 1.8Ghz won't be the high end of the first run after all.

Re:Good Stuff...

[Anonymous Coward]

i guess he meant he can get a PPC970 and run getoo on it. so yes, he did insult OSX

Obsolescent product line?

[Mononoke]

It appears to hold quite a bit of promise in bolstering Apple's currently almost obsolescent product line

Other than a slight lack of processing horsepower, what exactly is "obsolescent" about Apple's product line? Everything they sell (well, except the iPod) can run the latest version of OSX, widely praised as the most advanced OS in the world. Even Apple's 5 year old machines can run OSX. They only have one machine left that even bothers with a CRT, and that's only for economy's sake.

I'm sorry, but I don't see anything even approaching obsolete in Apple's product line.

Re:Obsolescent product line?

[Anonymous Coward]

err - while OSX is rightly praised, running on 5 year old hardware is a stretch. I have rabid mac friends who would not dream of running it on their 3 year old mac laptops. Anything with an older G3 runs like molasses, especially if it does not have much of a graphics card.

Re:Obsolescent product line?

[Anonymous Coward]

Any of the 100mhz bus speed and up G3 machines seem quite happy with OSX, in my experience. The drop down to 66mhz in some, oddly, makes for a FAR more than 33% speed drop, it feels more like 66%

The B&W G3 machines at 300Mhz (100Mhz bus) outstrip an iBook 500 (66Mhz bus) for example, and are quite happy with OSX, as are iMac 350s and up. They're 4 years old - not quite the 5 as the OP said, but still very nice in my eyes.

Re:Obsolescent product line?

[Jeff DeMaagd]

only have one machine left that even bothers with a CRT

Are LCDs better yet? I find it hard to imagine that LCDs match color quality well enough to a CRT, heck, on all the LCDs I've looked at, the colors change at least a little based on viewpoint. I don't see how this is acceptable to Apple's base of graphic designers.

Re:Obsolescent product line?

[proj_2501]

Plenty of those guys have two or three monitors hooked up to a machine anyway.

Re:Obsolescent product line?

[Mononoke]

Are LCDs better yet?

When it comes to energy savings (shipping weight, heat generation, current draw) LCDs are much better. Long term? We don't know yet.

I find it hard to imagine that LCDs match color quality well enough to a CRT, heck, on all the LCDs I've looked at, the colors change at least a little based on viewpoint. I don't see how this is acceptable to Apple's base of graphic designers.

Believe it or not, Apple's 'base' is not graphic designers. Apple is still by far the preferred platform for graphic designers, but said designers don't make up even a large percentage of Apple users.

Those designers aren't buying Apple monitors as their primary composition monitor anyway.

Most Apple users just wanted a computer that worked. They got one.

Re:Obsolescent product line?

[poot_rootbeer]

widely praised as the most advanced OS in the world.

Most advanced DESKTOP OS, maybe.

Even Apple's 5 year old machines can run OSX.

To be fair, not much about Apple hardware has changed in the past 5 years...

They only have one machine left that even bothers with a CRT

Unfortunately LCD displays are not always superior choices to CRTs -- particularly in the types of intensive graphics work that Mac has traditionally dominated the market in. Moving to LCDs might actually be a step BACK for some users.

Re:Obsolescent product line?

[jrock01]

I guess the point is that with the premium you pay for a Mac you should get hardware thats atleast a step ahead of the x86 equivalent, if not equal.

Re:Obsolescent product line?

[zuhl]

I work in a graphic design studio. I run OS X "Dual-headed" with a 17" LCD Studio Display and a La Cie 22" Electron Blue.

The La Cie is the "good color" monitor for Photoshop and palettes, Mail, iTunes, the Dock and everything else goes on the LCD display. It's a nice set-up. The color from the LCD takes a little getting used to, though like lots of folks who "do" color, I am looking at both the CMYK values in the image as much as the appearence of the image. I am much more concerned about the CMYK values. That is a "true" representation of what the image will look like. The LCD is brighter than the CRT by far. Interestlingly, I find that the LCD seems to represent halftones (greyscale images) better than the CRT. But again, I am looking at dot percentage values and thinking about dot ink gain, so the "numbers" of the image are far more important than how the image looks on screen.

Though the LCD color will change depending on viewing angle, they are not as bad as laptop LCD screens, for example. The desktop LCD screen is able to draw tons more power to drive the pixels and there is the advantage that the desktop display doesn't move. Plus I have the LCD screen plunked down right in front of me so I don't run into the viewing angle problems you are talking about. I end up doing all my web-surfing on the LCD screen since the type is TONS sharper than on the CRT. Much easier to read /. on the LCD.

Though I'd probably junk it all if I could get someone to throw a 23" Cinema Display my way. Or, two or three Cinema Displays snaking out of the G4, the geeky graphic designers equivilant of a Beowulf cluster. :-)

Re:Obsolescent product line?

[Mononoke]

I guess the point is that with the premium you pay for a Mac you should get hardware thats atleast a step ahead of the x86 equivalent, if not equal.

I do, because it runs OSX.

Re:Obsolescent product line?

[ellboy]

If by "run" you mean "slowly drudge through." Who's kidding who here? I use an Athlon system running WinXP and a new G4 iMac Superdrive all the time. The UI response times aren't in the same ballpark. MP3 encoding isn't even close. True, I love using my Mac, but let's not pull the wool over our own eyes! OS X was a big step up, and we're just now starting to see systems that run it adequately.

Re:Obsolescent product line?

[ivar]

My wife's got a one year old 14" iBook with (I think) a 600mhz G3. It came with OSX 10.1 preinstalled.. and it runs painfully slow. What's worse is the upgrade to 10.2.6 just made things slower ! (I just upgraded her machine from 10.1.5 to 10.2.6 last week, and now I'm taking the blame for the weaker performance)

Re:Obsolescent product line?

[enkidu]

How much memory do you have? If <256 you should consider getting an extry 256 or 512. Memory is cheap and will improve your performance. I have a G4450 (64+128+512 memory) and it's plenty fast for all of my home uses (web, email, docs, entertainment) etc. Also, doing a clean install or even just cleaning up with the disk first aid can help in the speed department.

Re:Obsolescent product line?

[truenoir]

Agreed. OSX is a dog with 128MB, which is what most lower end Macs came/come with.
My Powerbook G4 400Mhz is quite usable with 512MB, and my dual 450 at work runs decent with 384.

AFAIK the iBook's max is 640MB anyway.

Re:Assembly: Why It Will Replace C++/Java

[Anonymous Coward]

Sorry, but as the CTO of a Fortune 100 company I must point out the inacuracies of your post.

First of all, the Gnome C Compiler is written by ESR and the ISO, not RMS. After all, ISO standardised the C langauge themselves in 1993 with C++! There is not even such a standards body as the OSI.

Secondly, the Jazz disk could hold 100Mb of data with the double sided disks. You could purchase a special hole punch which would allow you to turn a single sided Jazz disk into a double sided Jazz disk, in fact. They were made illegal by the FTC however when it became clear that the modified disks caused the Jazz drives to emit interference on the 900Mhz bands.

You are also wrong about Parrot. Parrot is the replacement for Perl outright. After all, what would the benefit be of using an arhaic and outdated language such as Perl on top of the streamlined assembly sub-system of Parrot, when you should instead program in Parrot directly? Parrot will also be fully .NET compatable, thanks to the tireless efforts of Microsoft corporation.

I am afraid that your ill informed comments simply highlight your poor understanding of the current IS industry!

IBM created the first PC

[Anonymous Coward]

"No it doesn't Apple created the first PC, IBM created the AT or was it the XT later on."

No, the first "PC" was created by IBM in 1982. It was called the PC, and it came before the XT. The AT came after the XT (After this was IBM's PS/2 blunder when it decided to shuck off its leadership role in PC design).

There were several microcomputers before the IBM-PC, including Apple's machine. However, I am not sure that Apple was first here. TRS-80, PET, IMSAI... at least one of these predated Apple.

"Any computer you personaly own wether it be a mac or a computer running windows or linux ... is a PC."

Mac's aren't PC's. Many Linux boxes are. Not all Windows machines are PC's, actually: the Windows CE handhelds are not.

Re:IBM created the first PC

[Anonymous Coward]

However, I am not sure that Apple was first here. TRS-80, PET, IMSAI... at least one of these predated Apple.

It goes something more like (Rough cronological order here...)

Altair
Apple I
IMSAI
Sol
Apple II
PET
TRS-80

Actually I may well have the Apple I, IMSAI & Sol in the wrong places, but their close enough (The IMSAI was just a slightly-better-than-the-Altair S100 machine and I'm certain the Sol came after the Apple I though..)

Re:Gentoo translator-o-matic

[10Ghz]

Unfortunately, it has attracted a large number of clueless wannabes who absolutely MUST advocate Gentoo at every opportunity.

What makes them "clueless"? Maybe they advocate it because it really is as good as it sounds?

"Gentoo makes me so much more productive."
"Although I can't use the box at the moment because it's compiling something, as it will be for the next five days, it gives me more time to check out the latest USE flags and potentially unstable optimisation settings."

Well, if I do long compiles, I leave it compiling for the night (while I sleep) and it can continue in the next day while I go to work. So the computer has close to 20 hours of free compile-time that does not in any shape or form reduce my productivity, since I wouldn't be using the computer regardless.

And is there something stopping you from using the computer while it compiles? I don't think so. And that "5 day compile". You might get something like that if you compiled something huge (like KDE3 together with Xfree) on a slow computer.

Heh, my system is soooo much faster after installing Gentoo."
"I've spent hours recompiling Fetchmail, X-Chat, gEdit and thousands of other programs which spend 99% of their time waiting for user input.

There is such thing as responsivness. On general desktop-use, Gentoo IS extremely responsive. Apps load fast and the general feel of the machine is extremely snappy. As to your whining about the compile-times.... Read my comment above.

One word - vaporware

[Anonymous Coward]

These are rumors - from rumor sites. Is there any REAL evidence that the chip is ready? Any real evidence it has shipped? People are talking about new Macs with these chips coming out in June - any actual evidence of that?

Or will this be like the PB 17" announcement - where Jobs makes a big announcement, then quietly whispers there may be a delay? Then they'll actually let start shipping in the next financial quarter - after the press release has pumped their stock up.

Re:Assembly: Why It Will Replace C++/Java

[telax]

"the FSF does not make gcc (the Gnome C Compiler), it is written by RMS and the OSI (Open Source Institution)."?? http://www.gnu.org/software/gcc/ :)

Re:Assembly: Why It Will Replace C++/Java

[longrangebaby]

Sorry, but as a small monkey, I must point out some inaccuracies in both posts. Zip disks store approximately 100meg, Jaz disks, approximately 1GB - and later models 2GB.

PC does not mean Intel, either

[Anonymous Coward]

"and take it home and try to run it on my 'PC' (meaning Intel-based computer)"

It also includes AMD.

"So what you meant by PC was Windows, not a hardware platform"

No, there are many PC's using Linux.

Re:PC does not mean Intel, either

[Anonymous Coward]

By Intel-based I meant the computer that I was refering to was running an Intel CPU. Perhaps saying x86 based would have been a better choice for a more general case.

However, if you re-read the comment I was responding to you'll see that 'PC running Linux' doesn't meet the definition of PC that was given, that being the ability "go to a modern software store (or even a flea market with very old software) and pick up any box of software that says "For PC"" and run it without an emulator, since you'll need some sort of emulator (whether it only emulates the software, such as DOSemu, or emulates hardware as well, such as VMWare) in order to run it.

Re:Good Stuff...

[hype7]

p.s. OS X doesn't suck, [ insert long winded flame ]

You mean a big fart?

-- james

AMD is the odd man out & the megahertz myth.

[adzoox]

But I think he does make a good point. The whole "megahertz myth" presentation at MacWorld 2001 was about pipeline stages in the PCC being shorter = the main difference in speed between PPC and all other types of processors, even other RISC processors.

Re:AMD is the odd man out & the megahertz myth

[bobbozzo]

At the same clock speed, shorter pipelines are better as you reduce the penalty of stalls.

Unfortunately, Apple FUD'd, claiming that shorter pipelines were inherently faster.

Apple: speed does not matter.

[Anonymous Coward]

"The whole "megahertz myth" [apple.com]presentation at MacWorld 2001"

Of course the slower competitor does not think speed matters. "Pay no attemtion to sluggish performance: our machine cases are blue!"

Big MAC?

[Anonymous Coward]

I see the only sane option is for MAC to go x86.

Yeahsure. Sane people also know that MAC is an acronym for Media Access Control and the "Mac" is the abbreviation for Macintosh.

PPC970 and Linux

[Conspire]

The ARSTechnica article specifically mentions the possiblity that IBM will use PPC970 in poweruser targeted Linux desktops, and no comments here about that yet, which surprises me.

I ran "my first linux" on a DEC Alpha 512mhz 64 bit box that I got fed up running NT 4.0 on. I instantly became addicted, and eventually forced my company to switch to Linux on every computer (causing mass protest in the beginning, then mass praise over the years as we have grown and have no MS Tax on the books).

I now have a Powerbook G4 and love it, except it is a little lagging in punch speed sometimes. And, although I love OS X, now that my company is used to zero license and upgrade costs thanks to GNU/GPL/BSD software, there is no hope of mass migration to OS X and Apple hardware in the company. It just does not make sense after seeing the dollar savings of running Linux on all the desktops.

There is, however, always a need for powerful workstations that run Linux, and IBM might be pulling a rabbit out of its hat with this one. Will be very interesting.

At minimum, I would buy one for that "64 bit memorabilia" value, to bring me sweet memories of my first Linux love, the Alpha that rid me of winbloze forever.........

Re:PPC970 and Linux

[YourMissionForToday]

You can bet that that IBM's PPC offerings will cost 2x-4x the (roughtly) equivalent offer.

Remember, this is the same company that sells 604e machines for $5,000 in the year 2000. And yes, they are full-on server machines with SCSI, GigE, very nice custom parts, etc, but still, it's not gonna be cheap.

Even if you run Linux on it, Macs will probably be cheaper. Of course, the Linux experience will probably be better on an IBM, and the IBM name might look better to the suits.

Rumor has it that Apple will allow IBM to sell Mac OS X Server with some of its PPC workstations as a part of their ongoing cooperation. So you might get the best of both worlds...

Re:PPC970 and Linux

[Conspire]

you are probably correctomundo on the price offerings from IBM, but i was referring to PPC970 power workstation offerings from IBM. for 3D and CAD/CAM, scientific workstation and the like. real power workstations.......

surely would be expensive though, but price/performance may be no more or maybe even less than PPC970 based Macs.

Re:AMD is the odd man out & the megahertz myth

[bobbozzo]

But yes, he does make a good point. I just meant to point out that it would have been more informative/interesting (to me) if he had used the Hammer in his comparison instead of the Athlon. No big deal.

Kitchen Sink

[buddha42]

Its interesting to see how Intel and Sparc are moving toward explicit paralellism and extremely "wide" superscalar designs. And alpha, pa-risc are goners in favor of Intels designs.

And yet here we have the last man standing in the "RISC turned hopelessly complex" generation, the Power970. When you look at this things design they threw everything and the kitchen sink in there! Most interesting is that batch parallelism where an instruction for every type of execution unit is queued up and when they're all ready to go they're executed in parallel. It will be interesting to see if that can scale given the latency it introduces, and the likelyhood that you won't always be able to fill every unit.

Re:Kitchen Sink

[functor]

The Pentium 4 is, in fact, designed to scale to high clock speeds exactly so that it can tolerate lots of pipeline bubbles in flight without ending up stalling for too long.

A lot of these tricks (high decode bandwidth, multiple instruction queues [really buffers meant for reordering the instruction stream], branch prediction, etc.) are meant to reduce hazards such as pipeline bubbles as far as possible, and the PPC 970 does these hazard-reducing operations rather well, too.

And, yes, we're now in the post-RISC world where instruction complexity (particularly in the realm of SIMD and streaming/explicit cache manipulation instructions) is growing because simple instructions clearly aren't enough to allow for great throughput increments.

(Read some of Stokes' older articles in the Ars Technopaedia; I'm sure you'll find them interesting.)

Re:AMD is the odd man out & the megahertz myth

[Anonymous Coward]

And I meant the post slightly differently too. I meant that Apple has been hyping pipeline stages and now they are bringing out a processor that has MORE pipeline stages. That said, it seems to handle these additional stages MUCH more effieciently. ;)

Remember, they regenerate!

[taluven]

So, you guys go after him with your axes and swords. Then when he is down, I'll cast burning hands to finish him off.

Re:OS X not "more productive" for me

[sporty]

But.. but.. you have the same command line interfaces. You have fink to install all those other apps. You have X11R6. You have Office et al. I fyou don't wanna deal /w the gui, you can use cli or vice versa.

So.. what are you looking for in terms of productivity?

Speed would be an issue for long compiles, multimedia operations or games, but that's as far as I would go.

Re:Assembly: Why It Will Replace C++/Java

[d_i_r_t_y]

well, lucky you're not my CTO.

the idea behind perl6 sitting on top of parrot, is to allow such elegant code as the following (remembering that perl6 will be a step back to perl's hardcore roots):

Public Sub AddColumnsToViewBox(ParamArray TitlesAndWidths())
Dim i, Width, ParameterCount, Msg

On Error GoTo ErrorHandler
ListView1.View = lvwReport

'Input-parameter check. (See Author's Note)
ParameterCount = UBound(TitlesAndWidths) + 1
If ParameterCount / 2 CInt(ParameterCount / 2) Then
Msg = "Input-parameter count is incorrect. You must " & _
"specify an equal number of titles and widths."
MsgBox Msg, , "Prameter-Count Error"
End If

Width = ListView1.Width - 80
With ListView1.ColumnHeaders .Clear
For i = 0 To UBound(TitlesAndWidths) - 1 Step 2 .Add , , TitlesAndWidths(i), (TitlesAndWidths(i + 1) _
* Width) / 100
Next i
End With

Exit Sub

ErrorHandler:
MsgBox Err.Description & "."
End Sub

this way, perl6 will retain a "hard edge", while still providing programmers with access to the raw speed of parrot assembly. the best of both worlds. this is also the reason why the python community are enthusiastic about parrot as the saviour of python's poor performance and dying following.

Re:Good Stuff...

[Anonymous Coward]

OS X doesn't suck


Most of us will never care to find that out though..

But if they have a good cpu I may take a mac next time.. And run Gentoo..

Re:OS X not "more productive" for me

[murgee]

This argument is pointless, and one oft-repeated unfortunately. Different people find different things work for them. Whereas you and other people may not find OS X a particularily productive enviroment, other people (including myself) find it to be, and moreso find Windows and Linux (especially Linux, IMHO) provide them with a mediocre enviroment to work in.

I'm not posting this to beat up on the parent but it's something that tends to come up often.

Liitle used marketing term?

[Snart Barfunz]

What, like this? Quote - "Introducing the Apple II. You've just run out of excuses for not owning a personal computer." Apple ad, June 1977.

On portables.

[mikedaisey]

May be sooner--the power requirements for the PPC970 at 1.2 ghz is actually lower than the current G4 that is used in the Powerbooks.

Re:On portables.

[Dark Paladin]

Damn! Well, if that's the case, maybe I'll wait to buy that Powerbook w/Superdrive I've been eyeing (since my wife always steals my laptop to play Super Collaspe and other Gamehouse games).

Hm.... It always come to this, isn't it?

int damn! = 1;

function buyNoworWait() {
if (computer==good) {
if (futureprices == damn!) {
wait(6_months);
}
butnowOrWait();
}

Re:No matter how many times I read it...

[Anonymous Coward]

[IBM and Apple's] cooperation on PowerPC started almost 20 years ago.

The PowerPC alliance began in 1991, or 12 years ago.

Re:No matter how many times I read it...

[stu_coates]

Apple created the first PC

Cough,... Altair... Cough!

or not

[thatguywhoiam]

The fact that Macs have a reputation for good integration is mostly marketing - if you go down to your local PC World and walk out with a new box, that'll work just fine too.

While I agree with you if we're talking about established brands (Dell et. al), there is a signifcant chunk of sales that goes to the smaller shops who cobble the things together themselves, and problems are very common in this regard still. As usual, of course the experts need no help. People buy Dells - and Apples - partially because there's an 800 number to call when you're confused.

No they aren't. Everybody I've seen who has been sat down in front of a Mac found it hopelessly confusing and non-intuitive. The only people I know who stuck with them, are those who bought them personally (they would, wouldn't they). I know I had to have the owner of said Mac sit next to me and guide me when I was trying to use his machine, and I'm far from being a neophyte. Stupid differences from Windows and idiotic conventions that had seemingly no basis in actual usability just pissed me off.

Yes, they are. And it's not just a matter of opinion. There are tangible, measurable advantages in usability with Mac OS vs Windows. Check any TCO study on the matter, or any actual usability study (lost my Carnegie Mellon bookmarks for this but its there). Too numerous to list here.

You give yourself away with that last line - Mac OS can be frustrating if you are coming from Windows. Any transition is painful, from anything different. In fact the level of pain is often overlooked.

Trust me, put someone with little-to-no computer experience in front of the Mac and they will have a much, much easier time of it. I mean, c'mon, honestly, do you think that Windows conventions - still having to click Start to Shut Down comes to mind - are better? Things like that make no fucking sense to a newbie, because they make no fucking sense whatsoever - but we're used to that.

Blaming Apple for the majority of people having a lousy experience at their usual computers is nonsensical. Adjusting habits can be painful, but productivity is a highly personal thing. I use Windows XP all day and when I come home to my Mac.. it's like comfy slippers. WinXP is like a hard hat. I have no inherent reason to prefer one or the other frankly; I wish I could buy a cheap PC and be happy with how it works. But I can't. They aren't the same.

People don't upgrade their hardware because they like screwing about with drivers, they do it because they want to play Doom 3 but they don't want to buy a whole new machine when 80% of it is still just fine. If they don't know what they're doing the end result is mess and instability, but pretending people don't want to do that is the reason PCs dominated in the first place.

Ah, but you answered your own question. People playing Doom 3 might want to upgrade their CPU, but that's a vanishing percentage of the whole... I asked my dad if he ever used his PCI slots in his IBM machine and he really had to think about what I was talking about for a few seconds. Don't think that these silly upgrades are what drives the PC market, they are a sideline business. (Video cards possibly being the sole exception.) PCs are entirely commodity parts, that's all.

Frankly I think we need more Apples. More vertically-integrated computer companies who adhere to standards would be a good thing. Imagine such a company pumping out fantastic case designs for PPC970-based Linux boxen. That would rock.

Bubba Opinion

[Arbogast_II]

Intel, AMD, but dont forget VIA. A pretty, little, quiet Mac running OSX on a VIA Epia, if priced reasonable, would sell me on a Mac tomorrow. Then, if you got hard core work, the loud,powerful Linux box in the closet could do the big lifting. That VIA Epia is real nice for anything but heavy lifting...

Re:Bubba Opinion

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem is that OSX's GUI requires heavy lifting.

Re:Bubba Opinion

[metamatic]

Yeah, but the EPIA is slower than the G4, and the G4 iMac is already almost silent. (Like in an EPIA PC, the loudest noise is the optical drive.)

Re:Assembly: Why It Will Replace C++/Java

[jweatherley]

But this is a full-bodied classic of 2002 vintage from the cellars of the maestro (The trademark 'Gentlemen' introduction gives it away). The google groups link is well worth following to see just how many supposedly clever biters he reeled in!

Obligatory Joke

[NaugaHunter]

Sooooooo....

How long until the others have to worry about the Inquisition? Or are we skipping that since we've already seen the Second Coming of Steve?





(How many thought I was going to go with that math that showed B.G. = The Beast from Revelations?)

Performance is out of line?

[Anonymous Coward]

I manage labs of macs, totaling over 300 of them. The users of my labs have no complaints about performance. (They usually only start to whine when the find out the processor speed, but then they are conditioned to think that MHz is MHz; and when asked if their work is slowed, compared to what they do on a PC, they answer "no" it is not slower.)

What is this every non-mac user keeps saying that their performace is out of line with PC's? I have on my desk a hepped up dual P4 and a hepped up dual G4. XP on the dual P4 does not "feel," in day-to-day operations with standard apps like Office or Photoshop, much different from the dual G4. Comparing the MHz does not tell me anything. Using both side-by-side tells me a more "real" story about things. Now, perhaps XP is significantly slowing things down? :-)

I only notice a difference with some high-end 3D apps like Maya or Lightwave, *maybe* also with some high-ed vid apps like Avid's.

I am looking forward to the 970 though. Actually, I am very curious about any 64bit CPU. Hopefully the "growing pains" for anyone to move to 64bit is negligible.

Re:Performance is out of line?

[Anonymous Coward]

And for this you're spending twice as much as you would for an Intel/AMD-based system? Listen to yourself! "It's not really as bad as all that and besides, you can't really tell the difference in speed for business apps."

Spend half as much to buy an Athlon system, load it Red Hat or Mandrake with KDE or Gnome and you've got a system that is every bit as configurable and powerful as an OS X system. Some would say, more so.

The ONLY argument I've ever seen posted against this is the fact that you can't buy MS Office for it. So you save $600 by downloading Openoffice instead.

Re: Have you ever used a Mac???

[benzapp]

SCSI over IDE

Apple went pretty much all IDE about five years ago.

USB over PCI

Mac's have had PCI slots since the first PowerPC based units became available. In fact, back in those days many PC's still had VLB, and only Pentiums had PCI slots. Further, since they were 100% PCI there was no bottleneck due to legacy support (ISA) Also, USB's importance was such that it replaced SCSI for external, high speed devices...

Re: Have you ever used a Mac???

[Exitthree]

Actually, the first PowerMacs used Nubus, not PCI. I know, I have 3 of them. The 6100, 7100 and 8100 (and workgroup servers, etc on such variations) as well as the 9150 all shipped with Nubus slots. I don't believe it was until the 603 and 604 chips appeared in PowerMacs that they came with PCI.

Re: Have you ever used a Mac???

[dasmegabyte]

Yes. SCSI is one of things that "didn't pan out." But desktop Macs had SCSI LONG after it died on the PC market, for the extended MTBF and reduced CPU utilization. As I understand it, the HD inside my iPod is SCSI.

When I say "USB over PCI," I mean that Apple chose to eliminate PCI and PCMCIA slots from its most popular machines (iMac, iBook) because USB served the same purpose of extendability, was easier to install and manage and was cheaper to produce and support. USB was faltering until Mac made that hard decision. Now it's everywhere. Apple did the same for IEEE 1334, though it could be argued Firewire's time had come anyway.

Thanks for reminding me about VLB...I should have said "PCI over VLB/ISA/Microchannel," and pointed out that Mac tried to popularize 66 MHz PCI as the successor for graphics, not AGP. Another thing that didn't pan out, but it wasn't a bad idea...to have the same slot and bus for EVERYTHING is a pretty good idea from a simplification and unification point of view, even if it's slow as shit.

Who says Apple will use it?

[bigredradio]

I have seen alot of comments about Apple G4's, but I think you guys do not understand IBM. This new processor is designed for the CHRP-based RS6000s - not Macs. SuSE and IBM have been working on Linux ports to their 64-bit CHRP systems, and this seems like the real motivation.

Re:Who says Apple will use it?

[JonathanF]

As Hannibal (Jon Stokes) notes in the article in question:

"The fact that the Altivec unit was slapped onto the design, leaving some room for improvement in future iterations, leaves no doubt that the 970 achieved its present form under pressure from Apple and that Apple will be rolling out systems based on the new processor. This is the most plausible and reasonable explanation for the way the vector unit looks. If the 970 were solely intended as a Linux desktop platform for IBM, they would've preferred to reduce the 970's die size, power consumption, time-to-market, etc. by just leaving out the Altivec unit altogether, instead of shoehorning it into the design the way they did."

Most Linux variants and apps aren't Altivec-optimized, so there wouldn't be very much incentive for IBM to include the functionality in a Linux-only box given the engineering work involved in doing so. It makes much more sense to do it when you know that you could easily sell hundreds of thousands of these CPUs to another company whose customers are desperately eager for that level of performance, i.e. Apple.

Re: current "pro" line of G4 a joke?

[King_TJ]

I guess I don't quite follow.... As someone else already asked, what exactly are you trying to accomplish with your machine(s)?

I've been using strictly PCs for 5 years or so now, after a brief stint with a "Performa" Mac mini-tower that didn't turn out too well.

My "high end" PC system is a Pentium 4, 1.8Ghz tower with Promise EIDE RAID and a GeForce 4 video board.

I'm pretty happy with it, but I really wanted a good system to run OS X and some of Apple's incredibly well-done video editing packages (Final Cut, iDVD, etc.). I just broke down and bought a dual-processor G4 1.42Ghz tower. I certainly don't feel it's "slow" at all! I'd say it performs at least on par with my P4 system, if not a little faster at certain tasks. It boots into OS X a lot more quickly than the P4 boots into Windows XP, for one thing.

Sure, the 970 processor will be great -- but the people complaining that the current PowerMacs are "horribly underpowered" must be "benchmark junkies", worried about having the best stats for the sake of stats (bragging rights?).

Like I say, I consider myself very much a "power user", and for a long time, I didn't think Apple really had the "price vs. performance" in the right place on the curve. But with their recent price drops, plus "speed bumps" to their G4 offerings - I think they still have a very competitive setup to tide them over until the 970 is done.

At the end of the day, you don't plunk down $2000-3400 for a "pro" Mac G4 or PowerBook because you're worried about having the "most Ghz". You do so because it offers an OS and specialized applications you can't get in the PC world. (These days, you might also do so to avoid the Microsoft licensing nightmares. A "family pack" of OS X lets you load it on any 5 systems of your choice for a price not much more than 1 single copy of Windows XP Pro, for example.)

Re: Have you ever used a Mac???

[benzapp]

You are right, but 601 units had PCI. The 7200 was a 601 machine and had PCI slots.

I hope you can smell "bogus" when you see it...

[Anonymous Coward]

In particular on the 2.3 and 2.5 GHz parts, and the "upcoming 980 processor."

IBM has predicted that the 970 microarchitecture will reach 2.4 GHz *after a process shrink* which will not occur this year.

Concerning the Power 5 derivative 980: the POWER5 core is a reworking of the POWER4 to fit more cores on a single die, with corresponding changes to the memory, interprocessor and cache architectures. Since exactly zero of those features will be put on a desktop chip (those are the features cut off of the POWER4 to make the PPC 970), a desktop chip based on the POWER5 would be the same as a desktop chip based on the POWER4. Of course it already exists, and is the PPC 970.

I expect the PPC 980 when it arrives (assuming it does; IBM may stop at the 970 if it doesn't turn out well for them) will have a revamped cache and memory system suitable for a higher performance desktop processor, and more custom logic to allow it to clock at a higher speed. Of course any details about unannounced parts that may be upcoming is speculation on my part.

Re: Have you ever used a Mac???

[Anonymous Coward]

Mac's have had PCI slots since the first PowerPC based units became available.

Not quite -- the first generation of PowerPC Macs still used Nubus.

Memory Controller

[Vegan Pagan]

If the Athlon 64 and Opteron have on-die memory controllers and the 970 has an off-die memory controller, does that mean that even though the 970 has the same theoretical bandwidth as the Opteron, it will have higher latency and lower real-world bandwidth?

Back in your day you had it EASY

[krray]

Back in my day I had to write games in BASIC, on a 4.7Mhz computer with no hard disk and 128K of RAM. And I was grateful

You had it easy... Back in my day I had to write in BASIC on a 1Mhz computer with no hard drive and it had 38,911 bytes available for basic. C=64 anyone? :)

Re:Back in your day you had it EASY

[mad.frog]

Man: "When I started, we didn't have these sissy windows and icons. All we had was ones and zeroes. And sometimes we didn't even have ones."

Man: "I wrote an entire database just using zeroes."

Dilbert: "You had zeroes? We had to use the letter "o"."

WOW

[Anonymous Coward]

what a cocksucker.

Nevermind the riff-raff Hannibal

Re: Have you ever used a Mac???

[Anonymous Coward]

USB over PCI

What if you put a USB card in a PCI slot?

grin. I don't get how you could choose USB "over" PCI...

Will Linux apps become AltiVec enabled?

[benwaggoner]

Well, Linux and its apps don't have much AltiVec optimization because AltiVec wasn't in many Linux chips. But if IBM or licensees start making 970 based Linux workstations, it seems this would be likely to change.

And this would be a good thing for Apple, since there would be a lot more *NIX codec that could compile and run a LOT faster on their boxes, and there would be a larger pool of AltiVec and PPC coding talent for them and their ISVs to draw from.

3D does use 64-bit numbers

[wfolta]

This discussion has come up repeatedly in the Cinema4D discussion forum. (C4D is a cross-platform 3D app from Maxon.)

Athalons are so much cheaper and faster for rendering that the Mac isn't even arguable as a 3D platform based on bang-for-the-buck, and for rendering that is the entire argument. So people will occasionally say, "Hey, if you took advantage of AltiVec, the Mac would be competitive."

The official answer is that C4D (and most 3D apps) need 64-bit precision for rendering calculations and AltiVec is 32-bit so it's only useful for screen updates, etc, not for rendering. Evidently, you can use AltiVec to help with 64-bit numbers, but it requires enough additional work that you don't gain anything.

So if they add 64-bit AltiVec, the Mac could jump into the lead as a 3D rendering machine.

Re:I can't stand it anymore...

[wazzzup]

Clearly your incompetence with the English language is showing. It's not with arrogance that I correct you but with a desire to admonish those that perform the written equivalent of running your fingernails down a chalkboard.

Oh and, I'll just let you know now before you commit the inevitable - it's supposedly, NOT supposebly. Yes, you know you say that too. Admitting you have a problem is the first step to correcting it.

Re: Have you ever used a Mac???

[salesgeek]

I don't think that the SCSI vs IDE situation was really one that was decided by Apple - SCSI devices are substantially more expensive and Apple had to make a move to be competitive.

For the humor impaired...

[LionMage]

I think you missed the point... that post was so obviously full of factual holes, it had to be written as a humorous piece! Nobody could be that stupid, especially not someone claiming to be the CTO of a Fortune 500 company. (That claim just made the post all the more delicious.)

Come on, a CTO of a Fortune 500 company posting as Anonymous Coward?

68K was not braindead

[johannesg]

The 68K processor were brilliant to program for. I should know, I've done enough of it (old 68000, 68030, and 68060).

If you are referring to their low speed - yes, they were slow by today's standards. But slow is not the same as braindead.

Re: current "pro" line of G4 a joke?

[Anonymous Coward]

What I use it for makes no difference. it is wierd to suggest that since my Pc's could do everything my G4 could do about twice as fast, I must have not somehow been doing something worthwhile, or needed....or something. Never mind what I do, thats not the freakin issue. Maybe i look at pR0n ALL DAY AND NIGHT. Maybe I make music for a living. The issue is A: I could do everything with the PC I could do with the mac, and B: My Pc's I made are at least twice as fast as my G4 733. But thats not realy a fair comparing either - my 733 had a geforce 2 mx and my Pc's have 9500 Pro's and 2400 + XP's in them. OF COURSE they are gonna be faster than the sdram 133 G4!!!!! But I was able to buy 2 machines for what I got for my G4.

To say that somehow dumping Apple becuase it was slow and outdated when THE ENTIRE INDUSTRY runs on SPEED and POWER marketing wise is bizarre. Thats how these companies survive! That's what makes poeple buy new computers! What, you dont buy a new machine every few years? Most people have to. And most of the time it's about SPEED and ADVANCES in technology!

Weird.

actually

[_avs_007]

I believe IBM had plans for the PowerPersonal. I'm not sure if they ever shipped any or not. I think there are a bunch of linux distros that run on PPC tho...

970 performance under 'year of the laptops'?

[jonathanbearak]

So Apple catches up (almost) to desktops (eventually) but then what about notebooks? By the time these are out we'll be seeing 90nm pentium-m notebooks. Say the reviewers, pentium-m's perform extremely well per clock. What I'm wondering is whether these can scale (as the pentium-m's can to 500mhz) because if they can't, then Apple is going to lose performance *and* battery-life in notebooks.

Re:970 performance under 'year of the laptops'?

[Anonymous Coward]

Hail, great Intel!
You buy all they say,right? Try to think for yourself, you will find it refreshing...

I can only hope.

[eadint]

If apple dosent announce this proccesor in the wwdc. than i will have no choice but to go with an opteron cluster. the main reason why ive been holding off is because, the current G4's cant hack the scientific computing that we do intel beats the crap out of apple. i can only hold off projects for so long and then i have to get whatever is the fastest and most powerfull. there is speculation that apple wont announce this at the wwdc. if they dont i fear that apple will die on the vine.

dr.dumbass is more like it...

[Anonymous Coward]

Can the same be said about the 970, or will we only see an extra 100MHz or so every six months? (Be it because of actual technical barriers or Motorola's (or whoever ends up making them) complacency.)

WTF?? Are you living under a rock, or are you just fucking stupid?? Oh, nevermind, this is slashdot, you couldn't be bothered to read the fucking article. Just for you, here's the FIRST SENTENCE:

The present article is the second installment in a two-part series on IBM's upcoming PowerPC 970.

dr.dumbass indeed.

Re:Good Stuff...

[the uNF cola]

Heh, you know.. you CAN light them. Flame thrower attack!

Re: weird?? I think not!

[King_TJ]

What you do with your computer *does* make a difference! You seem to quickly discount this as pointless, because you claim you can "do everything with the PC you could do with the Mac".

I disagree with that assumption!

Granted, there is a LOT of crossover with applications. Most of the popular ones are written for both PC and Mac. Still, the Mac has a number of niches the PC isn't quite there with.

I pointed out in a seperate message thread, for example, that for WYSIWYG HTML work, "Freeway" for the Mac blows away anything I've used on a PC. For video editing, many folks think iMovie/iDVD and Final Cut (Express or Pro) are more powerful, stable, and easier to use than the PC counterparts. (I liked them enough that they pretty much sold me on a Mac by themselves!) For music creation, the PC has the edge in some areas (such as ACID Pro for working with sound loops), but not in others. The new Digital Producer 4 (DP4) from MOTU (Mac only) seems to have the edge over anything like it on the PC side. For hard disk recording on the high-end, more professionals use ProTools on a Mac than any single PC alternative I know of.

The PC is also straddled with competing "standards" for plug-ins to MIDI/music packages. Most people seem to agree that Steinberg's VST's are one of the best options, yet many PC packages (such as Cakewalk Sonar) prefer to use DirectX based plug-ins. Going all Mac for a music workstation at least bypasses some of these issues, too.

If you primarily play games on your computer, then a fast PC makes the most sense. If you just use the Internet - then whatever's cheapest that runs a modern browser is probably the best bet. (You simply have more money than sense if you buy a high-end system to do nothing but get email and look at porn on!) For video editing and DVD creation, or MIDI/music work, I think a Mac *may* make the most sense.

Re:Assembly: Why It Will Replace C++/Java

[Anonymous Coward]

I am a sucker for line breaks. I am laughing just thinking about them. Every troll should use them.

mostly wanking off

[DABANSHEE]

lets be honest, in regards to 95% of the shit 95% of people do on a computer, there's virtually no difference in speed between a K6-3 450 & A P4 2.8.

So really, unless one's into 3D games, compiling code, rendering 3D or encoding video, & one already have a 500+mhz PC, replacing it with a new computer is just wanking off, well that is if one's trying to justify it as a need. Of course if one's treating oneself & being honest that one's treating oneself, then it isn't wanking off.

Afterall I'd love a nice new Holden One Tonner, but I'd be wanking off to claim I need one for work, afterall in that regard it performs no better than my old Daihatzu van.

Ouch!

[PetWolverine]

Not to mention that if you actually put this laptop on the top of your lap, you might get your testicles hard boiled.

Somebody mod the parent -1 Stomach-Turning!

Eeeeyuch!

Re:smokin'

[Crazy Eight]

What's up with the way Apple computers always "smoke" their brethern? An Apple never "out performs" or "runs faster".

Re: Have you ever used a Mac???

[Crazy Eight]

As I understand it, the HD inside my iPod is SCSI.

You've got to be kidding. They're built around 2.5" laptop drives.

Re: Have you ever used a Mac???

[Anonymous Coward]

They're built around 1.8" drives.

Re: Have you ever used a Mac???

[dasmegabyte]

1.8 in drives connected via ATA. I was wrong about the SCSI. I misread info from this page which mentions that the iPod connects to the mac as a SCSI block device, which makes sense...that means more of the functions of copying and reading data are controlled by the iPod's processor and not by the mac's processor. And that may be one of the big keys to the iPod's download speed, which really is fast as hell. Faster than copying across my own HD, at least.

Don't give up on them yet...

[Anonymous Coward]

You're only computer illiterate if you're too old to learn anymore.

If you're geek enough to be at /., try teaching them.

If they're young, they'll learn it a lot better now than when they're grown up and pushed out of jobs for their lack of computer skills. Of course, being able to put up with Linux doesn't mean computer skills. Throw Terminal.app in their dock, start them off on some easy HTML they can show off to their friends. Then you can move them to PHP, get the programming basics (variables, flow control) in them young. Fiving them a foundation in programmatic problem solving will pay off.

Those three-line BASIC programs put me on a road to MIT. Even though I'd rather become a hooker than write code 16 hours a day, the thinking skills developed back then are still an asset.

Re:Assembly: Why It Will Replace C++/Java

[Anonymous Coward]

He's quoting a response to the original troll.

Re:Gentoo translator-o-matic

[salimma]

I wish I have mod points so I could mod you up as being at least Underrated, or Funny.

Before I get flamed, a disclaimer: I know that Gentoo has its proper uses, but on the other hand, 'wannabe hacker' types do tend to use the flavour-of-the-month, preferable on the unstable side, distros.

Before Gentoo it used to be Mandrake. I used to cringe when reading mailing list archives at the kind of questions that get asked.

A friend of mine I made the mistake of converting to Linux now swears by his Gentoo system. He claimed he could not figure out RPM, finding all the flags impossible to memorise (eh? you might ask), and blaming the fact that some obscure software he needed were not available in RPM packages.

Today he was wondering why his kernel broke the binary nVidia drivers and so he's stuck without X since he did not know how to edit XF86Config to move back to the free nv driver, or down to VGA. He could not get help online because it did not occur to him, should all else fail, to use a text browser.

Believe me, this is a true story.

Wrong religion

[fm6]

You've just described Judaism. Yeah, Chritianity has a lot of the same symbols, but all the ones you describe are "borrowed".