Apple To Discuss HyperTransport For Future Macs

macrealist writes "CNET is reporting that Apple will discuss the use of HyperTransport in Macs at the Developer's conference. The interesting thing is that the article claims that Apple is not likely to use hypertransport to link the CPU to the memory, but instead to link chipsets together because IBM would have to 'to adapt it to the Power architecture.' But according to arstechnica, the 970 does have a frontside bus that operates at similar speeds to Hypertransport."

Comments

Technically Cool Hardware, or Fast and Cheap?

[tyagiUK]

As many people (keep) saying, Apple kit isn't necessarily the fastest out there in terms of raw speed. However, from a day-to-day point of view, is raw speed what you want on a minute-by-minute basis? Probably not. If you do, then you've probably got a dual or quad processor x86 box churning away with your favourite SMP kernel-based OS. For everyday use (productivity apps, Internet, media manipulation) Apple kit does a really good job. Firewire is fast and convenient. More importantly, Apple kit (and software) is very stable in my experience. Apple looks like it is selective in its choice of cool new tech (tm) to incorporate into its products. This is a Good Thing.

Re:Switch?

[pauljlucas]

I have been thinking of switching over to Apple, and now that many designers are coming up with cool products with OSX support, I am paying much more attention to Mac.

Does that imply that you are using your current computers for out-of-the-ordinary things that Macs currently can not do either at all or at least as well? If the answer is "no," then you could have already switched.

So looking at Hyper Transport, at this stage, I'm a tad leery of it because it didn't come from Apple.

Uhm, the CPUs don't come from Apple (they're not in the CPU business); the hard drives don't come from Apple (they're not in the hard drive business); the memory doesn't come from Apple (they're not in the memory business); the LCD screens don't come from Apple (they're not in the LCD business); etc.

Apple contracts with dozens of commodity hardware manufactures to build components. Rebranding other-manufacturer items with the Apple logo doesn't make them "come from Apple."

... is this going to be the next evolutionary step for Apple, or is it just an added hardware feature that is relatively minor?

Is this issue really the show-stopper preventing you from using Macs? Seems kind of odd.