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90nm 3GHz PPC 970FX by Summer
dmdimon sent in linkage to a Forbes story on the upcoming PPC chips and notes "IBM is said to be ready to deliver a new version of its PowerPC processor to Apple by the end of this year in from sizes of 130 nanometers to 90 nanometers...
Apple CEO Steve Jobs has already gone on the record saying that the G5 computer will contain PowerPC chips that run at 3 GHz by the summer of 2004. A mid-step between the current systems, which top out with two chips running at 2 GHz, and systems with chips as fast as 2.6 GHz would be a logical move come January..."
where smaller is better.
wow... with this Apple will be dying much faster !
getSexySig();
Does anyone even care about the leetness of their speed with Apple stuff?
Why my friend converted: Final Cut Pro, he's in the movie/TV biz.
You can't take the sky from me...
This will also mean they can fit a G5 in a powerbook. Time to start saving up.
It's a boon for consumers. Now we have a real choice in architecture (ppc vs. x86) as well as brand (amd, intel, ibm) without sacraficing performance.
Perhaps this will force Intel to to up the ante.
I think this doesn't even raise to the level of hoax, I think it's a cheap publicity stunt by the hosting company who then go and post it on slashdot hopign to get some hits. Good try!
sig:
See the "..for smart people" banners Wired runs here? Look elsewhere guys.
Most of the people editing the audio and video you're encoding on your x86 are using macs. Well, maybe not most, but a hell of a lot of 'em.
"If you're thinking what I'm thinking, you're right." -
You'd need an iMagnifying Glass to see a whole processor that small.
Most of the people encoding audio and video
Macs have been the native platform of artists and designers doing serious image creation/manipulation, video editing, and music composition for a long time. OS X just continues that tradition, but makes it simple for the end-user to also get into how powerful a multimedia machine the Mac is with tools such as iMovie, etc. And of course, on the other end, you've got these two.
So, to answer your question, ramping up speed on the G5 chips is not only good for the whole marketing "Mine is bigger" approach, but there is also real value to Mac users, from casual to hard core.
El riesgo vive siempre!
I agree with the wisdom of letting others find the flaws in a first generation laptop--It's too easy to get burned with a brand new laptop design, pun intended.
That said, Apple puts more effort into laptop design than just about any other manufacturer I can think of. I seriously doubt they'd slap a G5 processor into a G4 design and call it done.
Obliteracy: Words with explosions
You missed the part about the G5 running cooler than G4 and also, the switch from .13 to .09 processes should help as well. The net effect may be an overall cooler machine which does not sacrifice MHz.
Pinball, arcade video, tech and more: www.micsaund.com
One thing that caught my eye is that the term "open-source" is used without any explanation, presumably because readers are expected to know what it means. It's a relatively technical article for Forbes, but they did provide a definition for "compiler".
Is there a name for this IBM compiler? Is there any word as to Apple's long-term plans for it versus gcc?
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
I think that if Apple would invest only a little bit more in managing their current products, they would be much more successful, and would therefore have more resources with which to innovate.
Think of it this way: Why is it that Apple has, what, 2% of the market, when Dell, which doesn't innovate at all in its product, has a huge chunk of the market? Dell does nothing but manage.
I'm saying all of these things because Apple's product is very promising, and I would be very happy if they would gain a larger chunk of the market, so that more people would use Apple computers, so that more software would be released for them, so that more hardware options would become available for them, and basically so that the computer world, as regular folks see it, won't be the monotonous Wintel platform...
Of course, I want to see my favorite OS (BSD) getting a big boost.
from the article: Faster chips will also migrate to the Powerbook notebook line. There's a pretty good chance that a Powerbook G5 notebook will appear no later than the summer of 2004.
if they take care of heat issues, this would be awesome. even though they will be somewhat pricey, apple will sell a ton of these. i'll buy one.
My problem? I was perfectly gruntled, until some numbnuts came by and dissed me.
Why would AMD be talking to Apple? If anyone AMD would be talking to IBM but even then unless IBM will be manufacturing the chips or has some kind of partnership agreement with AMD they would n't be inclined to pass on that kind of valuable experience to AMD.
This guy trolls for these types of posts, hoping to get modded up. His sig is the most disgusting thing ever, please mod down.
The new G5 chips will require 1.21 jiggawatts of power to operate effectively.
3D Printing Tips and Tricks at Zheng3.com
-_-
Encoding audio and video? Steve would cry if he read this. Where have Macs been widely been used all these years? The music and film industry...??? In fact, whilst it is a little irresponsible to say the reverse is true, it is certainly not unfair to suggest that people on a budget buy a low spec PC (i.e. even worse than the Mac's "meagre" specifications - i.e. 700Mhz x86 = 700Mhz PPC) to do "normal everyday things that don't require much cpu power: word processing, email, web etc." There are , I am sure, a few that use their Macs for just this, but I would have thought the majority might like to flex the power of iLife (i.e. DVD burning, movie editing, digital photography, music), Final Cut Pro, Logic, Photoshop, etc. The list is not small... True, Macs don't do as many games as PCs, but that's more a marketing/business-sense decision rather than any inherent weakness on the Mac's part. Indeed, of course, time was when Mac games were vastly superior (I am going way back to the time of Prince of Persia here, folks, so...) iqu :s
I'm not so sure.... G5 for the PowerBooks is probably not until next summer/fall, I bet there are at least one or two more updates to the 15' and 12'. What wouldn't surprise me too much is adding a G5 to the 17' first or dual g4's. It does have the most room to play with.
" Most of the people editing the audio and video you're encoding on your x86 are using macs."
I know what you mean, because I was talking about people doing DVD rips and anime fansubs rather than professionals, and true, lots of professionals use macs, but:
a) editing (especially mpeg2 "on an iframe" editing) takes virtually no cpu power
b) I was only talking about home users, even if that meant I was ignoring professional people, to whom the superleetspeed Apples could be advantageous.
graspee
Does anyone even care about the leetness of their speed with Apple stuff? I always thought the sort of people who used "the other computer" were more interested in doing normal everyday things that don't require much cpu power: word processing, email, web etc. Most of the people encoding audio and video and playing games are running x86.
Well, a huge number of design people use Macs, and image processing can be very processor intensive. Everyone knows Apple always quotes Photoshop benchmarks when trying to say that their computers are faster (with this version of photoshop! with these patches! with this filter! On Tuesdays! In March!)
That being said, there's one interesting point here - there are a lot of people who, after OS X, are switching to Apple because it's a Unix derivative that, for desktop use, is more polished than Linux. The scientific project I work on has just ported all of the analysis tools to OS X, because they like the Mac desktop better than the Linux one, so I think in addition to image processing/design tasks, developers may slowly switch to Mac as well.
One other interesting point now is that the reasons for sticking with x86 are quickly dwindling. It used to be a joke that Macs were faster. Macs, in many things, were three to four (yes, 3 to 4!) times slower at general-purpose tasks. Ever since the G5 was introduced, maybe it's still a joke because of Jobs's overzealous description of Apple's prowess, but it's not that much of a joke anymore. A dual 2GHz G5 is not a slow machine. Not by any stretch of the imagination.
At this point, the only things that can seriously keep people on x86 are software and price, and considering people still pay more than $1K for computers, I think it's safe to say that people are perfectly happy to spend way too much money on computers if they look nice and are well supported.
I think Apple is quite healthy: I'd be really surprised if Apple's market share doesn't continue to grow. If you're willing to shell out the money to shift to a Mac for the ease-of-use of OS X, then I don't think you're likely to shift back to x86.
(damnit! forgot that I have to put >br< tags in!)
:(
iqu
Yeah, I'm willing to bet that the people who make 80 million dollar movies with them do. Your friends who encode Simpsons episodes into DivX don't count, sorry.
Apple DOES still have chip designers employed, and pretty good ones at that. Remember they were a key player in designing the PPC in the *first* place.
However, it does make more sense that AMD would be talking to IBM. They already have a very cozy relationship, and this isn't quite the kind of thing that would play to Apple's role in chip design anyway...
don't click, nasty goatse.cx and defecation pictures
Mod this asshole down as a troll, plz
Does anyone even care about the leetness of their speed with Apple stuff?
Yes I do... The more speed, the faster my photoshop projects render.
that was funny in 1994...
wait, no it wasn't!
In the future, I would want to not be isolated from my friends in the Space Station.
"You sir are incredibly ill-informed. You confuse the needs of the home-fiddler with the needs of the media professional"
I wasn't talking about the so-called "media professional". Since this is slashdot, (and I doubt that those high and mighty "media professionals" make up much of a percentage of the readership) I was talking about home users.
Home users encode things like dvd rips, anime fansubs, holiday videos etc. Here, not only does x86 rule the roost, but (very sadly) the OS used is Windows. There has always been poor support for video editing and encoding, subtitling etc. under linux and the BSDs.
graspee
IBM sure seems to be popping out some great CPUs there.
My understanding is that applications are free to use 64 bit instructions if they wish.
Am I mistaken? Does the system, stack organization or memeory management some how preculde the use of 64 bit instructions?
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
The heck with new Macs... I already bought 3 this year. When are we going to see G5 upgrades for MDD (windtunnel) macs?
and...
Computers are more than raw CPU speed, and this is what Apple has learnt. I can only imagine how cool the 3 Ghz Macs will be when compared to other PCs. And the fact they're lagging behind on the Ghz race is not a big deal as long as they keep making high quality hardware/software that actually squeeze every single drop of potential our of your computer.
Diego Rey
diegoT
" He forgot that there are people in the world different from the guys at his LAN party and his mom's friends.
There are lots more uses for computers than browsing the web, playing games, and making DivX rips of netflix DVDs, but, hey, your world is pretty small when you're 13."
I am extremely confused by your comment, because all the statements in it are wrong. Please reply with the source of this misinformation so I can correct their computer records.
graspee
It takes a lot of R&D whenever you move from one feature size to a smaller one and since chip fabrication R&D costs $$$ that's why unless AMD have some kind of technology sharing agreement I doubt they would just "give away" something they've put a lot of money into.
ready to deliver a new version of its PowerPC processor to Apple by the end of this year
So, within the next week? (:
I'm not normally an irrational zealous dickhead, but I figure "When in Rome..."
Let's see: the fastest PC workstations beat the Mac's in Photoshop. QT6 didn't even have two pass mpeg4 encoding for a long time and even now the quality/features are a joke compared to Xvid/Divx (which make use of things like b-frames, qpel, gmc). On Windows the QT browser plugin is terrible and doesn't even allow you to zoom or fullscreen from the right-click menu (and windows media player does) so I'm stuck digging the freaking URL out of the page just to watch the stream in something other than a miniscule box (I use high res and I'm not changing it for a video in a web page). The few professionals doing DVD work I've ever talked to used Maestro and Scenarist, both PC apps. IME the parent is right on about macs having lost their spot re encoding.
I'm not really sure what you mean by this comment. How do you invest a little more in managing your current products?
Do you mean that Apple doesn't market their products aggressively enough? Maybe you haven't seen their ads everywhere. Remember that Apple is one company marketing an entire platform, while Dell, et. al. only have to market their products, not the OS.
Dell owns a huge chunk of the market because of their assembly and distribution mechanism. Dell started out with no retail mechanism to support, which allowed them to beat other Wintel OEMs on price. When a price war heats up, Dell can take a smaller margin on each unit sold without going under.
Apple is not "promising". It has led the personal computer industry for a quarter of a century. The fact that you're saying, "I would be very happy if they would gain a larger chunk of the market, so that more people would use Apple computers, so that more software would be released for them, so that more hardware options would become available for them..." reveals that you haven't used a Mac lately.
There are over 17,000 software titles available for the Mac. There are zillions of Open Source packages you can use with OS X. Besides that, how many crappy "me too" Windows programs do you really need? There are great software choices in every category for the Mac, and a lot fewer shovelware products than in the Windows world. Mac users just don't tolerate that sort of sloppiness for long.
As for hardware options, Apple is able to make computers that are relatively problem-free specifically because they control the hardware and the OS. Apple has tried the hardware licensing thing in the past, and it only cannibalized their own sales. The Mac will never dominate computing, but then again, Apple's desire to grow and profit has never been predicated on wanting to rule the world.
For that, look north to Redmond. ;-)
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
aren't both amd and apple part of the hypertransport consortium?
well, they've done it in the past on the desktop model... when the g4 debuted the first model was the "yikes" line that was, essentially, a g4 chip on a g3 motherboard. it was a couple of months until the "sawtooth" line with the g4-specific mobo came out.
2 1337 4 u!
I use a mixture of OSes for various things. I use Linux for cheap servers and at my desk for day-to-day web/mail use. I use Windows for things where I need compatibility with Joe Sixpack, such as web site testing or running niche products only available for Windows. But I'm about to buy a G5 running OS X, to put in my studio for all my image manipulation and 3D rendering work.
No, most of the IBM PPC 970 technology (G5) came from the POWER series of processors. Much of the POWER stuff is based off of Power PC (PPC) technology developed by IBM, Apple, and Motorola.
See MacRumors.com for Forbes' "sources".
I suspect the article got cut down for size and the non-technical editor left in the explanation for "compiler" after reading both it and the explanation of "open-source".
This is interesting because you could probably ask yourself if the concept of "open source" is so simple and obvious to a non-technical editor that they would delete it from an article then why is it so difficult for some many companies to understand?
I'm asking this question because of my conversations with a senior technical manager at work. He seems to interpret "open source" as there being an army of coders out there waiting to work on his projects as soon as he gets around to putting up some example code and the final requirements on sourceforge.
Sigh.
myke
Mimetics Inc. Twitter
boo
the fastest PC workstations beat the Mac's in Photoshop Could I ask where you are getting the statics to back that up? Every test I have read shows the G5 beating the fastest PC in photoshop renderings,
they wont move from GCC its just getting too good...
also they can change objc compiler when they plese
if Apple want CONTROL freakery then they should stay with gcc
regards
JJ
I'd answer, but I'm busy working on a documentary in Final Cut.
Mod point free since 2001
Macs will run at 3 ghz? WOOHOO! That means AMD and Intel will have 6gig chips!
Realistically speaking, though, performance increases have slowed down in the x86 camp. The jump from 2.8GHz to 3.0GHz came with a much larger increase in power than than the 7% increase in raw clockrate. Ditto for the 3.2GHz P4. Now Intel is apparently having a lot of trouble just getting bumped up to 3.4GHz, a CPU that dissipates over 100 watts. I'm not saying Intel won't break past this barrier--of course they will--but diminishing returns have kicked in hard. A 4GHz P4 is going to dissipate 150W at this rate. How long can it keep up? These are not the kind of CPUs you can easily put in a desktop, let alone a small-form-factor PC or notebook.
IBM is going to have the same troubles with the PPC970, but at least they're ahead of the game. The cleaner design of the PPC line has suddenly become a powerful advantage.
Damn, I though Y2K was a problem, now my 64 bit unix time isn't even good enough.
High-end Video Codec Pixlet is the first studio-grade codec for filmmakers. Pixlet provides 20-25:1 compression, allowing a 75MB/sec series of frames to be delivered in a 3MB/sec movie, similar to DV data rates. Pixlet lets high-end digital film frames play in real time with any 1GHz G4 or better Panther Mac, without investing in costly, proprietary hardware.
"I don't think it's selfish, to eat defenseless shellfish." -NOFX
Does anyone even care about the leetness of their speed with Apple stuff? I always thought the sort of people who used "the other computer" were more interested in doing normal everyday things that don't require much cpu power: word processing, email, web etc. Most of the people encoding audio and video and playing games are running x86.
But there's getting to be quite a leet-geek crowd using Macs now, thanks to OS X. It's a huge draw for people who understand the advantages of UNIX, but don't want to get into the Linux fray (because of lack of certain commercial applications, for example).
you dont need to be fully 64bit
things like the VM subsystem and the dynamic linker etc....
but really you need a compiler and a good ABI (look at sgi n32 O32 been there a long time)
they have the compiler (PPC64 linux has the same back end )
really if you want speed on these things run linux....
(check out the data access using ext2)
the real niceness is thet you can run photoshop 8
(cs or whatever adobe want to call it )
and then munch through a bunch of filters hmmm floating point goodness.....
regards
JJ
Let's hope that Apple decides to revive the Cube once again. I small form factor business-ready 64-bit Mac might be able to break into the corporate world with all the talk of Macs superior security and ease. Besides, I'm still kicking myself for not picking up one of those things the first time around, though they would need to adjust the price a little lower too, to convince me. $999 for a G5 Cube might sell pretty well.
However, it's completely impossible to put a G5 on a G4 board. You wouldn't stick an Athlon 64 on your Socket A board, would you? Think of it this way:
The G4 is to the G3 as the Pentium III is to the Pentium II. That's why a Slot 1 P3 worked on a P2 board, and also why a G4 CPU ran on a G3 board.
The G5 is to the G4 as the Athlon 64 is to the Athlon XP. Apples to oranges (no pun intended).
Most People? You must mean most people trading Paris Hilton WMVs... For those of us who do not live in our mom's basement, who actually make a living in the audio/video industry, Macs are still the dominant platform. Yes, I know PCs have been gaining ground, but they've hardly sent the Mac home with a pink slip. I work in 5 different OSs daily (2 Mac flavors, and 3 Windows flavors)... In the 8 years I've been doing this work for this company, the Macs have always been more reliable and offered more flexibility. Though they may not be as fast per se, the amount of time a stable system can save you over a cheap system adds up... and of course in this business, time is indeed roughly equal to money. We've had this argument a few hundred times in the last few years, so I will spare everyone the usual lengthy comment. Suffice to say that I work in that industry, use those machines, and you are mistaken. I'll grant you the games comment though... But I have to tell you, it's not exactly breaking my heart.
Someday a real rain is gonna come...
"Macs will run at 3 ghz? WOOHOO! That means AMD and Intel will have 6gig chips!"
Flamebait? Nobody saw the humor in that?
"Derp de derp."
You supply 3% of the computer market with chips, you can hand pick your chips and speed bin the rest.
Right... How does the *size* of the market relate to the yield? If a certain fraction of the chips you produce are exceptionally good, Intel/AMD can "hand pick" just as much, or as little as Apple. Their chips aren't 3% hand picked from 100%, they produce 3%, and a fraction of those again could be "hand picked".
The rest are just unsubstantiated rumors, following up a good troll. And the moderators are falling for it hook, line and sinker.
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Yeah, it was a pity to see SGI going, going, going, almost gone... ;-( Or are people in video business still use them?
(They did have very beautiful and powerful boxes for the time)
Paul B.
-J
When you are supply 3% of the market you cant just hand pick them and speed bin the rest just the same as you cant when you are supplying 50% of the market. If you did that then you would drive cost too high. They dont ship the chips until their production % of the level chips they want is high enough. The cost of the G5's to apple and 3rd party developers os about on par with the cost of processors that AMD and Intel sell. Its all just a matter of you have to scale the number you toss with the number you use to keep the % the same
From the article:
Where 32-bit chips are limited to addressing only 2 gigabytes of memory, 64-bit chips can theoretically address thousands of gigabytes of memory, though Apple's G5 boxes are limited to 8 gigabytes. Secondly 64-bit chips can perform complex calculations in fewer steps than 32-bit chips.
So far Apple's machines can see all the memory, they can't yet do 64-bit calculations. Present it with a 64-bit calculation, and a Mac with a G5 chip still breaks it into two 32-bit pieces.
First of all 32-bit chips can access 4 GB of memory, not 2 GB. And second, he's got it backwards. Apple's machines CAN do 64-bit calculations, but they can't do 64-bit addressing.
As others have mentioned, there's no great benefit in changing from 32-bit pointers to 64-bit. The optimizations for the G5 that you see in today's apps are from handling complex 64-bit calculations. In this regard Mac OS X is fully up to speed.
infested with jello like fishes no melotron wishes
Apple has always stated that there is a Megahertz myth when comparing computer platforms, to which I agree.
However, non-technical people are still buying Intel/AMD-based computers because they have the largest processor speed posted on the shelf (More MHz/GHz = more power, right?).
It's interesting that Apple's upcoming 3+GHz G5 processors will now tout the same speed numbers as Intel/AMD chips.
Surprisingly enough, if "3.xGHz" is on the Mac's box, Apple just might win a few Joe Sixpacks and a few PC converts.
Only time will tell.
Up, Up, Down, Down, Left, Right, Left, Right, B, A, START
... that they can fit more chips on a wafer. Which means that the price per chip is reduced. That's the REAL reason for die shrinks and moving to processes with smaller feature sizes.
Not that cheaper PPC970s are a bad thing, mind you...
That's true, keeping quiet helps con the customers into spending more money with apple by screwing them on the details. Yes yes, but this 2ghz system today because we are keeping our mouths shut about the 3ghz system we already have in back that will be the same price in 30mins.
I shifted to Mac due to the apple notebooks. They are very competitively priced and you know you are getting a good solution instead of a crappy flimsy piece of crap, which most PC notebooks are like. Also, I like the fact i can bring up fink and install most decent unix apps. Hopefully someone will port Gnome 2.4 into it. I think that Apple should try and get more games developers on board. Sadly, without direct X, most of the processing power of the Radeon 9600/9800 Pro's are going to waste. Maybe Apple should work on some sort of official wine port... it would be very interesting indeed.
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The two things you quote are very mundane and ordinary ways to get more performance from a CPU. Barring redesign, miniaturization and voltage drops are the ways to make hardware faster, and compiler optimizations are the way to make software faster. These are the bread and butter of performance improvement, and you give Apple/IBM entirely too much credit for doing these things. (And this is coming from someone who works on an IBM compiler.)
Having said that, the PPC compiler team's work has been amazing, and congratulations are due for the sheer magnitude of the performance boost. In a field where a 2% improvement is an achievement, 50% is incredible.
Patrick Doyle
I mod down every jackass who puts his moderation policy in his sig. Oh, wait a sec....
"Only in their dreams can men truly be free 'twas always thus, and always thus will be."
--Tom Schulman
You don't need a "fully 64 bit OS" to get the speed improvements (although there still are memory limitations. see below). It would break a LOT of things, and really wouldn't be any improvement over the current offering. Unlike x86, PPC was designed for the 64bit transition from the start (even though it remained unused in Apple's product line for almost a decade), and so there is no speed penalty, whatsoever for running 32bit PPC code on a PPC970.
Specifically, the article states:
So far Apple's machines can see all the memory, they can't yet do 64-bit calculations. Present it with a 64-bit calculation, and a Mac with a G5 chip still breaks it into two 32-bit pieces. That's because, Glaskowsky says, Apple doesn't have a 64-bit operating system
Among it's other inaccuracies, it claims that a 32bit machine can only address 2GB.
They fault Apple for only allowing 8 GB of RAM in a desktop enclosure, even though this is still a significant improvement. This limit is still physical, there are 8 slots, and the largest capacity chips are 1024MB right now. They will work when 2048MB chips are released, increasing the max capacity of the existing line to 16GB.
As for the 64bit calculation bit, that's also incorrect. If the binary is compiled for the g5, then 64bit calculations will not be split as they are on 32bit architectures. The downside is that this binary will no longer work on 32 bit machines, for the obvious reasons. For best performance/compatability, two binaries, one 32bit, one 64bit, can be compiled and placed in the same Application bundle, making the difference between the two irrelevant to the user (only a single icon to click on, works on both systems, full 64bit calculation on the g5)
The biggest limit of the G5s at the moment is (and it's quite severe), to my knowledge, a single processes can still only address 4gb, because the size of void* is still 4bytes. Apple will need to duplicate all the libraries in 64bit form to make this work seamlessly, which will probably have to wait until 10.4.I wonder how many software errors will be caused by neutrons hitting the processor and upseting logic gates? I have not seen any test results from Los Alamos for 90nm processors using EIA JESD 57, (1996) JEDEC Standard - Test procedures for the measurement of Single Event effects in Semiconductor Devices from Heavy Ion Irradiation. Unfortunately the Radhard server at NASA is down right now so I can't check the server for the latest test results.
Some people think Failures in Time (FIT) rates will get better at 90nm than 130nm. Some think the opposite. Xilinx and Actel are arguing over it. Caches are epecially vulnerable. In a critical software application, this is unacceptable, and sometimes the cache needs to be disabled altogether.
One method of addressing this is built in checksumming on the cache, and triple redundancy on certain registers like program counter, etc... This does induce a performance hit.
Holland
I doubt you'll see them at all. The G5 series advantages, like the much faster bus and memory, would be dead on the constricted pathways of the old G4 series. Heck, as it is, if you're upgrading a Sawtooth you better get one with L3 cache, or the processer starves for data on the 100MHz bus.
:)
Doesn't mean we can't hope, of course!
It doesn't mean much now, it's built for the future.
Well, I for one am doing robotics & AI simulation on a mac.
In fact, it wasn't until I *left* x86 (linux) that I got a platform where opengl worked well enough that I could write a proper display layer on top of my system, not to mention that my PB g4 was actually cheaper than the pIII thinkpad it replaced and in my tests was significantly ( e.g. more than 3x) faster.
Now, I don't do any audio, and I don't do any video; but my simulation is pretty f*cking heavy on the cycles -- and it rips. I have no complaints.
People who gripe about mac performance just haven't actually *used* one. And they certainly haven't written any code for one.
lorem ipsum, dolor sit amet
*cue dramatic entrance music*
NOOOOOObody expects the Flamebait Inquisition!
Our main weapon is surpise!
And karma damage! Our two main weapons are surprise and karma damage!
And a ruthless ignorance of moderator tags.
Amongst our weapons are surprise, karma damage, and a ruthless ignorance of moderator tags...*sigh* I'll come back in...
In the PC world, everybody is in for creating a market for *their* part of the system. Intel, AMD are pushing GHz, nVidia, ATI are pushing GPU, Abit/Asus/MSI/whatever is pushing mobo features and so on. Dell and others assembling computers are mostly just responding to consumer demand (read: buzzwords, MHz numbers etc.) delivering the most at the lowest price, even if they realize the consumer is "stupid" and might be better off with a different configuration.
Apple on the other hand, is mainly looking at total performance. It's part of their entire brand, taking care of the "behind the scenes" technology. "We know how to build computers, let us worry about what should be in a well-performing computer. You don't need to know PATA vs SATA vs SCSI or SDRAM vs DDR vs DDR-2 or 32bit vs 64 bit. Just trust us that the choices we make are good."
Compared to some purchases I've seen, I think it's maybe for the best. A few examples:
- High MHz CPU, but so low RAM you'll spend half the time waiting for the HDD.
- GFX card bought, based on memory size, not chip or memory speed.
- A friend considering purchasing a 64bit machine because it's twice as much as 32bit.
Now this may be unusual on slashdot, but for most people, they should stop looking at specs and try to "feel" performance. Unfortunately, where do you really get to test what it would be like? Nowhere really. Not even demo machines give you a good impression. With online ordering, there's even less opportunity than before. All you do is order, and know it'll be a lot faster than your last machine. That's pretty much it.Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
I missed that too...probably because it wasn't in the linked article. They did mention that the switch from .13 to .09 would help heat production, but no specifics or even percentages relative to the current G4 or G5.
If you have a link to another story with more info, I'd like to see it as I'm curious how much cooler it does run.
-- OpenVerse Visual Chat: http://openverse.com
YOUR SIGNATURE IS OBSCENE.
These days, when people say video editing they mean video editing, compositing, sound sweetening, re-recording and a bunch of other fun stuff.
In my end of the market, mid-low end, nobody hires a second person to do the extra jobs. Once you get the raw goodness, that's it. You get to do it all, and then do it over when the producer changes his mind.
That being said, horsepower is very important in video editing. It seems that everybody wants multi-layer titles, stuff flying around the screen, translucent layers, and then we get into color correcting. Tonight for instance, I will probably give my Dual 500mhz G4 two or three hours of tendering to do, and this is just for a couple of dozen titles on two half hour programs! I could very easily keep two computers busy with work.
Graspee Leemoor was talking about the home user, not the pro, but the difference is narrowing. The full version of Final Cut Pro is not that expensive, and Final Cut Express is only $300! With signifigant editing goodness being that cheap, people are starting to do more than just chopping together their clips. Once they get a tast of all the fancy crap that these programs can do, they start loading up their video with all kinds of stuff, and that's what will perk up their appetite for computing power.
I'm not saying that this is a good thing, by the way. Most people would be better served by getting a decent tripod, spending some bucks on microphones and recording equipment, and spending time thinking about whether they really need that fourth shot of little Jim-Bob playing in the mud. Quality production is never easy or cheap, and people think post can fix anything, damn it.
Basically, the DV video format has broken the prosumer market wide open. This will introduce people to decent video editing that wouldn't have had a chance before. Some of those people will start playing around and feel the need for more power.
When a post production facility is paying editors big bucks per hour, ten grand for a machine that saves just a little time per day is nothing. This is good for everybody downstream. Sadly I don't get paid much so the bosses don't see the need for anything faster than what we have..
Need some video help?
Why do I have this? I don't smoke.
AMD and Apple both have manufacturing contracts with IBM. I imagine this is where the sharing would be taking place, as both are using .13 SOI processes in their chips. It is quite feasible that what IBM learns from making PPCs could be applied to Athlons.
Both of those articles are compleatly outdated. They are comparing G4's not G'5s... big difference.
. . . sad, however, how all the serious (prosumer) 3d modeling and rendering software has fled the superior hardware platform in favor of WinTel.
Who, out there, wouldn't like to see an AltiVec enhanced infini-D beat the snot out of a complicated model on a dual 2GHz G5?
Oh well. Maybe Pixar will get on the stick and start porting to OS X. . .
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
I think Apple makes great stuff, but at the end of the day, I really do believe in free software and can't wait to own a (dual?) Power4 workstation so I can run Linux on it.
When I saw this article, I followed the procedure that I've done whenever I saw something new with the Power4 (Apple calls it the G5) chip - I went to IBM's site to see if they sell their own
workstations on it.
This time, however, I was incredibly happy to see that this was the case! The IBM website advertises Intellistation POWER series available for purchase. There are two large buts, though - and are probably related. Firstly, they are ridiculously expensive. As in, 8K+ for a 1 CPU at 1.0 GHz. Without a monitor. Secondly, they aren't running Linux - they're running AIX.
Does anybody know this situation? Has Linux been ported to the Power4 chip? I remember reading that it has, but I've never heard any success stories. Secondly, is IBM planning on releasing a workstation running Linux? I imagine the AIX license is a big part of the hardware and hopefully this would make the package much more affordable.
http://www.talknerdy.org
If you're claiming that Macs can't be upgraded in general, that's wrong. However, I'd be very surprised to ever see G5 upgrades for G4 Macs. The architecture is so different (much faster bus, true DDR support, Hypertransport, etc) that it just doesn't make sense.
How to solve most of our problems: 1.Lots of nuclear plants. 2.Cure aging.
I would expect that Apple's chip consumption is skewed beyond 3% based on its consistent use of multiprocessors in its powermac and xserve lines. Note also that Apple doesn't use but a few variants in any of its product lines. While the volumes of processors that Apple consumes are small overall, those volumes of 970's most likely exceed quite handily Opteron volumes. Add IBM's consumption for linux boxen, and were talking some real earning potential from PPC for IBM.
but I've been hearing good things from people about the new version. I can't say much, but it is exciting alternative for the prosumer these days.
Why do I have this? I don't smoke.
Their both stinking fast. I'll take either one as long as it runs my app of choice. Please santa, can't something fall off the back of the sleigh? I've been really good!
Why do I have this? I don't smoke.
I hate when Slashdot posts rumors.
Moof.
Here's the thing: If you're a Mac user into high end whatever (gaming, video, music, graphics, art, ...) you automatically move up with the processors Apple provides.
...).
Already the G5 gives a huge performance boost on all apps and an even greater one on those that are optimized - mainly the pro apps (FCP, Photoshop, Logic,
So while it's perfectly possible to keep buying G4 processors in iBooks, Powerbooks and iMacs, there's no reason to go looking for G4 towers when you can buy very reasonably priced G5 towers that will blow away all previous models both in features and in performance.
While I get your drift - and don't want to interfere with your personal preferences- I feel that with the backward compatibility and the performance boost Apple provides, your point is utterly moot for everybody else.
I think, therefore I am...I think.
Oh come on!
Macs are everywhere, turn on the TV, go to the movies.
Now if you want to be a bad guy, buy a PC, but all the good guys and hot chicks use macs.
QED
I think, therefore I am...I think.
I also said that Macs were "relatively problem free." I doubt you ever have to deal with malfunctioning HPs, Toshibas, IBMs, Dells (like my mother in-law's laptop which has been sent back to Dell twice with jacked motherboards). ;-)
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
On SPEC, the G4 performs comparably to the P3 (yes, P3) MHz for MHz. The Megahertz myth was a fabrication by Apple based on unfair comparisons and unattainable extrapolations.
What about the G5? Unlike previous PPCs, it is competitive, but no more. An Athlon64 or Opteron still gives you more bang for the buck. And comparing a planned PPC for next summer against today's Pentiums, like you did, also makes no sense.
What are you talking about, there are 2GB and 4GB sticks on the market today if you have the cash. They are extremely expensive and Apple does not guarentee that they will work although independant tests show that the G5's will work with 2GB sticks.
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
Hardware speed generally loses to wetware speed unless you have a monster render task.
If you can make things quickly and reliably, with consistent interface features (like keyboard commands) across applications, and apps are well-integrated into the OS, then your computer is much faster regardless of GHz. If your computer doesn't need rebooting when an app goes down, it's faster. If your GUI uses infinite sized targets (i.e. stuff at the very edge of the screen), or you have to click twice in an obvious place instead of 12 times in obscure dialogue boxes, you get a speed boost. If you can set some render job to work then switch to project planning applications without a hiccup, your computer is faster.
If you can learn new software in a pinch, print without headaches, move big files around the network effortlessly, and generally manage the computing environment without annoyingly fussy administration, then your computer is faster. If you have a powerful familiar far-reaching command line and can use it properly, your computer is faster.
Tell me you're using all those cpu cycles efficiently, and I'll put you on a pedestal and proclaim that your P233 is the fastest computer on the block. Otherwise, pay attention to your productivity skills and the quality of your software and stop worrying about cpu percentage points.
Damn those pesky terrorists
We're a 100% Apple shop running Final Cut Pro 4 and DVD Studio Pro 1.5 and I assure you we need that power.
We upgraded from a DP 450 G4 box (which was no slouch itself) to a DP 2.0GHz G5 recently and we've more than quadrupled our productivity when it comes to big renders, mpeg2 encodes and multiplexing.
I don't know of anyone in our business using x86 for video editing. None seriously anyway.
I know a couple of shops who use x86 boxes as cheap horsepower in render farms - but ultimately controlled by a Mac at the nose end.
We use our DP G4 as a Quake III server for company LAN matches when it's not encoding mpeg2 on a job. I know Q3A isn't exactly a taxing game on today's graphics cards (none of our client machines even break sweat) but you can't beat it for gameplay.
I wanna 60nm G5 SMP system for under $2000.
:)
Or maybe a laptop for around $1200.
The longer it takes them to bring it to market the lower my pricepoint drops. So.. Hurry!
Apple had a lot to do with the 970 design. If you loot at the design, Apple's fingerprints are all over it. The used the ALU and the FP2 unit from the Power4, then they specified the SIMD unit, they specified new PowerPC 32-bit to 64 bit protected instructions to allow for their OS X 32bit VM to work in native 64-bit mode. Apple developed the proprietary hyper-transport derived "coherent interconnects" (3 in all that would allow for 8-way systems and cache sharing when more than one processor is present, similar to Opteron.) and of course the non-coherent hyper-transport connectivity for all other bus interfacing. IBM was not previously a hyper-transport proponent. In addition, Apple developed a unique 130NM ASIC controller that is described as more complex than the 970 itself. This ASIC is just as important as the 970 in the G5 computer, if not arguably more important as it enables the fastest and widest FSB among mass produced computers. As far as volume, in this price range, I bet Apple is one of the volume leaders right now. It would be nice if the analyst would segment their market share numbers better. Who cares how many $400 PCs are sold. (At least I don't, IMO they are throw away computers with very short desk life.)
Apple and AMD are both founding members of hypertransport. Intel, Motorola and IBM are each promoting different bus technologies. IBM was modest enough to allow Apple to not only specify the bus architecture (non-coherent interconnects) but to also develop the coherent interconnects (which was, at least at the time, not part of the hypertransport spec) which allow for SMP configuration up to 8-way, so I understand.
I had the time to answer because I'm watching my editor friend make a documentary in Final Cut Pro that I finished shooting last week.
On a DP G5 no less.
I guess something like this new processor will be used in the next generation of consoles. Microsoft already anounced they would work with IBM for designing their Xbox Next. I guess that Nintendo may follow suit.
It also fits into schedule. For a new generation of consoles coming in 2005, SDKs must be available at least a year before. These processors will be here by 2004, so that lefts half a year to design and deliver SDKs, and a year to start production/distribution of Consoles in the last part of 2005.
Well, when you own 95%+ of the 64-bit desktop market and are the largest Fishkill production customer for IBM, I imagine you get treated pretty well. How many Itanium 2's were sold 2003, maybe 10,000 and 20,000 Opterons. Apple has sold over 500,000 processors (two per dual mac) in a 5 months. We are not talking the cheap low margin stuff, these are prime sales for Apple and IBM. Volume isn't everything when you have such a huge margin.
The performance increases are slowing down because we're reaching the end of life for 130nm technology. We can't squeeze much more speed out of it. I don't see any 130nm IBM chips running faster than 2.2GHz...
You're quoting numbers from 130nm x86 processors. Make no mistake, Intel and AMD will have 90nm processor offerings that will have the same benefits that IBM is claiming, and dare I say - much higher performance and performance/watt. That 4GHz P4 you're quoting will be on a 90nm process but it certainly won't be 150W.
No one except for Intel is currently sampling/shipping 90nm products.
Two years ago I bought a 600MHz iBook with 12inch screen for about $1300. Today, for about this much I can get a 12inch iBook with a 800MHz G4 CPU. While I am fine with this screen size, the progress of CPU speeds on low-end portables is disappointing. Compare this to how much the CPU speed of PC portables changed since 2001. They're probably at least twice as fast. I am still thinking of replacing this iBook eventually with another iBook but only when they come up with the model that's at least twice as fast as the 600MHz iBook (actually CPU speed is the only reason I want to upgrade it).
The heat is addressed not only with the 90NM process but with the new PowerTune technology which scales the voltage along with the frequency providing a quadratic decrease in power and heat whereas frequency only scaling only provides a linear decrease. Too, if IBM is including their "voltage island" techniques under the PowerTune umbrella, then IBM can use lower voltage components for none core processor sections. Too the efuse technology can dynamically switch and turn off redundant components that may become defective improving the life of the processor and of course more importantly the yield.
Well it's been a big rumor but apparently Apple is looking to buying Discreet or atleast a good portion of it's products. One them included was 3DSMAX. Which means once that happens it would no longer be updated on the PC platform and only would be updated on the Mac side. Why do Macs suck for games? Because you don't have a wide selection or because they just play bad on the Mac? Most games coming out for the Mac now play well and the only limits is due to it's gaming lib. In reality more people probably play on consoles then computer games these days. Also isn't ILM that uses only Macs and SGI machines for all their CGI animations?? Pixar also uses mostly all Macs as well. Most people I know in college go with Macs for their low-cost render machines not a PC.
You're quoting numbers from 130nm x86 processors. Make no mistake, Intel and AMD will have 90nm processor offerings that will have the same benefits that IBM is claiming, and dare I say - much higher performance and performance/watt. That 4GHz P4 you're quoting will be on a 90nm process but it certainly won't be 150W.
The 100+ watt dissipation figure is for the 3.4GHz Prescott, which is based on a 90nm process. It was supposed to be out this year, but was pushed into 2004.
As I have read previously, the G5 runs cooler than the G4 only when running at the same clock speed as the G4. The temperature gets hot however when you run the current 130nm G5 at its native speeds. I think as long as Apple can get a hold of 90nm G5s, and use very effective processor speed ramping, they can create a Powerbook G5 without too much trouble. I don't think they'll need nitrogen cooling or anything like that. :^)
Slashdot's first reaction to VMware
Okay, I'll have mine at 115 nanometers please.
The G5 is to the G4 as the Athlon 64 is to the Athlon XP. Apples to oranges (no pun intended).
Or maybe like the PowerPC to the 68k? If yes, then actually Apple has a (bad) record of making crippled machines with PowerPC stuffed into a 68k motherboard like the early performas. Much earlier, they also did put a 32-bit CPU on a 16-bit motherboard crippling the LC. Early adopters, beware; especially if you want to go the el cheapo way.
I love stuff like that.
--
Power to the Peaceful
the later revisions of the G4 Powerbooks seem to be better at staying sub-10000 degrees, but still get somewhat warmer than ideal...
The G5, which someone mentioned might be out as early as this summer, will need some impressive engineering to stay cool.
Actually, the PowerPC to the 68040 would be like the Pentium to the 486, except I don't think anyone actually built a Pentium Overdrive system - it was almost cheaper to do it right (although, a Socket 2 or 3 mobo COULD handle 50MHz FSB Pentiums without breaking a sweat).
BTW, the first system by Apple that WASN'T a 32-bit CPU on a 16 or 24-bit bus was in the Mac II family. Don't believe me? The 68000 is a 32-bit CPU on a 16-bit bus. Apple never used it, but the 68008 was a 32-bit CPU on an 8-bit bus (!) The Sinclair QL (Linus's second computer, if you didn't read his book) ran it.
Oh well. Maybe Pixar will get on the stick and start porting to OS X. .
a se.html
You mean like this?
https://renderman.pixar.com/products/news/G5_rele
So, are you bitches modding me as a troll because I prefer macs, or because I have a job? Seriously. My having real world practical experience with equipment that's relevant to the parent post somehow seems troll-like to you? Whatever.
Someday a real rain is gonna come...
The smaller the transistors are the less power they take and thus the less heat they generate. A finer die process is EXACTLY what is needed to cram a chip into a notebook.
Nicotine free Amish .sig.
People who begin with the cheaper commodity boxes will tend to stay with that operating system when/if they move up the line to the high end, and businesses also purchase mostly commodity boxes, but also buy a good number of high end machines.
Minor quibble: I suppose IBM sees this as the perfect solution for 64bit blades.
Sig removed because it was obnoxious
Think different!
When I used to use a regular maginifying glass, I'd go nuts. Nothing was where I thought it should be. I kept getting "wacky" error messages. So I ditched the beige magnifying glass and bought and iMagnifying glass. My name is Paul Allen, and I'm an iMag user
Gaming should not be your final decision, for any general purpose computer. If you need to go make gaming decisions, make them for your consoles. They cost less money, so you're throwing less money away.
I dunno about other people, but I use my machine for work, for online interaction, and for music and media. Even when I was in the PC world, I never found most computer games terribly compelling.
Like, "Yay, I can play the same FPS concept hashed out again and again and again, this time with a sneak button!" "Look, now I have grenades and a car!"
Slashdot. It's Not For Common Sense
Here.
OS/2 and NT share a considerable code base, the first three versions of OS/2 and the first version of NT. OS/2 v3 became Windows NT 3.0.
GPL Deconstructed
OK
let's hope not too many people look at this or Earthlink'll get PO'd.
Walking-new.mov
lorem ipsum, dolor sit amet
There are , I am sure, a few that use their Macs for just this, but I would have thought the majority might like to flex the power of iLife
Um, no, the majority of Mac users don't edit and burn their own movies on DVD. It's cool that the option is there, but come on - average people do average things with their Macs.
I do some Perl hacking with BBEdit (text editor of the gods), and I do have a USB MIDI adapter so I can connect a keyboard, but I own neither a DVD burner nor FireWire camera and have no plans of buying either in the near future. I don't use Photoshop; GraphicConverter is fine for what I do.
$x='S24;r)>63/* h@<5+oZ)32"5cz';$me='phroggy'x$];
$x=~y+ -xz+\0-Tx+;print$_^chop$me for split'',$x;
You must be new to the Apple world. No upgrades!
Um, sounds like you're the one new to the Apple world. Of course installing a CPU upgrade will void your warranty, but if it's still under warranty, you shouldn't be upgrading it yet anyway.
$x='S24;r)>63/* h@<5+oZ)32"5cz';$me='phroggy'x$];
$x=~y+ -xz+\0-Tx+;print$_^chop$me for split'',$x;
loser
Aside from my comment about downloading porn in mom's basement, the rest of my original post was simply an observation based on actual experience in the industry that was being discussed in that thread. Since I would never purposely insult the slashdot community, please accept my humble apology for making a joke at the expense of basement-dwelling porn viewers... Since I'm apparently not privvy to the planned "revolution", I can only assume that you must have 133t 5k1llz or better kung fu, or some such thing. Keep me posted on the target date for my death... I'd still like a chance to go skydiving, learn how to use a real computer, and do a little traveling before I'm lined up against the wall. Seriously. From now on, my comments on slashdot will be limited to sidetracking threads by complaining about anyone who might have any insight into the topic. Viva La Revolution!
Someday a real rain is gonna come...
Your bot seems to be limited by slow actuators, though. It needs some spring in its step so it can evade predators. :)
Evolutionary optimization fascinates me to no end.
--
Power to the Peaceful
You know of at least 200 reports? Where? Did you see 200 posts in Apple's tech forum and assume that there are 200 different problems with G5s? Are you claiming that of the 500,000 machines shipped, you have personal knowledge of 200 defective units? What is it?
I ordered a dual G5 2GHz for the office and I've only noticed 2 issues...
1) It used to hang when the plastic cover was removed and replaced while the machine was running (Apple specifically says I shouldn't do this so it's my own fault). I think this was fixed with the recent firmware patch.
2) There is a very subtle high frequency noise when the machine becomes active from rest. It isn't noticable in a normal office, but in a very quiet room I imagine it could be annoying. You can, however, stop this with a command line argument (can be run from startup script if I prefer)
For a machine based on a completely new architecture, the G5 has been the model of great design. It's stable, it's blazingly fast, and I really have zero real problems to report as I consider the above to be incredibly minor issues.
I have had Zero issues with fan noise, termerature sensors, sleep mode, or fan failure. I've not had any service calls to repair any issues with G5s in my division either and I've seen new G5s poping up.
So, I know it's easy to come on here as an anonymous coward and claim there are hundereds of problems with "beta" G5s, but where's the pudding?
Put up or shut up.
I'm not feeling witty so bite me
Apple exists for one reason, to make money, without regard to people, morals or consequences. If they have the have the market dominance to get away with doing something that will increase their profits. They'll do it, no matter how many people it fucks over. No different than any other corporation.
Sounds just like Microsoft, except I haven't heard of Apple stealing others work.
Should there be a Law?
You can get a 2 button mouse for Macs though it's not standard. That's one of the few likes I like abouts pcs though even with the Mac's standard mouse you just hold down the mouse for the context menu (right click). I've got one for my Power Mac 730/200. I know it's "old" at least relatively but it's not nearly as old as my Mac SE.
Should there be a Law?
No, it won't. People who are interested in getting a mac will probably already have one or be getting one soon. People with Intel PCs are probably staying with Intel PCs. I think the market divisions are strong enough that Intel doesn't need to worry about this too much.
Not this one. As I'm typing this I'm using a Wintel, but hopefully I'll be getting a Powerbook within a few months.
Should there be a Law?
That said, Apple puts more effort into laptop design than just about any other manufacturer I can think of.
They sure as hell do, although they can't seem to design a hinge to save their life, they pair their beautiful designs with $0.15 fans that are atrocious, and their rubber feet/display buffers can be gone in a week. They cut corners in the oddest places sometimes.
I seriously doubt they'd slap a G5 processor into a G4 design and call it done.
Well, yeah that'd be a bit scary. But they've come very, very close to that with some of their laptop models, starting with the tibook on up, specifically starting with the original 667 model.
Basically they just threw the newer G4's into the same case, although from time to time they might have modified some of the heat piping and the like. What you end up with in many cases is a computer that, under 20-30% sustained load, sounds like a hair dryer.
The 550MHz & 667MHz models were a good example of this- the 550MHz were fine, but the 667MHz were atrocious... they couldn't even speed-step down as newer models could. They'd just been slapped in.
On the first result for the AmigaOne, at eyetech the most recent "Lastest News" dated 1 November 2002 is more than a year old. However the date for the lastest news on Amiga OS is 17 Dec 2003, much more recent.
Though it was years ago the Amiga used to be my favorite platform. Not only could it run the Amiga OS, but it could also run the Mac OS and dos/Windows. And from what I saw it actually ran the Mac OS faster than the Mac did.
Should there be a Law?
if Motorolla was so awful to Apple, why did Apple stick to them?
Actually the PowerPC was a joint effort of Apple, IBM, and Motorola.
Should there be a Law?
If I weren't familiar with how Apple is working, I would have been completely taken in by your bundle of speculation.
> The updates to GCC from Apple don't also reflect the updates that have been made internally to GCC within
> Apple. Those updates always trickle down after thorough testing and SQA bug flushings.
You're wrong. Internal Apple developers work with pretty much the same dev tools that people outside of Apple do. At most, they're one set ahead, but even that is rare.
> Unless Apple Engineering has done a 180 degree on this than my comments are moot.
Nope, because as of two years ago your comments were just as wrong as they are now.
> Such would increase costs. Engineering does not want to be dependent upon the time schedules of IBM for the
> Compiler, not to mention the politics/business issues involved with Co-licensing and thus increasing the cost of
> ownership passed down to the consumer.
They, of course, would not be. In fact, during the MacOS 9 and before days, everything was built using XLC, and once they had a good version, they didn't care when it was updated.
> Now that work has blossomed expect more time spent on making sure if this PowerPC compiler from IBM can reduce
> overhead by 50% you can bet GCC will get this as well.
Impossible, and if you knew anything about the situation you'd know why. IBM has quite a number of patents on optimizations of code, and they license a lot more. These could potentially be licensed by Apple, but they most certainly couldn't be used in GCC. This is why gcc is still significantly slower than Apple's own MrC compiler, even after several years of development.
> What would be a big boost in performance would be the eventual EOL (End of Life) support for Classic and Carbon
> which means switching to a pure Cocoa environment that supports C/C++/Java/ObjC/ObjC++ and Fortran 77/Ada 95, etc.,.
And, of course, this is garbage too. Removing classic and carbon support would only be a major speed boost if the OS were hideously badly designed, which it's not. However, it might well reduce the memory footprint. But with a gig of RAM hovering around $200, I'd much rather keep classic and carbon in there.
Plus, of course, Carbon is just as valid an API, and just as efficient as well, as Cocoa. Cocoa is much nicer from a developer's point of view, but speed-wise they're not much different, and there are some things that are a lot harder to do in Cocoa than they are in Carbon.
> If you notice O'Reilly is publishing more literature on Cocoa and less on Carbon. Carbon is just a Transitional API. > How long that transition will be in effect only Apple
knows.
I'll give you a hint. Apple had a transitional API included in OpenTransport for legacy MacTCP applications which was supposed to go away sometime in MacOS 7-land. As of MacOS 9.2, it's still there.
And that's even assuming you grant that Carbon is some sort of 'transitional' thing. Which it's not.
> The biggest gripe people how about ObjC is the syntax. Ironic since it is quite logical and grammatically more
> readable than C++ let alone Java.
Wow. Something I agree with. Although I personally find Java a lot more readable than C++.
> In the end whether or not GCC becomes as fast as XLC is not what will determine the visibility of OS X. Its compelling
> third party applications that make equal quality as Apple.
Um. I have the feeling I would disagree, if I knew what you were trying to say.
Anyway. Stop spreading compost when you don't know what you're talking about.
-fred
Sign #11 of Slashdot overdose: You see the phrase 'moderate Republican' and you wonder if that would be a +1 or a -1.
> What you are trying to say is that regular computer users or nerds or geeks or everything not in the top 1% of the
> population aren't gay enough for a Mac, right?
So what you're trying to say is that only the top 1% of the population is gay, right? Which makes all gay people better than you.
I'm not sure about the 1% figure, but I sure do agree that all the gay people I've met are better than you.
-fred
Sign #11 of Slashdot overdose: You see the phrase 'moderate Republican' and you wonder if that would be a +1 or a -1.
I believbe the advantage is in the compression of file size. 6GB down to 250MB, all while playing at rates near that of uncompressed DV (which is stated in Apple's info). So similar playback as DV with smaller file size. I don't know exactly what the MJPEG compression rate is, but I think Pixlet can compress files to a smaller size.
"I don't think it's selfish, to eat defenseless shellfish." -NOFX
Basically, the DV video format has broken the prosumer market wide open. This will introduce people to decent video editing that wouldn't have had a chance before. Some of those people will start playing around and feel the need for more power.
DV format = FireWire has allowed this revolution to happen. You have to have the hardware side to support the bridge... much like CD-ROMs allowed us to just start sticking albums right into the computer. Or Desktop Publishing for that matter; that revolution required both the WYSIWYG software and the laser printer to happen at the same time (roughly).
If Jesus wants me it knows where to find me.