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Apple Switching To Intel Chips In 2006
telstar writes "According to C|Net, Apple has officially decided to drop IBM, and will use Intel processors starting in their '06 line of systems. This change was rumored last month. The announcement is expected Monday at Apple's Worldwide Developer Conference in San Francisco, at which Chief Executive Steve Jobs is giving the keynote speech." From the article: "Apple successfully navigated a switch in the 1990s from Motorola's 680x0 line of processors to the Power line jointly made by Motorola and IBM. That switch also required software to be revamped to take advantage of the new processors' performance, but emulation software permitted older programs to run on the new machines."
There's nothing to substantiate their story. It's all down to "CNET has learned..." and nothing else.
Is this yet another rumour? Is there anything to be read in Apple meeting with Intel above the idea that they might go PCIe instead of PCI-X?
They can't get chips small enough for a Powerbook G5 line.
Looking at the iMac G5, I can't see why not. I mean, that things almost a laptop already! I'm really surprised there are no laptops with G5's yet. I thought it was the next step from that iMac...
"Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge"
- Charles Darwin
Come on folks, there's a reason Via was able to enter the x86 market so easily. And there's a reason why IBM started making PPCs after Motorla. These folks know how to make computer hardware.
Would anybody be that surprised if Intel started making PPC-esque architecture chips? Don't be. Intel knows Si's at 14 as well as anyone and better than most.
Too many people have taken these rumors to mean Apple's going to release Macintosh for x86. I'm not quite ready to jump that gun just yet.
It's all 0s and 1s. Or it's not.
Uhmmmm, ever hear of embedded processors???
Yes, I'm an embedded systems engineer with over 20 years of experience.
Are you suggesting that IBM is going to take money from profitable embedded processor lines and plow that into R&D on desktop PowerPC CPUs? I somehow doubt it. Most of it doesn't apply anyway. In Intel's case, many of their embedded CPUs are based on now-outdated desktop technology, so while the desktop R&D eventually benefits their embedded processors, it seldom goes in the other direction.
Also, you will find that Atmel, ARM, Zilog, Microchip Technology, Motorola, and others, who are not big players in the desktop market, have a huge share of the embedded systems market. You also have to consider the dollar figures. When Intel or IBM sells a desktop CPU, they probably get about $100 or more for it, on averate. The average embedded CPU is less than $15.
Actually, what would be really suprising to me is if Apple moves to Intel chips rather than AMD after the recent blatant Apple-oriented attack by Intel with the Pandora PC (Mac Mini look-alike). It's the popularity of the x86 architecture that's attractive rather than Intel itself.
So unless this direct afront to Apple was mitigated with huge discounts, I doubt Intel will get the deal.
Of course none of this will be public except the choice of chip supplier. We'll have to read the spin from Apple, Intel, and makers of the Pandora like we were reading pig entrails for signs of what's really going on.
I didn't comment on the benchmarks story earlier as I was way too busy but it is now 4:40am and I have nothing better to do...
A lot has been said about the speed of various systems and benchmarks but at the end of the day the only real test for the performance of a computer is how well it runs your work. I have been developing some pretty compute intensive software for the last three months and I have to say that the G5 is a very quick processor. In my benchmarks a 2.3Ghz PPC was able to handily beat a 3.06Ghz Xeon EM64T chip with my code. This is only with gcc at the moment, I expect using the IBM compiler will make a significant difference just as using the DEC compiler on Alpha produced far faster code than gcc could. Opteron is also a very fast chip. So is Centrino. P4 and the Xeon based on it are also fast but clock for clock they are seriously underpowered.
Do not think that because some benchmarks showed what you want (that some cheap tatty Intel box is faster than a high end PPC970) that it is in fact the case. Write your own code and give it a whirl. Heck, my G4 Mac mini (1.42Ghz) is quicker than my Athlon XP 2200+ (1.8Ghz) running my code and it isn't even using Altivec yet.
As for Apple using Intel chips, far more likely it is something derived from the iPod part of their business than the Mac. The PPC970 is not underpowered, it is very quick, very efficient and easily a match for anything Intel has. AMD on the other hand has a very nice CPU in the Athlon64/Opteron and I would be torn to choose between the G5 or Opterons in a cluster as it would come down to performance running our apps as well as price.
"I have the attention span of a strobe lit goldfish, please get to the point quickly!"
I don't think Apple would ever want to get into the business of trying to support every type of hardware out there, like Windows does, and like Linux aspires to do. That would be horrendously expensive, and wreck the whole "just works" thing.
The x86 processor is just a CPU, not the computer architecture. Nothing says it has to be anywhere near compatible with a modern PC.
you know the world is coming to an end when the best golfer is black, the best rapper is white, apple goes to x86 and microsoft goes powerpc.
No, to use Apple terminology, "been there done that" . An alliance with Intel is less shocking than the alliance with IBM. How soon people forget that IBM was once the "Satan" of the Apple universe. IBM actually was a competitor unlike Intel who merely supplies competitors.
As for as MS going PowerPC, well, "been there done that" again. Windows NT 4's retail CD has x86, MIPS, Alpha, and PowerPC binaries. I remember Byte magazine comparing WinNT4 dual PPC 604s against WinNT4 dual pentiums. The verdict, dual PPC scaled better under WinNT4. The only problem was no one cared, Alpha had the performance, Intel had the price, unless you could dual boot the box into WinNT4 or MacOS there was no real point to PPC.
Are you serious? Either you completely missed the point of that post or I'm missing the humor in yours.
Intel != Pentium. The poster was just saying that because Apple now owns a big chunk of PPC IP, it will simply have another manufacturer (i.e. Intel) supply them with PPC chips. Nothing more, nothing less.
You're right. Intel probably wouldn't design a PowerPC chip, and the GP isn't suggesting that. In fact, if Apple wanted Intel to design a PowerPC chip for them, they already have more than enough IP and cross-licensing to do that without invoking a "Moto" clause. No, the "Moto" clause, if one exists, would be one that gives Apple the right to tell IBM "You didn't meet your numbers. Hand over the dies," and have them comply without penalty.
I have no idea if this is true or not, but it seems a hell of a lot more likely than Apple moving to x86, except maybe Centrino for laptops or tablets or something.... If Apple does move to x86, though, that's the day I dump all my stock and start looking for another computer vendor. If I want a shitty PC, I can buy one for a whole lot less from other companies.
As for me, I pay extra money for Macs because they aren't x86, because there aren't hundreds of thousands of script kiddies who know the chip architecture and have pre-written shell code floating around in their heads. It's not a big improvement in security, but it does make some difference. If you could write one exploit for Mac and PC versions of the vulnerability with only subtle changes in the system calls, you can bet your ass the Mac platform would be as virus/worm-ridden as Windows faster than you can say "Thank you, Steve."
More than that, since Darwin is open source, if the Mac moves to x86, I guarantee you could make Mac OS X run on any cheap $200 x86 PC in a matter of hours just by doing simple ports of a handful of drivers (and by substituting the boot loader and kernel from Darwin if they didn't use a PC BIOS)... which is exactly the reason that rumors of Apple switching to x86 are without any doubt, utter bullshit.
There is NO WAY WHATSOEVER for Mac hardware to move to x86 without it decimating Apple as a hardware company. A separate Mac OS X for x86 MIGHT be possible (at high enough cost to make up for the loss in hardware sales), but imagine being able to pick up a $129 copy of Mac OS X and run it on a $200 PC just by duplicating the DVD and adding a handful of additional chipset drivers.... Possibly as simple as running the x86 equivalent of XPostFacto and sitting back....
So raise your hands if you would still buy a Mac if you could just install Mac OS X on any $200 PC and get the same perforrmance and the same user experience as a Mac costing significantly more. Anybody? Anybody? I didn't think so. No, this story is about using Intel's fab to make the 970. It has to be. Anything else would be suicide for Apple, and I KNOW Steve isn't that stupid.