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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."
Wasn't April a couple months ago?
I suppose C|Net could be right, there's nothing technically stopping a 'switch' to Intel, but I don't see what Intel has in 2006 that IBM can't match, or AMD, or whoever.
GPL Deconstructed
Looks like they will want to snap up a bunch of developers from the PearPC project!
Have you Meta Moderated t
remember though, guys, that this doesn't mean that the rest of the system will be compliant with *ATX or the new BTX... so it might not work on your whitebox computer
Investing forum
How odd, Microsoft uses apple dv kits for the xbox 360 and IBM power pc chips and now apple drops IBM for Intel, how freakin' strange is that?
"Jeremy, you need to get to an internet cafe and cut and paste some appropriate sentiments about me from the world wide
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?
so... OS X86. Maybe it'll be called Chameleon instead of these cat names? crossing platforms, it will be!
How will they make sure MacOSX doesn't run on cheap X86 machines? Or will they use a different chip family?
Open Source Java Web Forum with LDAP authentication
Really, this has been on the table many times. When will this rumor die? Oh, and on tuesday, Steve will announce that Disney is purchasing Apple.
Emulating 68k stuff is easy, thanks to the cumulative efforts of some very talented individuals working on multiple platforms. But what about decent PPC emulation? Are they going to force recompiles of new software, and completely abandon support for old PPC binaries, or are they going to have really slow support of PPC software?
From the report IBM, Intel and Apple declined to comment for this story. How the hell does that make official?
So while this is technically feasible, I doubt that Apple is planning a wholesale switch to Intel chips as there is too much invested in both marketing and developer relations. From a technical perspective, Darwin runs on both platforms and there have been long standing rumors of Apple maintaining dual codebases for current OS X releases, so making things run would not be a problem. Developers however, would require significant resources to recompile their code for compatibility. I suspect that the News.com story is only partially correct. Apple has for some time been using Intel chips in their Xserve, and their may very well be additional products yet to be announced. However, think about this possibility: Apple has significant resources devoted to Altivec just about everywhere in the OS, functions that are not available in any currently shipping Intel chip. But imagine this: What if rather than OS X being run on x86, Intel were to produce a PPC chip with Altivec? I do not know what the current licensing agreements are with Apple, IBM and Motorola, but if the licensing were prohibitive, perhaps Apple certainly could help with the reverse engineering of such a chip.
Even that seems like a bit of a stretch to me as I suspect the reality is more like Apple will be using Intel chips in a potential variety of new areas. Chips for networking and WIMAX for example. Or.....given the performance of Intel mobile chips relative to Motorola chips, perhaps as a warning shot across the bow of IBM, Apple will announce that Apple portable systems like Powerbooks will move to Intel chips. Even though I am quite the Apple aficionado, I have to admit that Intel is doing some pretty impressive portable CPUs. Near future plans for Intel portables include built in WiFi and dual cores. However, I realize that this would introduce more than a little difficulty for developers who have a "portable OS" and a "desktop OS" which would suck.
So....perhaps what is really going to happen is that Intel will produce a "portable" PPC chip for something new? Something like a new Newton? If I recall correctly, my Newton 130 ran an ARM chip, and I believe that Intel has the license rights to develop ARM based CPU cores..... Oh please oh please oh please.....
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. . . run OS X on whatever Intel system you want, folks. I'm sure that there will be a dozen "I can't wait to put this on my blah-blah-blah Dell blah-blah-blah".
Apple is a hardware company. They will make damn sure that you can only run their software on their hardware.
...for Apple as all their current operating systems depend on correct floating-point results.
More likely, knowing Steve Jobs, he couldn't get his way with IBM, so he threatened to go to Intel. IBM decided to call the bluff.
I'm sure that others have surmised this. There is absolutely no way that Apple will invest the money in an expensive-for-the-consumer line of computers that will be partially obsolete in less than two years; who in their right mind would buy them?
It also occurs to me - another point that I'm sure others have already thought of - that this may be why they are forced to switch to Intel. They can't get chips small enough for a Powerbook G5 line.
1) IBM has opened up Cell, royalty-free.
2) Apple will never let MacOS run on an open platform/commodity hardware again.
3) AMD has virtually no non-x86 CPU tech.
I predict that Intel will either manufacture a Cell derivative or a big-endian, possibly non-x86 propreitary CPU and chipset.
Dream on x86 fanboys...
:)
Oh, if only those of us with x86 Intel and AMD CPUs could have the sluggish performance and high prices that one can get with a PowerPC system. I feel the jealousy welling up inside of me...
Seriously, grow up. It's just a CPU. Intel's CPUs offer more bang for the buck than IBM's PowerPC CPUs. It's not surprising given how many more Intel sells and how much more they have for R&D as a result. If the story is true, then Apple recognizes this and realizes that they can make more money with Intel CPUs while giving their customer base better performance. It's not religion. It's business. Just like the past Apple decisions to support PCI bus, IDE drives, USB, etc. Apple is a for-profit company and they base their product design decisions on that.
WINE is not an emulator! It's a translation layer, it's totally useless on a non-x86 platform.
Thanks for the insight. Did you happen to miss the entire point of this slashdot post?
God Fucking Damnit
You forgot that the Win in Wintel implies Windows compatibility, which this most certainly isn't.
I predict that Apple has gotten Intel to strip down its Itanium line of chips and bolt AltiVec on, as IBM did their POWER4. Remember, Intel does not necessarily equal x86 or x86-64. HP is selling iPods, and is also the premier Itanium vendor. Coincidence?
Dual core PowerPC G5 on the way, not Intel.
s p
... I'd say it's [Apple power management] software."
... and it's a limited-size market. A redesigned core might be attractive for future multicore processors" for desktops and servers as well, he said.
... and it's designed for the network world," he said. "It would require some modifications. But it's doable."
http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1759,1823282,00.a
Analysts: Dual-Core PowerPC G5s Due for Apple
Building a G5 PowerBook could be an aesthetic challenge for Apple. The G5 chip tends to consume more power and produce more heat than the G4. Hotter, more power-hungry chips tend to require a thicker, more spacious chassis and larger, higher-capacity batteries--all of which might lead to a more portly PowerBook.
But, analysts say, versions of the 970FX technically already fit into the power envelope needed for Apple to offer a mid- to full-size laptop in the 5-7 pound range. At the moment, two of its three PowerBook G4 portables weigh in at over 5 pounds.
Aiding portability, IBM has also added a power-management feature to the PowerPC 970FX. Called PowerTune, it can cut the chip's clock speed, therefore lowering its voltage, in order to save on power.
Therefore, a 1.8GHz PowerPC 970FX would be a good choice--it would top the current G4 processor--but power management might still be an issue in some other ways.
The 1.8GHz chip "might be 35 watts or something like that. There are plenty of 35-watt [notebook] processors out there. The big problem is you want to get average power [consumption] to be a lot lower. That relies to a large degree on software management," Glaskowsky said. "If I had to pick a reason why it hasn't shown up yet
Still, not everyone believes that the Power PC 970FX makes a great notebook chip.
"Right now, from IBM's perspective, the [PowerPC] 970 is a pretty competitive part, but they definitely lack a low-power version," said Kevin Krewell, editor-in-chief of the Microprocessor Report, in San Jose, Calif. "The question is, can you get it low enough--25 watts to 35 watts--in order to get it into something sleek enough for Apple?"
To arrive at the right mix of frequency and performance, Krewell suggests that IBM and Apple might need to consider creating a new G4-G5 hybrid instead of delivering a low-power 970.
"The best route would be to develop a new [processor] core that's somewhere between the G5 and the G4," Krewell said, "But that's a significant design undertaking
Apple could also adopt a multicore G4 derivative from Freescale Semiconductor Inc., once the chip arm of Motorola Inc., for its portables, Krewell said.
"That's still a 2006 thing
Representatives from Apple and IBM declined to comment for this story. A Freescale spokesman did not return a call.
Editor's Note: This story was updated to reflect the fact that an Apple representative returned a phone call to eWEEK.com but declined to comment.
You forget one thing: Intel has a tonne of cash. My pet theory (if the rumor is true): The whole thing was started by Intel, not Apple. IBM have been having some wins with the PPC arch, and been getting good press with the PPC/Cell chips. Same goes with AMD and the x64 arch. MS has been getting a little too cosy with both IBM and AMD. So Intel hedges themselves. While they may not have the technical "mindshare" lead right now, they still do have a SHEDLOAD of cash. So throw a crapload, and I mean a crapload, of cash at Apple to grease the skids. It puts MS on notice, gives them another exclusive tier one client and is a blow to IBM's chip division (cutting off a big revenue stream)
How it makes more sense?
This is of course only my opinion but here's how I'm thinking.
1) AMD has the performance edge for x86
2) I _think_ they are more 64 bit centric than the Intel afterthought 64 bit processors (but don't quote me on this).
3) AMD has 64 bit laptop chips (I think).
4) AMD are more energy efficient, at least on the desktop.
5) AMD is not Intel and therefor has less "Wintel" over itself. AMD is "different". Apple likes being different.
The Internet is full. Go Away!!!
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.
I have heard rumors that Apple has been talking to Transitive Technologies about Quick Transit which is a code translation system that can re-map system calls on the fly as well as do very fast optimized recompilation of native code. Think of it as a JIT for processor emulation.
If the claims about Quick Transit are true, and there is no reason to believe that they are false as evidenced by the product's success runix MIPS code on Itaniums (see here), then we should actually see a performance increase for PPC applications (not recompiled) running on OS X x86.
If you were Steve and your apps (as well as everyone elses) ran unmodified on intel hardware faster than it ran on your own, you would probably build some boxes based on intel as well.
There may actually be no need for developers to recompile anything. With Quick Transit built into the OS (let's assume it becomes part of OS X), it would be possible to target x86, PPC or even other architectures and yet run at essentially full speed on any deployment architecture. I know this sounds a bit wicked. It did to me as well. I am sure there will be a bit of a performance and memory hit when your applications are not native, but those hits may be completely overwhelmed by silicon horsepower.
If done properly, this could be a very good move for Apple.
The reason that it can be true that 1+1 > 2 is that very peculiar nonzero value of the + operator
I posted this somewhere else recently, but it applies here today.
== On having two architectures to support (x86 and PPC) ==
So a developer has to compile for two targets, optimise for two targets and ship fat binaries? What will that do to development costs, and ease of development for the platform? What if a developer like Adobe decides to only support PPC development, and tells the x86 customers that they support Windows on x86 and that's it?
And then there are Apple's own issues. They've got to effectively double their Mac hardware R&D to support the two completely different architectures.
And what do they gain?
== On Everyone and Their Dog Switching en masse ==
When I talk to people, they buy a PC because they don't know about Macs. When they do know, they often go PC anyway because they're used to it. There's also pricing. Apple's machines do come at a premium, although I maintain that the iBook line is nicely priced (well, it was when I bought this one a year ago).
Suppose Apple sells a box with an Intel inside. For starters, why would the cost drop? A powerful Pentium is not so much cheaper than a G5. The other components are similar enough. Maybe Apple would use PC motherboards? So why would anyone buy their hardware from Apple?
I don't see any evidence that hordes of PC users are going to drop Windows just to get OS X on x86. I see lots of people on hobbyist sites say that they'd buy it, but they're a tiny minority of a large market. Would that translate to actual sales, or would there be a reason why many of them still wouldn't buy it? What about piracy? How many people would 'try it out' for an extended period of time and never get around to purchasing the boxed copy?
And make no mistake: to make up for the lost hardware sales, Apple would need hordes of switchers to buy those shrinkwrapped boxes. If sales aren't what they hope, there goes the business.
That's a point to remember too - if a CPU switch goes wrong, that could pretty much screw the company. A few billion in red ink, combined with potentially facing near-zero sales when you give away your flagship OS (I'm thinking software piracy and commodity x86 hardware here) and we'll see Apple closing its doors. Some mistakes can only be made once.
==On Software==
I mentioned earlier that developers would likely have to support two completely different architectures, even in the 'best case' of Apple going entirely to x86. There's a legacy of PPC Macs out there that you have to sell to, after all.
That means that initially, there would be zero third party applications for OS X on x86. Not a single one. Maybe iLife really *is* all you need, perhaps with iWork. Over time, new apps would come out, but who would buy the new OS in the first year? That would be a hard sell to Herb and Judy Customer. "Sure, there's nothing you can do with it now, but give it a year or so and... Wow!" (I'm exaggerating of course, but you can go only so far with the iXxxx software before you itch to run something else.)
And what of the developers? I mentioned in an earlier post (not well stated though) that this would be the last straw for them. I'll modify that to "last straw for some of them." They have to learn new optimisation techniques, recompile all of their existing code for the new platform and re-release it - and that's the best case for consumers! Realistically we'll see more developers follow the Adobe and Quark path of holding off for 12-24 months for no apparent reason, and only when the market is safe, releasing their product as a new version with new features for the new platform.
The cost for any app being developed will increase. Not by double, as this would encourage more platform-independant code (well, CPU-independant at any rate), but there would be a definite increase. Who will pay for that? We will! Hooray! Software price rises!
And what if the developers simply say that the OS X platform is too unstable? After all, in five years we've seen a lot
If it's true, that is.
Intel chips take ridiculous amounts of power, and give off huge amounts of heat. The current PowerPC chips use a fraction of the power. This makes no sense for the Mini or the iBooks.
iBook battery life will drop by at least a third, maybe one half. Unless of course they could use slower chips, but there's no way that's going to fly. We all know the canonical Mac argument - "yeah the clock speeds are lower but the chip is totally different so it's not a one-to-one correspondence. Trust me, we're faster". Except this time, there _will_ be a one-to-one correspondence!
In market where clock speed is the main thing marketers latch onto, putting a genuinely slower chip in an iBook is suicide.
In a product line which relies on a marketing thrust of reliability, putting a frigging heating element in a notebook is likewise suicide.
Executive summary: either this is a hoax or Steve Jobs has finally gone off the deep end.
AsSeenOnTV, please tell us it's not true!
Matt Slot / Bitwise Operator / Ambrosia Software, Inc.
John C. Dvorak actually predicted something that happend!.
I'm scared. Hold me.
This is so blatantly obvious I'm shocked we keep seeing the "Mac OS X on x86!" stories. Intel is not x86. Apple is co-owner of PowerPC. Why would it shock anyone to have Intel making PowerPCs?
I submit that normal USERS (not some geek with an odd political fetish) really don't care what the hardware is. I am sure the OS will still be "Mac OS X".
Sheesh, do I care if my snail-mail letters are carried via pigeon, car, truck, plane or train, as long as the bill is marked "paid" on time!
This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
Cutie Pi 3.1415926535897932384626433832795028841972....
:)
Actually, the last digit shown should be a 1, not a 2, if you are going to end with "...". The 2 is the result of rounding up because the digit that follows is a 6.
No, I didn't have to look that up.
Read carefully. Do the research. It sounds nuts, but this might just be the key to this craziness.
The reason that it can be true that 1+1 > 2 is that very peculiar nonzero value of the + operator
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!"
There is more to being an IBM PC Compatible than using an x86 CPU. Apple could basically take their current proprietary designs and replace the CPU, leave everything else as is as much as possible. It makes no difference for them, the only OS they need to worry about is their own. As a matter of fact, doing anything else would be insane. They would destroy their business if they built yet another PC clone. Keep in mind that they are a hardware company, their excellent software is merely the incentive to buy their expensive hardware, Mac Mini not withstanding.
I just blew all my mod points, but this is exactly it - if this rumor is true, it means Intel will start making PowerPC chips.
The idea that Apple would switch to x86 simply doesn't make sense. There are no drivers, and no applications. Of course Apple would continue using their own hardware and would port their own applications, so such a machine wouldn't be a complete paperweight, but seriously, without backwards-compatibility (via PearPC etc.), why would someone want one?
$x='S24;r)>63/* h@<5+oZ)32"5cz';$me='phroggy'x$];
$x=~y+ -xz+\0-Tx+;print$_^chop$me for split'',$x;
I'll eat my hat if Jobs announces a switch to Intel chips (and I'll even be there at the Keynote). The most glaring giveaway in the article that this will NOT happen is this:
Apple plans to move lower-end computers such as the Mac Mini to Intel chips in mid-2006 and higher-end models such as the Power Mac in mid-2007, sources said.
So Apple's going to force their Developers, the people who need to have the latest, greatest and fastest machines, to use Mac Minis to develop their software on? Not in a billion years!
There's no way in Hell that Apple could ever get away with switching low-end Mac Minis first and then top of the line Power Macs a year later. No developer is going to torture himself on a Mac Mini when they could be developing on a Dual 2.7 GHz (or higher) G5. Sure there are those that will say that Apple will let you compile on a G5 and then just test on a Mini - that will never happen either. It would increase development time by at least a factor of 2 and probably more. This would effectively kill the Mac platform.
If Apple would ever consider this (which I doubt, AMD is far better than Intel and I believe the PPC platform has a far brighter future than the x86 platform, just look at all the next-gen gaming consoles) then they would need to transition their high-end machines first if not at the same time as everything else.
Not to mention the fact that SSEx pales in comparison to Altivec. Why does this matter? Because Apple has invested heavily in vectorized libraries, especially CoreImage. CoreImage & Quartz 2D Extreme rely heavily on Altivec when you don't have a graphics card capable of running them. SSE just wouldn't be able to cut it. Also, what's Apple to do with all their engineers that have so much experience with PPC and Altivec? I could go on and on.
It would take 4-5 years or more for Apple to make the transition and optimize OS X on Intel to where it is today (Apple might have a version of OS X running on x86, but I'm sure that it's nowhere near as optimized as Tiger is for PPC). Does Apple really want to give Microsoft that much time to catch up? I think not! They'd much rather run circles around Microsoft. It will be a cold day in Hell before this happens.
infested with jello like fishes no melotron wishes
If Apple move to Intel, then they are just another clone maker. If you could then get OS X on any x86 PC, how much more would you pay for the pretty box? Their hardware margins would go in the toilet.
This would be the beginning of the end for Apple as a *hardware* company. They could then focus on iPods, software and the like.
-Charles
Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
The mathematical number 9533.24 cannot be represented exactly as a double-precision number, because 9533.24 expressed in binary has a repeating string that goes on forever. It is 10010100111101.00111101011100001010001111010111000 01010001111...
When you round it after 53 bits, you have 10010100111101.00111101011100001010001111010111000 0101, or 81889908046875/8589934592 or about 9533.2399999999997817.
Similarly, 215.10 is 11010111.00011001100110011001100110011001100110011 00110011001...
Rounded to 53 digits, that is 11010111.00011001100110011001100110011001100110011 0011 or 7568158436307763/35184372088832 or about 215.09999999999999432.
The difference is exactly 327852904935829005/35184372088832 or 10010001100110.00100011110101110000101000111101011 1000001101 or about 9318.1399999999997874.
However, you cannot represent the difference in double-precision, because it requires too many bits.
The result of a subtraction instruction is rounded, and you get 640337704952791/68719476736 or 10010001100110.00100011110101110000101000111101011 1 or about 9318.1399999999994179.
(Caveat: I produced the above numbers with some quick Maple commands. They could be off a bit, but the concepts are correct.)
It might be nice if calculators intended for the general public used decimal arithmetic internally. (But it still would not be able to exactly calculate 1/3 * 3. There will always be limits to mathematical correctness.) But that is an issue of application design; it has nothing to do with correct floating-point results, as mentioned in the post you responded to. The floating-point arithmetic here is correct.
It's also worth considering that if they can run on Intel, they can run on AMD as well..
Certainly BSD is highly portable and parts of the MacOS includes bits of NetBSD which is especially portable...
But if you get over the "mine is bigger and faster than yours" basically the shift the marketing message from "Speed vs Speed" to one of technical merit about UI and so forth... because once they switch (if they switch), WinTel and Mac "computers" will have the same speed, in the same time frame.. so the Gigahertz #'s about speed/performance disapear.
It's also clear w/ the IPOD that see the value of a greater marketshare and customer acceptance. Price is a big part of that and like they have done with IDE, PCI, USB, etc. switching to Intel probably means they can lower their price without cutting profit(s), that means greater marketshare, etc.
http://www.hawknest.com/
Sorry, I just had to follow the trend.
Such a move doesn't make sense for Apple. They have a really nice OS, but their business is selling hardware at absurd markups. They can only justify those markups when the hardware is drastically differentiated from commodity hardware. Even if they create some licensing/DRM scheme to limit OS X to Apple hardware, such a slim difference will make consumers look hard at what exactly they are paying for. If they do try to limit the OS to the hardware, I expect an explosion of interest and development in GNUstep on Darwin that will steal their thunder fairly quickly. Then all they're left with is a pretty stylish case (which in the end is probably what sells the most boxes anyway.)
For great justice.
it would be easy to trace Jobs' path through this latest episode:
- IBM bends over and hands them the PPC970.
- Jobs publicly trumpets that the chip will hit 3GHz in a year's time.
- Jobs gets humiliated by the fact they didn't even come close and still aren't there after 2 years.
- Jobs throws constant fits and IBM suddenly considers using their tech for more gracious customers... say, game console manufacturers
- Jobs get jealous of the attention paid to said console manufacturers
- Jobs delivers an ultimatum, IBM calls his bluff, and Jobs is suddenly looking elsewhere for the future of his platform.
Sound crazy? Consider the Altivec debacle and how IBM backed away from the AIM alliance after that. Consider Moto's redirection to embedded processors (hello game consoles) and Jobs' resultant fishing for new tech. Jobs may be running out of corps that will put up with his, uh... particularly demanding negotiation skills. Then again, maybe Monday will bring a nice surprise... a choice of chips for the Mac platform. Here's hoping.
Note that this has been fixed in Tiger. Including the "paper tape" bug.
I know it's like shooting fish in a barrel to find problems in a C|net article, but why not?
Apple has used IBM's PowerPC processors since 1994...
Nitpick: More accurately, "Apple has used PowerPC processors since 1994." The way C|net wrote it, it sounds like IBM is the only game in town until you make it halfway down the page.
The earliest PowerPC chips were from IBM, the G3s were from either Moto or IBM, and G4s were from Moto (and now Freescale). Only with the G5 has it come back to IBM's PowerPCs in a big way.
The Wall Street Journal reported last month that Apple was considering switching to Intel
No, the Wall Street Journal did not. The Wall Street Journal's rumor page -- on par with such publications at The Sun and the National Enquirer, and not intended to be taken as factual -- printed this as a rumor. Not that this stopped Reuters or anyone else from reporting it as fact.
Keep also in mind that the shadowy mystery figures in the rumor are "two industry executives with knowledge of recent discussions between the companies" -- not Apple or Intel employees. Maybe it's Darl McBride and one of his other personalities!
"I don't know that Apple's market share can survive another architecture shift. Every time they do this, they lose more customers" and more software partners, he said.
Apple has changed architectures once, from the 68K to PowerPC. This change was, for the most part, completely transparent to users and developers. Why would they lose customers over something so painless? Next thing you know Detroit will be losing customers because their latest cars have a V8 and anti-lock brakes where last year's models had a V6 and a dashboard Jesus.
Even if you count OS 9 to OS X as an "architecture" change, nobody was forced into it and OS X did and does still run OS 9 -- and earlier -- apps.
Apple shipped 1.07 million PCs in the first quarter, and its move to Intel would likely bump up the chipmaker's shipments by a corresponding amount, McCarron added.
In other news, transferring $1.07 from your checking account to your savings account is likely to raise your savings balance by $1.07.
WiMax? Sure. ARM? Sure. Hell, might Intel even be getting into the PPC biz? Stranger things have happened.
If Steve Jobs stands on the stage at the Worldwide Developers Conference and announces Apple's moving to x86, Satan will rise up from the underworld and devour the souls of every innocent puppy and kitten. And then emit the fart that ends the world. This is, of course, completely unlikely to happen, as we all know Satan prefers chunky peanut butter to the souls of small animals.
Assume for the moment that this is true (as implausible as it may seem, there is good reason to believe Cnet on this); What should Apple developer do? 1) Applaud it because it could open up Apple's platform to new possibilities. 2) Boo it because now they will have to transition another time after just completing the OS-X transition and support another version. 3) Walk out of WWDC because Apple has now destroyed the Mac platform and "Osborned" the company 4)Wait 2 years to develop any new Mac software until after the Mac/Intel platform is released (and to see if the Mac is still around)
1. Apple has been losing the MHz war for years, and looking worse each year for it (even though Intel has even begun to back away from MHz claims).
Two years ago Steve Jobs said, "We'll be at 3GHz next year!". Next year came, and they were 2.5GHz with excuses. Now a year later they're at a whopping 2.7GHz. It's embarassing, even if it isn't a real issue.
2. Apple doesn't need more difficulting in getting products built and delivered on time.
IBM has thus far not been as reliable as Intel in getting processors out the door quickly.
3. We already knew that OSX worked on Intel, as it had been reported many times that Apple had a working port in-house.
4. Adding "Intel" to the Apple ads will help legitimize Apple computers to some of the people who assumed Macs were just second-rate computers.
Average consumers don't know PPC. They do know Blue Man Group and "Intel Inside". Incidentally, that's why I believe Apple didn't go to AMD, even though AMD has a better product (in the Opteron).
5. Lastly, it's a stock-boosting move.
Every few years tech companies must reinvent themselves, replace their CEO, or otherwise make a radical change. Just look at AAPL closing price, and then compare it to tomorrow's (which is actually today's now!) price.
.sigs are for post^Hers.
If the deal was with AMD, it might almost be believable. But not Intel. And certainly not on stock 32-bit x86 processors.
... Intel is about the last place on Earth that would want to help make faster/better PPC cpus; they have too much invested in competing technologies and (afaik) none of the licensing for PPC.
Further points:
1. How do they expect to able to announce this and not kill their laptop and desktop sales for the next 15 months or so?
2. Steve Jobs is notorious for hating leaked announcements. "inside source"? This could be one colossal troll.
3. None of the typical Apple rumors sites seem to have heard anything more on this.
4. Just because IBM has had problems with designing/manufacturing faster PowerPC chips doesn't mean the architecture is at a dead end; by all accounts PowerPC offers many advantages over x86 on a very basic level.
4b. The x86 instruction set would be a pretty significant step BACKWARDS, architecturally. x86-64 fixes this, more or less, but it's AMD whose proven most successful at this, and not Intel. Intel has tried to come out with a way to move beyond x86's limitations, and has consistently fallen back to favouring designs that instead manage to make x86 faster (and it is to their credit that they've managed this for so long). Nonetheless, the *only* reason to choose straight x86 is its backwards compatability -- which has no value to Apple. The possibilities for a gradual transition to 64 bits -- a transition Apple is currently halfway through -- under x86 are, at best, no better than that posed by PowerPC and the G5.
5. If Apple is sticking with PPC, but simply "shopping elsewhere" for future chips
I agree: I don't think Apple is this stupid. But it's one helluva way to build anticipation for an announcement on Monday, and if the result is egg all over CNet's face, well, that would be pretty funny.
This is complete nonsense. Hardly any major Mac apps in 1993 were written in assembly language. In fact, the ONLY major Mac app that I can recall being written entirely in assembly language was WriteNow.
The big issues for the PPC transition were
A typical application was converted in a few days. For not yet converted apps, emulation was reasonably acceptable because even the first PPC had a considerable speed edge on the 68Ks of the time and the emulator was pretty fast because PPCs have many more registers than 68Ks.
A transition from big endian to little endian would be far more unpleasant because of all the field swapping. The speed edge of Intel processors is a lot less than the PPC edge was back then, and PPCs, especially G4s and above, have an enormous number of registers. Altivec code would be horrible in emulation.
As long as it works like a Mac and runs all my software as well as a current Mac can, I couldn't care less what CPU it's running on.
Either way, it's not as though the x86 is totally inferior to the PPC. Each has its own strengths and weaknesses compared to its rival.
Short of the zealots (who happen to gravitate to this site), I would tend to think my fellow mac users would feel the same way. The experience is what makes a Mac, not the cpu.
All I can say is that it would be kickass to have a Mac with WINE or VMWare to run 'doze in a pinch without sacrificing too much performance.
Holy Crap! Tupac was black?!!?
This comment is guaranteed*
*not guaranteed
This rumor is false, and the proof is in the news cycle this week:
1. Intel pre-announces, e.g. 18 months away, a dual core laptop chip. The last time they made a move like and pre-announced a product days before a "SteveNote" was right before the G5 announcement.
2. Intel demo'ing the Mac mini knock-off over the past couple of weeks.
If Intel had a deal with Apple, they would never be pulling this type of PR which would anger Jobs to no end. This, for me, is the smoking gun.
I suspect Apple has some very big things up their sleeve, and they are still burned about the leak over the Mac mini, so they are doing some misdirection at the expense of Cnet. (Cnet has never been very pro-Apple.)
Jobs at D3 said they have a huge year coming with breakthrough products, and since most leaks seem to happen a few days before the "SteveNote" what better way to keep people pre-occupied than with an outrageous rumor like this to distract the media and rumor mongers.
I think this is misdirection, pure and simple.
The 680x0 emulator wasn't all that fast, and much of the operating system was running in emulation mode for years. Early PPC chips didn't have enough cache to contain the translation tables of the emulator, which resulted in cache trashing. And the change in floating point formats (the 68x00 floating point units could do 80-bit arithmetic, but the PPC only had 64 bits) broke all the engineering applications. Many of them never bothered to convert to PPC, and Apple exited the engineering market.
And that time, they didn't face an endian change.
Apple sold a lot of G4s to nervous switchers on the understanding thatthey could run all their x86 software under Connectix's Virtual PC software. Microsoft bought Connectix and Virtual PC for OSX hasn't exactly been top of Microsoft's priorities (I assume the Connectix staff are probably working on making the Xbox360 run Xbox software).
This leaves Apple with a hole in it's marketing. If Apple does launch a Mac with an x86 in it, I'm betting it's there as an addition to the G5s, and being effectively a hardware accellerator for an own-brand 'Virtual PC'. It wouldn;t be the first time Apple has done this.
A cheap, headless x86 coprocessor in a Mac Mini sized box that lives on the other end of a firewire cable could be a very interesting proposition.
A pizza of radius z and thickness a has a volume of pi z z a
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.
April fools joke, eh? Would it be even more of a joke if I said that Apple was going to raise the Itanic? The only fools here are people who think Steve is going to port MacOS to the x86.
Think about it. There is NO CHANCE IN HELL that Stevie will put an x86 processor at the heart of a Mac because it'd basically open the door to clones and homebrews of white-boxes running MacOS. Apple wouldn't dare give its users that much freedom.
No, we're talking ITANIC, baybe!
It makes logical sense, and it's a match made in heaven. AMD64 killed Intel's Itanium game plan in the short term causing sales of the machines to make a huge belly flop, plus it killed Intel's long term plans of eventually replacing the x86 with Itanium rather than slapping on 64-bit capability to the x86 architecture, which AMD did anyway and Intel was forced to adopt.
Intel sure as hell won't let billions of dollars of R&D for this new processor to go down the crapper. The solution? Move the processor to a different platform!
Intel can simply offer its wares to other architectures like the Mac. Plus, Intel has the fabs to make sure that Apple won't be starving for chips, which is a problem Apple constantly griped about with Motorola and IBM.
It'd also give Microsoft one more reason to fear Intel. If Intel is playing both sides of the PC vs. Mac war and suddenly becomes smitten with Microsoft (as they're reported to be lately), Intel would be in a position to play dirty.
How many can they support at once?
All of them.
Basically, NeXT solved the multi-architecture binary problem over a decade ago. NeXT's development tools could build for MC68K, HPPA, SPARC, and x86, just by checking the boxes for which architectures you wanted to include.
If Apple finally does ship their OS on x86, it won't be a switch, it will be an addition. This is a Solved Problem.
>>>If Apple were ever serious about this, they wouldve done it when first migrating to OSX. That would've been the perfect time, since OSX needed completely new application support and Motorola had hit a wall with the PPC. But come 5 years later, Apple now has more developers and users then ever before
Well, I can assure you that someone who started developing for the Mac with OS X did not develop Carbon applications. (based on the old os 9 technology).
These applications would be Cocoa-based applications and they would be very easily ported to Intel OS X.
- dj
When HP made its (insane) decision to switch to from Alpha to Intel, it didn't happen overnight: There were a couple more generations of Alpha. This could be the same.
So, Intel and Apple (though not x86) is mentioned in some rumor articles and you will now be surprised unless Apple switch to AMD x86 processors?.
My advice? Next time be wary of the difference between caffeine and cocaine.
There's no 'on' position on the Slacker switch!
Well, they could put a G5 into a Powerbook if they wanted too. I've seen gaming laptops with an Intel Prescott in them. It's just that Apple chooses to not make a Powerbook like that.
IBM owns the patents to most of the SOI and strained silicon processes. That's why AMD and IBM have an IP sharing contract so they can combine process tech. Intel's strained silicon process is very cheap, but has pretty bad heat issues (gotta have the SOI to buttress the leakage caused by strained matrix).
Kinda leaves Apple in a funny spot. AMD worked with IBM to come up with the process for 90nm SOI/SS at their Fishkill plant which is used in G5 and AMD's chips. I really, really don't see Apple switching to Intel for anything. The reason IBM cannot supply enough G5's is that it is a really hard chip to make. Now, IBM could cross license AltiVec to AMD and AMD could design a dual core AMD64 ISA based chip with it. That would be interesting, an AMD64 chip with AltiVec and no SSE2/3...
That would fix two big issues with the G5...memory latency and production capacity (it's a slightly less complicated chip...although much bigger and more expensive die-wise). Also, both the Fishkill plant and Dresden plants can make such a chip...in addition, AMD has a new fab (FAB36) due to open in a year (for 65nm production). Very fun, but I give this near zero probability.
[RIAA] says its concern is artists. That's true, in just the sense that a cattle rancher is concerned about its cattle.
The hardware in my mini is going to be or, as some have already pointed out, may already be outdated. I knew that when I bought it. What I didn't see coming was a massive code fork to x86, so that 2 years down the road, the newest mac software will possible be 'x86 only'. This boils my blood. I had to go through this crap with the first Windows CE devices, some software was compiled for ARM, and some for Intel, and I was always on the wrong side of whatever the program wanted to run on.
I have also paid a lot for the software I have. How long will adobe and Microsoft support the powerPC versions of their software once Apple goes Intel? I now feel like the lifespan of my machine is seriously degrading. I don't like it one bit.
God is real unless declared integer.
FWIW, Windows NT 3.51 (a.k.a. "Daytona") was the first PowerPC release.
Ladies and gentlemen,
I have one final thing I want you to consider: (pulling down a diagram of of x86 chip) this is the x86 processor. The x86 is a processor from Intel, but the x86 is now installed in MAC Mini. Now, think about that. That does not make sense!
Why would a x86 processor -- not even a PPC -- come be be found in MAC Mini with a bunch of Mac software? That does not make sense!
But more importantly, you have to ask yourself: what does that have to do with this post? (calmly) Nothing. Ladies and gentlemen, it has nothing to do with this post! It does not make sense!
Look at me, I'm a software developer posting on slashdot, and I'm talkin' about x86 on a Mac. Does that make sense? Ladies and gentlemen, I am not making any sense. None of this makes sense.
And so you have to remember, when you're sitting there reading this post and wondering where in the hell is Chewbacca... does it make sense? No! Ladies and gentlemen of this fine website, it does not make sense.
If x86 is now found in Mac hardware, you must accept it!
End Post.
Bet this
Probably the same thing that is stopping us from installing Windows on an Airport Base Station (which was powered by an AMD 486 incidentally).
Windows only installs on all modern x86 for two reasons:
1) Most hardware strives to be backward compatible to an IBM PC (BIOS, CGA/VGA/VESA, PCI/ISA, IRQs, etc)
2) Windows comes bundled with a lot of drivers
An Apple x86 won't be:
1) Backwards compatible with an IBM PC and it's legacy hardware
2) driver compatible with Windows
GPL Deconstructed
It's most likely the Intel fabs making PPC chips for them. Simply put, the alliance that made the PPC in the first place (the AIM or whatever it's called), will decide who makes the PPCs. Apple owns patents on the PPC stuff... so, it stands to reason the ENORMOUS fab capability of Intel is what they might be after (IF..and only IF "chips" means CPUs.... they are talking about a logical leap here... "chips" as the TFA says can be a number of things... my guess it's PCI-E instead of PCI-X... but who knows?) It could be more use of Intel's chipsets for memory or for a mini-handheld, or who the heck knows? C-Net seems to be embellishing this whole "line change" stuff out of thin air... there's no way they got that detailed a scoop. I think they're speculating VERY hard. And looking through "peril sensitive sunglasses" to get the "blank spots" filled in.
The answer is clear... it's not x86 anything. They're not switching architectures again. Not this quickly. (they haven't even fully exploited the 64-bit-ness of the damn G5 for shit's sake.) They just need more capacity. IBM is having troubles with capacity (wonder if this will hurt XBox 360? It might).... Intel's got fabs out the WAZOO... and could make TONS of chips for Apple if they needed it.
In some people's eyes, Apple may be dumb, but certainly not that dumb. And Jobs isn't about to shit all over the momentum he's got with the Mac line by switching the damn CPU.
My guess is this is much ado about nothing... and Intel's fab power is what Apple is tapping into for it's own PPC chips.
The switch to x86, even if it occurred, would be more complex than just "keeping in step" with the OS. There's much more to it than just a "recompile"...
It's the Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man.
You can buy an Opteron machine for about a tenth to a fifth of the price, get better performance, use less power, and less air-conditioning. Have you used Itanium ?
No, but I know people who have.
I also know that intel and SGI are having to give them away for free because they're so bad, no one will pay money for them.
Stick Men