2005 Good Year for Power Architecture

An anonymous reader wrote to mention an IBM article looking back on what the piece calls the best year ever for the Power Architecture. From the article: "While IBM is considered by many to be an 800lb. gorilla, in the microelectronics space, it is actually very small -- last year IBM was way down at number 21 on the iSuppli list of the top 25 semiconductor suppliers worldwide. Now, that isn't necessarily a bad thing: for instance, it means that IBM Semiconductor solutions is small and nimble and competitive -- and this agility (coupled with the fact that we do get to share Research and some other resources with the parts of IBM that are 800lb. gorillas) has led some to predict that the IBM chips division will be named the fastest growing semiconductor supplier of 2005. In fact, there is a very good chance that IBM may regain the coveted #18 spot on iSuppli's list this year!"

Comments

spot 18

[gcnaddict]

"there is a very good chance that IBM may regain the coveted #18 spot on iSuppli's list this year!"

Whats so special about spot 18?

Trying to make themselves feel better

[Colonel Panic]

Sounds like the Power PC group tryin gto make themselves feel better about losing their biggest customer, Apple.

Re:Trying to make themselves feel better

[taskforce]

I don't have statistics to back it up, but I can prettymuch guarantee that with the release of the Xbox360 and PS3 both using POWER based chips, Apple aren't IBM's biggest customer.

Re:Trying to make themselves feel better

[NDPTAL85]

Yeah but consoles are a one generation only kind of business. No one can predict what CPUs will be used in the next generation of consoles.

Re:Trying to make themselves feel better

[FatherOfONe]

"Well, consider that only 400k or so XBoxes have shipped and 0 PS3s have shipped, and Apple shipped 600k iMacs and PowerMacs in Q4 2005 (both of which use Power based G5s), Apple is STILL IBM's biggest customer.

Now Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo may have potentially larger markets, but right now Apple is still shipping more G5s than Microsoft, Sony, and Nintendo combined, that and each G5 is higher margin than a Cell based CPU."

Ok, I don't know where you get 400k. I hope that you are correct, but from what I here there will be around 3 million 360's sold by July of this year if they hold their current pace. Now as far as PS3's go, it would be a fair estimate to say that they will be close to their 90 million PS2's sold in 5 years. So lets just say they average 10 million a year for the next 5 years of PS3's. Now you also didn't mention all the hub manufacturers out there like Cisco. They also use power chips. When you start to add it up, the loss of Apple for the gain of Microsoft and Sony was huge win for IBM.

So in short Apple switching to Intel is a small loss for power, BUT there are some serious advantages now for Power as well. Microsoft and Sony will not require a new fab to be built for ~5 years! Cisco cares about the performance of the Power chip, but they care more about the power consumption. Intel on the other hand needs to focus on mobile chips, desktop chips and server chips. They will need to build their 65nm fabs as fast as possible then spend billions on the next version. Granted Intel spends around 10Billion a year in R&D so they can handle it as long as Wintel desktops keep selling like they do.

Now the real quesiton is why did Apple switch? This is off topic, but it doesn't make sense that they switched to a 32bit chip FROM a 64bit chip. Now if they would have switched to x86-64, that would have made better sense. I do feel for all those poor saps who are going to buy PPC or X86 Mac in the next year or so. I feel for them because I went through the 68k to PPC migraiton and bought all the load of crap that Apple fed back then. It is the same load of crap they are trying to spin today.... fat binaries.... blah blah blah. The truth is that if you go with a new X86 machine a bunch of your old stuff will not work and you will be praying that someone will code a new version that works as well as your old one did. Now after this painfull migration is over in a couple of years and if Apple moves to X86-64, then they will probably be better off. They just better pray (not that many in Apple belive in God), that sales of their Ipod don't faulter.

Apple has some other issues that they need to address. One is their view of open source. They use it a TON in their OS yet their sales guys go around and bash it whenever they get a chance. The next is their view on technologies such as Java. Again their sales guys go around and bash it, yet all their Java apps will not need to be ported to this new architecture. One sales guy just recently said to me that he would NEVER load any JVM on his system because he hates slow Java applications. I then informed him that it was loaded by default. He smiled and told me he knew that and he was "just kidding", but I have to wonder how many poor saps he talks to that don't know that and then repeat the same crap he just said. Lastly, and perhaps the biggest issue is why on earth would our development shop write software for X86 Macintosh? Lets look at the marketshare as it is and as it will be for the next few years. What percentage of all new desktops do you believe will be running X86 OSX? .05%? Heck some vendors just NOW started to fully support OSX! RedHat Linux Desktop and SuSE Linux on the destkop will have more clients that OSX on X86. Perhaps Ubuntu will even have more desktops! I wish Apple well, but it will be far far easier on them to reign in their sales guys and send out a message to ANYONE to help support OSX on X86, be that open source apps and or Java applications.

I

Re:Trying to make themselves feel better

[batzn]

Why did they make the switch? Easy one. Laptops. Powerbooks/iBooks make for more than half of the Mac revenue of Apple and there's currently no PPC chip available that can stand up to the Pentium M. Nor does anyone have one on his PPC roadmap.

Or do you think the Apple folks *like* to be hopelessly behind when it comes to portable computing power?

(And, yes, I too hate the fact that they switch. Now I'll be in the same boat with the Gigahertz bean counters ...)

Re:Trying to make themselves feel better

[adrianmonk]

Now the real quesiton is why did Apple switch? This is off topic, but it doesn't make sense that they switched to a 32bit chip FROM a 64bit chip.

There's a reason that doesn't make sense: it probably isn't happening. Yes, Intel does make 32-bit chips, but most (all?) of its recent chips have 64-bit extensions. It's entirely possible, and I would say also quite likely, that Apple will restrict itself to the subset of Intel chips that have 64-bit capabilities. It's the only sane thing to do, and as far as I can tell, there's no penalty for doing it. Heck, for what it's worth, I'll speculate that the reason Apple didn't switch sooner was that they wanted to wait until the x86 world settled on a 64-bit instruction set architecture.

I do feel for all those poor saps who are going to buy PPC or X86 Mac in the next year or so. I feel for them because I went through the 68k to PPC migraiton and bought all the load of crap that Apple fed back then. It is the same load of crap they are trying to spin today.... fat binaries.... blah blah blah. The truth is that if you go with a new X86 machine a bunch of your old stuff will not work

It remains to be seen how well the PowerPC-emulating technology will work. I personally thought that the 68k-emulating technology in the 68k to PowerPC transition worked pretty OK. I don't think it had perfect compatibility, but it did run lots of apps, and I never personally had a problem other than speed of emulation. (And although I did not personally own a Macintosh at the time, I was a system administrator at a site that had lots and lots of Macintosh systems.)

Also, regardless of how Apple spun the thing, doesn't it seem that some sort of transition was necessary? As I recall, several other manufacturers transitioned away from 68k before Apple did (such as when Sun chose SPARC for Sun 4 machines instead of the 68k processors they'd used in Sun 3 machines), and it was fairly clear that the 68k line was dying. Even if it wasn't clear then, it is definitely dead now (even Palm OS has transitioned to ARM!), so it was the right decision to do. The only question is whether Apple did it at the right time and did a good job with it, and I can't fault them for either one.

Re:Trying to make themselves feel better

[FatherOfONe]

"Intel on the other hand needs to focus on mobile chips, desktop chips and server chips."

What I mean by this is that Intel has to additionally focus on desktop performance against AMD. IBM does not need to worry about this market. This market has razor thin margins that only can be maintained by enormous sales. Quite a few people believe that this market is going away, or at best has leveled off and will not grow significantly.

"you say it like not beleiving in God is a problem for me it is an intelligence sign."

I say that from my dealings with Apple people. If they are so "proud" of their "Deversity" then why don't they show some of those people in their marketing? You say it is an intelligence sign.... You better hope you are correct :-) If not then you better start getting use to the temp of those uber hot Intel CPU's :-)

"Free software such as Linux is a competitor so why wouldn't they bash it if they get a chance? It's not like their principal target is geeks."

Good point! However please remember that those same "geeks" will help develop software for their machine that will have less than .05% marketshare the year it is out. Those same "geeks" will help convince other people that by buying a Macintosh they will actually be able to function in a "Microsoft" world. I just find it very ironic that a company that built their OS on the backs of open source developers would then stick a knife in it.

"having Apple on x86 CPUs can only help vendors deciding to port their software on MacOS X, it lowers the bar not increase it."

I wish that was the case. If you code in something other than Java and you company produces client code then here is your current environment.
1. OS9 - Still have a market using it.

2. OSX PPC - Large but now there are 4 versions and trying to validate your software on each one is a pain. This is why a lot of software vendors still only support 10.2 or 10.3. This currently has around 80% of the Apple market.

3. OSX X86 - Not out yet but at best these system will only hold a 5% share of the APPLE market the first year.

4. Linux - Lots of versions but RedHat and SuSE appear to be the leading candidates.

Now the last ones
5. Windows XP/2k
6. Windows 9X and Mel.

Those last two DOMINATE sales of most software vendors. Even the core Apple ones. Take the Adobe products... What percentage of sales do you believe Adobe gets from their Apple line vs their Windows line of products? From what I have been told is that it is way less than 10% of their sales, and I am being very generous here... So why should Adobe port yet again? I guess the question should be "why would Adobe port any apps in the next 3 years?" They might as well wait and see how the market pans out.... This adds to my point above, in that Apple should be begging any and all developers to port software to their platform.

"About Linux comparison: when I see reviews about MacOS X, I'm always surprised how stringent the reviewers are: they expect high quality from Apple and they're quite disappointed when they don't have it, unfortunately reviewers about Linux are far more tolerant because they don't expect (and don't get) such quality: the cracks between the many layers of a Linux's desktop are always showing.
Somehow I doubt that this can be fixed in one or two years, especially since HW makers don't help by hiding their spec (Nvidia, ATI, other..)."

We agree! However, I will say that the desktop Linux has come a LONG way over the last 3 years. It is a race for my $$$$ and I am curious who will win. I wish them all well.

Re:Subtle sense of sarcasm?

[1000StonedMonkeys]

Well, in terms of volume the XBox 360, PS3, and Revolution are going to get the Power architecture in a heck of a lot more homes than Apple ever could have.

Re:IBM Article By IBM

[Boogaroo]

This article is FROM IBM about IBM. The article is what is quoted and of course they're talking about themselves, so "WE" is a perfectly acceptable term to use in their own article.

Now, it may not seem newsworthy to some to put a navel gazing press release up on the front page, but some will find it interesting to get a glimpse of part of IBM's internal workings. Take it or leave it, the article is not some kind of Google ranking ploy.

The world is too complex for this rating system

[Anonymous Coward]

The reality of chip design and manufacturing is far too complex for this rating system to mean anything useful. IBM has cross licensing pacts with just about everybody these days, viz. AMD, VIA, Intel, Sony, et al..

Re:Losing customers

[KarmaMB84]

just because Apple is selling their stuff at inflated prices, it doesn't mean that they're passing it on to IBM...

Xbox 360 and PS3 are a step down

[Anonymous Coward]

Whether or not XB360 and PS3 are Power is irrelevant... Apple was a HUGE loss to these guys whether they know it or not. Power had a chance in the desktop and server space with Apple on board, and now it doesn't have a remote chance of general use except in academia. What company would seriously buy Power for servers now?

Sure, their volume will be higher, but the volume is still high for the 68000. The XB360 processor and Cell are not competitive in the general processing market, they're stripped down in-order processors designed for gaming. Problem with chips like those is they can't crank up margins. IBM can't charge an extra $500 for an extra meg of L2 cache or hyperthreading, like Intel still can with their "Extreme Editions". Any of those gaming chips fabbed by IBM are going to be selling for rock bottom prices. Plus, IBM doesn't have the sole ownership of either chip. Microsoft co-owns the XB360 design, and Toshiba and Sony have rights to the Cell. Either one can turn around and fab those chips somewhere else.

Power is a nice chip, but while going from a general desktop processor space to a specialized game console space may be a step up in the rankings, it isn't in general acceptance. What they make up for in volume, they'll lose in competitiveness and innovation. The Cell and XB360 chips won't and can't need a rev for another 5 years. IBM dropped the ball on Power. Freescale might be its only remaining chance.

Re:Xbox 360 and PS3 are a step down

[Anonymous Coward]

> What company would seriously buy Apple for servers in the first place?

I see your point, but many advertising companies or design firms have more Macs than PCs. Seems like a no brainer for them to buy XServes.

IBM 2-0 for 2005

[Nom du Keyboard]

IBM loses whiny Apple who is well known for beating up their chip suppliers every way from Sunday, while gaining XBox 360 and PS3, which will not only ship far more units than Apple over the next five years, but have already paid for the next generation of Power architecture.

Apple, in the meantime gets Intel, where they're not even close to being the big I's largest customer, and have only their prestige to trade for favors (compared to Dell, whose Intel loyalty is beyond understanding these days).

Re:See, good move apple!

[2nd Post!]

They aren't forced to support Intel; they chose Intel for the x86 and will choose to drop Motorola and IBM eventually (possibly).

Nor were they forced to support IBM; they chose IBM for the G5 and dropped IBM for the G3.

The only CPU they are 'forced' to support is Motorola, because they don't have a replacement for the G4, until Intel.

Apple has a choice; they decided, two years ago, to go with IBM instead of Intel or AMD, though that choice existed too.

Today Apple decided to support x86, instead of AMD or IBM, and that's just another choice.

Re:Subtle sense of sarcasm?

[Arker]

Last year they lost their biggest customer Apple

Umm, no, Apple was never anywhere near their biggest customer. Apple was only notable for building PCs with power chips, but the vast majority of power chips never went into PCs. Apple was a rather small customer, and one that was constantly demanding special treatment.

Re:Printers

[Anonymous Coward]

> If that isn't potential incentive, I don't know what is.

Incentive for do-nothing hobbiest/dabblers, maybe. The market as a whole is too busy getting stuff done to give a shit about dualbooting. Mac customers run Windows virtualized ontop of OSX.

Re:Nope, Cars

[Anonymous Coward]

3 or 4? Try 52. BMW 5 and 7 series currently contain 52 freescale chips. See http://www.appleinsider.com/article.php?id=1404