Slashdot Mirror
AMD to Build G4 CPUs?
the eric conspiracy writes "Bloomberg news is reporting that Motorola and AMD are in talks to include manufacturing of Motorola CPUs at AMD's Dresden facility. This could help cash-strapped AMD particularly if its x86 compatible line runs into problems. Motorola and AMD already have cross-licensing agreements - AMD gets its copper technology from Motorola, while Motorola uses AMD's specialized RAM chip technologies.
"
All I can say is that if it gets the G4's out the door quicker and cheaper, go for it!
'Course, I can't afford on til the New Year, but I'm sure the 2nd generation will be out by then with the bugs worked out of the hardware.
Go Mac!!
Pope
It doesn't mean much now, it's built for the future.
It seems like everyone looking for excess state-of-the-art fab capacity is going to AMD.
this would be a cool idea... I want both the PPC and AMD to succeed, so this is a great combination... also, this is good for the Dresden plant, which was just recently finished...
So let me get this straight. The Microsoft monopoly is now being threatened by the AOL/Netscape/Sun merger, and now it looks like Intel's marketshare is being threatened by a gathering together of it's rivals - AMD and Motorola.
It seems like the computer industry is seeing a mass movement for the major parties to align themselves together. Sounds like what Europe was going through just before WWI broke out (ok, well it sorta does anyway).
I can't wait for the *price* wars to break out...
Your Brain + EEG + LEGO Robots = Brainstorms
computer companies cooperating for the better good of all, instead of fighting each other for short-term gain. wish we could see more of this.
so now that apple is facing a smaller shortage of G4s, will their stock go back _up_? or am i naive to impose some kind of logic on the stock market?
Irritable, left-wing and possibly humorous bumper stickers and t-shirts
This just caps the idea that the world is a very strange place. I do kinda like how this move helps both Apple and AMD. They fit together perfectly:
1) Apple solves part of its supply problem. They have been short handed on G4 processors, and need another manufacturer.
2) AMD has a new plant in Germany that they don't want to waste if the Athlon does not sell well.
-B
I'm not too sure what you mean by that title, but it sounds like you mean AMD will be stamped on the G4. From articles I've read last week seem to indicate that Motorola would buy about 1 billian dollars worth of the fab (I believe it was 50% or close) and they would be produced along-side each other, but still with their respective names. But I do agree, this can only be good. AMD get's help out of their slump, as does the G4 (Will the G5 be made there?). I do hope the best for both companies, and AMD has always been one of my favorites (Mainly because I don't play games :). I agree, good idea, and good luck. I just hope it goes through.
Hate to break it to you, but the price war started some time ago.. =] http://www.sharkyextreme.com does a CPU Price Guide everyweek showing the trends on the mainstream (x86) CPU pricing, and a little info about them. The price war started about the same time the Athlon was announced. P2/3 prices dropped like a rock, etc..More vapor about the Coppermine and so on. It's all fun and exciting..Phht..
I wonder what this would do to competitive pricing for each respective chip. I'm no economist, so maybe someone has some more insight.
;)
But I'm hoping that this will drive g4 prices down, I'm no mac fan, but their prices are always high. And Hopefully this would cause athlon prices to go down, since amd would be bringing in a profit for a change
Course, a 500mhz athlon IS cheaper then a 500mhz pIII right now, so thats good.... plus its faster.
Also This is REALLY convient (good?) timing for motorola and apple.... since silicon valley's #1 LSD takin' CEO just stated that they were takin' a huge hit in the pocket book due to motorola's poor G4 production numbers. I'm sure the stocks will reflect this news.
Spell checking is over-rated,
Ecc
=]
Hell yeah! Maybe we will be able to buy non-Mac PC's that use PPCs. I would really like to have a G4 Mac and a G4 Linux box in my room with my HP Pavilion running COL2.3 so I can setup a decent network.
---Got Coffee?---
There's nothing like multiple vendors making the same hardware to help spread the knowledge. Also, as other have mentioned, control of chip supply has always been Apple's bane. It'll be nice to see continued stability for Apple, if only so that I'll still be able to buy kick-butt hardware to run linux/ppc on.
What I _really_ want is a compiler that's efficient and that builds fast code, like gcc/ix86. But I don't want to run linux/ix86. The gcc/ppc people are doing nice work, but need more support.
I am the king... of No Pants! www.penny-arcade.com
I've heard stories that AMD has actually been looking for a 'partner' for that fab for quite some time. It appears everyone has turned them down, unfortunatly. Anyone have any idea who they contacted/asked before? I'd imagine almost everyone but intel was contacted or thought about. Anyway, if anyone knows, speak.. =]
I looked over the G4 System Specs, and I can't help but notice that it uses IDE drives. So, of course, I poped over to the "Apple Store" online and checked if you could get one with SCSI drives. Not avaliable.
I thought the iMac was cute, I'll admit it, but Apple started to move away from SCSI then, and it seems they are still moving away. Apple was using SCSI drives exclusively when most companies didn't even offer them as an option, now the tables have turned again. Being that SCSI not only allows higher data flow rates, but off-loads the processing power needed to run the drives from the CPU to the controller card (or subsystem), it will clearly provide a preformance boost (that most people miss the significance of).
So, I guess I have to ask, why is it when Apple is pushing the new G4 as a "Super Computer on a Chip" and pushed the G3 as the "Pentium Beater" that they are takeing steps backwards with other componants?
I have to admit that the G4 price range (starting at about $1500, and topping off under $4000 not counting monitor) is quite impressive considering the claims of the CPU. But it's total system preformance that matters, and when even the $3500 decked out G4 system uses IDE drives, I just have to ask.... "WHY?
I guess when we actually see any G3/G4 generic systems come out, which is "suppose to happen" when IBM released mother board specs, this won't matter. But I haven't seen that happen yet, and since Apple is the primary source of the G4 systems to the consumer, it matters for now.
Lately it has been unusual to have foundries cross the great Motorola-Intel divide... but AMD is the ideal candidate for doing so.
Let's hope this will indeed happen. It's a win-win situation for everybody (except perhaps for Intel, of course)...
whoa.
this article doesn't actually _say_ anything, but i didn't realize that until the second time i read it. now that's good writing.
look.. it deals with a hypothetical result of talks that may _or may not_ be going on. they don't know _anything_. They're reprinting a rumor with no basis except the fact it would make a lot of sense if it were true, but presenting it in such a way it _looks_ like they're reporting fact. You don't notice that every statment made is ambiguous unless you're specifically reading for that. I guess that's how "journalism" works these days.
What would be really funny is if some executives right now in Motorola reading Slashdot, hearing about this for the first time, thinking "hey! that's a pretty good idea!" and calling up AMD caused the events in this article to actually _happen_. Life Imitating Journalism, or something.
hmm everyone seems to say copper is good but I don't see any specs
I saw in a microprocessor report that silicon on insulator gave a 35% boost
is this true ?
I know that the G5 is surposed to use it who do you pay in order to use this ? (who owns the method to do SOI ?)
The important thing to notice is that these companies want to replace PCI with some non open royalty paying standard like PCI64 instead Intel are doing the_right_thing and making NGIO open
so don't go saying that they are good just because you want proprietary stuff.
Me I thank Intel ISA is no longer on any machines that come in.
Cheers
john
a poor student @ bournemouth uni in the UK (a deltic so please dont moan about spelling but the content)
Right on that system specs page that you linked to, at the bottom of the Storage section, it says "Support for up to three internal SCSI drives"
Any questions? It's usually a good idea to get the right information before starting on a rant.
Right on that system specs page that you linked to, at the bottom of the Storage section, it says "Support for up to three internal SCSI drives"
Any questions? It's usually a good idea to get the right information before starting on a rant.
I'm not saying it's impossable to use SCSI in a G4. Not at all.
What I am saying is Apple is "pushing" IDE in the G4's. If you go to the Apple Store, it contradicts thier statement "Support for up to three internal SCSI drives." In fact, it's an "option" you can choose, or at least it seems that way.
I have no doubt you can (and probably -should-) use SCSI with an Apple G4 system, what I am saying is that Apple consumers don't clearly have that as an option on the configuration page, and more notably, what I feel is important to note... Apples use to use SCSI drives exclusively, they were "standard," not an option. When they moved to IDE, and then made IDE the standard and SCSI the option, they took a step backwards.
I said Apple use to use SCSI as standard on ALL thier systems, and now they have made it "optional," and it even seems a little obscure as to how to order a system with SCSI drives.
The POINT is, they took a step backwards, and now SCSI is not "standard" on thier systems, it's an option. Apple use to be "a step ahead" in this reguard, and now thier just like the rest.
I'd say the same thing if SGI or someone suddently stoped shipping thier systems with SCSI standard, and started using IDE insted. The point isn't "Apple Can't Do SCSI," because clearly, they can. The point is they made a cutback on other componants to get to a more competitive price, so all the G4 hype is drawing attention away from the fact that the "standard" systems have taken some quality cuts in other areas.
I personally find this very strange. Both AMD and are suffering from capacity shortage problems. AMD's stock is at its pathetic levels because analysts slammed the company when they could not provide enough AMD K6's to the market. Just recently, Gateway announced that it would not be using AMD processors since AMD can not supply them in volume. How can AMD consider sharing its production capacity with Motorola at this critical time when Athlon is just out and in great demand? If they can not meet the demand for Athlon and provide enough Athlons to OEMS, Wall Street will KILL AMD this time. And unfortunately for us techies, technical excellence does not make a company successful by itself. AMD is having a lot of financial trouble, and I don't think taking the risk of not being able to produce enough Athlons is worth the money that Motorola will provide them in return for this favor..
Here is what I believe: There must be something else behind this, if it is true. Motorola must have made a really attractive offer for AMD to have taken this risk..
Zigbee Central: A Zigbee weblog
Well, they never used the Dresen fab for the K6s, from what I understand. It's a newer plant, so giving them much more production. Also, the reason for partnering with Motorola would/will help them in their financial troubles, so it's a win-win situation for AMD (and possibily, Motorola). And as for the offer, do you think 1 billion dollars is a good enough offer?
Slashdotters--
It's been my belief that Apple doesn't do well with competition. For example, I remember the "Power Computing" cases where Apple managed to "show" that they had a copyright to anything remotely "Macintosh". This is one reason I was hesitant to believe in the stories that Apple had devoted site space to MkLinux. It doesn't seem to me that Apple is interested in open hardware, software, or standards for that matter.
I've secretly been lusting after a G[2-4] chip for a while now. I'm have yet to try LinuxPPC, but I have heard very good things from graphics artists and designers. This sounds to me to be a PowerPC UNIX box for cheap, a luxury which only the rich normally have available to them.
I sure hope no problems are run into by AMD, and I *really* hope AMD doesn't just put out chips that are merely poor mirror images of an existing chip.
I like AMD as much as the next guy, especially now, with the new processors available and impressive benchmarks galore. But, let's face it, most of us wouldn't have bought AMD if our lives depended on it a year or two ago.
For now, long live the AMD G4.
aÍÍ©ÍÌÍ£Ì'̽ͩÌÍzÍYÌÍÌY
But that's because the Dresden fab was not fully ready when they were producing the K6. Even now, I believe they are mostly using the Dresden fab for Athlon, although I'm not so sure about that. I believe Dresden was intended for the Athlon in the first place, they were really depending on this processor to save their butt after the brutal CPU price war.
1 billion $ is not that much if being able to meet the demand for Athlons will give AMD the opportunity to secure a beach-head in the server and corporate market that it was never successful in. It is what AMD has its eye on. Do you think the AMD CEO is happy because most of his customers are enthusiasts or cash-strapped teenagers? Businesses have not been buying machines with AMD processors, period. Athlon was supposed to change that.
Now if AMD throws away the corporate market in return for a big check from Steve Jobs; I believe it deserves a swift death in the hands of Intel. I will be among the first to short the stock..
Zigbee Central: A Zigbee weblog
AMD is deep in the red, If they don't start drumming up more business, they will go the way od the Dodo. AMD is GOOD for the consumers. Even if you buy INTEL. We need to keep them around.
-Oy Vey
In advance, I don't intend this as a personal attack, it's just that I am getting tired of replying to the same comment.
I did not say that the G4 can't do SCSI
I said, SCSI was standard on all Apple systems not long ago, and it's sad to see that this is no longer true. In addition, trying to order SCSI as an option from the Apple on line store seems a bit difficult, more difficult that it should be for the average consumer trying to equip thier $1,500 base priced G4 system.
If you go with a SCSI option, you will see a great benifit. By not useing SCSI, your bogging down your G4 un-nessessarly. It's a sad thing to see Apple move away from using SCSI as standard.
Again... I didn't say the G4 couldn't do SCSI. But if you look at the specs page, it says SCSI support for up to 3 devices, but when you go over to the order pages, you see this is an "option" and not standard.
It's an economic move on Apples part to sell more systems, I know. But it's sad. As someone else mentioned, SUN has made this step too, and that too is sad. If SGI does it too, that would be sad.
But, taking a step backwards, useing cheaper componants for the standard systems is the point I am trying to make. I am not trying to tell you that Apple's G4 system won't do SCSI. And... This seems to be the thrid time I am saying that.
Oh, I wish I could go back and add a little note at the bottom of my first post just to say "Yes, I know the G4 systems _can_ use SCSI"
The Athlon looks like a sweet processor. I sure hope AMD survives to keep the competition with intel. This K6 300 based system I'm using now has always worked great
Good luck AMD
Mike
Tigger's like to read
450 MHz PowerPC G4 - 1MB L2 cache
128 MB SDRAM - 1 DIMM
18 GB Ultra2 SCSI, 2-channel card
Zip drive
DVD-ROM drive with DVD-video
RAGE 128 AGP card - 16MB SDRAM
$2,899.00
AMD System (from www.indybox.com)
AMD K6-III 3D 450MHz w/ 256KB L2 Cache
FIC PA-2013 100MHz Front-end bus 2M Cache
128M 100MHz SDRAM DIMM
250M Iomega Zip Drive
Adaptec 2930U2W (32 bit) SCSI Controler
Seagate Barracuda 18MB 7200rpm U2W SCSI Drive
Matrox Millenium G400 AGP Graphics Card with 16MB
48X IDE CDROM
Mitsumi CDRW 4x/4x/24x
Intel EtherExpress Pro 10/100 PCI NIC
$2834.00 Wow, I'm impressed with Apple. This is the first time I have speced systems and actually seen prices come out close to competitive.
With the Apple system, you get a G4, definately on the plus side for Apple, and DVD (which I don't use). On the AMD side, you get CD-RW in addition to regular CDROM drive. I have to say, I did this comparison because I truely believed Apples prices were not competitive, but in fact, they actually ARE competitive.
This would be a tough call if I was about to buy a new system, I have to admit.
As the other people said, SCSI *is* a BTO option using a high-end PCI card. But Apple is pushing FireWire as their high-end hard drive solution. As I understand it, it is a higher-performance option, and it is much more flexible and simpler.
One other thing to keep in mind is the Unified Motherboard Architecture. Apple's new computers will soon all be using the same basic motherboard. The iBook and the high-end "Sawtooth" G4's are UMA-based right now, and the soon-to-be released iMac revision will be as well. The Powerbook will be UMA-based early next year.
A big reason for this is to allow economies of scale, both to spread R & D around and to allow cheaper production costs. They took SCSI off the motherboard to save money on the low-end machines, and they're puching FireWire as the replacement on the new G4's.
I often see people comparing ultra66 ide devices to ultrawide or u2 devices, and say "Look, the ide drive goes at 66MB/s, whereas the expensive scsi disk only goes 40MB/s" (or 80 as the case may be).
/older/ scsi drive doesn't even affect my load average, it still hovers around 0.01 or so! Granted, cd writing is only one specific example, but it is still an example.
This is almost completely wrong! These speeds are for the device interface, the speed at which data can be moved on the chain. The speed of the actual drive is independent of this! Most current ide drives have around a 6--10 MB/s sustained transfer rate. Nicer scsi drives are in the vicinity of 20+ MB/s. Also note, that for these speeds, your cpu for ide is having to work very hard, whereas with scsi it may not even be doing any work.
So, if you can only have two ide devices per chain, that means maybe 20MB/s transfer rate. Further, ide is single-tasking: when you do a request to a device, all other devices on the chain must sit and wait for the other device to find what it needs, read it, and send it back. SCSI is multithreaded: you say "hey, give me data", while grabbing data from two other drives, a fibrechannel array, send data to your 8x dvd writer, do ip-over-scsi, and receive the data you just requested!
Lastly, since scsi drives are often targetted at higher-end markets, they tend to be of higher quality than their ide counterparts.
And, finally, a (/very/) brief example:
Burning CDs on my box to my scsi cd writer from an ide drive pegs me around a load of two or three! The machine (a dual 166 pentium) is barely able to respond to mouse events. Doing the same task, but with the data coming from an
Don't get me wrong, ide drives definately have their places, but for large work loads they come nowhere near scsi drives and arrays or fibrechannel drives (which haven't started to really crop up yet).
Just my thoughts on the subject (hope they help).
Seeing rapid price fluctuations in most computer componants, it's a little scary to order something that isn't even going to ship for that long.
the big-heads from motorrola were on cnbc or one of those other money neworks yesterday talking about the G4. Nothing we don't already know, basically just "our processsor is X times faster than the P3" stuff. I didn't see the whole interview though. My stepdad called me downstairs yesterday and asked me about it. So i told him about apple putting roms on their chips and screwing over upgraders etc. Then he asked me for some stock advice on apple. then i told him about the new cheap ppc boxes coming out, and told him not to invest. he probably still will though, for the "short term"
char *stupidsig = "this is my dumb sig";
As for wanting gold interconnects, no you don't. For one thing, copper is a better conductor than gold. Besides that, gold is a disaster in silicon processing (it diffuses like lightning and scavenges carriers. Low transconductance and high leakage everywhere = slow and hot.)
Lacking <sarcasm> tags,
That's silly. How many external drives are the average Mac user going to have? Is apple reverting to expansion chassis? They cheaped out on the Disk subsystem and that's that.
Blar.
c'mon, we all know the Mac Demographic! Think the average MacUser wants to install his own disk drives?!? They picked the thing 'cause of it's appliance-like qualities. That's like selling a refrigerator with no compressor, allowing the user to buy a 3rd party unit.
Blar.
I think there is a little bit of misconception here...
... not them taking turns on the same fab process. This deal would help out both amd and motorola -- amd would get a much needed kick in the wallet and motorola could ramp up their production.
At AMD's dresden fab they are only using something like half of the clean room (50K sq ft?). I believe what this deal would entail would be giving motorola access to the unused space
AMD will hve more problems if they rn out of money before the fab is completed. Or before they are done with it. This plan has been in the works for a few months now, and it is solely a cash consideration. Also, remember that AMD had problems because they weren't running their fab very well, and yields were very low. Once yields improved, they had an excess of chips, and had an excess inventory of around 2 million last quarter.
AMD gets motorolla experience, and enough cash to surrvive. Motorolla gets a new fab (going price, 5 billion) and extra capacity. All in all, a good deal on both sides
"Wag the Dog"
(only not as violent, I think)
Insert mind here.
First: the debate here is about _internal_ hard drives that are installed by default at the factory, and usage of either IDE or SCSI for those drives. Not about external optional hard drives the user adds later. There are no internal firewire hard drives. I'm not even sure internal firewire is an option. Firewire is totally irrelivant.
also, your comment about RAID is totally mind-boggling. did i just misunderstand ou? RAID is a design philosophy, not a protocol. It stands for Redundant Array of Independant Disks and bascically means that any RAID drive contains several hard disks inside it in case one fails. You can have a RAID disk under SCSI, IDE, firewire, or anything-- it's independant of connection type.
Anyway, i have a random question for anyone who may be listening: _is_ internal firewire a good idea, or even possible? i'd imagine there's some reason apple isn't doing it already. What is it?
Irritable, left-wing and possibly humorous bumper stickers and t-shirts
SCSI has many advantages over IDE. However, drive access speed is generally not among them.
SCSI allows you to connect non-drive devices (scanners and the like), allows you to connect more devices total, has a common interface for external devices, and devices exist to do RAID in hardware.
There is one way in which "speed" is related: with most IDE controllers found in intel boxes, the cpu needs to handshake every block sent over the bus. This may or may not slow down the transfer, but it sure as hell bogs down the cpu itself.
However, there's no reason that this needs to be the case for all IDE controllers. Specifically, the controllers used in Mac hardware do such handshaking themselves, much the way that a SCSI controller is expected to do bus arbitration. (This is actually _because_ of the fact that IDE came to the Mac much later than SCSI, so the controllers were more self-sufficient, to make them easier to integrate into the system.)
This does mean that the IDE controllers are more expensive than their Intellish counterparts. It still turns out to be more cost-effective, given the relative cheapness of IDE drives.
And, as many people have already pointed out, individual drives (or even pairs of them) are not generally capable of saturating either bus.
(And by way of history, IDE has been around in Apple machines for about five years now, and has been the default for over two.)
What else were they supposed to use, ST-506? Or should they have simply delayed the introduction of the Mac for six years while they waited for IDE to come out? ;-)
The real question is why did the PeeCee switch from ST-506 (and then ESDI) to IDE, when they could have settled on SCSI instead. The reason IDE is cheap is mainly due to economy of scale, which didn't exist in IDE's early days. I never understood that... but I never understood WinModems either.
---
Have a Sloppy day!
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
After reading the coverage of this story on cnet, I have decided that they are a completely worthless source of news. No where are any real facts given, as the story is based on alleged talks between the chip makers that is loosely based on an agreement of a few months ago.
At the bottom of the article however, is this interesting link to a previous story ran by cnet. Guess what this one says. That Motorola is going to produce chips for AMD. Well, this article is equally as worthless as the current story, as they even in there own article state that its not true. The article is about how Mot is going to make AMD's chips, and then it states that the agreement did not include manufacturing of any of AMD's PC processors.
I work at Motorola across from some of the guys who work on the business end of the fabs. I have heard on numerous occasions that AMD is indeed going to be doing G4 production.
Take it for what it's worth.
The price difference between SCSI and IDE components (drives and controllers) is artificial and ridiculous. Most drive manufacturers make identical drives available with both IDE and SCSI interfaces, and charge 75-100% more for the SCSI model. And a PCI based Ultra/Wide SCSI controller board is 2X to 3X the cost of a PCI ATA/66 controller board. There's no reason, cost wise, to make the SCSI hardware so expensive. It is simple price gouging. I think there is some collusion going on among drive manufacturers to preserve the price disparity and keep the highest performance drives (currently the 10k rpm drives) out of the IDE market.
The one thing that needs to be mentioned is that most drive manufacturers are selling the *exact same* drives with both IDE and SCSI interfaces. For systems that only use one or two drives, the only advantage to SCSI is that you can get 10k rpm drives. If you compare (for example) the IDE and SCSI versions of the same 7200 rpm drive, you'll get nearly identical test results. There is no reason (aside from marketing) that manufacturers can't sell 10k rpm IDE drives. The only real (ie. not artificial) advantage to SCSI is in multi-drive arrays.
I can get an identically equipped 600 MHz Athlon system, *with monitor*, for under $2000. Granted, the Athlon doesn't have Altivec so it won't be as good at Photoshop, but in comparing SPEC benchmarks it is a faster system (much faster in integer perf).
From what I have been able to gather from various web sites, the current Athlon is not being produced at Dresden. It is being produced at their .25u fab. The Dresden fab was built primarily to produce .18u chips. Athlon production will be transitioned to the Dresden fab this fall.
Apple have actually put IDE in older Macintoshes as well, the Centris/Quadra 630 has an internal IDE bus.
Also, my Centris 660av does take advantage of all the SCSI stuff without the OS getting in the way, This has something to do with a different SCSI controller to previous Macs, as well as a built in DSP chip.
Both these machines are pre-PowerMac (PowerPC) Macintoshes, based on the MC68040 processor. It just goes to show how Apple can put good technology to waste. If they had've kept going with these machines instead of jumping to PowerPC systems, who knows what we might be using today. Anyone remember PinkOS?
life is a canvas/and the paint is hope and promise/the world is ours/no one can ever take it from us.
It is difficult to say whether or not it really is good for the giants of the computer industry combining to form titans. The computer industry right now is screaming Standard Oil, Carnegie Steel, and Pulman Rail. When those conglomerates formed, they didn't work for the good of the industry, but rather increased their profits since they had a monopoly. Granted, some say (not me) the M$ doesn't have a monopoly, and that AOL doesn't either, but they technically don't have to.
Once things settle, they'll all have their own territory. MS and Sun will still make servers and Motorola and Intel will still make processors, but Windows NT could, say, own the small business market while Sun controlls the high-end server/workstation market. Likewise, all PCs might have Intel CPUs while all cars have PowerPCs. So they technically compete, but are stil able to gouge the consumer.
I prefer to see many (ie 5) companies working in the same industry. If Intel, AMD, Cyrix, WinChip, and (maybe) Transmeta were all making compatible chips with each adding features here and there, I think we'd see a much more consumer friendly market.
...The price difference between the IDE and SCSI versions of the same mechanism has widened enormously. 5 years ago, the SCSI version was only $10-$50 higher. That's a little painful for a $300 drive, but compared to today, that is pennies.
Also, check out storagereview.com. Somewhere in there they tested SCSI and IDE versions of 2 different drives (4 total). You know what? There was essentially no difference in speed. What miniscule difference there was was in favor of IDE! Go figure!
Yes, IDE sucks, but when the SCSI version of the same drive costs $200 more (especially when the IDE version costs only $250), it's better to throw in the towel.
On another note, I think the price difference comes down to two things: (1) Volume manufacturing of IDE drives and the fracturing of the SCSI standard has increased the cost difference, but (2) the cost difference should only be $10. The manufacturers realise that people that buy SCSI have money, so they'll charge out the ass. Kinda like what they used to do for Mac peripherals before Apple started adopting PCI, etc...
Dat's it
Apple is using EGCS/GCC 2.95 as its compiler for Mac OS X [client] (not OS X Server; that uses gcc "2.7.2.1" for now).
They've submitted a large quantity of code (mostly from the work done at NeXT) to the GCC maintainers, and work proceeds to integrate the two source bases.
Furthermore, Apple would be nothing short of braindead to release OS X [client] for G4 systems without using an AltiVec-aware vectorizing compiler to generate their code. Since GCC Is the compiler that they're using, it seems more than likely that they will expend considerable resources to making GCC's PowerPC codegen as good as possible. (And LinuxPPC will see the benefits, too. Very cool.) Perhaps they can even integrate some of their work from MrC/MrCpp, Apple's fantastically good optimizing PowerPC C and C++ compilers for MPW.
- Mali
Actually, the ATA spec has all the multitasking capability of SCSI(disconnect/reconnect(called overlap in ATA spec), command queuing, command reordering). & some ATA drives have the commands which use these features(IBM GXP & GP series, Fujitsu MPE3 series). overlap & tagged command queuing are implemented with ATA's r/w dma queued commands(overlap is a step of the commands & tcq is used if que length>1). If a driver were written to use r/w dma queued, you'd have an ATA driver which supports disconnect/reconnect & tagged command queuing. From looking ATA driver source, it doesn't look like Linux supports the commands. Perhaps I missed it? The ATA spec can be found at t13.org.
Actually you are off on the last two the other way.
With Sheepshaver you can run Mac OS Applications.
Due to the standardization of apple hardware you can run just about any apple hardware. Certainly any and more machines than you can run OSX on.
That's not to say that I won't dual boot between them because nothing comes close to a Mac OS for appearance. And only Enlightenment that I've seen even comes close for customizability. (Note Customizability is often spelled ResEdit)
Geez if I could moderate comments, I would set most of these to "Offtopic." This isn't about IDE or SCSI guys, cmon...
Anyways......
This may actually happen, unlike every other Apple related RUMOR I've seen on slashdot, this could be true, because AMD and Motorola have made many deals in the past, including some stuff about that nifty K7 processor.
If you've seen or heard of a K7, look at it again. Yup theres quite a bbit of Motorola technology in that sucker.... Wiring, design, etc... Parts of it mysteriously resemble the G4 (really don't want to go into detail here...)
Maybe AMD will finally return the favor and manufacture some G4's... Why not?
-Curt
Why would you want to want to punish the poor G4 chip by saddling it with archaic PC holdovers such as irqs and such. If you want G4 and linux just buy a G4 and put linuxPPC on it! Just look at the case they put it in! It's not even that horrible blue anymore! The way that case opens right up just makes me smile.
An apple sold is one less PC sold. This helps AMD (badly needed cash) and Motorola (more production without capital investments). AMD may lose the PC sale, but gain it in the Apple. Intel must pull off a tricky play by moving to the 64bit Merced/McKinley architecture. They may be making the same mistake that IBM made trying to move people to PS/2 and OS/2. The old way was too familiar and just making it faster and non-proprietary (the didn't call it ISA - Industry Standard Architecture for nothing) was good enough for Compaq, Dell, Micron, HP, etc. If Intel stumbles with 64bits, AMD will clean up.
The Sun actually markets two servers with IDE drives, the Enterprise 2 and the Enterprise 10
Actually the 64 bit extension to PCI is part of the regular PCI spec. The fastest PCI bus is 64 bits wide running at 66 MHz. Some Wintel server machines implement this, as do many Sun SPARCstations. Other RISC workstations probably do too, I just don't keep up with them all.
You may be thinkng of PCI-X, which is an extension to PCI to up the clock rate to 133 MHz. PCI-X may require royalty payments, I'm not sure.
Intel intended to make NGIO an open spec. NGIO and FutureIO recently merged into a single proposal, and I'm not sure where they are going wrt licensing.
Well, the original title was: "AMD to build G4s? and I shortened it a little... I was not trying to say that Motorola will ditch the G4 or that AMD will start selling PPC... :-)
sure,
when they do something you detest, you say tou'll short the stock. But since they're doing what you want them to _right now_, are have you bought stock?? Or are you just another whiny hypocrite...
-earl
That AMD system is a total ripoff. Did you intentionally search for the most expensive AMD system you could find? I just had a look at www.cybmax.com and you can get an equivalent AMD K6-3 system from them (except with 9G SCSI drive) for just over $1500.
At the same site, I can configure a 650 MHz Athlon system (equipped the same as the Apple system except for a 9G SCSI drive), which benchmarks quite a bit faster than the G4, for only $2400.
If you want to compare low end, the cheapest G4 system with monitor is:
400MHz G4, 1MB L2
64MB SDRAM
10GB ATA drive
17" monitor
CD-ROM drive
Rage 128 - 16MB
56K modem
10/100 Ethernet
-------------------
TOTAL: $2098
Compare that with:
500 MHz AMD Athlon
64 MB SDRAM
10.2 GB ATA drive
S3 Savage4 16MB video
48X CDROM
Aureal Vortex2 3D sound card
56K modem
17" monitor
Speakers
10/100 Ethernet
-----------------------
TOTAL: $1233
In terms of performance, they should be about equal in general purpose FP and the AMD is faster in integer performance. Here are some SPEC benchmarks (unfortunately for the wrong CPU speed):
450 MHz G4
SPEC_int95: 21.4
SPEC_fp95: 20.4
550 MHz Athlon
SPEC_int95: 25.1
SPEC_fp95: 20.6
Of course, Altivec is faster than 3DNow!, so the G4 will perform better in signal & image processing apps and possibly 3D games, while the AMD will be faster at general business applications.
Apple hardware is just not price competetive.
apple is trading at 64 right now. analysts predict it will be at 90 by year end. they are producing better products at a lower pricepoint now that they ever have before. their marketshare is growing. they have something like 3 billion sitting in the bank.
i hope your dad didn't bother to listen to you.
A lot of cooments seem to read this as AMD seeling G4's directly to Apple.
Not gonna happen. Motorola would be hiring AMD as a foundry to make chips for them, which they will in turn sell to Apple. Motorola has been doing this all over the place lately. Something like 30 or 40% of Motorola chips are produced by third parties.
I like the idea. Anything to preserve AMD while the Athlon gains ground.
intel did the PR rounds for NGIO then it seemed to die can anyone show me any resources ??
it seemed a very clever way to get round bus bandwidth problems this after all has ben the major limiting factor in machines (and the reason why SGI machines are so damn fast)
I did not relise that 64 bit PCI was open !
if you can as I remember plug in 32bit standard PCI cards and use 64 where you have them why havnt people been pushing this ? MB manufacturers are always looking to get one step ahead of the crowd this seems to be a way !!
or arent people doing the core logic ?
whats going on ??
I hope NGIO does not die it looked very tasty
regards
john
p.s. thank you for your clarity over 64 bit PCI
a poor student @ bournemouth uni in the UK (a deltic so please dont moan about spelling but the content)
Too bad Motorola didn't do it sooner before screwing Apple.
I find it interesting that people continue to spout this "firewire isn't used because apple sux" stuff, a comment like the one I am replying to, replys and says that they are completely clueless. The replyers are never contradicted. Does this mean the anti-apple people don't actually read any of the replys to their messages, do they purposely continue to spout mis-information, or are there sufficiently enough clueless people who don't read other's comments, to provide an ongoing missinformation fest?
enough from me.
MS and Sun will still make servers
Interesting. I've not noticed Microsoft manufacturering, or even integrating much in the way of server hardware. Must not be making it's way into the market here in the midwest.
Around here we get Microsoft Mice, and a few other kinds of Microsoft hardware. Maybe the shipping costs for the bigger components like the CPU box is just too steep?
Both IDE and SCSI controllers have two interfaces. One interface to the drives, and one to the system bus. The way that the controller is interfaced with the system does not depend on whether it is IDE or SCSI.
Before PCI, computers that had ISA, VLB, and NuBus interfaces communicated with drive controllers (either SCSI or IDE) using programmed I/O. In this mode, the CPU had to request a block from the controller and sit idle until it was returned, then write it to memory. This was the case with both IDE and SCSI controllers. With a PCI bus, the controller may either use programmed I/O, standard DMA, or bus master DMA. With standard DMA, the controller can access and move data into system memory directly instead of passing it through the CPU. But the CPU still has to request the data, control the bus, and wait until the transfer is complete. With bus master DMA, the CPU only has to request the data and then go back to work. The controller controls the bus, uses DMA to transfer the data into system memory, and then signals the CPU with a hardware interrupt when it is complete.
You can use any of the above methods with either a SCSI or IDE controller. Almost every x86 based PC using a 430HX (I think) or later chipset - in other words almost every x86 PC purchased in the last 3 years - includes an IDE controller that uses bus master DMA. Unfortunately, for some stupid reason Windows comes with DMA disabled by default. You have to go into the Device Manager and check its box, so I suspect that many novice Windows users aren't taking advantage of it. I assume that most PCI based Apple systems have IDE controllers that support bus mastering DMA, but the original IDE Apple machines did not.
In the last year, since the ATA/66 spec came out, the SCSI scatter/gather functionality has now been added to IDE. The newer x86 chipsets support it, so most new PCs come with the ATA/66 interface. I don't know for sure whether Apple's machines support ATA/66, but I'd be very surprised if they did not.
In conclusion, there is no basis for saying that the IDE controllers in Apple machines are better, faster, or more expensive. Put the same drive in a new Apple and x86 machine and you should get basically the same transfer rates and CPU utilization.
As for your other points:
- You can use non-drive devices with IDE too. It is just less common.
- SCSI has no more a "common interface" for external devices than any other bus technology, especially now that SCSI peripherals are getting very hard to find.
- IDE hardware raid devices do exist. See Promise. There aren't any heavy duty (with big caches and hot swapping) HW raid controllers using IDE, primarily because you can only attach two devices per channel.
As far as I can see, the only "real" advantage of SCSI right now is the number of devices and longer cable lengths it can support. There are some artificial advantages of SCSI, like the fact that drive makers won't sell IDE versions of their 10k rpm drives.
>> But I'm hoping that this will drive g4 prices down, I'm no mac fan, but their prices are always high.
From motorola's website: G4 cpus run $210, $275, $355 and $475 respectively in quantities of 1,000.
This seems about the same as a Pentium III 600 and runs circles around it...
Gateway is married to Intel. They always have been. They have never used AMD chips
Wrong.
Check this URL for the Gateway Select(tm) line of Gateway AMD-based systems.
Gateway will discontinue selling AMD-based systems, but they haven't yet.
Stupid job ads, weird spam, occasional insight at
Oh so Motorola and AMD have been parters for quite a while already and have done nothing whatsoever? I didn't specifically point out the manufacturing process, but some technolgies have been shared.
That was their purpose.
-Curt
Actually, IBM isn't putting out those CHRP motherboards. They are giving away the designs so umpteem Asian clone makers can get in the business of making really fast Linux PPC machines.
Who ever heard of open source hardware before?
TML
Hot swappable SCSI is a very small subset of all SCSI devices and adds to their cost. Hot swappable Firewire is built into the spec and all firewire devices are hot swappable.
The reason that Firewire is not in more use is a simple, political one. Intel has decided that they don't want to give a boost to Apple so they are FUDding Firewire and refusing to make it standard on Intel motherboards. This is after Apple lowered its licensing pricing and made Intel part of the Firewire patent pool.
Intel wants us all to wait for USB 2.0 where they swear that it will be just as fast as Firewire 1.0 (by then, Firewire should be up to 800Mbps from the current 400Mbps).
TML