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G4 Bug Keeps Them at 500MHz
Hal-9001 writes "I saw this link over at Ars Technica; apparently, the G4 has a bug that keeps it from running at 500 MHz or above. The story is over at MacWeek. "
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microway.com is one place
look to the net, there are many others
1. Like I said, most. Sure, you can get Linux, NetBSD, etc. on a G4. However, you still rarely see them, because the G4 desktops generally are Macs, and Macs run the MacOS. Out of all the shops selling G4s, do you really believe most of its customer's run Linux or another non-Apple OS? And again, this is a Mac site, so they're talking mostly to MacOS users. If I'm only a BSD user, do I care if MS Windows crashes?
2. No, but as I said, its a side effect. The OS is poor, something I noted at. The new BSD derived OS should be far better. I'm sure Mac users would be happy to have the front end they love, and a back end that's worth they're love.
3. Sure it seems odd, but if we take them at their word and that it doesn't effect chips under 500mhz, than its ok. It sounds like it does, but they don't want to admit it.. or that they are giving an excuse for while the G4 500mhz chips will be delayed, but that its not a horrid problem that should scare customers away.
"Open Source?" - Press any key to continue
Yeah it's pretty fast enough if all you do is browse the web and use a word processor but if you are interested in rendering 30 fps 3D with at least a million polygons in each frame, it's not going to be enough. I'm pretty sure an athlon+geforce combination (or even intel) would do much better
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I agree with TheGreek, the folks at LinuxPPC have managed to make an OS that runs on Apple Hardware without ANY HELP FROM APPLE AT ALL. Are Be some kind of weirdo corporate wusses that need a company to hold their hand? Why can they just port it themselves? How do you KNOW that BeOS is better for video and audio, have you benchmarked it or something? And guess what, Mac OS X has alot of the features you are whining about. Also, it really pees me off when people put MACos or BEos, since when are the meant to be capitalized? It's Mac OS and Be OS. Well I've had my say. Mr-Ikari gendou@crosswinds.net
woo.
Yet another moronic generalisation from a spotty little game freak. Games DO NOT define the high end of computing, as clock speed has absolutely NO relevence to performance between different families of chip sets. The feature set of AltiVec is far more functional and accessable than the arcane and mentally retarded MMX family of instructions. The GeForce is a card optimised for DirectX 7, the idiot-child of OpenGL, I expect it to be just as useless for programs such as SoftImage as its predecessor the TNT2.
Get out of your basement, there are users with more pressing needs than getting 600 fps out of QuakeIII who welcome real technological advancements such as AltiVec.
People have gotten so used to systems that crash on a regular basis that they don't realize that systems could be much more reliable than the crap sold at the local computer store.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
On the other hand, you are 100% dependant on the applications to be able to recover from the crash (database, filesystem,...). This is not something I'd be wanting to do on a weekly basis.
AS opposed to Linux where a stray pointer in kernel space or a power failure can lead to serious disk corruption? THe disk repair utilities for Linux are so crude that I have more problems with losing ext2fs partitions than I ever have had with losing HFS partitions.
Unfortunately, Alphas have a reputation of being refridgerator-sized machines with
A good starting place. They have tons of links to vendors, list-archives, news, FAQ's, etc.
I've had good luck/great service from these guys. Alpha pricing starts at $1295 for a 533-mhz bare-bones kit.
The 466mhz model does over twice as well as a G4 in SPECfp. I seem to remember stumbling across a sale (from Compaq) for these little monsters for $2999, though I can't find the link now.
Never dealt with them personally, but they have fast machines and a all-around good reputation. They also sell quadputers and compilers
You can often find cheap Alpha hardware on eBay. Over 6 months ago, I put together a PC164-500/64mb system for about $600. Read the AlphaLinux.Org FAQ's, HOWTO's and HCL before you buy anything.
For reference, here are a few (single-cpu) spec*95 figures... (mostly from spec.org)
INT- FP-- processor
20.3 13.3 Mac G3/466mhz
22.3 15.1 Intel P-III/550mhz
21.4 20.4 G4-450 Mhz 7400
16.2 23.9 UltraSparc/450mhz
18.0 27.0 Alpha 21164/600mhz (very old now)
24.6 47.9 Alpha 21264/466mhz (new "low-end")
32.1 53.7 Alpha UP2000/667mhz
/* MAGIC THEATRE
ENTRANCE NOT FOR EVERYBODY
MADMEN ONLY */
They crash less? Less than what? Trains north of Paddington station? Macs are crashier even than Billyware boxen- that's why we're slowly replacing ours... ...well that, and the fact that IMacs are thin on the ground here, g3 blue amnd whites are no longer made, and mostly not available, and G4s aren't out yet. I simply cannot buy new machines, even when I need to get a load in a hurry for a pressing project. It's starting to feel like the twighlight years of the Amiga. Isn't it time for Jobs to jump ship, sell all his shares, and send the company plunging into oblivion again? Maybe he's waiting until they are a bit more over-valued. Whatever, I'm getting fed up with Apple. If my users can't grok Linux (And some of them are Prisoners of Steve, to whit, dumber than toast), then frankly, I'm gonna have to give them Windows :-/
minor correction: G4s => 450MHz are
>Also, it really pees me off
>when people put MACos or BEos, since when are the >meant to be capitalized? It's Mac OS and
>Be OS. Well I've had my say.
Thank you for finally pointing out the whole capitalization thing. Glad it's not just me thinking that. You can always tell an underinformed _____-bigot by their capitalization of the word MAC. For instance.
"MAC is going to go out of business any day now."
"If MAC had multitasking i'd use it."
"MAC's are too expensive and they dont have any software.
Huddle up to your nice warm Athlon Beowulf cluster running Linux, or go play with NetPositive under BeOS or whatever you prefer to rant off-topic about, and get your damn facts straight before you start trashing things. Even windows.
good luck finding something with "equal processing power" at a comparable price, more OR less than the g3/g4 (macOS or not).
but i have an amd processor and linux, although i have to run 98 for stupid school stuff (they sold out to the devil, so i have to use vc++). damnit, i need a valid response here.
Hola AC!,
:) I'm an alltime mac user and love the macs. The slight tongue and cheek was due to the fact that I cant afford those g4's :(
Yes I didnt mean it as a flame bait. I was refering to this add. Which I find hilarious
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Ok, are there any benchmarks that i could look at, instead of redundant "mac rules" responses?
Please God, get IBM to come onboard. The people at Motorola couldn't get up clock speed to save their lives. IBM is talking 500-700MHz G3s. If they start making G4s using SOI and using their amazing talent, Apple won't get screwed.
Steve Jobs should be on his knees begging IBM to make G4s. Motorola has made it abundantly clear that they can't meet deadlines, can't produce enough chips to meet even Apple's small demand, and can't keep up with Intel(much less AMD) in terms of clock speed and processing power
C'mon IBM, you can do it!
I believe they are 1 GigaFlop machines (or at least at the high end), and they are value for money in speed terms.
No reboot is ok. No matter what.
:P)
eh...i disagree. if youre developing some program that makes heavy use of system resources and/or performs some extremely low level functions, it wouldnt be too unheard of for you to have to reboot after you discover a bug in your software that makes the system unstable or unusable.
slightly more reasonable, what if you (for whatever reason) decide to build a new kernel for your snappy open source OS?
People who think that copmuter can be rebooted to fix problems should be taught properly.
well, ive heard early version(s) of windoze95 had memory leak issues. so what do you suggest those who are stuck using the affected version(s) do once their system starts bogging down for lack of available memory? (note: answers like 'use [insert alternate os here]' are not acceptable for this question
the point is, no system is perfect. they all need a reboot every now and then, be it to fix a problem or to upgrade. the real issue is the length of time between reboots.
--Siva
Keyboard not found.
Keyboard not found.
Press F1 to continue.
this is a direct quote from the famous 6 page G4 Ad in every major magazine
...with performance inscreasing at its usual pace, the new Power Mac G4 woudn't have arrived until 2003. Unfortunately, breaktroughs do happen...
maybe they should have waited till 2003 and done some more testing...
I know the quote refers to speed, but sometimes you have to slow down and make sure you aren't messing some things up too much...
--bdj
Ladies and Gentlegeeks,
/dev/zero > /tmp/santa.bag
What we have here is a typical speciment of either a mac or a windows users. His claims on programming seem to be based on coding done on a certain OS from redmond? I do not recall anytime hearing a good UNIX machine being rebooted to a user space run program? That is hilarious indeed. Ofcourse you can do,
cat
But theoritically speaking, this wouldnt yeild much. It would certinaly not crash the system. And ofcourse you can do this.
run a very buggy netscape.
And what does that do? It eats up the swap. Untimatly bringing your box down to your knees. But that doesnt kill it does it? Do geeks compile MAGIC codes into their kernel? I'm sure they do. There is no such thing as a blue screen, it's only on windows nt world that you hear a system rebooting every half hour.
Quality comes from pleasure. Pleasure comes from Understanding, Understanding comes from GNU.
This is an area where no Mac User will/can dispute. Mac VM blows. Windows definitley has a better implementation than the Mac. However, UNIX exceeds all VM designs, and BSD is the heart of MacOS X and Server.
The folks who bought 400's and 450's hoping they had some headroom are out of luck, I guess. Although I believe the motherboards are jumperless in the Sawtooth 450's to begin with. I hope Apple is on IBM's back over their non-support of AltiVec. They can't be happy about being stuck with a single source for 7400's.
Apple is ordering a couple million PowerPCs every year. I honestly don't see why IBM isn't taking that account more seriously. I'm sure there are good reasons for it. But they must be pretty serious for IBM to turn away all that business.
Okay, I'll buy that 233 MMX of ya from $100. Last I remembered it they were at least $300 or so. Second, Your G300 tower is reletivly recent. Current Macs are only at 400 or so now, (G4s are still pretty hard to find) or 450 if you want to quibble. PCs are at 700 MHz, so what do you think is going to happen to the price of the 233? Your G3 300 is comparable to a 450Mhz PII in terms of how out of date it is. Second, a mac does crash every 10 minutes. My windows install has not crashed in two days. (I was rendering in Truespace, while coding in Visual Studio.) Yes it is a piece of junk, but that is why you have things like BeOS. We have an old 180Mhz MacOS 7.6.x (which I hear is supposedly pretty stable) which has a problem running Netscape 4.0
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
Unless I'm off-topic (in which case I'll promptly be moderated out of everybody's way), the subject line is always on topic. Would you prefer I put in a different meaningless filler line instead? How about for this one "G3 CPU" instead of "..." ? "..." is easier. Unless I'm going off-topic, I really don't even see the need to include a subject line - slash already breaks this down for you.
people will learn that character is one's greatest asset, that hurting others is wrong, and that there's no "i" in "Slashdot Comment System"
... Funny how just before this you run off and say I'm an arrogant bastard hell-bent on some kind of popularity contest... and then turn around and post a few lines of mean-nothing text, which is essentially a personal slam and get moderated up 2 points! Oh, the twisted irony...
Anyway, I find it just laughably funny that anyone would believe that I'm here to 'be popular'. Yeah.. right. Online? With a bunch of anonymous people I'll never meet? Just think about that alittle. I'm not sure whether you're the same person, or another, but alot of ACs have complained that my posts are "meaningless". I've even had a few moderators mark down perfectly good comments lately. Does this bother me? Not really. It's a curiosity, but little more. The only reason I mention it is because so many of you find it interesting.
Bottom line: If you disagree with me, fine. If you think my posts suck, fine. But the majority of people here don't believe that, and this is just a fact you are going to have to live with, unpleasant though it may be. If you really feel strongly about it, e-mail this guy and let him know how you feel. While you're at it, how about suggesting an alternative moderation system.. maybe one that's more fair to people like you?
My e-mail address is, as always, attached to any post I make. Contact me off slashdot if you have some constructive criticism.
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Statements like this worry me. Restarts are NOT ok, and i'm sickened that people think they are. Especially when they're frequent like it sounds like this bug would make them. The world is not windows, if it were then everyone including me would have no problem with an occasional restart. But more importantly, G4's are usually going to be used as servers. Reboots are NEVER acceptable in a server, it can mean 20 minutes of downtime on a website which can mean lost revenue. It can mean lost e-mails within a company which is a VERY bad thing. Get the picture? I'm glad they're delaying the release, of course, as this is not a good bug. OK my rant is done
Patrick Barrett
Yebyen@adelphia.net
Restating the obvious since nineteen aught five.
At least we know Motorola is thoroughly testing it's processors before letting them on the market.
Intel hasn't been *that* kind (read: professional) with the Pentium class processors... Remember the first series (60, 66, 90)??? They tried, but ultimately had to replace a helluva lot of them...
-- It's always darker before it goes pitch black.
Damn sysadmins. EVERYONE NEEDS A VECTOR PROCESSOR. Vector procs rock for 3D. Even the ARM10 architeture is putting a vector engine in a proc made for handhelds. YOUR PALMPILOT NEEDS A VECTOR PROCESSOR!!!!
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
Why not have Slashdot automatically moderated by those grading programs some teachers are useing to grade student papers? (See slashdot from a few days ago.)
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
What is this "foo"? Is it overclockable? Where can I get it? I want some!!
I'm writing this on a G4/450 MHz. Believe me, this machine does NOT need any overclocking. It's so darn fast, I have a hard time not using it all the time. Responsiveness makes the computing experience so very sweet.
IBM did not want to support AltiVec way back when Apple was in more dire straits and the market could not be foreseen as being so lucrative. I'm sure the 'Its' over at IBM are kicking themselves now.
"That kind of errata isn't unusual for new ships from any manufacturer," said Keith Diefendorff, editor in chief of the Microprocessor Report in Sunnyvale, Calif. He said that Motorola's warnings don't necessarily portend serious problems: "Motorola, as a company, is relatively conservative, and they like to have everything perfect." --from the MacWeek article
I agree with the poster down below that people wanting to buy these machines are lucky that Motorola takes its quality so seriously, so they don't have to be replaced later (like the pentiums).
The bit you quoted was preceeded by "the glitch would more likely effect more-efficient embedded operating systems."
Could it be that Linux on Macs can be affected it is more efficient than MacOS(X)? Or is that just non-embedded OS's against embedded ones?
"The obvious mathematical breakthrough would be development of an easy way to factor large prime numbers." Bill Gates,
Ok, let me start out by saying i know that Mac is the better computer, and i seriously wish i owned one.
That said, i am currently a PC owner, and as such still have some loyaylty to intel.
I feel this must be said.
Someone is bound to, it might as well be me.
Wintel/Linux on Intel/AMD PC's rejoice. For once more, we have a legitamate reason to feel supperior (though, whether this reason will last for long, i know not...
We can, now, if for a brief moment, stick our tongue's out at Mac users and brag about us being able to get higher processor speeds (yes, yes, BYTEmark integers would love to argue with me, i know, but then this isn't exactly a serious post)!
That said, i have a few opinions on why Mac's are worth the extra price (not that i'd complain should they decide to price *more* competitively)
1st: They crash less
2nd: No need for Virtual Memory (or atleast you can turn it off and still be able to run your MacOS of choice) and 3rd: Power...they *are* faster, and in general run smoother.
I no doubt have now invoked the wrath of users of any computer, and as such, will now sit peacefully, hoping that my mail client doesnt tell me i have 100+ new messages!
I'd rather have a processor a month or two later than have a crappy one that causes me headaches and likely a few months to replace.
I mean, people can live without the 500 MHz version for a couple of months.
It would be far worse if they just decided to quietly go ahead and release it and hope no one notices. (Or if they didn't even do enough testing to detect it in the first place.)
Check Gnucash in the feature list I found this "Quicken files are automatically merged to eliminate duplicate transactions". Let me know if it is what you need.
The G4 suffers from analog noise, causing
cache corruption. This happens, to some extent,
at lower frequencies too!
That's right. G4 processors from Motorola crash.
IBM adds capacitors and other junk on top of
the chip to deal with this, but even they don't
really know the cause.
Thus, the G4 is a bad buy.
I'm serious, and have fairly direct inside
knowledge of this -- please fix the score on
this post, since I obviously must be an AC.
There are so many things wrong with this post I just don't know where to start.
:)
I'm really sick of Apple apologists...
I'm really sick of Apple critics that don't understand what they're offering advice on.
A hokey press release claiming that this might not affect MacOS users is just plain stupid
Who put out a press release? This was all from MacWeek's "sources." Apple and Motorola had absolutely nothing to do with MacWeek's analysis that "this issue might never evince itself in Macs."
Not to mention that atop all of this, Apple isn't offering any highly-clocked, discounted G3, nope
Pretty off-topic, but I'll address it. You can get a G3/400 for $1299 with DV stuff of in the form of an iMac. I'm sure there are still G3 towers around from various retailers. Selling G3s and G4s at the same time would cause unnecessary product line confusion.
just more G4 marketing hype... "Yeah, the AltiVec velocity engine will help AppleWorks with all of that vector math you'll be doing".
Right. Most people buy a G4 to use AppleWorks.
The least Apple could do would be to investigate the possibility of selling real workstations, based on MacOS X and powered by a Power3, Alpha, or maybe K7.
I agree. Apple should spend 6-12 months porting Mac OS X to Alpha, Power3 or K7, and concince developers to do the same. In the process they can alienate and confuse their customers, piss off wallstreet by radically altering their business strategy without warning, and lose the ease of administration Macs enjoy from tight software/hardware intregration, and ultimately elminate Apple's value proposition.
By why stop there? Why not just outsource the hardware manufacturing to Dell and just focus on software? Maybe Apple could work on some applications to compete head-on with MS Office, or maybe write a web browser. It should also open source everything and just sell the service contracts.
One more thing -- Linus should be the CEO.
- Scott
------
Scott Stevenson
Scott Stevenson
Tree House Ideas
nor is it an "errata" (who dug that word out of its grave?)
:)
RedHat.
- Scott
------
Scott Stevenson
Scott Stevenson
Tree House Ideas
Why do they even bother telling us there is a bug if it hasn't been released yet? Anyone with half a brain would quietly fix the problem and go on.
The best way to accelerate a windows box is at 9.8 meters per second square.
What makes these "supercomputing macs" so great that they're worth paying more for than a pc with equal processing power?
The integer performance, while quite good, is not vastly different than the G3. But you'd be hard-pressed to find a match in the wintel world with the kind of performance you get from the AltiVec (Velocity Engine) vector unit. It is the vector unit that pushes the G4 past the sustained one gigaflop mark (burstable to 4 gigaflops I believe).
For example, every G4 comes with a Photoshop plugin on its hard drive that allows the application to take advantage of AltiVec. I have no benchmarks handy, but the results are phenominal. The same is true for SETI@home and Media Cleaner Pro (digital media encoding) -- the performance is incredible with a G4. And those were just the optimized apps announced at Seybold. I haven't kept tabs on what has popped up since them.
If you're just running xterms, it probably doesn't matter, but if you're doing a lot of digital media manipulation or scientific calculations, it's a little slice of heaven in a cool-looking case.
- Scott
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Scott Stevenson
Scott Stevenson
Tree House Ideas
Pester whoever makes your current 'ultrareliable' typesetting system for Solaris. If they run on multiple commercial unixen, Linux versions won't be too much trouble for them.
Describe your situation, what you expect to happen with NT, how many licences could be in the balance and so on.
Although, with the advent of relatively cheap Sparc workstations, why bother with Intel machines?
Bring this up to your own suits.
Between Athlons and the now cheap Dual PIII systems, this really isn't too hard. You just need to take the blinders off.
Funny how just a little above someone posted SPEC scores that show the PII kicking the G3s ass. And real world stuff backs this up. Boot did a test pitting a 300MHz GC against a 400MHZ PII. The PII was cheaper and had more ameneties (bigger monitor, better speakers, bigger hard-drive, better graphics card, etc.) They tested Inspire, Quake, Photoshop and some other stuff. The MAC won Photoshop. Lost inspire and really lost quake.
Second the SPEC for a G4 costing 3000 is around the SPECS for an Athlon 700 costing 2000
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
A. As I recall the Alpha can juggle 80 out of order instructions, Intel 40, and AMD 70 something. B. Why are you comparing OSX to W2k, why not to BeOS, by far the fastest OS for x86. C. It compiles slower because Solaris 7 x86 is crap.
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
Funny. All of the first announcement spam for the G4 was centering around 'Alpha user' patterns of using an 'ease of use machine'.
So, if it's true that Apple is really only targetting the 'just make it simple crowd'. Why don't they do that, concentrate on that, instead of claiming that they make desktop supercomputers and quite possibly make the machines cheaper to produce and buy at the same time?
Such users (non power users) should be content with a mildly souped up Amiga, if we are to accept your position.
Actually, why is it that when Linux people can't do something cuz they don't have specs they cry foul, but when Be can't do it they call it laziness. Apple does not WANT Be on their piece of junk platform. It has great hardware melded to a braindead OS. Your choice is to either use Linux, and give up media, or do media and put up with MacOS. Be was a glimmer of hope and if the iditots at apple had half a brain they would have realized that giving people an alternative would not hurt MacOS. The same people who use BeOS aren't the same people who would use MacOS. Home users would not use BeOS, they would stay on mac. Only the people who needed it, (Stienberg, all the manner of media companies porting to Be, etc.) would use it. Intel likes Be cuz it helps show of its hardware. Apple
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
A. Yes I have done benchmarks. Encode an MP3 under Be, try playing 12 MP3s under Be (at the same time) try editing video without waiting for previews, plug in new hardware and watch it magically work, feel the elegance of the UI. Look at the fact that BeOS is a hell of a lot more stable than any other OS except the *nixes, and it is pretty close to them too. (Linux 4 crashes 2 months, Be 3 crashes in 1.5 months. 1 due to the fact that I killed the app server, the other 2 due to a consistant bug in sound recorder.) And Be takes Apples refusal to help them as a sign that Apple is hostile to them. (Which they are) Linux people have an army of hackers working on LinuxPPC. Be has 100 engineers. What would be more important to you. Supporting a platform that %5 of people use and that doesn't want you or getting HW accelerated GL on an equally powerful platform (Look at the Athlon vs. G4 SPECs) that more people use? Or getting multi-user into the OS, or fixing that bug in sound recorder, or writing drivers, etc? PS. Spelling bigots point out bad spelling becuase they feel superior to you. Spelling does not really matter in this day and age as long as you get you message across.
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
Sounds like this author uses Windoze, given how a restart apparantly isn't that big of a deal to him. Sure, newer Macs startup faster than many Windows 95 PCs, but it's still a minute or two wasted.
All alpha processors support big and little endian numbers, from the first chip produced, you just flip a flag in the load/store instruction called.
Okay AMDS athlon(stupid name) is now overclockable to 1 gig. Yes I know you need extra cooling. The pentium III has also been pushed up to 1 gig. When the G3 came out they released bogus benchmarks trying to prove that it beat the pentium II. I don't believe that Gx processors are really better than x86 processors. They just go about their buisness in different ways. This whole advertismant campain from apple is just a way for them to try and convince people that the MAC is better than any thing else and that justifies apple charging way the hell more that clone pc makers do.I would be very curious to see how BEos on a really fast x86 chip would compare to the MACos on a G4.
This is incorrect.
The reason that Mac OS applications (appear to) consume less memory with virtual memory on is that enabling virtual memory allows the OS to swap out the application's code with file-mapping. With VM off, the code data must always remain resident because the MMU is inactive and thus cannot deal with page faults (accesses to inactive memory). Thus, while you have precisely the same amount of data with VM off instead of on, more of it can be paged out to disk, reducing real memory concumption (somewhat).
It's worth noting that, while with VM on, applications do use less memory, it's not as much less as the Get Info window's memory panel advertises or the About This Computer window reports. This is because some of the code has to be resident for the programs to run. However, none of the memory pages mapped to code are part of the application's heap and thus precisely zero of them are reported in heap-based memory usage statistics (such as the Finder's About This Computer window).
If you have enough RAM, though, there's no reason to run your Mac with VM on; the Mac OS has fairly static memory requirements and generally deals with memory exhaustion more reliably than UNIX applications (where not checking for null pointers is quite common). Turning it off removes one more slight performance hit.
Addressing the resource fork memory usage issue, purgable resources (and handles in general) are always purged if memory constraints are encountered. This mechanism is made possible by the wonderfully screwed up world of handle-based memory allocation.
Just be glad you don't have to make the above code pre-emptable and/or re-entrant.
- Mali
I can't afford much more than a 9 year old mildly souped up Amiga, I'd like to think of myself as a power user none-the-less. Lest it be forgotten that the only major problem with this platform (aside from its age, which isn't really a major problem) is the
'buggy closed-source shareware net application that uses a crappy non-OS GUI API movement'.
Amigans get to use G4s too!
Someone set us up the bomb, so shine we are!
Hey Cunt,
Get off the ego trip. I bet your 12.
If G4's aren't out, then why does our school have one? and why does the apple store list them as shipping/available?
There was an Alpha laptop. Check the linux laptop page.
I'm really sick of Apple apologists...
I am really sick of PC bigots jumping the gun without reading the article.
first of all, the processor is soldered down
First of all you are wrong. These things are on Zif sockets.
This is not better than Intel
Secondly this bug is affecting nobody because Motorola is delaying release. Unlike Intel which releases stuff then does field replacements.
Scherry said:
>I can't even fit the damn things in my rack mount!
There is an *elegant* rack mounting kit available for the g3 and g4 macs. Check out irack.com.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
Wow. People are crazy. The thing's already fast enough. 1.5GFLOP? My science teacher has one. I would kill for that and this is on a 600MHz PIII.
I'm sure that the original news came out in a tecnical update. As such, we don't matter, but it was probably important for this news to get to Wall St.
Ummm.... the general rule on the Mac is that you leave virtual memory on unless you really need the .5% of extra performance taken up by the overhead. As long as you're not pushing applications beyond your actual, built-in RAM, you really don't notice the speed hit, even in Photoshop.
On PowerPC Macs, having virtual memory on forces applications to leave their resource forks on disk rather than loading them into RAM. Resource forks can get mighty huge. Photoshop 5.5, for example, requires about 7000 K more RAM with VM off than it does on and I think Excel 98's RAM usage ballons by 11MB with VM off. (Then again, this is from the same company that brought us Microsoft RAM Gobbler 4.5, the web browser which, when left running for 6 hours, will suck every last bit of RAM for itself.)
Of course, I always turn VM off when doing a render :-)
----
Am I the only one who thinks Microsoft is a misnomer? Perhaps Macrosoft would be a better fit?
thanks
gracias a.c. hombre
The errors go away if you disable the cache.
Depending on the speed and version number,
you may need to totally disable the cache or
only put it in write-through mode, etc.
Higher clock speeds make the problem worse.
Higher electrical noise in the environment
makes the problem worse. (hmmm, can a Mac
take a nice stable replacement power supply?)
See, this is kind of an RF problem. There
isn't any problem with the logic.
Buggy consumer operating systems hide the
problem, just like Win95 crashes hide bad RAM.
At low clock speeds, MacOS causes most trouble.
As the clock speed goes up, the CPU itself
causes a larger fraction of the crashes.
At some point, the system is total crap.
If you want to run a Linux server on your Mac,
the problems at lower speeds will bother you.
You won't be getting the 1-year uptimes.
I'm really sick of Anonymous Coward flamebait. I mean, there is nothing remotly intelligent in your post. Kindly grab your ears and pull your head out of a dark place! (I'll leave the rest of that image up to the reader, and there is more then one way to interpret that. <g>)
Bzzzt! And our runner's up will recieve... a whack in the head! You would of been right a few years ago, but Apple has been using ZIF sockets for awhile now.
Kindly take your BS elsewhere. Thank ye.
Insert wit here.
(I can't even fit the damn things in my rack mount!)
Actually, you can. http://www.marathoncomputer.com/pr_grack.html
Indeed, another source said, this issue might never evince itself in Macs, since the OS doesn't manipulate data rapidly enough to cause the problem
Finally an advantage to the MacOS's sluggishness!
Patrick Barrett
Yebyen@adelphia.net
Restating the obvious since nineteen aught five.
Don't get too worried about the comments. MacWeek attributed the comment to "another source."
This kind of attribution means the writer didn't talk to someone worth naming. Had the comment been from Apple or Motorola, it would have been attributed that way. Evidently, the "information" came from:
1) someone at the MacWeek watercooler
2) someone on IRC or comp.sys.mac.geek.at.home
3) a bum on the street (there's lots in SF)
4) the writer's kid
MacWeek frequently attributes quotes to nobody in such a way as to make it sound authoritarian. (e.g. "according to sources close to Apple"--what the hell does that mean? Nothing!)
Don't put too much stock into journalism. It's just an exercise in creative writing to fill pages.
Unfortunately even if he DID moderate me down, I've inked a deal similar to the one Bruce Perens has with Rob to have some code changed in slashdot. Namely:
if(strcmp(poster->name,"Signal 11") == 0 || strcmp(poster->name,"Bruce Perens) == 0){
poster->karma++;
}
:^) Yup, and I would have gotten away with it too had it not been for these meddling ACs!
--
Strange, I too have tried the Type1-in-the-2300 trick, but I managed to pull off about 15 minutes. Still thought it was kinda funny. Anyhow, I like the trakball of my older duo moreso than the trackpad on the 2300.
You do have a point somewhat. However, please realize that it is also entirely possible that this person really is telling the truth. It is highly like that said person did have moderator right under his or her account. However, in order to post the flame, they went to another computer or logged in differently on the same computer. Hence, when they posted, the Slashdot software didn't recognize the person as having an account and the AC post.
Oops!
In my post above I said that "the press release was bad."
The truth is, it wasn't a press release, just an article on MacWEEK. Not quite the same thing.
Now I'm off to find a chalkboard on which to write "I will get my facts straight before insulting someone for not having his straight" a few hundred times...
Insert wit here.
article. Have you never noticed the button labeled "Log Out" on the "Post Comment" screen?
Simply selecting the "post anonymously" checkbox won't allow you to moderate and post in the same article. However, logging out does allow such a thing. I've done it.
Learn a bit about how Slashdot works and you will learn these things!
I guess the fellow does have a point, it's painful seeing all these "..." subjects, usually with no real content attached, always moderated up to 5. It reaffirms the dream of a Slashdot killfile!!
This 11 fellow is already violating at least one of the rules that he sees every time he posts: "use a clear subject that describes what your message is about." Hardly a role-model for the community.
Maybe someday, arrogant bastards won't be moderated up for being arrogant bastards, moderation won't be based on popularity, and moderation WILL be based on whether or not someone has something productive to say. Maybe someday, people will learn humility, people will learn to serve others before they serve themselves, people will learn that character is one's greatest asset, that hurting others is wrong, and that there's no "i" in "Slashdot Comment System"
Yeah, right!
Here are some benchmarks for a G4 vs PIII vs AMD:
Intel SE440BX2 Motherboard (600mhz)
Specfp95: 15.9
SpecInt95: 24.0
Microstar MS-6167 mainboard, (650 mhz)
Specfp95: 22.6
SpecInt95: 29.4
Motorola G4 (450mhz) (Actually couldn't find exact specs but this is what I recall from somewhere:
Specfp95: ~23
SpecInt95: ~23
Note that the G4 specs aren't exact and that neither the AMD specs nor the G4 specs are for their fastest processor (450 & 650 mhz).
This 500 mhz cap is due to a bug with the Motorla G4, and involves a cache concurrency bug. In shipping proccesors, they have disabled a few features in order to keep this bug from cropping up in sub 500mhz systems. For whatever reasons, the fixes don't work on 500mhz or greater systems. They are planning a fix for this problem, so obviously it doesn't have to do with random noise that they have no clue about. Get a clue before you post so called inside information.
I have only one thing to say as with any new and possibly revolutionary way of doing things there is definately goong to be some problem that needs to be fixed. I say thats its no big deal everynew peice of hardware has a design problem sometimes you just dont find out about it. -CyberVenom2K
Yeah, this isn't new, Macs have been locking up for years. That's why I don't use them. ;P
by Mike Buddha -- Someday the mountain might get him, but the law never will.
Just because Intel chips tend to run at the highest clock speeds does not mean that they are the fastest. Chips such as the G4, Alpha and UltraSparc are much more superscalar in their design than the Pentium in all its flavours. The Pentium wastes acres of silicon on instruction decode units that take x86 instructions and effectivly compile them into an unknown RISC intruction set that can be handled by the core. The Pentium also does things like out of order execution. The Alpha and the UltraSparc don't waste silicon on this and do all the optimisation at compile time. This make the compilers harder to write but increases performance. The current crop of G4 Macs are crippled by an out of date operating system. I am willing to bet that a G4 based Mac running OS X Workstation (when it eventually appears) will smoke an equivalently clocked PIII/Win2000 box. I know that compiling a falrly large C project of mine takes about half the time on a 333MHz Ultra 5 under Solaris 7 as it does on a PIII 350 running Solaris 7 x86. P
Like the processor cards in previous powermacs, the sawtooth's board's processor card uses a series of surface mount resistors to set the clock speed. It's only a matter of time before there's a published list of speeds and settings for those savvy with a fine-tipped soldering iron. The group of overclocked 350+ MHz 604e and PowerBook G3 series users knows what I'm talking about. :)
Back when computers first started coming around,
:> This makes me
lockups and crashes were adamantly avoided at all
costs. Even today it's a vital role and is the way OS's should be designed.
This blatant statement:
Indeed, another source said, this issue might never evince itself in Macs, since the OS doesn't manipulate data rapidly enough to cause the problem -- the glitch
would more likely effect more-efficient embedded operating systems. Even if data corruption should occur, a source said, the result would be nothing more than a
system freeze, easily fixed with a restart.
Makes me sick to hear as it's read by people
who don't know better (having used buggy OS's for years)
and take it as a norm, thus compounding the problem
of getting companies to write apps and OS's that DON'T
crash every time you turn around.
I LIKE setting up a server, firewall, workstation
what have you and having it run for a year without
a re-boot.
I find it ridiculous that a popular OS must be rebooted
every other time a new program is installed.
Fortunately things are starting to turn around.
Linux (for me) is becoming more and more viable as
an alternative every day. Why.. it's been a week
since I had to boot into lose98.
quite happy.
OSS clone of QuickBooks/Quicken, anyone?
Please??!!
Friends don't let friends buy Compaq's. (Dell/Gateway... same same) You want a good computer? Build it yourself.
while i can appreciate that motorola actually admits when it has a problem, i don't think it's too much to ask that a company use conventional words in describing the problem...this is not an "outstanding performance issue", nor is it an "errata" (who dug that word out of its grave?) it's a bug, or at least an error. slowing a processor down is not a "workaround"...it's a defective product...just admit it and move on.
Ohh, just great, I can see the marketing now...
"PowerMacintosh G4 Server, based on MacOS X Server, this computer will power your workgroup, webserver, and more!... (small print) Use of G4 processor will hinder performance and cause crashes."
Heck, who needs a vector unit in their processor anyway... Power3 and PowerPC 604e forever!
I was hoping there for a second that Jobs would announce that OS XI would ported to Alpha and that the Alpha would be the official Mac processor. Though I can easily get along with my G3 powerbook and my PII Linux desktop. Where is the best place to get a cheap Alpha workstation that costs $2500?
Heh. PowerPC chips are bi-endian too, actually support 3 modes... big endian, little endian, and a pseudo mode in-between. Pseudo mode simply reverses the bit order, rather than byte order.
Yes, it's changable via a simple flag switch (meant to allow emulation, so task switching can easily put the processor in the right mode).
Heh. Talking about 50W processors... I used to remember when the Pentium MMX came out, several manufacturers put the *real* chip in, not the "mobile" version.
I think it's time to optimize the x86 so they don't draw so much power, on the processing-power/electrical-power ratio.
For those interested in benchmarks, here are some SPEC numbers from motorola for a 450Mhz G4:
21.4 SPECint95
20.4 SPECfp95
For those who care they claim typical power dissipation of 5W @ 400Mhz.
For comparison a Pentium III @ 500Mhz:
20.6 SPECint95
15.1 SPECfp95
So the integer performance looks comparable and floating point is better for G4.
One of the big features of the G4 that doesn't show in these benchmarks is the altivec simd/vector unit. There are no standard benchmarks I am aware of for extensions like these (or MMX/SSE/3DNOW). Apple has posted some results here that compare Pentium III/SSE @ 600Mhz to G4/altivec @ 500Mhz and show the G4 to be 3X faster on this subset:
http://www.apple.com/powermac/processor.html
Obviously YMMV but for some algorithms altivec is much faster than the Intel SIMD unit.
Forgetting about the Macs for a while (I can't even fit the damn things in my rack mount!), this delay will likely also delay the availability of really fast inexpensive PowerPC boxes based on the spec that IBM released and several manufacturers are (or expect to be) working on.
From a software development and architecture view, I much prefer the Motorola product line to Intel's. Its so much cleaner and IBM/Motorola have really taken a lot of the best ideas and put them into a single core without having to carry the baggage of the 8088 along with them.
The availability of Linux for the new platforms will make platform-independence a critical decision point from a marketing perspective. To translate for you Anti-BillGates types, this means that Windows will likely start losing serious marketshare as they're really tied into the Intel architecture and other proprietary PC technologies that Linux can pretty much ignore. If you're a commercial software developer and you have to decide what OS to write for, Linux starts looking all the more attractive if you see customers buying up those PowerPC boxes.
> This is true ASSUMING you can get the machine to ;-)
> run for more than 10 minutes on a battery.
I have a Powerbook Duo 2300 that has a 603e at 100Mhz that lasts about 3 miniutes on its battery. Granted it is a Type I battery that was manufactured in 1992 and that type of battery that is not supposed to work very long in the 2300 anyway.
Impersonating Tycho from Penny Arcade since before there was a PA.
Why all the fuss over a stupid comment? Alpha and PowerPC (at least Apple's packaging of the G3/G4) have widely disparate audiences...
Alpha's target market requires extremely high performance, 64-bit addressing and very wide memory bandwidth. Desktop PC's do not have these requirements though DEC ensured rather comprehensive compatibility with ISA/PCI, AT and ATX on their uni-processor logic boards.
Apple (G3/G4 PowerPC) targets a completely different market. They produce an easy-to-use OS and idiot-proof hardware for first-time/non-technical users. These users do not require nor care for extreme CPU performance, 64-bit addressing or wide memory bandwidth. Until recently, they did not demand standards-based components and were content with the convenience and additional expense or NuBus and ADB.
For that matter, x86 users also fall into the latter category so far as requirements are concerned though the nearly-dead platform carries many legacy annoyances that Apple's hardware doesn't.
Use the right tool for the job at hand.
First I'm not a pc lover, i'd love an Alpha if obtaining one did not require selling all of my organs. Second I don't run windows, My dual pII box, dual boots linux and beos. Okay; now why do mac lovers always defend apple? Apple is a closed, proprietary company that controls hardware and software. They over charge and squeeze money out of mac people. In my opinion apple has made some really dumbass mistakes; for instance BEos was going to be apples new os, Jobs came back and blew BE off, very dumb. BEos is far more advanced than the MACos. BE is fully smp(up tp 8 processors), fully multi-threaded, and has a journaled file system. The MACos has none of these. Now apple won't even let BE port BEos to the new macs. Apple knows that BEos is way better than the MACos and they are trying to prevent it from running on the new Gx processors. Bash Intel all you want but Intel sent a whole gang of engineers over to BE to help get BEos running on Intel silicon. As for the Gx processors; If they were as cheap as Intel or AMD silicon i would use them. Maybey now that IBM is giving the specs away for a Gx processor motherboard that fits standard atx cases i might get the chance(assuming that BE is able to then port to the Gx processors) Oh yeah one more thing, for editing video or audio BEos beats the MACos.
Typical Slashdot reaction -- anything remotely bad happens to Apple and it's immediately Apple's fault. Steve Jobs could have a cold and, by gawd, Apple is going to go down the crapper.
Let's look at this at face value, okay?
I'm not saying that this isn't a bad thing -- just saying that everyone is making it out to be far worse than it actually is.
----
Am I the only one who thinks Microsoft is a misnomer? Perhaps Macrosoft would be a better fit?
I'm one of the mac idiots. While other ppl in my groupt are bitching about i/o problems, I get to bitch about problems with linuxppc. I think that I'm winning the battle as linuxppc is pretty good if you have prior experience with linux. However, just mentioning that using a PowerPC chip based system makes ppl that I have to work with, want to puke.
Of course, the enemy of my enemy is my friend, may play a role in all of this.
Can you document that this is the cause of the bug?
To quote the Beastie Boys, "Where'd ya get your information from? Yeah..."
I work in publishing, and we're about to switch from our ultrareliable Solaris/Unix typsetting system to the *Dreaded* NT...
So in a few months, when we have to pick up the pieces again, is there any good Linux Typsetting software (*free*) besides xemacs?
Sign me up!
Personally, I'm waiting for a fast G4 notebook to run Linux On.
I don't recall when my Indy or SS5 were last rebooted, they just work. (And thankfully have a good UPS!). Shame that SGI is stingy with IRIX, I wouldn't mind having 6.5, though 6.2 hasn't been bad. I do like paying $20 for solaris media, though.
And why the **** would the processors need to be replaced???
Hello, people, hello.....
This only affects the 500MHz version which is not shipping yet. And it won't ship until the problem is resolved!
Mod down posts with a "Free Mac Mini/iPod" sig, they're spam!
What suprises me is that they haven't had more problems!
--
"Apple did not return telephone calls requesting comment."
:)
Ofcourse, They wont return the calls, not when their lethal weapon turns out to be a pea shooter
--
While I probably shouldn't respond, I will anyways.
A LOT more goes into selecting a microprocessor than mere performance benchmarks:
In this case, Apple was migrating from M68k's. A big-endian processor. Both x86 and Alpha are little endian and while Alpha (at least the newer ones) can mode switch to bid-endian. I doubt that DEC's chipset didn't support it. More cost there.
Also, DEC doesn't have the fab capacity to meet Apple's demand - not even close.
Thirdly, Apple kindof wants to have a notebook presence. Putting a 50watt chip in a notebook would likely yield several McDonald's-like lawsuits.
Tom
Even if data corruption should occur, a source said, the result would be nothing more than a system freeze, easily fixed with a restart.
Windows users could get very used to this.
if(!toilet_paper) roll.replace(new roll);
On a peeeeceeeee (w/ 64 MB ram) I can open 100 photoshop files w/o having to worry about it. Virtual memory on a DOS based OS is much smoother than on Mac. By turning virtual memory on on a Mac I take a HUGE performance hit. I *hate* mac virtual memory.
- A.P.
--
"One World, one Web, one Program" - Microsoft promotional ad
"Remember when the U.S. had a drug problem, and then we declared a War On Drugs, and now you can't buy drugs anymore?"
- Apple also has 3 finger salute 'ya know.
shut your 14 yr old ass, cock fiend
Geeze!
Out of all the postings with a rating of >2, only two weren't flamebait or some stupid "Apple should build a Alpha/K7/Whatever chip computer" comments.
Okay, here are my idiotic comments. Can I have a +5, please?:
Come on, at least they are midly amusing!
Hmmm, i dont think doomy ment that as a flaimbait? If you guys seen Apple's new adds, I think you know what he ment!
I'm not being sarcastic, this is a valid question. What makes these "supercomputing macs" so great that they're worth paying more for than a pc with equal processing power?
One question: have you used a G4/anything to use, oh, YellowDog Linux, and oh, maybe run the RC5 client? These things are fast. K7/700 would be nice, but the G4 is still a serious contender even at the K7s higher clock speed. And how is the Apple processor card different from current Intel Processor Modules (the ones the size of VHS videos)? You can't open them unless you void the warranty, and the Pentium is soldered onto the board in those too. Apple processor cards aren't any different.