Slashdot Mirror
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. "
← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)
← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)
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.
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.)
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.
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.
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.
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.
Megahertz is a poor measurement of speed. It's not even valid when comparing Celeron to Pentium III, much less between chip families from very differnt designs, like the PPC 7400 and x86.
In addition, mindless Mhz comparision fails to take into consideration things like different operating systems, application quality and the design of the surrounding PC hardware system.
The fact the x86 processors have higher clock speeds isn't useful in itself. Apple has frequently advertised various other measurements that the idiot public hasn't paid much attention to. Besides the BYTEmarks the PC-lovers love to hate, you can take a look at:
a) independant testing that shows Mac users are more effecient that Windows users because the OS is more consistant and easier to use.
b) Intel benchmarks that Apple ran against the new G4s. Mostly Photoshop filters, which the G4's Velocity Engine is best at, that whomp the PIII. (Look at apples' G4 web pages).
Because the idiot public would rather rely on megahertz, Apple now is pushing PPC development to higher clock speeds rather than just higher performance (note they are not the same goal).
Of course, the Wintel group can boast faster speed in certain areas due to flaws in the MacOS. Or features: Windows is often faster at file system "Finder" work, because it isn't managing a desktop database of metadata, doesn't handle resource forks, and doesn't calculate the size of directories. This speed trade off means you lose much of the Mac feel and features of the Finder. But it's marginally faster.
Apple can charge more because they're doing more. They sell a whole product, not just clone a basic design and outsource the software to Microsoft. In turn, you have a richer system that's less crapped together. It's suprising that Macs aren't more; this is another result of the idiot public buying only by price, not by quality. Imagine if the BMW M3 was within 10% of the price of the Ford Escort. What would you drive?
I'd like to see BeOS on both x86 and G4 for comparison. Comparing two OS on the two chips is already doable, and pointless as a hardware comparision.
Compare Mac Word98 to Win Word2000. Then compare QuickTime4 on the PC and Mac. That's interesting.
Then compare FinalCut Pro on the Mac to... the PC just sitting there overclocked to 1000Mhz creating heat. Task: edit video. The Mac wins!
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.
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?
What suprises me is that they haven't had more problems!
--
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