I'm in an x86 assembly class right now, so I can tell you what you've said is true. I'm not expert on x86 or assembly in general (I studied 68k and a little PPC assembly years ago). Changing registers through a buffer overflow is a bit of a big deal, as those reside on the processor and not in memory. At this point, however, they haven't been able to change any registers which control program flow, so *for now* things are fine (as far as execution of arbitrary code is concerned).
Hmm.. I do see your point a little clearer now. There are a ton of variables to this however, such as will Apple boxes run Windows? If they dont' then the argument about having tons of availible software goes out the window (no pun intended). Unless you feel like running something like WINE on OS X, a Mac doesn't have the API nessisary to run the thousands of software titles availible, and so then, back to square one: What's the point of buying a Mac?
Furthermore, a switch to an x86 chip means for any apps to be decent (i.e. run without emulation), they'd need to be recompiled and reworked, the registers are different on x86 and there are fewer of them, there are big- vs. little-endian issues, etc. Software developers just made the leap to Mac OS X, slowly I might add. How long did it take to get decent programs running on Windows XP? Not that long. Major apps didn't begin to show face on Mac OS X for quite some time, imagine if now after all that hard work and re-training of Mac software engeneers to bring their products to OS X, Apple again slams them and says "Ok, you have to work with x86 now." I think that alone would do Apple in.
Also, supposing Apple boxes could run Windows, that would pretty much make Mac OS X need to comply to a standard x86 motherboard spec, which in turn would allow Mac OS X to run on any commodity PC. There go hardware sales, as Apple's prices remain high as they need to fund this 3rd major time-of-transition. Going head-to-head wth Microsoft might not exactly be the best idea until Apple is a little more firmly settled with their current offerings.
Yes, I admit, it's all speculation at this point, knowing exactly what IBM comes up with will be a great factor. I really wish there was some kind of official word on this, they must know everyone is itching to know about it.
I just feel that while it may be a gigantic boon to Apple to move to x86, it may also be complete suicide. They'll have Marklar to back them up if it ever becomes a nessesity, but if it happens I'm sure we won't see it for at least 5 years.
Couple of things...first, the IBM chip is at least a year away from complete development
We know this. It's also in the article. No one said anythign about expecting it tommorow.
Secondly, as I understand it, this particular PPC will have four processor cores on each die with a scalability of eight--meaning it could be run in dual cpu configurations.
Up to four. First runs will be (single and?) dual from what I unserstand. This will make them nice for dual processor applications.
How this will fit into Apple's plans is beyond guessing at this point. Just because something is called "PPC" is no reason to think it will easily work within the Mac architecture.
Maybe it will fit in nicely because Apple just redesigned ther system controller/bus scheme, and all G4 Towers are dual processor now? And yes, is something is called PPC it can be made to work with a Mac. You're thinking of Power4. Power4!=PowerPC. Power4 was developed by IBM, and was the chip Apple "zealots" where oogling over last time Motorola began to fail us. PowerPC was developed jointly by Apple, IBM, and Motorola. It was based heavily on IBM's POWER RISC designs, but size, speed, and lower cost where added, along with AltiVec.
Last time it was size, expense, heat and lack of AltiVec which nixed Apple's use of IBM's PPC.
...I'd rather they go to AMD's upcoming Hammer, provided...
"Just because something is called "PPC" is no reason to think it will easily work within the Mac architecture.", yet Apple will with much more ease, convert its entire motherboard specs over to x86 and convince developers to make ANOTHER giant platform leap right after we're just getting near the end of this OS9->OSX fiasco? That's pretty much suicide.
It ought to easily outperfom a P4 and it would give Apple 64-bit capability (great for the corporate server market) when and if Apple might want to use it.
Or they could use the new chip which you STILL havent' read about, which will be 64-Bits.
I hate the blind x86 fans who are just like the journalists mentioned in my previous post. It's not a good move for Apple to use the x86 architecture, or any of it's near-future alternatives. Even if you had Mac-only boxen, someone out there would somehow hack Mac OS X to run on a PC. Then it woudlbe over, no one woudl buy Apple hardware. People would buy cheap boxes for Windows, Linux, or the "cracked for the other 95%" Mac OS X. And then you can say goodbye Apple.
Plus the PowerPC architecture is much more reasonably organized than x86 is (Contiguous memory which is soon to be 64-bit, big-endian, better piplining, TONS of registers, both general purpose and floating, less pwoer, less heat, etc.)
I'm not a zelot because I won't jump on your bandwagon.
Not that I disagree with you, but 68k emulation was not that slow. 68k to PPC was a relatively easy transition. OS9 to OS X has been much more difficult.
So what happens when you take your "Mac" copy of Photoshop and try and run it on an Apple x86 box? Does it fork into an Intel binary, or is there going to be an additional layer of emulation to further slow it down?
It would have to be emulated, processor opcodes are not identical, or else Macs would already run Windows natevely and you'd all be installing Mac OS X on your Athlon 2200 boxen.
Ok Ok, so it's a Mac OS X thing, so what? How long before M$ innovates this feature into Windows? How long before it's patched into XFree86?
Think of all the cool things you can do, both for visual pleasure and UI functionality by operating in an accelerated, 3D enviroment, while the main CPU is free to crunch away at whatever it is you have your CPU doing, thus improving overall speed. Yes, I realize the CPU still has to intruct the card of what to do, but at least we're not blitting as we're trying to host web pages, for example.
For that you're going to need texture memory. Lots of texture memory. When you run out of memory on the card, the framebuffers must be stored in RAM. When those framebuffers are needed, you'll need to swap them into the card's RAM. This will cause the main CPU to stutter as it pumps a couple 8-9MB buffers through the system & PCI bus, which, needless to say, will get old fast, especially if the framebuffers get paged out to a swap file. Yuck!
Of course, maybe you should wait until the other 2 of the Big Three implement this in some form (I know some work as been done on a 3D window manager for X, no idea if it's meant to take advantage of acceleration, though). I've heard rumor that M$ is working on it for Windows XP(ensive) 2005 or 6 or whatever it is, and I'm sure some Linux hacker has it working on his overclocked Athlon box already. Either way, you probably want to be ready for this. Or wait and buy a card when it finally happens, when 128MB will be standard.
Since color depths will probably never exceed 48-bit (32-bit + alpha), screen resolutions are fine at 2???X???? or whatever the current highest is, it'd take quite a few windows open at once to framebuffer all that memory up. Assuming about 8 megs per window, which is admittedly above average for most windows (sans Photoshop or web browsers), you'd get about 14 or 15 windows open at once.
Oh well, someday, you'll be sorry your card doesn't have 512MB on-board:-D
Hahaha, not "Fellowship of the Cock Ring", or "Lord of the Circle (Jerk)", the one with Elijah Wood...damn that still doesnt' narrow it down does it?
All the pr0n actors just used his name as-is.
I cna't wait to see what they come up with after "Two Towers" is released (hm heh heh), although I'd prefer some straight pr0n. I'm just going to shut up now.
An attorney for the consortium of technology companies that developed the 5C copy-protection technology said just the opposite is true. He says rules are designed to reflect home use -- while addressing piracy fears that prevent Hollywood from releasing more high-quality content.
Hollywood doesn't realize that piracy is rampant right now because it's not worth paying for the good-quality copy. They're very foolishly making a chicken-and-egg problem out of this when they dont' need to be: Consumers say "If you don't make quality stuff we'll just pirate it because it's not worth paying for." and Hollywood says "We're not going to make quality stuff if consumers aren't going to pay for it.
To put it more simply, I paid for "Fellowship of the Ring". I downloaded "Dude, Where's My Car?"
If you're running MacOS 9 with IE, don't even kid yourself, that's not browsing. That takes longer than Photoshop rendering (no lie).
Especially tables. The worst part is it locks the machine in MacOS 9. I click on/. "Read More..." links and go take a healthy dump and it's still not ready when I get back. Then all my AIM windows scroll out of control due to messages building up. Since that sucked up memory for all the incomming packets that needed to be saves while my machine was frozen, AIM bites the big one and then takes IE and the rest of the system with it.
Netscape, on the other hand, has a sluggish UI but at least it doesn't lock down my system durring such routine tasks as page rendering.
Sometimes I wonder if Microsoft does it on purpose...
The P4 2.8GHz and the Xeon 2.4GHz are the ONLY 2 chips on CPU Scorecard which are ranked above the G4 1.25GHz.
Heeyyy...Imagine that! Now imagine if Motorola got off their ass and upped the G4's clock speed to 2.8GHz. You'd be blown away. Man I can't wait until the mythical^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H G5 comes out and wipes that smug little x86 grin off your faces.
If a G4 at less than half the clock speed of a P4 can still keep that close in the grand scheme of things, then you, sir, are talking out your ass with a megaphone.
...the first set of THESE (.)(.) where seen on a computer screen! Spend $50 million on researching THAT, M$FT!
(Ironically enough, to make that "bodicon" appear correctly on/. I have to use the <TT> tag...pronounce by spelling)
And one for the road ->:-)
Re:When users attack... Themselves
on
When Users Attack
·
· Score: 2
Ahhh god damn, 90V AC? That explained the ringing in my ears....
Re:When users attack... Themselves
on
When Users Attack
·
· Score: 2
I was rewiring the phone in my house because the cable drop in the basement was a total disaster. 2400bps had line noise problems.
Figures, red wire/green wire both touching skin of same hand.
Phone rings. Ouch.
(For those who are unaware IIRC a normal phone carrier is +5V, and a ring signal is +40V, if I am wrong please correct me it's been a while with phone stuff, but I def. felt it that day.)
Maybe Lucas is employing some kind of "invasion of the science museums" idea with this, but in reality, they're the only place to find an IMAX screen within 300 miles, and science museums (the one in Boston, actually) are the ONLY place I've ever seen the dome-shaped screen in. THAT is an experience, I actually got motion sickness there once, and I'm usually very strong stomached.
Dont' get me wrong, I'm sure they said "Hey! When we convert to IMAX we can flood the museums with our merchandising crap too!" but I would imagine the availibility of screen space is the key to this move.
P.S. Isn't Star Wars a form of modern mythology? Certainly enough people are into it to quialify it somewhat. I'm not sure it should be "pushed" on a museum however...
Slashdot Mirror
Red Monkeys Gather Plastic Tricycles
Same reason there isn't just one distro, or there is even Linux in the first place:
Choice.
Besides, since you're pretty much -1 Flamebait after the first paragraph, I'm not even sure why I bothered to make sure to bring this point up...
I'm in an x86 assembly class right now, so I can tell you what you've said is true. I'm not expert on x86 or assembly in general (I studied 68k and a little PPC assembly years ago). Changing registers through a buffer overflow is a bit of a big deal, as those reside on the processor and not in memory. At this point, however, they haven't been able to change any registers which control program flow, so *for now* things are fine (as far as execution of arbitrary code is concerned).
How is this even close to -1 Offtopic? If you can't mod correctly, don't mod at all.
Bunch of trolls with mod points around here...<GRUMBLE>
'While I agree that this is really a bit of a scam, it is a way for us to pay salaries while not adversely affecting our users.'
No, not +5 Funny.
Fer Chrissake, it's FRAUD!
+5 Insightful.
Hmm.. I do see your point a little clearer now. There are a ton of variables to this however, such as will Apple boxes run Windows? If they dont' then the argument about having tons of availible software goes out the window (no pun intended). Unless you feel like running something like WINE on OS X, a Mac doesn't have the API nessisary to run the thousands of software titles availible, and so then, back to square one: What's the point of buying a Mac?
Furthermore, a switch to an x86 chip means for any apps to be decent (i.e. run without emulation), they'd need to be recompiled and reworked, the registers are different on x86 and there are fewer of them, there are big- vs. little-endian issues, etc. Software developers just made the leap to Mac OS X, slowly I might add. How long did it take to get decent programs running on Windows XP? Not that long. Major apps didn't begin to show face on Mac OS X for quite some time, imagine if now after all that hard work and re-training of Mac software engeneers to bring their products to OS X, Apple again slams them and says "Ok, you have to work with x86 now." I think that alone would do Apple in.
Also, supposing Apple boxes could run Windows, that would pretty much make Mac OS X need to comply to a standard x86 motherboard spec, which in turn would allow Mac OS X to run on any commodity PC. There go hardware sales, as Apple's prices remain high as they need to fund this 3rd major time-of-transition. Going head-to-head wth Microsoft might not exactly be the best idea until Apple is a little more firmly settled with their current offerings.
Yes, I admit, it's all speculation at this point, knowing exactly what IBM comes up with will be a great factor. I really wish there was some kind of official word on this, they must know everyone is itching to know about it.
I just feel that while it may be a gigantic boon to Apple to move to x86, it may also be complete suicide. They'll have Marklar to back them up if it ever becomes a nessesity, but if it happens I'm sure we won't see it for at least 5 years.
RTFA.
...I'd rather they go to AMD's upcoming Hammer, provided...
Couple of things...first, the IBM chip is at least a year away from complete development
We know this. It's also in the article. No one said anythign about expecting it tommorow.
Secondly, as I understand it, this particular PPC will have four processor cores on each die with a scalability of eight--meaning it could be run in dual cpu configurations.
Up to four. First runs will be (single and?) dual from what I unserstand. This will make them nice for dual processor applications.
How this will fit into Apple's plans is beyond guessing at this point. Just because something is called "PPC" is no reason to think it will easily work within the Mac architecture.
Maybe it will fit in nicely because Apple just redesigned ther system controller/bus scheme, and all G4 Towers are dual processor now? And yes, is something is called PPC it can be made to work with a Mac. You're thinking of Power4. Power4!=PowerPC. Power4 was developed by IBM, and was the chip Apple "zealots" where oogling over last time Motorola began to fail us. PowerPC was developed jointly by Apple, IBM, and Motorola. It was based heavily on IBM's POWER RISC designs, but size, speed, and lower cost where added, along with AltiVec.
Last time it was size, expense, heat and lack of AltiVec which nixed Apple's use of IBM's PPC.
No, It was Power4.
What will it be this time?
Well since they're WORKING TOGETHER ON IT, it should probably be nothing, right?
"Just because something is called "PPC" is no reason to think it will easily work within the Mac architecture.", yet Apple will with much more ease, convert its entire motherboard specs over to x86 and convince developers to make ANOTHER giant platform leap right after we're just getting near the end of this OS9->OSX fiasco? That's pretty much suicide.
It ought to easily outperfom a P4 and it would give Apple 64-bit capability (great for the corporate server market) when and if Apple might want to use it.
Or they could use the new chip which you STILL havent' read about, which will be 64-Bits.
I hate the blind x86 fans who are just like the journalists mentioned in my previous post. It's not a good move for Apple to use the x86 architecture, or any of it's near-future alternatives. Even if you had Mac-only boxen, someone out there would somehow hack Mac OS X to run on a PC. Then it woudlbe over, no one woudl buy Apple hardware. People would buy cheap boxes for Windows, Linux, or the "cracked for the other 95%" Mac OS X. And then you can say goodbye Apple.
Plus the PowerPC architecture is much more reasonably organized than x86 is (Contiguous memory which is soon to be 64-bit, big-endian, better piplining, TONS of registers, both general purpose and floating, less pwoer, less heat, etc.)
I'm not a zelot because I won't jump on your bandwagon.
Not that I disagree with you, but 68k emulation was not that slow. 68k to PPC was a relatively easy transition. OS9 to OS X has been much more difficult.
So what happens when you take your "Mac" copy of Photoshop and try and run it on an Apple x86 box? Does it fork into an Intel binary, or is there going to be an additional layer of emulation to further slow it down?
It would have to be emulated, processor opcodes are not identical, or else Macs would already run Windows natevely and you'd all be installing Mac OS X on your Athlon 2200 boxen.
Apple and IBM Team Up on 64-Bit Processor
Um, yea, I doubt that's for sh*ts and giggles...
I can't stand when journalism is blind to the fact that the SOLE reason the x86 architecture is popular is due to PRICE.
You need to turn on HTML formatting or the tags get stripped out, methinks.
<BLINK>:-)</BLINK>
Yes, that's exactly what Quartz Extreme does. It really makes a difference, espeically when you have a lot going on in the GUI.
:-(
I wish i had a video card worthy of trying this out on
Quartz Extreme.
:-D
Ok Ok, so it's a Mac OS X thing, so what? How long before M$ innovates this feature into Windows? How long before it's patched into XFree86?
Think of all the cool things you can do, both for visual pleasure and UI functionality by operating in an accelerated, 3D enviroment, while the main CPU is free to crunch away at whatever it is you have your CPU doing, thus improving overall speed. Yes, I realize the CPU still has to intruct the card of what to do, but at least we're not blitting as we're trying to host web pages, for example.
For that you're going to need texture memory. Lots of texture memory. When you run out of memory on the card, the framebuffers must be stored in RAM. When those framebuffers are needed, you'll need to swap them into the card's RAM. This will cause the main CPU to stutter as it pumps a couple 8-9MB buffers through the system & PCI bus, which, needless to say, will get old fast, especially if the framebuffers get paged out to a swap file. Yuck!
Of course, maybe you should wait until the other 2 of the Big Three implement this in some form (I know some work as been done on a 3D window manager for X, no idea if it's meant to take advantage of acceleration, though). I've heard rumor that M$ is working on it for Windows XP(ensive) 2005 or 6 or whatever it is, and I'm sure some Linux hacker has it working on his overclocked Athlon box already. Either way, you probably want to be ready for this. Or wait and buy a card when it finally happens, when 128MB will be standard.
Since color depths will probably never exceed 48-bit (32-bit + alpha), screen resolutions are fine at 2???X???? or whatever the current highest is, it'd take quite a few windows open at once to framebuffer all that memory up. Assuming about 8 megs per window, which is admittedly above average for most windows (sans Photoshop or web browsers), you'd get about 14 or 15 windows open at once.
Oh well, someday, you'll be sorry your card doesn't have 512MB on-board
Hahaha, not "Fellowship of the Cock Ring", or "Lord of the Circle (Jerk)", the one with Elijah Wood...damn that still doesnt' narrow it down does it?
All the pr0n actors just used his name as-is.
I cna't wait to see what they come up with after "Two Towers" is released (hm heh heh), although I'd prefer some straight pr0n. I'm just going to shut up now.
And in the real world, if you don't like it, you have the freedom to move.
So where do we go when the whole Internet becomes like this? AOL?
Yes, good point. The VCD made a good frisbee though. :-D
An attorney for the consortium of technology companies that developed the 5C copy-protection technology said just the opposite is true. He says rules are designed to reflect home use -- while addressing piracy fears that prevent Hollywood from releasing more high-quality content.
Hollywood doesn't realize that piracy is rampant right now because it's not worth paying for the good-quality copy. They're very foolishly making a chicken-and-egg problem out of this when they dont' need to be: Consumers say "If you don't make quality stuff we'll just pirate it because it's not worth paying for." and Hollywood says "We're not going to make quality stuff if consumers aren't going to pay for it.
To put it more simply, I paid for "Fellowship of the Ring". I downloaded "Dude, Where's My Car?"
Mozilla.
/. "Read More..." links and go take a healthy dump and it's still not ready when I get back. Then all my AIM windows scroll out of control due to messages building up. Since that sucked up memory for all the incomming packets that needed to be saves while my machine was frozen, AIM bites the big one and then takes IE and the rest of the system with it.
If you're running MacOS 9 with IE, don't even kid yourself, that's not browsing. That takes longer than Photoshop rendering (no lie).
Especially tables. The worst part is it locks the machine in MacOS 9. I click on
Netscape, on the other hand, has a sluggish UI but at least it doesn't lock down my system durring such routine tasks as page rendering.
Sometimes I wonder if Microsoft does it on purpose...
DAMMIT 4 minutes of running to stop my dinner from burning and I'm -1 Redundant.
:-D
Oh well, props.
...to "Legolas"
The P4 2.8GHz and the Xeon 2.4GHz are the ONLY 2 chips on CPU Scorecard which are ranked above the G4 1.25GHz.
Heeyyy...Imagine that! Now imagine if Motorola got off their ass and upped the G4's clock speed to 2.8GHz. You'd be blown away. Man I can't wait until the mythical^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H G5 comes out and wipes that smug little x86 grin off your faces.
If a G4 at less than half the clock speed of a P4 can still keep that close in the grand scheme of things, then you, sir, are talking out your ass with a megaphone.
...the first set of THESE (.)(.) where seen on a computer screen! Spend $50 million on researching THAT, M$FT!
(Ironically enough, to make that "bodicon" appear correctly on
And one for the road ->
Ahhh god damn, 90V AC? That explained the ringing in my ears....
I was rewiring the phone in my house because the cable drop in the basement was a total disaster. 2400bps had line noise problems.
Figures, red wire/green wire both touching skin of same hand.
Phone rings. Ouch.
(For those who are unaware IIRC a normal phone carrier is +5V, and a ring signal is +40V, if I am wrong please correct me it's been a while with phone stuff, but I def. felt it that day.)
If Netscape dies [will] the dragon that it spawned burn Redmond?
Unlikely, but I can dream, can't I?
Sorry to be so blunt, but honestly.
Maybe Lucas is employing some kind of "invasion of the science museums" idea with this, but in reality, they're the only place to find an IMAX screen within 300 miles, and science museums (the one in Boston, actually) are the ONLY place I've ever seen the dome-shaped screen in. THAT is an experience, I actually got motion sickness there once, and I'm usually very strong stomached.
Dont' get me wrong, I'm sure they said "Hey! When we convert to IMAX we can flood the museums with our merchandising crap too!" but I would imagine the availibility of screen space is the key to this move.
P.S. Isn't Star Wars a form of modern mythology? Certainly enough people are into it to quialify it somewhat. I'm not sure it should be "pushed" on a museum however...