Analysis: x86 Vs PPC
Linked by Nicholas Blachford on Wed 9th Jul 2003 16:43 UTC
Talk, Rumors, X Versus Y This article started life when I was asked to write a comparison of x86 and PowerPC CPUs for work. We produce PowerPC based systems and are often asked why we use PowerPC CPUs instead of x86 so a comparison is rather useful. While I have had an interest in CPUs for quite some time but I have never explored this issue in any detail so writing the document proved an interesting exercise. I thought my conclusions would be of interest to OSNews readers so I've done more research and written this new, rather more detailed article. This article is concerned with the technical differences between the families not the market differences.
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Re: various
by Nicholas Blachford on Thu 10th Jul 2003 09:31 UTC

A) There is no diff between RISC and CISC now.

B) The law of diminishing returns actually means that because there are no new instructions added the amount of space required to decode the SAME instructions gets relativly smaller and less important every year. (The artical is illogical .. either cause the writer is or because his trying to manipulate the reader.)

C) Altivec makes G4 a slow RISC computer. Thats why it cant scale well because of the COMPLEX Alitvec instruction set.

D) x86 benchmarks are invalid.. gawd what a load of bull....
This artical is a transparent piece of tripe .. trying to sell PPC chips and whatever else he is interseted in.

Did you even read the article?
The entire point is that A) is not true.
It is true to say that CISC uses the same techniques as RISC but the inefficiency cannot be hidden by an instruction decoder and consequently CISC has to expend a great deal more energy getting up to high performance rates.

B) What are you on about?

"LAW OF DIMINISHING RETURNS
An economic principle asserting that the application of additional units of any one input (labor, land, capital) to fixed amounts of the other inputs yields successively smaller increments in the output of a system of production. (Krippendorff)"

C) Perhaps you should tell IBM that.

D) If Apple produces a benchmark it automatically assumed to be fake - which I guess is only to be expected given their record.
However If Intel produced a benchmark it's "gosh look how fast they are". They should both be treated for what they are: benchmarks produced by a manufacturer of a product - no matter their intention - are marketing.

--

Heat:
Yes there are low power x86s but the latest G4s (7447) go down to 7.5 Watts at 1GHz. There's nothing in the x86 world that even comes close to that level of performance at such a low power consumption.

VCRs
It's quite correct that the best or most advanced technology does not always win the market, if it did we would all be Alpha users running BeOS with an Amiga AAAAA chipset...