The Wall Street Journal is reporting that Apple and Intel executives have been in discussions about Apple using Intel chips in its hardware. Apple’s only official response at this point is that it’s “rumor and speculation,” but the Journal implies that it’s nearly a done deal. No word on whether Apple would use Intel chips across its product line or just in one or two products, like the Xserve. And this could all just be maneuvering to extract a better deal out of IBM. Losing Apple would be a major blow to IBM’s chip business.
This article doesn’t say anything about Apple switching to x86. Intel has plenty of other kinds of chips.
Come on, its pretty obvious that Apple still have OSX running on x86 inside the company… Jobs was just holding off to see could he keep the PPC stuff alive.
It could be a chip for the imbedded network card. Or a flash RAM for the iPods. Or a low end vedio controller on Mac-Mini. Or an other dozon of chips that are used in a computer.
Apple already uses some sort of Intel chip in their Xserve, and the non-computer products (iPod, iTunes) have really helped the popularity of Apple. I am guessing that they have some new gadget in the pipes, and Intel will supply the processor. As far as OSX on Intel chips, I would guess that they have a version of every OS for X86. Apple does not move that much merchandise when compared to other vendors. What if IBM decides that supporting Apple is not a smart business decision? This way, Apple could shift production of their OS and not loose a beat or dollar. I doubt it would see the light of day though. However, imagine a Mac Mini priced even lower due to a cheaper processor.
… anything at all. I’d hate to be Apple trying to sell Microsoft and Adobe on yet another platform. They’ve only just frozen the APIs on OS X.
Could be an appliance. Could be x86 OS X alongside PPC. Could be a lot of things.
I’d be surprised if Apple came off PPC at this point.
I hope it’s just about minor chips and not the processor itself. I moved to Mac to get away from the various problems with the x86 architecture.
“What if IBM decides that supporting Apple is not a smart business decision?”
IBM doesn’t support Apple. As a matter of fact, it might be said that the phrase should be turned around. Apple supports IBM. IBM simply creates chips. Apple certinly isn’t their only customer for these chips. So Apple chose to support IBM, your implication to the alternative makes it sound as if Apple is potetially at risk from IBM if they stopped helping Apple.
Yes, we already know every geek out there wants to get OS X on their home built x86 box, and they all think it would be a great idea for Apple to do this. Plus Apple should OSS all of their software, because it’s for the good of humanity, and then they would no longer be ‘evil’.
Migrating OS X to x86 is not viable from a business perspective. Period. End of Story. No really…END OF STORY.
-Kelson
P.S. Please commence with 200-300 posts about how much linux sucks/rocks, OS X sucks/rocks, your personal switcher story, or a random troll.
Here’s a summary of the article : “Apple talked to Intel and we have no clue what’s going on, could be anything”
Why would Apple change processor architecture? The G5 is a far better designed chip than any Intel or even AMD processor. It is cheaper, faster, far more efficient… Apple were the ones who first made the switch to risc, and they would be mad to switch back.
There is a possibility they are investigating running OS X on x86 in order to expand, but I doubt it, since they are famous for always making both the hardware and software.
If this article has any truth, then it will be an appliance of some sort. Apple will never switch to Intel in their main machines.
AMD has shown its a stable, mature chip maker that is genuinel y better quality than Intel. Lower heat, same performance as faster Mhz Intel, better instruction pipeline, Ideal for gaming, only proper 64-bit chip for x86, killer dual-core AMD64 X2 and a slew of other features
Intel now is playing catch up to AMD…
With Apple becoming stronger and needing to partner with someone on the x86 market, I wonder why AMD is left out ???
If Apple can start encroaching on the gaming market, Apple G5’s will sell like hot cakes like their iPods and will truly compete with Microsoft.
Uh… no! The G5 is falling behind and the 3 GHz chip Jobs promised a long time ago is already very late. In addition, the G4 chips running the laptops are going nowhere. The Powerbook has no G5, no dual-core G4, and has lost the incredible processing prowess it used to enjoy.
Its most likely chips other than the main CPU for the Macs. Just that this person who wrote this article thinks that Intel only makes one type of chip so deducts that Apple is switching to x86 chips. It is widely known that Intel makes some of the best Raid chips so Apple used them in their XRaid. If Apple was switching to the x86, they would have done it before they went to the G5, because it would not make sense to keep changing chips and making it a pain for your developers.
I’d love to see an Apple gaming machine (preferably a pc derivitave, meaning an open development platform ala Windows/DirectX, not a console – though a partnership with Nintendo on a console seems perfect to me).
Slashdot and to a lesser extent, OSnews, is full of people saying this is “impossible”, “no point”, “not to do with CPUs”….I won’t dispute these points, but I will say these people generally have no clue what is in Jobs’ head, and more often than not are “blown away” by surprises from Apple.
Jobs has made aggresive, risky moves in the past. He will do so again in the future. Steve Jobs does not take his cues from Slashdot postings, most of the “factual” musing people posit there WRT Apple are often entirely wrong.
This move (if it as people are speculating) would be:
Good for Intel
Bad for Apple and the G5 users.
Please do not turn this into another Mac v. Linux. Windows v. AMD v. Intel v. PPC debate. No one cares!
So Microsoft and Sony adopt the powerpc processor for their gaming console, and Apple switches to intel?
I don’t think so.
to put pressure on IBM. That would be my guess. I suspect they are talking to intel about flash memory or arm processors for ipod or some other device.
It would be awesome, though, if AMD and/or Intel made powerpcs but i don’t see that happening. OS X on x86 is not going to happen anytime soon. Forget about it.
What would Jobs say at his speech?
Ok folks, it looks like IBM didn’t gimme my 3GHz, they just kept giving me faster chips that couldn’t clock at the rates my marketing staff needs! So, in leui (sp?) of this I have finally admitted to secretly buying the MHz Myth and have switched to overclocked Intel chips! Forget those great G5’s we were using, now we’re switching to the worst thing Intel has shipped to date, Prescott!
if only to make all the fanboys squirm a little 🙂
I’m really looking forwards to their spin after years of telling how much superior and more elegant the PPC is, even if it doesn’t seem to translate into many real-world benefits. On the desktop, AMD and Intel can match everything from the PPC camp. In portables, neither IBM nor Freescale have an adequate answer to the Dothan Pentium-M.
The G5 is a far better designed chip than any Intel or even AMD processor.
It’s debatable whether it is better than the AMD K8 chips. The K8 is a really well-designed architecture, even if it does have warts, like every other architecture does.
It is cheaper, faster, far more efficient…
It’s really none of the above. It’s not cheaper, because its a lower volume product than any x86 chip. It’s not faster, at least not since AMD started shipping 2.6 GHz Opterons. Meanwhile, the G5 is stuck at 2.3 GHz* for what seems like ages. The two are fairly comparable, clock-for-clock, in real world code, so that clock speed gap represents a real performance delta. And it’s really not more efficient. As I said, clock-for-clock, the two are comparable. Plus, if you look at the new low-voltage dual core Athlons (which run at the same 1.3 volts as the 970FX), the two architectures are pretty comparable watt-for-watt too (per core, of course!)
Apple were the ones who first made the switch to risc
In an alternate reality where Sun or SGI didn’t exist?
That said, I’d agree that this news probably doesn’t mean OS X on Intel. Most likely, it is some non-CPU chip. Even if it is a CPU thing, it’s pretty likely that its just a way to pressure IBM into ramping up the G5. I said this when the G5 came out, and its remained true. The G5’s success will depend on how quickly IBM can ramp up its clockspeed. They’ve been going slower than anybody (including Apple, apparently) expected. They got lucky, because Intel and AMD hit issues too, but that luck won’t last indefinitely.
*) Yes, I said 2.3GHz. Apple’s 2.5GHz overclocked watercooled machines don’t count. New Athlon64’s hit 2.7GHz easily on watercooling, but we don’t say that’s the design rating of the Athlon64!
Ok folks, it looks like IBM didn’t gimme my 3GHz, they just kept giving me faster chips that couldn’t clock at the rates my marketing staff needs!
This “MHz Myth” thing is getting a wee-bit ridiculous, since neither AMD nor Intel sell processors according to MHz anymore, and haven’t for awhile. And IBM hasn’t kept releasing faster PPC970’s. The PPC970’s basic architecture, aside from the FX’s die shrink, hasn’t changed since its introduction. If the architecture doesn’t change, the only way to make it faster is to increase the clockspeed, which hasn’t been happening quickly enough.
This would NOT be a major blow to IBM’s chip business. IBM’s POWER business is built around servers, not Apples desktop computers. Losing Apple’s business would not be a major blow to IBM.
Yes, we already know every geek out there wants to get OS X on their home built x86 box
——————————————
Not me. I’ve used OSX and I would rather be using Windows.
Apple has always been the low volume customer and it has never made sense to run a foundry based on the needs of your low volume customer.
That is apple’s real problem. Motorola and IBM would gladly invest more if apple had volumes to show for it but apple does not and you can only blame apple’s own pricing for that.
The mac mini will ramp up volumes for G4s (i hope) but Steve needs to ramp up volumes for G5s somehow. I’d prefer a $999 power mac G5 but it does not matter how they do it just as long a they do it. Maybe linux on G5 will do it for steve. I don’t know.
Ultimately, Steve must provide more volumes or apple will always get the short end of the deal from its foundry partner.
Even if Apple was actually switching to x86, don’t expect OS X to run on your wintel box. The CPU is not the only show stopper for running a piece of software on a certain HW platform.
We’re a different beast than who they currently support or want to support. It’s a dream to have your own software running on your “own” hardware. However, entering into the x86 market would completely change Apple’s public perception. They would never want to support hundreds of millions of users although I must admit that the Mac Mini was the first time Apple has shown that they want to be in every consumers home. Steve Jobs is very creative but he doesn’t have the “take over the world” way of business that Bill Gates has.
Everybody knows Apple maintains x86 reference machine for their FreeBSD support for OSX. Apple used the IOP processor (an X-Scale derived part specifically for servers) in the X-Server. The Airport BS is the Alchemy/AMD Au1xxx series parts. The iPod is the PortalPlayer SoC (ARM7 based). I don’t see Intel providing an x86 part, too much heat, other HW issues for Apple to overcome. It’s possible that Apple is looking at the X-Scale parts (which were the old DEC Strong-ARM parts, still considered to be very good powerwise). Most of the newer handhelds are running these parts (400 MHz+). Intel also has in their arena some “phone chips” based upon X-Scale. But then one would wonder why Apple wouldn’t partner with Motorola for any sort of phone device. My money would be on some “embedded” X-Scale part for some gizmo. Either new server gizmo (video PVR/home center) or can you say Newton-Plus???
This is probably related to mobile chips like the ones used in PalmOne or PocketPC devices. With iPod and other consumer gadgets, it makes sense for Apple and Intel to work together.
I doubt this is about desktops or servers. New dual-core AMD chip’s low-power and high-performance is probably more interesting for Apple on the desktops/servers than Intel’s offerings. But for PDA chips, Intel is very compelling.
We’ll see…
-rwa
The number one chipmaker in handhelds or smartphones is Intel… correct?
“‘It’s like Ferrari going to BMW for an engine,’ said Richard Doherty, the research director for technology consulting and research firm Envisioneering.”
Yeah, right. This would be more like Ferrari going to Kia for an engine.
What’s to stop Intel from making Power processors? It’s an open architecture, is it not?
Since FreeBSD can run on x86 then so should Mac OS X. Yes, apple made some real changes, much of apple hardware is the same as PC. For instance, nvidia AGP cards can run just fine on Apple. It’s the same story with DDR ram, PCI cards etc. Much of the hardware is already the same, so changing the CPU is mostly a matter of rewritting some bus code, redoing the core driver structure, and then recompiling with GCC. It’s not as big a deal as some people would think. Whether it would make sense business wise for Apple to do this, that I don’t know.
Mwahahahaha! Since when FreeBSD uses the mach kernel …
The xserve to me is the only sensible way to test the water (ala sun) if they build in a bit of linux compatability then the server would have LOADS of software quickly
To me it seems it would be the consumer macs where it would be hard for them. Server side linux software is accepted and top notch (apache as an example)
I would keep consumer side on ppc if nothing else then to keep compatible with MS office (if apple became serious competition do you really think MS would continue to make a mac version?)
Adurbe
Too much hardware to support on x86 for OSX.
Look how many drivers they gonna need to make it run all x86 hardware. So, like others said probably an Intel chip may be Itanium
who knows
Intel has switched off it’s marketing of it, about 11 months ago (July 2004). However, their current core and design philosophies still follow the old ways (just look at Prescott).
When they make Dothan all it can be and switch to it for desktop chips then Intel will finally be off the MHz marketing. Until then, people are still jumping around for P4 4GHz chips…. And Intel is still installing frequency scaling into a desktop chip because they have major heat problems.
You forgot DEC!
why couldn’t this be about intel making PowerPC chips?
<Too much hardware to support on x86 for OSX.
Look how many drivers they gonna need to make it run all x86 hardware. So, like others said probably an Intel chip may be Itanium
who knows>
Who says that they can’t continue supporting only certain hardware configurations like they do now, only with Intel produced chips, specially designed for them? Just a thought.
“The G5 is falling behind […]”
Hehe. Every opion is respected but not necessarily correct.
Microsoft dont make every driver for windows, its up to the manufactuer, they do however set quite stringent guidlines on how to make a driver
(gave me some nice cut and paste code 😉 )
I wonder how many devs couldnt do their job without copy and paste… :-p
Why would Apple change processor architecture? The G5 is a far better designed chip than any Intel or even AMD processor. It is cheaper, faster, far more efficient… Apple were the ones who first made the switch to risc, and they would be mad to switch back.
Doesn’t matter the RISC design is getting old. Mainly this is about volume. Switching to a foundry that can produce a consistent performance increase in processor design on a regular basis and a variety of perfommance ranges is key to the advancement of Apple as a company. Your choices for Macs right now are fast G5(1.8Ghz) or a marginally faster G5(2.2Ghz) or the older slow G4 for the mac mini. IBM has Apple by the balls they basically control their product line. They keep the higher end Power 5 processors for their RS/6000 line and leave the lower end scraps for Apple. Not to mention the fact that they do compete in the mid range server line. The advantages to switching to intel are numerous (assuming they adopt the Pentium line of CPU’s) they would have the broad range of perfomance from Celeron to P4 Extreme. intel processors are much cheaper in volume compaired to the IBM line. They would benifit from measured performance increase over time. Software ports become a heck of alot easier to do! Apple could keep the excellent openboot architecture and still keep their hardware propriety in order to differentiate from the Run-of-mill PC running windows. This is a good thing for Apple to consider.
“‘It’s like Ferrari going to BMW for an engine,’ said Richard Doherty, the research director for technology consulting and research firm Envisioneering.”
WTF? Why don´t these people have sufficent neurons to realize the retardedness of such an analogy. Ferrari makes engines and cars. BMW also makes engines and cars. Both compete directly (in the grander vehicle market – forget niches or product differentiation).
Now, Apple makes computers, not CPUs. Intel makes CPUs (among other things but this is the subject at hand) – NOT computers. Duh??? Complementary goods, not direct competition as in the Ferrari/BMW case. Ferrari going to BMW implies that applicable in-house know-how would be foregone in favor of external knowledge. Apple´s contribution to an end product does NOT overlap with Intel´s contribution…. </rant>
Now, how portable is something like CoreGraphics? CoreAudio (with the obvious need to migrate comparable levels of low latency)? My impression seems to be quite
that they are significantly hardware-dependant solutiuons (esp the latter). Perhaps nothing that may be replicated with the adequate silicon on a x86 based MB…?
Would be cool to gain the excellent intel compliers though…..
I agree that Apple could rely on a HCL as most OSes do, but the HCLs never stop people from trying different hardware that they wish to run. More than, than the x86 is so much more than just CPUs. Why enter the market at all if you can’t support most hardware? MS and Linux strive for that, shouldn’t anyone who competes in this market do the same? I doubt they wish to open up the x86 can of worms. Man, I bet Aqua would be a dog on anything less than 2 GHZ
Last time I checked the high end Apple notebooks were stuck with 1.3Ghz G4s. Not only do you have the PC notebooks riding in at 3.4, 3.6 Ghz now, but the desktop replacement systems are even coming with the ability to upgrade video cards and other stuff.
that rumor appera at least 1 time a year…
But Intel probably have some nice PCI Express components.
Xbox 360 is basically a Mac – you get a G5 when you order the XBox 360 dev kit.
With the XBox running a PPC that is 3.2 GHz and triple core, how long before IBM releases a PPC for Apple with similar spces?
Not long, they can obviously produce the chip. Or, maybe Apple knows that IBM will not be able to make their chips anymore, since they are busy making console chips.
Hard to tell, but with PPC running in XBox 360, Sony PS3, and Nintendo Revolution, I doubt if Apple will leave that scene.
A quick trip to apple.com will tell you that the powerbooks are at 1.67 Ghz with a whopping 167Mhz bus. But as Apple will tell you G4’s are short and wide, not tall and narrow so the bus is not important.
Apple really needs to get the G5 into a powerbook soon!
Oh Yes I forgot the powerbook also support the ATI Radeon 9700. Incredible!
Seems that as the article put it, Apple may look to Intel for server ships.
the rights to the powerpc are owned by motorola, ibm, and apple. I don’t think apple can go out and license that chip without the approval of the other two.
Do IBM and Motorola want intel producing Powerpcs? I don’t think so but there have been some early efforts, which have resulted in nothing, to license the powerpc core to other parties if not necessarily to intel so maybe.
I’d love to see intel and/or amd offering powerpcs.
Powerbook G4 – 1.5ghz & 1.67ghz
PowerMac G5 – 1.8, 2.0, 2.3, 2.7ghz
No, a Powerbook does not have the same spec’s as a desktop replacement. It also weighs much less and has much lower power consumption. Pentium M’s are not running at 3ghz. They top out at 2.13ghz (770) and 1.5ghz for the low power version (758).
– Kelson
@Chris: First, I don’t buy that Netburst was just about marketing. Intel has a lot of smart people, and is a well-run company. They wouldn’t bet the farm on a marketing gimmick, especially considering that their high-margin high-profit products are sold to people who know better than to assume a bigger number = a faster processor. Unless you’re a total fanboy, you have to realize that Netburst was a design design. It was based on an engineering tradeoff (IPC for clockspeed), and an emperical observation (that the long pipeline hurts media processing code much less than it does integer code). Intel expected that Netburst would be running at 5-6GHz by now, and if those expectations had been correct, the design would have payed off and despite Netburst CPUs would still hold the performance crown. In retrospect, it turned out that the frequency barriers became too huge, but its just stupid to dismiss the entire design as a marketing gimmick just because the engineers couldn’t see the future. Beyond that, the reason Intel is hanging on to Prescott is not because of marketing (who cares if it runs at 3.8GHz when that’s not even advertised on the box?), but because it takes some time to turn around the design direction of a multi-billion dollar company!
@XBox 360: The XBox 360 is about as much a Mac as my iPod is a Palm PDA… Yes, their processors use the same instruction set (same as the iPod and the Palm). That’s about it. The processor architecture is completely different (the XBox CPU bears no relation to a G5), the bus architecture is completely different, it uses a different type of memory, and it runs Windows! Aside from the processor’s instruction set, a Mac has more in common with a Dell it does the XBox 360.
@Andrew G: All the superlatives do nothing to mask the fact that all those technologies are quite crusty by now. A 167MHz shared SDR bus is not “whopping”. It’s pokey. It’s 1.3GB/sec pokey. I’ve got a 3 year old laptop that has a bus 2x as fast. And yes, the G4 is “slow and wide”. But the bus isn’t slow and wide. It’s slow and narrow. What matters is bandwidth, and the G4 just doesn’t have any of it. As for the Radeon 9700, that’s fine and good, but the PC world moved to portable X800s and GeForce 6800s months ago. Heck, the latter came out in 2004!
“Intel Chips” does not necessarily mean “Intel CPUs”.
I’d love to see running OSX on standard PCs, but this will unfortunately only happen two days after hell freezes over.
Apple will never switch to standard PCs, it would IMHO be the immediate death of Apple and OSX. MS doesn’t like any serious competitors in OS business…
It is clear that Steve Jobs is asking Intel to produce 6Ghz quad core chips for the next Macs.
All Intel have to do is reverse the way their chips store data and apple will sign a deal.
We always knew our chips where arse about face, Intel Chairman Groves admitted. But once we had made the mistake we had to live with all that rubbishy DOS & windows software that needed to carry on working backwards.
Apple dont need that legacy garbage, Steve Jobs announced, we just wanted Intel to do things right for once, just like Motorola and IBM. And we like the speed he admitted with a grin.
It would be nice if our Macs where really as fast as a PC for more than a few weeks this time.
There is more to a computer than a pretty case.
Now we know at Apple how to do water cooling and we are ready to swap to the Intel chips.
ibm could loose all of apples chip production and not bat an eye. think of all the other things they make chips for. also think of the fact that IBM isnt producing a chip for apple. apple is merely using an IBM produced chip.
as for the rest, i do believe it is prolly compiled for x86 in sum secret back vault sumwhere, but its not accesable by many or it would hav been leaked to the web.
my biggest question about OS X on x86 is would windows programs b compatible? would OS X programs b compatible? or would both or niether be compatible?
x86 is looking more and more like a dead end and intel seems a bit fed up with billy gates. Maybe Intel, like IBM, is interested in created a real market for linux on powerpcs. Apple is just a first potential customer.
Intel does license the ARM core.
here’s a thought…could this portend a move towards pda’s that have Intel chips in them? I would welcome it.
I don’t see how Apple would change to x86 when Microsoft has “Switched” to PPC and the PS3 is also on PPC. Seems like a big step backwards. If anything, Apple may be going to offer a box with a x86 processor along side ppc boxes.
– Mark
Intels not EVIL anyways. So why not, they are on the ball and seem to be pushing the technology faster than IBM.
Where is the 3gig PPC Chip anways?? Hasn’t shown up in my Mac yet. Apple’s stuck using the same board since 2003.
… those cell processors ?
Question: Why do so many people assume that the chip in the X-Box 360 is a triple core G5.
Because all I’ve ever seen is stuff about how it’s a PPC chip with a triple core. NOT a 64 bit chip, and NOT a G or Power series chip.
I’ve yet to see anything about the design of the chip, too. Same datapipelines, number of registers, etc?
It could be a PPC processor that IBM had developed for other products, and while it may be 3.2 ghz and triple core, if it’s not a G or Power series chip, it’s quite possible that it does not get as much done per clock cycle at those chips and other design factors allow it to be clocked screamingly fast.
Also, IIRC, to get clocked screamingly fast, the chip’s going to be liquid cooled.
All indications suggest that the XBox chip similar to a Cell PPE. Their specs seem identical, so if the chips aren’t, they’re likely very similar.
And the XBox CPU won’t be anywhere near as powerful as a G5 clock-for-clock. The G5 is 5-way out of order, while the XBox CPU is 2-way in order. The G5 has a higher theoretical peak (by a factor of 2), and its OOO execution will allow it to reach closer to its maximum theoretical performance.
Quote: “Migrating OS X to x86 is not viable from a business perspective. Period. End of Story. No really…END OF STORY.”
You seem to not only be a little biased but also out of touch with marketing in the real world. Several companies make money from selling their software and support services with out having to rely on selling hardware to keep making a profit. Apple porting their software such as OSX to X86 would open a wider market for them to compete. Keeping some of their software such as OSX only for PPC is only going to hurt them in the long run and Jobs realizes this due to current market trends. Where Apple could make a profit with hardware is with key industries such as custom turnkey systems for the entertainment industry (ie: Dual processor workstations with Quadro or FireGL graphics and Shake, Motion, FCP, etc preinstalled).
My guess is that Apple want’s to extend their success with Ipod.
We will maybe see an handheld computer, media player or possibly a phone (or all three). Most likely a PDA/Media Player with WLAN. Apple has done it before with the Newton, and may do it again.
“Question: Why do so many people assume that the chip in the X-Box 360 is a triple core G5”
What about the X360 demos at E3 running on powermacs G5 ?
“What about the X360 demos at E3 running on powermacs G5 ?” I read that the 360 demos were downgraded due to the G5 not having enough “power” to push the 3d effects.
Speaking of the 360, it is NOT just a G5. The PS3 is NOT just a G5, hell, it is even called CELL.
Apple running on Intel? Not a good idea. Granted, you can lock the whole hardware design down but it is STILL just an x86 pc. If they decide to run PPC/X86 they will lose. I personally think the x86 is TOO saturated with competition for anyone to justify paying for an Apple (x86). Look at Sony, they aren’t doing so “hot” with their premium X86 hardware either. If Apple did decide to dump Intel, they would have to pull out a huge business plan switch. From hardware to software or hardware with services to software with services.
“If Apple did decide to dump Intel, they would have to pull out a huge business plan switch. From hardware to software or hardware with services to software with services. ”
Typo, meant if Apple would dump IBM.
Of course Apple aren’t going to switch to Intel, all those people who claim Intel x86 processors are better than PowerPC go stand at the back of the class.
Acorn’s Archimedes was one of the earliest, if not THE earliest “desktop” computer to use Risc, in the guise of the custom ARM1 chip.
The Xscale/Strongarm and Arm siblings are in most people’s mobile phones and PDAs, they are low power, scalable and fast. Intel bought into Strongarm because they knew it had huge potential, they evolved XScale from Strongarm core.
Having written assembler for both Arm and x86 I have my own opinion, Arm/Risc are more efficient as they tend not to need “bolt on” wizardry like MMX and SSE to rescue their sorry ancient ass
Ever wondered why Intel didn’t scrap x86 all together by now instead of using something like XScale?, just look to Microsofts XBox 360’s issues….you want to run old games? Ooops, we forgot about that!
Apple are in a really strong position, suddenly everyone’s “future vision” is in Risc/Power architectures, even Microsofts. I’d imagine Apple could quite easily design in Cell, though Sony may not be happy with that, worst case Apple could use the new multicore chip MS are using.
Finally, many people make the mistake of comparing Apples with, urm, not with like specs. Comparing memory types and bus speeds for instance of a top end Prescott based system against a “like cost” Apple system isn’t a good comparison. Apple computers cost more, like it or not.
I’m looking forward to big announcements soon from Apple, I think something cool will come out of all these deals and high-volume production runs, keep the PS3, I NEED Cell in my tower and I NEED it now!!!
“Of course Apple aren’t going to switch to Intel, all those people who claim Intel x86 processors are better than PowerPC go stand at the back of the class.”
I respect both architectures, however, the benchmarks for the Athlon 64 X2 (dual core) is very good. Macrumors.com had a good amount of people that respected this CPU as well
.
http://techreport.com/reviews/2005q2/athlon64-x2/index.x?pg=1
At least get your definitions right. Pentium Ms are not used for desktop replacements.
Ok, why the hell are people trying to compare PPC chips with x86 chips on 2.2 ghz to 2.2ghz comparison?
Do you not realize that for every 7 instructions processed by a risc processor, it takes a cisc processor 15?
Thus, a 2.2 ghz, G5 is rougly equal to a 4.4ghz x86 64 bit chip.
So, why in the hell would you want to switch to an inferior product that is more expensive?
You can’t compare apples to oranges, likewise you cannont compare the GHZ of the two different processors.
As for the FreeBSD runs on x86, so should OSX, you kind of forgot that OSX os a fork of FreeBSD known as Darwin. Now, because of the OSS community, Darwin does run on some intel based chips, but had no support for AMD. Now, that could’ve changed with the release of Darwin 8, but, my hardware (for some reason it’s an ide problem at the moment) is not supported (apples says it’s a known bug), so I have no idea if AMD’s are supported yet (which is all I use on the x86 side).
And, the gamecube uses an IBM PPC processor, the next nintendo (the revolution) is going to use an IBM PPC processor, the next xbox is going to use an IBM PPC processor, so, IBM doesn’t need apple. Plus, the reason these companies (including MS) are using IBM PPC processors, is because the architecture is far superior than your cisc processors.
“Do you not realize that for every 7 instructions processed by a risc processor, it takes a cisc processor 15?”
Please clarify this statement.
Wasn’t there a previous article referring to an Apple tablet device? Now why wouldn’t the XScale (ARM) make a perfect processor for such a device? All manner of hand-held devices already make use of it. This seems incredibly probable.
Do you not realize that for every 7 instructions processed by a risc processor, it takes a cisc processor 15?
That’s irony, right?
Do you not realize that for every 7 instructions processed by a risc processor, it takes a cisc processor 15?
That’s just silly… cpu’s differ in design so much you can’t make sweeping statements like that.
Plus I think you’re wrong anyway – isn’t the point of RISC to reduce the number of instructions the processor has to deal with? Hence (as a silly simplified example) a CISC processor might have an instruction to add two numbers then square the result, while a RISC processor would add them then take that result and square it, as two seperate instructions.
So that took the RISC processor twice the number of instructions to get to a result as the CISC one…
Yes, that’s a pretty silly example, but as I understand it that’s roughly how it works. Feel free to correct me if you can come up with a justification for your statement.
Thus, a 2.2 ghz, G5 is rougly equal to a 4.4ghz x86 64 bit chip.
HAHAHAHA!! There are exactly NO benchmarks to back that up!
It also doesn’t explain how AMD’s chips can perform at roughly the same level clock-for-clock (I’d say higher but that’s another argument…) as the PPC970.
RISC hasn’t been a buzzword for years now – it was a big thing back in the 90’s, when chips were bigger and having to stay compatible with x86 was proportionally taking a lot more out of Intel’s/AMD’s chips.
However since the P3 or so their performance has skyrocketed; RISC isn’t really much of an issue beyond an architectural decision any more.
Oh, Lumbergh: At least get your definitions right. Pentium Ms are not used for desktop replacements.
The new Dell XPS’s run on a Pentium-M. I don’t think you could class them as anything other than desktop replacements!
I recall hearing that rumor as well.
“Do you not realize that for every 7 instructions processed by a risc processor, it takes a cisc processor 15?”
As I recall RISC needs to use more instructions to equal out CISC. But RISC is cheaper because due to the lack of memory needed to store the instructions.
1. Incredibly misinformed
2. Troll
Choose one.
“Intel Chips” does not necessarily mean “Intel CPUs”.
I’d love to see running OSX on standard PCs
And Intel (x86) CPU does not necessarily mean standard PC.
Apple would roll their own x86-based design with their own BIOS and so on, anything else would kill off their hardware business.
The new Dell XPS’s run on a Pentium-M. I don’t think you could class them as anything other than desktop replacements!
I don’t know about Dell latest offerings, but at one time they did have Pentium4s in their notebooks. Here’s what I mean when I talk about desktop replacements.
http://www.pctorque.com
Here man. http://notebookforums.com/showthread.php?p=888192#post888192
Apple doesn’t have anything close to this in their notebook offerings.
“I respect both architectures, however, the benchmarks for the Athlon 64 X2 (dual core) is very good. Macrumors.com had a good amount of people that respected this CPU as well
.
http://techreport.com/reviews/2005q2/athlon64-x2/index.x?pg=1“
Oh, I see, so we’re allowed a $1000 budget!
Interestingly, the target price for the XBox2 is sub-$500 as will be (I’d guess) the PS3. Maybe you’ve inadvertently uncovered the real reason for the mass-PPC switch over, AMD and Intel are too greedy. With those kinds of target prices you can bet IBM will need to keep the prices of the PPC-Cell way down.
As for the Athlon 64 X2 (dual core) the PPC-Cell eats it for breakfast, sorry. The PPC-Cell has effectively 7 cores, runs at 3GHz+ and has all the support architecture it needs to break all the rules! Go watch the online demos and read about all it, you’ll be impressed.
Die x86! Die!!! …lol
Considering PowerPC based chips are going both into the X-Box 360 and the Playstation 3, I’d say the ‘threat’ to IBM’s chip business by Apple jumping ship is overblown to say the least… A year ago that probably would have been true, but with both of those on the horizon and given that combined those two machines will outsell Mac’s by a factor of 100 to one, their chip business is more than secure. They’ll probably be able to funnel profits from sales to M$ and Sony into their own linux on PPC development.
Hell, with their console involvement IBM could probably tell Apple “Go ahead, have fun. We don’t need you anymore.”
As to RISC vs. CISC, I’ll buy that a 2.2ghz G5 is faster than a 2.2ghz Intel, but that’s because intel has been sitting around with their thumb jammed up their backside in terms of chipset optimization for over five years now. Compare that to a 2.2ghz A64 (rated 3500+) and it’s a whole different ballgame.
The terminology RISC and CISC are damn near obsolete now anyways. There is no reason you cannot make both processor sets the same speed, it is a matter of willpower and effort, not instruction sets.
Hypothetical Article A:
You should throw exceptions by value and catch exceptions by reference.
Response:
Chirp chirp chirp
Hypothetical Article B:
Apple is doomed unless it switches to Intel x86 processors, and Apple knows this. This is why its board has been secretly meeting with Intel about securing shipments for transitioning. Given that Cocoa is an evolution of the OpenStep API, and OpenStep has already proven itself to be portable to the x86 along with “fat binaries” the transition should be painless. In this reporter’s opinion, Microsoft should forget about Linux and worry about Apple!
Response:
OMFG YOU’RE SO DUMB LOLOL YOU’RE WRONG BECAUSE OF X, Y, Z OMFG x 200
OMFG LOLOL POWERPC < CISC LOLOL x 80
OMFG U ALL WANT MACOS ON UR PC BUT IT WILL NEVER HAPPEN x 30
Way to reward bad journalism.
…a move like this might affect negatively Apple because its hardware would die. but at the same time, i can see new customers buying cheap hardware running OS X. maybe this might help Apple to conquer the masses.
personally I love the PPC arquitecture but i would not mind to have a dual brain AMD computer or 3-4 symmetrical cores running at 3GHz+…..that would be very interesting.
this could be the right time to attack Windows users since Linux(desktop) can’t.
-2501
Patrick wrote:
“However, imagine a Mac Mini priced even lower due to a cheaper processor.”
No, a cheaper processor in the Mac Mini would just mean a larger margin for Apple.
“Do you not realize that for every 7 instructions processed by a risc processor, it takes a cisc processor 15?
That’s just silly… cpu’s differ in design so much you can’t make sweeping statements like that.”
True. It depends on the level of microcoding, which differs between CPUs.
“Plus I think you’re wrong anyway – isn’t the point of RISC to reduce the number of instructions the processor has to deal with? Hence (as a silly simplified example) a CISC processor might have an instruction to add two numbers then square the result, while a RISC processor would add them then take that result and square it, as two seperate instructions.”
Not true.
“So that took the RISC processor twice the number of instructions to get to a result as the CISC one…”
Also not true.
“Yes, that’s a pretty silly example, but as I understand it that’s roughly how it works. Feel free to correct me if you can come up with a justification for your statement.”
lol
‘justification for your statement’…that’s funny.
Ok, just to help out a little here. Cisc and Risc are both good, they have their uses and are the right decision for different reasons.
Reason 1) You’re Intel, you have a crappy architecture in the x86 with a poor instuction set, but you don’t care, it’s the mid-1980s and you’re Intel! x86 uses a lot of RAM access and RAM access is slow, who cares? …Bill Gates just told us all 64K is the most we’ll ever need!
Reason 2) You’re Acorn, you have looked at other architectures and decide you like the look of 68000, but you could make something better and neater. You decide to reduce the number of instructions to a minimum, BUT you’re going to make each instruction MORE useful. Less instructions mean less logic/silicon, cheaper production etc. And you’d quite like to be a little obsessive about reducing access to external RAM which is super-slow compared to on-chip cache and registers. You provide a tight instruction set which programmers embrace with great excitement.
Now, things change over time, by the 2000’s Intel and AMD have both refined their cores and have added instructions and logic to transform their stink-foot architecture into something more worth while. Over the years it comes to matter less and less because programmers write in C/C++ instead of assembler anyway.
Arm have meantime focus on a different market, accepting Intel’s PC monopoly, the mobile market proves an ideal place for a clean and mean architecture which can be licenced and reproduced by chip makers the world over.
Over the years the differences between Cisc and Risc have become grey. What used to define Risc begins to apply to x86 based CPUs, where they are microcoded less and less.
These are only two scenarios from my light-hearted point of view, clearly IBM have been upto something far more devious behind closed doors
“Thus, a 2.2 ghz, G5 is rougly equal to a 4.4ghz x86 64 bit chip. HAHAHAHA!! There are exactly NO benchmarks to back that up! It also doesn’t explain how AMD’s chips can perform at roughly the same level clock-for-clock (I’d say higher but that’s another argument…) as the PPC970.”
You just shot yourself in the foot, you slam the other guy for lack of benchmarks and then do the same thing yourself, lol
…no offence mate, it’s just funny the way it came out.
Benchmarks are usually difficult to quantify, I prefer to write some code, read some docs and see for myself how the CPU works. It’s REALLY difficult and usually unfair to compare different architectures and tasks. For instance I have an ancient G4 which can create MP3’s faster than my 2.6GHz Northwood, all the benchmarks say my watch is wrong!
“RISC hasn’t been a buzzword for years now – it was a big thing back in the 90’s, when chips were bigger and having to stay compatible with x86 was proportionally taking a lot more out of Intel’s/AMD’s chips.”
Uh?
“However since the P3 or so their performance has skyrocketed; RISC isn’t really much of an issue beyond an architectural decision any more. ”
Intel’s CPUs seem messed up to me. I recently scratched my head at some figures for Centrino which suggested it was quicker than P4, AMD are constantly tweaking for benchmark bonus points and well, it’s all very boring. There’s been no REALLY “WOW” type advance in last 6 years, yet I still upgrade my box for not THAT big a difference. For the first time in AGES watching the demos of the PS3 on gamespot made me sit up and take notice!
Cell, Cell, Cell!
Won’t happen. No reason to. At all.
Why are these stories even printed?
Ok, why the hell are people trying to compare PPC chips with x86 chips on 2.2 ghz to 2.2ghz comparison?
Because most benchmarks show that the G5 is clock-for-clock as fast as an Opteron?
Do you not realize that for every 7 instructions processed by a risc processor, it takes a cisc processor 15?
I don’t even know where to begin with this one. All I can say is, whah?
Thus, a 2.2 ghz, G5 is rougly equal to a 4.4ghz x86 64 bit chip.
WTF? You’re joking, right? Look at the SPEC scores of the PPC970 and the Opteron. The barefeats benchmark is pretty good too. They compared a 2.0GHz Opteron MP system and a 2.0GHz G5 system. Of the five benchmarks, the Opteron decisively won two, the G5 decisively won two, and the two tied on the last one. Most benchmarks I’ve seen showed that clock-for-clock, a G5 is about as fast as an Opteron, with the main difference being that the G5 is faster in tuned Altivec code, while the Opteron is (significantly) faster in integer code.
So, why in the hell would you want to switch to an inferior product that is more expensive?
What’s the unit cost of a 2.3Ghz PPC970FX?
You can’t compare apples to oranges, likewise you cannont compare the GHZ of the two different processors.
As for the FreeBSD runs on x86, so should OSX, you kind of forgot that OSX os a fork of FreeBSD known as Darwin.
Except its not. Darwin is Mach 3.0 + 4.4BSD-Lite2, with additions for FreeBSD 5 (userland, filesystems), and NetBSD (networking).
True. It depends on the level of microcoding, which differs between CPUs.
Most modern compilers for x86 don’t emit instructions that are microcoded. While the entire x86 instruction set is still CISC, its basically treated as RISC these days. The CPU manufacturers optimize a RISC-y subset of the x86 chips (translating these into 1 or 2 RISC micro-operations in the execution core), and compilers treat the chip as a load/store RISC with funky addressing modes.
Not true.
No, the poster was basically correct. Very simple example. In x86, you can have an ADD instruction with an operand in memory. In a RISC CPU, you have to load the operand into a register, then issue the ADD.
Also not true.
But it is basically true. One of the disadvantages of RISC is that it tends to cause code expansion, because you tend to need more instructions, and short instructions are still 32-bits.
Andrewg I have a 9800 Mobility with 256 mb in my Dell XPS. So the 9700 is not incredible. And I paid less than what a top of the line Mac notebook would cost. Also nowadays there are geforce 6800 ultras in notebooks nowadays so theres nothing big about a 9700. IT is outdated.
“I don’t even know where to begin with this one. All I can say is, whah? ”
Too funny, Rayiner lol
What the hell is this not upgrading eMacs to G5 nonsense like that they did for iMacs?
——-quoted from Kelson:
Migrating OS X to x86 is not viable from a business perspective. Period. End of Story. No really…END OF STORY.
-Kelson
P.S. Please commence with 200-300 posts about how much linux sucks/rocks, OS X sucks/rocks, your personal switcher story, or a random troll.
—————————–
That’s all very well and fine, but tell us WHY you hold this *opinion* (which you stated as a fact). I’ve seen posts like yours before, and they often come off as sarcastic (perhaps you meant it this way), as if the poster knows all. But, please tell us WHY you feel this way, and what evidence leads you to think it is fact.
Else, you’re just what you project upon others.
–EyeAm
$1000 isn’t so bad when you think of the price for Apple :p
. If the X-Box 360 can outpace any PPC/X86, I’d buy it just to mod it 
. Man, the Cell is running unbelievable in benchmarks. It would be amazing to buy a $500 system that kills everything I own. I’ve been watching “Cell” papers jump around. Just imagine if they doubled the vector units.
Because then someone might buy one instead of an iMac. Every cheaper product offered must carry with it some sort of punishment for selecting it. The next revision of the Mini should come shipped with a built-in mini-keyboard that shocks the user at random.
I think Apple realizes that the Xbox will under-sell any Powermac/iMac G5 using the same chip.
That alone could create a bad industry title for Apple, when Microsoft sells similar technology found in the iMac for $500.00 or less and it would be great profit to MS to bring a blow to Apple.
even if they did switch, it wouldn’t been a x86 chip.
For one, I highly doubt apple is going to switch anytime soon. And if they did leave IBM, it would be for AMD, not Intel.
But more importantly, even if they went AMD (or intel really) it would not be a off the shelf x86-64 proc. Apple would go to AMD, and have them take a AMD64 and start ripping anything that is x86 left in it away, have them add registers, and basically end up with a new chip, a pure or close to it risc chip, designed by AMD for Apple, they wouldn’t bother trying to have all the old legacy x86 stuff in there since they don’t need it.
But even then, why bother, IBM will get them faster chips in time. IBM has slipped some, but nothing too bad.
Also, what is with all the people low balling what Apple has their chips at. 1.3 ghz PBs? 2.3 ghz PMs? please, look at apples site before posting such stuff.
2.7 ghz G5 isn’t to shabby, especially compared to intels products which are fireballs at those speeds.
Apple would have to be stuck where they are right now, for about 2 more years before things start looking like the pre-G5 days when there was no conceivable chip on the future and the thought of a switch looked rather possible.
Even if the 970 doesn’t get much farther in life, there is always a cut down power5 to make the next generation chip from.