When Apple Computer announced in June that it planned to move to Intel chips, one of the companies left in the lurch was Terra Soft Solutions. This week, Terra Soft is announcing it has filled some of the void created by Apple’s move. Under a new deal, Terra Soft will resell PowerPC-based servers from Mercury Computer Systems. Mercury’s XR9 systems use the same G5 chip as Xserve, but at 2.4GHz, the chips are slightly faster than those used in Apple’s servers.
Nice move but still, PowerPC is a dying platform.
I think the PowerPC will eventually die. Nobody is going to develop new software for PowerPC platforms. It is over. Univeral binaries will work but for not too long.
-2501
How is PowerPC dying when every console dev eloper is basing their hardware on PPC?
Yep, the gaming consoles. And do not forget the embedded market. A lot of PPC there too.
I was refering to the computing platform, not the gaming platform.
People might use PPC to play but not for IT which is Terra Soft’s market.
I think the PowerPC will eventually die. Nobody is going to develop new software for PowerPC platforms. It is over. Univeral binaries will work but for not too long.
Well Mac users turn over their machines far less frequently than PC users so developers will still have to cater to the overwhelming PPC base for quite some time.
If developers use Apple’s X-Code to write their code, it’s a simple matter to “one click compile” universal binaries.
What’s hard is supporting the machines that don’t exist yet in any great number, the MacTels.
“developers will still have to cater to the overwhelming PPC base”
Dude, the remains of a figure close to nothing isn’t anywhere near to ‘overwhelming’, except for in the imagination of a Mac-user… so no worries…
The reason VA tech built a (then) world’s third largest supercomputer for only $5 million, a few hundred pizzas and soda was because price for performance, the G5 chip smoked anything else available.
Since then several companies including a contractor for the US ARMY built X-Serve G5 supercomputers.
It’s really the IBM G5 chip, not Apple that spurned these sales.
Typing this from my PowerMac G5, I don’t look forward to the new line of MacTels with these dual core Intel chips. I feel at least the first batch might not be nearly as powerful as what PPC G5 gives now.
Unless the PowerMacTels are dual-dual cores, then we are talking!
Of course right now I got more power than I possibly can use, so I’m set for at least 7 years of use, hmmm $3000/7 = apx $450 yr TCO
Don’t call me Apple, I’ll call you.
The dual-core Intels are also hyperthreaded, so the OS sees 4 cpu’s not just 2. Of course it all comes down to the applicatations being threaded properly, and as the benchmarks at Tom’s Hardware, or was that Ars?, show that OS X is not thread friendly for user apps.
Once Apple fixes this bug, OSX will not be the bloated sucking pig that it currently is.
I can blame them really, their claim to fame was having the PPC Yellow Dog (RH based) Linux. After Apple shifts to Intel any random distro should work on Apple hardware.
This sort of leaves the Yellow Dog out in the cold. This is only a logical response on their part, but nothing groundbreaking. They are just buying time really.
Is it possible for me to build a PPC system the way I can build an Intel/AMD box out of parts? Can anyone point me in the right direction?
Yes, but it is not cheap and you will not be able to run Mac OS X on it. However, MorphOS and Linux will work…
http://www.pegasosppc.com/pegasos.php
I don’t think the PPC chips are available in small quantities, you’ll have to buy bulk or cockroach parts off eBay.
These things look a million times better than the Pegasos II boards.
Hopefully bPlan have a Pegasos III up their sleeves due for release?
I don’t see how its necessarily bad for them. They are confusing too.
1) They are increasingly involved in the OpenSolaris Community
2) Why would someone pay hundreds more dollars for a genesi board when you can get a mac that comes with os x installed and everything for a lot less?
I don’t see why anyone would buy a genesi board over a mac unless they just wanted to waste money. I think this may actually help genesi’s sale as apple is no longer competeting with them.
Think positive here.
Why would someone pay hundreds more dollars for a genesi board when you can get a mac that comes with os x installed and everything for a lot less?
An Open Desktop Workstation is only $799,-. Not at all bad for a 1Ghz, 512MB RAM, Ati Radeon 9250 *PowerPC* machine. I’ve been tempted to buy one many times, were it not for the fact that I’m on Genesi’s waiting list for a review of one of these babies.
An Open Desktop Workstation is only $799,-. Not at all bad for a 1Ghz, 512MB RAM, Ati Radeon 9250 *PowerPC* machine.
The only question is what would this machine do that a cheaper or better-specced x86 computer or a Mac Mini wouldn’t do – run MorphOS? As nice as the ODW is, it’s just PPC for PPC’s sake.
The real treasure of the Pegasos is the “smart firmware”. That might
become a major improvement to computer systems.
Adapt your system once for the “smart firmware” and yor system will
run on *all* smart system based maschines instantly.
The other treasure is MorphOS, but this has to mature still…
Genesi just licensed the smart firmware to AMCC for their yosemite
board.
Maybe lastability. There’s a saying in the IT culture: Never buy a first-gen product, especially not from Apple
. All kidding aside, the mini’s aren’t bad machines. I’ve seen one overheat itself once, but they were moderately stressful conditions.
As for a cheap x86 pc; well we all know how crappy cheap x86 pc’s are after a couple of years when the cheap fans fail.
I meant are these new G5 boards bad news for Genesi?
They are better spec afterall.
This g5 solution is another price league than the Pegasos. In
comparision the Pegasos is payable from the p&p expenses…
Not Necessarily true. I have a G5 Mac, and a Dell Inspiron 8500 p4 2.2… I installed Mac OS X on the Inspiron…. it is FASTER on boot up, and zippy like..
It probably be a lot better IF..
i have the video accelerated. but atlas.. im still working on hacking out getting the drivers working.
On a side note, i showed my coworkers.. they were impressed at its native speed of it. I look forward in buying an APPLE Notebook with an intel technology inside.
Hopefully It will drive the laptop prices down. Mac Laptops ARE WAY to expensive. $2000 IS a bit too much for a processor that isn’t in the same league as a p4 M….
I am however glad they went to intel. and they will keep my business if they continue to make strides in delivering a better cash to performance value.
“Hopefully It will drive the laptop prices down. Mac Laptops ARE WAY to expensive. $2000 IS a bit too much for a processor that isn’t in the same league as a p4 M….”
I just got the 12″ iBook for $1k USD, and I think that’s a pretty good bargin for a decent laptop. 5-6 hours of battery, OS X 10.4, and iLife ’05 …
But I do agree that the powerbooks are a bit pricey.
If developers use Apple’s X-Code to write their code, it’s a simple matter to “one click compile” universal binaries.
Oh my. That’s what Apple’s propaganda tells you. The truth is that neither Xcode nor any other IDE on the market will solve your problems that come from endianess, differences in SIMD instruction sets or CPU dependent data structures in the Apple system APIs.
fact is, what matters to a desktop and server provider is the marketshare in that industry.
SORRY… Gaming Consoles and PC Desktops are 2 different things right now.
More PPC Chips in consoles makes no difference to the PC industry. What would make a diff is more PPC chips in PCs..
now, its time to enroll in your local university for some business courses.
Perhaps… but the issue being addressed was whether or not PPC is dying or not. THe conclusion drawn was that not oly is it not dying… its experiencing an explosion of growth.
you guys are right. the PPC market is exploding right now. Playstation,Xbox and Nintendo consoles will add millions of new users. But I still thinking that the desktop market will die. All I can think of right now is Amiga OS 4 using PPC arquitecture. Besides that, there is nothing really….I guess the servers market will do good.
I just want to see OS X running on my screen. I thought the Apple market was going to crash during this transition period and it has been completely the opposite. The avg user does not care about the arquitecture, only geeks. there is where the money is.
show me the money.
-2501
All I can think of right now is Amiga OS 4 using PPC arquitecture.
Don’t forget the Pegasos I/II/ODW– they probably outsell the Amiga big time. Not sure though on the sales fgures.
Well, considering the ATX development system is priced over $6K, (for far less than you get in a current Apple G5 for 1/3 the price) I really don’t see this being a saving grace for YD. And here I got excited….
A real innovation comes not from the G5, but it’s predescessor, Freescale Semiconductor, Inc.’s new dual-core G4.
Due to its architecture, unlike x86 it can operate asymetrically, meaning in theory you can run two operating systems simultaneously. This opens many doors for various features, such as the ability to switch from, say, Linux to NetBSD, or the possibility to instead of having a virtual desktop for protected data, you can have an actual desktop.
It’s just amazing the powers this could be used for.
> Don’t call me Apple, I’ll call you.
Well, until/unless you need repairs or parts… then they’ve got you right where they want you; by the wallet.
Also, Jody wrote:
> This sort of leaves the Yellow Dog out in the cold.
> This is only a logical response on their part, but
> nothing groundbreaking. They are just buying time
> really.
Not really. Folks don’t crave speedy computers like they used to. Even bargain basement PC’s (and yesterday’s G4’s) are fast enough for most folks. Some people are even starting to care about energy consumption and how much heat the thing throws off.
Besides the ODW http://www.terrasoftsolutions.com/products/genesi/ I bet you eventually start seeing YDL available for these PPC “game console” machines before long, and any other PPC computers that become available.
With all the talk of DRM, terrasoft might even find themselves as a leader in non-DRM machines (if they decide to market themselves that way).
some AC wrote:
> As nice as the ODW is, it’s just PPC for PPC’s sake.
Well, that, and very low power consumption and heat dissipation. I bet watt-for-watt is faster than x86.
(though I haven’t done the arithmetic on that)
As a research scientist with an xserve cluster (dual G5’s with 4GigRAM) that runs simulation software written ‘in-house’ (C/mpi/gsl), I have recently benchmarked some differences. For my simulaiton work on the same hardware 10.4 is slower than 10.3.9 and Yellow Dog Linux is faster than the rest. Overall I have found 5-12% increase in speed running YDL over OSX which is very encouraging. I fully support Yellow Dog in their efforts and plan on sticking with the PPC for future clusters.
R. Dyer, PhD
“Well, until/unless you need repairs or parts… then they’ve got you right where they want you; by the wallet.
“
That’s where your wrong, first off I got AppleCare that covers the machine for three years. If the Mac has any problems it should show up by then. I don’t abuse my machine in hot enviroments or dusty condititions.
The PowerMac is designed in a way to make it easy to exchange parts. The CPU’s/heat sinks are plugged into the logicboard and screwed into place. Changes in optical drive technology changes so fast that I will most likely buy a new external DVD burner anyway.
Hard drives are standard SATA, so that’s no problem and for other custom parts like fans and PSU’s I know right where to go.
Of course if the logicboard goes, then that’s a problem, but I got three years of coverage for it, if it lasts that long it will last longer after that.
I have a old Mac SE that still fires up nicely, sometimes it’s used for text entry or simple graphics work.
Now about the Powerbooks I agree those are clearly yuppie status symbols, the yearly TCO on those are $1000 a year for 3 years and that’s not including AppleCare!!
Provided you don’t drop, sit on, lose, overheat or get yours stolen before then. So I agree the longterm value isn’t there on those.
Apple would do good to provide a midrange laptop that wasn’t all eye candy at a better price point.
PPC is sucky hardware at over inflated prices. Yellow Dog was mediocre at best and priced way (WAY) to high to be competitive – then it just plan sucked when Ubuntu PPC came out (and that was much better software and was free). Like the movie – time to take old yellow out back and put a bullet in it’s skull, shed a few tears, then move on to something better.
“Hopefully It will drive the laptop prices down. Mac Laptops ARE WAY to expensive. $2000 IS a bit too much for a processor that isn’t in the same league as a p4 M….”
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
It’ll never happen. If Apple’s hardware costs go down, that just means more profit for them, not savings passed on to the buyer. The premium price is part of the cachet of owning an Apple.