NYTimes posted a no-frills article explaining the reasons behind the switch, citing IBM’s inability to produce faster, lower power CPUs for Apple leaving no choice to Apple but to switch to Intel.
What’s really behind the Apple-Intel Alliance
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
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And finally an article that doesn’t predict the end of Linux. 😀
They rejected CELL? They could have had MAC OS X on every PS3, and they rejected it?!?! What a shame.
Cell’s not a good general purpose multi-purpose CPU…
This may be a good move for apple. Intel and AMD get locked in the performance race, Apple will be able to play with newer and faster chips. Hopefully the 65 nm chip will be made by the time the new intel mac appear.
Its also not a laptop cpu and that’s what’s hurting them the most now.
>>”They rejected CELL? They could have had MAC OS X on every PS3…”
Here’s the deal: The way to run OS X is to buy a Mac. Apple has no intention of selling its OS as a separate retail product that runs on something other than Apple hardware.
Besides, why would anyone think PS3 owners would buy OS X?
What are you talking about?
Why would apple want OSX on PS3s, I have to assume your the type who see’s some purpose in Linux running on consoles
Apple sells hardware, not software to hack on a PS3.
Furthermore, as it says the cell in the PS3 is not for desktop use. It would need a lot of work to be used in a desktop, the reason they can get those things out to 3.2 ghz is that they are a vastly simplified chip, and not suitable for desktop use.
Intel had 2 viable options. Go with intel and wait for intel to get some higher speed 64 bit Pentium M based chips out the door (which looks like what they took). Or go with AMD and used 64bit X2s, but AMD isn’t capable of delivering chips. This is clear by AMDs struggle to get a huge jump on intel over the last few years. They just can’t get chips out the door.
The only aspect I hate about this is all the PPC machines becoming legacy junk in a year. Apple may support them, but developers will toss support real quick. Any apps people buy or have now will run like turds or not at all on a new mac if they buy one after the switch. No matter what Apple says, rossetta is not going to be very fast. I bought my Powermac to last a long time, and it surely could, but while i try to keap going on it for a long time, the world will pass it and leave it behind.
The next year or two will suck for apple. Their hardware sales are going to tank massively, same for software unless they start selling all their apps right now as being intel ready too. It would be nice if developers can ship software designed for intel macs now, so people know it will run as it should when they upgrade hardware, but odds of this happening are low.
Would be nice to know how much IBM and Apple talked, to see if there was anyway to have kept things going. Actually doesn’t matter who made the chip and such, just that it would have been so much nicer for Apple to find a way using PPC based chips, then life could keep marching on. People wouldn’t toss their dual G5s when a G6 (ppc) came out, but a switch to intel makes things much more difficult.
Everyone also seems to be forgetting the NeXT legacy.. NeXTSTEP already ran on Intel in 1994 (?). Rhapsody (aka NeXTSTEP 5 aka Mac OS X Server Beta aka pre-OS X) ran on Intel. Mac OS X beta previews had options to compile programs for x86. Mac OS X has been rumoured time and time again to be running on x86 internally at Apple.
Guess why they didn’t choose Cell lol. Apart from all the reasons Cell supposedly don’t make good general purpose desktop CPU or that they’re still created by IBM or.. or.. or.. etc.
Appications running on this thing are going to be complex. They will require a full and complete OS to run. We aren’t talking had tuned DSP code here. We are talking large and complicated apps that are doing everything “real” apps will do. To think that won’t be done in a real OS is to defy logic.
Fab 36 in Germany will be fully on-line this fall drastically reducing any concerns about not meeting chip demands.
Apple can still jump to AMD, without concern of performance, if Intel can’t match their own words.
the original decision to go with the powerpc instead of x86 was a mistake. the cost scale of x86 economics proved to be a marketplace winner reguardless of its defects.
So is OS X running Native now sinces it’s back on x86? I mean look at the core of the OS, Darwin.
It’s good news for all of us, because there are already reports from developers that OS X screams on the Intels, almost matches and beats Dual G5’s on OpenGL and Quartz all on an integrated board! Nice…
Just wanted to know?.
How is Sony claiming backward binary compatibility with PS-2? If so is cell planning on using Transmeta’s design for backward compatibility?
After reading the article I can see how much of a jerk IBM is. IBM can even admit to it’s business mistakes.
It’s their own faught that waffers didn’t produce chips. For the last year and a half it’s been in the news that they have had problems producing the chips.
Remember the iMac last summer that couldn’t be delivered and hurt back to school sales?
Apple’s Chip Pain Will Ease — Later
Jobs & Co. is suffering from slow progress on speedier processors from IBM. Overall, though, Big Blue is the right partner for the job.http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/apr2004/tc20040428_6…
“Now, IBM is struggling to produce cutting-edge G5 chips of sufficient quality in sufficient quantity, and the upper half of Apple’s hardware lineup is in limbo.”
Cell and POWER are both compatible with PPC as it explains on IBM’s website about the design.
Now, CELL is something that has a lot of marketing hype and a buncha leaders putting a chip together. Does that mean its ‘superior’? NO.
xbox did just fine running on intel cpus and sold loads of game consoles.. but since cell was widely adopted, it drove the prices down due to volume.. and since it is better designed for game consoles than intel cpus were, thus offered better performance (may not be much), they switched… they will probably switch in PS4 anyway…
“””””xbox did just fine running on intel cpus and sold loads of game consoles.. but since cell was widely adopted, it drove the prices down due to volume.. and since it is better designed for game consoles than intel cpus were, thus offered better performance (may not be much), they switched… they will probably switch in PS4 anyway…”””””
WTF are you talking about? the CELL was designed specifically for the PS3… the PS3 will compete with the XBox 360… Intel cpus are not involved in this at all…neither is the original XBox which competed against the PS2..which did not have a CELL processor as the design phase for CELL had barely begun when the PS2 came out…
I don’t belive this sh*t. If IBM can make a 3.2ghz triple-core PowerPC for the Xbox360… Why Apple don’t use it?
while i don’t think apple should run on any machine, it should be able to run on machines that pay apple royalty for the sticker “ready for os/x”.
such machines should be 100% legacy free (i.e no ide/ps/2/serial/parallel, even pci-less) and 64-bit
it would be nice for apple to go 100% legacy free x86
When considering possible designs, it is perhaps worth noting that AMD64 when combined with x64 Edition of os x, allows for the elimination of the physical FPU unit, MMX, and 3DNOW! instructions. Therefore once 64 bit OS Xis a mainstream platform, the potential exists for a clean sheet redesign of x86 hardware. With this in mind, the K9 could prove to be a surprising chip, looking much more like a classic RISC processor, than has traditionally been the case with x86 systems.
it could be “power x86”
Backward compatibility will probably be achieved in the same way they did it last generation: by including the PS2’s hardware in the PS3. And since they figured out a while ago how to burn both the PS1’s and PS2’s CPUs on a single chip, they’ll get PS1 compatibility as well.
That’s not an elegant solution at all, but it’s one that works. Nintendo did the same in the GBA and DS.
M$ and apple decide they do not want a third player so billly hands over some money and also tells jobs it is alright to switch to intel so that they can “tag team” linux
heck, now apple becomes more popular, M$ is no longer a monopoly,billy makes money on his apple stock going thru the roof not to mention the fact that all those “monopoly” lawsuits and threats and agreements obvious arent relevant anymore….
At the very least linux growth/adoption is slowed which makes M$ look like it has gained a few percentage points and is “winning” against linux and M$ makes sure every magazine picks up that story and runs with it….
yep no doubt about it, since SCO didnt work in fact it kind of blew up in M$ face they figure they will dig the apple out of the barrel and throw it at linux….
I hope jobs got some BIG money out of billy boy!
>>>I don’t belive this sh*t. If IBM can make a 3.2ghz triple-core PowerPC for the Xbox360… Why Apple don’t use it?
The X-Box/PowerPC cores are more simple than the G5 core. The Sony/Toshiba/IBM Cell core is more simple than the G5 Core.
General PC computer and general PC OS — they need a more complex core.
IBM is basically saying that sure — we can make a faster G5 chip or a low-powered G5 chip, but you (Apple) need to pay me more money.
Sony paid IBM to design a Cell chip that can go to 4 GHz. Microsoft paid IBM to design the xbox chip. Nintendo paid IBM to design their chip as well.
You guys may be interested in what Bob Cringely has to say about it. I found it very interesting. He’s on:
http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/pulpit20050609.html
Mmmm.
Perhaps you should read it more closely…
It’s about SALES, not technical superiorness.
Companies can put in crappy CPUS and do good marketing and outsell companies that put in really good CPUs….
OK??
“Nearly a quarter-century ago, Apple Computer ran a snarky ad after its onetime rival encroached on its territory: ‘Welcome, I.B.M. Seriously.’ ”
I’m nearly 25 years old myself. What was Apple doing with I.B.M. in the early eighties?
Apple are shifting into a realm of volume and brand, rather than cutting edge complexity and tech-kudos.
Interesting that IBM knew as much about this as we did!
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20050611-4987.html
(assuming the report is true)
Apple could have used Cell or Xenon, but they both need something of a paradigm shift in the way the OS behaves and interacts with them, more so for Cell. Apple aren’t interested in that when they already have a simple option, to switch to Intel and make their hardware more generic.
You can hardly blame them, when IBM wanted more cash and Intel were dangling a Yonah shaped carrot, it’s a simple choice.
As for Sony P3/Cell and XBox/Xenon. CPU’sville is about to become a whole lot more of an interesting place. Next year Apple will be x86 based, Sony will launch their P3 and Microsoft will have already launched their Xbox360.
Cell will be open licenced, and there’ll be a linux based desktop running Cell, along with the PS3 linux option, which BTW is not half as rediculious as some suggest – ever heard of a Mac Mini? (it’s not a computer, it’s just a box!!)
😉
it could be PPC dosn’t have the kick it once had.
“Fab 36 in Germany will be fully on-line this fall drastically reducing any concerns about not meeting chip demands.
Apple can still jump to AMD, without concern of performance, if Intel can’t match their own words.”
Marc hit the nail on the head. Intel will always have AMD looming over their shoulder and they’ll do what they can to keep Apple’s contract so that they can get their new tech out there to be the standard.
It really was a win-win move.
IBM should open the PPC line of chips to consumers. Encourage motherboard manufacturers to make PPC compatible products, or possible use HT and migrate closer to AMD’s arch. And build a Linux PC with multicore general purpose Power5 class CPU and a Cell vector CPU.
Now that Apple’s business won’t be hurt by IBM giving us Power based personal computers..
I wonder how the Opterons compare to the Power5s.
Cringely missed the mark. He asks the right questions, but he comes up with the wrong answers. For example, it is well documented that Apple looked at Cell, AMD, etc.
This partnership is about Intel once again claiming it’s position as The Standard and Apple getting chips and future tech it can play with.
“ever heard of a Mac Mini? (it’s not a computer, it’s just a box!!)”
Isn’t every computer a box? ; )
The form factor does not designate function. Operation and capability do.
Apple’s largest demographic is image manipulation. Altevic seriously improved PPC’s image manipulation speed. now you have 8 SPE’s. It wouldn’t surprise me if a cell can have a user work in Photoshop, while encoding HD video.
of course don’t expect it to boost your web surfing performace though.
“Nearly a quarter-century ago, Apple Computer ran a snarky ad after its onetime rival encroached on its territory: ‘Welcome, I.B.M. Seriously.’ ”
I’m nearly 25 years old myself. What was Apple doing with I.B.M. in the early eighties?
NYT article is referring to the introduction of the original IBM PC, IBM’s entry to the desktop microcomputer market which until then had been dominated by Apple products.
And when 65nm rolls around, there is no reason that you cannot have x86 and PowerPC on the same chip. Instead of four cores, you could even do:
Dual core x86
PowerPC G5 core
PowerPC G5 core
Giving you a speedy dual-core X86 and a speedy dual G5 as well.
As silicon geometries shrink, “instruction set” will mostly become meaningless. All the other functionality around the “instruction set” will be the interesting stuff.
With a modular design, the cost of adding an “instruction set” to a processor will be small.
Of course the typical use of non-homogeneous cores will be for fancy network processing, graphics, DSP, DRM, etc.
“of course don’t expect it to boost your web surfing performace though.”
You just answered your own question.
The Macintosh is a general-purpose desktop computer. A gaming console is a dedicated machine. Sure, you could probably use Cell in other dedicated machines… maybe a rendering farm… who knows? The point is, however, it’s not suited for general desktop computing tasks. That doesn’t mean it’s a crap chip; it’s very good at what it does.
Hasn’t anyone actually read anything ?
Both these chips only have a single precision floating point, which means, doing your taxes it will actually guess the last numbers, let alone doing any real 3D and real work.
Cell and XBOX PPC chips are great for game machines, not real machines. Thats why Apple did not go with either one. G5 is considerbly more complex, add to it that a laptop cpu needs to be able to “go to sleep” and lower it’s MHz when you unplug it and such, it is not able to, not yet.
Cringely comes oh so close to the real reason Jobs did this. By switching to Intel, Apple now runs exactly what NeXT OS did. Same OS, same CPU. With the switch to Intel, “Classic” applications will no longer run. Quite simply, after twenty years of effort Jobs has finally killed what he has hated so much – the Macintosh.
Between the all the hype around the Cell processor, and all the already present hype around “Linux”, I wouldn’t be surprised if the two camps started joining together. We’d all get lovely fanboy-isms like:
“Ubuntu + PS3 could have rendered all of Finding Nemo for Pixar with just USB connected units 3 units”
“PS3 Linux for the Enterprise!!!”
so jobs thinks he has enough followers to “start over” and grab all the followers pocket money for the “new” apple….
might be raping the cash cow…. could be could be
I agree, it could happen–but there’s not enough volume to drive such a chip being created–sadly 🙁
I do think the instruction set is getting more meaningless, and i think apple thought so too
😉 Those old PPC chips were the best though! Even NASA thinks so
Both these chips only have a single precision floating point, which means, doing your taxes it will actually guess the last numbers, let alone doing any real 3D and real work.
Its a well known design consideration that monetary calculations are done using integers (except percentages, which are rounded to nearest dollar anyways).
Cell and XBOX PPC chips are great for game machines, not real machines. Thats why Apple did not go with either one. G5 is considerbly more complex
But noone is saying why! Its simple, really. The Cell/Xenon/Nintendo chips don’t try to dynamically reorder instructions. They use in-order processing. That’s fine for graphics, as its a bunch of in-order instructions, but poor for general purpose computing. It slows down branching (if…then…else, loops, etc.) greatly. There’s a lot of lament about next-gen AI being somewhat difficult to get working with any real speed (read, less complex AI than what we’ll be expecting).
That’s the real reason these chips are simpler. That reordering unit can be removed from a PPC custom design, which is what Cell/Xenon/Nintendo all have. And yes, the Cell is a PPC with some custom vector units and a hard-as-nails memory model.
do {
Apple is hardware maker
}while(1)
bit tired of those comments
It WAS.
Until it made really different hardware,in architectural meaning.
No reason anymore.
Time to turn into software company
IBM dumped Apple. Apple is making the best of a really lousy situation. Linux and Microsoft have nothing at all to fear.
It’s candy thats behind it! Quite grab it before someone else does!
“Nearly a quarter-century ago, Apple Computer ran a snarky ad after its onetime rival encroached on its territory: ‘Welcome, I.B.M. Seriously.’ ”
I’m nearly 25 years old myself. What was Apple doing with I.B.M. in the early eighties?
NYT article is referring to the introduction of the original IBM PC, IBM’s entry to the desktop microcomputer market which until then had been dominated by Apple products.”
Heh heh, Funny thing is, I still have one of those IBM 5150’s from 1981…
And it still works, nothing has ever failed on it. Even the monitor is still good…(though I don’t use it much other than to read ancient floppies)
Too bad they don’t make them as durable anymore…
“Apple now runs exactly what NeXT OS did”
NeXT OS might have been able to run on x86 but originally those NeXT boxes ran on Motorola 680×0
notebooks
The fact that Mac OS-X renders Linux desktops a non-starter is incidental. But I bet it sure bumps up Mac sales. Who knows what Apple will do when someone comes knocking and asks for 50,000 white box wintel licenses.
The multi-threading problem with Mas OS-X precludes it’s effective use on Cell type processors. No one really needs a multiple processor box for Internet browsing and other PC type uses — IMHO.
Who knows what Apple will do when someone comes knocking and asks for 50,000 white box wintel licenses.
You don’t think things through much do you? Did you mean “mactel” and not wintel? What would Apple have to do with windows licenses? If you mean if someone comes knocking for 50,000 OSX licenses to run on white boxes then you’re still not thinking, because once the cat is out of the bag they might as well close down all hardware operations and go head to head with Microsoft selling DVDs.
Apple might have ultimate goals of getting out of the hardware business, but not today and not 5 years from now. Until their volumes are much, much larger they could never sustain the piracy loses….unless DRM or something else up their sleeves that would probably fail.
Playstation 2 and 1 emulation is done in software there Anonymous.
Typically Dynamic Recompilation takes a 4x slowdown in order to work, so if you look at the rough specs: Playstation 1 @ 30 mHz, Playstation 2 @ 300 mHz, Playstation 3 @ 3,200 mHz.
The Playstation 3 has enough power on raw clock speed alone to handle emulation in software. The architecture of the PS2 is pretty well defined so most of the grunt work can be offloaded easily without too much of a problem, such as the vector units and graphics rendering. This is an advantage of having a clear system, but they may be getting a little bit bogged down on the PS2 (if you look at the Playstation vs the Saturn, Sega lost out, then their roles were flipped vs the PS2 and the Dreamcast, ironic!)
I’m not sure how well the PS3 will work emulated vs say the PS4, but that’s 5-6 years down the track, so they may do it in software again, or they may go the PS2 route and do it in hardware again. Hard to tell at this point in time.
“The fact that Mac OS-X renders Linux desktops a non-starter is incidental.”
What makes you think this? It didn’t before and it won’t now.
NeXT OS might have been able to run on x86 but originally those NeXT boxes ran on Motorola 680×0
NeXTSTEP had four fully supported platforms: 680×0 NeXT boxes, SPARC (such as a SPARC 5), x86, and PA-RISC. There were fat binaries that enabled an application to run on all four (if it was compiled for those four).
In the last years of NeXT, x86 was the dominant platform, as NeXT had stopped making the NeXT hardware. Steve himself ran NeXTSTEP on an IBM Thinkpad in 1997 and used it to give the presentation of him as the new Apple interim CEO.
What this is about is selling out all of the assets of the Pentium brand.
What’s the next Intel chip called? It’s Dual Core x84_64 4.0 GHZ 32 bit, 2.04 GHZ 64 bit?
ahahhahahaha
Shaggy: Old Man Apple?
Scooby: Woldmam Wapple?
Police Officer: Gee we could have never solved this one if it wasn’t for you kids.
…They will survive and prosper, at least couple of years. Their main power lies in P5 chips and beyond…and all three nex’gen game console is dominated by IBM’s PPC derivative chips. Apple might’ve meant nothing to them…
Apple is irrelevant. Intel is irrelevant. Now lower your firewall and prepare to be assimilated.
…I love stupid jokes
By the way, some analysts published a report claiming that still w/o Apple, IBM will continue to grow and prosper. Read http://www.xbitlabs.com/news/cpu/display/20050609121500.html for more info.
http://osnews.com/comment.php?news_id=10812
why?
Looks to me like Apple is also getting further and further out of the personal computers business and more and more toward iPods and consumer electronics. Granted, they never made cpu’s, but this is just one less thing that makes Macs less distinguishable from PC’s. In fact, given OS X’s BSD roots, one will argue that they’re really just a UI company.
Speed:
Intel; x86 needs an os and programs to push the processor upgrades, waiting for longhorn lets us all use what we already have (except for gamers)for 4+ yrs with no real need to upgrade, the general publics need for upgrading is stagnant. enter Apple with the perception by the public of graphics and multimedia.
Apple; as stated here in many threads they need faster processors, period.
Win Win for both
Money:
Apple; faster processors and more capabilities sells more computers. more money, also even tho they say they will not license their os there still is the ability to do that in the future if needed. how about HP selling a dual boot OS X/Windows computer that has the OS X restriction that does not allow it to boot on anything but that computer. It will allow Apple into some of the “Enterprise” market and they get the fees for the os.
Intel; right now 2.3 percent of the market is not a lot of processors but if apple grows they sell more processors and they probably will make more of a margin selling to Apple than Dell. also Apple will use their higher speed lower power consumption chips which are more profitable.
WIN WIN for both
Power:
Apple; wrests some of the market from Microsoft making them more of a player than a niche market.
Intel; If Apple grows they are less dependent on Microsoft and Dell and will start to regain the power in the market that they once had and can dictate the course of computing more rather than being told their course.
Win Win for both Intel much more.
First of all, there still is the option to get a PS/3 and hammer linux on top of it (Sony already said, that they are going to do another harddrive linux edition)
Second, I ran Qt7 on my centrino based notebook yesterday, and it basically ran a full screen h264 video almost smooth, almost no framedrops, compared to my mini it ran circles around it, somehow probably performancewise not fully at G5 level but very close to it.
Exactly what Apple needs for their notebooks, low power, performancwise a huge step up from the G4 but not fully the speed of their g5 offerings.
Sort of makes me excited to get a centrino based mini next year (probably with the latest P-M generation and a Radeon mobile 9600 in it)
Having such a thing wont be the worst decision, put lots of ram in it, and in the long rum, via Xen or other virtualisation technologies you will be able to run OSX-Windows and Linux-BSD whatever side by side.
First I also was shocked about the thought, but the more I think of it, the more I start to like the fact. Apple can again switch if there is too much trouble on the Intel side of things, but for now it will be a good move.
Looking forward to a decent centrino based Mini.
With the game consoles IBM didn’t waste time to announce the Cell.Later the specs came along.What’s a bit awkward in my opinion that Intel hasn’t said a thing about the chip that most likely is going to run inside the apples.AMD on the other hand has the X2 allready finished and announced the X4 being developed on.
Wouldn’t suprise me if Apple would also bet on AMD for the powermac (x86_64).
Since the dev boxes are plain P4s with AMD64/EMT64 enabled it wont be anything drastic like an Itanium core, but there will be for sure a really severa hardware dongle in one form or the other, to prevent OSX to run on plain PCs. My bet is that the hardware dongle will be done either over the bios replacement tech, intel has been working on for a long time, or via a special Mac processor, which is x86 at the core, but has some new instructions, if intel can really justify to roll an apple processor.
Either way, it will be rough, to get OSX up and running on a plain PC, and probably Apple will sue the first person who manages it to pull it off into oblivion.
They should have instead used this one!
http://www.zilog.com
I guess in the 80-90s the tech industry was so much more interesting and innovative because money wasn’t a big issue. They just did it for fun. The era is gone. Amiga, IRIX, BeOS, now Mac running on PowerPC – they’re all gone.
Google “Conroe”, “Westbrook”, and “Merom”. These chips are supposed to begin showing up next year, with the heavy hitters showing up in 2007. Which matches Apple’s Intel Timeline. This is when I’ll buy my next Mac.
Have a good one…zen
DP-867 / OS X 10.3.9
1.75 GB RAM
360 GB HDD
RADEON 9800 PRO
Intel IS VHS….
Google “Conroe”, “Westbrook”, and “Merom”. These chips are supposed to begin showing up next year, with the heavy hitters showing up in 2007. Which matches Apple’s Intel Timeline. This is when I’ll buy my next Mac.
Have a good one…zen
DP-867 / OS X 10.3.9
1.75 GB RAM
360 GB HDD
RADEON 9800 PRO
Intel IS VHS….
The merom and Conroe have both 4MB L2 cache on die,not bad.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/03/17/intel_plots_4mb_l2_64bit/
clock speed is a issue but the real performance comes from onboard cahce and 4mb would be sweeeeet, probably overkil but still sweeeeeet…..
shame AMD had to throw the spotlight on the fact that clock speed itself has little to do with performance but yet everyone still flocks to intel…
if i was in the market i would definately be buying AMD…..
The Cell can do double precision FP. Just look at the prototype Cell based server IBM showed recently.
I keep hearing on many message boards the Cell is not suitable for general purpose computing, which means what exactly? IBM is pushing Cell for consumer, desktop, server and embedded markets. IBM is even protoyping a Cell based server, I assume to run AIX or Linux. I think Apple didn’t go with Cell for economic reasons rather than Cell’s rumored unsuitability.
OS X will still be hardware locked, so you still need a system from APPLE to run OS X. I can see if OS X was campatible with any x86 based chip, but it won’t be.
See for yourself:
http://www.blachford.info/computer/Cells/Cell1.html
One hardware cell has dual 12.8 GByte per second memory busses which would give the cell a theoretically memory bandwith of 25.6 GB/s.
* 4.6 GHz
* 1.3v
* 85 Celcius operation with heat sink
* 6.4 Gigabit / second off-chip communication
Isn’t this what Apple wanted in the first place?
This is what got a bit more my attention:
APU local memory – no cache
“This may sound like an inflexible system which will be complex to program and it most likely is but this system will deliver data to the APU registers at a phenomenal rate. If 2 registers can be moved per cycle to or from the local memory it will in it’s first incarnation deliver 147 Gigabytes per second. That’s for a single APU, the aggregate bandwidth for all local memories will be over a Terabyte per second – no CPU in the consumer market has a cache which will even get close to that figure. The APUs need to be fed with data and by using a local memory based design the Cell designers have provided plenty of it.”
i recalll when this topic was broached naysayers were saying apple will never go x86
yea and xbox CAN NOT run linux…. oh wait, it sure does now doesnt it… comeon you honestly think apple can keep this locked up? Lets see if they use a plain vanilla x86 chip and then we will see…
and why would it still be called OSX?
How does darwin figure into all of this?
I guess Steve Jobs must have figured out the hard way to make money is not by being exclusive but to go with the mainstream.
With the PS3 and CELL based PCs on the market next spring CELL will become a popular platform and IBM a major player in the CPU market. Intel’s Pentium D series already displays severe heat and performance problems in comparison to the AMD Athlon 64 X2 and the Power architecture is a simply a superior platform and has a number of benefits across the board.
Apple has clearly made the wrong decision in order to save a quick few bucks but down the line Apple will miss the benefits of the CELL architecture and loosing out big times. We will see the CELL CPU popping up in everything from DVD players to supercomputers and while Apple will have to deal with Pentium heat problems while the CELL desktops will be the new standard.
Indeed , the xbox can run linux …
But can your x86 pc run x86 xbox games ??? No …
so yes, the intel-OsX box wil run linux … but the wil OsX run on the x86 box ?
I keep hearing on many message boards the Cell is not suitable for general purpose computing, which means what exactly?
The Cell consists of a central “PowerPC processing element” (PPE) controlling seven so-called “SIMD processing elements” (SPEs).
The SPEs are simple vector processors, with a PowerPC-based but Altivec-incompatible instruction set. Each has its own local memory with very fast access but no paging support, which means that the SPEs can’t be treated like a normal SMP (symmetric multi processor) machine. So in order to take advantage of the SPEs at all, software has to be specifically written for them. (That’s in contrast to MS’s Xenon btw, which has three symmetric PPEs.)
The PPE itself is a 64-bit PowerPC, but apart from that it’s nothing like a G5. It has a long (20-stage) pipeline, in-order execution, only one integer unit, no branch prediction and is also a bit short on cache.
Such a design requires the compiler to do much of the work that the processor would normally do itself. In particular, instructions have to be arranged in such a way that pipeline stalls due to data and control dependencies are minimised.
Since PowerPCs used in Macs have always been out-of-order designs, existing software has not been compiled with that in mind and would therefore perform real bad on the Cell PPE.
But even after recompiling with the necessary optimisations, anything with lots of integer arithmetic and branches in it, e.g. OS kernel, user interface stuff, compilers, game AI, will not perform nearly as well on the Cell as on a G5.
When Linux runs on the cell cpu with any major problems we will see! In like of recent history Jobs is spreading more RDF.
With the PS3 and CELL based PCs on the market next spring…
What Cell PCs? The ones in your dreams? The rest of your comments are just as silly.
A Cell transition would’ve meant headaches for Apple nearly as great as an Intel transition. Recompile still required and rewarded by lower performance for general apps to boot. And still no low power 64-bit laptop chip, and still no 3ghz 64-bit desktop chip… you know, the stuff they actually needed. And a further lock-in to a single supplier, IBM. A Cell transition would’ve satisfied a few PowerPC fanboys who are now eating crow, and nobody else. It would have brought pain almost equal or greater to the Mac community as the Intel transition, but with no significant gain.
Apple’s only other option was to pay IBM big bucks to focus more development on the chips they actually needed and IBM had been so far unable to deliver. With no guarantee that such a plan would even succeed. And still no backup supplier, as Freescale is concentrating on the embedded market and is still delivering laptop chips with a, what is it again, 167mhz fsb? Or something equally ridiculous. This move would’ve saved Apple a lot of face, and a hell of a lot of trouble. And kept their loyal fanboys happy. But it would’ve been an incredibly stupid business move.
Who made a mistake here? Not Apple. (This was obviously not something they wanted to do. It was a choice of last resort.) IBM made a huge mistake here. I don’t think they had any idea the PR disaster a switch like this would be. Having Apple on board with the PPC program was worth more to them than the 2% of sales they actually represented.
“But can your x86 pc run x86 xbox games ??? No …”
hmmm, dont know! let me take special dvd drive out of the xbox and rig it into a x86pc and i would guess it probably would work, unless of course the game somehow looks for the xboxOS and/or the drive itself craps out being in a normal pc????
BUT darwin runs on a x86pc already… I think osX would easily run on a whitebox x86pc and apple will have to implement some major protection to keep it from doing so…
… and I have seen osX on a xbox as well but do not know specifics about how it was done either…
was not going with amd64, as if it was written in LONG mode, it has additional registers and a cleaner programming model.
Linux is going to run on the cell cpu’s, as sure as someone hacking OSX to run on plain jane PC’s. If Linux can run cell cpu’s OSX can too, what is this RDF time.
Danox: Scroll up the page and read Nimble’s comment. The point isn’t that OS X couldn’t be ported to the Cell, of course it could. The point is that, like switching to Intel, this would break all existing Mac applications, and have serious implications for performance. Quite frankly if you don’t understand the difference between in-order and out-of-order execution (hint: it’s not a figment of Steve Jobs’ imagination) then you have no business commenting.
Anonymous: Since Intel has adopted AMD64 (calling it EM64T), I can’t see what possible difference that makes.
Since Intel has adopted AMD64 (calling it EM64T), I can’t see what possible difference that makes.
do you know whether apple will use intel with EM64T as the current pentium M’s don’t support EM64T
Do you know if Apple will be shipping what are “current pentium M processors” now in 2006?
and is also a bit short on cache.
The cell has no cache,but APU (SPE) local memory.Which is in theory much faster.
The cell has no cache,but APU (SPE) local memory.Which is in theory much faster.
Each SPE indeed has 256kB of local memory instead of a level 1 cache. This can be faster than cache, but has to be hand-managed. Therefore existing software wouldn’t take advantage of it. Furthermore, the OS’s memory management can’t deal with it because it doesn’t have paging support.
It will be very interesting to see how Linux deals with those SPEs and how applications can access them.
The central PowerPC processing element has 32KB each of L1 instruction and data cache. In addition to that, the PPE and all the SPEs share 512KB of L2 cache.
The G5 had 64KB of L1 instruction cache, 32 KB of L1 data cache, and an exclusive 512KB of L2 cache.
Interestingly the Cell is supposed to have 234 million transistors, whereas the G5 only had 52 million. So theoretically IBM could have fitted four G5s into the same die space. Now that would have been some desktop processor.
Sorry, I didn’t read the article.
I’m not willing to make free registrations to parts of foreign newspapers I won’t read if not exceptionally.
Please, consider that what is just a small annoyment for one single user this time could be worse if it happens too often.
TY
You can turn most NYTimes links into no-registration-required links here:
http://nytimes.blogspace.com/genlink
Also, if you do a search for the headline you’ll usually find that the article has been picked up by other sites that don’t require registration, in this case news.com has it.
Intel build a DRM chip into their motherboard.
I imagine that Apple will use this to secure several things:
1) iTunes
2) Encrypted Home Directory
3) OSX boot process. Make sure nothing can run if the cryptography unit doesnt pass it off. See how the “bit-torrented OSX on a white box” leet-boys get around that ! (they won’t. Ever)
4) Virus protection – they could make new apps optionally need a digital signature to run and thats the END of viruses
3) OSX boot process. Make sure nothing can run if the cryptography unit doesnt pass it off.
How?
4) Virus protection – they could make new apps optionally need a digital signature to run and thats the END of viruses
Until someone makes (compiles) the virus on a (married) legal mac platform so the virus gets a digital signature to0.
The bigest thing will be when Sun Microsystems will announce eight core processor code named Niagara which I think will be 80% faster than CELL. After Niagara will be announced CELL processor popularity will lost.
I think that Niagara is more better for Gaming platforms than CELL.
– Didn’t Ars’ Tech call it the equivilant of a fast G3?
– Is the Cell’s PowerPC the same as the 3 in the new XBox design, to run at 3.2 ghz?
Would be nice if we could benchmark the thing.
But, I believe Steve didn’t just muse this decision for 5 minutes. He probably, you know, has some expert consultants help him with his decision. Possibly, the guys coding OS X?
This would be a nice application for the Cell.
if Sony could get together with these guys, and port the Linux version of Folding to the PS3/Linux I’d be very interested.
Here’s another Hot Chip.
If Sun could put out a consumer/developer version, with Solaris/or Linux/Java these would be interesting times.
Didn’t Ars’ Tech call it the equivilant of a fast G3?
Possibly in terms of performance, but not in terms of architecture. Like all the other PowerPCs used in Macs it was an out-of-order design.
Is the Cell’s PowerPC the same as the 3 in the new XBox design, to run at 3.2 ghz?
Yes, that’s widely assumed. Main difference being the caches: the Xenon cores share one 1MB level 2 cache, whereas the Cell’s PPE has to share 512kB with the eight SPEs.
But, I believe Steve didn’t just muse this decision for 5 minutes. He probably, you know, has some expert consultants help him with his decision.
Perhaps he phoned the Woz?
do you know whether apple will use intel with EM64T as the current pentium M’s don’t support EM64T
We don’t know when OS X will support it, but I think it’s safe to assume given the timeframe that even the first Macintel boxes will ship with EM64T (a.k.a. AMD64) chips.
Interestingly the Cell is supposed to have 234 million transistors
how is m$ and ps3 supposed to be affordable?
TY for the hint
I don’t believe that apple desktops or laptops based on x86 are going to be much more expensive than those from Dell or HP.
so, I think it is a brilliant move from jobs. Apple will go head to head against windows and it’ll beat it.
…you ill-informed nimrods.
I’m excited about lower-cost, greater cross-platform-compatibility OS X machines. I guess it’s not really “cross platform” if you came to the same side of the street, though, is it?
Once upon a time, I ran NEXTSTEP on sun4m, PA_RISC, 040 and x86 simultaneously (different machies) from 4x-fat binaries in /LocalApps over NFS. The PPro 200 HP Kayak was definitely the performance leader. And it didn’t have the dithered 8-bit video of the Sun GX/cg6!
NeXT users have lived the future, back in 1996. The rest of you are just catching up now!
My 1989 Cube is still running!
I killed a thread!
😮