There is an interesting editorial in the Inquirer that paints a picture of what an Apple/AMD platform might mean for the ailing PC industry and what a MacOSX/Hammer combination could do to chip-away at the Microsoft/Intel “Wintel” hegemony. The article is pure speculation, the conclusions highly unlikely, but interesting nonetheless.
It takes more than ease of use at the dead end user level. Someone has to program the OS and applications.. Will a dive back into a hacked x86 cisc really help?
Isn’t that backwards? Will AMD take APPLE to the mainstream!!!!??
AMD is already mainstream!
Apple’s Aqua GUI is very nice but all these Dr.Strangelove might or might not Jobs wait till you see next Expo appearances cannot be taken seriously. It’s all between magic, vaporware and plain trolling. That was an article more suitable for <a href=”http://www.satirewire.com“>Satirewire.
I mean, the article could have been titled “Mars Attack” and no one would have noted the difference.
News please.
… It isn’t going to happen! I know that Apple is taking advantage of AMDs other technologies, but the CPU will not be one of them!
Eugenia,
I know this is what you want, almost as much as I want BeOS to dominate over Windows on the PC platform! Neither of our dreams will be realized (though BeOS might have a chance right?!). I noticed you have been super busy with the website this week… great coverage:-)
My thoughts:
Apple shold NEVER merge with x86 technolory.
Apple isn`n fighting that much for marketshares like companies
in the x86 bussines do. They have thier own group of consumers
and thier market is well (again).
The most advanced feature of the Mac in the future will be OS X.
In that point, I agree with S. Jobs. In the current OS market you need
a “hardware dongle” (= Mac) to protect your system. Oherwise the
financial- and marketigpower of the current leading os company in
the x86 market will destroy apple.
Best example is the sad end of my beloved BeOS. Beside the
management failtures they made, the never had a real chance
to get into the x86 OS business.
So, I think, if you like apple, and if you want them to be in bussines
in the future, protect them from the sharktank called x86 market.
Greetings from Germany
Ralf
Eugenia: Thank’s for your great work on sites like this and BeNews!
I can admit with all the popularity that AMD receives and I would even have an AMD powered PC to run BeOS/Linux (I am still deciding my priorities for this year)! It would be a match made in heaven, so okay you’re right Eugenia, I am wrong… you are smart, I am dumb (okay a skit from ‘Happy Gilmore’ he he)! But it is true that AMD doesn’t get the credit it deserves and gets put second behind Intel, when AMD should have some spotlight, other than the userbase doing all the preaching and evangelizing the sad truth. Maybe if the ‘Hammer’ was more RISC than CISC and made it where Mac OS X can’t run on normal x86 hardware, Apple might jump on board with AMD?! But we know that Mac OS X is not going anywhere near the x86 platform due to reasons we all pretty much have a hunch on! But here is a question… would Mac users embrace AMDs Hammer over the G5? That is a question that Apple needs an answer for. So I guess we will see what happens, but don’t hold your breath, you’ll suffocate!!
1) Small mac developers ouldn’t face another recompile/rebuild for OS/X/86 – this leaves you missing a lot of crucial applications until the x86 Unix/Linux boys got in there with ports of their software..
2) The move to PPc was a bad experience for many and cost a lot in the hope of better performance – can Apple really justify making all that lovely PPC software useless? If not, then they need either incredibly expensive PPC emulation code in the OSX core ( PPC emulation on x86 is possible..transitive technologies have a product that does it as does opensource 604e devt tool PSIM ) – or to add a PPC chip as coprocessor, which would push the costs through the roof…
3) Does Apple really want people dualbooting OSX and Windows XP cos it will happen if they go X86… And I wouldnt put it past Microsoft to bring out Windows:PPC in revenge. Before you laugh, well, don’t. Back in 97-9 Windows NT4 was sold for use on PPC systems, XP is based on NT and is doubtless similarly portable.
Everyone wants Apple to go x86 via AMD. Now for something that will warp your fragile little minds – AMD should start manufacturing PPC processors. Thank you, thank you, and please sign the checks on your way out 😉
This is not a bad idea. I thought that was in the rumormill that AMD would takeover Motorola’s PPC tech sometime ago? I am not starting bad gossip, but I thought I heard that wacky story somewhere!@#$%^&*? Oh well, if AMD could successfully push PPC… then let em have the reins!!!
This would cut their own throats and Jobs knows this. Once people got used to the lower prices of x86 machines and faster speeds…how many ppc boxes would they sell to NEW users?
Not to mention the rift it would create with old users.
Remember the clone wars…they were selling too well and affected Apples bottom line. Hence they were stopped.
Unless Apple becomes a software company…this idea is stillborn.
If Apple did any of that, I think it would lose some of the things I like about their computers: low power consumption & low noise, and frankly, I think these things will become more and more important in future. These have also been a way Apple has distinguished itself from the x86 market.
High power consumption will also limit Apple’s design flexibility. That said, Apple does need a MHz boost in the processor department, and I think Apple isn’t entirely satisfied trying to convince man+dog of the benefits of superior architecture when everyone else is talkiing megahertz, megahertz, megahertz.
the only way to bring apple and AMD in the same deal would be a buyout of AMD by apple followed by a converstion of AMD plant to PPC.
That would remove a big competition in the x86 market and we would see the real price of a x86 versus a PPC. That would remove a part of the “apple computer cost more”.
the problem is apple don’t have that kind of money. One thing to do that would be to get backing with company that want to make M$ weaker so that the control on AMD would not just be on apple pocket.
A common misconception is that 64 bit will make all applications faster. This is simply not true for everyday, common applications because they don’t even come close to needing 64 bit addresses.
The nice thing about Hammer is that 32 bit applications will still run full throttle (supposedly). Contrast that with Itanium, which is a slow dog for all common applications that have been ported to run on it, included OSes (like Windows) themselves.
Apple wont switch to x86 and for good reason. They make themseleves different and it works – Apple may be expensive but they are one of the few PC* makers making a profit.
Hammer Technology is good but it is designed to run x86 code – actually thats not quite true – it decodes x86 code and executes it on a fast RISC core.
You could change it so it decoded PPC code but this would be difficult as I believe the number and type of register are different and there are other differences like the 3DNow/SSE unit would have to be replaced with Altivec (aka velocity engine). etc….
If AMD decided to bring out a version which ran PPC code it could no doubt prove very interesting. But then it would just be a PPC chip wouldn’t it.
Besides, Apple are said to designing their own CPU (the G5), thats no news BTW, Apple have been involved with the CPU design for years.
* Strictly speaking “PC” means Personal Computer and thats exactly what Macs are. The common usage just happens to take PC to mean “IBM Compatible PC”.
CattBeMac, please email me. I am preparing an updated design for OSNews and I need someone with a Mac to tell me if everything renders ok on iCab, OmniWeb and IE under Macintosh. My main consideration is not the layout actually, but the font sizes, which seem to be rendered very small on a Mac. Awaiting your response. Thanks.
Someone mentioned that AMD should fab PPC. Sorry AMD just announced they are going to license and manufacture the Mips processor.
when I see MS spelled like M$, I know the article is biased and the author is a dumbass
Glad to see im not the only one that thinks that an AMD/Apple mixture spells disaster. For the past few years, AMD has been pushing out better processors than Intel, even though their frequency isnt as high. The P4 was designed so that they could push the limits of its frequency so that they could use it as a marketing ploy (its true). And who said that the Hammer would be all that much better than the PPC? The Hammer has 16 64bit general purpose registers and 16 floating point registers. The PPC has 64 64bit general purpose registers (so im told by a friend of mine). If you’ve ever done assembly you know how important it is to have as many general purpose registers available as possible. For those of you that dont know, the x86 currently has 6 general purpose registers, and an extra if you are careful.
The PPC is RISC is it not? I’m not sure if they are planning on making the *Hammer RISC or CISC. The Athlon was abit of a mix, it could be considered RISC if you used only the instructions which it defined as risc instructions, but hit a “loop” instruction and you get punished for it.
AFAIK, the G4 is still better than any x86 processor out there, even though they dont have the same frequencies. The article said that M$ didnt have a 64bit version of its OS. Have people forgotten the Alpha port so fast? It was true 64bit Windows NT4, and you can get Windows2k beta for it too, but they never released the final for Alpha.
Who said that users need 64bit processors? Even though the G4 is still considered a 32bit processor, its registers are 64bit. It may only have 32bit addressing, but who here has over 4gigs of memory in their mac? I think the last thing Apple should be thinking about is going 64bit, as there is no reason for it.
These days, 1GB of memory can be had for a pittance. It will only be a year or two before 4GB of memory is common on machines. Besides, having > 4GB virtual address space is really nice for OS developers. With a > 4GB virtual address space, the OS kernel can map all physical RAM into memory at the same time, not just the several hundred megs that can be done on 32-bit architectures. That removes a lot of rather nasty code since the kernel doesn’t need to care to check if a page is mapped before using it (see Linux highmem support). Also, it allows prelinked libraries to be implemented more sanely. All you have to do is reserve a chunk of virtual address space for each installed library, relocate it once, and you never have to deal with relocation again. On a 64-bit arch, it its giant virtual address space, this is easy. On a 32-bit arch, with its limited virtual address space (remember, an average Linux or Windows box can have hundreds of megs of libraries) this is less convenient. Also, with 64-bit archs, you can do all sorts of cool things with persistant objects and such that are harder to do with a more constrained virtual address space.
http://www.microsoft.com/technet/treeview/default.asp?url=/TechNet/…
Will not happen.
This would be a slap in the face of all Apple developers and users, that would have to recomplie or repurchase their applications for a different platform. With such a move, Apple would declare their whole “MHz myth” campaign and their pushing of Altivec bogus and lose it’s face. There would be no proper migration path as there was from 68k->PPC, since even the Hammer cannot emulate a G4 at reasonable speed. Apples pride applications like FinalCut Pro and iDVD might even be slower on the AMD chip since that one has no AltiVec unit.
If OSX is keeping time the Unix way, then Apple will need to be 64 bit clean before the year 2038. If I am remembering this correctly Unix tells time by counting seconds as an integer number from the year 1970. When we get to 2038 the integer number becomes to big for a 32 bit system.
The sony play station2 uses a processor based on Mips, except the Sony system is 128 bit. the consumer is already using some very powerful hardware. Once we are using 64 bit or better systems the average system will have enough head room not to need any more hacks. Like the hack to be able to use more than 4 gigs of ram on 32 bit systems etc.
I don’t see this happening because of all the software that would have to be re-written. Since Apple only has a small percentage of the computer market (~5%), I think software developers would be hesitant to put the resources again into re-writing the software. Finally, everyone who already has purchased software would have to eventually run it under emulation if Apple used the Hammer (or another) chip.
In the future, if for some reason Apple could not be supplied with PowerPC chips, then I could see moving OS X to another processer. If at this time, AMD chips are still better than Intel’s, then I would hope that Apple uses AMD’s chips.
– Mark
As other people pointed out, Apple is a hardware company. One note: the G5 isn’t being designed by Apple, as far as I know; what I’ve read suggests that it’s finally updating the PowerPC with IBM’s newer Power architecture. The current PPCs are all Power2 designs, while IBM is merrily chugging along with Power4. I’m not going to make dramatic predictions about how wonderful the G5s will be when they get here, but I suspect they’ll definitely the perceived gaps.
Apple’s work with Darwin and even some of their developer documentation for OS X makes it clear they’ve thought about the possibility of x86 CPUs; not only is Darwin itself already ported, the “bundle” format that OS X uses for applications specifically mentions processor independence and gives the example of PPC and X86 versions of the same program in the same bundle. Having said that, though, my perception of this is that it’s not a commitment to move to Intel hardware as much as a political cannon pointed at Motorola.
My prediction for Apple’s immediate future, though, is that they’re going to move to G5 chips this year–and their new processors will not only be designed but actually manufactured by IBM.
You don’t need the Hammer for 64 bit integer time values. UNIX (and VMS) already have finer resolution time values that are 64 bits wide. The problem we will have in 2038 is that the seconds-since-1970 date/time is stored and processed as 32 bits, regardless of the register sizes of the processor, and signed at that. As long as we don’t need to express times before 1970, unsigned will give us another bit and we can carry on into the next century on 32 bits.
Okay I understand the date issure better now.
I still think that its worth the effort to jump up to 64 bit systems. Your solution by going to unsigned integers is a good idea, however its still a work around to a limitation of 32 bit systems. Once we get everybody 64 bit clean these sorts of issues are gone. Well until we get to the year 2^64 in seconds.
Hello! Apple is a hardware company, if they go with amd they’ve instantly opened the platform for cloners and hobbists alike to build thier own boxen to run osx. Apple doesnt make money with osx it’s a trinket to get you to buy their hardware. Why is it so many people are so quick to jump to “well what if apple did this.. or that.. then i could finally run osx and not have to pay $23409234 dollars for it!” Simply think about what you’re saying before you open your mouth. Gee wait that would invalidate apple’s business model, it wouldnt be a good idea for apple to do that, crisis averted and the world has one less dumb idea floating around.
No, really, 64 bit registers do not solve that kind of problem. It’s a software problem, one that the register size does not affect at all. You could switch to a 64 bit date/time right now on any computer you want. You would only have to rewrite the software – lots of it. The compiler will make it work on your processor’s 32 bit registers. The one difference 64 bits makes in an architectural sense is the address space, since that’s practically limited to the size of the address registers. Cf. comments above on that. A 64 bit address space opens up some interesting possibilities, but of course anything that exploits it is then pretty much limited to only 64 bit (or more!) hardware.
And what would an AMD CPU do for hobbyists? Their platform is closed, not because of
the CPU but because of the rest of it. The PPC CPU is as well documented as AMD’s,
and an Apple board with an AMD CPU would be as much a mystery as it is now. I didn’t hear anyone proposing that MacOS be ported to the PC clone, and I’m sure they would have better sense than that.
An AMD PPC being the most likly of the unlikly lot.