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[Forum] DANGER ZONE FACT&FICTIONANN.lu
Posted on 18-Apr-2002 18:23 GMT by db25 comments
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X86 causing problems again, this time Apple consider changing to X86 http://www.viahardware.com/x86apple.shtm (personally i think this is just speculation an they have nothing else to write about, add your comment or worries about this article. How can this effect Amigone hopes?)
DANGER ZONE FACT&FICTION : Comment 1 of 25ANN.lu
Posted by coldfire on 18-Apr-2002 16:29 GMT
It would kill the powerpc chip as a desktop processor. It is only the constant harranging of Apple that gets Motorola to get off their ass and make faster chips now. Now that apple is using BSD as it's core OS it would be just a matter of porting the Aqua interface to make the change to X86. I bet there is some talk at apple about making the change.
coldfire
DANGER ZONE FACT&FICTION : Comment 2 of 25ANN.lu
Posted by Douglas McLaughlin on 18-Apr-2002 16:39 GMT
In reply to Comment 1 (coldfire):
There have already been rumors on /. that an x86 OS X ALREADY exists!
DANGER ZONE FACT&FICTION : Comment 3 of 25ANN.lu
Posted by Sam Dunham on 18-Apr-2002 16:43 GMT
In reply to Comment 1 (coldfire):
Actually, it would also require porting the Carbon layer and that would be a tremendous undertaking.
DANGER ZONE FACT&FICTION : Comment 4 of 25ANN.lu
Posted by darklite on 18-Apr-2002 17:09 GMT
tol'ya ;p
no, seriously... could everyone please make the news items a bit less subjective, and thus a bit more professional? Thanks.
DANGER ZONE FACT&FICTION : Comment 5 of 25ANN.lu
Posted by DaveW on 18-Apr-2002 17:10 GMT
The only effect I can see is prices for low volume orders of PPC chips going up, if PPC becomes midrange hardware only.
I am skeptical about this in the short term because of all the applications that would require PPC emulation to run and Apple would irritate the hell out of its followers if it made this move.
IMHO, in the near future the battle between linux distributions that are getting more easy to use and microsoft operating systems that are getting more complex to use will rage harder. Until the outcome of that is clearer it seems unlikely that Apple would risk getting caught up in it.
Dave.
(C) Oh No Its Another DaveW Post Inc. 2002 All Rights Reserved.
DANGER ZONE FACT&FICTION : Comment 6 of 25ANN.lu
Posted by DaveW on 18-Apr-2002 17:20 GMT
In reply to Comment 5 (DaveW):
In fact because they dont mention that PPC chips are fabbed by Moto *and* IBM and base their argument on the issues that Moto has had shows me that the referenced article is particularly clueless.
Dave.
(C) Oh No Its Another DaveW Post Inc. 2002 All Rights Reserved.
DANGER ZONE FACT&FICTION : Comment 7 of 25ANN.lu
Posted by Mike Veroukis on 18-Apr-2002 17:57 GMT
>I am skeptical about this in the short term because of all the applications
>that would require PPC emulation to run and Apple would irritate the hell out
>of its followers if it made this move.
Not so if they decide to release MacOS X for PPC and x86 and thus have a slow transition. If PPC fails to keep up with AMD's Hammer then the users themselves would demand the move.
- Mike
DANGER ZONE FACT&FICTION : Comment 8 of 25ANN.lu
Posted by Anonymous on 18-Apr-2002 19:02 GMT
if the so called amigaone was really new ,which it isnt it shouldnt bother it. mac wont go to a bad chip design at any rate.
DANGER ZONE FACT&FICTION : Comment 9 of 25ANN.lu
Posted by smithy on 18-Apr-2002 20:11 GMT
In reply to Comment 8 (Anonymous):
>bad chip design at any rate
Please illuminate us Mr Engineer. What's bad about the x86?
DANGER ZONE FACT&FICTION : Comment 10 of 25ANN.lu
Posted by Gareth Knight on 18-Apr-2002 20:19 GMT
The article is written as a recommendation that Apple switch to x86, not that they are considering the move. For anyone that doesn't know Apple history, the company have had various internal x86 projects for ten years! If they do choose to move beyond PPC it will most likely be a 64-bit processor.
DANGER ZONE FACT&FICTION : Comment 11 of 25ANN.lu
Posted by strobe on 18-Apr-2002 21:02 GMT
There is a lot of misinformation on this thread. Allow me to clear a few things up:
• Carbon is NOT tied to PowerPC. The Carbon library is entirely written in C (with extern pascal interfaces). If Mac OS X were ported to another platform Carbon would merely require a simple recompile.
• Classic IS tied to PowerPC and can't be ported for obvious reasons. However Mac OS X has matured to the point that few 'Classic' apps are required. This includes Real Player (ugh), a few codecs like indeo video, and I really can't think of anything else which doesn't have a Mac OS X native alternative. An x86 port would allow WINE to be ported to XDarwin so I doubt that would be an issue.
• The only other things tied to PowerPC are drivers and some PowerPC optimized parts tied to QuickTime and Quartz. They could still be compiled for x86 but would run slower (and by that I do mean in absolute terms, not per mhz.).
• Would I use Mac OS X for x86? Yes. Will it happen any time soon? No.
• Apple is having a hard enough time with driver support for their limited hardware series. Mac users are up in arms because one specific configuration can't play DVD movies on the external video hook-up. The last thing they would want to do is support a bazillion more devices with a bazillion more pee-stained screaming 'Mac' users who can't get DVD working with their Cirrus Logic video cards.
• Apple is, last I looked, a $7bil company which makes most of their money selling good quality expensive hardware with high margins (which people like myself are willing to pay because they run MacOS which in turn makes me more efficient). Now Apple could sell the hardware for less and the OS for $500, but MacOS is already pirated at $100 (which in no way covers the cost of development). Now perhaps Apple could sell Mac OS X with a hardware dongle of some time, but that would completely ignore the fact that...
• OPENSTEP for x86 was a BOMB! Every time I point this out people complain that it was too expensive, at which point I've proved my case.
Yes I would like to see it happen, no it won't. Too many people expecting to pay little to nothing for an OS no matter how well their productivity improves. In the meantime I'm satisfied with the current situation.
DANGER ZONE FACT&FICTION : Comment 12 of 25ANN.lu
Posted by Dave Haynie on 19-Apr-2002 02:21 GMT
In reply to Comment 1 (coldfire):
New Flash- Apple killed the PPC as a desktop processor the day they cancelled MacOS licensing. It's just taking a little while for the Macfaithful to catch on.
Motorola doesn't rush out new CPUs for one simple reason: it's not an interesting business. The level of technological development necessary to deliver a new, modern desktop CPU is not a problem when you have a healthy company and 50M potential customers. But for a marketplace of 250K-2M per year (depending on how fast Apple moves the new processor throughout their product line, and assuming they don't slip any more in the marketplace), this simply isn't a good business.
Word on the street is that there will be a G5, but that's only because Apple's footing much of the bill. In return, they get an exclusive on it for some set period, probably about two years.
-Dave Haynie
4tel, Inc.
DANGER ZONE FACT&FICTION : Comment 13 of 25ANN.lu
Posted by Dave Haynie on 19-Apr-2002 02:27 GMT
In reply to Comment 6 (DaveW):
You're misunderstanding IBM's involvement. IBM does NOT make any G4 chips as a product. They have, at least on two occasions, contract-manufactured some G4s for Apple, when Motorola couldn't meet demand. That's it. They don't participate in (eg, don't pay for) development of new G4/G5 class CPUs. When Apple dumped MacOS licensing, IBM totally lost interest in the PPC as a desktop CPU. Internally, they use PPC604s in their very low-end servers, and Power3-II or Power4 chips in the higher-end products.
IBM's committment to the PowerPC, these days, is limited to embedded processors. They have made faster versions of the PPC750, not for MacOS, but because it's a popular CPU used in phone and network switches and routers. They also have a full line of embedded PPCs, the PPC40x/44x series, which actually covers more area than Motorola (and undercuts Mot in price, though they don't offer any of these with FPUs yet).
-Dave Haynie
4tel, Inc.
DANGER ZONE FACT&FICTION : Comment 14 of 25ANN.lu
Posted by DaveW on 19-Apr-2002 03:21 GMT
In reply to Comment 13 (Dave Haynie):
Sorry to correct you Dave H. IBM does not make G4s as that was a Moto only development. I would suggest I know more about what runs through IBMs production lines than you ;-)
Plus, Apple might get exclusive mits on G5s from Moto. That means diddly squat elsewhere. Why do you think that IBM does its own chip design and production?
Ah of course, the G5 and G6 protos that are under my desk at work are embedded, must brainwash myself to believe that.
Dave.
DANGER ZONE FACT&FICTION : Comment 15 of 25ANN.lu
Posted by DaveW on 19-Apr-2002 04:11 GMT
Its not all on the website yet but you should go do some reading here at least:
http://www-3.ibm.com/chips/products/powerpc/rdmap/
P
DANGER ZONE FACT&FICTION : Comment 16 of 25ANN.lu
Posted by BIG POPPA on 19-Apr-2002 05:35 GMT
Total speculation and conjecture! The roadplan to G5 shows the greatest promise and I use Pentiums and G3's and G4's on a daily basis. Whoever made this up is really having a slow news week!
DANGER ZONE FACT&FICTION : Comment 17 of 25ANN.lu
Posted by strobe on 19-Apr-2002 06:12 GMT
Strategic Roadmaps are always a joke. Anybody who would put an ounce of faith in buzzwords like "Ultrascalar" would have to believe that AOS4 is just around the corner and AOS5 will soon follow it.
*cough cough*
Shipping 200X people, 200X....just think...before 2010....wow
DANGER ZONE FACT&FICTION : Comment 18 of 25ANN.lu
Posted by Rodney McDonell on 19-Apr-2002 09:51 GMT
In reply to Comment 10 (Gareth Knight):
itanium?
DANGER ZONE FACT&FICTION : Comment 19 of 25ANN.lu
Posted by Dave Haynie on 19-Apr-2002 10:29 GMT
In reply to Comment 14 (DaveW):
Well, maybe you do have an insider on each and every contract manufacturing job IBM does. I certainly don't. I would, in fact, suspect that most contract jobs are NOT a matter of wide public notice, unless someone makes them so. It _was_ widely reported, well over a year ago, that IBM made some G4s under contract to Apple/Motorola, because Motorola couldn't meet demand.
Of course that doesn't make it an IBM product, anymore than the Atari Jaguar was an IBM product. I rather suspect IBM does foundry work for many companies. This _did_ lead many Mac and PowerPC fans (hey, whether the story was true or just a rumor, really) to incorrectly conclude IBM would release a G4 product. IBM clearly said, at every turn, that they would not. I got it immediately -- no market. But it would be uncharacteristic of IBM Microelectronics or any company that does contract work to refuse a large prepaid order, I would think. As well, making a PowerPC anywhere else would open up all kinds of licensing issues.
-Dave Haynie
4tel, Inc.
DANGER ZONE FACT&FICTION : Comment 20 of 25ANN.lu
Posted by DaveW on 19-Apr-2002 11:54 GMT
In reply to Comment 19 (Dave Haynie):
IIRC there were also other reasons why IBM did not make the "G4" processors for its own purposes
but thats another off topic story ;-)
Dave.
DANGER ZONE FACT&FICTION : Comment 21 of 25ANN.lu
Posted by Solar on 19-Apr-2002 12:13 GMT
> Carbon is NOT tied to PowerPC.
> The Carbon library is entirely written in C.
As if one thing had anything to do with the other... :-D
DANGER ZONE FACT&FICTION : Comment 22 of 25ANN.lu
Posted by AdmV on 19-Apr-2002 14:43 GMT
I do wish people would not focus so heavily on Macs and on IBM and motorola desktop politics.
IBM have a system called AS/400 which has been for many many years based round the PPC. I have been out of touch recently, and IBM have now changed the name of the AS/400.
One of the old code names for the as/400 ppc chips from a few years ago was north star processors. I have little doubt that these may well be used far and wide amongst big blue kit. I could be wrong but I think many IBM systems have been growing closer in terms of tchnology and chips and systems used.
This is a major reason why IBM do not follow the same path as MOT with PPC. They use and develop the PPC for their own uses.
So yes, IBM have a vested interest in PPC and its development. And No, its not based round the desktop and mac issues.
IBM continues to develop AS/400 systems, based around PPC processors.
These are mid/large range systems and more than 300,000 have sold.
AdmV
DANGER ZONE FACT&FICTION : Comment 23 of 25ANN.lu
Posted by DaveW on 19-Apr-2002 16:36 GMT
In reply to Comment 22 (AdmV):
Focus so heavily? I spoke the truth in all my posts as I have VERY good access to all the information I have stated. Dave Haynie does not have a similar level of access. It is hard for me to follow up on this topic because I have a business interest. Apart from posting the roadmap which has been up there for a year now I can do no more. I cant give you progress of projects, I cant give you specs I shouldnt have even talked about test boards.
I agree with you. Not just 400, RS6k too and SP2 systems. It is rather pathetic the poor fidelity information that goes round the Mac but then if you look at the majority of computer journalists and if you realise thats mostly where people get info from you realise why such low grade info is out there. No offence Dave but you are right and you are wrong.
Now there is a lot of publically available info out there that those without blinkers should be able to go read.
Note that Altivec is the main political issue.
Dave.
DANGER ZONE FACT&FICTION : Comment 24 of 25ANN.lu
Posted by basicbsd on 20-Apr-2002 04:51 GMT
In reply to Comment 23 (DaveW):
Focus so heavily? I spoke the truth in all my posts as I have VERY good access to all the information I have stated.
That is wrong , I proved him wrong on many occasions.
DANGER ZONE FACT&FICTION : Comment 25 of 25ANN.lu
Posted by Tony Gore on 20-Apr-2002 10:01 GMT
In reply to Comment 12 (Dave Haynie):
"New Flash- Apple killed the PPC as a desktop processor the day they cancelled MacOS licensing"
Anonymous, there are 25 items in your selection
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