“Apple CEO Steve Jobs said this week that his company would consider moving to Intel chips, but that he would wait until at least 2003 because the transition to Mac OS X was more important. But with the speed of Power PC hardware increasingly falling behind Intel’s chips–The Pentium 4 will hit 3 GHz this year–Apple would be wise to do a bit of research. I recommend AMD’s upcoming 64-bit Opteron, which will give Apple a technological leg up on Windows and, perhaps, offer them Windows compatibility through the Opteron’s full compatibility with 32-bit x86 code. Come on, Apple: Do the right thing.” Read the blurb on WinInformant. Read more for a short commentary. Appendix 21/July/2002: Please read for a small update and more explanations at the end of the article.Our Take: Personally, I believe that OSX will jump architectures soon enough. Motorola is not interested in their PPC line of CPUs, and G5 is nothing but vaporware so far. They have clearly stated that these CPUs are too far away from their focus as a company. Where does that leave Apple?
G4s might be good machines, but the x86-based CPUs are now riding away the clockspeed horse and they only get better and faster with time. G4s are currently on 1 Ghz, while rumours want Jobs to introduce faster G4s, only at 1.2 Ghz, with the release of OSX Jaguar next month. Obviously, Apple is lagging behind in raw speed (and this has nothing to do with the “Mhz myth”). Their products are outrageously overpriced for the raw speeds they offer these days while more and more users seem to wake up from Job’s “reality distortion field”.
Apple, once upon a time, used to have more than 10% of the computer market. Latest statistics show that Apple has fallen to 2.4% of the overall desktop market for the summer 2002, while it had 2.9% last October, 2001.
Time is running by, and Apple will need to make a decision, fast. I believe they will indeed use another architecture, which it might be AMD’s 64-bit Opteron, or Itanium2 or maybe, the simple 32-bit x86. Wallet-wise, it does not matter what they will pick. Why is it so? Read on.
Because Apple is primarily a hardware company. If they leave the PPC world (and that won’t happen overnight, all their third party apps run there and all their loyal costumers are still there), their new platform of their choice will also have the same “theme” as their PPC products.
Forget the possibility that you could purchase OSX off the shelf and run it on your PC. This will never happen (except for a demo CD for promotional purposes, maybe). Apple would do the same ‘tricks’ they did for PPC to make sure that OSX only runs on exact hardware they sell. They will modify BIOSes of both cards and motherboards to make sure that OSX would only run on the specific Apple hardware (while it would be able to run other x86-based OSes like Linux and Windows (which might be a good strategy), while other x86 hardware and PCs won’t be able to run OSX).
By doing it this way, Apple wouldn’t necessarily have to clash with the Microsoft giant, as the hardware they would run on, wouldn’t be exactly what I would call “IBM PC and compatibles”.
I am not against the idea of a more “closed” x86 hardware. History taught us that no one can go against Microsoft’s OS and have a profitable company at the same time by only selling a boxed OS. Apple will have to “close” their x86 hardware and only work with a very particular set of hardware and cards. It is the only way they would survive in the x86 jungle. And this is fine with me. We see Linux distribution companies going down and only be strong in the server market because of its price per seat (free), Be died, QNX does not care about the desktop, OS/2 is history too. Apple won’t make the same mistake.
There is such large choice of hardware out there that Apple won’t be able to support all of it. Hardware support is the main problem of every OS in the x86 world. Even Windows XP does not support all the recent hardware yet. Therefore, Apple would only support a fraction of this hardware, rebrand them if necessary and possibly change… the way they look. In other words, the jump of architectures won’t look much different to an end-user, not much different as it was looking before when he/she was purchasing a PowerBook or a PowerMac. It will still be hardware controlled and modified and manufactured by Apple.
The reason I wrote this is to calm down people who would be so excited to use OSX on their current PCs, as this won’t be happening. You will still have to purchase an x86, or Opteron or Itanium or whatever machine that it is Apple-branded (and possibly on a pretty high price as the current Macs). If Apple changes architectures (to whichever architecture that might be) that won’t matter much for the consumer. It will still be branded as “Apple Hardware” and it will still cost you to get it.
Appendix: I would like to make some points more clear:
1. A possible jump to a new architecture, would NOT happen overnight. PPC computers would still be selling from Apple, in parallel to whichever new architecture Apple might choose. PPC won’t die overnight, it will take years.
2. This article is mostly to advocate the fact that Apple would still sell “closed” hardware, no matter which architecture they might choose to jump in.
3. IF (I am saying, IF) that architecture might be x86, they will possibly first try to only sell an XServe server rack product based on x86 and not a desktop/workstation machine. This way, Apple can find some good excuses for using x86 (compatibility for server software, better support from ISPs and CPU manufacturers, you name it), without making their userbase angry (because their average Mac customers do not really use rack servers…). “They only use it for the server product” the Mac users will say and they will sleep tight at night. After this “transition” in the minds of the Mac users happen, 8-10 months later Apple will be offering x86-based workstations too (in parallel to the PPC ones). People would have now used to the idea, and not all will be bad for Apple. What I am trying to say, is that whichever transition might happen, Apple will try to make it as smooth as possible in the minds of all costumers. Apple is great on marketing…
4. Binary compatibility of course will have to break. However, that is the whole point of a “transition”. API compatibility can be very strong, as history has taught us with BeOS and QNX versions of PPC/x86, and theoretically, a simple recompilation of an application can produce binaries for both platforms without much hassle. Not all applications will be ported to the new architecture, but this “transition time” will help Apple establish themselves in the new platfom overtime. Nobody said that it would be easy.
5. Is such a platform-jump the real reason behind the divorce of Microsoft and Apple, regarding Microsoft’s application ports to the Mac, that the news media is covering the past few days?
Here is a recent benchmark of latest P4s and Athlons against a dual G4, where the x86-based machines are ahead on all tests. Apple is trying to establish themselves in the digital video/imaging/3D area in the last few months with the buyout of many such multimedia software companies, but clearly, with their current G4s, they have no chance to compete with WindowsXP’s equivelant software and raw speed. In my view, a platform switch is imminent for Apple and it should be expected.
This won’t happen. Apple will NOT attempt any kind of windows compatibility, for one thing. While I can see Apple making a closed x86 box, the more likely scenario is either going with IBM’s G3’s which are really much faster now than the G4s or partnering with AMD for a RISC chip. AMD does embedded RISC chips already so the scenario isn’t too far fetched.
How does switching to x86 constitute the “the right thing”? For who? Apple? No way!
as quoted from MacRumors:
>>(5m 40s) Steve Jobs was asked about porting Mac OS X to Intel:
Steve Jobs: “The roadmap on the PowerPC actually looks pretty good and there are some advantages to it. As an example, the PowerPC has something in it called AltiVec, we call the Velocity Engine — it’s a vector engine — it dramatically accelerates media, much better than, as an example, the Intel processors or the AMD processors… so we actually eek out a fair amount of performance from these things when all is said and done. And the roadmap looks pretty good. Now, as you point out, once our transition to Mac OS 10 is complete, which I expect will be around the end of this year or sometime early next year and we get the top 20% of our installed base running 10, and I think the next 20 will come very rapidly after that. Then we’ll have options, then we’ll have options and we like to have options. But right now, between Motorola and IBM, the roadmap looks pretty decent. ”
… so it looks like discussions of OS X on Intel/AMD may be a premature. (despite repeated speculation on this topic)<<
It’s not going to happen folks, I think I have a hunch on what Apple might do, but I keep it to myself for now 🙂
> Apple will NOT attempt any kind of windows compatibility
It is on their best interest to allow Windows compatibility with their hardware (but not on the other way around). Linux people are craving for something like this via VMWare and emulation techniques. Windows compatibility is important, for many-many reasons.
I am not just saying that they will only choose x86, it might be something else indeed. What I am trying to “pass” with this commentary is that whatever that would be, it would be a “closed” hardware. It would be controlled by Apple, because that is their primary source of income.
Wow, this is the 13th story I put up in less than 20 hours… We never had more than 6 a day… 😮
> as quoted from MacRumors
Never, ever, believe MacRumors. The guy lies constantly to get traffic. No one trusts him anymore to give him any real rumours, so he makes them up. I caught him LIEING 2 months ago. He blatantly wrote how great Cosmoe was and that he had tried it. He was lieing, as I know for sure that he did not have any such access to Cosmoe back then (that was before the release of Cosmoe).
Jobs’ actually saying something such as this, no matter how candid he may seem, is pretty damned remarkable. Though I’m a fan of the PowerPC architecture, it no longer makes any sense whatsoever for Apple to stick with it, especially with Motorola’s apparent complete lack of motivation to get the G5 out anytime in the even remote future (not that I blame them, of course–targeting the desktop is understandably extremely low on their list of priorities). Moreover, with the pending widespread acceptance of the Itanium, they no longer have their old-fashioned RISC-over-CISC bragging rights (not that it means anything any longer). It’s obvious that they must do something, and there are obvious advantages to using Intel hardware (it would speed up emulation of Windows applications, for one thing).
On an unrelated note, I definitely think Apple should consider creating an Win32-workalike API to facilitate the porting of applications to Mac OS X. While this obviously haunted, say, OS/2, I feel that it would be a different situation all together with Mac OS X. After all, Mac users prefer the operating system and hardware… they could care less if the same software were available for another platform–indeed, this is *already* the case, and Mac users generally must wait quite a while before they get a port of a piece of software. This would merely reduce the wait. The cons of this, however, is that there’s already enough API fragmentation with Mac OS X, among others. Well, it’s a thought, at least. Now discuss! =)
> The cons of this, however, is that there’s already enough API fragmentation with Mac OS X, among others.
Not necessarily. QNX and BeOS have very good compatibility with their PPC versions. A simple recompilation most of the time is enough to get these apps “ported” to both architectures.
“Time is running by, and Apple will need to make a decision. I believe they will indeed use another architecture, which it might be AMD’s 64-bit Opteron, or Itanium2 or maybe, the simple 32-bit x86. ”
Inluding Itanium in the list just reduced the articles credibility to 0. Itanium will never be used in any type of PC, it is toooooo far off the beaten track.
If Apple did build a closed x86 box that still ran most of the other OSs, I buy one in a heartbeat. If it can’t run anything else, well thats interesting but I’d pass on it.
> Inluding Itanium in the list just reduced the articles credibility to 0. Itanium will never be used in any type of PC, it is toooooo far off the beaten track.
I am sorry, but I am talking about Itanium2, the latest version (http://www.electronicstimes.com/story/OEG20020530S0024). Which is very nice cpu, unlike the weak Itanium 1. You never know what Apple might choose.
The point of my commentary was that whatever it might be, it will be “closed” hardware.
I can understand Apple making a platform jump, considering the lackluster development of PPC, but I can’t see x86. Why? One word: laptops.Laptops are becoming an ever-increasing part of the PC market.And for a long time, one of the selling points of a PowerBook, et al, were the long battery life (still applicable) and processor speed (no longer so applicable – for now). For a desktop, it might offer an advantage, but the most powerful x86 chips never make it to laptops due to power consumption and heat issues. And forget about a multi-processor x86 laptop! If they’re going to jump elsewhere, they’ll still need a cool, low-power, powerful processor ala PPC. A switch to x86 loses them significant advantages in the laptop market. PPC based laptops have other advantages besides just Mac OS.
Even if Apple were to move to x86 chips for their systems, that doesn’t mean that you will be able to run MacOS X on any clone in the world. Apple could build in hardware requirements that could only be satisfied on Apple supplied hardware.
Doing this would allow Apple to have a cheap source of CPUs while still requiring Apple branded hardware.
Which is exactly what I wrote in the article…
>Not necessarily. QNX and BeOS have very
>good compatibility with their PPC versions.
>A simple recompilation most of the time is
>enough to get these apps “ported” to both
>architectures
In the NeXTStep days, they used to distribute NeXT binaries in what was called a Quad-Fat format (if memory serves). Basically, a single binary could run on 68000, x86, and a couple of other processors.
It worked well, just like it does in BeOS and NetBSD.
I couldn’t have said it better myself!
You never know what Apple might choose.
I can gaurentee they won’t be chosing Itanium. Not only is it pretty expensive in comparison to commodity processors, but it is also an excellent space heater ( > 135 Watts). Real world performance is somewhat removed from what the SPEC benchmarks might lead you to believe…
Frankly, all that Itanium and the stupid diversion down EPIC alley has show is that making an already difficult job (compilier writing) practically impossible isn’t a good thing.
If Apple did go all the way into x86 processors. Could they go head to head with MS on the software/os side side(on x86)? We might end up with 2 giants. I have a PC thats running windows, but I also have a Mac running OS X. OS X is my favorite OS to this date.
> Could they go head to head with MS on the software/os side side(on x86)?
This is the whole point of having “closed” hardware. They won’t be going head-to-head. OSX would *only* work on Apple PCs, while Windows would work on everything else (and maybe on Apple PCs too). But OSX would not run on “IBM PC and compatibles”. It would only run on a modified x86 platform, created and solely sold by Apple. This way the two giants wouldn’t clash, it would help Apple to not be pushed to support all this hardware for x86, and they would make a good buck.
>>*only* work on Apple PCs<<
‘Apple PCs’ is such a dirty word Eugenia!
🙂
The one thing missing in the G4’s “Velocity Engine” is the ability to handle double precision floating point numbers. The G4’s FPU can do it, but not the vector unit. But guess who’s vector unit can accelerate double precision FP calcs? Intel’s SSE/SSE2 and AMD’s 3DNow (note: some Athlon models have SSE as well).
If Apple switches to x86 hardware I just might get what I want: better 3D grapihcs cards. You don’t find FireGL or Quadros on a Mac, nope. If OSX ran on x86 hardware I hope it would be possible to simply write drivers for said video cards.
Apple’s marketing stategy right now is “Switch.” They’re trying to get Windows users to switch to the Mac. Well why not Apple switch themselves? Try out x86 hardware, that’ll make it easier for Windows users to switch to Mac.
> ‘Apple PCs’ is such a dirty word Eugenia!
You will have to get used to it until next year. 😉
If Apple could roll buy (somewhere) EV8 Alpha CPUs and run OSX on that, now THAT would be cool. I dont know of anyone who doesnt respect the Alpha as a powerhorse. Heat problems? what heat problems, i could touch my proc right now without burning myself (thought its an EV56, not sure how the EV7s and the vaporware EV8s are).
Eugenia: i see a problem with your scenario though. Say someone see’s a “shiny new x86 that runs OSX” in a store, and decides “wow, i want to try that.”. Runs it, and realizes, that hey, it doesnt work EXACTLY like windows and could be frightened away, take an XP CD (*shudder*) slap it in and boom Apple lost a customer.
With their current model, if someone buys an apple box, they really are screwed into using OSX, forced to learn how to use it, and eventually love it. I think it would be more logical for them to pick another non-x86 chip, if something, personally i’d have more respect for them if they did, i want to see the x86 burn in the bloody pits of…..
sj will never go with intel. the main reason is that must distinguish apple from other chips to charge more. it does not matter if the chip is better or not just not comparable in the windows world. I believe IBM’s power4 is what sj is talking about not intel or AMD.
…that Apple is planning on switching to x86 then I wonder how the sales of the new Macs will be? I for sure wouldn’t buy one right now!.
My company ordered about 19 Dell Latitude laptops for use in a summer program with youths. Once the program is over, we share them with a local public library.
Anyways, these laptops are PentiumIII-M 1GHz. They are incredibly quiet – a trait seen in most Dell products – but it does get hot. I provide tech support to the kids using it (since I wrote the software they’re using anyways) and we often work in rooms with no air conditioning – if anyone here is from New England area, you know the kind of summer heat we’re having. All in all these laptops do quite well. But I’ll admit it’s still no comparison to PPC chips – Intel’s Speedstep tech that was suppose to save battery life supposedly had a bug in it and was removed altogether, I’m not totally clear on what the deal was there.
The PPC is also used in embedded platforms, and it was modified to be better for desktop use. Someone had suggested Apple partner with AMD to make a RISC CPU, and they had mentioned that AMD also develops embedded chips. This is true, however it’s probably not worth the effort to take an embedded processor and make it desktop-class, when there’s already several desktop chips available and they have much more money invested into them for R&D. Those 2 magical letters R&D is what Apple needs most.
>>Apple’s marketing stategy right now is “Switch.” They’re trying to get Windows users to switch to the Mac. Well why not Apple switch themselves? Try out x86 hardware, that’ll make it easier for Windows users to switch to Mac.<<
I don’t think ‘switching’ to x86 is going to change anything, people will still hate Apple (regardless what CPU the Mac runs), like people who hate Microsoft (regardless what OS they deploy)! Apple will still price their hardware the same and people will still complain. Apple would commit ultimate suicide going x86, and then the Mac refugees would jump onto the Amiga ship for comfort. Sounds crazy, but it’s a possibility.
I’ve been saying it for years; Apple needs to shift focus from hardware to software if they want to increase their abysmal market share (~5%). They could get users to switch without them having to buy a whole new computer. That’s the only reason I don’t use OSX: I can’t afford a new computer. Even if the x86 OSX install cd cost ~$300, I’d pay for it. It beats $1200 for a new iBook.
> Say someone see’s a “shiny new x86 that runs OSX” in a store, and decides “wow, i want to try that.”. Runs it, and realizes, that hey, it doesnt work EXACTLY like windows and could be frightened away, take an XP CD (*shudder*) slap it in and boom Apple lost a customer.
No, Apple practically lost nothing. Apple has still sold one computer and that is what matters.
If this person was to buy instead a PPC Mac and he did not like OSX, his next computer would have been a PC. In our case, this person would also buy another PC. In both situations, Apple lost a customer. But in both situations, they sold hardware. It is the exactly the same situation.
There is no flaw on my scenario. ;-D
>>You will have to get used to it until next year. ;-)<<
What’s happening next year?
me confused :-
With all due respect to Eugenia, I have to disagree with the “PowerPCs are too slow to sell much longer” argument. Even if we concede the point that PowerPCs are slower than x86 chips (which some people would be happy to debate ;^)), the fact is, nobody except gamers needs the fastest CPU anymore. I can surf the web, read my email, even play videos and most games just fine on a 500Mhz machine with a decent 3D card. There may be other reasons for Apple to switch to x86 chips (economics mostly), but saying that 1 GHz chip isn’t fast enough is like saying that a Corvette isn’t fast enough because it only goes 150MPH, while a Lamborghini can go 200MPH. Guess what? Most people are driving on little winding country roads where there is no reason to go faster than 25MPH anyway. No, the things that sell a Mac are not raw CPU speed, but ease of use, reliability, and style.
And now that I’ve argued that, let me weaken my argument a bit by saying that current Macs DO need all the CPU they can get, in order to power that monstrously flexible, powerful, and CPU-hungry GUI they’ve got running. But once Quartz Extreme has matured, and the 3D graphics card is doing all the heavy lifting in Mac GUI land, that will no longer be the case.
> That could get users to switch without them having to buy a whole new computer.
Kyle, you obviously did not read my commentary. Please stop posting without read the article first!
I did read your comments, I just happen to disagree with your interpretation of the situation.
I wonder if this happens if FreeBSD will pick up some benefits of cross-pollination for the desktop, like a few more multimedia drivers
Jeremy, Apple wants to shift a lot of its focus to digital media, sound, 3D rendering and video applications. They have bought a whole lot of these companies lately. These applications require power. The more power the better.
While 1 Ghz might or might not be enough for a user (my 450Mhz G4 1 MB L3 cache Cube is NOT enough – OSX is slow as hell on it), for professionals, PPC is a dead horse right now.
And this is one of the most primary reasons why Apple would switch to an architecture where faster CPUs are available.
> I wonder if this happens if FreeBSD will pick up some benefits of cross-pollination for the desktop, like a few more multimedia drivers
It will mean nothing. OSX does not have open source multimedia drivers. From my experience with the BeOS situation, the companies that have expensive or serious multimedia hardware only provide specs for drivers writting after a lot of NDA signings. Do not expect anything multimedia or advanced to be released for either Darwin or FreeBSD.
In my opinion, If Apple were to switch to x86, they probably would sell custom, Apple-branded boxen. However, I believe they could add to their userbase by also creating a version for Non-Apple x86 boxes. Getting more people to switch over is a Good Thing, and could help ensure that these “Converts'” next PC would be an Apple-Branded box.
This would also have the nifty effect of giving Microsoft a little “kick in the butt.”
Motorola is simply not the company that will power Apple into the forefront of multimedia, film, digital music, etc. If Apple is to succeed with their strategy of becoming the premier digital media workstation, they need raw unadulterated speed. Motorola has no core competency in producing lots of world class CPU’s; their time in the sun is long gone.
Simply put, Apple invested a lot of money into high-end software, from audio to video to film. In order to make this investment pay off, Apple needs the hardware platform to match their software platform.
Moving to an established more mainstream platform also opens up Mac for more developers to write more apps. By going to AMD/Intel, there would a synergy between hardware and software that Apple does not have today.
AMD Ahtlon/Hammer and Intel Pentium/Xeon are the only mass-market chips that provide a growth path for the future. Either of these chips would off amazing performance vs. what the G4 offers today.
The Itanium2 is also a fine choice, especially given that it is fast today and will become faster and faster as the former DEC Alpha team applies its smarts to the chip. And Apple could cut a great deal with Intel to use the Itanium2. Suddendly the Itanium would go from nowhere to the top of the 64 bit chip world. Intel would be open to really working with Apple to make Itanium happen in such a big way.
Maybe Power4 is a choice, but IBM will never sell very many of these chips. Once Itanium2 gets off the ground, Intel will sell more Itaniums than IBM has sold Power4’s to date. IBM has never had plans to migrate Power4 to desktop computing. Witness there are no current desktops running Power4, only servers.
All in all, some good speculation. I hope Apple does move to another chip architecture. It would be the rebirth of the company.
#m
It’s clear they need to do something. The lag in memory and power-related specs is killing their sales.
To someone reading the box at the store, the numbers are all that matters. Imagine if Apple had a processor equal to PCs, and on top of that they could advertise that their unique architecture made Macs so much faster! As it is now, they depend on their architecture making up for slow processors.
Best Wishes,
Bob
While I don’t have a great track record as a prognosticator, my suspicion is that Apple will try to transition away from the POWER2-derived PowerPC architecture to a POWER4-based architecture. This brings them up to a “state of the art” level <em>without</em> sacrificing binary compatibility. The only way Apple could move to the x86 family would be to design a motherboard with a separate PPC chip to run legacy programs–software emulation ain’t gonna cut it. POWER4, on the other hand, would give them some significant firepower–and it would let them do the transition gradually, first having a “high end workstation” POWER4 machine then gradually moving it through the PowerMac line as the fastest G4s moved into the iMac line.
The only problem with this, basically, is convincing IBM of it.
Incidentally, Eugenia, I have to agree with Jeremy F. CPU speed certainly does count, but SGI workstations in their heyday never achieved their blazing speed based on the main CPUs–all the supporting specialized processors did the heavy lifting. If Apple got their workstations onto DDR RAM, made the GeForce 4 the <em>standard</em> video card with the Quadro4 (or something comparable) available, and pushed a couple high-end AV I/O cards as storefront options, a “mere” dual-1GHz G4 setup would make a lot of professionals quite happy for a while.
>>The Itanium2 is also a fine choice, especially given that it is fast today and will become faster and faster as the former DEC Alpha team applies its smarts to the chip.<<
The Itanium (Itanic) is a bad choice, and as the benchmarks show, it’s slow as hell and Intel is sweating bullets over the lack of mass adoption! Itanium is also not a great desktop contender and is getting beat by Sun and IBM, so it’s future is unclear!
Jeremy, Apple wants to shift a lot of its focus to digital media, sound, 3D rendering and video applications. They have bought a whole lot of these companies lately. These applications require power. The more power the better.
Yes, that’s certainly true. And as you say, for professional purposes, PowerPC is currently dead in the water (although I wouldn’t write it off yet). But you’re talking about professional use here.
A few days ago, you posted an article about Apple using Power4 CPU’s. And my first response was, “That’s silly! A Power4 based workstation would cost at least $10,000!” And for a consumer level workstation, that is indeed a pretty penny. But then, if you’re talking about professional use, that’s well inside the range of comparable equipment from Sun, SGI, IBM, etc. And why shouldn’t Apple want to play in that space? It’s high-margin, and they already have a foothold in that market. And in OS X, they now have an OS with the capabilities to take advantage of that kind of hardware.
The one undeniable advantage of the Power architechture, in all it’s incarnations, is it’s scalability. It has an advantage over x86 in imbeded and laptop applications, due to it’s low power requirements, and it scales quite nicely to high-end workstations and servers (Power4), should Apple decide they want to play there. And they’ve already put their toe in the server market, it isn’t outrageous they’ll want to develop that line farther. The only place Power is weak, is in the consumer desktop incarnation. And there are ways around that (multi-processors). And as Jeremy pointed out, that may not be a significant disadvantage in that market any longer anyway. And as I said, while G5 is taking it’s time, I wouldn’t write it off just yet.
> The Itanium (Itanic) is a bad choice, and as the benchmarks show, it’s slow as hell and Intel is sweating bullets over the lack of mass adoption!
This is right, Itanium is slow (at least in Integer performance) and nobody wants to buy it (but mainly because it’s the first CPU of a new generation, no much/stable/optimized software and OS yet).
But we’re talking about Itanium2 here, and this beast is going to be – ‘a little bit’ – faster than the Itanium.
> Itanium is also not a great desktop contender and is getting beat by Sun and IBM, so it’s future is unclear!
It is supposed to be a CPU for the server market. And yes,
the Itanium2 can easily compete with IBM’s and SUN’s processors (and new variants aswell). I think especially Sun will have difficult next years, their UltraSparcIII is not a real competitor to the other processors.
I also don’t think Apple will choose the IPF, because it’s wasting energy (-> what about notebooks? perhaps other CPU, stick to PPC ?). Moreover it’s too expensive so that Apple wouldn’t gain much from changing to this architecture.
wouldn’t it make sense to just have Amd take over power pc development. Apple will have the option to buy out the rights. What about IBM? IBM has shown considerable interest in remaining in the chip game. There are other fabs and developers. You know TI might be interested as well. TI must not be thrilled with intel’s push into more of TI’s traditional DSP/embedded areas.
Going x86 is in my opinion an exceedingly bad idea. x86 is for all practical purposes owned by MS. MS has a lot of pull there and they can even bully intel.
Remember be. intel was their best friend for a while but it didn’t take long before Gassee’s columns were attacking intel. i wonder why?
Apple needs to remain independent of a platform that is so controlled by microsoft. That is like sharing your air force with your enemy, not a good idea. Anything else is fine but not x86. I am not even sure that apple should cozy up to anyone that is reliant on MS, as intel is. at the end of the day intel’s bills are paid by computers that run on windows. That is very important.
http://www.intel.com/eBusiness/products/itanium/overview/bm022701.h…
yeah that sticks about as well as Apple’s pretty benchmark graphs on the Photoshop benchmarks. But the test’s were duplicated by a columnist a week ago:
http://www.usatoday.com/tech/columnist/2002-07-19-steinberg_x.htm
Dell gets beat by Apple in Server benchmarks:
http://www.xinet.com/benchmarks/benchmarks.2002/index.html
Helk we could be posting links all day, but it won’t prove anything to either one of us!
There’s been a lot of fantasizing in this thread about Apple moving to one of the big guns of the CPU world – the highly-clocked, brute-force, huge-power-consumption chips like the Itanium2, POWER4, Opteron, Athlon/P4, etc…
First of all, I think the Itanium2 is completely unrealistic. Apple needs a chip family that will work well in everything from an iBook to a multiprocessor Power Mac. If they were able to get an hour of battery life out of an Itanium2 laptop, it would be a feat of engineering on par with the building of the Great Pyramids.
The POWER4 is not realistic either – it draws 130(?) watts of power. On the other hand, a derivative of it could be very realistic.
SPARC and Alpha are not options, either. Both are too power-hungry. Alpha’s future in particular is not very bright.
x86 is a possibility, offering everything from low power consumption to very good performance. But moving to x86, even with proprietary Apple hardware, would likely blur the line between the Mac and PC too strongly for customers to see as much difference between the two as they do today. It could put the Mac on the same playing field as Dell etc., in a position to be crushed by its competitors’ economies of scale. It’s also very possible that an x86 version of OS X would be hacked to run on non-Apple x86 hardware, which would be a MAJOR disaster.
SGI’s MIPS line would be interesting. A 600MHz R14000 is quite inexpensive to manufacture and consumes only 18 watts (I think) of power. SGI purposefully keeps the clock speed low in order to keep power consumption down – making them great for being packed densely. For the same power consumption (and probably a similar price) as a single Itanium2, it would be possible to rig up a 6-CPU NUMA configuration of R14Ks that outperforms the Itanium2 at tasks that can be parallelized. MIPS also has the advantage of not being tied to any single manufacturer. There were rumors a while back about Apple buying SGI. I think such a move would be VERY interesting…
Then, of course, there is the option Apple has of not doing anything, and continuing to follow Motorola/IBM’s vapor trail. Supposedly the new plant Motorola is building will be finished early next year (read: sometime before the next decade). There is the option of adding finer multithreading to OS X to allow it to run better on multiple CPUs, then building dual and quad G4 or Sahara G3 boxes.
It’s frustrating that Apple seems to have so many options available but chooses to (apparently) do nothing. Does anyone else ever have the urge to get Steve Jobs alone in a room, drug him, and make him talk? Because I do. I wish he would be a bit more open about such important matters. I wonder if he realizes his user base is freaking out.
Yes, I should clarify I meant a derivative of the POWER4 architecture, just like the PowerPC was a derivative of the POWER2 architecture–perhaps a “PowerPC2” is coming. If they abandon the G4 path (which as people have pointed out, there’s no real sign of), that still strikes me as the most likely bet.
As for Steve Jobs, I suspect he’s quite aware his user base is growing impatient with the apparently-stalled PowerPC line. But I don’t think he’ll ever say “here’s our vision” until all the i’s are dotted and t’s are crossed–anyone who isn’t bound by serious NDAs will find out what the “next generation” Macintosh CPUs are when systems with them are announced.
The Itanium III is to be out in a few more months and is expected to put the Itanium II to shame. I fully agree with what Eugenia stated in the article. I also agree that it’s a good idea for Apple to make a move sooner than later. OSX is very different from *BSD, but I would still guess that it’s way easier to port to x86 (or IA-64) than OS 9 would have been (GCC 3 anyone?). Moving to another CPU would also better the FSB by a factor of about 4, use much faster RAM, and let apple move from ATA/66 to ATA/133. Moving to the other platform would also cut hardware research costs for Apple by huge margins.
First of all many of you may have read an article on The Register about Windows 2000/XP not liking the P4 2.8 GHz. It causes system crashes. So if some of you are saying speed doesn’t matter after 1 GHz, then what does matter?
Code morphing is done in software, so couldn’t Transmeta write a PPC CM layer? Also keep x86 CM for cross platform goodness! Isn’t next TM cpu going to be 256 bit VLIW? Should make PPC CM layer more efficient. 1 cpu for laptops, 2,4, heck why not 8, for desktops, since they’re so low power.
http://www.hp.com/go/itaniumperformance
HP’s latest ItaniumII workstations offer very good performance in a compact package.
http://www.hp.com/workstations/products/itanium/zx6000/summary.html
If Apple were to come out with something comparable, they would turn the technical workstation world on its head.
I hope Apple goes for a 64 bit architecture and maximal performance. They have a legit solid UNIX OS foundation, many good apps, and a loyal following in the audio, video, and film worlds. In short, all the ingredients to succeed in the high performance computing world.
#m
Is the day I decide to NEVER, E V E R buy a Mac.
PowerPC is the thing for me.
’nuff said.
Jared
Itanium would be a bad choice for a workstation, as it is made for servers. Plus, for Apple at the moment, they better stay clear from Itanium because of the lack of proper EPIC compilers.
As for the benchmarks CattBeMac posted, you notice the USAToday uses a very underpowered machine that is overprice (wait, Sony is in the same field as Apple, no wonder…). They also used a uniprocessor system versus a dual processor one, quite unfair.
Than about Xinet one, you notice Dell is way cheaper than any other machine in the benchmark (at least as of now).
http://www.hp.com/workstations/products/itanium/zx6000/summary.html
There is that word “workstations” in the link I provided. Itanium is a high-end 64 bit chip, suitable for workstations and servers. Whether the chip is used for one or the other depends on the market need the manufacturer is targeting. Note that different supporting chipsets are used for different systems, mostly depending on how many processors you are supporting as well as what sort of memory interface. HP has a very high-performance DDR memory controller as part of their zx1 chipset, the one that is used in the zx6000. It offers 8.5GB/sec of memory bandwidth and has a low 78ns open page memory latency. For servers, HP offers an improved chipset that offers >12GB/sec memory bandwidth. Note that even the 8.5GB/sec is far beyond anything currently available in the Pentium 4 world.
I’m not advocating the ItaniumII as Apple’s top choice, merely sharing some information about its performance, which is quite good.
In many ways, going strictly with an x86 processor would be the best bet for “right now”. However, the move to 64 bits is inevitable and it would put Apple ahead of the curve, a place Apple has not been since they first made the move to RISC.
Oh, not to forget. The HP workstation offers great performance for the dollar. Take a look, it’s a cool little machine that has dual 1Ghz Itanium processors in it.
#m
Lets face it – There is a lot of evidence that says that when a professional buys a mac, that person is likely to keep it for a long time.. there are thousands of PPC Boxes still in service with old mac OS on them, Photoshop 4 and 5, etc, because they just keep working.
Other Mac users include Schools, and Parents who want a simple machine for surfing, etc. – again, markets that dont go in for big software upgrades
As long as the Mac comes with a browser, Appleworks, mail, the usual small games, DVD player, Burning software etc..
..most people wouldn’t even notice that it wasn’t compatible with older Mac hardware/software.. except to say how much faster it ran than their last Mac..
( BTW thanks for changing the text about Bold/Italic tags Eugenia 🙂 )
Apple is moving even further into audio, video, and film solutions. All of these areas need major major processing power. 3D rendering is one of the most compute intensive applications that exists. There are few farms of Apple machines doing rendering because Apple offers poor price/performance. 3D authoring, movie processing, running lots of sound effects using a computer audio program, encoding video, etc., are all compute intensive applications.
If Apple changes the CPU of their high-end workstation to something more powerful, they will be able to offer solutions that work much better to their customers.
Having CPU power available is an enabler; applications that we can’t think of today can be built when the power is there. If Apple sticks with slow processors, they will continue to lose market share in every single market that they are in. There are few Apple markets that have switching costs so high it prevents companies from dumping their Macs and going to PCs.
Apple needs to be ahead of the curve ideally. They are 2-3 years behind the market on many of their machines. Jobs is not stupid. He knows Mac hardware technology for the most part is antiquated. Only the XServe and the iPod have current technology.
So, I am waiting to see what happens in August and what happens early next year. We have likely G4 speed increases in August and a possible addition of AMD64, IA-64, or POWER4 machines next year.
#m
..most people wouldn’t even notice that it wasn’t compatible with older Mac hardware/software.. except to say how much faster it ran than their last Mac..
Yeah right. In the real world, people do notice and get very upset if their old software doesn’t work on a new OS. Why do you think that Dos-software still runs on Windows?
You mentioned some modified BIOS to make a MacOS X/x86 only run on that computer.
There would be cracks released pretty soon to make OSX on standard x86 hardware.
Another way would be to modify the instruction set. AFAIK Intel’s XBox CPU has modified instructions.
Another idea:
I read somewhere that AMD and Motorolla have some kind of partnership.
On ArsTechnica is an article that the G4 and the K7 (Athlon) have quite simmilar backends. And the main difference is the frontend for the instructions.
Now let’s play around: What if Motorolla produced the notebook CPUs (lower power consumtion), AMD produced the desktop CPUs (Athlon with PPC frontend), and IBM ships Power4/5/6 CPUs (allready PPC compatible) for the high end?
===========
RE: The day Apple goes to x86…
> Is the day I decide to NEVER, E V E R buy a Mac.
> PowerPC is the thing for me.
I read on some web site a years old quote: “If Mac OS ever gets a command line, I won’t buy Macs.”
Now there’s MacOS X – featuring a command line.
Apple needs a 64-bit CPU since MacOS X is designed for one. That is no problem with Itanium or Hammer. But they also need them to be cheaper and in aggresive development, which basically rules out everyone but iNTEL and AMD.
All these rumours about Power4, PPC G5, Alpha, etc are just rumours. I assure you that Itanium II and Hammer is comming out. I wouldn’t want to put my company out on the premises that some kind of super chip is going to come out of nowhere.
Ah, and the good old “you don’t need more CPU power for normal use”. That is the lamest and most useless argument that I have heard through the years. It was the same when every fast CPU has been introduced. How expensive is an Athlon XP 2200+ anyways, and it outperformes any of the PPC chips easily. All this bollocks about the AltiVec unit making up for it is silly, read up on your CPUs please.
And to the next obvious (for most of us) reason for faster CPUs. Why would I buy a new computer that wasn’t faster than the one I have? To get a new harddisk or screen? (iMacs, what a joke) You can obviously do more with more memory, more power, etc. Games and rendering are the most obvious examples of course, but everything is smoother with a faster computer. Both XP and KDE runs much smoother on a 1.4Ghz Athlon than a ~500Mhz PIII.
What Apple simply can do is to build their own custom chipset (free from old PC roots), or get nVidia to help them do it, and then they have entry level iMacs that is cheap and attractive again. So if it runs Hammer or PPC, as long as they make sure that there are upgrades for all important pieces of software from day one.
Apple sells on their looks, their OS, zealot users, special deals and gimmicks. The CPU doesn’t mean a thing there, for as long as it can keep up with the PCs. Heck, could even become a gaming powerhouse as you would have more defined hardware, and fewer legacy drawbacks from the moronic PC construction.
I’m actually considering to buy an apple laptop whenever I have the money. I don’t overly care about the CPU speed given that for most things todays speeds are sufficient as long as I don’t play the latest and greates games. that is – as long as I’m not running OS X. I guess with Quartz Extreme things will speed up, but at the moment the UI is very sluggish (G4 466MHz). So why the hell an apple laptop now? For one OS X should be running decently on it.
And from what I read so far, due to the more or less standard configuraions (aka limited amount of hardware that has to be supported) they rock for alternative OSes as they are quite well supported compared to some other x86 laptops (how about a story on this?
. I recall the horror stories about Linux on Vaios.
But dualbooting Gentoo and OS X would be interesting.
As for Apple switching away from the PPC architecture: it ddoesnÄt make much sense if they now get PC users to switch to Apple with them in half a year realising the the new Apples are the same damn thing with an Intel/AMD inside. On the other hand they already managed to piss a lot of people of with the .mac crap, so who knows?
Yeah, i’ve thoguht for a long time that they would be much more successfull if they used x86 (a 64 bit cpu would make sense too). While it would be nice to be able to just pick up a boxed copy of OSX and install it on my computer, that’s not going to happen. But, atlease we will see some faster (and hopefully they will lower the prices a little) Macs.
Is the day I decide to NEVER, E V E R buy a Mac.
PowerPC is the thing for me.
Hmm. Would you mind explaing why you would not buy a x86 mac?
..most people wouldn’t even notice that it wasn’t compatible with older Mac hardware/software.. except to say how much faster it ran than their last Mac..
If this x86 mac came out you could not to do much with it until people started Porting software to the intel Version and that would take a wile. Also it wont be able to run any Classic software without Emulating a Power PC (which is probably impossible to do on an x86) not to mention People would have to buy all new Software.
Apple? They are WannaBe now, thus proven by this. This is all you really must say about it. Woz didn’t much have such a touch, but now..
he’s just a WannaBE
BeOS Forever!
…remember when OS X was NeXTstep? In this times apps was often released as NIHS quad-fat binaries:
(N)eXT
(I)ntel
(H)P
(S)un
So, why not quad-fat again? But personally i think there is *no* way Apple is developing OS X for x86 hardware…
First, let me state that I am a bit biased, being a Mac Head since 1985, with my first 512K Fat Mac. Second, being one who is “in the business”, I (IMHO) can speak with some face.
1. AMD NO LONGER DOES RISC! They killed the AMD29K family back in 1995. I know, I was there, I was one of the casualties of the time. They may still manufacture the 29K for customers, but I doubt that heavily. The 29K, though a very cool and unique architecture, was running out of steam at around 60 MHz (which is VERY anemic by today’s standards). Their primary market, printers, started to move to MIPS 64 Bit processors, for the “heavy lifting” required to run Postscript on faster printers. The only “commonality” between AMD/Apple is that they both are part of the HyperTransport (HT) group. Now, keep your eye on this!
2. Yes, Motorola sells “boatloads” of PPC’s into the Embedded World (my world). Not only to they sell their G4’s to Apple, but people like Mercury Computer build Quad G4 boards for “high end” graphics/computational systems, like MRI/CAT scanners and military applications. So, yes, there is a market other than Apple for these chips. What percentage of G4’s goes to Apple, I don’t know, probably the lion’s share. But compared to the PPC8xx/PPC82xx line, they pale in comparison. The PPC8500 (the 1GHz e500 Core (bookE compliant) with the Switch and RapidIO is interesting, but it’s a control plan chip for networking boxes, to complement their C5 (replacing the likes of the PPC824x series)
3. Going with IBM – Maybe. IBM and Motorola took different routes a while back. IBM is now making a 2 chip version of the Power4 that goes in the p630 Server. Given IBM’s prowess at Process/Interconnect/Packaging technology, it’s possible bring the price down (their basic server starts at $12K), but again, it’s all economics. Keep your eye on this.
4. A recent Inquirer article (http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=4423) points out that processors may be getting too fast for the OS’s. Now, don’t quote me, but I remember reading somewhere in the past that MS was still using ‘386 compliant code in their tools (and ergo in their OS), so this might be true. Why do benchmarks always run faster on the Intel compilers? Because they are “tweaked” to the architecture! Just like MIPS does with their chips. So, IF this is true (consider the source), then the “faster is better” mantra could be falling apart. Besides, with a CPU running more than 10:1 over the bus speed (irrespective of Intels “quad pump speed”, it’s still 133 MHz), you still have a tremendous imbalance here. As some pointed out, better graphic support and other “support” subsystems to do the “heavy lifting” could be the answer. Again, the system is only as fast as it’s slowest component (memory bus, disk drive, etc).
5. Alternatives: I doubt Apple would go x86, though the AMD Opteron w/64 bit support would (and HT) would be the “logical” choice. But as others point out, heat for laptops is a concern. Itanic, NEVER! to immature. SPARC, not likely. IBM Power4, see 3 above. Alpha, well, as others point out, too hot, and a dubious future (though a recent article regarding INTEL quarterly earnings pointed out poor performance on a P4 line (in MA?) because resources were being used for Alpha production ??????) MIPS, well, it’s 64 bit, available as a synthesizable core, has multi-core versions (siByte, part of Broadcom), but is primarily an “embedded” chip, not much “mainstream” deaktop software, except for SGI. A very slim dark horse, because it’s 64 bit. Motorola, well, they need some “fire” to “get it right!”.
6. The future – Part of what I see is that we (the consumer in general, not the OSNews population per se) has been hooked on “the next big thing”, or as I think of it, the “short attention span video generation”. So, they are always looking for “something else”, never content with what they have. There is still alot of capability in the current systems we have today, IF we took the time to “do it right” Some may disagree, but IMHO, there’s alot of “bad” code out there (including IMHO, Windows) that has been rushed to market, all in the name of market share. Well, Apple must may yet prove “good guys finish last” with OS X. Only time will tell.
And a Final Note, I would like to thank Eugenia for what is IMHO one of the best sites out there regarding OS News. As a pointy eared friend once said “You have been and shall always be my friend”. Live Long and Prosper, Apple!
“SGI’s MIPS line would be interesting. A 600MHz R14000 is quite inexpensive to manufacture and consumes only 18 watts (I think) of power. SGI purposefully keeps the clock speed low in order to keep power consumption down – making them great for being packed densely. For the same power consumption (and probably a similar price) as a single Itanium2, it would be possible to rig up a 6-CPU NUMA configuration of R14Ks that outperforms the Itanium2 at tasks that can be parallelized. MIPS also has the advantage of not being tied to any single manufacturer. There were rumors a while back about Apple buying SGI. I think such a move would be VERY interesting… ”
Just what Apple needs. Another Mhz scandal. Listen. You and I know SGI’s perform better than their CPU Mhz ratings suggest. But most consumers don’t and as nice as SGI’s are, the company lost alot of sales to to Linux or Win 2000/XP on X86 hardware (especially in the 3d graphics market). Why do you suppose that is? Price performance ratio. So, why in the world would Apple want to get involved in that? It would put them in a similar position to what they are in now. Sure, current customers would benefit, maybe. But it would do nothing to help sell computers to the masses. If the goal is to keep (or try to keep) the current crop of users only, then they should go ahead and buy SGI if yhey really want to. If the goal is to try and get more customers, then SGI is a bad choice.
AMD or Intel could design a new proprietary cpu/chipset for Apple that at least would give similar true and perceived performance to that of their current offerings. Apple customers would have faster performance and potential customers wouldn’t be turned off by high prices on low Mhz machines.
Satori.
I can’t speak for anyone else, but I’ve never said “speed doesn’t matter”–I’ve just said that the CPU isn’t the only thing that makes a system run fast. A Celeron 433 with a GeForce 4 will run 3D games faster than a 1.8 GHz P4 with a RAGE 128. A lot of the fabled Unix graphics workstations in the late ’80s and ’90s had pretty pedestrian CPUs (at least in terms of MIPS)–they just had amazing GPUs to do the work.
If Apple’s next “refresh” of their PowerMac line fixes the rest of the system, accepting faster RAM and getting some serious graphics hardware support out of the box, then that’ll let them go through the rest of the year with the PowerPC line. I’d like to see them bring SMP machines down to the lower-end pro systems, too. (I think some of the old BeOS users around these parts have forgotten that one of the original tenets of the system was that lower-speed CPUs working in tandem could provide a competitive user experience compared with a single high-speed CPU.)
Apple wants to shift a lot of its focus to digital media, sound, 3D rendering and video applications. They have bought a whole lot of these companies lately. These applications require power. The more power the better.
I agree but in all these applications bandwidth also matters a great deal, If the CPU is starved for data to process increasing the clock speed isn’t going to have much effect.
Adding cache in some cases will work but not if the program is constantly pulling data from memory as will be the case with video etc.
I really think Apple should and will upgrade the bandwidth before considering drastic moves such as changing to a different ISA. I expect the next gen PowerMacs will use DDR and as such will perform a great deal better than today.
Switching to a derivative of Power4 at the top end could get them a lot more power without having to switch to x86, Itanium or whatever.
If Apple really want to sell more systems the best they could do is cost the price of their systems. With their trend towards charging for Software they may even be consideing such a move.
I have heard rumours of this happening with OS-X moving onto the x86 platform. Now for anyone thinking this would be Apple shooting themselves in the foot because they are going up against Microsoft please consider one thing, as a musician what platforms currently do we have to use software on?
Win and Mac
Now with Mac OS-X moving to x86 what would that mean for said musicians? It would mean that we have a unix class OS on x86 with apps available with a simple recompile to utilise in the creative process.
I was recently caught out with Emagics Logic 5 for Windows. I purchased it and no less than 2 days later I was to read on the Internet that Windows support was to be dropped because Apple had aquired the comapny come Sept 30th.
I have now moved to Cubase SX which I am very impressed with but the fact remains that be better choice is with OS-X but with OS-X being on two hardware architectures, we could see a simple recompile for each to have a multitude of great media creation apps available.
I would jump to OS-X if it was x86 capable. Linux has been a joke in the Audio sphere and I am still waiting for OpenBeOS to take flight although I believe this to be the best option in the next 5 years.
Microsoft needs a kick in the ass and Linux at the moment ain’t doing it on the desktop. Only Apple is with OS-X and until something viable from OSS moments comes along this will remain the case.
First, if Apple was to switch to Intel, it would need to create at least a custome motherboard to both ensure its relatively high prices and to lock OS X to a specific line of hardware. Unfortuanetly, the move to X86 may not deliver the fastest boxes – just look at how long it has been taking Apple to get DDR memory and ATA 133 harddrives into their systems. Simply moving to a different architecture will not change this, unless Apple shot itself in the foot and used off the shelf components.
For those deluded by Intel chasing its own tail to deliver the chips with the highest gigahertz rating, consier the 68k Amigas. Some of the machines are puching twenty years old, yet a group of dedicated programmers are still putting out great applications and games that continue to get better and quicker even though the underlying hardware stagnated long ago. It’s called code optimazation, a lost art in the Wintel world.
Is it not possible that Steve jobs is just giving himself a little leverage in regards to motorola and IBM.
HE could be saying that as a threat to motorola and ibm. It could be a kind of public get your act together or we will loose you.
By why not just get someone else to handle chip dev and/or fab. hell mot can still develop it with apple, AMD can make it.
I don’t think Apple would ever do this. I suspect this is a threat to apple’s current failing partners, and i think if they continue to fail the #2 choice is to get someone esle to make the powerpc. If that fails then moving to another platform makes sense.
alexd:
Thank you, THANK YOU for mentioning MIPS, the only affordable, low-power, embedded 32 and 64 bit platform that still has a future. It’s also quite scalable, as it has been used in game consoles (Playstation, Playstation2 is a 128 bit mutant MIPS, Nintendo 64), PDAs, and cell phones; and it has been used in servers, workstations, and supercomputers.
AMD has acquired Alchemy Semiconductor, which makes MIPS32 and MIPS64 cores for their newest embedded chips. AMD makes 32 and 64 bit embedded MIPS processors now, and does not plan on stopping–this could work out well for Apple if they switch to MIPS.
My opinion on other contenders:
DEC Alpha:
Compaq killed Alpha by giving it to Intel. Of course, everybody was pretty sure Compaq would kill Alpha eventually (at least I was). Nearly impossible without a miracle.
SPARC/UltraSparc:
Did you know that Sun does not entirely control SPARC? Apple licensing a Sparc core, or teaming up with Sun is a longshot. It would anger Microsoft to no end, but would make Macs the best platform for Java/SunONE, and seal the fate MS software on the Mac. Very unlikely.
Itanium 2 and up:
Maybe for the XServes and Ultra-High-End PowerMac workstations. Not in the iBook. Unlikely.
x86, x86-64:
Low power x86’es are possible. Thanks to x86-64, this creaky old architecture can invade high-end servers and workstations. They would also have tons of megaherts to throw around. Possible.
IBM POWER4, or some derivative:
Apple would have to convince IBM to include a Vector engine at least on par with the G4. Actually, they probably want a better one, so they could top Intel’s SSE2. Possible…
Same old PowerPCs:
IBM could do it, but they don’t really care for the G4’s vector unit. I really don’t know why, as they are quite happy to engineer custom chips for Nintendo (GameCube) and Sony (with Toshiba, the Cell chip, rumored to be the heart of the Playstation 3). Motorola would have to start caring again. Very likely, at least for a while.
Whatever they switch to, there will be Open Firmware BIOSes, oh yes, there will. Muhahahahahahaaa!!! Oh, it’s not so bad, only complex devices would have to be reflashed.
–JM
“Lets face it – There is a lot of evidence that says that when a professional buys a mac, that person is likely to keep it for a long time.. there are thousands of PPC Boxes still in service with old mac OS on them, Photoshop 4 and 5, etc, because they just keep working.”
Very true in my case. I have an 8600 that I bought 5 years ago and its still running like a champ. But, its time for a new mac and I’m waiting either for a G5 or a G4 with RapidIO, 8X AGp, faster HD’s, Radeon 9700, DDR (not a DDR hack). As such, this will hopefully last me another 5 years until the G9 is ready.
..most people wouldn’t even notice that it wasn’t compatible with older Mac hardware/software.. except to say how much faster it ran than their last Mac..
If the transition was like 68k to PPC, the user won’t notice any difference at all. x86 apps and PPC apps would work perfectly, except that PPC apps wouldn’t run as fast as x86 apps. But a bigger plus: porting OS X to x86 would be much easier than porting System 7.
As an OS X developer. I love the ppc chip, and the os x dev environment. Luckily the OS X dev environment (cocoa, corefoundation and all that) would make porting a ppc os x app to pc litterally a recompile. Hell, gcc for OS X already has the option to produce a binary with both x86 and ppc code. But I don’t like cisc. It’s icky
>>Hmm. Would you mind explaing why you would not buy a x86 mac?<<
Explain to me why would you buy a x86 mac?
>>As for the benchmarks CattBeMac posted, you notice the USAToday uses a very underpowered machine that is overprice (wait, Sony is in the same field as Apple, no wonder…). They also used a uniprocessor system versus a dual processor one, quite unfair.<<
Underpowered? You PC drones come up with silliest things!
>>Than about Xinet one, you notice Dell is way cheaper than any other machine in the benchmark (at least as of now).<<
Actually the price between the 2 is closer than you think, and after adding Microsoft’s unlimited user license at around $2500 compared to Apple’s free unlimited user license, so the Dell would be more expensive at the end of the day!
>>SPARC/UltraSparc:
Did you know that Sun does not entirely control SPARC? Apple licensing a Sparc core, or teaming up with Sun is a longshot. It would anger Microsoft to no end, but would make Macs the best platform for Java/SunONE, and seal the fate MS software on the Mac. Very unlikely.<<
Now this would be the pipe dream I could except… I love Sun hardware, I have been working around Sun’s stuff for about 10 years and though I have my little complaints here and there, overall it’s some of the best hardware in the business!
>>Now this would be the pipe dream I could except…<<
I meant to say ‘accept’!
D’OH!!!
There is exactly 0% chance that Apple will ever move to x86 archetecure. Changing archectecures is not something one can do just because the current one is slightly lacking. Unless Motorola and IBM stops producing PPC chips, there is no way that Apple is EVER going to move to another archetecure. Besides, why would one even WANT Apple to move to x86? Sure, it is the land of cheap and plentiful and powerful hardware, but, it would be completely binary incompatable with PPC software. Backwards compatability is a big thing in todays world, and moving to x86 would make that impossible. Apple is not going to move to x86 especially because they are currently transitioning to OS X, which is a big enough backwards compatability problem.
Skipp
Ignore this next part, it is just a test.
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>Backwards compatability is a big thing in todays world, and moving to x86 would make that impossible.
Nobody said it would be easy. A long transition time it would be in place, and PPC hardware would continue to exist for some time, in parallel to the new platform. No one said that one day they will stop producting PPC hardware and completely switch to another platform. That would be stupid.
One thing Apple could do is adopt a platform-neutral-binary format, similar to what AmigaOS and TaOS have done. That is, binaries are compiled into a “vanilla bytecode” format, which can be easily and quickly translated to a particular ISA whenever necessary. I’ve seen claims that this translation can be done quickly enough that it causes no noticable slowdown at run-time (because the limiting factor when loading a program is disk I/O latency, not CPU cycles)… but even if that was not the case, it would be easy to cache the translated binary onto the disk for quick loading next time (similar to what Python does when you run a .py file, it creates a .pyc file). Once Apple has done this, they would be able to include any type of CPU they want to in their next generation of Macs, without needing to worry about maintaining binary compatibility with old code.
If Apple goes with OS X on X86, then I believe they’ll go the way of OS/2. Nowhere.
Why do you people think Apple can succeed with OS X on X86 when IBM could not do it with OS/2? OS/2 was FAR superior to windows at the time and was backed by a much bigger company (IBM) who spent 4 billion dollars trying to beat a smaller company (microsoft) with it. Apple does not have the resources as IBM did so there is no way in heck that they would succeed.
– Mark
1. Porting to x86 will take a major, major effort to support all the different available hardware and in the end, will only badly hurt Apple’s PPC business. HP and Dell would eat Apple’s hardware business. Most people would not pay for Apple’s OS.
2. If Apple were to make proprietary / incompatible x86 hardware, it would not sell. People will stick to the standards.
3. Apple is a hardware company. Converting to a software company selling OS X would be suicidal for their PPC hardware business.
Palm would more likely succeed with BeOS and x86 desktop hardware because Palm does not depend on an existing PPC desktop business for earnings.
As usual, just had to get BeOS in there!
Just got back from the beach – and my OS News accessories have arrived! I’m walking around the house feeling all important <g>.
I know nothing, I admit, but to me, it seems that it could be possible that Apple might migrate to another processor for the Power Macs and Xserver, but perhaps stay on the PPC road with consumer Macs.
I understand the idea of Apple being a software comapny. This was hashed out endlessly when Apple was in near death-throes and the Mac clones were out there. It only seemed to hurt them more. Jobs saved Apple by new hardware design, hype and squeezing everything he could out of Mac OS 8 – 9. So, I think Apple is tied to hardware. I agree with what Eugenia and some others are saying – that if Apple did move to a different processor, the hardware would be closed.
A switch to x86 scares me. This is certainly not the company that wanted to “Think Different” and innovate its way out of the recession. It would be a major cop out not to mention a total pain to port everything. Plus, you would lose the advantage of tight integration which Apple has right now due to making both the hardware and the software. In my mind, the best solution to their dilemmas is the IBM Power4.
Speed wise the current line of Macs are falling behind. You need 2 chips to compete with the fastest x86s as evidenced by the recent duel with the 2.2 Ghz P4. It barely beat it and I have no doubt that a 2.53 Ghz P4 can beat the dual 1 Ghz Powermac in just about anything. Motorola is being slow about improving the chip too. The 1.3 Ghz Power4 is 40% faster than the 2.53 Ghz P4 in the SPEC CFP2000 benchmark. The only foreseeable problems are the extra chip costs for the Power4 and the lack of a unit such as Altivec which many programs are optimized for. Creating a (single core?) derivative of the Power4 seems to be a real alternative and as long as it maintained a good advantage over any x86 chip, then Apple could promise good sales to IBM. In my opinion, it’s worth those potential woes for the extra speed delivered overall by the chip. And, a huge plus, it uses the PPC instruction set which means far fewer porting problems. This as a whole means there’s no need to use some obscure Photoshop filter as a benchmark, which won’t help sell it to your average consumer. That’s where the Switch campaign is aimed, isn’t it?
Speaking of the ad campaign and the average consumer, both a move to x86 and not moving to the Power4 seem counter-intuitive. Staying with Motorola’s line is a problem because Apple has to use increasingly obscure benchmarks to maintain the facade that it’s are just as fast as x86. Those benchmarks don’t do a thing for the average consumer, all they see is Ghz. So to genuinely beat them, and make some money, a move to the Power4 and some graphs of a Mac absolutely destroying the fastest PCs around in anything and everything, would be a good idea. And the Switch ads just got people to sell off their x86 hardware and buy something completely different. And then Apple start releasing things for the platform that they just spent a good deal of money switching from. It’s bound to piss people off.
The most ideal thing by far would be to release OS X on x86 and Power4 Macs at the same time. You gain market share in the double digits, and you can have a good, real world place to do benchmarks. Have an OS X pc with the fastest x86 next to a Power4 Mac and let them see that a Mac is really that much faster. 64-bit stuff from the x86 line? No worries, Power4 is 64 bit with no x86 quirks. All this combined with the simple power (UNIX) and beauty (Aqua) of OS X with no Palladium restrictions, would make Apple much more of a worry to Microsoft than any other company can hope to be.
I’ll bet the majority of Mac users don’t know and don’t care what hardware is in a mac so long is it runs well. I don’t understand when people say the Dell and HP and Microsoft will kill Apple if they move to x86 cause that’s what happened to OS/2… It makes no sense… IBM tried to sell a boxed OS which directly competed with microsoft. I’m confused as to how Apple will now be suddenly competing with Microsoft, HP, and Dell any more than they are currently just because they use x86. People seem to be saying that ALL mac users will walk into a store and say “Hey, this mac is just a filthy PC, so I’ll forget that I liked mac at one time and buy the PC.” I’m arguing that if Apple switched it will go something like this: “Hey, look at this faster new mac that costs less than it did? KILLER!” and they’d buy one on the spot. Apple would be selling more than just an Apple branded PC. They’d still be selling a Macintosh. Did anyone say it wasn’t a mac anymore when they switched from the 68k to the PowerPC? I guess it’s like this: How many sales did Microsoft lose on the XBox because people said “Hey, this is just a computer! I should get a Dell instead!” I’m guessing none (I know it’s not selling as well as MS hoped, but I believe that the reason is NOT the one I just mentioned)
Also, Apple switched from SCSI to IDE… I’ll bet the designers at my work have NO IDEA. AND even though IDE isn’t theoretically as fast as SCSI, their G4’s run better than their old 8500s. They don’t know that the processor is different, and even if they did, they wouldn’t care.
I’m defending Apple here and I don’t even like them. I do like OSX, though, and I’d even consider buying a Mac if you could get me a cheap enough box that ran as well or better than my windows machine.
At any rate, sorry for the long winded response…
>>I’m confused as to how Apple will now be suddenly competing with Microsoft, HP, and Dell any more than they are currently just because they use x86. People seem to be saying that ALL mac users will walk into a store and say “Hey, this mac is just a filthy PC, so I’ll forget that I liked mac at one time and buy the PC.”<<
No the Mac users will have a cow because when we think x86, we think PC automatically and Mac users also know that if we’re going to pay premium for hardware, that’s exactly what it should be, not pawnshop specials! I would be one of those Mac users you just described, I would leave the platform in a heartbeat, as most other Mac users… that is why Apple would never make that step.
>>I’m arguing that if Apple switched it will go something like this: “Hey, look at this faster new mac that costs less than it did? KILLER!” and they’d buy one on the spot. Apple would be selling more than just an Apple branded PC. They’d still be selling a Macintosh.<<
NO, Mac users would say that it’s just a PC with an Apple logo on it, and the userbase would dissolve into chaos!
Let’s see…
The machine is still made by Apple.
It’s still high quality.
It runs all the OS X apps.
It’s cheaper.
It’s faster.
There’s much more software now available.
The games are amazingly cool.
All the new graphics cards are available in quantity.
Somehow I believe the majority of the Mac owners/usrs would love it.
The only ones who would have an issue would be those who KNEW they were getting fucked with Apple’s high prices on the G4 and went ahead and bought the machine anyway.
The ones that didn’t know would go “Cool, lower price Mac. I can afford two of them now. Awesome”.
Apple, the masters of the reality distortion field, could certainly come up with some spin for going x86. Just doing it would be like $10 billion of free PR for them anyway 😉
Think (different) about it.
#m
how you project.
If someone pays a bit more for a product-in your eyes they are wrong in doing so.See you in a month Mac hater with a #.
Michael,
Do you actually think Apple is going to lower prices on Macs just because they switched to a different CPU? Apple learned its lesson that selling in volume doesn’t make money, just ask Gateway and Dell! Of course Dell is doing pretty good, its profit margins are low, and Gateway has been losing money trying to compete for the lowest bidder!
uh, mac folks —
lower prices = more demand
and now for extra credit —
more demand = good
(Apple learned selling lots of computers is a bad thing)
“It’s mine, all mine. My precious.”
What did they learn, again? How to shrink their market share every year, sometimes 30% at a pop? Given the recent suckage down to 2.4%, I’d say Apple is still talking to the teacher for extra credit.
#m
Yeah… sell yourself right into bankruptcy, or give everything away but the bank, and then go out of business because you listened to too many armchair CEOs that said that ‘lower everyday prices’ was the best thing for everybody! Hey it might work for Wal-Mart, but it doesn’t work for everything, just look at the turmoil the PC industry is in now!
‘lower everyday prices’
I mean;
‘everyday low prices’
same difference!
🙂
Apples market share may be small but they sell more Macs per year than the total Amigas sold in 10 years.
…and unlike most PC companies still make a profit, $32 million in the last Q – and thats with high prices in a slowdown…
I do agree they should have lower prices though.
—
I think a move to x86 will be suicidial, direct competion with MS and chums will not exactly be easy, closed hardware or not. OK most people wont care about the CPU but most sales people will and they might not be interested in selling Apple hardware.
Many people seem to blindly assume there sill be better performance, OS X is optimised for Altivec so switching will likely cripple performance at least in the first few versions. Also, the Objective C compiler is unlikely to be optimised for x86 so it will only hurt more and take years to fix.
By the time it’s all sorted out anyone in the PC business selling cheap will have gone out of business anyway and PPC G? may have caugt up or even surpassed x86 so Apple wont have gained anything, only lost.
There is an implicit assumption that x86 will always be faster then PPC and yet this is without reason. Prior to the G4 this was not always the case. Speed is at best a temporary problem for Apple.
Spped (or lack thereof) has never hurt Sun – they have always lagged behind pretty much everyone in CPU speed wars and yet remain the biggest server vendor.
Oh, man. 97.6% global market share. Ouch. Damn those low prices hurt. Oh, the high value PC is doing so poorly that it is going to sell ONE BILLION units in the next six years.
Let’s call Apple. They know how to fix it. They are only going to sell 18 million computers over the next six years. If anyone knows how to take an industry-leading advantage and squander it, well, it must be those guys. They are old school.
The PC industry, both hardware and software, is the great success story of our time.
When it comes to many Mac owners, I have never seen a group of computer people so self-blinded to their own heritage and tradition. Apple used to deliver the PC of its era — entry level computer, expandable, upgradeable, six slots, etc.
Maybe the company should consider a return to its heritage instead of striving for more Moma awards.
#m
Objective-C already runs on the x86.
Mac OS X = NeXTStep = used to run on Intel
For Apple to move to the Intel x86 world, it would not be as big of a jump as some would have you believe.
Both Mach and BSD run on Intel architecture.
Some of the world’s best developments tools and compilers are on Intel architecture.
The best graphics drivers run on Intel.
Mouse, keyboard, etc., all the drivers for the PC parts Apple already uses are all available for Intel.
Ah no matter how much Megahertz Koolaid you drank, a 2.53Ghz Pentium 4 will smoke a 1Ghz PowerPC 99% of the time.
Ain’t it time to move away from the FEAR and into the VISION of creating something undeniably cool??? I hear a lot of FEAR from the Mac-folks, not a lot of COOL.
#m
Apple is doing a lot to try to pick up a high end. If they succeed, then they could deemphasize the importance of the desktop, to profits that is. Thus they could offer lower prices, which is why pcs really sell more anyway.
Back to cars. Few car manufacturers make much money from selling economy cars. They use it to build customer loyalty. They make profits from selling luxury cars, SUVs, etc. Apple can makes profits from servers, the high-end creative market (stealing SGI’s market), etc.
Apple can shoot for 10% to 20% market share. That should be very appealing to a chip maker who is interested in making money, motorola seems more attracted to losing money. Meanwhile AMD is taking an beating in the x86 world.
I’m totally with you on this one! As I said in one of my previous posts, it makes a lot of sense for Apple to move into the high-price high-margin world of technical/professional computing. Apple could release a super powerful 64 bit machine that would take the workstation world by storm.
#m
>>Oh, man. 97.6% global market share. Ouch. Damn those low prices hurt. Oh, the high value PC is doing so poorly that it is going to sell ONE BILLION units in the next six years.<<
Oh know, if the PCs have 97.6% of the marketshare and Macs supposedly has the other 2.4% of the marketshare, then Sun, SGI, HPaq (Alpha Division) and etc… isn’t selling squat and probably is fudging their accounting books, I smell a conspiracy theory here!
>>The best graphics drivers run on Intel.
Mouse, keyboard, etc., all the drivers for the PC parts Apple already uses are all available for Intel.
Ah no matter how much Megahertz Koolaid you drank, a 2.53Ghz Pentium 4 will smoke a 1Ghz PowerPC 99% of the time.<<
Ever heard that word called ‘hearsay’?… that sums up what you said!
>>Ain’t it time to move away from the FEAR and into the VISION of creating something undeniably cool??? I hear a lot of FEAR from the Mac-folks, not a lot of COOL.<<
Move from what FEAR? What are Mac-folks fearing?? You people come up with so many crazy stories that it’s become total science fiction! It’s always doom and gloom for Apple, isn’t it?!
Here is another slogon to add to your tall tales;
“Apple… going out of business since 1984”
🙂
Someone commented that if there was a move to x86, it would be a slow and gradual one, not a monumental one, however, that still doesn’t take care of the backwards compatability issues. PPC software still cannot run on x86, and it doesn’t look like emulation is going to work like it did for 68k. Besides, PPC is still a good processor, there is nothing wrong with it, it is just that for the first time ever, Intel has had real competition, so that has sent the mhz flying. Intel is not Apple’s saviour, unfortunately, neither is motorola. What Apple needs is a solid manufacturer in the PPC world. Apple will never switch to x86, it is very un-Applelike in many ways.
Micheal sounds like he is very happy with Intel and does not want a mac, I don’t know why he is even posting on this topic. Eugenia and others are wrong, Apple will not switch to Intel, simply BECAUSE it would be very hard for them to create an Apple-only closed hardware on x86. Besides, Apple has been spewing anti-x86 retoric for so long, I doubt that they have a very favorable opinion of the archetecture anyway.
Skipp