Apple switching to Intel Processors
Some interesting reading on the subject:
http://www.wired.com/news/mac/0,2125,67 ... _tophead_2
http://www.wired.com/news/mac/0,2125,67 ... ry_related
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/06/06 ... _analysis/
http://www.wired.com/news/mac/0,2125,67 ... _tophead_2
http://www.wired.com/news/mac/0,2125,67 ... ry_related
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/06/06 ... _analysis/
Anandtech.com also has a nice review of the keynote speech: http://www.anandtech.com/tradeshows/showdoc.aspx?i=2438
The speculation about what Dell's response might be caught me eye over the weekend. Apple and Intel is big news and Dell has been staying away from AMD thus far (although making more and more noise about it lately). Apple hasn't mentioned AMD but Hypertransport was used for their main system bus on the g5's and AMD sits on that board.
IBM has been obviously lured in by the gaming console market. They've had a high-profile expensive development campaign with Sony for the 'new' stripped down multicore Cell cpu architecture. Microsoft's Xbox360 is going to ship in a few months with not just a 3.2 GHz PowerPC derivitive in it, but one with THREE cores. Nintendo's console next year will have and IBM cpu with 4 2.5Ghz cores. All three of these 'partnerships' funded IBM's development costs and own the chip-designs they paid for. rather than IBM having to fund the development of the cpu's over time. This means that IBM will continue to recieve income from these designs without bearing further development costs or having to deal with overseeing production. Quite nicer than the situation with Apple and its G5 (which they have been under constant pressure to improve and can't seem to--or don't want to--ramp up production for). So still no G5 for Apple laptops and G5 is still sub-3ghz, something that was promised by Steve Jobs some time ago.
The second Wired article that dArKr3zIn posted also speculates that the next-generation p4's have 'DRM' (Digital Rights Management) built into them to favor Hollywood. This has been denied by Intel who has given an official statement: http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=23708
<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: valis on 2005-06-06 18:29 ]</font>
The speculation about what Dell's response might be caught me eye over the weekend. Apple and Intel is big news and Dell has been staying away from AMD thus far (although making more and more noise about it lately). Apple hasn't mentioned AMD but Hypertransport was used for their main system bus on the g5's and AMD sits on that board.
IBM has been obviously lured in by the gaming console market. They've had a high-profile expensive development campaign with Sony for the 'new' stripped down multicore Cell cpu architecture. Microsoft's Xbox360 is going to ship in a few months with not just a 3.2 GHz PowerPC derivitive in it, but one with THREE cores. Nintendo's console next year will have and IBM cpu with 4 2.5Ghz cores. All three of these 'partnerships' funded IBM's development costs and own the chip-designs they paid for. rather than IBM having to fund the development of the cpu's over time. This means that IBM will continue to recieve income from these designs without bearing further development costs or having to deal with overseeing production. Quite nicer than the situation with Apple and its G5 (which they have been under constant pressure to improve and can't seem to--or don't want to--ramp up production for). So still no G5 for Apple laptops and G5 is still sub-3ghz, something that was promised by Steve Jobs some time ago.
The second Wired article that dArKr3zIn posted also speculates that the next-generation p4's have 'DRM' (Digital Rights Management) built into them to favor Hollywood. This has been denied by Intel who has given an official statement: http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=23708
<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: valis on 2005-06-06 18:29 ]</font>
-
hubird
Astonished, very astonished.
I'm a pc user and a student so nowadays I can't efford a mac, but I belive that the mac enviroment is the best to make music and graphics (except the dedicated workstations obviously).
Since I read this message my opinion was to buy a mac as soon i can efford it, but now my opinion is changed a little. I know about the "old" motorola processors that they are RISC, and I read that the new Intel (for PC use) are not very optimized, because they must maintain the compatibility with the old ones.
So my question is:
Intel will make a customized processor for apple or will adapt the new generation of processor to try to fit the apple requirements?
I agree with: " Two things make a Mac: the operating system and the hardware design.[...]"
If the processor is crappy you can do the best O.S. but it must repair to the hardware lacks'. In definitive you have less performances.
My fear is that in the next future, macs will be pc with a better design (in terms of aesthetics). You will pay more, not for better tecnical specs, but for a better design.
But I really hope that mac's heads are responsible people and do the things as they must be done (for us)
I'm a pc user and a student so nowadays I can't efford a mac, but I belive that the mac enviroment is the best to make music and graphics (except the dedicated workstations obviously).
Since I read this message my opinion was to buy a mac as soon i can efford it, but now my opinion is changed a little. I know about the "old" motorola processors that they are RISC, and I read that the new Intel (for PC use) are not very optimized, because they must maintain the compatibility with the old ones.
So my question is:
Intel will make a customized processor for apple or will adapt the new generation of processor to try to fit the apple requirements?
I agree with: " Two things make a Mac: the operating system and the hardware design.[...]"
If the processor is crappy you can do the best O.S. but it must repair to the hardware lacks'. In definitive you have less performances.
My fear is that in the next future, macs will be pc with a better design (in terms of aesthetics). You will pay more, not for better tecnical specs, but for a better design.
But I really hope that mac's heads are responsible people and do the things as they must be done (for us)
Mac heads are indeed responsible people - but it's cash flow, shareholder value and prestige that concerns them in the first place 
of course they announce it as 'the best computer for YOU, our customer...', but come on, we're not kids anymore.
NextStep as the direct OSX predecessor has been available for Intel CPUs years ago and WebObjects (Apple's internet application server dev kit) was always available under WinNT, so it's not surprising.
From the technical viewpoint Apple has given up hardware specific, highly optimized coding long ago anyway.
It was clearly mentioned that the deal is about the next generation of Intel chips, and there could be some nice DRM surprises on their way...
It's in no way to please current 'me knows it better and I build any box from crap' types.
Imho the hype is fairly irrelevant since what's a PC built from ?
A CPU and a mobo, some Ram, a graphcard and a soundcard.
The latter two may cost several times more than the first 3 components, as we all know
cheers, Tom
of course they announce it as 'the best computer for YOU, our customer...', but come on, we're not kids anymore.
NextStep as the direct OSX predecessor has been available for Intel CPUs years ago and WebObjects (Apple's internet application server dev kit) was always available under WinNT, so it's not surprising.
From the technical viewpoint Apple has given up hardware specific, highly optimized coding long ago anyway.
It was clearly mentioned that the deal is about the next generation of Intel chips, and there could be some nice DRM surprises on their way...
It's in no way to please current 'me knows it better and I build any box from crap' types.
Imho the hype is fairly irrelevant since what's a PC built from ?
A CPU and a mobo, some Ram, a graphcard and a soundcard.
The latter two may cost several times more than the first 3 components, as we all know
cheers, Tom
that's right.
there is currently little separating mac from "pcs", hardwarewise and even softwarewise. osx is an extension of unix code which is common in the pc world. macs will be just an optimized "pc" soon and that might actually be a good thing. maybe osx will be an option like linux.....maybe os11(eleven is not as sexy as "X" anyway...)
we'll have to see what the powers that be want to sell to us......
there is currently little separating mac from "pcs", hardwarewise and even softwarewise. osx is an extension of unix code which is common in the pc world. macs will be just an optimized "pc" soon and that might actually be a good thing. maybe osx will be an option like linux.....maybe os11(eleven is not as sexy as "X" anyway...)
we'll have to see what the powers that be want to sell to us......
That's a good point Ditty and it had occurred to me too--no more Mhz/Ghz anti-spin (from Apple) on benchmarks. Its going to be completely down to user-experience now, at least once all the binaries are compatible and there aren't any Rosetta issues.
As for the 'newer' PowerPC design versus the older x86 design, the core of modern x86 chips is far removed from the CISC roots. The internals actually decode everything to RISC-like 'microops', and the deep-pipelining and reliance on compilers and the cpu's scheduler to eek performance gains is very RISC-like. In contrast the G4 and G5 added many CISC-like features, not the least of which is the much-touted Altivec (specialized vector unit and registers). Many people point out Altivec as being an Intel-killer without being aware that the P4 added sse2 (P3 added sse1) which is largely the same thing (although different in terms of implementation). On Intel's side SSE3 is pretty much with us now as well, while the modern G5's actually LOST an Altivec vector unit and have only one compared to the G4's two (which is why the G4 can actually perform better for certain intensive calculations that can fit largely in the G4's cache and use both Altivec units).
The biggest issue here in my opinion is the fact that IBM hasn't been able to deliver laptops to Apple, and Intel's "Centrino" cpu and power saving tech is about to take another huge leap forward with Yonah's dual cores and 6-8 hour battery life. Keep in mind that Intel's Pentium-M (Centrino) outperforms the P4 desktop cpu's clock for clock (that old IPC thing) and now fully supports SSE1/2/3 itself. Last month Laptops finally outsold desktops for the first time here in the US which indicates that the shift to mobile computing has moved beyond the suits and become mainstream. Apple has now had 2 rounds of laptop updates in the last year, both times hinting that G5 laptops were 'on the horizon'. They want Yonah now without a doubt.
<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: valis on 2005-06-07 03:33 ]</font>
As for the 'newer' PowerPC design versus the older x86 design, the core of modern x86 chips is far removed from the CISC roots. The internals actually decode everything to RISC-like 'microops', and the deep-pipelining and reliance on compilers and the cpu's scheduler to eek performance gains is very RISC-like. In contrast the G4 and G5 added many CISC-like features, not the least of which is the much-touted Altivec (specialized vector unit and registers). Many people point out Altivec as being an Intel-killer without being aware that the P4 added sse2 (P3 added sse1) which is largely the same thing (although different in terms of implementation). On Intel's side SSE3 is pretty much with us now as well, while the modern G5's actually LOST an Altivec vector unit and have only one compared to the G4's two (which is why the G4 can actually perform better for certain intensive calculations that can fit largely in the G4's cache and use both Altivec units).
The biggest issue here in my opinion is the fact that IBM hasn't been able to deliver laptops to Apple, and Intel's "Centrino" cpu and power saving tech is about to take another huge leap forward with Yonah's dual cores and 6-8 hour battery life. Keep in mind that Intel's Pentium-M (Centrino) outperforms the P4 desktop cpu's clock for clock (that old IPC thing) and now fully supports SSE1/2/3 itself. Last month Laptops finally outsold desktops for the first time here in the US which indicates that the shift to mobile computing has moved beyond the suits and become mainstream. Apple has now had 2 rounds of laptop updates in the last year, both times hinting that G5 laptops were 'on the horizon'. They want Yonah now without a doubt.
<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: valis on 2005-06-07 03:33 ]</font>
Selling OSX independantly would comprimise the stability of the Mac line, opening it up to the same set of hardware and driver conflicts that the PC suffers from. Also Apple has been a hardware and software company since its early days, and going software-only would require changes in their business plan. Personally I wouldn't mind checking out OSX dual boot on my Xeons but I won't be surprised if that never materializes...
There's an interesting comment in this thread that I thought was pertinent not only because it applies to the Mac>Intel discussion, but also because its connected to Creamware's OSX port (for which progress to date has been unknown):
Not surprising as I've seen the same thing said in relation to PearPC (MacOSX emulator for Wintel) but I think it may be beneficial now if Creamware hasn't spent a lot of effort on producing an OSX port to date. Could be it saved them some time & money...when the OS is native, the emulator only has to run apps. And in fact Rosetta is even more limited than that; not only won't it work for audio drivers, which are kernel extensions, but it also won't work for control panels which need to talk to audio drivers. As well, Rosetta doesn't support system preference panes for reasons at which I am presently unable to guess. So, for audio folk, the ride might be a bit bumpier than for most other folk, because the work implied for driver developers may be higher than for most others. Your DAW may work fine (albeit slower) in emulation as long as your workflow doesn't require your audio interface. For that you're absolutely going to need ported software.
Also from the comment to http://www.createdigitalmusic.com/index ... &Itemid=44 :
It may be that a given pro audio workflow cannot be emulated at all. Not only are kernel extensions (the lowest layer) not emulated, but it sounds like the emulator may not work well for compute-bound apps (the highest layer) either. Pro audio apps (mixers, synths, etc.) tend to be compute-bound. Here's the relevant text for the curious:
> Applications that have a lot of user interaction and low computational needs,
> such as a word processor, are quite compatible. Those that have a moderate
> amount of user interaction and some high computational needs or that use
> OpenGL are, in most cases, also quite compatible. Those that have intense
> computing needs aren’t compatible. This includes applications that need to
> repeatedly compute fast Fourier transforms (FFTs), that compute complex models
> for 3-D modelling, or compute ray tracing.
The extent to which Pro Tools, Reason, Logic, et. al. fall into each category remains to be seen, of course.
A bigger issue may be plug-ins; if you have an Intel build of a DAW, it won't be able to tell the emulator to execute a PowerPC plug-in, and even if the DAW were able to do so, the plug-in might be so compute-bound that you'd rather not go there.
I think the brightest hope for pro audio users is that porting to Intel is as easy as Apple says.
Anandtech has another article with this information:
Rosetta does not run the following:
Rosetta does not run the following:
- Applications built for Mac OS 8 or 9
- Code written specifically for AltiVec
- Code that inserts preferences in the System Preferences pane
- Applications that require a G4 or G5 processor
- Applications that depend on one or more kernel extensions
- Kernel extensions
- Bundled Java applications or Java applications with JNI libraries that can't be translated."
Here's an Apple page on Universal Binaries/Code conversion to X86.
http://developer.apple.com/documentatio ... al_binary/
http://developer.apple.com/documentatio ... al_binary/
it's not dangerous and I wouldn't compare it to the Palladium 'ideas'.On 2005-06-09 11:20, stardust wrote:
...
Infact astroman mentioned the really dangerous thing about it:
TCPA aka Palladium is then even more likely.
Care about that !!
The latter was an either log all activity or lock out from internet access approach, controlled by a handful of companies (imho) - and since internet communication has become such a core source of information that's hardly tolerable.
DRM in the context with future Apple products will just protect the 'content' provided on a commercial base by certain suppliers.
Apple was the first company to establish a profitable business model for downloadable content (music) and as such they will be the first considered capable of repeating this in the video domain.
Aside from the fact that I'd appreciate some more reasonable pricing for video ('classic' movies that already performed well from the business viewpoint are sold for horrendous amounts), I don't care much about copy protection.
But of course I know dudes who have every release half a year before it enters the shops.
It would be foolsish to assume the 'industry' just watches like the rabbit in front of the snake
cheers, Tom
<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: astroman on 2005-06-09 12:48 ]</font>