More on the PowerPC 970 386
functor writes "Ars Technica's Jon Stokes has a treatise up covering the microarchitecture of the high-performance 64-bit PowerPC 970 microprocessor, due to be released by the end of the year, that goes over in detail how this chip is put together, and how we can expect it to perform. This is the follow-up to Stokes' article detailing the PPC 970's design philosophy. 'It appears to hold quite a bit of promise in bolstering Apple's currently almost obsolescent product line, and it appears to have been designed explictly to fulfil Apple's requirements. To say the least, the second half of this year looks to be pretty interesting as Apple's product line promises to become competitive performance-wise with IA-32 and x86-64-based PCs again.''
Yeah. let's depend on IBM for our future (Score:0, Insightful)
Mac developers are used to heavy lifting to accommodate change. Witness the 680x0->PPC migration (which was incredibly painful), or Mac OS 9->OS X. Adopting a new processor would be a piece of cake at this point.
Take a page from GNU/Linux and the BSD's 1 2 & 3. Target multiple architectures. Let the users decide!
Re:Yeah. let's depend on IBM for our future (Score:5, Insightful)
Most users of Macs are in the graphics industry. Having BEEN there, I can tell you the 68k to PPC transition was a non-issue. The PPC ran the 68k code as fast as the old machines. The real transition was in restructuring applications, since they no longer needed to work around the brain-deadedness of the 68k series. Again, old apps were not affected.
The other point I would like to make is that they HAVE taken a page out of the GNU/Linux BSD page. MacOSX is an alternative window manager sitting on top of BSD!
Re:Yeah. let's depend on IBM for our future (Score:5, Insightful)
Y'know, I don't know why this keeps coming up. Apple's bottom line has always depended on keeping tight control over the hardware to allow maximum integration with their own software. And it works.
Keep in mind that Linux and BSD aren't targetted towards consumers who want to just "rip, mix, burn" or have plug-and-play that's actually exactly that. Even Windows can't deliver consistently on its promise of universal ease-of-use because so many vendors have so much hardware that may or may not work with the system and its existing drivers.
Whatever else you think about Apple's computers, they are without a doubt the easiest PCs on the planet if you're a neophyte. Take it from me, I've got two young women in my home who are all but completely computer-illiterate, and if I didn't have Mac OS X running they'd be constantly lost at sea. I'd love to try hooking up a Linux box for either or both of them, but there's no way I could expect them to use it. Macs are easy, and their users like them that way.
Yeah, I know it's a profit issue for Apple as well, because without business software sales like Microsoft relies on they'd be bankrupt without hardware profits. But I like to think it's more than just money. Apple cares about making a good and easy-to-use product, or else they'd just be chasing Windows like (sorry, not trolling here, but it's true) GNOME and KDE are instead of constantly innovating their own hardware and interface designs.
Targetting multiple architectures means that Apple's got to deal with unpredictable hardware configurations, cards, motherboards, drivers, all sorts of things that could cause inconvenient kernel panics, drive failures, or worse. Users are used to that with Windows, and they pretty much expect it with Linux. With Macs, they expect things to just work. Controlling the hardware is the best way for Apple to do that.
Or let's not... (Score:5, Insightful)
The music industry for iMS, AMD for the chips in the airport base station (and the iPod(?) don't know), Motorola for the non-pro lineup (iMacG4, iBook and the portables until they get 970), etc. etc.
I think Apple will go a long way to make sure they don't get stuck with one provider.
Also I think they are trying to be more competitive pricewise. By having a steady stream of income from selling iPods and songs via iMS, they get more money to develop hardware and software, and we just might get Powermacs970 below the $3k mark.
Re:competitive, sure... (Score:5, Insightful)
"Being competitive" does not equal to 'having more computing power". Look how small is this thingy's power consumption! I guess when 970 ships, we will have similar situation as we have right now. x86 machines will consume enormous amount of power and dissipate enormous amount of heat, what usually results in this nice "quadruple augmented turbofan" sound that accompanies most PC desktops or "not enough battery life even to watch a full DVD" laptops. Not to mention that if you actually put this laptop on the top of your lap, you might get your testicles hard boiled.
And Apple will launch yet another series of slower but cool machines - both in terms of look and heat dissipation. Which actually is pretty much what we have already.
Re:waiting for this to arrive.... (Score:2, Insightful)
Sensible argument for MAC going x86 (Score:0, Insightful)
That being said, I can see apple working themselves into a corner. Let's say they go to a 970 based MAC in October, and it's 1.8Ghz. Perhaps then a big first jump to a 2.5Ghz machine by early 2004. Let's assume for the sake of argument that MAC is then the quickest on the block... for how long will this last? Apple are still very dependent on ONE single external supplier, being IBM. They're being forced to follow the whims of IBM and their CPU line, when that is not IBM's core business.
With an OS running on x86 architecture, not only do OS authors have the knowledge they're building for a well supported architecture, but there is choice in the market of who makes those chips, AMD or Intel for a start. Not only that, AMD and Intel have desktop CPUs as a MAJOR part of their business. There's a big point I've seen little mention of
I see the only sane option is for MAC to go x86. Everything else seems just a temporary option as long as the world works how it does
Sure, you can buy it... (Score:2, Insightful)
You seem pissed that Apple doesn't throw down with the other hardware manufacturers. Why? Other platforms offer nearly everything Apple does, except that patented "Apple Flavor" and maybe FCP. I wish they'd commoditize the hardware, too, but it won't happen.
Re:Obsolete my a$$ (Score:5, Insightful)
I use the Dell for Linux development work and to run a couple of Windows-only programs (Netware Administrator), but for everything else I use my Mac (email, word processing, web browsing, spreadsheets, etc.).
Far from obsolete, this old G4 with OS X still provides a much better work environment than my Optiplex. So what if the processor is slow by today's standards? I'm still MORE PRODUCTIVE on my Mac. Isn't productivity the best benchmark for how good a computer REALLY is?
Obsolescent product line? (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm sorry, but I don't see anything even approaching obsolete in Apple's product line.
Re:Obsolete my a$$ (Score:5, Insightful)
Macs are often used in publishing...
We use Macs (Dual G4), Sparcs, and PCs (running Linux) to do massive batch processing of EPS files, converting them to PDFs and GIFs or JPEGs. (using Acrobat Server and/or Ghostscript)
The PCs are able to run these conversions several times faster.
We are currently about to exceed the capacity of the current systems.
Question: do we get an expensive 4-CPU Sparc, make a cluster of Macs, or do we get one moderately-priced dual-CPU PC server?
That is what people mean when they talk about systems becoming obsolete; they can no longer keep up with what else is available or needed.
That is also why Apple must keep up with the competition or die... even if MOST people don't need the power, SOME do.
If they aren't going to compete on performance, then they must compete on features and/or PRICE.
Features: It used to be that most good publishing or graphics software was only available on Macs; that is no longer the case. Now the only difference between a Mac and a PC running Windows is the GUI looks different.
Re:AMD is the odd man out & the megahertz myth (Score:3, Insightful)
Unfortunately, Apple FUD'd, claiming that shorter pipelines were inherently faster.
Kitchen Sink (Score:3, Insightful)
And yet here we have the last man standing in the "RISC turned hopelessly complex" generation, the Power970. When you look at this things design they threw everything and the kitchen sink in there! Most interesting is that batch parallelism where an instruction for every type of execution unit is queued up and when they're all ready to go they're executed in parallel. It will be interesting to see if that can scale given the latency it introduces, and the likelyhood that you won't always be able to fill every unit.
Re:OS X not "more productive" for me (Score:3, Insightful)
So.. what are you looking for in terms of productivity?
Speed would be an issue for long compiles, multimedia operations or games, but that's as far as I would go.
Re:64-bit Adobe apps (Score:3, Insightful)
Some video/image editing applications may be able to get a small win out of it, but I don't think it will help a lot, since in general they operate on 8 (single color channel) or 32 (3 color channels+alpha) bit quantities. For that kind of operations, the vector unit shines. You can use the regular integer registers as well, but then you get some overhead because of all the masking that's necessary to keep the separate channels from overflowing into the next one. Of course it's possible (after all, that's all there was before altivec etc) and can be combined with the usage of the vector unit, but I doubt it will deliver a lot of extra performance over a 32 bit processor.
Having extra memory available will help everyone (if only because it can be used as a disk cache if no application needs it), but a 64 bit integer unit is not necessary or even helpful in most cases (except for being able to address said memory). As someone else in this thread already remarked, making a program 64 bit may actually make it slower instead of faster if you do it just for bragging rights or because it seems cool.
Re:PPC970 and Linux (Score:0, Insightful)
Remember, this is the same company that sells 604e machines for $5,000 in the year 2000. And yes, they are full-on server machines with SCSI, GigE, very nice custom parts, etc, but still, it's not gonna be cheap.
Even if you run Linux on it, Macs will probably be cheaper. Of course, the Linux experience will probably be better on an IBM, and the IBM name might look better to the suits.
Rumor has it that Apple will allow IBM to sell Mac OS X Server with some of its PPC workstations as a part of their ongoing cooperation. So you might get the best of both worlds...
Re:It is competitive ! (Score:3, Insightful)
No, they couldn't. Every app would need to be rewritten, right on the heels of the 9 to X transition that isn't even finished yet. Switching to x86 is a complex nightmare that may be Apple's doomsday plan, but it is far from simple.
Re:competitive, sure... (Score:1, Insightful)
LIsten to yourself, you are saying that adding an extra 40% isn't going to have an effect on a laptop battery?
"As a result, the CPU stays cool, and the machine is barely audible from a few feet away."
A few feet away? I can't hear my iBook running while I hold it! Your delusional! Mad I tell you!
JohnnyX
Re:Sensible argument for MAC going x86 (Score:4, Insightful)
And Apple/Mac has got exactly how far by being sane? They take chances. Big ones. Sometimes they fail. (Lisa, Newton) Sometimes they don't. (The orginial Mac, iPod, iMac, (actually, most of the i* stuff...)) The one sure thing is that if Apple stopped taking chances Apple would fail.
Re:commodity hardware (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: Have you ever used a Mac??? (Score:3, Insightful)
Apple went pretty much all IDE about five years ago.
USB over PCI
Mac's have had PCI slots since the first PowerPC based units became available. In fact, back in those days many PC's still had VLB, and only Pentiums had PCI slots. Further, since they were 100% PCI there was no bottleneck due to legacy support (ISA) Also, USB's importance was such that it replaced SCSI for external, high speed devices...
Re:Who says Apple will use it? (Score:4, Insightful)
As Hannibal (Jon Stokes) notes in the article in question [arstechnica.com]:
"The fact that the Altivec unit was slapped onto the design, leaving some room for improvement in future iterations, leaves no doubt that the 970 achieved its present form under pressure from Apple and that Apple will be rolling out systems based on the new processor. This is the most plausible and reasonable explanation for the way the vector unit looks. If the 970 were solely intended as a Linux desktop platform for IBM, they would've preferred to reduce the 970's die size, power consumption, time-to-market, etc. by just leaving out the Altivec unit altogether, instead of shoehorning it into the design the way they did."
Most Linux variants and apps aren't Altivec-optimized, so there wouldn't be very much incentive for IBM to include the functionality in a Linux-only box given the engineering work involved in doing so. It makes much more sense to do it when you know that you could easily sell hundreds of thousands of these CPUs to another company whose customers are desperately eager for that level of performance, i.e. Apple.
Re:Obsolete a long time ago (Score:3, Insightful)
The marketshare has more to do with marketing and the fact that most people don't even know what a Macintosh is (Slashdot aside). Only since it moved to RISC in '94 and then went to a UNIX-based OS in 2000, has the Mac gotten a lot of cred with the geeks, the prime-computer buying crowd.
Also, the IBM PC practically debuted at 90% marketshare due to IBM's brand-recognition with large companies that needed a lot of desktop-computers.
Re:Inaccuracy, Part 1 (Score:2, Insightful)
Moreover, how is this claim anti-Apple? Are they the ONLY company in the world using processors built on Post-RISC design philosophies? Doesn't IBM also use PPC750's in workstations supporting their servers?
Re:May be sooner than we think (Score:2, Insightful)
We know apple has been working on this for at least two years.
We know the processors are most likely in production.
We know Apple is making big announcements at WWDC.
Wee know Apple needs to release a new platform soon 'cause anticipation is killing sales
Is there any reason Apple and IBM shouldn't be ready to release?