Apple to dump IBM and switch to Intel

Azza

According to CNET Apple are dumping IBM and getting into bed with Chipzilla for its future processors.

Which begs the question.......why?

aidan_walsh

Perhaps so that they can get a faster chip from a more brand recognised chip maker, thus be able to (maybe) lower the price of their machines and make a stab at once again coming into the mainstream? Lets face it, a Mac Mini-type box could be pretty easily adapted by Apple to make a great little HTPC.

Besides, this isn't the first time this rumour has been going around. I'll believe it when I actually see it happen.

Dempsey

The chips they are using are much better than Intels and AMD Desktops CPU's. I'd say they are about to negotiate with IBM for chips and this is get a better offer.

jessy

aidan_walsh wrote:

Perhaps so that they can get a faster chip from a more brand recognised chip maker

WTF?

Intel is more brand recognized than IBM at making CPUs but to have a company like IBM who are world leaders at every single thing they do and been one of the most recognizable names in the world on your side has to count for something? The G5 is probably the best chip around at the min, + there's the little mater of rewriting one of the most advanced OS's in the world. The main reason these rummers are occurring is because Apple are a bit pissed at IBM for not been able to produce the G5 chips fast enough and not been able to produce a suitable G5 for laptops (one that wold not drain the battery in an hour). Was always under the impression that Apple were proud of the fact that they did something different, they move to intel and there just one of an endless line of PC makers. + IBM still has the cell up its sleeve if it can incorporate that as a coprocessor it would make this very interesting.

rsynnott

See this. MacOS should be moderately portable, and a Pentium M would undoubtedly be better on laptops in the short-term, for example. It's a pity, tho; the PPC970 is one of the last mass-market desktop RISC chips around.

astrofool

probably because the price/performance they're getting out of IBM's Power series isn't good enough. If Apple seriously want to be contenders again, x86-64 will be the way to do it.

Azza

The chips they are using are much better than Intels and AMD Desktops CPU's.

The day you prove that conclusively (sorry If I spelt wrong) I'll eat the slower cpu's.

rsynnott

The PPC970 is technically far superior to the AMD chips, which rely on the massively superannuated 386 architecture. The have more registers and execute more instructions concurrently. When USED, the AltiVec unit provides far better performance than either the 387 unit or the SSE unit in in Intel/AMD chip. It's also a cheaper chip; it would be more expensive for Apple to use Pentium Ms than PPC970s. However, compiler optimisation for the chip is currently poor, with the AltiVec unit, in particular, rarely being used (Apple went to a lot of trouble getting the AltiVec used in Photoshop for benchmark purposes), and IBM has been slow to produce higher clock speed chips, lower power chips and multi-core chips. It'll be a pity to see it go, but it probably makes sense in the short term for Apple to do this.

Azza

What is AltiVec an instruction set?

rsynnott

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AltiVec

Dempsey

http://www.barefeats.com/macvpc.html

It will hard to get a good gaming benchmarks because Mac use OpenGL and windows based games are optimised for directx. Suppose I cant prove it conclusively because of that.

Azza

Anandtech was in high praise of the G5 recently as a workstation and given that Intel's clock speeds have stopped and AMD's have not much further to climb could of given them an edge. However if there jumping ship to Intel then the G5 won't be getting any faster either.

Wondering away abit from desktop processors I was looking at Anandtech recent look at the G5. Basically a good processor with alot of used potentail.
Anandtech compared the G5 to the Xeon and Opteron which he believed both had better branch predictors. They also reckon the Opterons memory sub system was superior. Also the G5 really needs good optimization. They mentioned the ability of the AltiVec unit to transfer performance though. Its preformance as a server was apparntly terrible.

As a gaming platform I don't think the G5 would loss out terriblly but I would wager they would still be behind.

I'm not convinced of one platforms dominance over the other yet.

Azza

I thought a few games on Windows prefer OpenGL to directx....like Doom III?

rsynnott

Yep, saw that server one. The server performance problem was due to use of MacOS X as a server, a role it's dramatically unsuited towards. In particular, it was used as a MySQL server, which requires heavy multi-threading; the mach microkernel, which MacOS uses, is historically very poor at multithreading, as is the BSD kernel, which MacOS also uses elements of. (Mac alleges that Oracle and Symantec have gotten around this problem with their DBs). It's a pity they didn't have a Mac running Linux or proper BSD as a comparison. In any event, poor performance there was nothing to do with the chip.

No, unless people are willing to optimise for it, it is not a good gaming platform. It has never been marketed as such.

Dempsey

I was generalising, there probably is some exceptions

gline

moving to intel can have good and bad points.

But i think mainly bad.
MAC=IBM
HOME USER PCS=AMD, INTEL

Thats the way i always think of them. IBM make some kickass chips. If they did move to intel wouldnt they have to rewrite the OS to be used on an intel chip??

steviec

When they say 'Intel' do they mean x86? Because surely, since they don't have the backwards compatibility of PCs to worry about, it would be far better to use a more efficient architecture?

And if it is x86 does that mean Macs are going to be compatible with PC software?

rsynnott

Yes, unfortunately they do mean the good old 386. And according to Jobs, MacOS has been running on said chip for the last 5 years.

Maybe they'll go for Itanium on their higher performance machines; somehow I doubt it.

OfflerCrocGod

rsynnott wrote:

Maybe they'll go for Itanium on their higher performance machines; somehow I doubt it.

Itanium is being killed off by Intel - simply put no one wants it. Great waste of money.

rsynnott

OfflerCrocGod wrote:

Itanium is being killed off by Intel - simply put no one wants it. Great waste of money.

REally? HP will be disappointed; they just killed off PA-RISC and said their high-reliabilty machines would run on Itanium-3 (which isn't out yet)

Dempsey

OfflerCrocGod wrote:

Itanium is being killed off by Intel - simply put no one wants it. Great waste of money.

Where did you hear that?

rsynnott

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/06/01/hp_itanic_nonstop/ , btw

astrofool

Itanium will be around, and developed for, for a good long time yet.