Intel..? AMD? VIA????

[Xapplimatic]

OK, Apple clearly has other reasons than just price of processors and cooling options for going with Intel.. The competition out there against Intel is just too intense to justify otherwise.. AMD chips are faster (so far), and on the low-end fanless performer scale (iBooks, Mac Minis, iMobiles, etc), what about VIA? I never hear anyone talking about them, but clearly they are a contender as well, albeit perhaps less well known. I found this interesting, particularly their technology for encryption/decryption and worm prevention *in hardware*:

http://www.via.com.tw/en/products/processors/eden-n/

Hey, that little motherboard is begging for Mac OS X !!!

 

[ravenvii]

 

[screensaver400]

Via's cpu division is former Cyrix, if I recall. Back in the bad old days, when chips had only numbers, anyone could make a chip and market it as a 386, or 486. Intel would pioneer, and the others (AMD, Cyrix, and others) would make their own versions. I actually had a Cyrix 486-DX2. Anyway, Intel got mad about all this, and the 586 became the Pentium. Pentium is trademarkable, so you couldn't have an AMD Pentium. I believe this was about the point Cyrix went downhill, while AMD somehow managed to thrive. They had their K6, K6-2, and then their first Athlons.

I never really liked Cyrix, though. They were never anything more than the Intel knockoff (that I remember), although Via might do something interesting with it. But I haven't seen it and I don't think I will. Plus, I'd feel weird buying a Via cpu now. They only really use the things in those $200 Linspire machines and the like.

In any case, this post is mostly irrelevant. But I thought the history lesson might be useful.

 

[Xapplimatic]

Apple needs to consider lower-priced options as well as higher priced.

Via's cpu division is former Cyrix, if I recall. Back in the bad old days, when chips had only numbers, anyone could make a chip and market it as a 386, or 486. Intel would pioneer, and the others (AMD, Cyrix, and others) would make their own versions. I actually had a Cyrix 486-DX2. Anyway, Intel got mad about all this, and the 586 became the Pentium. Pentium is trademarkable, so you couldn't have an AMD Pentium. I believe this was about the point Cyrix went downhill, while AMD somehow managed to thrive. They had their K6, K6-2, and then their first Athlons.

I never really liked Cyrix, though. They were never anything more than the Intel knockoff (that I remember), although Via might do something interesting with it. But I haven't seen it and I don't think I will. Plus, I'd feel weird buying a Via cpu now. They only really use the things in those $200 Linspire machines and the like.

In any case, this post is mostly irrelevant. But I thought the history lesson might be useful.

Very interesting. I didn't know that VIA was related to Cyrix. I believe Cyrix went down because they had a reputation of problems with incompatibilities. Clearly though the latest VIA designs aren't hold overs when they are super-low energy up to 1GHz and higher. It looks like they are targetting the lower portion of Pentium-M and Celeron sales. I wouldn't totally write them off just yet. Maybe it isn't DOOM-3 quality stuff, but it could certainly push webpages, do TurboTax, and play PacMan, and that's all that about half of the buying public really cares about.. Not everybody is a super-gamer.. and dollars definitely talk.

Apple might do well to market a low end Mac on "x86". There is certainly a big market for it. I don't consider the Mac Mini a low-end Mac by that guide.. Mac Mini is a very lower-midrange Mac. Too powerfull (and too costly) to be considered low-end even though low-cost certainly by yester-year's Mac prices.

 

[combatcolin]

Via were making low power chips at a time while Intel and AMD thought low power was a microwave setting.

Unfortunatly they, as you could alreasy guess, were not that powerful and Via left the desktop market.

 

[shadowmoses]

To use OSX-86 processors need SSE3 capabilities and so far no via processors support this and only the most powerful AMD's support it....Whereas all the new Intel processors support it like Celeron D and and all the new intel chips not the old P4's...

So for the mean time i think we will see apple sticking exclusivly to Intel; I think they will use some powerful Celeron D's in the new low end intel macs, they are a very good processor and not to be confused with the old Celeron's i have one in my linux box and its great...

SHadOW