Analyst: Apple to lie down with Intel

[G4scott]

regardless of whether or not IBM or Motorola can bring their clock speeds up, the switch from PowerPC to x86 would take tons of work on Apple's behalf, and even then, you don't know if you will see a performance gain with the OS or any apps...

 

[G4scott]

Originally posted by Sherman
If apple DID decide to switch to the x86 platform i'm about 90% sure they would use the new Itanium architecture and not the old x86 crap. If they did this, they would still have their edge over Microsoft because all of the old software won't run on the new architecture, but apple would still have the might and power of Intel working on the processor line instead of itty-bitty retarded ass-backwards Motorola.

And Mac os X tries to spell Intel "Lint".

From what I've heard about the itanium, is that its had its share of problems, such as an 800mhz barrier, and no 32bit compatability. Based on all of the information about the G5 and the itanium, the G5 is sounding alot better, but I haven't heard anything about the itanium lately, so I could be wrong...

The problem with Motorola, is that they aren't dedicated to Apple, and they have no need to be. They are busy waging war in the mobile phone industry right now, and their semiconductor business is not much more than red ink to them. This is why I say that Apple should use IBM more than they do now. IBM seems to be having no problems supplying G3's, and the only limitation to those are the G4's, since Apple can't sell a high end G3 with a higher clock speed than their high end G4's (yes, i'm fully aware that the high end iBook has a 700mhz processor, and the low end TiBook has a 667mhz G4, but that is the low end TiBook...

 

[MacCoaster]

Originally posted by G4scott
Let me just say that the Mac OS would take a big performance hit on the transition from Power PC to x86 based systems. With no Alti-Vec, you'd have to have a good processor to equal, if not go beyond the power of Alti-Vec. A P4 at 2.5 Ghz might work to match a dual 1Ghz G4, but nobody really knows for sure.

Wrong. AMD has 3DNow!, MMX, and SSE, of all which combined are pretty much similar to Altivec. Sure, it's gonna be painful as hell to port OS X, etc. to Athlon/x86/P4.

Originally posted by G4scott
Another thing about the G4, is that they beat the sh*t out of a P4 at the same clock speed. If Motorola, or IBM could bring the clock speed of the Power PC up to 2-2.5 Ghz by this time next year, Apple would have no problem keeping up with the x86 world. Now, you may say that it's impractical for IBM or Motorola to make a jump in clock speed that big, but hey, intel did it. The thing about the x86 platform that I really don't like, is that it needs such a high clock speed to give it that little 'edge' over a Dual 1Ghz G4... Just remember, a G4 at 3 ghz would blow the P4 of this planet and out of existance... I think It's time for Apple to call in IBM to get the PowerPC platform up there...

Yeah, and to acheive that, they have to add more pipeline stages, therefore going the way Intel did with Pentium 4, if they do that at all. We'll see.

 

[eirik]

Apple on Intel

Blah, blah, blah, blah!!!

 

[Sherman]

This is just getting into yes they will! no they won't! kind of thing.