Behind the Apple-Intel Deal, IBM Surprised

[fuzzwud]

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You can access the site using fake info and invalid email accounts. Wonder how much spam JoeSmith@hotmail.com gets?

Not much spam ... getting to read the news on nytimes.com is free once you register. it's a good place for news.

 

[GFLPraxis]

I am quite surprised about the poor performance of the Cell chip that everybody is hyping.

I'm not.

The Cell is just a PowerPC processor with SPE's attached. The SPE's only do floating point calculations and can't do branching, so are absolutely useless for anything except VERY specific types of work like rendering.

 

[iMeowbot]

The problem is all OS and softwares will have to be rewritten, and possibly redesign.

Rewritten and redesigned. That makes it just like the Transputer, then: it's the wave of the future and always will be.

 

[tdewey]

Just from my own sampling of Apple fanatics - friends who buy a lot of Apple gear, from G5s to PBs and iPods - I think there may be a far more significant Osborne effect than Jobs and Apple realize. Personally, I used to update my PB every 9mos or so.

WoW! I love people like you. You help lower the price of technology for the rest of us. I update my PB and other computers about once every five years (or longer). Let me know when you're dumping your PB.

How could anyone update a PB every 9 months? I've got a 12" from 2003 that I might update in 2006 with a Yonah PB. Three years is about my usual update cycle.

 

[Silencio]

Unlike other fanboys saying, Cell is more than capable of running traditional OS thread. You will soon be seeing Linux running on Cell, guarantee!. The problem is all OS and softwares will have to be rewritten, and possibly redesign.

It could well be used in Apple future Powerbook laptop. It's Apple who would not only need to rewrite the entire OSX and its development suite, and to gain 3rd party support of the completely new architecture.

It might be understandable why Apple would switch to x86 instead of future power/cell. After all, money matters. But blaming IBM for future roadmap and performance/watts is just plain BS. Apple is not so "innovative" no more.

Well, think about it, even Intel tried and can't switch away from x86 architecture.

Yes, the biggest problem with Cell is that so much code has to be rewritten to make it work -- even more code changes than the x86 conversion would take! And I am still not convinced that Cell would make a useful CPU for general-purpose computing, let alone run cool enough or energy-efficient enough to be workable in a laptop.

IBM can spin it all they want about "cost", but they just don't have an answer for high-performance portable computing, where so much of the market growth is/will be taking place. Apple cannot risk falling even further behind in that space.

Apple may be switching to x86, but they do not have to adopt all the legacy cruft that holds back mainstream PCs. I'm sure Intel is stoked to have a hardware/OS partner that can help them show off what they can really do.

It will be interesting to see what these "great PowerPC products coming" are that Steve Jobs mentioned twice in the keynote. I'm sure the 970MP will surface... eventually. Apple's high-end machines will be transitioning last to Intel, after all.

Someone mentioned Freescale's Dual-core "G4" a while back. It's a non-starter AFAIK due to Freescale's MaxBus, which would require a lot of work for Apple to adopt. More work than it's worth, most likely, amongst numerous other reasons (some of which are undoubtedly political).

Apple has such tremendous customer (if not developer) loyalty, that I expect the impact on PowerPC sales in the next 12-18 months will be real, but not at all debilitating. I am getting extra laughs out of the resurrection of the "Osborne effect" phrase, reminding me of a hilarious call Steve Jobs once made to Osborne's secretary back in the day: http://www.folklore.org/StoryView.p...hole.txt&sortOrder=Sort by Date&detail=medium

And one more thing: I'm sure Apple has some other non-computer "digital lifestyle" device due to reach the market soon that'll help them through this transition period.

 

[Moxiemike]

Steve Jobs always has trouble talking hardware because he is a saleman, not a computer engineer. If he lived in most other areas of the country I could see him as a used car saleman. He just tells you what he wants you to know. Just enough to make the sale. LIke a used car salsman, we must always check what he says. This is the only way we have to tell how much if any truth he tells us.

How could the PPC be better than Intel yesterday, but now Intel is so much better than the PPC used in the Mac? When were we lied to. My money would go to both times.

My plans are to stay with the PPC Macs I have at this time. To extend the time that I can use them, I will also cancel all plans to update my software. Remember, new software requires new hardware.

Do you believe that IBM would deliver a dual core 3 GHz PPC to Apple at this time. I would think that they have stopped all development of the PPC 970. It has too narrow of a market at present with Apple sales going lower everyday. With this change of processors two things will happen. First those that like the PPC like me will buy the latest & greatest PPC G5 to help insure that they have a working computer for 5 to 10 years into the future. I so far have chose not to reward Apple for changing processors. My PowerMac G5 upgrade has been cancelled for the present. This action by PPC supporters would help Apple in the short term. Then those that want to support the Intel Mac will put off their purchases until the Intel Macs come out. As Steve Jobs has declared the PPC Mac junk & the new Intel Mac to be the greatest Mac ever to be made, I would think that sales would take a gigger cut from waiters that PPC users. Who wants to spend $3,000-8,000 on a new PPC Mac system that Steve Jobs has alreeady declared as dead?

My opinion is support the PPC Mac if your hardware is getting very old. All others should put a boycott on all thing Apple. This could start with the Intel Macs for those that need their iPods. In recent years Apple has changed to a music company away from a computer company. This Intel move will divide the already small Mac market into pieces. Maybe too many to keep it alive.

To many the processor does not matter. To many like me it is all about the processor. I chose the Mac 21 years ago & I still am just as anti-Intel as I was then. I was a Heath-Kit computer user before that time. They chose to make IBM Clones with Intel 8086 processors in them. Being anti Intel I chose not to follow. Now Apple is making the same decision. This time I will make the same decision, not to follow my computer manufacture. This is limiting my choices severly. That is why I must keep what I haverunning for as long as I can.

Who knows what will be available in the 5-10 years before I will have to make any new purchases. Others won't be as severve as I am.

I did this same multi year wait from my Clones, & this will be easier as my 5 Clones still all run at least OS 9.2.2. 2 have G4's in them, 2 have G3's & one is still a 250 NHz 604e. All have 1 GB of ram in them. They also have USB & FW. THis is just proof that you don't need the latest & greatest to do your needed & useful work.

Bill the aging TaxMan

Did the Intel boogeyman steal your baby or something? God. You never once explained why you're so anti-intel, so we can just assume that you really have no basis for your comments.

Tell us all why you're so anti-intel? give us some reasons. Concrete ones. And how about some reasons why the PPC is SO great for your work? C'mon, just saying without backing it up is dangerous. FUD territory.

 

[gwangung]

Unlike other fanboys saying, Cell is more than capable of running traditional OS thread.

Realllllly? Not from what I've seen. Multi-media stuff, yeah....but I think you're a bit shaky on how it would handle more day to day tasks.

 

[nagromme]

An indication of the extent of the sales slowdown

The top-selling desktops and notebooks at Amazon.com used to be mainly Macs.

A week after the Intel deal... they still are.

Those stats get updated frequently.

Desktops:
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/new-for-you/top-sellers/-/pc/565098/ref=pd_ts_pc_nav/

Notebooks:
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/new-for-you/top-sellers/-/pc/565108/ref=pd_ts_pc_nav/

And if you're wondering how Apple might finance a half-year sales lull...
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/new-for-you/top-sellers/-/electronics/172630/ref=pd_ts_e_nav/
(Good grief! There isn't a non-iPod MP3 player anywhere in the top 20 at the moment.)

Amazon's customers don't represent the entire public--NO online shopping site does, since many people don't shop online. I'd say their customers may represent people ahead of the crowd--they hint at future buying patterns. I make that guess not just because online shopping is a recent wave, but because they sell many more laptops then desktops--and we've seen that trend begin in the rest of the market too.

But if Amazon's customers aren't the entire market, they're not mainly Mac users either. Most of their customers have always been PC users, and they offer great sales on both platforms. Yet in the last year, Macs have crept into the top sellers--and stayed there.

I don't think the rest of the world will catch up to match Amazon--Macs won't be THE top-selling computers instantly--but it tells me a LOT more acceptance of Macs is growing.

If that acceptance faces a 6-month lull in laptops (which outsell desktops) until MWSF 06, Apple will survive that easily, and then the wave of pent-up demand will arrive.

 

[Moxiemike]

The top-selling desktops and notebooks at Amazon.com used to be mainly Macs.

A week after the Intel deal... they still are.

Those stats get updated frequently.

Desktops:
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/new-for-you/top-sellers/-/pc/565098/ref=pd_ts_pc_nav/

Notebooks:
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/new-for-you/top-sellers/-/pc/565108/ref=pd_ts_pc_nav/

And if you're wondering how Apple might finance a half-year sales lull...
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/new-for-you/top-sellers/-/electronics/172630/ref=pd_ts_e_nav/
(Good grief! There isn't a non-iPod MP3 player anywhere in the top 20 at the moment.)

Amazon's customers don't represent the entire public--NO online shopping site does, since many people don't shop online. I'd say their customers may represent people ahead of the crowd--they hint at future buying patterns. I make that guess not just because online shopping is a recent wave, but because they sell many more laptops then desktops--and we've seen that trend begin in the rest of the market too.

But if Amazon's customers aren't the entire market, they're not mainly Mac users either. Most of their customers have always been PC users, and they offer great sales on both platforms. Yet in the last year, Macs have crept into the top sellers--and stayed there.

I don't think the rest of the world will catch up to match Amazon--Macs won't be THE top-selling computers instantly--but it tells me a LOT more acceptance of Macs is growing.

If that acceptance faces a 6-month lull in laptops (which outsell desktops) until MWSF 06, Apple will survive that easily, and then the wave of pent-up demand will arrive.

You, my friend, tell it like it is plainly and beautifully. Congrats on your vision. 🙂

 

[aegisdesign]

I'm not.

The Cell is just a PowerPC processor with SPE's attached. The SPE's only do floating point calculations and can't do branching, so are absolutely useless for anything except VERY specific types of work like rendering.

And the PowerPC CPU in the Cell is a cut down effort that can't do out of order processing and has less functional units. If you give it plain old multi-threaded PPC code, it'll suck. You'd have to rewrite a lot of your code for the Cell. And then write some more code to use the SPEs.

I can see why initially at least, the Xbox 360 with it's 3 core cutdown PPC chip would be more appealing to developers. There must be quite a learning curve to get the best out of the Cell.

And I can see why neither is the right choice for the Mac.

 

[aegisdesign]

"How could the PPC be better than Intel yesterday, but now Intel is so much better than the PPC used in the Mac"

Check the clock speeds. Do the math. Not hard to figure out; when clock speeds were roughly the same, PPC could be the same, but if the clock sppeds for PPC are half or worse than Intel, then Intel is easily better.

If you can't figure that out, then perhaps you ARE the simpleton you claim everyone else is.

Baloney. The Pentium M that we're more than likely shifting too runs at a much lower clockspeed than the Pentium 4 and beats it. The AMD Opteron runs at a lower speed than the G5 and generally beats it. I'd be surprised if a 2.5Ghz Pentium M doesn't beat the G5 also.

Clock speed isn't the only indication of performance.

 

[FelixDerKater]

This is starting to sound a bit like the way things were moving before Jobs's exile from Apple.

 

[~loserman~]

IBM saying it was a cost issue doesn't help them much either. I can see them not saying there were performance/power issues but mention that they are too expensive too that really hits them from both sides. IBM chips are hot, not improving quickly in performance, and are expensive too? Wow.

One thing of note....
Yes the 970 is hot... but it can operate at 85c and still be within specs.
On our xserves we have noted that operating temperature has never exceeded 62c and we typically have ours running at 100% utilization 24/7

I honestly believe they can run even without the fans.

 

[cygnus23]

I loved my Amiga 500, 4000 and 1200. I would have been happy to buy new models with Intel processors. Unfortunately, the enormous technical lead that the Amiga had, was squandered. Who cares what processor Macintosh runs on - as long as Macintosh runs.

It seems like the only thing we'd really need to worry about is Microsoft switching to something better...

 

[~loserman~]

And the PowerPC CPU in the Cell is a cut down effort that can't do out of order processing and has less functional units. If you give it plain old multi-threaded PPC code, it'll suck. You'd have to rewrite a lot of your code for the Cell. And then write some more code to use the SPEs.

I can see why initially at least, the Xbox 360 with it's 3 core cutdown PPC chip would be more appealing to developers. There must be quite a learning curve to get the best out of the Cell.

And I can see why neither is the right choice for the Mac.

It really depends on the development environment. If Sony has good dev tools then they can mitigate the complexity of dev for the cell/PS3.

 

[gwangung]

Baloney. The Pentium M that we're more than likely shifting too runs at a much lower clockspeed than the Pentium 4 and beats it. The AMD Opteron runs at a lower speed than the G5 and generally beats it. I'd be surprised if a 2.5Ghz Pentium M doesn't beat the G5 also.

Clock speed isn't the only indication of performance.

I'm being very simplistic about it. But there was considerable promise around the G5, which were quite competitive at its initial introduction. That promise hasn't been kept...and I think that's an objective look at things.

 

[Fukui]

Vector computing is the future of very demanding multimedia stuff. Cell is an architecture by the the way, the PS3 use one kind of the cell chip for a specific application gaming console. You could change a cell chip to use it in almost anything.

But cells vector units can only handle single precision floating point.
I think that will limit some aspects... its already probably why they stuck an altivec unit in there. In fact, why coulnd't they just take a standard PPC core, stick 4 altivec on there and be done with it?

The whole Cell philosophy is super-multi-threading of everything. Something that is very difficult for standard desktops apps to really take advantage of. Makes debugging a hell of alot harder too. Second, on cell, would each thread (how many can it take anyways 9 or more?) be as fast for each process using it? Would you rather have 9 threads running so-so speed and can only be SIMD, or have only 2 or 4 much faster general pourpose threads like the pentium-D?

I think thats what steve meant by dissapointing.

 

[MacVault]

... so one concern is what keeps IBM interested in developing PowerPC processors in the meanwhile? Contractual obligation?

I don't know if the 970's are used in volume much elsewhere.

arn

yea, but... who the heck would be interested in buying a PowerPC(Mac) from now on? So, maybe there's no need for IBM to develop anymore. Just make a few of the current designs to sell til the switch to Intel.

 

[MontyZ]

My plans are to stay with the PPC Macs I have at this time. To extend the time that I can use them, I will also cancel all plans to update my software.

Hope that works out for ya.

My opinion is support the PPC Mac if your hardware is getting very old. All others should put a boycott on all thing Apple. This could start with the Intel Macs for those that need their iPods.

YAWN. Same garbage you keep posting here over and over.

I smell a gnome. I mean troll.

 

[MontyZ]

Wow, Steve must have been really pissed at IBM.

I say screw IBM, they've never really been a friend of Apple from the very beginning anyway. Cut them loose. Sayonara Big Blue!

 

[springdaddy]

Wow, Steve must have been really pissed at IBM.

I say screw IBM, they've never really been a friend of Apple from the very beginning anyway. Cut them loose. Sayonara Big Blue!

Exactly. From the looks of things, Jobs probably got fed up with IBM not giving Apple the upgrades in chips that would keep Macs in check with PCs. Every 7 to 9 months for upgrades wasn't cutting it and I think Jobs realized that if they wanted to make a dent in market share, it was time to move on. And I'm glad they did.

 

[gangst]

yea, but... who the heck would be interested in buying a PowerPC(Mac) from now on? So, maybe there's no need for IBM to develop anymore. Just make a few of the current designs to sell til the switch to Intel.

Many people will still by PowerPC Macs for many reasons, they need a new Mac urgently, new designs that Apple said they'd bring out, plus there are lots of Apple consumers who don't know anything about the move to Intel, neither do they understand what it means, so why would they care?

And for IBM to stop developing would be like flushing money away after investing millions if not billions in chip designs and their fabrication plant in Fishkill, NY.

And what do you mean by 'Just make a few of the current designs to sell til the switch to Intel.' are you referring to Apple or IBM. If you are referring to IBM, they won't just stop making chips till Apple swaps to Intel, because they have plenty of chips to make for Sony, Microsoft, Nintendo, themselves, plus Apple was only 2% of their chip business now they have these massive contracts with Sony, Microsoft, Nintendo etc, so I doubt they'd just quit making chips, be a little stupid of them.

 

[tdewey]

If that acceptance faces a 6-month lull in laptops (which outsell desktops) until MWSF 06, Apple will survive that easily, and then the wave of pent-up demand will arrive.

I think this is right on. There is no reason not to buy an iMac, PowerMac or Xserve right now. We know there can't be a Mactel version of any of these three until at Q2-Q3 2006 (assuming a Q2 or Q3 release of Conroe -- 64bit dual-core based on Yonah/Pentium-M).

I think most people assume there will be a 970MP update to the PowerMac and Xserve--but it is anybody's guess when that'll happen. Paris? MacWorld in Jan?

There is some reason to hold off on a purchase of a mini, iBook or PowerBook given the 4Q 2005 or 1Q 2006 release of Yonah which everyone assumes (probably correctly) is going into these three machines. We may see a minor (7448??) update to these at Paris--I don't know.

 

[springdaddy]

I think this is right on. There is no reason not to buy an iMac, PowerMac or Xserve right now. We know there can't be a Mactel version of any of these three until at Q2-Q3 2006 (assuming a Q2 or Q3 release of Conroe -- 64bit dual-core based on Yonah/Pentium-M).

I think most people assume there will be a 970MP update to the PowerMac and Xserve--but it is anybody's guess when that'll happen. Paris? MacWorld in Jan?

There is some reason to hold off on a purchase of a mini, iBook or PowerBook given the 4Q 2005 or 1Q 2006 release of Yonah which everyone assumes (probably correctly) is going into these three machines. We may see a minor (7448??) update to these at Paris--I don't know.

I just bought my PowerBook in Febuary, and I know that I will, for sure, be buying one when the first Intel chips are used in the new PBs.

 

[tdewey]

CELL is ofcourse better! x86 architecture is damn old and it's drawing us backward! Just because we have to stay "compatible" with old x86 and windows software architecture, major cpu calculation and software architecture still have to stay in 32bit bandwidth.
*snip*!

Um. Check out the arstechnica article

http://arstechnica.com/articles/paedia/cpu/cell-1.ars

Cell rocks at in-order execution of floating-point--awesome for rendering. However, Cell sucks at out-of-order execution which is kinda necessary for the modern multi-tasking operating system.

Nevermind that gaming CPUs are only updated every three to four years.

Anyway good luck with the linux on Cell. Sure it can be done, but why would anyone do it?