Nope. The price of the CPU will be enough to steer people away. The cost of a complete Mac Prosystem won't cover the cost of just the Power6 CPU. With a proce sheet not out yet, I would venture to guess that a CPU will fall in the 5 figure range. All that cache is not cheap. Plus it being a low volume chip doesn't help the price. Look at the Itanic chips compared to the x86. Server chips are also manufactured a little different then consumer chips. The G5 was manufactured as a consumer chip and that is one reason why the speeds were higher as well.
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Did Apple Do The Right Thing in Moving To Intel From PowerPC???
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Nope. The price of the CPU will be enough to steer people away. The cost of a complete Mac Prosystem won't cover the cost of just the Power6 CPU. With a proce sheet not out yet, I would venture to guess that a CPU will fall in the 5 figure range. All that cache is not cheap. Plus it being a low volume chip doesn't help the price. Look at the Itanic chips compared to the x86. Server chips are also manufactured a little different then consumer chips. The G5 was manufactured as a consumer chip and that is one reason why the speeds were higher as well.
In terms of affordable, general purpose CPUs IBM ARE behind Intel. The Core architecture is fast and cheap, perfect for consumer computers.
The CELL is an excellent CPU for very specific tasks, but very poor for general purpose computing (which is what really matters in a Mac). A CELL equipped Mac wouldn't be nearly as fast as a C2D or even CD one for most tasks people use them for. The CELL is also bigger and hotter than the C2D, I doubt you'd see one in a notebook which is the architecture nearly all Macs are based on.
as much as i miss the powerpc days, intel was the right way to go. it enabled switchers to keep windows while they slowly warm up to os x, and also gave macs frequent (not lately) updates and the power to be among the top 5 computer hardware sellers.
MHz, GHz, you guys.
The article in question was based on the traditional transactions per second debate. What OS was it based on? What were the transactions? How long did they spend tuning it? Etc...
Trying to align this to personal computing is misguided. You seem to have forgotten the basics. How fast does your disk spin? How many spindles is the data spread across? What is your data transfer bottle neck (DSL limits etc), what is your contention ratio?
The article in question was based on the traditional transactions per second debate. What OS was it based on? What were the transactions? How long did they spend tuning it? Etc...
Trying to align this to personal computing is misguided. You seem to have forgotten the basics. How fast does your disk spin? How many spindles is the data spread across? What is your data transfer bottle neck (DSL limits etc), what is your contention ratio?
You left out the one question that was a major reason behind the shift to Intel; how much power does it consume?
While IBM processors did not directly compete with Intel offerings, you gotta take in to notice that a lot of AMD designs came from IBM engineering labs. AMD collaborated with IBM on a couple of occasions in processor development. It is a widely known fact that IBM has the best processor enginners in the world, if Apple had a significant share of a PC world you can bet that IBM would have designed mobile G7 chips by now but it wasn't worth IBMs hassle as they didn't have manufacturing capacity to satisfy Sony, Nintendo, MS, Apple, and their own high-end server market all at the same time. Intel definately has advantage in the number of manufacturing plants in the world but engineering wise they are definately not better than IBM, even the Core line was a copy of Transmeta Crusoe chips.
If Intel CPU's were that bad, then it shouldn't have been so hard for IBM/Motorola/Freescale to keep up. Not updated as often is different than no mobile G5 CPU after a long, long time. If PowerPC was really lower power, then why did 'G5 PowerBook' become such a long-running joke here?
No, but my MacBook kicks butt over my old G4 PowerBook.
It's not that I'd argue that Intel is so cutting edge. But they can't be so far behind, if they are able to offer signficantly better CPU's for Apple's family of computers.
POWER6 PowerBooks next Tuesday!
It's important to remember that better isn't equal to faster though. I actually think that the processors we have now will last for several years in terms of speed. Software developers should focus on writing more efficient applications while CPU designers should focus on making the processors more energy efficient.
That is much more important right now than faster processors in my opinion.
What if they could lower the power consumption with a considerable amount and keep the processor speeds. We could close down a few nuclear plants thanks to that.
It would also be nice to have a speedy laptop which didn't have to turn on a screaming fan as soon as I do something more than browsing the web.
There are CPUs that have low power consumption, but the fact is that they aren't that fast either and modern software isn't optimized to run on such processors. And that makes them pretty unattractive.
If the speed of those CPUs could be bumped up a bit, and the hardware requirements of the software could be set a little lower we could have sleek quiet machine that consumes a lot less energy, which helps the environment.
I agree that technology should continue to evolve. But we have to stop and think about which direction we want it to evolve towards.
Are faster processors really that important right now?
In my opinion, it's not.
But sadly, it's selling argument that the consumer understands. Because he has learned that faster = better.
Know what would be absolutely amazing for apple to be able to do, but ofcourse in the real world, due to competition from the two companies would never work, is if apple were to sell both powerpc and intel versions of their computer line up and have all future products stay universal. that way people could choose the one they feel comfertable with, and apple could price them as to which archatecture (spelt wrong) has the most current technology and speed..
Just my $0.02
Just my $0.02
Why would that happen?
IBM do not offer anything that is comparable to the Core 2 Duos, especially for laptops.
Universal code is a great solution to the switchover to Intel processors but as time goes on, we should move onto Intel-only code that is highly optimised (and which would be a lower filesize due to containing only relevant data). Surely that's better?
IBM do not offer anything that is comparable to the Core 2 Duos, especially for laptops.
Universal code is a great solution to the switchover to Intel processors but as time goes on, we should move onto Intel-only code that is highly optimised (and which would be a lower filesize due to containing only relevant data). Surely that's better?
I posted alleged thermal and performance comparisons on page 9. Definitely not for the laptop. Would be great on a MacPro/Powermac though.
Cheap? Then why did the Mac Mini go up in price by hundreds of dollars? Intel is certainly not cheap. Dig up the price lists or just do the math. Intel has the larger chip, and they've got the brand name premium.
Sorry, what's special purpose about the Cell other than its first application?
Nothing you're saying here makes much sense. The clock rate race is over because we've hit the wall. Parallel execution is how we'll be getting our speed increases from here on out. Applications will get faster by breaking themselves into lots of little threads that can be parallelized. Why would I want to throw a full fat CPU at each of those little threads? Much better to throw it at a much slimmer processing unit. That will make the device smaller and cooler.
Mark my words, within 5 years and probably sooner, we'll hear AMD moving to heterogeneous cores and within a year or two after that Intel will follow. They'll give it some new acronym to make it sound like a new innovation (VLIW or EPIC?) but it'll be pretty much what Cell is doing now with some mistakes fixed.
Most of the heat in the G5 came from the surrounding subsystem. Work the numbers. Driving a few hundred signals off chip at a couple GHz will burn lots, and lots of power. The PowerPC itself was quite efficient. The G4 is phenomenally efficient.
I never understood why people wanted a G5 PowerBook. It never made sense. Do you have 6GB of RAM in your Macbook right now? What we wanted was a multicore G4 style design. Motorola was busy self destructing and when Freescale spun off they decided they weren't going to chase the process curve anymore they were going to stay a couple steps behind and cater to the embedded market.
At the time of the decision, Intel didn't have a competitive laptop processor either-- just a roadmap. IBM was demonstrating lower power G5 variants, but the decision had been made. I'd wager IBM could have met Intel's release schedule on Core and Core2.
And in 4 or 5 years your new computer will kick this one's butt. What's your point? I'd argue that the 4 core G4 you could fit in a similar heat profile would do just fine these days...
Let me put it this way-- take the amount of money Intel burns on their R&D and distribute it among 5 qualified startups. Where would the better CPU come from? I'd bank on one of the startups with 1/5 of the resources. That doesn't mean they'll succeed though because Intel has the market.
And make sure you compare things at the same point in time. Intel CPUs seem better today, but remember Moore expects the number of transistors to double every 18 months and it's been at least that since the last true G5 revision and may be closer to 36 months by now. I think the performance curve for Macs will show little discontinuity at this point if you back up and look at the big picture.
I'm not following you. Low end computers do do things. the OLPC program has speed. Apps do open fast, why would they slow down?
What do you mean do less? Apps wouldn't just dissapper because computer development stops!
You're partly right. No one is forcing me to upgrade. Yet. Eventually, to be be able to still do the things I want, I'm going to have to upgrade. Which, I'd rather not do.
I own 19 computers. Who says they were all my main machine at one time? I bought them for novelty. I've had 4 main machines in my life, since I was 5, two were old pentium's with Windows 95. Unable to access internet. I got an HP with Windows XP when I was ten. Then last year, I got my mini (because my HP died for the third time in two months, and I gave up on it; had it not died, i wouldn't have my mini right now) I'm sick of always changeing computers, moving files, deleting stuff, it sucks. I want to get one computer that maybe lasts for 5 years!
If I wanted to get attention, I'd start a thread on how Steve Jobs was the anti-christ and how Microsoft and Apple were really the same company and how MacRumors is the worst mac community ever (Not really saying these things)
These are my honest to god thoughts on the subject.
I believe that Apple did the right thing on the move from PowerPC to Intel. If they hadn't moved to Intel then I'd be typing on a PowerBook G4. Nothing against the PowerBook G4s, but I'd much rather have a Core Duo MacBook Pro than a PowerBook G4 for Graphic Design.
And when Intel release 45nm processors that enable quad core to fit in a notebook running at 4+GHz sometime next year...
Intel chips run cool. On heavy, heavy fuel. ie. Uranium
IBM chips don't. They burn up instead. I've heard silicon dioxide gas can get very nasty. Especially when it has arsenic in it too...
Intel chips run cool. On heavy, heavy fuel. ie. Uranium
IBM chips don't. They burn up instead. I've heard silicon dioxide gas can get very nasty. Especially when it has arsenic in it too...
If Apple hadn't switched to Intel - I wouldn't have switched to Apple.
Did they do the right thing? Damn right they did.
Doug
Did they do the right thing? Damn right they did.
Doug
That's something about this announcement that caught my attention, actually... Is the Power6 the first commercial processor to ship at over 4GHz?
Dream on
Why? It's not THAT far fetched...
Far fetched, but greater than, say, 1% chance
I want my 20GHz nanotube Core 7 256'o MBP!
I'd say close to 0.1%Why? It's not THAT far fetched...
Far fetched, but greater than, say, 1% chance
Because Apple is a company that markets single-image. True they have the consumer and "pro" lines, but for a company that has a relatively small segment of the hardware industry, marketing both Intel- and PPC-based computers would be a waste.
Personally, I'd like to see what Power6 could do for Apple/OS X, but I don't see that happening. The masses know the Intel name; Intel chips run cooler and with less electrical needs; I read somewhere right before the Intel switch that IBM and Apple couldn't agree on the future of PPC in Macs--namely for the issues I just mentioned.
**For design professionals RISC was a far better platform both in computing and GPU power. I used to be a CADD designer in the late 90s and slower-clocked RISC systems always outperformed x86 machines running at twice the clock and quadruple the RAM** perhaps that gap has closed with multi-core CPUs, etc.
Like how Beta was superior to VHS, it all comes down to who is selling what, and what you can get the consumer to buy.
Beta:VHS:
PC:Intel
And what was it that made you think that way? The familiarity of the Intel name?
Irrelevant. Why does the "cleanliness" of the architecture matter? It's like back in the PPC-days. Apple was getting spanked at benchmarks, but people kept on saying stuff like "well, xx86 is an ugly architecture, whereas PPC is clean". Well, that cleanliness didn't make the apps run one bit faster, nor did it help the batteries last longer, so what's the point? Whatäs the point of having "clean" design, if the competing "ugly" design simply mops the floor with it?
Is that why we got those wonderful G5 PowerBooks? No, wait... we didn't.
Not really. When Apple announced G5, it didn't march all over current x86-processors. It was competetive with them, which was a marked improvement over the G4 which was getting massacred by them. G5 managed to stand on it's own against x86, but even it didn't really beat x86.
And I for one can't relly see why. Apart from "I want to use a clean design, even if it gives me zero real-world benefits".
What $400 chip you might be referring to here? Core Duo? It's nowhere near $400. I could go and buy a 1.83GHz Core Duo _at retail_ for 240, so I would say that Apple pays maybe 100 bucks for each 1.66Ghz Core Duo in the Mini.
What do you mean by "cutting edge"? Sure, Cell is very impressive CPU for it's intended uses. It really screams in things like console-gaming and the like. But it would suck for general-purpose computing. It's also a pain to program for.