IBM AltiVec

[Tiauguinho]

Originally posted by DannyZR2
What exactly does "8-way superscalar" mean????

A 8 way Superscalar Processor Chip means that it can execute 8 instructions per clock cycle. The current G4 is a 4 way Superscalar (4 instructions per cock cycle). But you have to have this on mind. If you have instructions that depends on the result of the previous instruction, the Superscalar technology will not bring you any benefit, because it processes/execute 8 instructions that are independent form each other. You cant have the chicken and the egg at the same time...

 

[kenohki]

Originally posted by daijones
Read the rumors more closely and it sounds pretty bad for Apple. The rumors suggest that IBM is planning to release a Linux box under their own name. 1: an IBM brand linux box is going to be a big seller, taking sales off the power-hungry UNIX users Apple needs to be attracting; 2: if IBM want to sell this box, it would be in their interests NOT to sell the new chip to Apple, to reduce competition. I really hope Apple has maintained contact with IBM and has OS X compiled ready to put this chip into a box, because if IBM get much of a headstart with a 64-bit linux desktop the scientific market is lost to Apple before it even got going.

Why would they want to cannabalize their sales of AIX ($$$) with sales of Linux (free)? Yes, they've done lots of Linux on a Mainframe (zSeries) but does this make sense in their traditional Unix space (pSeries / RS/6000). I would think this is more just an update to replace the 604.

Also, a lot of the scientific market is not gaga over Linux. I used to work in the chemistry department at Argonne National Laboratory and they'd rather use Macs provided they can get equivilant power out of them. Many of those guys have to do a lot of their IT work themselves (including programming) and they don't want to have to screw with KDE and tweak X just to get a usable environment. Anyway, just some thoughts.

 

[synp]

IBM and Linux

IBM has had a Linux strategy for the last three years - provide Linux on all hardware platforms so that applications can smoothly scale from the low-end xSeries to the high-end zSeries and everything in between.

This was part of their "eBusiness" strategy (they actually tried to trademark the "e"). To show what a great e-business company they were, they renamed all the server platforms. That's why the Intel servers became "eServer xSeries", the RS/6000 became "eServer pSeries", the AS/400 became "eServer iSeries" and the mainframes became "eServer zSeries". They want to support Linux on all these platforms in addition to the legacy OS with names like Windows, AIX, OS/400 and MVS (renamed z/OS). That's why it makes perfect sense for IBM to support Linux on a pSeries.

As for the new PPC, it could be destined for a low-end pSeries which should run either Linux or AIX just as all the other pSeries servers do. They will never compete with the iMacs and eMacs, because they don't make money on PCs. There may be some competition between low-end pSeries and PMs, but IBM has a long history of selling to competitors. IBM's biggest focus is Sun with whom they compete for the mid-range and high-end Unix servers, where margins are high. Apple is to them more of a customer than a competitor, since it operates in a low-margin market.

 

[technocoy]

IBM/MOTOROLA

I hate to be vague, I have sources through IBM.... Motorola has been dumped.
don't wanna get my butt into hot water... sorry

 

[Faeylyn]

Originally posted by daijones
But my point is, if alternatively IBM have decided to broaden their range of products to include low-end hardware, then this could be bad news for Apple, not good.

Linux is no threat to Apple. Period. There are currently many many many many different Linux boxes out there. They range in price from very low (Walmart's new $199 box comes to mind) to very very expensive. They range in power from very low, to many many times as powerful as the best Apple has to offer. These are all available TODAY. These have all been available for quite a while. So suppose IBM comes out with a Linux box. So what? How would that be different than any other Linux box out there? Why would people who don't want to use Linux suddenly shout for joy because there's a new box that happens to have a Power4-Lite inside?

IBM's main competition for a Linux box would be other Linux vendors, not Apple. IBM would have to convince the people looking for Linux boxes that IBM's solution offered a better price/performance value. Just making it faster won't cut it. IBM would have to make the $ per flop significantly less in order to get people to buy the thing. This means keeping margins low.

As for IBM not selling the chips to Apple, wrong, wrong, and dead-wrong. Apple probably sells more computers in a single week than an IBM/Linux PC would sell in a whole year. There is no way IBM would pass on that kind of cash. If Apple's sales take off, it's good news for IBM.

 

[e-coli]

Re: IBM/MOTOROLA

Originally posted by technocoy
I hate to be vague, I have sources through IBM.... Motorola has been dumped.
don't wanna get my butt into hot water... sorry

the campus in raleigh is IBM Global Services, and has almost nothing to do with OEM, or chipmaking technologies. I would venture to bet that if your "source" is from the RTP campus, his / her info is rooted in speculation.

 

[chicagdan]

All of these IBM G5 stories are great ... but there's no way in hell I'm buying a new Apple in 2002 if I can buy a G5 equipped system in 2003. In a deflationary industry like desktop computers, I'd be nuts to buy a 17" iMac today if I can get the same configuration with a 2 GhZ G5 one year from now ... I can muddle through another year with my current computer.

That's the problem of having computers priced so much higher than the rest of the industry -- you force consumers to wait for a better deal. Plus Apple systems are so well built that my souped up Beige runs Jaguar just fine. The only reason to buy a new system right now is for the aesthetic beauty of the iMac.

 

[oldMac]

The only reasons for Altivec...

The *only* reasons I can think of for IBM to make an Altivec-enabled chip are the following:

1) To sell to Apple

2) To attempt to optimize certain Linux applications in a way that differentiates them from the Intel-driven Linux world so that there's a reason for people to buy expensive Linux hardware from IBM.

Neither reason seems like enough of a reason for IBM to bother on its own. I'm guessing that both reasons are accurate.

 

[kenohki]

Re: IBM and Linux

Originally posted by synp
IBM has had a Linux strategy for the last three years - provide Linux on all hardware platforms so that applications can smoothly scale from the low-end xSeries to the high-end zSeries and everything in between.

Yeah, and theoretically this makes a lot of sense. Especially if the OS we were talking about was very scalable. I guess I just question Linux's scalability. I mean it's pretty limited to small system images and clustering. On the zSeries they've been basically partitioning the machine into virtual machines each running Linux. I'm sure that makes for some very easy machine administration versus having tons of small boxes to have to maintain. But it's nowhere near as elegant or powerful as z/OS, MVS, OS/390...whatever they're calling it these days.

As for the pSeries, I can see Linux running on a low to mid-range PPC box, but I can't see it scaling up to something like the p690. And when the FastPath stuff gets integrated into POWER5 and POWER6, is some of that intellectual property going to go back into Linux? Guess it depends on how it's implemented. Just a rhetorical question. *shrug*

 

[technocoy]

IBM/MOTOROLA

I LOVE APPLE!

Later

 

[3G4N]

Re: IBM/MOTOROLA

Originally posted by technocoy
I hate to be vague, I have sources through IBM.... Motorola has been dumped.
don't wanna get my butt into hot water... sorry

while trying to stay out of that same
vague james brown hot tub,
I have sources at Motorola
saying the exact same thing.

 

[eirik]

AltiVec and Linux

How long did we wait for our favorite apps to implement Velocity Engine? Point is, while gcc and perhaps other compilers are now making implementation easier, it still reqires quite a bit of effort to lever AltiVec.

IBM says that junior is targetted for workstation and low-end server markets. Could someone in the know please let us know what major multimedia packages work on linux. I'm not actually requesting a comprehensive listing, just a qualitative feel for what is out there.

AltiVec is great for multimedia apps and for scientific calcuations other than perhaps double-precision floats. Perhaps, IBM's SIMD will not only be compatible with Motorola's implementation of VMX but it also adds support for SIMD on double-precision data. Wouldn't that be something!

If not obvious already here, who would IBM seek to sell IBM branded Linux boxes to? These boxes would most likely be considerably more expensive than other Linux boxes on the market. Clearly, IBM would seek a means to differentiate its boxes from those of the others. Their VMX implementation could perhaps. But, who would buy them?

As far as I know, Photoshop doesn't run on Linux. The other major multimedia (high-end) apps run on Solaris and SGI's OS (sorry brain fart, can't remember, dah!). Well, porting these apps to Linux wouldn't be very difficult. But, enabling them to employ junior's SIMD would likely be challenging to say the least, unless the new compilers are making it a hell of a lot easier.

Even so, the consumers of this market are pretty damn high end, do they really care that much if its Linux instead of AIX? I don't know how IBM license pricing compares but why invest in this porting if it might also enable other Linux box makers to enjoy the fruits of the efforts minus AltiVec.

I don't presume to have all of the answers. However, this concept just seems rather fuzzy to me.

Eirik

 

[nixd2001]

Re: IBM/MOTOROLA

Originally posted by technocoy
I hate to be vague, I have sources through IBM.... Motorola has been dumped.
don't wanna get my butt into hot water... sorry

Wow. Do you know if this extends across the range or just for top-end processors?

And there's the thread elsewhere about Apple shares being bought by some corporate.......

 

[Cappy]

Originally posted by kenohki


Why would they want to cannabalize their sales of AIX ($$$) with sales of Linux (free)? Yes, they've done lots of Linux on a Mainframe (zSeries) but does this make sense in their traditional Unix space (pSeries / RS/6000). I would think this is more just an update to replace the 604.

They've done things like this before or do you not remember IBM selling systems with OS/2 and others with WinNT? They went with what the market demanded because initial sales mean more to them. They're doing the same thing again only with Linux.

Personally I'd love to see IBM sell a highend server solution that included Mac OS. Probably won't happen in my lifetime but would be a boost to Apple in the business world nonetheless.

 

[jaykk]

Could it be that IBM plans to put it in thinkpad with linux

IBM could use their own chip if they want to. Think about all those thinkpads with Win installed? If ibm can supply thinkpad with Linux, it is the end of Microsoft .. I heard that Sun already replaced winnt laptops with Apple Powerbooks. and HP chose Corel WordPerfect over M$ Office. If IBM follows the suite with Linux installed thinkpads, it is indeed a great news for anti-m$ campaign.

 

[Faeylyn]

Originally posted by Cappy

Personally I'd love to see IBM sell a highend server solution that included Mac OS. Probably won't happen in my lifetime but would be a boost to Apple in the business world nonetheless.

That's actually a really good idea. Apple could even design the thing. And since it's a high-end server, it wouldn't be competing with anything Apple has or is likely to have for the next several years. It could even include the Power4 for that matter and later the Power5 and Power6. And since high-end servers have high-end profit margins, IBM could give Apple a healthy royalty on each hardware unit sold.

 

[Faeylyn]

Re: Could it be that IBM plans to put it in thinkpad with linux

Originally posted by jaykk
If ibm can supply thinkpad with Linux, it is the end of Microsoft .. I heard that Sun already replaced winnt laptops with Apple Powerbooks. and HP chose Corel WordPerfect over M$ Office. If IBM follows the suite with Linux installed thinkpads, it is indeed a great news for anti-m$ campaign.

1. Not knowing the specifics yet, it's doubtful that the first generation of the Power4-Lite would be useful in a laptop.

2. Linux is not a threat to Microsoft in the consumer arena. You can run Linux on laptops TODAY. Why don't most people do this? Are people who don't want to run Linux on an x86 laptop likely to want to run it on a Power4-Lite laptop? What would they gain?

3. There are lots of laptop makers besides IBM. Most people prefer the other brands.

 

[ktlx]

Originally posted by Faeylyn

That's actually a really good idea. Apple could even design the thing. And since it's a high-end server, it wouldn't be competing with anything Apple has or is likely to have for the next several years. It could even include the Power4 for that matter and later the Power5 and Power6. And since high-end servers have high-end profit margins, IBM could give Apple a healthy royalty on each hardware unit sold.

Why would IBM, who has experience building high end servers, contract to Apple, who has almost no experience building servers of any kind, to build a high end server? That makes no sense. Mac OS X is not even very competitive against low end server offerings in terms of features you expect out of an enterprise-class server operating system. It does not have a journaling file system (geez, Apple even recommends to use HFS+ over ufs), it does not support enterprise backup solutions and its disk subsystem options are still pretty limited.

 

[skunk]

IS IT TRUE???

If Motorola are out of the door, presumably that means IBM for January? And what happens to the iMac/eMac/TiBook? How will they be upgraded?

 

[Newtonboy]

Originally posted by edvniow
I'm not so sure that it wouldn't be just a pop in daughtercard. They redisigned the whole case, created a new motherboard with DDR, flipped it around so air can have a pass-through from front to back, a giant heatsink and fan. They didn't do this for no reason. The upgrades for all that are miniscule; a pair of 1.2 GHz G4 with 167 Mhz bus does not need that much modification. Ive got a feeling that this case is for something more.

The problem I have with this idea is Back when all the upgrade companies started going belly up, I heard it was because Apple considers upgrade suppliers as competitors. So why would Apple help out the competition by making a case for their use?
Then again I could be wrong, and Apple could have learned that people their macs and don't give them up for a whole new machine too easily. (Or at least I don't) They upgrade them, and customize them, and make'um their own.

 

[eirik]

great new thread idea

Originally posted by ktlx


Why would IBM, who has experience building high end servers, contract to Apple, who has almost no experience building servers of any kind, to build a high end server? That makes no sense. Mac OS X is not even very competitive against low end server offerings in terms of features you expect out of an enterprise-class server operating system. It does not have a journaling file system (geez, Apple even recommends to use HFS+ over ufs), it does not support enterprise backup solutions and its disk subsystem options are still pretty limited.

I'm a bit skeptical about the utility/importance to server administrators of a journalling file system. Nonetheless, ktlx raises a good point to me. I'd like to see a thread digging into what features OS X lacks for various server markets/needs. There we could discuss, for examlpe, the utility/need for a journalling file system in a server world.

I'd start it myself but I don't have that priviledge in Macrumors.

Eirik

 

[ktlx]

Re: great new thread idea

Originally posted by eirik


I'm a bit skeptical about the utility/importance to server administrators of a journalling file system. Nonetheless, ktlx raises a good point to me. I'd like to see a thread digging into what features OS X lacks for various server markets/needs. There we could discuss, for examlpe, the utility/need for a journalling file system in a server world.

I'd start it myself but I don't have that priviledge in Macrumors.

Eirik

The first time you have a hard crash of a 500MB file system on a live system you will see the importance of a journaling file system. Without a journaling file system, the file system will either come up possibly corrupt or you will need to do a fsck on it. If it is corrupt and you try to write, the file system is toast and it is time to get out your backup tapes (RAID does not help if the file system is corrupt). If you run fsck, your server is unavailable until it is complete. Large file systems can take a long time to run fsck on. I have seen file servers without journaling file systems take hours to come up waiting on their fscks to complete.

With a journaling file system, this does not happen (except in rare cases that would have trashed a non-journaling file system anyway). The file system is either kept in a non-corrupt state or a recoverable state by backing out incomplete updates. For an enterprise-class database server or large file server, this is critical. Web and print servers can get away without a journaling file system just fine. Most e-mail systems could probably get away without it, although if it is a large one, having the mail spool and storage file systems journaled is nice.

These features are so critical to enterprise class servers that Veritas built a very successfuly business solely around providing journaling file systems and software RAID for UNIX systems. When Linux first started going after the server market, one of the knocks against it was that it had no (and no one provided) a journaling file system for it. Since then several companies stepped in to fill in the gaps. Linux still has some limitations, but it is much farther along than Mac OS X.

Please don't get me wrong, the Xserve is a nice server and Mac OS X is a nice operating system. It is a wonderful system for a small operation or for most Web, file and print services. But to me, a high end server is an enterprise-class server that is going to run a database (i.e. Oracle or DB/2), application server (i.e. BEA, PeopleSoft or SAP) or large e-mail or file server. Apple has no experience here and Mac OS X is woefully inadequate compared to Solaris, HP-UX, AIX and Linux. And Linux is only on that list, in my opinion, thanks to the huge investment by IBM.

It will very difficult for Apple to get much traction in the large server market as Sun, Hewlett-Packard and IBM own 90% of the UNIX server market. All of them have far more experience than Apple at building large servers. My guess is that as Linux matures and Intel improves their server CPU designs, Dell will capture the remaining market share leaving only crumbs for Apple or any other company.

 

[Cappy]

Re: Re: great new thread idea

Originally posted by ktlx


The first time you have a hard crash of a 500MB file system on a live system you will see the importance of a journaling file system. Without a journaling file system, the file system will either come up possibly corrupt or you will need to do a fsck on it. If it is corrupt and you try to write, the file system is toast and it is time to get out your backup tapes (RAID does not help if the file system is corrupt). If you run fsck, your server is unavailable until it is complete. Large file systems can take a long time to run fsck on. I have seen file servers without journaling file systems take hours to come up waiting on their fscks to complete.

With a journaling file system, this does not happen (except in rare cases that would have trashed a non-journaling file system anyway). The file system is either kept in a non-corrupt state or a recoverable state by backing out incomplete updates. For an enterprise-class database server or large file server, this is critical. Web and print servers can get away without a journaling file system just fine. Most e-mail systems could probably get away without it, although if it is a large one, having the mail spool and storage file systems journaled is nice.

These features are so critical to enterprise class servers that Veritas built a very successfuly business solely around providing journaling file systems and software RAID for UNIX systems. When Linux first started going after the server market, one of the knocks against it was that it had no (and no one provided) a journaling file system for it. Since then several companies stepped in to fill in the gaps. Linux still has some limitations, but it is much farther along than Mac OS X.

Please don't get me wrong, the Xserve is a nice server and Mac OS X is a nice operating system. It is a wonderful system for a small operation or for most Web, file and print services. But to me, a high end server is an enterprise-class server that is going to run a database (i.e. Oracle or DB/2), application server (i.e. BEA, PeopleSoft or SAP) or large e-mail or file server. Apple has no experience here and Mac OS X is woefully inadequate compared to Solaris, HP-UX, AIX and Linux. And Linux is only on that list, in my opinion, thanks to the huge investment by IBM.

It will very difficult for Apple to get much traction in the large server market as Sun, Hewlett-Packard and IBM own 90% of the UNIX server market. All of them have far more experience than Apple at building large servers. My guess is that as Linux matures and Intel improves their server CPU designs, Dell will capture the remaining market share leaving only crumbs for Apple or any other company.

You may be right but some in the business do see some opportunites for a fully featured Mac OS X Server to make some inroads. I would agree that Apple has no business being in the hardware market for highend servers. Software is another matter and lets face facts. Nothing says that this would happen tomorrow. It's obvious that Apple isn't ready yet.

As for not having experience there is always a first and, sure, the market is pretty full but with the right features and price, IBM could sell this thing. They still sell OS/2 last I checked. I don't see anyone else capable of pulling this off. Not Dell, Sun, HP, or even Apple....only IBM.

 

[ktlx]

Re: Re: Re: great new thread idea

Originally posted by Cappy
You may be right but some in the business do see some opportunites for a fully featured Mac OS X Server to make some inroads. I would agree that Apple has no business being in the hardware market for highend servers. Software is another matter and lets face facts. Nothing says that this would happen tomorrow. It's obvious that Apple isn't ready yet.

As for not having experience there is always a first and, sure, the market is pretty full but with the right features and price, IBM could sell this thing. They still sell OS/2 last I checked. I don't see anyone else capable of pulling this off. Not Dell, Sun, HP, or even Apple....only IBM.

You are talking could and I am talking should. Sure it is possible for IBM to contract out to Apple to build software, hardware or whatever for the server market and try to sell it. But the question is why? What reason would IBM have to believe that Apple could develop any product targetted toward the enterprise server market that would be more attractive than something IBM developed itself?

The problem with the catch up argument, in my opinion, is one of R&D dollars. The server portion of Apple's business, let alone any potential high end server business, would be so small in comparison to the existing players, they will simply be out spent. Before we even talk about things like journaling file systems we need to find out if Mac OS X will even work with more than two processors. It should, but others had problems taking SMP beyond two processors before. Until there is a quad or eight processor Mac OS X server out there running just fine, we will never know for sure.

 

[Faeylyn]

Originally posted by ktlx

Why would IBM, who has experience building high end servers, contract to Apple, who has almost no experience building servers of any kind, to build a high end server? That makes no sense. Mac OS X is not even very competitive against low end server offerings in terms of features you expect out of an enterprise-class server operating system. It does not have a journaling file system (geez, Apple even recommends to use HFS+ over ufs), it does not support enterprise backup solutions and its disk subsystem options are still pretty limited.

Because it wouldn't just be a high-end server, it would be a high-end Mac server. IBM has zero experience with Macs and there's no way they'd be able to do that without Apple's help.

As for the rest, you're thinking in terms of what traditional servers are used for. Again, this isn't a high-end server, it's a high-end Mac server. Not the same thing, not the same uses, not the same customers.