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IBM on Apple/Intel and the G5

On a related note, it would be a major boost to Apple in the enterprise market it IBM started to move their staffs desktops & laptops over to Macs.

I know IBM makes their own PCs but they dont really make that much from them, the bulk of their revenue comes from their high end servers, supercomputers, software & of course microprocessor division, so I would suggest IBM could benefit more by using G5 based Macs than by using their own PCs.

If the IT director of a major corporation like IBM was to stand up and say 'we drastically lowered our IT operating expenses and boosted productivity by switching over to Macs' it could kickstart something big.

I can't help feeling IBM is perhaps one of the most likeley enterprises to do this?
 
Originally posted by DeusOmnis
BTW, it would be cool to dual-boot w/ windows though.
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You know just because the processor would have been from Intel does not mean it would be a Pentium 4 or some derivative. It could quite possibly be a new processor fabricated by Intel but all odds point to the fact that they probably were considering the Pentium 4. I believe a machine from Apple that would boot both OS's would be death to further development on the Apple side, but that's just me. 😉
 
Originally posted by tduality
Most likely any company in hitech business has (or should have) a long term roadmap. ...
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Speaking of roadmaps, if we are not going to see the full article, Arn, can you see if it says anything about 3GHz parts?
 
Originally posted by magitekkn
I, for one, welcome our new Big Blue overlords.
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That is one of my favorite simpsons EVER!!! especially that particular line . . . The graphic that they pop up behind Kent is great, too- a huge ant applying a bullwhip to some hapless human slaves. Priceless!!!!! And all because homer wanted some potato chips . . . ."Careful!! they're ruffled!!"

elvisizer
 
Re: An agonizing choice...

Originally posted by MadMan
With Moto failing to deliver on desperately needed improvements and speed ramps, it's no wonder Apple looked for alternatives. They (Apple) were getting their clocks cleaned performance wise and regardless of the "Mhz Myth" , there was no or very little movement in speed increases for Apple.

So I can see why they looked at Intel.

AND, if IBM hadn't been able (or willing) to do the 970 and future families of chips, I'd bet we might have seen a much different "G5" chip (Intel, not IBM). Because at this point, Moto is basically out of the high-end chip business.

What would our world look like then?

I'm just glad there was an IBM there, willing to do so🙂

Long live the PowerPC!!

😎

MM
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I agree 100%. Of course it makes sense for Apple to look at all alternatives. We're all very lucky that IBM got involved and that we ended up with PowerPC. The roadmap lokos healthy and fruitful for the first time in 3 or 4 years.
 
not that anyone remembers

I recall that NEXT was in line to use Motorola's 88000 RISC processor (as was Ford for an imbedded version), but that processor died when the three (IBM, Apple, Motorola) created the PPC, which was, at the time, a single chip version of the POWER Processor. Motorola at that time was top notch in microcontrollers and microprocessors, and did an amazing job of putting the POWER instruction set on the single chip.

Whatever happened to Motorola since the intro of the G4, everybody should at least note that there was quite a long period of time in the 80's and 90's when Motorola was king of the hill in performance. I can only hope that the rumors of an additional PPC partner coming on board are actually are true. Intel/AMD could use a little more competition.
 
Originally posted by magitekkn
I, for one, welcome our new Big Blue overlords.
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This is not slashdot.

Although it was funny to see here.

I am still anxiously awaiting my overlord - Marklar.

😎
 
Re: not that anyone remembers

Originally posted by TMay
I recall that NEXT was in line to use Motorola's 88000 RISC processor (as was Ford for an imbedded version), but that processor died when the three (IBM, Apple, Motorola) created the PPC, which was, at the time, a single chip version of the POWER Processor. Motorola at that time was top notch in microcontrollers and microprocessors, and did an amazing job of putting the POWER instruction set on the single chip.

Whatever happened to Motorola since the intro of the G4, everybody should at least note that there was quite a long period of time in the 80's and 90's when Motorola was king of the hill in performance. I can only hope that the rumors of an additional PPC partner coming on board are actually are true. Intel/AMD could use a little more competition.
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IIRC, NeXT was also waiting on Moto to release the 68040 for their Cube. I think they actually released a brief version of their Cube with a 68030 while waiting for Moto to release the 68040. (Please correct me if I'm wrong).

But then they stalled. The 68060 was supposed to be the next CPU for the Mac, but got delayed so long, Moto HAD to team up with Apple and IBM to create the PPC or lose Apple's business altogether.

I remember this was also about the time cell phones, at least the big luggable ones, started taking off. I think Moto lost it's focus on desktop CPU's when it saw other, perhaps more lucrative markets develop.

So while they were KOTH for a long time, Moto's inability (or more than likely, no desire) to really drive performance cost them huge. When the drive to 500 mhz stalled and then being stuck there for over a year hit home, Apple really had no choice but to look at all of the options.

Just like they did when it became apparent Copeland had failed.

So while I'll give them credit where due, I'll also give credit to Apple for looking at it's options.

Luckily for us OS X was choosen and now IBM and it's 970 for the G5.

😎

MM
 
Re: not that anyone remembers

Originally posted by TMay
I recall that NEXT was in line to use Motorola's 88000 RISC processor (as was Ford for an imbedded version), but that processor died when the three (IBM, Apple, Motorola) created the PPC, which was, at the time, a single chip version of the POWER Processor. Motorola at that time was top notch in microcontrollers and microprocessors, and did an amazing job of putting the POWER instruction set on the single chip..
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I remember the promise of the 88000 very well. Prototype boards running it were shown by Apple and NeXT I believe.

But IBM's Power architecture was nicely refined and Motorola was permitted to build and enhance it -> becoming the PowerPC.
 
Originally posted by bluedalmatian
I know IBM makes their own PCs but they dont really make that much from them
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Sorry, I just busted up laughing when I read this.....lol Yea, IBM doesn't make much from them. 🙄
 
The speed of innovation.....

"According to the report: "IBM has committed to provide several generations of processor development to Apple over the course of five years."

Gee, that's more towards Apple chips than Moto put out in 15 years!😱
 
I like reading stuff like this.
12-18 months.... So way back in January 2002 (introduction Flat Panel iMac 🙂 ), Steve probably knew by what his "next generation" PowerMacs would be powered.... cool 😎

BTW, the rumorboards were correct a long, long time ago too.😉
 
Originally posted by chadfromdallas
Sorry, I just busted up laughing when I read this.....lol Yea, IBM doesn't make much from them. 🙄
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True, our renderfarm consists of 500 IBM X333 Xeon machines.

No complaints about them here.
 
Re: Re: not that anyone remembers

Originally posted by mmontano
I remember the promise of the 88000 very well. Prototype boards running it were shown by Apple and NeXT I believe.

But IBM's Power architecture was nicely refined and Motorola was permitted to build and enhance it -> becoming the PowerPC.
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Data General produced an entire line of Unix machines based on the 88k. Aviion was the product name, if memory servers me. They were quite nice, at the time (1992/3).
 
Originally posted by whooley
I'd imagine many Cocoa apps would be close to just a straight recompile, but I wouldn't be so sure about Carbon apps.
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Carbon apps and Cocoa apps are the same as far as porting goes. The framework comes along, the developer code gets revised. There is no reason to think that Carbon apps couldn't be ported to any architecture in the same amount of time that Cocoa apps could be. To say otherwise is to say that the trip from Orlando to Oakland is longer because you take American Airlines instead of Delta 😀
 
Think different

In five years time will I have to buy a Windoze PC, Just to "think different" from the rest of the world.


Still wating for my G52G
 
Originally posted by whooleytoo
This bit's odd. A re-compile would be the best case scenario; most software would have to be, partially to entirely rewritten, depending on whether it was Carbon or Cocoa etc.

Mike.
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I assume the "better-case scenario" would have been Apple supplying a PPC emulator for Intel on which less performance-critical apps could run in the transition.
 
Originally posted by whooley
It depends entirely on the app, and how abstracted from the hardware it is. Could you emulate an AltiVec unit using SSE2? As I understand it, SSE2 and the FPU can't be used simultaneously, whereas the PowerPC FPU and Altivec can, how would you get around this?
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SSE1 or 2 can coexist with floating point. In the original MMX (integer only stuff) Intel reused the floating point registers, but the SSE stuff has it's own. Having written a little SSE and Altivec, they are not really very different. Altivec was a little easier because it has more registers to play with and for the task I was doing had an instruction that did a mutiply and accumulate whereas I had to do two seperate instructions in SSE. In the end the performance boost was similar between the two. I haven't explored SSE2 to be able to comment on that, but I didn't see anything between SSE and Altivec that a compiler couldn't do a little shuffling to compile one set of typed instructions into a different set of CPU instructions.

I'm not saying Intel is the way to go, but if Apple had wanted to do it, they could make it so that it was a recompile no matter what the language or underlying API (carbon or cocoa) used by the application. It's just a matter of building the compiler and porting the libraries. MS compiled NT for Power PC, Alpha, Mips and Intel. Win32 applications could be compiled for any platform usually with a minimal amount of tweaking.
 
Originally posted by chadfromdallas
Sorry, I just busted up laughing when I read this.....lol Yea, IBM doesn't make much from them. 🙄
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I believe IBM's PC division frequently loses money. For example, for the quarter ending March 31, 2003 that division had a loss of $69 million on $2.4 billion in revenue. For the quarter ending June 30, IBM lost $8 million on $2.7 billion in revenue.

When Steve Jobs says only Apple and Dell are making money in the personal computer business, he isn't kidding.
 
I look forward to the day when we a full transition to IBM processors has been made...No more MOTO!!!

On the other day, I believe that the negatives of Intel processors are definitely real...That report shows that both Apple and IBM realize that the x86 architecture is going to hit a brick wall, soon, what with that mention of solving the megahertz dilemma SHORT-TERM.

I never want to see us using Intel chips, unless Intel chips get a major overhaul. The entire philosophy at Intel is wrong. Everything is about megahertz, at the cost of efficiency, power consumption, and even performance.

The PowerPC architecture is like a well-thought-out, masterfully crafted luxury car. The x86 architecture is like a car that started out well, but is showing its age...Now the car has new doors, a new roof, a new trunk cover, and they're all a different color. It's a sloppy mess, and though each new part adds to the performance, it detracts from the efficiency.
 
Re: Think different

Originally posted by Loopy
In five years time will I have to buy a Windoze PC, Just to "think different" from the rest of the world.


Still wating for my G52G
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Yea, I bought a windoz machine I'm thinkin it ain't gonna happen again🙄
daniel
 
Originally posted by whooley
It depends entirely on the app, and how abstracted from the hardware it is. Could you emulate an AltiVec unit using SSE2? As I understand it, SSE2 and the FPU can't be used simultaneously, whereas the PowerPC FPU and Altivec can, how would you get around this?

I'd expect that performance critical apps (such as games) would require substantial re-writes, since any optimizations for Mac hardware would no longer be valid.
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For one thing, even in performance critical apps, the truly performance critical pieces are generally pretty small; Porting these components from AltiVect to SSE2 would be, while nontrivial, not anywhere near the biggest problem a port would face.

For another, you should consider that many performance critical apps exist in both PPC and x86 versions (e.g. Photoshop). And most of the games on the Mac started out as x86 code, and were ported to the PPC later. Either way, the vendors likely already have good x86 code for the parts where speed matters.

The AltiVec/SSE2 problems aren't trivial, but I don't think they're very big compared to many of the others that could come up if Apple moved to x86.
 
Originally posted by whooleytoo
This bit's odd. A re-compile would be the best case scenario; most software would have to be, partially to entirely rewritten, depending on whether it was Carbon or Cocoa etc.

Mike.
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why would you say that? a switch to intel would not mean a swith to x86, it would just mean that intel would make a ppc. this has nothing to do with marklar either, marklar is to run on x86, an intel chip in an apple would be a ppc
 
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