carletonmusic said:
It's a leader, it gets IBM into the Intel based corporation then they push Linux on the Server which then eventually allows them to push their bigger iron Power4 and now Power5 plaforms; from which the 970 was derive.
Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
IBM vs. Intel
- Thread starter MacRumors
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
It's a leader, it gets IBM into the Intel based corporation then they push Linux on the Server which then eventually allows them to push their bigger iron Power4 and now Power5 plaforms; from which the 970 was derive.
blackfox said:
Companies set up up alliances and acquire businesses in order to control as many factors as possible in their business environment. Apple have about as much control over their product range as anyone out there - OS, software packages, music store and player, and the minor aspect of their business - hardware design and manufacture. The way things are heading with what seems to be a very well thought out strategy stretching back to Steve Jobs reappearance, if Apple thought that by 2010 they were going to be in trouble because of chip suppliers, I would not bank against them having a contingency to invest the equivalent of the $2bn that IBM just invested to maybe go into an alliance way before then with an AMD type company (ie relatively little but technically very good) and secure their supplies for a whole lot longer . By not wanting to dominate the world, Apple can get into a great position of designing producing and delivering anything they want.
IJ Reilly said:
Nope. Apple was not prepared to make the jump to x86. I think someone has been munging the internal memo to make it juicier.
G4s did have Intel inside, actually, it started out as DEC inside, but DEC got split and bought, and it turned into Intel.
Subsequent G4s had Intel inside as well, in the form of flash memory.
G5s don't have Intel inside, unless its flash memory again.
iggyb said:I was watching some IBM commercial the other night, and they were talking about their Blade Servers running Intel Xeon processors. This made me wonder, why aren't they offering servers with their own processors? Does it have to do with the software involved?
They do.
RS/6000 servers from IBM are one of the fastest and cost effective servers.
Plus, IBM the server company, is the biggest customer of IBM the chip company.
RS/6000 - ancient history!
The name of the line changed to "pSeries" in the last few years, RS/6000 is history.
"p" means "POWER" - the "pSeries" servers use the POWER architecture.
http://www-132.ibm.com/content/home/store_IBMPublicUSA/en_US/eServer/pSeries/pSeries.html
The JS20 Blade Server
contains two PowerPC® 970 processors at up to 1.6GHz. This is the only current IBM offering with the PPC970 chip.
The picture looks like a 1U, but it's really a module in the BladeCenter chassis:
14 dual CPU blades fit in a 7U chassis, so it's effectively a 0.5U dualie.
http://www-132.ibm.com/webapp/wcs/s...Id=2586156&storeId=1&catalogId=-840&langId=-1
Frohickey said:
The name of the line changed to "pSeries" in the last few years, RS/6000 is history.
"p" means "POWER" - the "pSeries" servers use the POWER architecture.
http://www-132.ibm.com/content/home/store_IBMPublicUSA/en_US/eServer/pSeries/pSeries.html
The JS20 Blade Server
contains two PowerPC® 970 processors at up to 1.6GHz. This is the only current IBM offering with the PPC970 chip.
The picture looks like a 1U, but it's really a module in the BladeCenter chassis:
14 dual CPU blades fit in a 7U chassis, so it's effectively a 0.5U dualie.
http://www-132.ibm.com/webapp/wcs/s...Id=2586156&storeId=1&catalogId=-840&langId=-1
AidenShaw said:
Erp. I guess I haven't kept up with IBM's offerings lately.
The last time I worked on one was with IBM's debug system for PowerPC chips. I haven't worked on the latest one.
Pretty neat really, you use a PowerPC machine to debug another PowerPC machine.
*sigh*
Nobody seems to have pointed out yet that this was posted by The Inquirer on, um...
"By INQUIRER staff: Friday 07 November 2003, 07:57"
So it's ages old... Hardly news...
Nobody seems to have pointed out yet that this was posted by The Inquirer on, um...
"By INQUIRER staff: Friday 07 November 2003, 07:57"
So it's ages old... Hardly news...
Let's see (for those who worry about PowerPC's future):
PowerPC users:
Apple
Nintendo (GameCube / GameCube 2)
Sony (PlayStation 3)
Microsoft (XBox 2)
Most interesting is the Xbox 2. The current Xbox runs a trimmed down copy of Windows 2000. Microsoft has essentially 5 choices for the Xbox2's OS:
Linux (possible, but unlikely)
BSD (MacOS core - possible but unlikely)
MacOS in an Apple partnership (yeah, right!)
Entirely new OS (hmmm... possible, but let's see what 5 is)
Port Windows NT kernel to PowerPC... (yeah, that's more like it)
If this happens, one must wonder if they'll end up releasing Windows XP (or the next Windows Longhorn) in a PowerPC version - at least the server edition. It really would make sense. PowerPC is really a much newer architecture than x86. Not to mention that except for basic functions the compatibility aspect of x86 is going away... first with mfg-specific extensions, and now with two different hybrid 32/64 instruction sets (AMD's being by far the first to market, but Intel is supposedly planning one too). I think IBM's processor business will be healthy for years to come...
PowerPC users:
Apple
Nintendo (GameCube / GameCube 2)
Sony (PlayStation 3)
Microsoft (XBox 2)
Most interesting is the Xbox 2. The current Xbox runs a trimmed down copy of Windows 2000. Microsoft has essentially 5 choices for the Xbox2's OS:
Linux (possible, but unlikely)
BSD (MacOS core - possible but unlikely)
MacOS in an Apple partnership (yeah, right!)
Entirely new OS (hmmm... possible, but let's see what 5 is)
Port Windows NT kernel to PowerPC... (yeah, that's more like it)
If this happens, one must wonder if they'll end up releasing Windows XP (or the next Windows Longhorn) in a PowerPC version - at least the server edition. It really would make sense. PowerPC is really a much newer architecture than x86. Not to mention that except for basic functions the compatibility aspect of x86 is going away... first with mfg-specific extensions, and now with two different hybrid 32/64 instruction sets (AMD's being by far the first to market, but Intel is supposedly planning one too). I think IBM's processor business will be healthy for years to come...
I think IBM is exaggerating how much Apple was actually considering Intel. If IBM can show multiple showdowns with Intel in which IBM wins, that can prove that IBM is the superior chip maker. It wouldn't be as impressive if Apple was only considering IBM or only considering PowerPC chip makers. Rather, IBM now spins it to say that Apple was thinking about Intel, the chip powerhouse, but that IBM's brilliant technology convinced Apple to go in the other direction in a BIG way. It looks good for IBM.
So honestly, I think that Apple's actual consideration of Intel was probably less than IBM's spin would suggest.
So honestly, I think that Apple's actual consideration of Intel was probably less than IBM's spin would suggest.
wrldwzrd89 said:
Dell and the other big computer manufacturers could decide to offer a Linux/PowerPC based computer instead of - or next to - a Intel/Windows based one. Wouldn't that make an eventual transition smoother ?
rdowns said:
I'd say that is exactly what it is.
If any of my company's internal messages were relied on as being fact-based instruments of information and not the rose-tinted view on the performance and prospects of our great business, then I wouldn't immediately trash the mails and perhaps even read one of them.
Perhaps.
NT did run on PowerPC up until NT4sp3
Windows NT was supported on PowerPC systems up until Service Pack 3 of Windows NT 4.0.
It also supported the Alpha and MIPS architectures at various times. It currently runs on three different ISAs - IA32 (x86), IA64 (Itanium), and x86 Extended (AMD64).
Microsoft compilers support PPC code generation for the Pocket PC version of Windows.
Resurrecting the PPC code is probably quite easy - especially for a subset of Windows to run on a console.
The problem would be that there would be no applications available. It's hard to market an operating system if there's nothing that runs on it.
Intel will be completely compatible with AMD64. The "compatibility" aspect of x86 is extremely important, which is exactly why Intel took the embarrassing step of creating a Pentium that runs the AMD64 extensions.
Think of everything that's gone wrong with Intel's Itanium push - PowerPC would have all those problems and more. After several years and a huge and expensive effort, a modest number of high-end applications have been ported to Itanium.
The only way you'll see Dell building a PowerPC system is if Dell can install Mac OS X on it....
You may see some PPC systems built for PPC Linux, but even that is a backwater right now. If you have your own applications, you might build them for PPC Linux. If all you need is already in Linux (like Apache) you could use a PPC - but an x86 box is fast enough and probably cheaper.
You can't find many of the important commercial apps running on PPC Linux, however.
markie said:
Windows NT was supported on PowerPC systems up until Service Pack 3 of Windows NT 4.0.
It also supported the Alpha and MIPS architectures at various times. It currently runs on three different ISAs - IA32 (x86), IA64 (Itanium), and x86 Extended (AMD64).
Microsoft compilers support PPC code generation for the Pocket PC version of Windows.
Resurrecting the PPC code is probably quite easy - especially for a subset of Windows to run on a console.
markie said:
The problem would be that there would be no applications available. It's hard to market an operating system if there's nothing that runs on it.
markie said:
Intel will be completely compatible with AMD64. The "compatibility" aspect of x86 is extremely important, which is exactly why Intel took the embarrassing step of creating a Pentium that runs the AMD64 extensions.
Think of everything that's gone wrong with Intel's Itanium push - PowerPC would have all those problems and more. After several years and a huge and expensive effort, a modest number of high-end applications have been ported to Itanium.
The only way you'll see Dell building a PowerPC system is if Dell can install Mac OS X on it....
You may see some PPC systems built for PPC Linux, but even that is a backwater right now. If you have your own applications, you might build them for PPC Linux. If all you need is already in Linux (like Apache) you could use a PPC - but an x86 box is fast enough and probably cheaper.
You can't find many of the important commercial apps running on PPC Linux, however.
Everybody keeps forgetting AmigaOS 4.0 for PPC, but that's because they've been promising a new PPC based Amiga for a couple years -- delivered the hardware a year ago, but no OS (ooops).AidenShaw said:
We'll probably see IBM reintroduce a PPC-based workstation soon, but the PowerPC Platform systems are gaining ground on Apple rather quickly (technology parity).
Though the OS of choice for them would be Linux.
I would include Amiga, but they're still having a cashflow problem -- and two divergent OSs for the PowerPC Platform (MorphOS and AmigaOS 4.0 beta).
ibm intentions// MS gain -- conspiracy
I think IBM is wisely using Apple as a product launcher for a more common place in the linux/unix arena. We must not forget IBM used to be in MS's position and they are in it for the money. They want EVERYBODY'S market share. I am not sure what the are doing with Microsoft though. Getting the xbox is a definite coup but supposing MS in behind the SCO lawsuits could mean that MS is actually trying to flank IBM. Its possibly something that could definitely work against them by giving MS the leverage to control where IBM directs future chip research, business models and affecting present/future business alliances.
I think IBM is wisely using Apple as a product launcher for a more common place in the linux/unix arena. We must not forget IBM used to be in MS's position and they are in it for the money. They want EVERYBODY'S market share. I am not sure what the are doing with Microsoft though. Getting the xbox is a definite coup but supposing MS in behind the SCO lawsuits could mean that MS is actually trying to flank IBM. Its possibly something that could definitely work against them by giving MS the leverage to control where IBM directs future chip research, business models and affecting present/future business alliances.
Sun Baked said:
Not to mention a credibility problem. And a most-people-have-never-heard-of-them problem.
iLilana said:
Interesting. But lets not forget Fridays recent report that Intel is now moving to 300mm wafers - an announcement that did nothing to their stock price - actually dropped - and their forecast of reduced costs and higher margins of chip revenue still did nothing. WHy? Finally analysts are realizing IBM is now the leader, probably. Also note that Micheal Dell is leaving CEO title in April to someone else in the company who's already been doing that role (without the title), letting Mr. Dell to be the chairman. I'm hoping this will significantly hurt sales & management of the company or misdirect their focus.
If MS ports the NT kernel to the XBox2 for a gaming OS then this could be a good step for us Mac lovers. This porting may improve future functionality of Virtual PC -god I hope so. IBM I don't think will hurt either way because their leading in chip contracts.
I would like to see a campaign of Mac desktops being able to work in harmony with IBM server environment or reselling Mac OS X under IBM products (only that using G5 chips).
Ahh think I'm crazy. Lastly though remember the court case in the eighties that allowed cross-over technology use of AMD x86 to Intel & vice-versa. We will see Intels version of x86-64 chip to compete with AMD.
IBM I want imbedded memory controllers with their own direct hypertransport connection to memory chips/HDD/PCI-X/PCI-Express components!!!!
Prom1 said:
You probably don't want this....
Even AMD with the three HT links on the chip is using direct DDR controllers - the memory is *not* on the HT bus. Apple didn't use HT for memory in the G5 NorthBridge - HT is used to connect the I/O busses.
HT seems optimized for I/O bus operations, where a lot of "streaming" is done (relatively large data moves). It isn't used for memory, where low latency on random operations is important.