I got this in an email and thought I'd pass it on for what it's worth.
From an email scooting it's way around the Net. http://www.xlr8yourmac.com/
has posted it to their site, too:
I got it off the YML list. I can't personally vouch for the info
here. You are probably getting it 4th or 5th hand at this point
-------------BEGIN QUOTED MATERIAL--------------
BTW I just got this from a source. Looks to be text of an internal doc
meeting probably at WWDC. Checking into it now, but please keep it off the
list until I have checked sources.
" I'm going to keep this brief, so please write me with the questions
you have and any tests you want run on one of the dev kits. I will
have one of my own next week as well.
First, the thing is fast. Native apps readily beat a single 2.7 G5,
and sometimes beat duals. Really.
(I asked about real-world apps - if any were already available in
native code-Mike)
All the iLife apps other than iTunes, plus all the other apps that
come with the OS are already universal binaries....
They are using a Pentium 4 660. This is a 3.6 GHz chip. It supports
64 bit extensions, but Apple does not support that *yet*. The 660 is
a single core processor. However, the engineers said that this chip
would not be used in a shipping product and that we need to look at
Intel's roadmap for that time to see what Apple will ship.
It uses DDR-2 RAM at 533 MHz. SATA-2. It is using Intel GMA 900
integrated graphics and it supports Quartz Extreme. The Intel 900
doesn't compare favorably to any shipping card from ATi or nVidia.
The Apple engineers says they dev kit will work with regular PC
graphics cards, but that you need a driver. Apple does not write ANY
graphics drivers. They just submit bug reports to ATi/nVidia. So,
when we asked where to get drivers for better cards the engineers
said "The ATI guys are here." He's right, they've been in the
compatibility lab several times.
It has FireWire 400, but not 800. USB 2 as well. USB 2 booting is
supported, FireWire booting is not. NetBoot works.
The machines do not have Open Firmware. They use a Phoenix BIOS.
That's right, a Mac with a BIOS.
(I asked if the Bios had any tweaks like Memory Timing which is
common for many PC motherboards, although Intel OEM motherboards
don't usually have any end user tweaks like that.-Mike)
They won't tell us how to get in the BIOS. I'm sure we can figure it
out when out dev kits arrive.
They run Windows fine. All the chipset is standard Intel stuff, so
you can download drivers and run XP on the box.
Rosetta is amazing. (see earlier post on limitations of the Rosetta
emulator - it's a G3 emulator basically - will not run Altivec code,
etc. and performance isn't going to be as good as native code, but
most Mac apps will run on a G3.-Mike) The tests I've run, both app
tests and benchmarks, peg it at between a dual 800 MHz G4 and and a
dual 2 G5 depending on what you are doing.
(I mentioned to him the limitations of Rosetta (posted below)-Mike)
It's true Rosetta does not support Altivec, but most apps run on a
G3, right? Rosetta tells PPC apps that it is a G3. Apps should fall
back to their G3 code tree. Everyone I tested did.
The UI tests in Xbench exceed a dual 2.7 by a large margin. (other
specific tests are much lower than a G5 per Xbench site results.-Mike)
I've been talking to and watching a lot of devs. There are a lot of
apps from big names running in the Compatibility lab already. Some
people face more pain, sure, but Jobs wasn't kidding when he said
that this transition would be less painful than OS 9 to OS X or 68K
to PPC.
Game devs seem optimistic. They see porting Windows/86 to Mac/x86 as
much easier. They look forward to the day they don't have to support
PPC.
I was talking to a (game Developer) that said about 1/3 of the
process is handling endian issues, the rest is Win32/DirectX. For the
next 3-5 years, their job will be harder since they have to port to
two processor architectures and most bugs *are* endian related and
that they will have a hard time making the PPC versions run as well
as the x86 versions.
This transition is not about current P4 vs G5. It is about the future
directions of the processor families. Intel is committed to desktop/
notebook and server in a big way. Freescale/IBM are chasing the
embedded market and console market. Apple would have been in a lurch
in 2 years.
Also, all the cell people and the AMD people need to be quiet. Apple
evaluated both. AMD has the same, if not worse, supply problems as
IBM. Their roadmap is fine, but the production capacity is not.
The tested Cell as well. That processor is NOT intended for PC
applications. (it was designed for game systems, not as a general use
CPU) The lack of out of order execution and ILP control logic creates
very poor performance with existing software. Having developers
rewrite for cell would have been MUCH more work than reworking for
Intel. And that's what this is, you rework your codebase in ALL
cases, not rewrite it. "
---------------END QUOTED MATERIAL--------------
From an email scooting it's way around the Net. http://www.xlr8yourmac.com/
has posted it to their site, too:
I got it off the YML list. I can't personally vouch for the info
here. You are probably getting it 4th or 5th hand at this point
-------------BEGIN QUOTED MATERIAL--------------
BTW I just got this from a source. Looks to be text of an internal doc
meeting probably at WWDC. Checking into it now, but please keep it off the
list until I have checked sources.
" I'm going to keep this brief, so please write me with the questions
you have and any tests you want run on one of the dev kits. I will
have one of my own next week as well.
First, the thing is fast. Native apps readily beat a single 2.7 G5,
and sometimes beat duals. Really.
(I asked about real-world apps - if any were already available in
native code-Mike)
All the iLife apps other than iTunes, plus all the other apps that
come with the OS are already universal binaries....
They are using a Pentium 4 660. This is a 3.6 GHz chip. It supports
64 bit extensions, but Apple does not support that *yet*. The 660 is
a single core processor. However, the engineers said that this chip
would not be used in a shipping product and that we need to look at
Intel's roadmap for that time to see what Apple will ship.
It uses DDR-2 RAM at 533 MHz. SATA-2. It is using Intel GMA 900
integrated graphics and it supports Quartz Extreme. The Intel 900
doesn't compare favorably to any shipping card from ATi or nVidia.
The Apple engineers says they dev kit will work with regular PC
graphics cards, but that you need a driver. Apple does not write ANY
graphics drivers. They just submit bug reports to ATi/nVidia. So,
when we asked where to get drivers for better cards the engineers
said "The ATI guys are here." He's right, they've been in the
compatibility lab several times.
It has FireWire 400, but not 800. USB 2 as well. USB 2 booting is
supported, FireWire booting is not. NetBoot works.
The machines do not have Open Firmware. They use a Phoenix BIOS.
That's right, a Mac with a BIOS.
(I asked if the Bios had any tweaks like Memory Timing which is
common for many PC motherboards, although Intel OEM motherboards
don't usually have any end user tweaks like that.-Mike)
They won't tell us how to get in the BIOS. I'm sure we can figure it
out when out dev kits arrive.
They run Windows fine. All the chipset is standard Intel stuff, so
you can download drivers and run XP on the box.
Rosetta is amazing. (see earlier post on limitations of the Rosetta
emulator - it's a G3 emulator basically - will not run Altivec code,
etc. and performance isn't going to be as good as native code, but
most Mac apps will run on a G3.-Mike) The tests I've run, both app
tests and benchmarks, peg it at between a dual 800 MHz G4 and and a
dual 2 G5 depending on what you are doing.
(I mentioned to him the limitations of Rosetta (posted below)-Mike)
It's true Rosetta does not support Altivec, but most apps run on a
G3, right? Rosetta tells PPC apps that it is a G3. Apps should fall
back to their G3 code tree. Everyone I tested did.
The UI tests in Xbench exceed a dual 2.7 by a large margin. (other
specific tests are much lower than a G5 per Xbench site results.-Mike)
I've been talking to and watching a lot of devs. There are a lot of
apps from big names running in the Compatibility lab already. Some
people face more pain, sure, but Jobs wasn't kidding when he said
that this transition would be less painful than OS 9 to OS X or 68K
to PPC.
Game devs seem optimistic. They see porting Windows/86 to Mac/x86 as
much easier. They look forward to the day they don't have to support
PPC.
I was talking to a (game Developer) that said about 1/3 of the
process is handling endian issues, the rest is Win32/DirectX. For the
next 3-5 years, their job will be harder since they have to port to
two processor architectures and most bugs *are* endian related and
that they will have a hard time making the PPC versions run as well
as the x86 versions.
This transition is not about current P4 vs G5. It is about the future
directions of the processor families. Intel is committed to desktop/
notebook and server in a big way. Freescale/IBM are chasing the
embedded market and console market. Apple would have been in a lurch
in 2 years.
Also, all the cell people and the AMD people need to be quiet. Apple
evaluated both. AMD has the same, if not worse, supply problems as
IBM. Their roadmap is fine, but the production capacity is not.
The tested Cell as well. That processor is NOT intended for PC
applications. (it was designed for game systems, not as a general use
CPU) The lack of out of order execution and ILP control logic creates
very poor performance with existing software. Having developers
rewrite for cell would have been MUCH more work than reworking for
Intel. And that's what this is, you rework your codebase in ALL
cases, not rewrite it. "
---------------END QUOTED MATERIAL--------------