No I didn't:
History doesn't favor open systems 10:1. History favors closed systems (like Windows) 9:1.
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Intrinsity (Formerly Exponential Technology) Now Speeding Up ARM CPUs
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No I didn't:
History doesn't favor open systems 10:1. History favors closed systems (like Windows) 9:1.
One can do Windows virtualization on PowerPC, or another possibility is a chipset with ARM, x86 and PowerPC codesets for compatibility with a wide rand of existing software code. I doubt Apple would actually go that route, but if they did for one variant of iPad, the value added would be pretty good.
One can wish . . . .
The Powermac G5 is widely considered one of the better overall Macs ever.
Rocketman
cite:
http://www.globenewswire.com/newsroom/news.html?d=158126
http://news.discovery.com/tech/intrinsity-smart-phone.html: "Some even speculate that Apple itself will put Hummingbird in a coming upgrade to its iPhone."
Well, this doesn't appear to be sourced in the wiki, but
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exponential_Technology
http://www.mackido.com/Hardware/DeadPPCs.html
I'm sure it's possible that these sources aren't entirely accurate, but we certainly didn't "just make it up".
arn
Arn -
First - you haven't addressed the fact that the title of the article is just plain factually incorrect.
Second - you point to a blurb about Apple maybe using Samsung's chip to argue that Apple is working with Intrinsity? Those are two different issues. The link you pointed to does NOT "speculate that Apple is working with Intrinsity." It speculates that Apple might buy a Samsung chip. When I buy a Ford car am I "working with" Ford's suppliers? We all know EVEN THAT is unlikely to happen, and the next iPhone is likely to have the A4 or a derivative. You have provided no evidence that anyone other than you is speculating about Apple having a relationship with Intrinsity.
Third - re: the x704 performance. Take my word for it or not, but keep in mind that whoever wrote the thing you cite never actually SAW an x704. PPC 604 came out well after the x704 was ready to ship at 450MHz, and on every benchmark the x704 was faster. It was around 2x the speed of the 603, and around 1.25-1.5x the 604. It also was within its power budget. It was budgeted at 100W and game in under 90W (and that was measured differently back in the day, btw).
More importantly, you say:
You really think that had anything to do with it? It wasn't because:
1) Steve came back
2) He wanted to kill the clones, who had placed major orders for the chip
3) he wanted to leverage the x704 to get a better deal from IBM?
It's hardly an issue. "speculation" is such a throwaway word, I don't think it matters. Either way, I removed the reference, but what was said in the article to begin with is that I didn't think Apple was working directly with Intrinsity.
In this instance, the actual truth is irrelevant. This is the non-focus on the article, and the commonly held belief is that Exponential couldn't produce quickly enough, and is there just to provide some point of reference.
If you go down your reasoning, then why didn't apple just ship the Exponential x704 chips in their own machines? Why ignore a technology that would instantly get them twice the performance?
The points of the article are these:
1) Apple is producing their own ARM chips
2) Intrinsity was born of the ashes of Exponential Technology which was a significant company in the history of Apple (especially the rumor world)
3) Intrinsity is working on accelarating ARM designs which, depending on their success, may or may not be relevant to Apple in the future.
The title remains because it's a more succinct title than "Intrisity Who Had a Design Team That Used to Work for Exponential Now Speeds Up ARM CPUs".
arn
Fine. According to AppleInsider (formerly Macrumors), the reason the x704 wasn't used in Apple machines was because they got a deal from IBM that resulted in lower chip prices as long as they didn't use Exponential chips.
Nancy (formerly Arn), I'm glad you've updated the article, and I'm sure everyone will agree that a completely false headline is okay as long as it's "more succinct."
Yes, if a large part of my dying corpse reorganized and came back to life as Nancy, that would be an equally accurate statement and I would have no problem with that. And Robocop (formerly Alex Murphy) would agree.
arn
I Wish
I want Apple to start making it's own chips for the Mac, so that I could start reading comments about how Apple CPUs are superior and more innovative than Intel's or Amd's. How I wish I could go into an alternate universe.
But seriously, take the PS3 CPU for example, it's complicated chip to program for, which causes delays, and games looking worst than they do on the X-Box 360. Since Sony developed the CPU, when they decided to built the PS3 their only choice was to pick their own CPU, while Microsoft had the freedom to choose the best choice out there. So if Apple did decide to just stick to their own design, then they won't have the freedom of picking the best available CPU. Then again since they have created a really loyal fanbase who do buy their Macs even though they aren't the most powerful, regardless of the price, then perhaps it would be better for them as a company for them to make their own CPUs.
I want Apple to start making it's own chips for the Mac, so that I could start reading comments about how Apple CPUs are superior and more innovative than Intel's or Amd's. How I wish I could go into an alternate universe.
But seriously, take the PS3 CPU for example, it's complicated chip to program for, which causes delays, and games looking worst than they do on the X-Box 360. Since Sony developed the CPU, when they decided to built the PS3 their only choice was to pick their own CPU, while Microsoft had the freedom to choose the best choice out there. So if Apple did decide to just stick to their own design, then they won't have the freedom of picking the best available CPU. Then again since they have created a really loyal fanbase who do buy their Macs even though they aren't the most powerful, regardless of the price, then perhaps it would be better for them as a company for them to make their own CPUs.
Why does MacRumors keep calling the iPad's CPU an ARM CPU?
From what Apple's said it's not... and you're gonna need universal binaries.
My guess is it's not an ARM, and we'll find this out over the coming weeks when people get their hands on this baby.
From what Apple's said it's not... and you're gonna need universal binaries.
My guess is it's not an ARM, and we'll find this out over the coming weeks when people get their hands on this baby.
First, Apple hasn't said anything really. There's no reason why they shouldn't use ARM. They have ARM-processors in iPods and iPhones now, and the iPad is a platform of the same kind, uses the same OS and are running all of the present apps without emulation. Technology wise, there is no other ISA that can present SoCs of the price, functionality and performance specs that the device seems to have.
Apple is using universal binaries on iPhone/iPod touch to make device specific optimizations. The first generations used a ARM11 processor, and the later ARM7 processors, and the x86 version running in the iPhone Simulator in the SDK. UBs could also be used to do special versions for the iPad.
It just makes sense. If we lack hard info, we fall back to the most likely answer, and that A4 would be x86, PowerPC, SPARC, MIPS or an entirely new ISA would be really really surprising. There's just nothing that points to that.
It runs unmodified iPhone apps... so it's either ARM or emulating ARM. Emulation seems entirely unlikely.
The universal are so you can package iPad formatted apps and iPhone formatted apps in the same app.
arn
Just clarifying -
Apple has talked about creating "universal applications" - NOT about creating "universal binaries." Further, universal apps are a single binary - developers are supposed to, within their code, detect what device they are running on and turn features on and off accordingly.
And the i386 simulator binaries are not fat binaries - when you build for the simulator, it's not universal binary that also runs on the phone.
Apple simply isn't big enough to take on AMD and Intel.
What is worst here is the layers of confusion many seem to have in this thread. The rumored ARM based chips are for the iPad/iPhone/Touch series of computers. They have nothing to do with Intel chips in desktop hardware or laptops. ARM is a very long ways from being able to compete there, that is as state of the art system processors.
This is total BS and demonstrates a limited grasp of the issues. First Apple has shown no sign of leaving Intel as a processor supplier where it currently uses them. The only possible exception would be Apple TV.
As to the mobile devices, if Apple did go ARM it is very likely because it is the best solution for these platforms. ARM supplies the only low power core that can be successfully integrated into a high performance System on Chip. The reality is one can't be successful with these devices without a highly integrated SoC. For ont there simply isn't room inside the devices for older approaches and two SoC dramatically lower the power requirements.
The reason you see TI, Samsung and others building similar SoC is that device manufactures need such to build their product. Many of us actually question Apples ability to keep up with the competition as the market is really starting to fill up with custom high speed ARM SoC. The next couple of years will be really interesting as the low power world becomes more and more important. The biggest issue right now is the lack of info as to what is actually in the A4, is it a plain old ARM A9 core or something custom engineered by Apple for it's specific usage.
No one has yet to completely spill the beans as far as what A4 is. For us tech folks that is frustrating.
Dave
Dream on, Apple doesn't have the cash or man power to take on Intel.
What is worst here is the layers of confusion many seem to have in this thread. The rumored ARM based chips are for the iPad/iPhone/Touch series of computers. They have nothing to do with Intel chips in desktop hardware or laptops. ARM is a very long ways from being able to compete there, that is as state of the art system processors.
I'm not sure where you got these ideas from but both chips where designed by IBM. In fact the PPC cores are very similar. As to the vector processors in PS3 they have proven to be very capable again and again given some smart programmers and a little motivation. Frankly I don't follow the gaming world much so I won't speculate on why the games are of lesser quality as you say. But I will say that porting may be a significant issue.
This is total BS and demonstrates a limited grasp of the issues. First Apple has shown no sign of leaving Intel as a processor supplier where it currently uses them. The only possible exception would be Apple TV.
As to the mobile devices, if Apple did go ARM it is very likely because it is the best solution for these platforms. ARM supplies the only low power core that can be successfully integrated into a high performance System on Chip. The reality is one can't be successful with these devices without a highly integrated SoC. For ont there simply isn't room inside the devices for older approaches and two SoC dramatically lower the power requirements.
The reason you see TI, Samsung and others building similar SoC is that device manufactures need such to build their product. Many of us actually question Apples ability to keep up with the competition as the market is really starting to fill up with custom high speed ARM SoC. The next couple of years will be really interesting as the low power world becomes more and more important. The biggest issue right now is the lack of info as to what is actually in the A4, is it a plain old ARM A9 core or something custom engineered by Apple for it's specific usage.
No one has yet to completely spill the beans as far as what A4 is. For us tech folks that is frustrating.
Dave
I almost completely agree.
I would point out that the reason Apple can compete in the ARM world, however, is that ARM chip designs all suck. AMD and Intel have been in a cutthroat war for many years, and have inherited many of the chip designers from companies like DEC, Exponential, and IBM. When I worked at AMD, we didn't use an ASIC design flow - we hand-converted RTL into standard cells and macroblocks, sizing gates manually, pre-routing wires by hand, hand placing cells, etc. Whenever an ASIC EDA vendor would come in and try to sell us their software, we'd ask them to design a block as best they could, and if they could come close to what we could do by hand, we'd buy it. They never came within even 20% of the speed or 20% of the power dissipation.
ARM physical designers are just now beginning to use some of the techniques AMD and Intel used 5 years ago.
In other words, there's a whole lot of low-hanging fruit that can be picked by doing things "the hard way." Many of the key PA Semi guys came from DEC where they worked on StrongARM (and many of them worked on Alpha before that). They know how to do this stuff.
I'm confused. Was MacRumors under the impression that most cpu makers are slowing chips down? Slow news day?
I can't find it right now, but I remember a quote, probably from the 1980's, that had something to do with Apple wanting to control the entire process. Something about shoveling sand in one part of the factory and having computers come out the other end. Probably attributed to SJ. Can someone find it?
I know Apple isn't in the business of fabricating chips right now, but that old quote is perhaps a look into the mindset at Apple.