Originally posted by Phil Of Mac
Apple spent a good deal of time and money moving to Altivec. Moving back to the G3 wouldn't work, especially if they had the 970 to wait for.
IBM didn't produce G3's faster than Motorola's G4's because Apple didn't want them to. You don't bother producing a product no one's going to buy, especially when you're already working on the 970.
Right, no one would be interested in buying G3 iBooks running at a higher frequency than 900 Mhz, that would make it much less competitive. Geez....do you even stop to think your statements through before posting?
An AMD PPC would be a variant of the procesors they're already developing. AMD chip design allows that flexibility. Remember, AMD processors now are an AMD processor with an x86 frontend tacked on. If that AMD processor was a PowerPC, or if they replaced the x86 frontend with a PPC frontend or something, it would be very feasible.
You mean to say go with the chip manufacturer that had repeated delays getting the Opteron processor to market? Isn't getting processors out on time the main reason you believe that Apple should dump Motorola? Now you advocate going with a chip manufacturer that has a recent history of delays that are far worse than what Motorola is exhibiting.
Uh, that's what the 970 is, chief.
No Mac has been sold yet with with a 970 inside. Apple at this point is taking preorders for G5 Power Macs.
The 970 did.
The 970 is the future and not the present or past. There are no Macs sold yet with a 970 inside.
Once again, they did. It's called the 970.
Once again, the 970 is not available yet in a Mac. Apple states a G5 Power Mac will be available starting later this month.
Motorola developed AltiVec in the 90's and didn't do much since. If we're going by that criteria, then I guess IBM is superior because they invented the PowerPC in the early 90's 🙂
Motorola added SOI and a low k-dielectric process since then.
Also, can you name a SIMD process by IBM or Intel that is superior in performance to Altivec? Quite simply Altivec has been Apple's saving grace in performance comparison to Wintel computers.
The PowerPC was not invented by IBM alone. It was a joint collaboration by Motorola, IBM and Apple.
Are they really that much more expensive? Bought in the bulk quantities Apple's buying them? Have you even read about the Fishkill facility? IBM can mass produce the 970 or any other processor on the cheap, domestically. No foreign outsourcing. In fact, other chip makers are starting to outsource to IBM!
The average price of a desktop PC currently sold is about $749 according to a recent market research survey. Quite a lot of those computers are using processors that have a list price of under $70 from Intel.
It's quite possible that the 970 costs Apple less than the 1.42 GHz 7455 processors. However, the 970 is almost certainly costing Apple several hundred dollars apiece. That is a long ways from the under $70 that Intel gets for Celeron processors.
IBM is not likely to match or beat the prices of the lowend 7457 G4 processors in the next year or so. That's due to IBM targeting a higher performance market and in doing so the company can ask higher prices. If IBM lowered the price of some 970 processors to $70 or so, then that would undermine the demand for the much higher priced 970 processors.
The 970 costs whatever IBM and Apple agree on. If they need to produce them in the millions to go into all product lines, they will.
A bigger processor with a larger die size usually costs more to produce than a smaller die size. By virtue of the G3 being around 33 mm^2 in size it will naturally cost less to produce than the 970 which is about 117 mm^2. The 7457 will be a little bit smaller than the 970, so it could quite possibly be cheaper to manufacture than the 970.
For IBM to make G5 processors that are sold in every Mac that would mean there must be some sold to Apple for well under $100. Either that or you are advocating that Apple abandon the sub $1,000 computer market. It's not likely that IBM will be selling G5 processors to Apple for anywhere close to lowend Celeron prices anytime soon. Because of that alone Apple needs some other PowerPC processors to fill in on the low priced Macs and that is likely to be the G3 and G4. If you believe that the G3 running at about 1 GHz can do the trick for desktop and notebook Macs competing against Celeron chips running at well over 2 GHz, then you are in a fantasy world.
Apple needs Motorola and the G4 processors for quite some time to come. Judging by what Motorola has planned for the G4 it looks like Apple intends to use it through at least 2004.
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Motorola and PowerBook, iMac Delays
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macphoria
macrumors 6502a
I did say "There was speculation at one point." And you agreed with enthusiasm, "based on wild assed speculation." If you do agree, no need to bring up the same point over and over.
A lot of consumers, especially "switchers" who are not familiar with difference between G3 and G4, often rely on clock speed for judging performance. Therefor they did not want iBook with identical clock speed as PowerBook to prevent iBook sales cannibalizing PowerBook sales. They want PowerBook to be definitively and clearly better than iBook in all specs. Also, G3 is capable of out performing G4 with similar clock speed in some non-AltiVec tasks. Not every software benefits from AltiVec.
970 has AltiVec compatible SIMD. It only makes sense 970 provides AltiVec guidelines.
http://www-3.ibm.com/chips/products/powerpc/newsletter/dec2002/newproductfocus2.html
IBM has constantly upgraded G3 and made it just as good as G4 in non-AltiVec tasks. And now there are speculations about even more advanced G3 that includes SIMD functionality, 750vx. And at the same time, IBM also came up with G4 replacement, 970. IBM is doing better job at living up to expectations than Motorola.
The part of reason why Apple lost market share is due to Motorola's slow development on G4. G4 was stuck around 500MHz for a long time, during which AMD and Intel went ahead and hit 1GHz long before G4. Apple had to introduce Dual Processor Power Macs just to keep up.
If Apple's CFO said he doesn't think G5 PowerMac sales will ever reach that level, then there are several reasons for that. One, when G4 PowerMacs were selling well, computer market in general was doing well. It is completely the opposite now. And to add to that problem Apple has less market share.
Why would Apple go with Intel when it is not interested in consumer level 64bit desktop processor, which Apple is trying to push? Intel's 64bit processor solution is not even backward compatible, whereas AMD's is 64 and 32bit compatible. AMD would make a better candidate, not Intel.
The 970 is based on the Power4 core architecture and was designed from the start to be a highend server processor. Since Apple's first G5 Mac will be sold starting this month it's obvious that the 970 was thought up quite a bit later than the Power4.
Intel has simply increased the pace of development for chip manufacturing and the other manufactures have found that there is little financial benefit to try and keep up with them. If you believe that AMD has been able to do that, well AMD has lost buckets of money attempting it recently.
The reason the G3 or G4 has not kept pace with what Intel offers is simply due to economics. For every $1 that IBM or Motorola takes in from Apple, Intel rakes in $40 or $50 selling chips to the Windows world. So it takes IBM or Motorola much longer to invest in building a new multi-billion dollar chip facility for manufacturing Apple processors than it takes Intel to make enough for a new plant for Pentium chips. Also, the amount that Intel can devout to designing processors creates a faster turnaround time than what competitors can muster.
IBM spent at least 2 billion dollars creating the new Fishkill facility with the vew that demand for their chips would increase dramatically. Well, it turns out that it hasn't and IBM is losing money on chip manufacturing.
IBM created the Power4 knowing that they could hide the several thousand dollars cost of designing and manucturing each chip in high priced servers. Making a cut down version for use in Apple and IBM computers is simply a extension of the Power4 core sales. IBM would not have had the financial incentive to create a PowerPC processor for Apple from scratch.
Likewise Motorola does not have the financial incentive to design a PowerPC processor that would only be used for Macs. Motorola would not have the means to sell a Apple PowerPC derivitive for several thousand dollars each in a high priced computer. So, essentially they are stuck with having to make a low priced PowerPC processor for Apple's use than can also be used in other markets.
IBM will have a increasingly difficult time trying to keep up with Intel in server processors. IBM will be coming out with the Power5 which will run upt to 4 times faster than a Power4 computer. Intel intends to put two Itanium processors on one chip which will nearly halve the price of each processor. Then in mid decade Intel will be producing Itanium processors that have about 10 times the performance of the current Itanium chips. As a IBM engineer stated in a forum a few months back, 'how much longer can IBM stay ahead of Intel, when Intel has such deep pockets?'
Why not, according to you Motorola's Altivec technology has not advanced since 1999. It would seem that IBM would have come up with something better by now since you state that IBM is so superior to Motorola.
Intel will be rolling out Prescott processors on a 90-nm process in the fourth quarter of 2003. Where is IBM's 90-nm process for the 970?
Also IBM intends to come out with strained silicon on the 65-nm process. Intel will introduce strained silicon with Prescott at the 90-nm process level which will boost its performance by about 10%.
Apple has added the G5 to the Mac lineup, its not necessary at this time to have it replace the G4 or G3. Now Apple has more to processors to choose from and yet you advocate that Apple reduce their choices and simply go with a single design in the G5. Having the G3, G4 and G5 enables Apple to target each market segment much better than if they relied on the G5 for everything. The G5 will never match the low power use of the G3, nor will it come close to the low power use that the G4 will be made at. The G5 has advantages, but its power use is not a advantage when it comes to portables.
Your confusing instruction set with chip architecture. PPC is an instruction set and AMD does not use it whatsoever.
Sun wants nothing to do with Apple because of past history. AMD, however, might see Apple as a source of turnaround.
Why would a lot of Motorola chip designers come to work for a company that only designed motherboards?
What financial advantage would Apple have to design processors? The processors would only be used in Macs and that is a very small segment of the 133 million+ PC sales per year. Designing their own processors would only add to the costs of making each Mac. Apple needs off the shelf hardware to compete on price and performance with the Wintel crowd. It's becoming increasingly difficult for Apple to keep using PowerPC processors and the G5 processors are probably the last hope for Apple to continue using a PowerPC processor instead of X86 chips.
The personal computer market and the car market are completely different. Personal computers have become commodities much like cell phones, tvs and cd players. Apple needs to have market share in order to have developers continue creating applications and also to lower costs of building each computer so that their product can compete on price/performance. Apple has been losing not only market share in the last four years, but also Mac sales have been falling overall. Meanwhile, except for one year, personal computers have been increasing in sales over the last four years. So, Apple has been shrinking in sales while the overall personal market has grown. That cannot continue with any hope of Apple remaining a personal computer manufacturer when each Mac would be slower, have much less software, and sold at a much higher price.
I clearly pointed out that the G5 was not intended for the Apple market on Motorola's roadmap way back in 2001.
The G3 is made on a smaller process size than the current G4. On the same process size the 1.3 GHz 7457 will clearly outperform the 900 MHz 750FX.
970's Altivec has the same amount of instructions as the G4. IBM lists the 970 as having Altivec and Altivec is a trademarked name by Motorola. Therefore the 970 is using Motorola's Altivec.
Really? Does the G3 have Altivec or a L3 cache? The G3 has 4 pipeline stages and the G4 has 7. The G3 can use up to a 200 MHz bus and the G4 can use a 167 MHz bus. With the use of a L3 cache, the G4 overcomes the G3s speed advantage of a faster bus. The G3 does have double the L2 cache of the G4 and that is a advantage, but the 7457 will have the same L2 cache size as the 750FX, so the 750FX will no longer have an advantage there.
IBM just recently announced the 750GX that will move the 750 design up to 1.1 GHz and a doubling of L2 cache to 1 MB. That still won't overcome the speed advantage of the 7457 which lists up to 1.3 GHz and can reach speeds of 1.8 GHz on higher voltage chips intended for Apple's market.
If you'll notice Apple will still be selling G4 Macs when the G5 is released. There are no indications yet from Apple that the G5 will displace either the G3 or the G4. It looks like the G5 is simply an additional choice for Apple.
Your claim is that part of the reason Apple lost market share was due to Motorola's slow development of the G4. Then you go on to state that a reason G5 Power Macs will not sell as well as G4 Power Macs once did is due to the overall personal computer market not doing well. That is simply not the case. The overall computer market is growing and in only one of the past four years did the overall market fall in sales. Fred Anderson obviously believes that the G5 Power Mac will not reach the high sales point of the G4 Power Mac even with a bigger overall personal computer market.
Apple as of yet is not pushing 64 bits. One of Apple's executives stated that Apple at this point sees very little advantage to 64 bits for their market. Its the speed increase that the G5 brings which interests Apple at this point in time.
You mean AMD which delayed the release of Opteron for several months? So this struggling company would spend several years designing and building a processor exclusively for Apple's small and shrinking market? That makes perfect sense to me.
Re: Re: Re: Motorola vs IBM
Where did Motorola every state that a G5 PowerPC processor was intended for the Apple market? All of this has been conjecture based on rumors. You jump to the conclusion that Motorola has let Apple down by not delivering on what was projected in these rumors? Geez...
If you'll take a look at Motorola's PowerPC roadmap dated November of 2001 you can see that the G5 8500 chips are intended for markets that Apple is not in. But then maybe you don't want to believe the actual information from the company that manufacturers the chips, but instead rely on rumors from unknown sources.
That should tip you off that these rumors of a 8500 G5 Motorola processor made for Apple could be a complete fabrication.
How do these rumors become facts to you when there are no known written documents where Motorola states that the G5 was ever intended for Apple's market? However, there have been internal Motorola documents posted on the internet that mention a future dual-core G4, the 7457 and a later 7457-RM.
Where did Motorola every state that a G5 PowerPC processor was intended for the Apple market? All of this has been conjecture based on rumors. You jump to the conclusion that Motorola has let Apple down by not delivering on what was projected in these rumors? Geez...
If you'll take a look at Motorola's PowerPC roadmap dated November of 2001 you can see that the G5 8500 chips are intended for markets that Apple is not in. But then maybe you don't want to believe the actual information from the company that manufacturers the chips, but instead rely on rumors from unknown sources.
That should tip you off that these rumors of a 8500 G5 Motorola processor made for Apple could be a complete fabrication.
How do these rumors become facts to you when there are no known written documents where Motorola states that the G5 was ever intended for Apple's market? However, there have been internal Motorola documents posted on the internet that mention a future dual-core G4, the 7457 and a later 7457-RM.
Apple clearly knew that IBM was going to make a Power4 processors designed for highend servers long before it went into production. It simply makes sense that Apple would make every effort to try and convince IBM to make a cut down version for the PowerPC market. Apple's Jon Rubenstein stated that Apple worked with IBM for three years on the 970. IBM did not design a PowerPC processor exclusively for Apple's market, its a derivitive of a exisiting chip design.
It wouldn't matter whether Motorola came out with a G5 processor for Apple two years ago and Motorola was the most reliable chip manufacturer in the world . Apple would still want to get a PowerPC version of the Power4 processor. The 970 is not intended as a replacement for what Motorola offers. The 970 allows Apple to expand into markets that desktop processors are not designed for. The 970 is derived from the 64-bit server market that the Power4 and Itanium are made for. Even the Pentium 4 is restricted to 1-2 processor servers and the desktop or notebook markets. The 970 can be configured up to 16 processors.
It is Altivec and IBM clearly states it in literature about the 970.
The G4 is not a IBM design.
Oh yes it is.
You mean like the 980 that you claim will come out next year? Where are ANY IBM literature or statements published on the internet that confirm that rumor? Or for that matter where does IBM claim that a 970 or 980 will reach speeds of 4 GHz or 5 GHz next year as you have claimed? IBM statements and documents have clearly shown that the 970 is expected to reach 3 Ghz a year from now and also a German IBM document stated that IBM intends to come out with a server that uses 970 processors that run up to 2.4 or 2.5 GHz. Everything beyond that seems to be based simply on unconfirmed rumors and wild speculation.
The 7457 however was clearly mentioned and shown on a roadmap posted from a internal Motorola document which stated that the 7457 will reach speeds of 1.8 GHz. This document also mentions the expected 7457-RM version.
Also, this Register articlehttp://www.theregister.co.uk/content/39/31026.html states that their staff has seen a Motorola document which indicated the company would give a presentation on the upcoming dual-core G4.
More evidence that you simply make a lot of this up. Your stating that Motorola could not produce enough processors to eliminate the G3 from the iBooks? That's simply not plausible. Apple probably held on to the G3 due to it's low cost and reasonable price/performance for low priced notebook computers. The G3 is almost 1/3 the size of the G4 and so therefore should be considerably cheaper. For the desktop market the G3 was simply outclassed by the G4. In fact Apple has stated that one of the demands by schools for a iMac replacement was to have the G4. So Apple included the G4 when the eMac was created.
You have little or no information about the production of IBM's Fishkill fabrication facility and yet you jump to the conclusion that IBM has no problem producing enough chips there.
macphoria
macrumors 6502a
1.3 GHz G4 vs 900MHz G3? I certainly hope G4 will win. It better. If it ever comes out. But my comment was on G3 and G4 of equal clock speed.
You did not even read that official IBM press release. It clearly states, "With the introduction of the PowerPC 970, IBM has taken PowerPC performance to new heights. At up to 1.8 GHz, the PowerPC 970 is the fastest PowerPC yet introduced. But the 970 employs much more than frequency to answer the demands of high-performance computing customers. The 970's multiple execution units including an AltiVec COMPATIBLE vector processor are fed by an up to 900-MHz processor interface bus, which can deliver data at a rate of up to 6.4 GBps."
Yes, what you say is true. But irrelevant to my comment. You said "How about the G3 iBooks catching up with the PC in performance." So I replied and suggested it might be doing just that, G3's non-AltiVec performance is challenging G4 and there is possibility of G3 with SIMD, 750vx. But you are replying along the lines "How about the G3 iBooks catching up with the PC in performance" and going around in circles as if I didn't reply.
I certainly hope so. If it ever comes out.
Of course not. Apple has two distinct product categories, Professional and Consumer. They need various processors for different categories. And indeed G5 IS "and additional choice for Apple." But you are again missing the point and arguing for reasons I can't understand. My comment was about IBM living up to expectations, how IBM now provides G3 and G5, which Motorola ended up not making. Nothing to do with G5 replacing anything. Your reply has nothing to do with my comment about living up to expectations. Had you said something like "Motorola's product will still be used in more Mac products (eMac, iMac, PowerBooks) than IBM's products (iBook and Power Mac) then yes you do have some point about living up to expectations.
First, it is known fact that Power Mac sales slowed down when G4's clock speed remain unchanged for a long time. Second, I said "One, when G4 PowerMacs were selling well, computer market in general was doing well. It is completely the opposite now." My point was that computer market was far more active then with internet boom and all that, resulting in high sales. It will be hard for latest sales to catch up to that level. And I don't even know how you came to conclusion about "Fred Anderson obviously believes..."
This is partially true. I do believe their current goal is to increase performance, not necesarilly 64 bit processing right away. However, they are committed to 64 bit processing, and probably same could be said for AMD, whereas Intel showed lack of interest. And this was the context of my comment about Apple "pushing" 64 bit, not necessarily the way you took it.
This is true. But my previous comment still stands. AMD has made more practical 64bit solution, which is backward compatible, therefore better partner for Apple which is also pushing 64 bit consumer level desktop processing. And if "delayed" release of a processor is such and issue for you, you should take up the issue with Motorola as well.
Now, I'm getting tired of you going off in tangents and arguing for the sake of arguing. I made effort to read your comments and grasp where you are coming from and make counter argument. But you do not fully read other people's comments nor make effort to understand different views. You have yet to acknowledge a single fault on your part, even the most blatantly obvious ones. You simply argue for the sake of arguing and go around in circles. It is prefectly normal to have different points of views and I enjoy heated discussions. But I've grown tired of your half hearted effort to communicate and interact. If a place to chase your own tail and go around in circles is what you want, then this forum is yours. I'm done.
Phil Of Mac
macrumors 68020
That roadmap is from late 2001. Earlier versions, circa 1999, definitely showed a G5 intended for personal computing applications.
Actually, on non-Altivec related tasks, the G3 often outperforms the G4.
Considering that the G4 is a newer and superior design than the G3, it is. That would be like asking the G4 to outperform the G5.
What? Sales figures magically alter a computer's performance, more than the CPU?
It's called a recession. That's when the economy goes down.
How do you know this? I thought you worked for Motorola!
This isn't like Intel. IBM doesn't produce processors, put a list price on them, and put them on sale. They sign a contract with Apple to provide them in bulk. I don't know the terms of that contract, but it's concievable that if Apple wants millions upon millions of parts, IBM will make them and lower the price. It's also possible that Apple will subsidize some of the R&D for the 970 so they can buy the parts for just above what it costs to manufacture them, which is probably not prohibitively expensive.
Man, you have been wrong on almost every thing you have said
The 970 uses the same amount of SIMD instructions as the 7450. That's due to IBM using Altivec for the 970.
Intel has several chip manufacturing facilities that use 300-mm silicon wafers, IBM has just one.
Wrong again.
Motorola is working in a collaborative effort with Phillips and STMicroelectronics to produce microprocessors. In this Silicon Strategies article Motorola's Claudine Simson states that her company will have PowerPC test chips running this summer on a 90-nm process size and 300-mm wafers in STMicroelectronics Crolles fabrication facility in France.
She also states in this June interview that a PowerPC processor made on a 130-mm process was 'now moving out'. So why doesn't Apple have a Mac computer yet that uses this processor? Quite simply because Motorola announced that the 7457 will not be in production until the fourth quarter of this year. The interview does clearly indicate that a PowerPC is already on the 130-nm process and since Apple always gets the first Motorola PowerPC processors on a new process, then its obvious that she was talking about the 7457 chips.
Motorola intends to have partners for most new fabrication facilities due to the multi-billion dollar costs of building them. Intel recently stated that only a handful of chip manufactuers with the highest revenue can now fiancially justify building a fabrication facility. Unfortunately IBM is not one of those top five revenue producers, in fact IBM is not even in the top ten. That makes it much less likely that IBM will want to create a next generation chip facility in the next 2-3 years like Intel will. Which means IBM could fall further and further behind in state of the art chip fabrication without a joint venture with other chip manufacturers.
The 970 uses the same amount of SIMD instructions as the 7450. That's due to IBM using Altivec for the 970.
Intel has several chip manufacturing facilities that use 300-mm silicon wafers, IBM has just one.
Wrong again.
Motorola is working in a collaborative effort with Phillips and STMicroelectronics to produce microprocessors. In this Silicon Strategies article Motorola's Claudine Simson states that her company will have PowerPC test chips running this summer on a 90-nm process size and 300-mm wafers in STMicroelectronics Crolles fabrication facility in France.
She also states in this June interview that a PowerPC processor made on a 130-mm process was 'now moving out'. So why doesn't Apple have a Mac computer yet that uses this processor? Quite simply because Motorola announced that the 7457 will not be in production until the fourth quarter of this year. The interview does clearly indicate that a PowerPC is already on the 130-nm process and since Apple always gets the first Motorola PowerPC processors on a new process, then its obvious that she was talking about the 7457 chips.
Motorola intends to have partners for most new fabrication facilities due to the multi-billion dollar costs of building them. Intel recently stated that only a handful of chip manufactuers with the highest revenue can now fiancially justify building a fabrication facility. Unfortunately IBM is not one of those top five revenue producers, in fact IBM is not even in the top ten. That makes it much less likely that IBM will want to create a next generation chip facility in the next 2-3 years like Intel will. Which means IBM could fall further and further behind in state of the art chip fabrication without a joint venture with other chip manufacturers.
Phil Of Mac
macrumors 68020
It's called product differentiation. If IBM could pump up the older G3 design to truly compete with the G4 in terms of speed, who would buy a G4? Then we lose Altivec, which Apple spent good time and money coding Mac OS X for.
So buy AMD, cancel everything, and use the engineers to design PPC's. If Apple had the personnel, they could surely work together with IBM at IBM facilities. Perhaps Apple and IBM could work out an arrangement much like Somerset, where Apple and IBM chip designers work together on new designs.
Many have been sold. They are simply not yet delivered. And, once again, you are missing the point. Apple wanted IBM to beat the G4 in performance. They asked them to do it with the 970, not with the G3.
SOI was an IBM invention. So were copper interconnects, a few years ago.
That's nice. But this is business, not academia. You don't get tenure for what you did 4 years ago, especially if you've slacked off since then.
The PowerPC 601, the first PowerPC processor, was designed exclusively by IBM. PowerPC is an IBM trademark. It is based on IBM's POWER technologies. Motorola was there simply to help, and to provide a friendly face to Mac users who still saw IBM as the enemy.
Hooray.
Wait, you get angry at us for using rumors, while you're just making that up!
It's manufactured by Motorola in facilities that aren't nearly as economic as Fishkill.
Phil Of Mac
macrumors 68020
I didn't know it was a religious experience for Intel.
Itanium has been a spectacular failure so far. Regardless, the PowerPC has other advantages, stemming from its superiority as a chip architecture to x86. While x86 is attempting to overcome its disadvantages, IBM and Apple can spend time and money working on the advantages of PPC.
Altivec has indeed not advanced since 1999. That's because it's in many ways a supplemental instruction set. If they wanted to advance it, they'd have to change that instruction set, and everyone would have to rewrite everything.
IBM's not interested in adding supplemental instruction sets. They're interested in making a better processor. All the better for them.
IBM has said nothing about it that I know of, but reportedly it'll be here around January or so.
The G5 can be changed so it has better power use. That'll probably happen at 90 nm. As for reasons to abandon the G3 and G4, well, the G3 is too far behind in terms of technology, while the G4 is made by Motorola, who has been proven to be unreliable. Additionally, with the G3 we saw Apple move to a "one processor design for all computers" model. This was so even the lowly iMac had the same type of ass-kicking processor that the most powerful Power Mac had (albeit at a lower frequency). Given Motorola's production problems with the G4 (they've never been able to produce enough), Apple couldn't do that with the G4. The G5 will undoubtedly be plentiful enough to install across the line.
Regardless, AMD processors actually use a proprietary AMD instruction set. There's an x86 frontend attached to the processor which translates from AMD to x86. I'm willing to bet that with the technology sharing AMD has done with PowerPC chip makers, the internal AMD instruction set is not that dissimilar from PPC. An AMD to PPC translation frontend, much like the AMD to x86 frontend, may not be unfeasible.
If the AMD instruction set is more similar to PPC than we thought, then AMD might just switch to the PPC instruction set, and design a PPC to x86 frontend.
Apple's already consulted with IBM and Motorola on the design of the G3. Without a doubt, Apple already has some people who know something about chip design. If the reports of Motorola chip designers going to Apple is true, then perhaps Apple is going to design processors.
Apple already pays the cost for IBM or Motorola to design their processors. Neither IBM or Motorola wants to produce processors just for Apple. Apple does. And if Apple can move the costs in-house for chip design, then they only have to rely on IBM or whoever for production. There's also a possibility of Apple and IBM doing joint processor design, much like IBM and Motorola once did.
Apple is dying, eh?
You know what, though, you've missed the number one point. In this recession, only two PC makers are profitable: Dell and Apple. If Apple was profitable in spite of Motorola, then with the G5, Apple can be even more profitable. With G5's across the line, Apple will have the price-performance advantage over almost every other PC. Within a short time, I think IBM can surpass Intel in performance in a clear and significant way. The PowerPC has almost always outperformed Intel. The one clear exception--the G4--was the fault of Motorola. With the G5 and the partnership with IBM, Apple's future is bright indeed.
Phil Of Mac
macrumors 68020
In 2001, Motorola gave up on developing the G5 for the Mac because of a serious design flaw. Pre-2001 roadmaps show the 8500 G5 as a personal computing CPU.
IIRC, the 970's implementation of Altivec has 160 instructions. The 74xx's implementation has 162 instructions.
Apple can't redesign all their products at once. Check again in 18 months. The G3 and G4 will be dead.
Staying at 500 MHz for a year does give you a price/performance disadvantage.
We're in a recession. The PC market is in a slump.
I've decided you're stuck in the 90's, Phinius. You think the PC market is growing, Motorola is still a reliable chip maker, and Apple is dying. All three were true in the 90's. None are true today.
Phil Of Mac
macrumors 68020
By that reasoning the 970 would be in the Xserve. It's in the Power Mac, which is intended for content creation professionals. Thus, the 970 is intended for general personal computing because it blows the doors off the G4.
It's been stated that IBM and Apple are working on the next generation after the G5. It pretty much follows from that that they're working on a Power5 derivative which will come out around the same time as the Power5.
I was exaggerating when I said we'd be at 4 or 5 GHz next year. Obviously you didn't look up the meaning of the word "hyperbole" like I told you to.
Motorola is less reliable than most rumors sites.
Given Motorola's production problems ever since the release of the G4, it's very plausible.
IBM is using Altivec in the 970 design, so its stands to reason that IBM could have added Altivec to the G3. Oh wait!, IBM is rumored to be being just that with a 750VX version. So since IBM added Altivec to the 970 design and still intends to use the G4 and G3, then Apple would not have lost the G4 is IBM matched its performance with the G3.
As it now stands IBM intends to move the 750 performance up a few notches by doubling its L2 cache and bumping up the frequency by 200 MHz. That will still put its performance below the G4 due to Altivec. If IBM does add Altivec to a 750 chip design, by that time Motorola will have put two G4 processors on one chip.
Are you beginning to see how Apple is coordinating the chip development from both IBM and Motorola? Instead of duplicate chip performances from the two companies, Apple is making sure that each chip fits in a different Mac product. But that still doesn't justify IBM staying below the performance of Motorola's chips if indeed Motorola was doing such a lousy job for Apple. It's more like Intel was simply running away from the competition and Motorola was tagged as the bad guy in all this since they were the preemmenent chip maker for Apple. If Apple would have kept a 30-50% market share, then Motorola would have little trouble keeping up with Intel. Instead Apple chose a road that started in the early 80s that lead to a falling market share, which in turn led to them falling behind in performance and prices compared to the much larger Windows computer makers.
So Apple should buy AMD and take on the companies debt? What in the world would be the advantage to Apple for them to buy AMD? That would just increase Apple's overhead in making Macs.
Apple is already working closely with IBM as I am sure they are doing with Motorola. Jon Rubenstein even stated that Apple worked with IBM for three years to get the 970 in production.
Apple needed to step up in performance in order to keep up with Intel's Pentium 4 processors and neither of the PowerPC chip manufacturers that would sink money into designing a chip architecture just for Apple's personal computer market. Motorola had just come out with the G4 in mid year of 1999 and a processor core design has a life cycle of usually 4-5 years.
Apple's discussions with IBM probably were more along the lines of trying to design the 970 to keep pace with Intel's Pentium chips rather than trying to beat Motorola's G4. In order to accomplish that Apple probably insisted that Altivec be included so that the 970 would have a speed advantage in vector processing if not in integer or frequency performance.
IBM did get there first. However, Motorola seems to have a different SOI method than IBM. Intel however does not feel the costs of SOI justify the gains in performance so they have yet to implement it and just recently Intel started using copper wiring.
Also IBM announced a strained silicon process well ahead of Intel and yet Intel will be introducing it a process generation ahead of IBM.
If Altivec has grown outmoded, then IBM should have come up with a different vector unit for the 970 instead of using Altivec.
The truth is Intel has simply stepped up the pace to the degree that few chip makers can even hope to keep up without losing money at it. IBM has been able to design a Power4 processor that would take on Sun's UltraSparc, but IBM is also losing money on their hardware division for some time due to Intel cutting prices and Wintel servers encroaching on Power server sales.
PowerPC is a instruction set and the 'G' moniker is designating what generation the chip is for Apple or Motorola. IBM does not use the G designation. Likewise the chip designs are independently coming from Motorola and IBM, the 'G' or PowerPC designation does not indicate similiarities in chip design.
The dual 2 Ghz G5 Power Mac is priced three hundred dollars more than the dual 1.42 GHz Power Mac that it replaced. That alone should give an indication that Apple is paying about the same or slightly more for the 2 Ghz G5 than for the 1.42 GHz G4. Motorola listed the 1 GHz 7455 at either two or three hundred dollars when it was first announced. The 1.42 GHz 7455 running at a higher voltage and the addition of a low k-dielectric should raise the price of each chip considerably beyond what the 1 Ghz chips sell for. In fact I believe the Register speculated that Apple may have payed over four hundred dollars for each 1.42 Ghz G4 processor based on what the going rate for the processors are on the open market. Seeing how Intel charges up to six hundred dollars for topend Pentium 4 processors, it's more than likely that Apple is paying several hundred dollars per each G5 or topend G4 processor.
So no, I'm not exactly making that up, it's just a rather educated guess as to what Apple is paying for processors. But, there is abosolutely no way that Apple is paying under a hundred dollars per chip for G5 processors. IBM would not be stupid enough to sell it to them for that price when Intel gets up to $600 for each topend Pentium 4 or Xeon processor.
The 7457 maybe produced in Motorola's older chip facilities, but they intend to make some 90-nm PowerPC processors at the Crolles facility on 300-mm wafers. Since Apple gets Motorola's topend processors, then it's obvious that a G4 designed for Apple's use will be made at the Crolles fabrication facility.
Phil Of Mac
macrumors 68020
Re: Man, you have been wrong on almost every thing you have said
Motorola isn't quite reliable, now is it? So what if they do? IBM already has PowerPC 970's running on their fabrication facility in New Jersey!
So Motorola now has 90 nm *this summer*? When Intel won't have it until the end of the year? I thought you said Motorola couldn't keep up with Intel!
They promised it would be bumped up to May. They lied.
Intel's just spewing out some FUD. They have a vested interest in derailing other chip makers.
IBM right now can make money from other chip designers going to IBM for fabrication. If IBM does that, then they'll have a profitable business.
Motorola isn't quite reliable, now is it? So what if they do? IBM already has PowerPC 970's running on their fabrication facility in New Jersey!
So Motorola now has 90 nm *this summer*? When Intel won't have it until the end of the year? I thought you said Motorola couldn't keep up with Intel!
They promised it would be bumped up to May. They lied.
Intel's just spewing out some FUD. They have a vested interest in derailing other chip makers.
IBM right now can make money from other chip designers going to IBM for fabrication. If IBM does that, then they'll have a profitable business.
Phil Of Mac
macrumors 68020
I don't buy those rumors and neither do you.
IBM doesn't use the G4. In fact, IBM doesn't use the G3 either. In fact, I have no damn clue what you're trying to say.
And in the meantime, the G5 will be down to 90 nm and across the entire product line, and the G6 will be released. So it's useless to bother with the G3 and G4.
If Apple was already dedicated to Altivec, then they couldn't move away from it with a shift back to the G3. Besides, the G3 was still an inferior design to the G4. Apple didn't *want* IBM to outperform the G4.
Intel was running away because Motorola was stuck at 500 MHz.
Funny then how the PowerPC always outperformed the competition, until the G4 at least.
Yes, but I'm saying that, just like when Motorola and IBM collaborated on chip design, Apple and IBM should collaborate the same way, with Apple doing some actual chip design work.
Which is why it's necessary to use Power deriviatives, like Apple's doing with IBM.
Or floating point for that matter.
Of course they didn't approach it in terms of beating the G4. It wasn't hard to beat the G4. But Apple still wanted the G3 kept below the G4 for business reasons. And they wanted the 970 to compete with the Pentium IV.
So everyone has to rewrite their apps again? Altivec isn't a bad technology. But then again, it's not proof that Motorola is a good chip designer either. It's proof that they were a good designer four years ago, but today, they're not the same company. Pointing to Altivec to say that they are is a fallacy.
It's hard to keep up when you're stuck at 500 MHz for a year.
You don't think the cost of developing a completely new motherboard and using Serial ATA, PCI-X, and AGP 8x had anything to do with it?
Fair enough. When it was new, how much did the G3 processor cost? How about competing Pentium II's? It was perfectly plausible to use the G3 across all product lines, remember.
For all the superiority that the PowerPC has in comparison to the X86, Intel is still able to get the X86 chips to a higher performance level than even the 970.
Intel is willing to spend ten years creating a market for the Itanium processors with a belief that they can use the same off-the-shelf sales idea for the server market. Recent announcements that IBM and Dell will use Itanium indicates a growing market.
Unfortunately IBM and Apple cannot spend more time and money than Intel, because Intel is bigger than the next three or four chip makers combined and IBM is not even in the top ten chip producers. Intel simply has much deeper pockets than IBM or Apple can spend on chip design and manufacture.
Boy, I've never heard so many excuses for why a company cannot or will not pass a competitor in performance. You seem to look at this as simply a good guy, bad guy scenerio. IBM is totally good and Motorola is totally bad, even though IBM has years of opportunity to pass Motorola in desktop processors performance. Ultimately IBM did pass Motorola, but only by make a version of a chip designed for the highend server market down to the PowerPC desktop market.
Why should IBM even try to come up with a better design than Altivec when Altivec is already faster than any other vector design for personal computers?
It takes time and money to move to a updated processor technology. It's more than likely that IBM will move the 970 to a smaller process size before a Power5 derived version comes out. If IBM moved the Power5 design over to the G5 a few months after the 970 was released, then IBM would have had little time to recoup the investment that was made in the Power4 derived 970 chips.
The frequencies that Apple now uses for the G5 will uses a lot less power on a smaller 90-nm process. There might be a 1.8 GHz 970 that can run at about 20 watts on the smaller process. Still the Pentium M should be well beyond 2 Ghz by that time.
I haven't seen much proof that Motorola has been unreliable in recent years other than that they cannot match the speeds that Intel is putting in their chips. But that's not an indication of being unreliable. That could simply be due to a lack of funds to keep up with the competition, which is more likely the case for much of the disappointment.
It's difficult now to have one processor that works extremely well in several different markets. The server market has different demands for chip performance than the desktop and the notebook market has the requirement of low power use which is not needed in the desktop market.
If Motorola has not been able to produce enough G4 processors, then it necessarily follows that Apple is always running behind on G4 equipped Mac orders. The reality is that Apple usually only falls behind in filling G4 Mac orders when a update or new model is introduced.
AMD pays Intel a license fee to use the X86 instruction set. It's difficult just from that extra financial burden to keep up with Intel.
What technology sharing? IBM and AMD have entered into a collaboration where IBM shares chip making technology with AMD and Motorola belongs to the HyperTransport consortum. But that does not mean that the chip designs share a whole lot in common.
I don't believe that AMD would be too interested in switching to the PPC instruction set when the X86 market is much bigger and more lucrative financially.
Have you noticed how Apple doesn't design any hardware other than the box and motherboard? It's just much less expensive to leave hardware design and manufacturing to companies that can make them in much larger quantities and Apple desperately needs to lower costs for production, not increase them.
It's cheaper for Apple if they can get a processor design that is made for a larger market than just their use. The 970 will also be used by IBM and it is derived from the Power4. That spreads the cost of developing the core design over a much larger sales than if Apple went it alone. Also, Motorola's designs that Apple uses are also sold to other manufacturers, which in turn lowers the cost per each chip for Apple. Unfortunately for Motorola there isn't to much demand for a high performance PowerPC processor other than IBM or Apple. Since its unlikely that IBM would use anything that Motorola comes up with, that leaves only Apple for a computer customer of the chip.
Apple has been able to make a profit in spite of falling sales and a lack of profit on computer sales (Apple has been making most of their profit off of interest on savings for two years in a row)
Also Dell grew by about 28% in personal computer sales this past quarter in the United States while Apple's sales shrunk.
If anything, in the foreseeable future Apple will only have the possibility of a price/performance advantage against the higher priced Intel chip equipped computers. It would be extremely difficult at this point for Apple to have a better price/performance than the low priced Wintel computers without resorting to using the extra income from software and services to offset the losses from lowering hardware prices.
If a companies sales have fallen significantly in comparison to the overall market through the years it doesn't make sense to believe that the hardware designed for their products will outperform the product that has the majority of sales. Motorola simply does not have the money to keep up with Intel on the desktop and Apple has very little chance of supplying them with enough market share to do that.
The G5 has a very good chance of outperforming the Pentium chips in the next year. However, even with that, Apple's Fred Anderson stated that the G5 Power Mac would probably never reach the sales level that the G4 Power Mac had years ago. One of his reasons for that happening is a shift in sales to notebook computers. However the overall personal computer market is growing and not shrinking. Dell and HP are increasing sales at a rate beyond the average for the overall personal computer market. So if Apple's sales are depressed mainly due to the lack of speed from Motorola, then having the G5 should allevitate the sales slide and even gain a significant market share back. Unfortunately it doesn't look like Fred Anderson believes that will happen.
Re: Re: Man, you have been wrong on almost every thing you have said
Apple announced G5 Power Macs well ahead of actually shipping them. It could very well be that Apple could announce Macs with 7457 processors about the same time that the G5 Power Macs are being shipped. Which would be in the next two weeks or so. That could coincide with the official announcement that some Best Buy stores will be carrying Mac computers. Hmmm...do you think that Apple would put computers into Best Buy stores that would be outmoded in a handful of weeks. It's more likely that Apple coincided the introduction in Best Buy stores with much more competitive computers being made.
Those are test chips, PowerPC production is not scheduled to begin until next year.
Where did Motorola state this? You are saying they went from stating March samples to full production in May? That simply is totally unrealistic to expect that and its more than likely to be just a rumor. It takes months and not a few weeks to get a sample chip into full production.
Intel is the leader in getting new process sizes into production. They are months ahead of other manufacturers.
It's tough to say at what point IBM would make money on the Fishkill facility. There is a glut of chip manufacturing capability right now due to smaller process sizes creating a higher production limit in each facility and over expectations in chip sales.
Apple announced G5 Power Macs well ahead of actually shipping them. It could very well be that Apple could announce Macs with 7457 processors about the same time that the G5 Power Macs are being shipped. Which would be in the next two weeks or so. That could coincide with the official announcement that some Best Buy stores will be carrying Mac computers. Hmmm...do you think that Apple would put computers into Best Buy stores that would be outmoded in a handful of weeks. It's more likely that Apple coincided the introduction in Best Buy stores with much more competitive computers being made.
Those are test chips, PowerPC production is not scheduled to begin until next year.
Where did Motorola state this? You are saying they went from stating March samples to full production in May? That simply is totally unrealistic to expect that and its more than likely to be just a rumor. It takes months and not a few weeks to get a sample chip into full production.
Intel is the leader in getting new process sizes into production. They are months ahead of other manufacturers.
It's tough to say at what point IBM would make money on the Fishkill facility. There is a glut of chip manufacturing capability right now due to smaller process sizes creating a higher production limit in each facility and over expectations in chip sales.
If these rumors are true, then its likely that a Altivec equipped G3 maybe up to a year away, so its a little to early to get expectations up.
I meant to say Apple's use of the G3 and G4.
It would be useless to bother with the G3 and G4 if Apple was making all three chips. The G3 and G4 still have some uses for Apple competing some of the Intel designs. There are low and ultra low watt Pentium chips that the G3 would stack up well against and the G4 can be quite competitive with a dual-core design. You have to remember that Apple is up against the Pentium M and Celeron chips also. The G3 and G4 maybe a better match against these chips in some cases than the 9XX series of chips.
Intel started running away from Apple after Microsoft came out with Windows 95. With a graphical user interface much like Apple's there was much less reason to buy a Mac. The money from Windows 95 sales created a huge advantage for Intel and the rate of momentum just kept increasing with Windows 98.
Motorola had to have started on the G4 design well over a year before it came out. The G4 started out at a top speed of 500 MHz, the Pentium 4 started out at a top speed of 1.5 GHz. That's a tripling of frequency over the G4 design that Motorola could not overcome without coming out with a whole new chip architecture. That wasn't about to happen since chip architectures typically last about 4-5 years. Motorola was stuck running behind the Pentium 4 yet even still they were able to almost triple the frequency of the G4 since its introduction. Apple knew that they had to take a giant step up in performance to try and catch up to the overwhelming advantage that the Wintel side had with much bigger sales. The only realistic way to do that in a PowerPC chip design was to convince IBM to create a smaller version of the Power4 processor.
The pace of development on the Wintel side picked up as the sales increased. It was due in no small part with Microsoft closing the gap with the Mac user interface. Motorola simply wasn't getting enough money flowing in from sales to Apple to keep up with the increasingly deep pockets of Intel.
Apple also knew that they were in trouble on the operating system side and that is why they spent a large sum of money to buy up an existing OS to replace what they had. It wasn't just in processors that Apple was falling behind, it was the whole ball of wax.
Yes, but I'm saying that, just like when Motorola and IBM collaborated on chip design, Apple and IBM should collaborate the same way, with Apple doing some actual chip design work.
That certainly spread out the cost of development over a larger volume of processors both for the PowerPC and Power chips. In other words IBM's server platform is joining forces with Apple's desktop platform. Now IBM can spend more money to speed up development for the Power processors and the PowerPC side can take advantage of some of the strides made for large servers. Luckily for Apple that IBM decided to make the Power4 a dual processor design from the beginning. If they had decided on a uniprocessor design then it would have been much more difficult to shrink it enough to get a low cost design for Apple's use. Apple would have been stuck with no place to turn too except perhaps Intel.
Motorola is a leader in chip manufacturing and embedded processors sales. Unfortunately Apple doesn't have the sales for Motorola to be the leader in desktop processors. If Apple would have chosen a different route in the early 80s it might be a different story today with Motorola being top dog.
It's also hard to keep up when Windows 95 and 98 came out.
It's perfectly plausible that IBM could find ways to reduce the costs of 9XX production, but its tough to do when they must also try and keep up the highend Pentium processors. Dramatically shrinking the size of the chip would reduce costs, but it would also limit performance. Intel reduces costs on the Pentium design by reducing cache size and bus performance. That product is the Celeron.
Phil Of Mac
macrumors 68020
At this point in time, yes. In the near future, due to advantages inherent to PowerPC, IBM will surpass them. The PowerPC is what gives the Mac an advantage, because despite Intel's money, they're working with ancient technology
And that's cheating?
Listen to me: THE G3 WAS NEVER MEANT TO OUTPERFORM THE G4. NO ONE EVER ASKED IBM TO MAKE A G3 THAT WOULD OUTPERFORM THE G4, BECAUSE THAT WOULD BE REDUNDANT. THE 970 WAS ALREADY IN DEVELOPMENT.
You were the one saying that IBM would. I don't have any problem with Altivec.
I'm predicting 18 months until the Power5 derivative comes out.
So? The PPC is faster at any given clockspeed than the Pentium. Obviously that doesn't mean that a 500 MHz G4 will outperform a 1 GHz Pentium 4, but at 1.8 GHz vs. 2 GHz, the PPC would be very competitive.
I already listed the proof, your blindness to it is not my failt.
At 90nm, no one really worries about it anymore.
Which is where a good part of the demand is. Once they have the chips fabricating at a good rate, it can keep up with sales. But whenever the chip is upgraded and they start a new run through fabrications, they always have problems.
Motorola and AMD have shared some technology in the past.
If you were paying attention you'd know that I was suggesting that AMD could design a chip that would be compatible with either instruction set after simply changing the frontend.
Apple's losing money on computer sales? Where do you get this?
I don't know, an eMac with a G5 at a low clockspeed 9 months from now would probably still be belew $1000. While it wouldn't be $600, the ratio of price to performance would still be better.
Apple's here to make full-featured computers. We aren't competing with eMachines.
The shift in sales to notebook computers is the exact strategy Apple is seeking to capitalize on, if only the 7457's would arrive on time.
Phil Of Mac
macrumors 68020
A year away from now, Apple could migrate entirely to the G5.
A 90nm G5 would be power-efficient enough to slay the Pentium-M. As for the Celeron, Apple has never competed in the "cheap crap to check your email with" market.
Uh, you do realize I'm talking about processor performance and not market share? Windows 95 didn't give Intel an edge in processor performance. Keeping the G4 at 500 MHz did.
450 MHz. It was supposed to come out at 500 MHz, but an "errata" in the chip design forced a ceiling of 450 MHz.
The Pentium 4 was released a year after the G4. The fact that the G4 went an entire year at the same speed was Motorola's fault.
Microsoft didn't close the gap.
At the release of the PowerPC in 1994, it outperformed the Pentium. This lasted for several years. In 1996, Apple almost died as a company. In 1997, the turnaround began with the G3, which outperformed the Pentium II. In 1998, the iMac started Apple's recovery. In 1999, the G4 was released at 450 MHz, still competitive with the faster-clocked yet still comparable in speed Pentium III of the time. Then the G4 stayed at 500 MHz for a year. That is when the Pentium III and 4 gained a significant performance advantage.
Well, since Windows 95 has such an effect on processor speed 🙄
How many years now has Intel stayed ahead of the PPC using so called ancient technology?
Let me get this straight. Apple let their sales slide for three years because Motorola did not supply them with an adequate amount of fast processors in a timely manner. Also Apple did not want to get faster processors from IBM because that would surpass those inadequate G4 processors from that awful manufacturer Motorola. Well now that sure involves a lot of business sense.
The truth is that Microsoft and Intel picked up the pace and left Apple behind with dropping sales and a ever smaller market share. You can lay most of the blame on Motorola if you want, but the fact is that Microsoft and Intel played a much better hand than Apple and won.
That's a reasonable estimate and if it arrives sooner then you will be pleasantly surprised.
The trouble with that is the Pentium 4 is at 3.2 GHz and the fastest PowerPC processor is running at 2 GHz.
Heat and power use is becoming one of the biggest concerns of chip designers. Making a smaller chip concentrates the power use into a smaller area. The G5 is probably limited to about 1.2 GHz right now without resorting to a heatsink and a heatsink would make it too thick to fit into a slim cased PowerBook. That's the reason the Pentium 4s are only in thicker notebook designs.
It's tough to get production up to meet short spikes in demand. When sales fall a couple of months later then Apple would be stuck with too much capacity if they quickly met the demand of new products.
Chip design is not that simple. It took three years of working with IBM to get a PowerPC version of the Power4. At first glance it would seem fairly easy to just split the Power4 in two and come up with a PowerPC version in a few short easy steps. If that is true then why did it take three years?
From Apple's own quarterly reports. In fact of the last four fiscal quarters Apple lost money on overall sales minus expenses in three of those quarters. Of the last eleven quarters Apple lost money in six of them on sales minus operating expenses. The losses started around the time when the Pentium 4 was introduced. In fact Apple's sales plunged so far and fast in the Christmas quarter of 2000 that they lost 420 million dollars from sales minus expenses in that quarter. Apple's sales have never even come close to the level that they were at before that quarter.
Apple needs to work on getting Macs made that sell at a much lower entry level price. Only using a G5 processor that costs two hundred or more per chip won't get them there. That cost to Apple could be at least 2/3 of the retail selling price of the computer.
You may believe that Apple can survive by only serving the classes and not the masses, but Apple losing money on sales in three of the last four quarters tells me that Apple does not believe the same thing you do. If Apple did believe what you seem to then they would have kept prices at the same level or even raised them to make sure they kept a good profit on sales. Obviously Apple saw trying to keep sales up to be more important than short term profits.
Apple has been using the excuse of shifting to notebook computers because their desktop computers have been way off the mark in price/performance. Now Apple's thin and light notebook designs are being attacked by Wintel competitors using Intel's Banias chip.
Re: Man, you have been wrong on almost every thing you have said
Both of you are right (or wrong). IBM does not use "Altivec" because "Altivec" is a registered trademark of Motorola. IBM uses "VMX" which is a 100% Altivec-compatible instruction set. Apple calls it "Velocity Engine" no matter what the vendor calls it. The three of them developed this technology together, but IBM pulled out of production for the reasons you mention.
Personally, I don't think Altivec's presence in the G5 makes a case for either side. This was a strategic error on Apple's part (pumping up Velocity for the G4) that was further compounded by developing Velocity-specific optimizations into the OS to make up for a chip that was lagging behind others (not just Intel, AMD too).
What Motorola did really bothers me but I can't bring myself to place the whole blame on them. Intel was cherry-picking their best designers and redefining the term "predatory hiring practices" and Apple had just wiped out a lucrative market just before the G4 was taped out (by shutting down the clone market). So who else buys such a chip: BeOS? LinuxPPC? Amiga?
Intel has two 300mm fabs and were planning to build two more (one has since been cancelled, the other will go online in 2005 or 2006). One of the current fabs is development-only and the other has yet to ship a single chip out of it's doors (Fab11X). The confusion (deception?) lies in that the latter's sister-fab (Fab11) which is a 9" fab and produces the current Pentium 4.
There is a lot of industry evidence that Intel is having serious issues with their 12" fabs. Prescott (aka Pentium 5) debuting at 90nm with 11X producing all the world's P5s is not going to happen this year (it's already been delayed from 3Q to 4Q). If Prescott debuts, I'd guess that they'll use 130nm design rules while the expect to ramp it up to "real" 90nm as time goes on (a trick they did very successfully with the P4, I might add). (11 and 11X combined could satisfy all the demand for the thing for quite some time.)
With the industry demand being so depressed, I seriously question whether Intel needs a 12" fab when their 9" fabs keep up with all current demands for the P4 with capacity to spare. As you noted, they seem to be the only CPU manufacturer actually making a profit on microcomputer CPUs. (I think this might change as IBM seems to have a good setup here of migrating their POWER stuff to PowerPC at low cost.)
I'm taking you to task here because your comment is misleading. Fishkill is a superior facility because it has a proven design and production record as a 12" Fab. It is not making money most-likely because demand is so low right now, certainly lower than anyone would have predicted in 2000 when they broke ground on Fishkill. It is not, however, as unique as a lot of Mac pundits would have you believe, so I understand your frustration.
Both of you are right (or wrong). IBM does not use "Altivec" because "Altivec" is a registered trademark of Motorola. IBM uses "VMX" which is a 100% Altivec-compatible instruction set. Apple calls it "Velocity Engine" no matter what the vendor calls it. The three of them developed this technology together, but IBM pulled out of production for the reasons you mention.
Personally, I don't think Altivec's presence in the G5 makes a case for either side. This was a strategic error on Apple's part (pumping up Velocity for the G4) that was further compounded by developing Velocity-specific optimizations into the OS to make up for a chip that was lagging behind others (not just Intel, AMD too).
What Motorola did really bothers me but I can't bring myself to place the whole blame on them. Intel was cherry-picking their best designers and redefining the term "predatory hiring practices" and Apple had just wiped out a lucrative market just before the G4 was taped out (by shutting down the clone market). So who else buys such a chip: BeOS? LinuxPPC? Amiga?
Intel has two 300mm fabs and were planning to build two more (one has since been cancelled, the other will go online in 2005 or 2006). One of the current fabs is development-only and the other has yet to ship a single chip out of it's doors (Fab11X). The confusion (deception?) lies in that the latter's sister-fab (Fab11) which is a 9" fab and produces the current Pentium 4.
There is a lot of industry evidence that Intel is having serious issues with their 12" fabs. Prescott (aka Pentium 5) debuting at 90nm with 11X producing all the world's P5s is not going to happen this year (it's already been delayed from 3Q to 4Q). If Prescott debuts, I'd guess that they'll use 130nm design rules while the expect to ramp it up to "real" 90nm as time goes on (a trick they did very successfully with the P4, I might add). (11 and 11X combined could satisfy all the demand for the thing for quite some time.)
With the industry demand being so depressed, I seriously question whether Intel needs a 12" fab when their 9" fabs keep up with all current demands for the P4 with capacity to spare. As you noted, they seem to be the only CPU manufacturer actually making a profit on microcomputer CPUs. (I think this might change as IBM seems to have a good setup here of migrating their POWER stuff to PowerPC at low cost.)
I'm taking you to task here because your comment is misleading. Fishkill is a superior facility because it has a proven design and production record as a 12" Fab. It is not making money most-likely because demand is so low right now, certainly lower than anyone would have predicted in 2000 when they broke ground on Fishkill. It is not, however, as unique as a lot of Mac pundits would have you believe, so I understand your frustration.
Apple could but they would probably have to raise the prices on most of those products, just like they did with the Power Mac when it moved from the G4 to the G5. Raising the minimum price level will reduce overall sales and market share. Which in turn lowers the amount of developers writing applications and raises the cost of parts and manufacturing per each unit sold.
The Pentium-M is up to 1.7 GHz on a 130-nm process. The 970 could probably fit into a PowerBook at the 1.2 GHz frequency. That's almost a 50% frequency advantage that the Pentium-M has over the 970 for thin and light notebook use.
Moving both the Pentium-M and the 970 to a smaller 90-nm process size reduces the watt use for both designs. For notebooks the 970 would move up in frequency and also the Pentium M. I see no advantage for the 970 compared to the Pentium-M if both are moved to a smaller process size.
Maybe that's one of the reasons Apple is losing sales and market share since the average selling price of a desktop PC now is about $749, which is below the minimum price that Apple offers in a desktop computer.
Or is it that more people won't buy a product when prices are lowered significantly and the competitors do not have to reduce prices also in order to keep sales from falling? That would seem to run counter to what most economists teach.
So Sony reduced the prices for the Playstation 2, then the Xbox and Gamecube followed shortly thereafter simply because it looked like a fun thing to do at the time? Microsoft and Nintendo were not the least bit worried that Sony could take away sales from them by reducing the price of a competing product?
You mean Windows 95 did not boost Microsoft OS sales considerably, which in turn lead to more sales and profits for Intel? And Windows 98 did not give Intel a big boost in sales and cash flow when more people bought Wintel computers?
It seems that Intel had a problem similar to that when they had to recall chips. Also AMD had delayed the Opteron processor for several months and IBM kept the Power4 at about the same frequency for months and months. In fact the progression rate for frequency improvements in the Power4 chip has crept along with the Power4 going from about 1.1 Ghz at its introduction to a top speed of 1.7 Ghz now.
You mean to say that due to Motorola keeping the G4 at 500 Mhz for a year it has had an adverse effect on Apple's computer sales every since?
Apple announced the 500 MHz Power Mac on August 31 of 1999. In the next 41 months Motorola increased the frequency by 2.84 times that.
Intel introduced the first Pentium 4 that ran up to 1.5 GHz on November 20th in the year 2000. Intel increased it's frequency in the next 31 months by 2.1 times that.
Motorola may not have gained any ground in frequency increases with the G4 against the Pentium 4, but they were able to stay at about the same pace of frequency improvements that Intel made with the Pentium 4.
You mean DOS was just as close to the Mac OS in performance as Windows is compared to OSX today? That gap has not narrowed considerably and made the Microsoft operating system much more appealing compared to the Mac?
Notice how that is about one year after Microsoft introduced Windows 95.
Microsoft also turned it up another notch with the introduction of Windows 98, which in turn increased computer sales and that gave more money for Intel to develop chips.
Do you believe that the amount of R&D for chip development and capital investment in fabrication facilities stays the same when the revenue from sales increases by several fold? You honestly believe that Motorola should have been able to keep pace with Intel with a increasingly smaller fraction of the money that Intel was getting from personal computer sales?
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