PowerPC popularity 2018-beyond ?

[z970]

I found a Power9 with a TDP of only 90 watts, which is still way too much for any laptop, but still less than 190W, also it runs at 3.2GHz. Maybe it's possible some company who wanted a Power ISA laptop could underclock it to 1.6GHz, which would bring it to a managable tempurature range. Though, a 1.6GHz Power9 chip may not be much faster than an Intel 45W chip, like the new Coffee Lake i9 laptop chip with 45W TDP and 6 cores running at 4.8GHz

You know what would be nice, take an old Intel Mac Pro, like the 2006, and put one of the Talos motherboards in with an 8-core Power9 chip...

Damn, that actually sounds like a feasible idea.

 

[Roman78]

I found a Power9 with a TDP of only 90 watts, which is still way too much for any laptop, but still less than 190W, also it runs at 3.2GHz. Maybe it's possible some company who wanted a Power ISA laptop could underclock it to 1.6GHz, which would bring it to a managable tempurature range. Though, a 1.6GHz Power9 chip may not be much faster than an Intel 45W chip, like the new Coffee Lake i9 laptop chip with 45W TDP and 6 cores running at 4.8GHz

You know what would be nice, take an old Intel Mac Pro, like the 2006, and put one of the Talos motherboards in with an 8-core Power9 chip...

Hmmmm A Map Pro whit nnaaah... I stick with my G3 Blue And White running at 3.4 Ghz.... i5 that is.

 

[mzs.112000]

Damn, that actually sounds like a feasible idea.

What, a quad-core Power9 downclocked to 1.6GHz so it can go in a laptop and have performance on par with last year's Intel laptops(but still faster than the new MacBook Pro due to throttling)?
Or swap a 2006 Mac Pro motherboard for a EATX Raptor motherboard with a full-clocked Power9 on it?

 

[z970]

What, a quad-core Power9 downclocked to 1.6GHz so it can go in a laptop and have performance on par with last year's Intel laptops(but still faster than the new MacBook Pro due to throttling)?
Or swap a 2006 Mac Pro motherboard for a EATX Raptor motherboard with a full-clocked Power9 on it?

Oh, sorry.

The Mac Pro swap out.

 

[mzs.112000]

Oh, sorry.

The Mac Pro swap out.

Funny to think, PowerMac G5 970MP had TDP of 180W each, so in total a quad core Power4(the micro-arch the G5 is based on) at 2.5GHz had TDP of 360W. Now, 13 years later, an 8-core Power9 at 3.8GHz has only 160W TDP, if you have 2 of them that gives you 16 cores @ 3.8GHz, and a 320W TDP. Amazing what 13 years of new technology gets you...

So, someone could take a PMG5 or Mac Pro case, and put a Power9 in, get over 5 times more processing power and draw less power...
And EULA problems aside, with you could probably have an emulator and run Mac OS X 10.5 at near-native speeds(Power9 is little-endian, G5 is big-endian, all you should need is to reverse the bit order, which is simple for an emulator)

 

[z970]

Funny to think, PowerMac G5 970MP had TDP of 180W each, so in total a quad core Power4(the micro-arch the G5 is based on) at 2.5GHz had TDP of 360W. Now, 13 years later, an 8-core Power9 at 3.8GHz has only 160W TDP, if you have 2 of them that gives you 16 cores @ 3.8GHz, and a 320W TDP. Amazing what 13 years of new technology gets you...

So, someone could take a PMG5 or Mac Pro case, and put a Power9 in, get over 5 times more processing power and draw less power...
And EULA problems aside, with you could probably have an emulator and run Mac OS X 10.5 at near-native speeds(Power9 is little-endian, G5 is big-endian, all you should need is to reverse the bit order, which is simple for an emulator)

And this. Is why I'm a techie.

It's fascinating.

 

[bunnspecial]

maybe still photography making them inadequate but for many tasks, if the software were there, they would be perfectly suitable.

Funny enough, still photography is my main "creative" use for Macs. Most of my digital originals pass through my MacBook Pro, and most of those come from a Nikon D800. It spits out 36mp files-RAWs are 60-80mb and JPEGs are 15-20mb.

I handle MUCH larger files on my dual 2.7, though, and it actually handles them pretty gracefully. For those, I either start with a 35mm film strip or slide and scan it in a Nikon Coolscan V, or for any other format(as small as 110 and as large as 4x5, but mostly 120) I use an Epson V700. A typical medium format scan for me is about 14,000 pixels on each dimension, and since they are all "real" pixels and not Bayer interpolated a JPEG runs 40mb or so. You do the math on 4x5 at 6200ppi or even 4000ppi.

Pretty much all I do in terms of PP work on the G5 is dust spotting in CS4, although I occasionally do some distortion correction. The G5 lets me scroll around big files with no lag or other issues-it's as fast to use as my MBP.

Funny enough, a year or so back I got into a "debate" with someone on another forum who claimed that his 1ghz TiBook was "totally inadequate" for digital photography work in 2004. At the time, my main DSLR was a Nikon D70s, a camera that came out I think in 2004 or 2005. Just to prove a point, I pulled 100 shots from it into Lightroom 2 on my 1ghz Ti, and had zero issues working them up. The only thing that took a bit longer was importing them(I did it via a Cardbus CF adapter, as opposed to the USB 3.0 reader that I use with my MBP), but once in most of the bottleneck was the fact that some of the buttons are in different places in LR2 vs. LR6 🙂 . I'm not anxious to process D800 images on that computer(or big film scans) but at least with cameras contemporary to the camera it's fine.

 

[AphoticD]

Funny enough, still photography is my main "creative" use for Macs. Most of my digital originals pass through my MacBook Pro, and most of those come from a Nikon D800. It spits out 36mp files-RAWs are 60-80mb and JPEGs are 15-20mb.

I handle MUCH larger files on my dual 2.7, though, and it actually handles them pretty gracefully. For those, I either start with a 35mm film strip or slide and scan it in a Nikon Coolscan V, or for any other format(as small as 110 and as large as 4x5, but mostly 120) I use an Epson V700. A typical medium format scan for me is about 14,000 pixels on each dimension, and since they are all "real" pixels and not Bayer interpolated a JPEG runs 40mb or so. You do the math on 4x5 at 6200ppi or even 4000ppi.

Pretty much all I do in terms of PP work on the G5 is dust spotting in CS4, although I occasionally do some distortion correction. The G5 lets me scroll around big files with no lag or other issues-it's as fast to use as my MBP.

Funny enough, a year or so back I got into a "debate" with someone on another forum who claimed that his 1ghz TiBook was "totally inadequate" for digital photography work in 2004. At the time, my main DSLR was a Nikon D70s, a camera that came out I think in 2004 or 2005. Just to prove a point, I pulled 100 shots from it into Lightroom 2 on my 1ghz Ti, and had zero issues working them up. The only thing that took a bit longer was importing them(I did it via a Cardbus CF adapter, as opposed to the USB 3.0 reader that I use with my MBP), but once in most of the bottleneck was the fact that some of the buttons are in different places in LR2 vs. LR6 🙂 . I'm not anxious to process D800 images on that computer(or big film scans) but at least with cameras contemporary to the camera it's fine.

Good write up @bunnspecial. I do most of my (non-professional) photography with a Nikon D90 body which spits out 12.3mp files (not high compared to today’s standards but it still looks good to me).

Importing, processing and working on these images is seamless in terms of performance between both my G5 DC 2.3Ghz (16GB RAM) with CS3 and my cMP 3,1 Octo 3.2Ghz (16GB) with CS6.

The only reason I tend to do more work using the cMP is because the display is much larger (27”) than the one hooked up to the G5 (19”). Both are completely capable machines for my use and even if I upgrade my Nikon body to a larger MP format I’m sure the G5 will still be just as adequate as it’s cMP cousin.

Photography in general isn’t much of a driving factor to buy the latest and greatest Mac hardware (like an iMac Pro). People are quick to forget that most tasks can be accomplished quite well with the hardware already owned. I think it mainly comes down to wanting to find a way to spend money on something new and exciting.

...And Apple are always willing to receive your hard earned (or borrowed) cash in return for something shiny 🙂

 

[Roman78]

Nice said 😀 You can do a lot whit old computers. If there wasn't the Internet as one of the highest resource eating process on older hardware.

I play a lot with old computers, even 8-bitter and so on. I like using OS9 or 10.4, even windows 98. It is possible to do most of the tasks on older machines using older period software. And most people would not need new hardware if there were two things:

Psychological Obsolescence - Just to want the latest shiny thing.

But more Technical Obsolescence - For example the internet. You can't use the internet normally on an nice G4 or G5. But i would say it is not only the Internet itself, but also the software. I tried TFF for example, which is a Firefox derivative, and i tried iCab. iCab is much faster than TFF... Much faster.

Buy the way... Firefox. I noticed a strange behaviour of Firefox. I use a Mac Mini 3.1 from 2009 a lot as daily computer. Just because of the low power consumption. And i installed Firefox next to Safari. One day i was browsing a Forum using Firefox and noticed a CPU utilization of 75-80%. Than i switched to Safari on the same site I had a Utilization of 15-20%. This is not on all sites but on some. And it was a forum like this, not YouTube. On YouTube Firefox also gain up to 90% where safari goes to 35-40%

YouTube on a G4, i tried it. It is a stop-motion experience. But Downloading the movie file and watch in VLC runs fine.

That said... were was I... Oh yeah... Obsolescence. Also companies describe what to use. Like DTP-companies, they give you a Adobe Indesign file to work with, i tried to open it whit CS3, no chance. No you have to use Adobe CC something. But also Digital Photography @AphoticD mentioned. I can do perfectly whit Photoshop 7 on a OS9 Computer or CS3 on 10.4, if there were the right plug ins for my newer Camera RAW files. No it must be CS6, for now. I'm scared to buy a new Camera.

So i am more a power saver, so my G5 is not used very often. As mentioned I like the Mini. The mini G4 for OS9, the Intel Mini 1.1 for 10.4 and the Intel Mini 3.1 for 10.6, 10.10 and Windows. All have a Power consumption of 20-35 watts, compared that to the G5 using 180 watts on idle. When doing Photo editing I use a cMP4.1(5.1) at the moment, 110 watt idle and 300Watt full load.

 

[Dronecatcher]

Funny enough, a year or so back I got into a "debate" with someone on another forum who claimed that his 1ghz TiBook was "totally inadequate" for digital photography work in 2004.

He might have a point - depends how much work is going on. I've done the same on my 1Ghz Tibook/OS9/Photoshop 6 - it's fine for simple stuff working with one layer but once you have multiple layers going on, it gets bogged down - and that's working with relatively small files.
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I tried TFF for example, which is a Firefox derivative, and i tried iCab. iCab is much faster than TFF... Much faster.

The reason there is simple - iCab for PPC is now 5 years old and written for the Internet as it was in 2013 whereas TFF is designed for here and now.

YouTube on a G4, i tried it. It is a stop-motion experience.

Lot's of ways to make this work, SMTube being the best - search on here to find it 🙂

Like DTP-companies, they give you a Adobe Indesign file to work with, i tried to open it whit CS3, no chance. No you have to use Adobe CC something.

That's a basic snobbery with the design fraternity - they can easily make files backwards compatible but some feel the onus is on you to upgrade your software....

 

[bunnspecial]

No it must be CS6, for now. I'm scared to buy a new Camera.

Adobe has actually kept LR6 alive for a surprisingly long time, and it received an update a few months ago that added support for the Nikon D850(came out last fall, although most folks didn't see theirs until the first of the year) and I think maybe the Sony A7RIII. Word on the street, though, is that this will be the last update.

At least I know I'm set if I buy a D850 a few years from now.

It's a shame Apple killed Aperture and replaced it with the half-baked Photos app. I was never an Aperture user(even though I have an older version) but at least Apple keeps Apple Camera RAW up to date as long as you're running the current OS or one of the previous two releases.

 

[Guy Clark]

Running OS X Leopard and Tiger on PPC architecture has become a considerable challenge. TenFourFox is a great browser but far too heavyweight and runs very slow on both my PowerBook G4 and Mac mini G4.

Unless you need to run specific OS X applications it is well worth considering switching to Linux.

Canonical have stopped releasing Ubuntu images for PPC architecture but Ubuntu 16.04 LTS can be successfully installed on a PowerMac G5 which is supported until 2021
http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/releases/16.04/release/

For G4 Macs the lighter weight LXDE interface is more suitable. Consider Lubuntu 16.04 LTS
https://lubuntu.net/downloads/

By installing either of the Linux distributions above will enable you to run the latest available software from the Linux community along with the latest release of Firefox which comes as the default web browser and is very much faster than TenFourFox.

Before taking the plunge it should be noted that native dmg. packages cannot be run on Linux.

 

[Dronecatcher]

By installing either of the Linux distributions above will enable you to run the latest available software from the Linux community along with the latest release of Firefox which comes as the default web browser and is very much faster than TenFourFox.

I keep hearing this claim but I've yet to see any proof 🙂 I've run Debian and Lubuntu on Powerbooks (Debian with Openbox - even slimmer than LXDE) and I couldn't reach any speed advantage over OSX - I'm happy to be disproved 😉

 

[AphoticD]

I agree with @Dronecatcher on this point. I’ve found Tiger really is the fastest (most optimized) OS for the PowerBook G4s and can achieve acceptable results with even as little as 256MB of RAM.

Linux is great and brings a huge amount of software options and improvements, including system security. But unless you stick to a very lightweight Debian installation (no GUI), then it isn’t really any faster than OS X, just different.

 

[mmphosis]

Great thread -- I wish I had popcorn 🙂

I type this with one finger on a hand-me-down android phone with no sim card. I think some things are way better and some things are worse. I like being able to scroll, zoom and rotate with simple touch gestures on this phone but I miss the little tactile keyboard on the Powerpc g4. For me, I see obsolescence everywhere. I find the "modern" platforms an encumbrance. I am not willing to spend time, energy, and especially not money on something that is more annoying, is going to break, is compromised, and does not allow me freedom of access to something that is easy to grok. Apparently, the Apple II still has the fastest keyboard, and I know that machine inside out. It came with schematics! I can start programming the Apple II in the instance it takes to power it on. My Linux laptop takes some time to power up to where I can open a Terminal and then start to program. The knowledge I need to do things in the terminal is available on stackoverflow. The knowledge for the Apple Ii is in an old printed manual. I am not going to pay Apple to post on the Apple store and hand over a percentage to them and probably be rejected by them anyways. Same with the play store, and while I am ranting about google, I turn off JavaScript on my powermac because I don't need google fonts and other web bloat. I am not going to post for free on FB, I am not on that platform at all -- it makes me ill. I am not going to use AWS, I could use a PowerPC mac as a web server, it would work fine. I use a $35 raspberry pi and NTP seems to be broken on it -- the powermacs don't have that problem. I really like some of the new stuff but I like the old school stuff just as much. I miss a stick shift on my car, and all the power door stuff is breaking. All my Intel macs are dead while all the PowerPC macs, surprisingly keep running! Intel ME? No way! By 2039, we'll have a clever workaround while people spend all their cryptocows trying to make a time machine work on their face book.

 

[CooperBox]

I keep hearing this claim but I've yet to see any proof 🙂 I've run Debian and Lubuntu on Powerbooks (Debian with Openbox - even slimmer than LXDE) and I couldn't reach any speed advantage over OSX - I'm happy to be disproved 😉

That's been my experience too. Of course on a C2Duo Intel MacBook Linux Mint can be very pleasant to use, as I alternate using this on a MBook7,1 and Snow Leopard on an earlier MBook3,1 and just love both these OS's.

 

[Dronecatcher]

Of course on a C2Duo Intel MacBook Linux Mint can be very pleasant to use

On X86-64 Linux is great - I have Debian on 3 Intels and they're great to use. I suspect PPC Linux is better fitted to G5s than G4s, talking advantage of 64bit optimisations that Apple never got round to?

 

[pochopsp]

Well if you try some old versions of linux which support a lot of hardware your PPC Mac will be as fast as being on OS X, see Debian 7.11 wheezy on my PowerMac MDD, or old versions of ubuntu. The biggest problem now is that most distributions are dropping support for PPC architecture and the latest ones available don't support our old GPUs, so all the work is done by the CPU, and the system inevitably slows down...

 

[Dronecatcher]

Well if you try some old versions of linux which support a lot of hardware your PPC Mac will be as fast as being on OS X, see Debian 7.11 wheezy on my PowerMac MDD, or old versions of ubuntu. The biggest problem now is that most distributions are dropping support for PPC architecture and the latest ones available don't support our old GPU's, so all the work is done by the CPU, and the system inevitably slows down...

Granted the older versions work well - but then you can't run contemporary apps.

 

[mmphosis]

I just plugged in monitor to a Linux laptop, it doesn't recognize it -- so I go into Settings Manager > Display, fiddle with unintuitive display settings, it doesn't remember the previous settings I had. On older Macs, I can plug in a monitor and it figures it out -- it at least knows that I've plugged it in. Linux recognizes that I've plugged in a monitor sometimes and sometimes not and there are little annoying bugs in the configuration for multiple monitors. In 1990, I am pretty sure you could plug in nine monitors into a Macintosh IIfx. By 1998 when Microsoft was helping Apple, Apple sold or gave Microsoft some of their monitor tech. and soon after Windows98 could have, wait for it: two monitors! And then PC hardware being PC hardware, they came out with dual monitor video cards -- hardware driven dual monitors. In System 6, I think that spanning your nine monitors was software driven, I mean you had to have 8 more video cards but the software in those Macs could deal with it. Newer Macs have paired down the nine monitors to daisy chaining multiple monitors which means no you can no longer have 9 monitors on the "modern" macos platform? Before deciding to simply abandon buying any new Intel architecture, I was looking at fanless intel mini-atx (PowerPC Mac-mini size) PC hardware, but I wanted to plug in at least three monitors -- it is difficult to even find a good board with three HDMI ports and then there are questions about the machine even being capable of driving three monitors at a decent speed. I guess I don't see the pace of progress in hardware that we seen since the Apple II. To me, "modern" PCs and Macs are meh, whatever. The things that I like to do with a computer: bring up a Terminal, program, open an IDE, I can do just as well if not better on my PowerPC Macs as I can on the mediocre "modern" Linux laptops.

I've tried Linux on PowerPC Macs and I am sorry to say that Mac OS X still has an edge over Linux. And, I like Linux don't get me wrong -- Window10 is a non-starter for me. If all you need is bold, italics, and underline and a few more formatting options for your documents, I think the entire Office-ecosystem is bloated and way too much of what I don't want in a word processor and spreadsheet -- I am pretty sure I could build a fast word processor for the Apple IIe that has Apple-B, Apple-I, and Apple-U and it would be a lot less trouble. If I need to open antiquated proprietary formats (please stop sending/posting Office documents), I use LibreOffice or an ancient copy of Office that doesn't expire on the PowerPC Mac.

Forgive me ranting more. This was typed on a Linux laptop with an external monitor, and PC keyboard (what the heck is the Scroll Lock key for? and why is it still on "modern" PC keyboards?)

 

[pl1984]

Funny enough, still photography is my main "creative" use for Macs. Most of my digital originals pass through my MacBook Pro, and most of those come from a Nikon D800. It spits out 36mp files-RAWs are 60-80mb and JPEGs are 15-20mb.

I handle MUCH larger files on my dual 2.7, though, and it actually handles them pretty gracefully. For those, I either start with a 35mm film strip or slide and scan it in a Nikon Coolscan V, or for any other format(as small as 110 and as large as 4x5, but mostly 120) I use an Epson V700. A typical medium format scan for me is about 14,000 pixels on each dimension, and since they are all "real" pixels and not Bayer interpolated a JPEG runs 40mb or so. You do the math on 4x5 at 6200ppi or even 4000ppi.

Pretty much all I do in terms of PP work on the G5 is dust spotting in CS4, although I occasionally do some distortion correction. The G5 lets me scroll around big files with no lag or other issues-it's as fast to use as my MBP.

Funny enough, a year or so back I got into a "debate" with someone on another forum who claimed that his 1ghz TiBook was "totally inadequate" for digital photography work in 2004. At the time, my main DSLR was a Nikon D70s, a camera that came out I think in 2004 or 2005. Just to prove a point, I pulled 100 shots from it into Lightroom 2 on my 1ghz Ti, and had zero issues working them up. The only thing that took a bit longer was importing them(I did it via a Cardbus CF adapter, as opposed to the USB 3.0 reader that I use with my MBP), but once in most of the bottleneck was the fact that some of the buttons are in different places in LR2 vs. LR6 🙂 . I'm not anxious to process D800 images on that computer(or big film scans) but at least with cameras contemporary to the camera it's fine.

Interesting read, especially regarding the medium format scans. Great to hear PPC continues to be productive in this area.

 

[z970]

Canonical have stopped releasing Ubuntu images for PPC architecture but Ubuntu 16.04 LTS can be successfully installed on a PowerMac G5 which is supported until 2021

I haven't had any luck whatsoever with 16.04 on my G5. Keep getting that stupid VFS error at boot, no matter which HD I try. I've had success getting it on an iMac G4, though. So I've had to revert to 14.04, and I'm still trying to wrangle with desktop environments now. I will not admit defeat and settle for LXDE. Not on a G5. I'm going to get GNOME / Unity working if it's the last thing I do, and when I do, I'm going to post all about it!

I keep hearing this claim but I've yet to see any proof 🙂

Well, I suppose that's just personal bias on my part. 😉 Sorry.

 

[mzs.112000]

I haven't had any luck whatsoever with 16.04 on my G5. Keep getting that stupid VFS error at boot, no matter which HD I try. I've had success getting it on an iMac G4, though. So I've had to revert to 14.04, and I'm still trying to wrangle with desktop environments now. I will not admit defeat and settle for LXDE. Not on a G5. I'm going to get GNOME / Unity working if it's the last thing I do, and when I do, I'm going to post all about it!



Well, I suppose that's just personal bias on my part. 😉 Sorry.

Is this on Vanilla Ubuntu, Ubuntu MATE or Lubuntu? AFAIK Lubuntu does not have the VFS issue, but it does use LXDE as the default desktop environment. Of course, it would be easy to just install the Gnome desktop. However, I would reccomend compiling the latest KDE Plasma 5.12.3 and KDE Frameworks from source, as it has features that rival even MacOS Mojave and is also faster and uses less memory than Gnome.

 

[z970]

Is this on Vanilla Ubuntu, Ubuntu MATE or Lubuntu? AFAIK Lubuntu does not have the VFS issue, but it does use LXDE as the default desktop environment. Of course, it would be easy to just install the Gnome desktop. However, I would reccomend compiling the latest KDE Plasma 5.12.3 and KDE Frameworks from source, as it has features that rival even MacOS Mojave and is also faster and uses less memory than Gnome.

All three, albeit with Vanilla Ubuntu Server 16.04.4. They all have the same VFS error at boot, even when performed via an upgrade from 14.04. I haven't tried KDE, but GNOME doesn't work unless it's installed with gnome-session-fallback running under Metacity, because Compiz doesn't like PowerPCs. It is unfortunately however, relied on by most of the installable desktop environments, which is the wall I'm still trying to deal with on 14.04.

 

[mzs.112000]

All three, albeit with Vanilla Ubuntu Server 16.04.4. They all have the same VFS error at boot, even when performed via an upgrade from 14.04. I haven't tried KDE, but GNOME doesn't work unless it's installed with gnome-session-fallback running under Metacity, because Compiz doesn't like PowerPCs. It is unfortunately however, relied on by most of the installable desktop environments, which is the wall I'm still trying to deal with on 14.04.

Try Adelie Linux, it seems like nowhere near as good as Ubuntu, but it shouldn't have VFS error: www.adelielinux.org/info.html