Start Up Goal: Run Software on Any Chip

[steveh]

Re: So many people are so stupid

Originally posted by clairiun
It is very well rumored that Steve Jobs traveled a lot to Intel.P

And Intel makes a lot of chips other than their CPU lines.

Such as USB controllers...

Okay, whatever. Doesn't matter.P

Exactly.

 

[clairiun]

Intel and Jobs

I'm sure Jobs wasn't going over to Intel to talk about USB stuff. That's for peons.

I'm sure he was over there talking chips.

P

 

[Sonofhaig]

What??

Originally posted by hvfsl
....the price I pay for a Mac needs to go down by about 70%....

What? 70% ? If you want a computer that cheap, go out and by an Etch-a-Sketch. Please. 70% reduction is just absurd! 🙄

 

[tmornini]

Originally posted by mjtomlin
How much money do you think Apple could make if millions of wintel users decided to buy a copy of OS X at $189 a pop?

Well at $189, 1 million copies would generate $189 MILLION in revenue, then you subtract the expenses.

How many millions would need to PAY FOR OS X on Intel to generate the approximately $5,819 MILLION in revenues Apple actually generates each year?

Short Answer: A lot.

Longer Answer: Approximately 30.79 MILLION people PER YEAR.

If Apple could pull this off, their stock would be one hell of a lot more valuable than it is now, because their expenses would be a lot lower than they are currently.

 

[themadchemist]

Originally posted by Megaquad
I've been imagining something like this for a while.
Perhaps some sort of 'card' that would hold CPU used for translating code so that speed is 100% as on native platform isn't a bad idea? 🙂
I say its about time to bring OS X to PC's!
It will increase market share, and if implemented bad enough, make people buy Macs!

Bring OS X to PCs? I think not! Apple's primary revenue is from hardware. Thus, the bulk of its profits and its R&D money comes from this arena.

OS X on PCs, if it even became successful, which I doubt, would only discourage people from buying Apple's hardware. Why spend money on the expensive hardware if all I want is the OS? Also, part of the allure of Macs are their processors in my opinion. If not for their frequencies, at least for their excellent architecture and for being RISC. x86 architecture is revolting.

So if OS X on PCs was popular, and less people bought Mac hardware, then there would be less money to do R&D and less advances in the OS and in hardware (for those of us who stuck around for the latter). Moreover, prices would go up as Apple tried to recover costs. These prices would further discourage sales, as would the weaker R&D.

And if OS X for PCs was "implemented bad enough," as you say, then how would that promote people to buy Macs? It is not common knowledge that Mac OS is better, even though we "know" it to be so. People don't just assume that Macs are great. If they use a poorly-implemented OS sold by Apple, why would they rush to buy a Mac? This just doesn't make much sense.

No hard feelings, but these are just my personal thoughts.

 

[encro]

This kind of thing is rather old now. Doesn't anybody remember Tao group's Intent which used by Amiga?

 

[scan300]

This news has a longer history...

...a little bit of follow up on the company Transitive Technologies shows that other announcements were made late last year, and it's to do with gaming. They partnered with Transgaming Technologies to bring about a fast porting solution for games... and yes it's for Macs as well as other hardware.
http://www.transgaming.com/news.php?newsid=37

Transitive Technology has been developing a suite of tools which essentially create a CPU independent kernel. It's not just binary translation that they are working on, the tools also include acceleration and a sort of hardware/software synthetic CPU.

 

[hvfsl]

Apple can bring OS X to PCs, but make it so that it will only work on Apple PCs. The cost of a Mac would massively go down, it is just the cost of PC hardware is a lot less than Mac hardware.

 

[Doctor Q]

70%? Hah! Maybe they imagine approaching a maximum of 70% on carefully chosen code on a particular processor, but I think these claims are well over 70% hype and way below 30% realism.

The emphasis these days isn't on single-instruction execution anyway. Wouldn't features like pipelining and branch prediction, which make a great deal of difference in the speed of our processors, be lost if you translate instructions on the fly?

 

[mkrishnan]

70%? Hah! Maybe they imagine approaching a maximum of 70% on carefully chosen code on a particular processor, but I think these claims are well over 70% hype and way below 30% realism.

The emphasis these days isn't on single-instruction execution anyway. Wouldn't features like pipelining and branch prediction, which make a great deal of difference in the speed of our processors, be lost if you translate instructions on the fly?

So I just skimmed this thread now, because of the new rumor, and I went to Transitive's website...I'm not the only one who doesn't really see any compelling explanation for why their claim might be true, right? Sounds very snake-oil to me.

 

[javiercr]

so if apple moves to intel becuase the g5 cant get to 3ghz, then you get an intel 3ghz then you put an emulator which only give you 70% of the speed what would be the point? 🙂

 

[alandail]

there is no reason at all to need an emulator. The only reason an emulator was needed for the switch from 68k to powerpc was because so much of hte original mac os was written in assembly language. This time around, the OS already runs on x86 - it ran on x86 before it ran on PowerPC even. Also, the OS makes it easy to have apps with multiple executables, one for each CPU architecture.

 

[elmimmo]

so if apple moves to intel becuase the g5 cant get to 3ghz

Intel is as stalled in processors for desktop computers as IBM is. If they switch, it is because Intel does have modern CPUs for laptops whereas IBM does not, and will not anytime soon, as both Apple and IBM have stated several times.

 

[Mr Maui]

Stick with the PPC architecture (IBM just built a 3 billion fab, with Apple in mind as a major customer...) and have this as a solution for running all of your PC software on your Mac. With the processing power of the G5, I don't think you will see much of a slow down, even with many PC games, such as counter strike...

Earleir threads have already said that IBM thinks of Apple as an insignificant piece of their business, accounting for only 2% of production at their Fishkill fab plant. If I remember correctly, when they talked about their "new" plant back when they basically took Apple away from Moto, the story was that the Fishkill plant could produce chips for Apple in high volume. It seems that IBM has broken their promises to Apple andd focused on others (Microsoft, Sony, Nintendo) and their gaming consoles instead of producing the PPC for Apple as originally promised. Steve does not like being shunned. Apple helped rejuvenate IBMs business and this is the thanks that Apple gets in return.

 

[Mr Maui]

Apple doesnt need to switch to x86 they need to get price down and be more competitive on lower end computers. People will argue one way or another but the 2ghz G5 is at least on par with the current fastest x86 cpus.

The chips (PPC and x86) may be complarable in cost and price to one another, but if you've read some of the articles posted in the past few days, it seems that Intel would be willing to negotiate a "preferred vendor" price for Apple, like they do for many of their big customers, thus making the cost of the chip lower for Apple. Apple tried to negotiate a lower price with IBM during recent talks, but IBM basically said, "No Thanks." IBM would rather lose Apple's 2% of their volume, than to give Apple a discounted price. As stated in an earlier post, if Apple leaves IBM, it is because of IBM turning their back on promises made to Apple, and little to do with Apple not liking the PPC. Fishkill is a huge fab plant, originally claimed to be used largely for Apple, yet IBM's Fishkill production offers only 2% of their volume and capacity to Apple chips. Guess the real money comes from MS, Sony and Nintendo.

 

[Mr Maui]

Let's not get into talk about OS X on x86. That would kill Apple, since most of the company's profits are from hardware sales.

However, if running OSX on x86 (PC) could win customers over to Apple's OS, giving them a larger market share, and then gain full benefit of the OS by purchasing Mac hardware, designed specifically to run the OS seamlessly, Apple might be willing to take that gamble. Apple can stop offering OSX for the x86 (PC) at any time in the future, just like they did when they stopped allowing clones to be manfactured. Once you win a user over to OSX, they'll never want to go back to Windoze. Part of the reason Apple is trying to negotiate lower price points with IBM and/or switch to Intel is to be able to lower their prices on hardware, thus becoming more competitive with the x86 boxes, and thereby win more market share. Intel is willing to offer these types of discounts to get Apple. Apple would be a feather in Intel's cap. If Apple can win more users to its OS and then offer more competitively priced hardware, Aple's marketshare will increase dramatically, both in software AND hardware.

 

[salmon]

What does IIRC mean? I have seen it in numerous posts.

If I Remember Correctly.

 

[njmac]

Well I guess we may soon find out the answer to the age old question: What what happen to Apple if you can run OS X on an X86 machine.

 

[DakotaGuy]

Well I guess we may soon find out the answer to the age old question: What what happen to Apple if you can run OS X on an X86 machine.

I think we are very close to seeing this happen. Did anyone hear Steve talk about ways this will be prevented today? I don't recall him saying anything about that. If Apple opens up OSX to all PC's then their hardware business will become a PC that might be a little more stylish. They will have to sell on price, customer satisfaction, and service. They will change their income from hardware to software sales. BUT I don't know if Apple wants to get in the game and play with M$. Microsoft will take no prisoners.

 

[7on]

I think we are very close to seeing this happen. Did anyone hear Steve talk about ways this will be prevented today? I don't recall him saying anything about that. If Apple opens up OSX to all PC's then their hardware business will become a PC that might be a little more stylish. They will have to sell on price, customer satisfaction, and service. They will change their income from hardware to software sales. BUT I don't know if Apple wants to get in the game and play with M$. Microsoft will take no prisoners.

It has already been stated that OSX will not be opened to all x86 computers, just like OSX isn't opened to all PPC computers

Not to mention there's OpenFirmware (Apple's Proprietary version of a PC's BIOS) and Apple's use of "special" video cards that cost about $100 more than PC equivalent versions. Let's not forget that Apple also over sees all hardware put into their machines and the OSX is built to take advantage of that. It would be really hard to make OSX run on a generic PC without an emulation layer of sorts. But my guess it will be only a matter of time until Apple sues PearPC if they take advantage of x86 code 🙂

 

[mkrishnan]

Not to mention there's OpenFirmware (Apple's Proprietary version of a PC's BIOS)....

Since it's already in most of the other threads...might as well. Apple's Developer documentation on unibinaries clearly claims that Intel Macs will not use OpenFirmware:

Link

Macintosh computers using Intel microprocessors do not use Open Firmware.