@takemehomegrandma

In terms corporate drive, Motorola/Freescale is hardly equates to AMD. If the number two X86 supplier was VIA, the X86 CPU competition levels would be lower.

Remember, AMD used similar fabrication technology as Motorola/Freescale during 130nm node.

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@Tigger

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Really, the A1 has builtin airport?? Does everybody use it?? Or are you saying someone wrote a driver for a device that plugs into the A1 that does Wireless? It comes standard with the Mac, did it come standard with your A1?

No, as you probably know the A1 doesn't have built in 802.11. Nor does it have built in RAM, or screen, or hard drive etc. The Mac is sold as a complete package. The A1 shipped as a motherboard/CPU.

Some Macs do ship with WiFi, but this has not always been the case. The Mac Mini, with which so many are enamored, did not originally ship with WiFi, nor did most G4 based Macs, even G5 macs only had it as an option for some time.

@takemehomegrandma

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My point is - what if Steve Jobs would have *encouraged* Mac clones and competition on the Mac arena back then, instead of *forbidding* it and re-establishing a monopoly? Starting from that point in time (way back) and going forward in an alternative future to present time; what could have happened to the demand of PPC desktop CPU's, and how would the demand and supply of those look today if Steve would have acted the opposite as he did?

There's a good chance Apple would have gone bankrupt. Apple was essentially spending all this money on R&D, OS development, but not selling enough machines because the competition was cheaper (and often better). They were doing very badly.

What would have been far more interesting if the original AIM alliance worked. If Microsoft got the PPC version of NT out the door in time, and if IBM got OS/2 running on PPC when it should have, and if there had been true cross platform compatibility (allowing IBM PPC machines to run MacOS, and Apples to run OS/2 or NT or AIX or whatever). Then we would have had a viable contender to Wintel.

But this is all over 10 years ago. It is highly unlikely that there will be another CPU to challenge x86 unless either Intel or AMD make one.

If OS4 wants to survive it is going to have to find a niche outside of the mainstream desktop world. Either embedded or in some new device like a Cell machine.

@DrBombcrater

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The Cell, as it is now, is a poor fit for desktop systems. Its performance is lacklustre on code not re-written to make use of the SPUs

By that description many x86 processors are also a poor fit for desktop systems since the PPE will invariably come in above some of them. Where exactly is a good question since there have never been any figures released for code running on the current PPE.

However, figures for the PPE are irrelevant anyway as nobody is going to use only it, the important parts of code will run on the SPEs.

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The on-board Rambus memory controller has serious issues using socketed memory, and its power consumption is laughable compared to current x64 designs.

At 1.1v the power figure (110W) is lower than a top end AMD (120W) or Intel (>150W?). Like AMDs chips Cell will clearly be binned by power so 0.9v parts will go into the PS3, these should run at significantly lower power (est around 70W).

The socked memory is a problem today but it'll be fixed in the next Cell rev.

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But most seriously for a company like Apple, Cell is difficult and expensive to make. Apple's been bitten by IBM failing to deliver before, so there're unlikely to have any faith that supplies will plentiful - and the downgrading of the Cell from 3.2GHz+8SPUs to 2.8GHz+7SPUs

Don't believe the FUD, the downgrade from 2.8GHz to 3.2GHz has been rubbished by Sony.
7 SPEs has always been the plan for the PS3 but that's just the PS3, Cell blades from IBM etc will ship with 8 SPEs - up to 4.0 GHz.

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indicates that IBM is going throught he same old yield problems as it had with the PPC970.

There's no indication IBM is currently having problems, The XBox 360 alone is taking 10x more CPUs than Apple ordered and according to Steve Ballmer himself (twice) supplies are fine.

Everybody had problems going to 90nm, IBM had problems in early 2004, the same time Intel was promising a 4GHz Pentium 4...

According to Sony and Microsoft supplies are fine and IBM themselves have said the Cell is yielding very well.

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PA Semi has never delivered a working product and has only one design planned that would be in any way suitable for Apple.

They only have 1 core design but they've said it could be modified to run faster if that was required.
Intel's next gen is also only one core modified for different segments.

It's true they haven't delivered a working product but that's not surprising given it's not due until the end of the year, (first silicon passed all it's tests). On the other hand the people running the company have a record as long as your arm delivering working parts - e.g. AMD 64.

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@minator

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By that description many x86 processors are also a poor fit for desktop systems since the PPE will invariably come in above some of them. Where exactly is a good question since there have never been any figures released for code running on the current PPE.

So, you're saying that a processor core that does not support OOOE is going to be faster than any full desktop processor? Refer to thet fact that the Itanium 2 is no longer faster than the latest AMD desktop and server designs...

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At 1.1v the power figure (110W) is lower than a top end AMD (120W) or Intel (>150W?). Like AMDs chips Cell will clearly be binned by power so 0.9v parts will go into the PS3, these should run at significantly lower power (est around 70W).

You are comparing a pair of high-end desktop cores, with OOOE (meaning that the core is far more complex) and at least 3 1GHz HyperTransport buses to a chip containing a halfbaked cut-down PPC and 7 peripheral units? Great!

See you again when you have some REAL WORLD benchmarks of the Cell.

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Quote:

Quote: indicates that IBM is going throught he same old yield problems as it had with the PPC970. There's no indication IBM is currently having problems, The XBox 360 alone is taking 10x more CPUs than Apple ordered and according to Steve Ballmer himself (twice) supplies are fine.

Steve didnt say that, you didnt understand what Steve said, or Steve's a damn liar, you decide.

From launch to April 1 they had sold 3.5 Million units X-Box 360 units worldwide. Apple in there last two quarters have sold over 2.4 million computers (some with dual processor) this second quarter ending April 1st as well. Can you explain why the Microsoft bought over 24 million Cell processors (ie 10X what apple buys) to make 3.5 million X-Boxs?
-Tig

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We played the first thing that came to our heads, it just happened to be the best song in the world.

@AMiGR

Quote:

So, you're saying that a processor core that does not support OOOE is going to be faster than any full desktop processor?

No, just some.

However, what exactly you mean by a "full" desktop processor?
A VIA processor can do everything a x64 can do (except for 64 bit addressing) but just doesn't do it as fast, I fully expect the PPE to beat the living **** out of anything VIA make.

However it's still irrelevant because it'll not be used on it's own.

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Refer to thet fact that the Itanium 2 is no longer faster than the latest AMD desktop and server designs...

What's that got to do with anything? Itanium is a completely different architecture designed for completely different tasks. Also, compare it to the latest Itanium 2's which are due shortly.

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You are comparing a pair of high-end desktop cores, with OOOE (meaning that the core is far more complex) and at least 3 1GHz HyperTransport buses to a chip containing a halfbaked cut-down PPC

Yes, and so is AMD, their CTO described it as a "wake up call".

OOOE is only a technique of boosting performance, it doesn't mean the processor can actually do anything more. It's not even the most important technique used.

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and 7 peripheral units? Great!

The SPEs can also do everything an x64 can do (but you wouldn't want to run everything on it).

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See you again when you have some REAL WORLD benchmarks of the Cell.

That's what I was saying.

@Tig

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From launch to April 1 they had sold 3.5 Million units X-Box 360 units worldwide. Apple in there last two quarters have sold over 2.4 million computers (some with dual processor) this second quarter ending April 1st as well. Can you explain why the Microsoft bought over 24 million Cell processors (ie 10X what apple buys) to make 3.5 million X-Boxs?

I wasn't aware Microsoft had bought any Cell processors

Anyway, Apple were buying G5s at the rate of about 1 million / year from IBM, MS expect to sell 10 million XBox 360s by the end of the year, that's the factor of 10 I was referring to.

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@minator

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Anyway, Apple were buying G5s at the rate of about 1 million / year from IBM, MS expect to sell 10 million XBox 360s by the end of the year, that's the factor of 10 I was referring to.

Imagine a beowulf cluster...

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Quote: From launch to April 1 they had sold 3.5 Million units X-Box 360 units worldwide. Apple in there last two quarters have sold over 2.4 million computers (some with dual processor) this second quarter ending April 1st as well. Can you explain why the Microsoft bought over 24 million Cell processors (ie 10X what apple buys) to make 3.5 million X-Boxs? Anyway, Apple were buying G5s at the rate of about 1 million / year from IBM, MS expect to sell 10 million XBox 360s by the end of the year, that's the factor of 10 I was referring to.

First of all your million G5's a year is low. That would imply less then 20% of apples computers sold last year had a G5 in them, you and I both know that aint true. In addition, I'm not sure why you've decided millions of G4's don't count in your made up story, but since even that context is wrong, we will go with it.

First of all the 10 million by the end of the year prediction includes all the launch ones from last year, and two christmas seasons. In 4+ months (including Christmas), they've sold 3.5 million. They are way off there target of 10 million by end of year and not likely to make it. April numbers were low and everyone said it was because of E3, Mays numbers are even lower, in fact the best selling console in the US in May was the PS2. If I want an X-Box 360, at least 7 places in town have them, thats not the kind of demand that Microsoft needs to get to that 10 million number they claimed and now are forgetting about.

In an average month you say Apple buys 83,333 G5 processors (1/12 of a million) , and you think Microsoft buys 10X that processors . Given that the last three months of sale for X-Box 360 gives you 330K, 291K and 221K, yes thats decreasing sales btw. How can you account for the 800K+ processors they are going to be buying each month in your story, when they've only sold that many in 3 months time? This X-Box 360 is better for IBM then Apple was myth needs to be busted as much as the can't port OS 4 to the PPC macs.
-Tig

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We played the first thing that came to our heads, it just happened to be the best song in the world.

@Tigger

Quote:

First of all your million G5's a year is low. That would imply less then 20% of apples computers sold last year had a G5 in them, you and I both know that aint true. In addition, I'm not sure why you've decided millions of G4's don't count in your made up story, but since even that context is wrong, we will go with it.

Where are you getting your figures from? About half the Apples sold were laptops with G4s, then a number of Mac Minis and eMacs. That leaves the iMac G5 and Power Mac G5. 20% is possible, but I'd guess higher. But how many overall did they sell?

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This X-Box 360 is better for IBM then Apple was myth needs to be busted as much as the can't port OS 4 to the PPC macs.

But it does look like IBM sold more to Microsoft than Apple. With regards to OS 4 being ported to Mac, ofcourse it /can/ be done. But Hyperion doesn't seemed interested in a desktop future for OS4, and there have been suggestions that the reason OS4 is still at pre-release beta is because their licencing and contractual arrangements would make it too expensive to official release it. If that is the case, I can't see them spending the money on R&D porting it. Apple's chipsets are closed boxes, and even the linux h4507ing has not produced a perfect OS on Macs. There are lots of reasons of varying rationality.

Last edited by overdose on 19-Jun-2006 at 05:37 AM.

@falemagn

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However, the concept of "wasting memory" might be a bit different than what you think: wasted memory is unused memory. That's why modern operating systems use as much memory as they can to hold caches for frequently accessed data, like filesystem data.

I'm very well aware of the fact that various OSes commit and manage memory in a variety of dynamic ways, however, when you basically start swapping out to disk after starting the OS and a WordProcessor on a system with 512Mb of memory, you just have to start scratching your head and wonder if something's just gone wrong somewhere along the way in the evolution of computing and OSes...at least IMHO.

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Last edited by elatour on 19-Jun-2006 at 04:59 AM.

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@overdose

Quote:

Where are you getting your figures from? About half the Apples sold were laptops with G4s, then a number of Mac Minis and eMacs. That leaves the iMac G5 and Power Mac G5. 20% is possible, but I'd guess higher. But how many overall did they sell?

Taking Apple's figures from their quarterly reports, they sold about 4.5million Macs in 2005. Based on other data found on the web somewhere, about 10-15% are Power Mac G5s, and some unknown proportion are iMac G5s. But given that the iMac G5 was the single biggest selling line (according to other data), the figures are undoubtly higher than 20% and probably more than 30% or much more than 1 million G5s (remembering that most of the Power Macs sold were dual CPU models). Also, for the whole of 2005, desktops outsold portables by about 5:4.

So where does the 1 million number come from?

But what we really want to know is how many G4 Mac Minis were ever made. I'm guessing more than 1500

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Where are you getting your figures from? About half the Apples sold were laptops with G4s, then a number of Mac Minis and eMacs. That leaves the iMac G5 and Power Mac G5. 20% is possible, but I'd guess higher. But how many overall did they sell?

They sold 4.5 million, many of the G5 desktops sold are dual processor, if they only buy 1 million processors, lots less then 20% of the computers have to have G5s.

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But it does look like IBM sold more to Microsoft than Apple.

Absolutely, but they are buying the parts at a price less then the top end G5, and IBM will never be able to charge more for them, in fact they will be cutting the price on the parts as it goes on either a 3 or 6 month increment. Unlike G5s or G4s where by making a newer, faster better part IBM can charge more money. Microsoft wants the same part, same speed, etc for the next five years, with the part constantly getting cheaper for them to buy, and thus there net income will drop as they will be cutting price much more often the Microsoft will be able to increase sales of the device.

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But Hyperion doesn't seemed interested in a desktop future for OS4,

Hyperion isnt interested in any future for OS4. At this point they are hoping for a bankruptcy and then try and sell what they got to someone. Waiting for someone to call them about using there OS, is not the action of a company interested in there OS.

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Apple's chipsets are closed boxes, and even the linux h4507ing has produced a perfect OS on Macs.

Boeing and Lockheed would disagree with you, both use Macs with Terrasofts YDL on it for some pretty serious work. As I have pointed out before, if the mac port after 18 months of not having hardware is too much for them, then they can forget about embedded work. WindRiver does hardware ports in less then 30 days, and they port to things that dont already have OSs running on them. Hyperion should have there software running on every piece of PPC hardware available by now, instead its hey by an AmigaOne on Ebay and pray it doesnt overheat. Really think anyone is going to use that to base a real product on it?
-Tig

Last edited by Tigger on 19-Jun-2006 at 05:12 AM.

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We played the first thing that came to our heads, it just happened to be the best song in the world.

Quote:

overdose wrote: So where does the 1 million number come from? But what we really want to know is how many G4 Mac Minis were ever made. I'm guessing more than 1500

I don't know where his 1 million number came from, but its not accurate, and it also throws out all the G4s that they are buying for the rest of the Macs at the time. G4 Mac Minis, I dont have a total number sold, but over 1/2 million we know from press releases, its probably significantly more then that.
-Tig

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We played the first thing that came to our heads, it just happened to be the best song in the world.

Tigger: The G4 is sold by Freescale, not IBM. The discussion was about IBM
and the G5's. Makes perfect sense to exclude the G4.

As for porting AmigaOS4, I agree with you completely. The embedded sector is a hard
sector to be in. I would say that even YelloTab with its bigger capital than Hyperion would
have a hard time if they started focusing on the embedded sector.

@Tigger

@Tigger

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They sold 4.5 million, many of the G5 desktops sold are dual processor, if they only buy 1 million processors, lots less then 20% of the computers have to have G5s.

IIRC The number is quite old and may even be an estimation rather than a real number.
The exact numbers aren't important as the point I was making is MS are ordering a lot more (and physically larger) chips from IBM than Apple ever did and IBM are not having problems delivering them.

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Absolutely, but they are buying the parts at a price less then the top end G5, and IBM will never be able to charge more for them, in fact they will be cutting the price on the parts as it goes on either a 3 or 6 month increment. Unlike G5s or G4s where by making a newer, faster better part IBM can charge more money. Microsoft wants the same part, same speed, etc for the next five years, with the part constantly getting cheaper for them to buy, and thus there net income will drop as they will be cutting price much more often the Microsoft will be able to increase sales of the device.

The contracts are very different so I don't think they'll be directly comparable.
Xenon is a custom built processor for Microsoft only, Microsoft own the rights to the processor and can if they so wish take it elsewhere to get it built. All that will have cost MS $$$ so IBM will be making money in areas other than the individual chip sales. IBM will also get money from future die shrinks and the reworking necessary if MS do take it elsewhere.

With the G5 Apple had exclusivity over new versions of the chips for 6 months then they could be sold to anybody.

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@thread

Just to add a link, looks like Genesi/Peg and I'm assuming the 'troika board' are mentioned in this doc from freescale's site, regarding a Home Media System:
http://www.freescale.com/files/abstract/overview/FTF2006_PC104.pdf

Funny enough, the misspelled Pegasos throughout the doc...somewhere towards the end it certainly looks like the 'mystery board'...

Interesting reading, although they give some info on typical CPU usage, etc...and all are mentioned as using software rendering...any clue why? To up the CPU load artificially? IF it's the same board being talked about, they claim it runs gentoo and Debian..

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Are we not done with the same silly arguments and flames yet??!

Quote:

Funny enough, the misspelled Pegasos throughout the doc...somewhere towards the end it certainly looks like the 'mystery board'...

It is, in fact that the board the block diagram is talking about on the page after the Genesi board. Interestingly it says 1.2 Ghz G4.

Quote:

Interesting reading, although they give some info on typical CPU usage, etc...and all are mentioned as using software rendering...any clue why? To up the CPU load artificially? IF it's the same board being talked about, they claim it runs gentoo and Debian..

The other website told us already that it runs Debian (maybe Gentoo too, I dont remember), they are doing Video decodes in software instead of a TV card, which is why they are saying software rendering (or at least why I think they are saying Software rendering. Its not an effort to load the CPU, its showing how little of the CPU is being used to do those tasks. I still think this board is a poor choice over the Peg2, two slots really isnt enough when you dont have the ports that are available in Peg2, and even with those ports, Peg2 still has more slots. In addition, unless they really cut the price, the board is more expensive then a Mac Mini or a Peg2, not a a great choice. And I still havent heard Rogue say they are porting OS 4 to it, or Troika tell us how much it and OS 4 is going to cost.
-Tig

Last edited by Tigger on 21-Jun-2006 at 07:14 AM.

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We played the first thing that came to our heads, it just happened to be the best song in the world.

@Tigger

Quote:

Tigger wrote: The other website told us already that it runs Debian (maybe Gentoo too, I dont remember)

Getting Linux to run won't be *that* difficult once the Articia S is out of the picture. And Tundra has probably already taken care of that as part of their service ...

BTW, install the Genesi HAL/OF on the board instead, and you will instantly have a lot more OS's than those two!

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I still think this board is a poor choice over the Peg2, two slots really isnt enough when you dont have the ports that are available in Peg2, and even with those ports, Peg2 still has more slots.

Well, the Pegasos is a general desktop motherboard, and is designed and equipped accordingly. It's the only one of its kind, AFAIK.

This other board is ... yes what is it really? An over-powered STB? As such I guess it doesn't require to be designed and equipped for desktop usage. One thing is for sure; you won't be able to put it in a standard, general desktop case.

Also, can anyone tell if it's Tundra 108 or 109? The photo of the motherboard is blurry so it's difficult to see. Troika say 109 but the slide (number 22) say 108. Those are almost exactly the same chip; the most significant difference is that 109 can handle dual-CPU. Using 109 for single CPU systems is a stupid design move IMHO, as it is a complete waste of money. But I guess it will be easy to replace it to an 108 before any production ...?