2.53GHz Pentium

The upside of moving to AMD instead of Intel is that they have consumer level (as opposed to server level) SMP chips.

As far as I know, if you want Intel SMP you need either PIII or Xeons.

Also, AMD has a consumer friendly direction with their sledgehammer/clawhammer stuff. Intel seems more focused on the Itanium.

Still, the nice thing about Intel is their long history of leading the market. We wouldn't want AMD to be the next Motorola (smaller company without the R&D to keep pace).

As for the Power4, what's it's advatage? It doesn't have altivec which is a HUGE loss. I don't that it's lack of altivec has received the attention it deserves in this thread. Maybe it's easy to add in but I sort of doubt it. Do you really want to stand still for a year while IBM adds altivec to a chip that's similar to a G4? That would suck. A year from now we'll be at 1.5 ghz. That doesn't excite me.

I'd vote for a port to x86. That way we can work with the industry leaders.

Vanguard
 
x86 archetecture sucks. And AMD is hurting the industry with their sledgehamer or whatever they're calling it by keeping so much backwards compatability stuff. It still supports 16 Bit! This may sound "good" for consumers, but in the long run it just slows progress down because it has to be developed in a way to keep it 64 bit but also contain backwards compatability for 16 bit and DOS and stuff!

The Intel Itanium is 64 bit only, no backwards compatability, so it can progress faster and doesn't need to hang on to old legacy support.

Another vote for the move to Power3 and Power4 from IBM, although having to recompile everything would suck. Maybe a Power4 chip as the main chip and a G3 hidden somewhere on the MoBo that can run older non-Power4 compiled apps for compatabiliy until they're re-compiled by the developers? Hmm..
 
Why should the lack of AltiVec dismisses the POWER4 chip? From Apple's website, the G4's theoretical peak performance is 5.2 gigaflops, which is including the performance of the AltiVec unit. In comparison, a single POWER4 processor, which does not have AltiVec, can achieve 5 gigaflops of peak performance. Also, apps do not have to be written to take advantage of a vector processing unit. You'll see speed improvements across the board. Other advantages, the G4 is stuck at a 133MHz front side bus, the POWER4 uses 500MHz front side bus. Each POWER4 processor is multicore, meaning SMP processing without having to use multiple processors! The POWER4 is shipping at 1GHz speed now, using .18 technology, when it moves to .13 technology, it'll hit 2GHz. Also, binary compatibility with the PowerPC binary meaning minal compatibility issues between OS, apps, and hardware.

The POWER4 chip and the G4 are really in different leagues. The POWER4 is a 64bit workstation and server level processor that delivers unbeliveable performance. The POWER4 chip has been widely praised and is very well received in the tech world. With its performance, the lack of AltiVec is a non-issue.

Since Apple is going after the UNIX market with a vengence, it needs to have a processor architecture that can compete, and the POWER4 is just such an architecture.
 
by vanguard
As for the Power4, what's it's advatage? It doesn't have altivec which is a HUGE loss. I don't that it's lack of altivec has received the attention it deserves in this thread. Maybe it's easy to add in but I sort of doubt it. Do you really want to stand still for a year while IBM adds altivec to a chip that's similar to a G4? That would suck. A year from now we'll be at 1.5 ghz. That doesn't excite me.
Click to expand...

What is the POWER4's advantage? Hm, lets see, how about we look at the POWER4 at 1.3 GHz (with 128 MB of L3 cache). As I recall, it had a SPECint2000 of 800+ and a SPECfp2000 of 1200+. Some how not having the AltiVec doesn't seem like a HUGE loss to me. The real trick is getting IBM to make enough of them to lower the price on these gems (IBM sells systems with them at $250,000+).

The point of all this is to get IBM to want to make very fast low cost chips for workstations. As it stands currently, IBM uses 604e, POWER3 and POWER3-II for their high end workstations, and POWER3-II upto POWER4 for their servers. Apple wouldn't buy G4s without AltiVec attached, so IBM stopped making them, and their G3 series is aimed at the embedded market more than the desktop/workstation market (then again, you can't use it for multiprocessor systems, so why would they use G3s themselves).

Remember that IBM is not Motorola, and they have not had any of the same types of production problems that Motorola has had in the past (which kept the G4 at 500 MHz for so long).
 
I am sorry... i do not know anything about this stuff. But I have a question: Why is Moto falling behind so much? why can't that crank out more mhz? WTF is wrong with them?
 
(Ignoring the last post.)

1. Apple is aware of Motorola's problems.
2. IBM is aware of Motorola's problems.
3. Apple is a huge fan of AltiVec.
4. Motorola and AMD are working together to some extent.
5. The G5 processor is being finalized as we speak.
6. Jaguar is said to be released 'late summer'.

If all goes well, I'd say Motorola will let IBM produce a massive G5 desktop processor rollout this summer. Apple machines will be released alongside Jaguar.

The question will be whether this will be too little, too late.
 
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