Originally posted by arden
Apple could stick an Itanium inside their machines to run Windows alongside Mac OS. Fine. It wouldn't be the first time. What Dvorak is suggesting, however, is that they put 2 completely different chips, the G4 and the Itanium, on the same bus, with the same instructions relayed to both, trying to run the same programs at the same time. The G4 and the Itanium are incompatible with each other and cannot run the same instruction set; therefore, Apple would need to revamp and revise Mac OS X to run on Windows hardware, which they certainly won't do unless both Motorola and IBM go bottoms up, Chapter 11, etc.
Actually that's not what he exactly meant. It makes no sense to have two different processors running the same instruction stream. As you pointed out, this would be a waste and is so out there as to not even be worthy of anything resembling consideration. Not only are they different processors, they don't even use the same same general "architecture", one is RISC the other VLIW. Anyway, since they are two different processors with two different instruction pointers. If they did want to create such a frankenstein, most likely what would happen is that one processor would be designated the primary and the other the slave. For the sake of argument, let's say the primary is the Itanic. Whenever the NEW IA64 version on MacOSX is running, the Itanic is executing, however, when userland code is being run that is still PPC, then the Itanic defers processing to the PPC. The PPC runs the userland code and when it's done, control goes back to the Itanic. While this is an interesting design, it would be so massively complex and bug prone (not to mention the development costs to come up with such a beast) that I think we can safely assume that this will NOT happen (and if it does, then Mac people better start getting their black suits and arm bands ready because Apple will be with us not much longer).
From Intel's page on the Itanium: "From large databases, to high-performance computing, to large-scale data analysis, the Itanium 2 processor is designed for business-critical application environments." This is certainly out of the range of the average Joe-checking-his-email-shmo's needed capabilities. Yes, Apple caters to professionals who want the utmost in service and quality, but the Mac is not the best OS for heavy-duty business operations. Apple will not include the Itanium in its computers.
Keep in mind that the same things were being said for the Pentium when the 486 was the dominant pc chip. This is what people like Intel do. When they release a new family of chips, they keep the prices high to make the margins high to help pay for the r&d costs of the chip. Every new family is aimed at the high end and will slowly filter down to the low end. Ditto the G4 vs the G3 vs the 604 vs the 601. Just because Intel is targeting the high end market at first speaks nothing for what an eventual system might be geared towards (other than the obvious fact that it would be expensive, so price wise it would be geared towards the professional). Remember, the reason we're even having this conversation is the fact that Motorola (and therefore Apple) is falling further and further behind in the cpu/performance wars. Of course they are going to be looking at a "powerful" chip.
Now, if Intel started making PPC-type processors, Apple may switch to them. I find it ironic that Apple uses a company like IBM, who made the PC mainstream (IBM-clone), and possibly Intel, the processor equivalent of Windows.
Intel making PPC compatable chips. Now that's funny. More chance of Strom Thurmond renouncing his race and joining the NAACP. IBM didn't make the pc mainstream, they made the PC, period
One thing about IBM, they are freakin huge. Their semiconductor arm is not related to their PC arm (talk about irony, IBM doesn't sell any PC's with the chips they manufacture, at least not any more). IBM lost control of the PC market a long time ago, they are a bit player (relatively) in the market they created. So it's not too surprising that they would be helping Apple out. What's even LESS ironic but more pathetic is Motorola. If Apple completely drops Motorola for the 970 or Itanic, Motorola will have once again lost a major manufacturer due to their incompetence with RISC (Sun being the first).
