PowerPC 970 Info Thread

[jazzyjim]

Its interesting from IBM's perspective that their chip is more or less directly compatible with OS X. _I hear that IBM are planning to offer blade servers using this chip, what if Apple licenced OS X Server for use in these blade servers as well as using the chip in their own machines?

Apple suddenly gets a decent foot hold in the server market with the marketing clout and support of IBM. Apple also gets some leverage in the corporate desktop market (similar to how Microsoft ties windows clients to windows servers using Active Directory, SMB, etc) because IBM is shifting large numbers of OS X servers.

Drawbacks are that Apple's own Xserve server market may be decimated (but could equally be increased if their servers were complimentry to IBMs rather than competitive i.e. low-end, small business).

Its pretty certain that IBM could find a way to sell OS X servers since it would be effectively selling easy to use Unix (an attractive proposition to any large organisation). And since IBM already offer servers in various flavours of Unix (Linux, etc) its not out of line with their current market strategy.

These are just my thought and I have no information to support this, but I think its an interesting idea thats not totally out of the question.

Cheers,

James.

 

[binaryDigit]

Originally posted by jazzyjim
... _I hear that IBM are planning to offer blade servers using this chip, what if Apple licenced OS X Server for use in these blade servers as well as using the chip in their own machines?

...

Its pretty certain that IBM could find a way to sell OS X servers since it would be effectively selling easy to use Unix (an attractive proposition to any large organisation). And since IBM already offer servers in various flavours of Unix (Linux, etc) its not out of line with their current market strategy.

...

Not going to happen. IBM _already_ has two Unix flavours that they push, AIX and Linux. They have absolutely no need, and more importantly, their customers are not asking for another solution. Trying to differentiate THREE unix flavours would not gain them anything in the marketplace, as anyone seriously considering AIX would NEVER consider OSX and Linux still has a strong foothold in the Web space.

IBM had an opportunity to jump on the Mac bandwagon, and they declined, it's hard to imagine them jumping in now.

Now if you want to sink your teeth into something, how about IBM simply purchasing Apple, getting rid of their pc clones (except for the ThinkPads) and focusing on Macs for their low end offering. Effectively eliminating any x86 based units (again except TP). They could then make Jobs the head of this new Personal Computing unit and give him a lot of autonomy, but with the engineering might of IBM.

 

[Androo]

So, how fast will this 970 be? If they put it in a powerbook right now, how many ghz do you think....?

 

[jazzyjim]

Originally posted by binaryDigit
Not going to happen. IBM _already_ has two Unix flavours that they push, AIX and Linux. They have absolutely no need, and more importantly, their customers are not asking for another solution. Trying to differentiate THREE unix flavours would not gain them anything in the marketplace, as anyone seriously considering AIX would NEVER consider OSX and Linux still has a strong foothold in the Web space.

Now if you want to sink your teeth into something, how about IBM simply purchasing Apple, getting rid of their pc clones (except for the ThinkPads) and focusing on Macs for their low end offering. Effectively eliminating any x86 based units (again except TP). They could then make Jobs the head of this new Personal Computing unit and give him a lot of autonomy, but with the engineering might of IBM.

binaryDigit,

As to your first argument, how is this different from say Microsoft offering Win2K, WinXP home, WinXP pro, WinXP server, etc, etc....

You are missing the point that IBM would be getting an advanced product that they could actively influence the future development of (without spending loads on development themselves) and through negotiation of chip supplies with apple they could get at a very low cost. They also get an operating system which plays nice with both Unix and Windows (without needing years of Unix experience to configure) which will make a good integration box and have a lot of other value add which you dont get out of the box with Linux.

As for the AIX vs OSX argument, I'm not convinced. Yes AIX is enterprise class and a lot more robust, etc, etc, but that really hasnt stopped a lot or oganisations from ripping out enterprise Unix's like AIX, etc in favour of Linux or worse, NT. Where I work we replaced a number of Solaris boxes with Linux on x86 because the cost benefit model was so much better.

I'm not saying its going to happen or that its even likely but the benefits for apple would be immense and IBM would get a chance to piss Microsoft off by producing yet another significant competing OS to NT

IBM are principly into making chips, selling servers and providing end to end enterprise solutions, they are not into desktops and the only desktop product that they make any real money out of is the Thinkpad line. I dont think IBM will buy apple anytime soon for exactly this reason

As for the new chip. I think any increase in OSX performance will come from the greater memory bandwidth available to the processor rather than the actual clock speed, that why its important that this chip has such a quick bus speed (900Mhz I read somewhere). It has to be able to work with large screen textures in memory very quickly because of the way that quartz works (alpha channels/blending)

See ya.

 

[binaryDigit]

Originally posted by jazzyjim
binaryDigit,

As to your first argument, how is this different from say Microsoft offering Win2K, WinXP home, WinXP pro, WinXP server, etc, etc....

Uh, how about night and day. The pro/server/enterprise/home variants are just that, variants. It is the same code with certain features en/disabled and slight configuration differences. XP is the successor to 2K and and both are based on related code bases.

AIX/Linux/OSX are entirely different code bases and entirely different OS's. You can't compare them, at least not in the same sense as the WinXXX family.

You are missing the point that IBM would be getting an advanced product that they could actively influence the future development of (without spending loads on development themselves) and through negotiation of chip supplies with apple they could get at a very low cost. They also get an operating system which plays nice with both Unix and Windows (without needing years of Unix experience to configure) which will make a good integration box and have a lot of other value add which you dont get out of the box with Linux.

Actually you are missing my point. My response was WHY would they want that? Sure you mentioned some benefits, but so what, if it doesn't fit into their big picture, then the "advantages" are irrelevant. They don't NEED those advantages that you mentioned.

As for the AIX vs OSX argument, I'm not convinced. Yes AIX is enterprise class and a lot more robust, etc, etc, but that really hasnt stopped a lot or oganisations from ripping out enterprise Unix's like AIX, etc in favour of Linux or worse, NT. Where I work we replaced a number of Solaris boxes with Linux on x86 because the cost benefit model was so much better.

True, IBM wouldn't be offering Linux solutions if their customers weren't asking for them instead of AIX solutions. Many customers don't need the "enterprise" features that AIX offers (or dont feel like paying for them), so Linux becomes that alternative (that and the cult of personality that has grown up around Linux esp. in the web space).

I'm not saying its going to happen or that its even likely but the benefits for apple would be immense and IBM would get a chance to piss Microsoft off by producing yet another significant competing OS to NT

But I think that the chance to "piss off Microsoft" is hardly a reason to start selling OSX based hardware. Plus, M$ frankly wouldn't care. M$ is FAR more worried about the Linux camp then they are about OSX. As a matter of fact, they'd probably love to have IBM try to sell OSX boxen, then they can say "see, IBM is not as gung ho about Linux as they claim to be", ESP. if they offer OSX as yet another server platform.

IBM are principly into making chips, selling servers and providing end to end enterprise solutions, they are not into desktops and the only desktop product that they make any real money out of is the Thinkpad line. I dont think IBM will buy apple anytime soon for exactly this reason

Actually I was just kidding