2009/7/7 tortoise <cymraeg...@gmail.com>: > > IBM had problems with their design which was why they teamed up with > APPLE. at the time theirs was the worst performing and selling. Don't > forget Motorola was in there too, coming in especially with the G4.
IBM had problems? Not as I recall. POWER was doing great. PowerPC was merely an adaptation of the high-end POWER multi-chip processors into a lower-end single-chip device utilising the Motorola 88000 bus, designed for PC-type kit. The 680x0 was going nowhere, the 88000 was dead in the water, and both Apple & Motorola needed something new. For IBM it was just a chance to get into another segment of the market. > Sun and SGI always had the better designs in the 90s but pricey too. > Nevertheless SGI cornered the movie business and Sun the web server > market. The g5 got apple into the big time. > > But I think that they have blown it now. Intel centers on the lower > end of the market now with their low power cpus. For high end machines > clearly IBM and AMD excel. These are the cpus preferred by scientists > and engineers -- they are not the same as the consumer versions > admittedly but those benefit from this research. I know Bruce will > argue with this but I am speaking statistically of course. AMD are really struggling now. The Sledgehammer µarch was stunning and killed Itanium; it moved the x86 world onto 64-bit, although 99% of machines still run 32-bit S/W, just like for a decade, 99% of the 32-bit 386 machines ran 16-bit S/W. But Intel turned on a dime - very impressive for such a large company - moved the Netburst µarch P4s onto x86-64 then released the really very good Core2 line based on the Pentium III (ergo, Pentium Pro) µarch. AMD retained a big lead in memory bandwidth through HyperTransport, but Intel has had a big edge in raw CPU power. Now, with Core i7 and soon Core i5, Intel is racing up on memory bandwidth too. And it's cleaning up at the low end with the Atom chip, too. Frankly, unless AMD pulls off a miracle, I think it's looking /very/ bad for it. Even Via's Nano has disappointed in the market. Perhaps an unholy AMD/Via/nVidia merger will happen, with very-lower-power-but-good-graphics ARM cores, low-power Via cores and some kind of hybrid-multicore CPU/GPU beast for the consumer market. It would be interesting, at least. > Clearly apple is a consumer company. Although the video industry > helps, many specialists have complained the intel macs are not so good > for them as the g5 was. (Intel centric) Benchmarks aside, this is user > experience. Even SSE4 can't match Altivec, it's true - at least from what I've heard - but few people really need SIMD instructions. They were a marketing ploy, a way to use extra CPU acreage. The real benefits came from growing onboard caches, not from all the SIMD stuff. > By the way they have POWER5+ intellistations on closeout for $5000. > 2x2ghz dual core, 4GB RAM, 32MB Cache on-chip, dual SCSI drives, and > free monitor. > (G5 is Power4). No OS. Put Linux on and run Leopard with MOL. Sounds nice! I always wished IBM did a deal and ported OS X Server to its POWER servers. Apple once sold AIX boxes; I see no reason a reverse deal couldn't have worked. -- Liam Proven • Profile: http://www.linkedin.com/in/liamproven Email: lpro...@cix.co.uk • GMail/GoogleTalk/Orkut: lpro...@gmail.com Tel: +44 20-8685-0498 • Cell: +44 7939-087884 • Fax: + 44 870-9151419 AOL/AIM/iChat/Yahoo/Skype: liamproven • LiveJournal/Twitter: lproven MSN: lpro...@hotmail.com • ICQ: 73187508 --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed Low End Mac's G3-5 List, a group for those using G3, G4, and G5 desktop Macs - with a particular focus on Power Macs. The list FAQ is at http://lowendmac.com/lists/g-list.shtml and our netiquette guide is at http://www.lowendmac.com/lists/netiquette.shtml To post to this group, send email to g3-5-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to g3-5-list-unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/g3-5-list?hl=en Low End Mac RSS feed at feed://lowendmac.com/feed.xml -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
