Briefly: Power6, EMI bought out, YouTube on Apple TV

[AppleInsider]

IBM has helped the PowerPC architecture regain some ground lost to Intel with the advent of a new supercomputer-class chip. Meanwhile, new anti-DRM advocate and iTunes partner EMI has agreed to be bought out by a private group. And hobbyists have put YouTube on Apple's network media device.

IBM debuts 4.7GHz Power6

While most chipmakers are stressing the parallelism of many cores in a single chip, IBM on Monday revealed the POWER6, a new dual-core processor that the company boasts as the world's fastest.

The New York state-based firm has used energy optimizations to double the clock speed to an unprecedented 4.7GHz without consuming added power. The chip could also run at the same speed with half the consumption, IBM says.

Its speed is reportedly three times faster in heavy-duty benchmarks than Intel's pure 64-bit Itanium, representing a comeback for the PowerPC architecture from which POWER draws its base. The PowerPC G5 system used in late iMacs and PowerMacs was based on a stripped-down version of the POWER4 introduced first in 2002.

Perhaps fittingly, IBM also compared the 300GB of raw bandwidth available through the POWER6's system bus to an Apple product. The sheer speed was enough to "download the entire iTunes catalog" -- 5 million songs -- in a single minute, according to the company.

EMI bought out, unprotected music remains

In a surprise announcement, EMI said today that the private equity group Terra Firma had successfully won a takeover bid, acquiring the music label for about $4.7 billion.

The terms of the deal gave relief to those worried about an acquisition jeopardizing the safety of its landmark deals to offer music without copy protection through Apple's iTunes and Amazon's unnamed store. The music recording and publishing arms would stay together, Terra Firma said.

And while the deal was still wrapping up as of press time, the deal has also eased concerns that Warner Music would validate seven-year-old rumors of its own buyout attempt of EMI. Warner CEO Edgar Bronfman publicly derided Apple head Steve Jobs for even suggesting the removal of DRM, indicating that any music under his label would have to be sold with anti-piracy measures in place.

Apple Store music playlist revealed

ifo Apple Store has successfully discovered the most recent playlist for Apple's retail outlets, which determines the music that plays in the background of all the company's 180-plus stores. The rotation is said to change every three months to stay current and maintain variety.

Though the 150-song list is dominated by clearly recognizable pop songs found on the iTunes Store from artists such as Gorillaz and U2, the company has also included the occasional independent tracks from slightly more exotic artists such as Mulatu Astatke and They Might Be Giants.

YouTube reaches Apple TV

Nicknamed "A Series of Tubes," a new unofficial plugin for the Apple TV promises to expand the media streaming hub's Internet functionality beyond watching movie trailers and reading Top Ten lists.

Using a combination of RSS news feeds and a Flash player, the Apple device can access any of the most recently spotlighted YouTube clips as well as the most commented-on or viewed movies from any given month or week.

The modification is just the latest in a series of unofficial add-ons for the device, which trickled out almost immediately after the device appeared in mid-March.

The Apple TV hobbyist website AwkwardTV is said to be receiving the YouTube extension in its plugin directory soon. In the meantime, view a brief movie demonstrating the software below.

[ View this article at AppleInsider.com ]

[solipsism]

1) F@#k IBM's dawdling effort on the PPC.

2) I have a feeling that Apple's contract is tight enough to not affect the deal with EMI.

3) Excellent work with the YouTube plugin for AppleTV.

[josephwinters]

Hey, who uses the ppc chips now that apple doesnt? I heard something about sony or xbox, but i wasnt sure.

[solipsism]

Originally Posted by josephwinters

Hey, who uses the ppc chips now that apple doesnt? I heard something about sony or xbox, but i wasnt sure.

Nintendo and Microsoft for the Wii and XBOX(360), respectfully. The XBOX360 uses 3 PPCs and requires no incremental updates or advances, like Apple constantly wanted.


The PS3 uses a Cell processor jointly developed by Sony, Toshiba, and IBM.

[bdkennedy1]

I like how IBM compares the features to the G5 and current Apple products as if Apple is going to come back.

"The chip could also run at the same speed with half the consumption, IBM says." Then why not just save electricity and just run it at half consumption?

[mynameisjesse]

damn, i want a power6 processor. i can see why apple switched to intel, but those power6s processors have been sounding pretty sweet to me.

[Morris]

Originally Posted by mynameisjesse

damn, i want a power6 processor. i can see why apple switched to intel, but those power6s processors have been sounding pretty sweet to me.

You are aware that these POWER5/6 cpu's are not the same as the G4 and G5's, are you?

As mentioned in this article, Apple used different, stripped down versions and never used these processors which are only meant for big mainframes. They are not used in any desktop machine and with power consumptions like 170 Watt you can forget any laptop use. Let alone that even the Mac Mini would start at about $11,000 if these processors would be used.

It sounds nice but this news has little to do with Apple or the decision to switch to Intel.

[shamino]

IBM's POWER series of chips are not PPC chips. They share a common ancestor, architecturally, but they are very different from each other.

POWER6 (like POWER5 and POWER4 before) are mainframe-class chips. They sport very high speeds, but at an extremely high cost, and with high power consumption. Giving the pricing, cooling, and power requirements of desktop systems (not to mention laptops), there is no way this chip will ever make its way out of the machine room.

Everybody (including Apple) knew all about POWER4 and 5 when Apple made the decision to move to Intel. None of it mattered, because IBM wouldn't put all that tech into the PPC (the consumer version of the architecture) without Apple paying all of IBM's R&D costs. And given the G5's track record, I doubt it would ever run cool enough to go in a laptop or iMac or mini.

[Hattig]

I think the original story is a but unkind to POWER, insinuating that IBM have finally gotten something out to catch-up to Intel.

POWER6 is lapping Intel, POWER5+ was already way ahead. This just makes Intel's Itanium efforts look weak.

The last CPU to lap other architectures was the DEC Alpha, when it went to EV6.

Figures?

http://www-03.ibm.com/systems/p/hard.../perfdata.html

8 core SPEC CPU2006 INT Rates
240 ___ IBM: 4.7Ghz POWER6
108 ___ HP: 3 GHz AMD Opteron 8222SE, DDR2 667
102 ___ HP: 1.6GHz/24MB Dual-Core, Intel Itanium 2
91.2 ___ Fujitsu Siemens: 2.66 GHz Intel QC Xeon processor X5355, FSB 1.333
81.6 ___ Sun: 2.15 GHz SPARC IV (Fujitsu)

8 core SPEC CPU2006 FP Rates
213 ___ IBM: 4.7Ghz POWER6
98.7 ___ HP: 3 GHz AMD Opteron 8222SE, DDR2 667
90.8 ___ HP: 1.6GHz/18MB Dual-Core, Intel Itanium 2
70.9 ___ Sun: 2.15 GHz SPARC IV (Fujitsu)
60.9 ___ Fujitsu Siemens: 2.66 GHz Intel QC Xeon processor X5355, FSB 1.333
58.2 ___ Bull: 3.4 GHz Intel Tulsa, FSB 800, 16MB L3

(Opteron ain't doing so badly for having a total of 8MB L2, compare that to the 96MB L2 the Itanium 2 system has; the 32MB L2 & 128MB L3 the POWER6 has is used well though, the SPEC rate 2006 scaling is near 100% per doubling of cores)

Of course this ain't for your common garden workstation system, this is going to run Oracle or simulations in high end compute supercomputers.

[McHuman]

Originally Posted by solipsism

Nintendo and Microsoft for the Wii and XBOX(360), respectfully. .

Its "respectively", not "respectfully".

[syklee26]

oh no. this board and other forum will be devoured with "POWERBOOK G6 COMING TUESDAY" bs.

[JeffDM]

The POWER 6 part of the story really has nothing to do with Apple. It's not the same type of chip and Apple never used a POWER chip in any shipping product.

Even if it meant an extension of the PPC line, I think it was still smart to dump the arch. There are still some hangers-on but I think the G5 PPC was a mistake of an architecture and the PowerMac G5s were irritating in too many respects, I'm glad I don't have one by my desk anymore.

[MonaLisa]

Hattig, you're right on the money. Once upon a time, the Itanium was beating up on the POWER4, but since the POWER5+ came out, POWER has had no competition at the high end. Note that the Itanium still beats everyone when it comes to IPC, but that doesn't really mean anything then the clock is 3x slower. Oh well.

[anantksundaram]

Originally Posted by AppleInsider

In a surprise announcement, EMI said today that the private equity group Terra Firma had successfully won a takeover bid, acquiring the music label for about $4.7 billion.

This is looks like a terribly overvalued deal..... this is a company whose stock has fallen by half since early 2002, has seen declining sales, and falling/volatile profits (indeed, losses recently).

They made less than $90 million last year (and will make probably less this year), and some private equity genius is willing to pay $4,700 million!?

Wow, private equity is beginning to scrape the bottom of the barrel.

[solipsism]

Originally Posted by McHuman

Its "respectively", not "respectfully".

its is it's. We all make mistakes and spell checker isn't infallible. No need to post a reply to comment soley on grammar.

[Bageljoey]

Originally Posted by solipsism

its is it's. We all make mistakes and spell checker isn't infallible. No need to post a reply to comment soley on grammar.

[Marvin]

Originally Posted by bdkennedy1

I like how IBM compares the features to the G5 and current Apple products as if Apple is going to come back.

"The chip could also run at the same speed with half the consumption, IBM says." Then why not just save electricity and just run it at half consumption?

That's exactly what I was thinking.

IBM technology is meaningless to most people now. Even the games consoles are struggling. The Xbox 360 runs too hot, the PS3 isn't delivering the performance they were hoping and the Wii is almost just a Gamecube.

Now is the time to develop a games machine that is designed to run standard PC games using a Core 2 Quad CPU. Instant catalogue of cheap games and guaranteed future support. You wouldn't need Windows completely, just the bits that PC games need.

[technohermit]

Originally Posted by JeffDM

The POWER 6 part of the story really has nothing to do with Apple. It's not the same type of chip and Apple never used a POWER chip in any shipping product.

Even if it meant an extension of the PPC line, I think it was still smart to dump the arch. There are still some hangers-on but I think the G5 PPC was a mistake of an architecture and the PowerMac G5s were irritating in too many respects, I'm glad I don't have one by my desk anymore.

Yeah. I'm fairly certain my 1st Gen MBP is faster than my 2.0Ghz Dual G5 (also 1st Gen) was. I'm glad I dumped it off. And even if the laptop isnt as fast, it is close enough, and portable. Switch to Intel was a good thing.

[Louzer]

Originally Posted by anantksundaram

This is looks like a terribly overvalued deal..... this is a company whose stock has fallen by half since early 2002, has seen declining sales, and falling/volatile profits (indeed, losses recently).

They made less than $90 million last year (and will make probably less this year), and some private equity genius is willing to pay $4,700 million!?

Wow, private equity is beginning to scrape the bottom of the barrel.

Yes, because private equity firms are run by people who are so stupid, they have no problem spending 4.7 billion dollars on a company. Obviously they need to hire you and they would actually have tons of money at their disposal.

Or perhaps they see more to EMI then just what they made last year.

[nvidia2008]

Originally Posted by technohermit

Yeah. I'm fairly certain my 1st Gen MBP is faster than my 2.0Ghz Dual G5 (also 1st Gen) was. I'm glad I dumped it off. And even if the laptop isnt as fast, it is close enough, and portable. Switch to Intel was a good thing.

Word. Screw IBM. The had their chance, they blew it, they can go back to making the BIGGEST FASTEST OMFG MOST AWESOME CHIP ON THE PLANET. And people that need it, more power (heh, pun unintended) to them. As for the "rest of us", the Core2Duo is kickass. Reallly.

[anantksundaram]

Originally Posted by Louzer

Yes, because private equity firms are run by people who are so stupid, they have no problem spending 4.7 billion dollars on a company. Obviously they need to hire you and they would actually have tons of money at their disposal.

Or perhaps they see more to EMI then just what they made last year.

Maybe.

But I doubt it. (Altho, I don't think they are stupid ones, as much as the people feeding them the debt to do this buyout are; and that is your typical local banker).

[Neruda]

Originally Posted by AppleInsider

IBM debuts 4.7GHz Power6

[ View this article at AppleInsider.com ]

And in other news, these chips won't actually be available in meaningful quantities for another four years....(or has IBM overcome the general production incompetencies that we all know from Apple's PPC days?)

I say good riddance.

[theapplegenius]

The POWER6 isn't a general use processor like the G5 was. You'd never see it in an Apple desktop anyway. It is very good at one thing, but not at lots of different code. 4.7GHz would seem slow.

[melgross]

Originally Posted by solipsism

1) F@#k IBM's dawdling effort on the PPC.

2) I have a feeling that Apple's contract is tight enough to not affect the deal with EMI.

3) Excellent work with the YouTube plugin for AppleTV.

It isn't a PPC though.

The PPC is to this, as the Pentium 2 is to the Core2.

[Splinemodel]

I love how everyone is bashing the Power6. A few years ago, it was Intel getting bashed, and it would have been nothing but oohs and aahs about the Power6.

Which is what it should be. No one so far has gotten close to 4.7GHz. That's pretty impressive. I'm sure it's a total beast, which is how most IBM processors are. Don't get me wrong: I think it was the right decision to take Apple to Intel, but there's no harm in appreciating a good piece of engineering. The Power6 will be a boon for telecom especially.

theapplegenius: Umm, the Power6 is indeed a general purpose chip. General purpose for extreme requirements. It's not an ASIC or a DSP or anything close. I'm not sure it even includes DSP instructions the way the G5 does.

[theapplegenius]

Originally Posted by Splinemodel

theapplegenius: Umm, the Power6 is indeed a general purpose chip. General purpose for extreme requirements. It's not an ASIC or a DSP or anything close. I'm not sure it even includes DSP instructions the way the G5 does.

It's a general purpose chip in the same way that an Itanium is a general purpose chip. You know what I mean. It wouldn't end up in a Power Mac G6.

[melgross]

Originally Posted by theapplegenius

It's a general purpose chip in the same way that an Itanium is a general purpose chip. You know what I mean. It wouldn't end up in a Power Mac G6.

Not any more.

[AISI]

Originally Posted by bdkennedy1

I like how IBM compares the features to the G5 and current Apple products as if Apple is going to come back.

The POWER6 is compared to another server chip, the Itanium processor that runs HP's server line: "the processor bandwidth of the POWER6 chip could download the entire iTunes catalog in about 60 seconds -- 30 times faster than HP's Itanium."

Originally Posted by bdkennedy1

"The chip could also run at the same speed with half the consumption, IBM says." Then why not just save electricity and just run it at half consumption?

"At 4.7 GHz, the dual-core POWER6 processor doubles the speed of the previous generation POWER5 while using nearly the same amount of electricity to run and cool it. This means customers can use the new processor to either increase their performance by 100 percent or cut their power consumption virtually in half."

Originally Posted by Neruda

And in other news, these chips won't actually be available in meaningful quantities for another four years....

It should be available at the end of this year in the p570.

Originally Posted by Splinemodel

I love how everyone is bashing the Power6. A few years ago, it was Intel getting bashed, and it would have been nothing but oohs and aahs about the Power6.

Times they are a-changing.

[jonessodarally]

Originally Posted by solipsism

its is it's. We all make mistakes and spell checker isn't infallible. No need to post a reply to comment soley on grammar.

PWN?

[ascii]

POWER6 sounds like a great chip. I wonder if Apple would release a server based on it (or the PowerPC derivative)?

OS X is still fully Universal...

[aegisdesign]

Cue Mac Pro Power Extreme next Tuesday.

I'm joking of course but it's not so far fetched. Unlike the PowerPC 970 which was cut down from IBM's POWER4 series chips with AltiVec hacked on, the POWER6 is more PowerPC like from the beginning.

The other thing to note is when the PPC 970 was running at 2+ Ghz, the POWER4 was only running at 1.8Ghz. Server class chips are much more conservatively clocked. Who knows, perhaps a POWER6 derived PowerPC could run 6+Ghz.

It still makes me wonder if Apple couldn't pursue a dual architecture approach instead of being Intel only. It was a great thing that they switched to Intel for laptops but a POWER6 derived XServe would kick ass.

[petermac]

Originally Posted by anantksundaram

This is looks like a terribly overvalued deal.....

Wow, private equity is beginning to scrape the bottom of the barrel.

Yep, I agree. Its because its not "the deal makers" money. Its a reflection in the growing superannuation money from around the world. Its yours and my money. I'd be wery wery afwaid.

[petermac]

Originally Posted by aegisdesign

Cue Mac Pro Power Extreme next Tuesday.

It still makes me wonder if Apple couldn't pursue a dual architecture approach instead of being Intel only. It was a great thing that they switched to Intel for laptops but a POWER6 derived XServe would kick ass.

Yeh, you could be spot on. If Apple developed OSX for intel in their skunkworks dept for 5 years, its quite feasible they are maintaining a POWER version now, only to be dragged out when conditions are appropriate

[petermac]

Oops Double Post

[solipsism]

Originally Posted by melgross

It isn't a PPC though.

The PPC is to this, as the Pentium 2 is to the Core2.

I know. I was just venting my feeling about IBMs lackluster PPC efforts.

[caliminius]

Originally Posted by Marvin

Now is the time to develop a games machine that is designed to run standard PC games using a Core 2 Quad CPU. Instant catalogue of cheap games and guaranteed future support. You wouldn't need Windows completely, just the bits that PC games need.

Your second sentence is half right. A stripped down games-only Windows PC would have an instant catalog of cheap games, however it would hardly be guaranteed future support. Whatever combination of CPU and graphics processor it has will be obsolete before the system leaves the factory. In the end, such a system will quickly be left behind in the computer games world because the latest ATI/NVidia graphics card has upped the required VRAM requirements to 512MB and your games-only system only includes 256MB. Or Microsoft will release the next version of DirectX which the system isn't capable of supporting. These issues are why I gave up on trying to be a PC gamer. At least if I buy a video game console, I know it will play everything made for it.

And I think someone tried to manufacture a system like this a few years ago. From it's nonexistence now, I assume you can see how well that went...

[nmcphers]

Apple should just provide an OEM version of OS X Server with Power6 hardware. That way they get into the high end server space, leverage OS X processor agnostic nature, and not strain their relationship with Intel or waste money on dual hardware support.

[JeffDM]

Originally Posted by caliminius

And I think someone tried to manufacture a system like this a few years ago. From it's nonexistence now, I assume you can see how well that went...

If you are referring to the Phantom console, then I don't think that's a clear-cut situation such that your conclusion is a valid one.

A lot of the gamer community pretty much written them off as fraud perpetrators. The address on their communications pointed to unused commercial space that they weren't even renting. Basically, it was an expensive, locked-down, epoxy sealed & non-upgradeable PC that really didn't have much of a selling point or much interest from gamers or vendors.

[shamino]

Originally Posted by Hattig

Of course this ain't for your common garden workstation system, this is going to run Oracle or simulations in high end compute supercomputers.

Exactly. You would never compare a POWER6 (or POWER-anything) system against a desktop computer.

You'd compare it again big-iron from Sun, SGI, and other similar manufacturers.

Originally Posted by ascii

POWER6 sounds like a great chip. I wonder if Apple would release a server based on it (or the PowerPC derivative)?

I suppose it could be done in theory, but I doubt Apple ever would. They have never shipped a product even close to a big-iron system. Their most powerful computer (the Mac Pro) is still a desktop class machine. It doesn't have the storage or I/O bandwidth to go up against a mainframe.

Apple would have to do a lot of hardware R&D to enter that market space. And after all that work, they'd be trying to enter a saturated monopoly market. They've done this before, but always with consumer devices, where their superior UI can attract customers away from the incumbents. That's not going to help in the mainframe biz, where the computers are only accessed by software running on other computers (and by a small number of trained system administrators.)

I don't think OS X would be much of an advantage over Solaris, IRIX or Linux in this market.

[EruIthildur]

Originally Posted by petermac

Yep, I agree. Its because its not "the deal makers" money. Its a reflection in the growing superannuation money from around the world. Its yours and my money. I'd be wery wery afwaid.

I guess you ignore the fact that many times the deal makers have a lot of their own money in with the fund.... It might be that the majority is outsiders money, but really, to properly function it's hard to all come from one person... At least when they are starting out.