PCI? We don't need no stinking PCI

[serrano]

or AGP apparently...

linkage.

<a href="http://www.newsfactor.com/perl/story/16589.html" target="_blank">Will Apple's Next Power Mac Pack New 3GIO?</a>

[quote]Apple (Nasdaq: AAPL) has a history of popularizing computer expansion standards. The company caused an explosion in the number of USB devices on the market when its original iMac took off, and it caused a similar uproar in the digital video community with FireWire.

Now, Apple may be poised to push another standard called 3GIO, widely heralded as the successor to PCI and AGP expansion slots. Those slots, located on a computer's motherboard, allow insertion of video cards, networking cards and so on to enhance the computer's capabilities.

Pundits have begun to speculate that Apple is planning to incorporate 3GIO into the much-anticipated revision of its aging high-end Power Mac architecture.


[A D V E R T I S E M E N T] A D V E R T I S E M E N T
Third Time a Charm

3GI0 stands for "third-generation input/output." Originally called Arapahoe (named for a workgroup that included Compaq, Dell, IBM, Intel and Microsoft), the standard is expected to start shipping with desktop computers in 2004. Development tools and specifications are likely to appear in 2003.

The PCI Special Interest Group (PCI-SIG), of which Apple is a member, is attempting to push the 3GIO standard while retaining support for the still-emerging PCI-X standard. The group is telling users that PCI-X is optimized for high-end applications used on servers and workstations, while 3GIO is targeted toward general-purpose applications that run on desktops and mobile devices.

Need for Speed

According to the PCI-SIG, a number of upcoming technological developments will require a faster internal input/output scheme.

"Technologies such as CPU speeds that will exceed 10 GHz, faster memory speeds, higher-speed graphics, 1-Gigabit and 10-Gigabit LAN, 1394b, InfiniBand fabrics and others will drive the need for much greater internal system bandwidth," according to 3GIO product literature.

Apple already includes a direct bus to the system controller on current Power Mac G4 systems, providing sustained throughput of 215 Mbps. The company claims that bottlenecks in most other PC architectures cause a slowdown to 133 Mbps when using certain applications.

Current specifications for 3GIO show data running directly from an expansion device (such as a graphics card) through a memory bridge and into the CPU, avoiding any potential I/O bridge bottlenecks.

The PCI-SIG claims 3GIO sports an initial frequency of 2.5 Gb/s/direction, which is expected to increase as silicon technology advances to 10Gb/s/direction (the theoretical maximum for signals sent via copper wire). 3GIO purportedly also will feature 100 MB per second per pin data transfer, compared with AGP 4X's 10 MB per second per pin throughput.

HyperTransport Complement

AMD is developing its own high-speed interconnection standard, independent of 3GIO, dubbed "HyperTransport." This I/O standard, which AMD officials said is not intended to compete with either 3GIO or PCI-X, will deliver 12.8 GB/sec.

Apple is a member of the HyperTransport Consortium, lending credence to speculation that the company will choose to integrate some form of AMD's technology into its high-end systems. NVidia, which supplies virtually all graphics cards for current desktop Macs, is also a member of the HyperTransport Consortium.

Major announcements regarding HyperTransport and possibly 3GIO are expected to take place at the Networld+Interop conference, to be held in Las Vegas, Nevada, from May 7th to 9th. &lt;http://www.ecommercetimes.com/images/end-nfn.gif&gt;
<hr></blockquote>

[Nostradamus]

[quote]Major announcements regarding HyperTransport and possibly 3GIO are expected to take place at the Networld+Interop conference, to be held in Las Vegas, Nevada, from May 7th to 9th<hr></blockquote>

Interesting. That's right around the time of Apple's WWDC. WWDC has always been a venue for hardware and software announcements and demonstrations.

[ 03-01-2002: Message edited by: Nostradamus ]</p>

[TJM]

[quote]Originally posted by Nostradamus:
<strong>

Interesting. That's right around the time of Apple's WWDC. WWDC has always been a venue for hardware and software announcements and demonstrations.

[ 03-01-2002: Message edited by: Nostradamus ]</strong><hr></blockquote>

Actually that's exactly the time of WWDC 2002 - May 6 - 10. :eek: Sounds extremely interesting...

[wmf]

Eventually Intel will replace PCI with 3GIO, so card makers will have to develop 3GIO cards. Since the Mac market is so small, Apple will be forced to adopt 3GIO in 2004 or so.

[concentricity]

[quote]Originally posted by wmf:
<strong>Eventually Intel will replace PCI with 3GIO, so card makers will have to develop 3GIO cards. Since the Mac market is so small, Apple will be forced to adopt 3GIO in 2004 or so.</strong><hr></blockquote>

Right..., just the same as USB and FireWire...

&lt;...something about giant simian testicles...&gt;

[AirSluf]

[Eskimo]

[quote]Apple is a member of the HyperTransport Consortium, lending credence to speculation that the company will choose to integrate some form of AMD's technology into its high-end systems. NVidia, which supplies virtually all graphics cards for current desktop Macs, is also a member of the HyperTransport Consortium.
<hr></blockquote>

Nvidia is poised to release their second iteration of their Nforce chipset with support for PC2700 DDR memory, ATA133, and integrated G4MX graphics in addition to their already present support for hypertransport, integrated LAN, and integrated dolby digital sound.

Perhaps Apple has liscensed Nvidia to produce chipsets for future Apple computers? Nvidia has proven they are able to adapt their Nforce technology to different platforms as is evidenced by their support of AMD's EV6 protocol for SocketA motherboards and Intel's GTL+ protocol in the Xbox. What's to keep them from making an MPX compliant version for the mac? This would bring the Mac to parity with the cutting edge of PC technology as far as motherboard technology.

[Powerdoc]

[quote]Originally posted by Eskimo:
<strong>

Nvidia is poised to release their second iteration of their Nforce chipset with support for PC2700 DDR memory, ATA133, and integrated G4MX graphics in addition to their already present support for hypertransport, integrated LAN, and integrated dolby digital sound.

Perhaps Apple has liscensed Nvidia to produce chipsets for future Apple computers? Nvidia has proven they are able to adapt their Nforce technology to different platforms as is evidenced by their support of AMD's EV6 protocol for SocketA motherboards and Intel's GTL+ protocol in the Xbox. What's to keep them from making an MPX compliant version for the mac? This would bring the Mac to parity with the cutting edge of PC technology as far as motherboard technology.</strong><hr></blockquote>
it may be a possibility for the future, but is there isn't a problem with endian stuff ?

[Jeremiah Rich]

I think that would be pretty awesome.. The problem of course, would be compatibility. Who makes cards that would support this format? As long as they could get at least ggrphics cards that do, I think it could be viable for the G5....

[G-News]

Going to 3GIO before anyone else does would be a bad move, as you'd spend money on expensve controllers and stuff, without having any potential benefit for the customer, as long as nobody has any 3GIO cards available. (unless they made it downwards compatible, which I don't know).

Apple will most likely adopt both PCI-X and 3GIO in the future, but most certainly not before Intel introduces it to its own chipsets.

G-News

[Eric D.V.H]

[quote]Originally posted by G-News:
<strong>Going to 3GIO before anyone else does would be a bad move, as you'd spend money on expensve controllers and stuff, without having any potential benefit for the customer, as long as nobody has any 3GIO cards available. (unless they made it downwards compatible, which I don't know).

Apple will most likely adopt both PCI-X and 3GIO in the future, but most certainly not before Intel introduces it to its own chipsets.</strong><hr></blockquote>

Wrong. remember how much support SCSI had when Apple picked it up? how about ADB? USB, DB-15, DAV, NuBus, GeoPort, LocalTalk, ZIF, PDS ? how about _practically none_.

Apple has gone it alone many times before(In fact. when Apple gave up it's independant ways for PCI and ATA. Apple lost nearly all of it's massive advantage over the other platforms. leaving only the CPU and the ROM chip to differentiate a modern Mac's motherboard from an equivalent, vanilla PC). the fact of that AMD and Intel are pushing for LDT né Hypertransport and Arapahoe(Respectively) will make Apple's task all the easier. the only difference between using it in their machines now. and waiting like a fat cow for everyone else to do it first. is that Apple would give everyone else in the PC industry a resounding *SPANK*. as well as re-affirming their innovative image.

As for HyperTransport Vs. 3GIO. this is going to be just like <a href="http://www.mackido.com/Hardware/rdram.html" target="_blank">DDR Vs. Rambus</a>, <a href="http://www.mackido.com/Hardware/USB2.html" target="_blank">FireWire Vs. USB 2</a>, SCSI Vs. ATA and NuBus Vs. ISA. as usual. Intel's standard totally sucks wind.

Arapahoe is pure fiction right now. meanwhile HyperTransport slots currently run at 6GB per second. and have been on the market(And by that. I mean that companies have been buying HyperTransport chips, designing <a href="http://www.api-networks.com/silicon/" target="_blank">Products</a> around them, mass manufacturing and selling them on the open market) for about _two years_ now. and the revision slated for mid-2002 beats Arapahoe's(Extremely theoretical) top speed by 2Gb per second. so Apple could already have been tinkering with REAL, SHIPPING COMPONENTS FOR TWO YEARS if they've been using HyperTransport. as opposed to their parts being "likely to appear in 2003" for a clearly inferior standard.

[quote]The group is telling users that PCI-X is optimized for high-end applications used on servers and workstations, while 3GIO is targeted toward general-purpose applications that run on desktops and mobile devices.<hr></blockquote>

What a line of garbage <img src="graemlins/lol.gif" border="0" alt="[Laughing]" /> ! <a href="http://www.pcisig.com/specifications/pci_x/" target="_blank">PCI-X</a>. while about four times faster(1Gb/sec) than 64-Bit/66Mhz PCI. is still about 11Gb per second short of HyperTransport. and even Arapahoe beats it out by 9Gb per second. PCI-X's main advantage is that its pin compatible with other versions of PCI.

The other one to beware of is <a href="http://www.intel.com/technology/agp/agp_draft9.htm" target="_blank">AGP 8X</a>. it will run at only 2Gb/sec. which will also be way slower than HyperTransport and 3GIO. and try to weasel it's way in through pin compatibility too. plus. PCI-X and AGP 8X are _just now_ exiting the experimental stage. giving HyperTransport a MASSIVE lead over _everything_ that could possibly try to compete with it.

So if you hear anyone mention 3GIO, PCI-X and/or AGP 8X in a positive manner. especially in comparison to HyperTransport. set em' straight.

This is Apple's golden chance to massively leapfrog the rest of the industry. lets hope they don't blow it.

Eric,

[Arty50]

Umm, last time I checked HyperTransport was NOT a replacement for PCI. Eric, that link you provided supports this. According to those product schematics you linked to, HyperTransport is used to connect the PCI bus to the rest of the system. PCI-X and 3GIO are replacement technologies for the PCI bus/interconnect. HyperTransport isn't. In other words, HT and PCI-X/3GIO are complementary (not competing) technologies. HT's purpose is to enable greater bandwidth than is currently available between the various chipsets on a mobo.

[ 03-03-2002: Message edited by: Arty50 ]</p>

[AirSluf]

[Arty50]

[quote]Originally posted by AirSluf:
<strong>

Different busses, different parts of the MB. No head to head competition, but synergistic when used together.</strong><hr></blockquote>

Yes. I don't understand why we have to keep rehashing this. A few idiots in the media screwed this whole thing up a few months ago, but it's been discussed to death and the notion that these are competing techs has been debunked a million times since.

[ 03-03-2002: Message edited by: Arty50 ]</p>

[Junkyard Dawg]

Apple does not innovate in hardware any longer, so they will not adopt this standard until they are forced to by the low availability of PCI and AGP cards. The way of Apple is to use slightly outdated technology to pad their profit margins, while using meaningless benchmarks to demonstrate that Macs are 2.3 times as fast as a 4 GHz Pentium beast.

If Apple ever leads the way in motherboard design within the next 5 years, I'll suck my own dick!!!

[Powerdoc]

[quote]

If Apple ever leads the way in motherboard design within the next 5 years, I'll suck my own dick!!![/QB]<hr></blockquote>

If it arrive, we will refresh your memory and some of AI members will ask you some proofs ... :eek:

[concentricity]

[quote]Originally posted by Junkyard Dawg:
[QB]Apple does not innovate in hardware any longer [QB]<hr></blockquote>

&lt;sarcasm&gt;
wow, i couldn't agree more!
&lt;/sarcasm&gt;

"any longer"? like, not since they released USB & FireWire way ahead of most (if not all) other computer makers? Or when they moved to a unified motherboard architecture? (showing truly forward thinking) or, since they released a FULLY decked out laptop @ only an inch thick? or since they successfully brought to market the first DVD-R equiped machines (not to mention the complete solution for creating content and then mastering it). or not since they completely redefined what a desktop consumer machine should be?

yeah, i guess you're right, apple hasn't released any innovative hardware in the past couple weeks...
<img src="graemlins/oyvey.gif" border="0" alt="[No]" />

[TJM]

[quote]Originally posted by Eric D.V.H:


Apple has gone it alone many times before(In fact. when Apple gave up it's independant ways for PCI and ATA. Apple lost nearly all of it's massive advantage over the other platforms. leaving only the CPU and the ROM chip to differentiate a modern Mac's motherboard from an equivalent, vanilla PC). <hr></blockquote>

Originally, Apple built their computers around what they considered to be the best available technology. SCSI, was light-years ahead of any other external connectivity standard, for example, except that nobody cared in the PC world because they focused on internal devices. Most of the other now-discarded technologies were greeted similarly. Better = more expensive, and the PC world prefered cheap price over all else. What made Apple finally discard them was the constant whining and griping of critics and us, the customers. The complaint was that these technologies made Apple a de facto closed system, with upgrade or replacement parts difficult to find and expensive to buy. Although ATA was (is) an inferior technology to SCSI, Apple shifted to it because that's what their customers wanted (ATA drives are 1/2 to 1/3 the price of equivalent SCSI drives, for example - or at least they were at the time). So don't beat up on Apple for giving up on these technologies - it's what we, their customers, demanded they do.

An unfortunate side effect of Apple's initial direction is the persistent myth that Macs use only proprietary parts - its memory, hard drives, or other parts couldn't be used in a PC and vice versa (my brother and sister both gave me this one last summer!). It also gave Apple a reputation for being "uppity" or catering to snob-appeal, which turned off a lot of PC users. Overall, I think going to industry-standard parts has been a positive thing.

[ 03-04-2002: Message edited by: TJM ]</p>

[Eric D.V.H]

[quote]Originally posted by Arty50:
<strong>Umm, last time I checked HyperTransport was NOT a replacement for PCI. Eric, that link you provided supports this. According to those product schematics you linked to, HyperTransport is used to connect the PCI bus to the rest of the system. PCI-X and 3GIO are replacement technologies for the PCI bus/interconnect. HyperTransport isn't. In other words, HT and PCI-X/3GIO are complementary (not competing) technologies. HT's purpose is to enable greater bandwidth than is currently available between the various chipsets on a mobo.</strong><hr></blockquote>

[quote]Originally posted by AirSluf:
<strong>Different busses, different parts of the MB. No head to head competition, but synergistic when used together.</strong><hr></blockquote>

[quote]Originally posted by Arty50:
<strong>Yes. I don't understand why we have to keep rehashing this. A few idiots in the media screwed this whole thing up a few months ago, but it's been discussed to death and the notion that these are competing techs has been debunked a million times since.</strong><hr></blockquote>

That's just what they want you to think. in <a href="http://www.sibyte.com/mercurian/docs/whitepaper_ldt.pdf" target="_blank">this Api NetWorks/Sibyte whitepaper</a> and <a href="http://www.hypertransport.org/downloads/whitepapers/HT_busarch.pdf" target="_blank">this Api NetWorks executive summary</a>. they say that: "The 50-ohm impedance and differential signaling also permit trace lengths up to 24 inches, and they span board interconnects well." meaning that HyperTransport works perfectly well across the shattered pins and traces at the bottom of a PCB card.

They also said that: "There is an ongoing effort with major connector companies to define a variety of connectors that can fit different price/performance parameters. More information on this topic will be available in 2001."

And in a <a href="http://www.amd.com/us-en/assets/content_type/white_papers_and_tech_docs/HyperTransport_IO_Link_Whitepaper_25012A.pdf" target="_blank">recent AMD whitepaper</a>. they discussed Plug ‘n Play in it's session layer.

The final clincher though. is on <a href="http://www.hypertransport.org/documentation/#q20" target="_blank">AMD's online HyperTransport FAQ</a>. where they more cautiously echo the precise words of the Api NetWorks/Sibyte pieces by saying: "A HyperTransport connector has not been endorsed at this time; however, some members of the Consortium are exploring possible use of connectors for different applications."

So why are they pretending that HyperTransport is an intra-board-only standard? darned if I know.

[quote]Originally posted by concentricity:
<strong>&lt;sarcasm&gt;
wow, i couldn't agree more!
&lt;/sarcasm&gt;

"any longer"? like, not since they released USB</strong><hr></blockquote>

Intel thought up USB. and it took Apple three years to adopt it. although. if not for Apple. USB probably would have died the quiet death of VCDs in the US during the mid-90s. ever present and fully compatible. yet never used.

[quote]Originally posted by concentricity:
<strong>& FireWire way ahead of most (if not all) other computer makers?</strong><hr></blockquote>

For some strange reason Apple pretty much always treated FireWire like some sort of illigitimate child, After developing FireWire in 1994 Apple announced that all Macintosh's would support FireWire by 1996, They missed it completely.

Meanwhile, Around 1997 Sony started shipping DV products like the VX-1000 Camcorder, Compaq released Presario's with FireWire on the motherboard, Sony followed suit soon after, And then the rest of the PC industry gradually came into the fold, Apple had publicly done nothing until they released the Apple FireWire Kit(A PCI card with three cables) in 1998, Finally, in 1999, Apple Computer, The company that thought of FireWire in the first place, Became pretty much the last company to put it on one of their motherboards.

Prior to this, Apple didn't really encourage third party's to use it as much more than a glorified S-Video connector, And to this day about the only FireWire devices other than DV camera's you will see are storage peripherals, Like hard disk, Zip, Jaz, MO, DVD-RAM, CD-RW, Tape, And ORB drives(None of which are actually true FireWire drives, As they ALL use _bridge chips_, And usually ATA ones, Blech! Thusly so called FireWire drives are actually the equivalant of an ATA drive with an ATA to FireWire adapter hanging off the back).

I have yet to see large numbers of FireWire based speakers, Printers, Devices that use small media(CF,SM,MMC,Clik!, MicroDrive,MD etc.) like digital still camera's, Portable music players, PDA's and memory readers, Microphones, TVs, Special purpose equipment control I/O's(Medical devices, Industrial manufacturing machinary, Scientific instruments etc.) and many others that seem to have been either ceded to USB or left with straight serial.

[quote]Originally posted by concentricity:
<strong>Or when they moved to a unified motherboard architecture? (showing truly forward thinking)</strong><hr></blockquote>

Dumping the contents of the ROM chip into ultra slow dynamic RAM instead of swapping the slower ROM chips they were using at the time for speedy static memory(Which. by the way. is seldom used in large amounts due to the fact of that it costs so much more than dynamic memory. but the fact of that the Mac ROM code is only about 6-8MBs makes static memory an excellant choice for small, frequently accessed data like is on most ROMs) chips. like the SRAM used in most CPUs as cache. was probably one of the worst moves Apple has ever done.

And if you're refering to switching to a standard motherboard chipset across all lines. I think the PC industry has been doing that since about the day there were clones.

[quote]Originally posted by concentricity:
<strong>or, since they released a FULLY decked out laptop @ only an inch thick?</strong><hr></blockquote>

*Yawn*. as if Sony, Toshiba, Sharp and numerous others hadn't trampled all over them already. the PowerPC G3 is such a low energy/heat/footprint chip compared to every semi-recent Pentium or Kx ever placed in a laptop as to make Apple's design team look ridiculous for taking so long. and then to use one of the highest energy/heat/footprint chips ever employed by Apple. the G4. in their first &lt;=1" thick laptop. was completely absurd. the crowning insult is the fact that Apple STILL hasn't satisfied the subnotebook crowd(And one upped the Wintel industry) with a <a href="http://cdgenp01.csd.toshiba.com/content/pr/download/flash/2000_tour/portege_2000_tour.html" target="_blank">_really_</a> tiny laptop.

[quote]Originally posted by concentricity:
<strong>or since they successfully brought to market the first DVD-R equiped machines</strong><hr></blockquote>

Yuck. DVD-R. like CD-R before it. is about the most user unfriendly storage medium ever invented. Apple already had DVD-RAM drives in their G4s. which. aside from their far superior hard disc like user experience. also costed roughly $750 less than Apple's DVD-R drive at the time. and currently cost $250 less(PS: Don't believe the lies. all DVD-RAM discs are fully compatible with all 3rd generation or later DVD drives and set-top DVD players). also. DVD-RAM is the obvious master format in the new <a href="http://www.dvdforum.com/tech-dvdmulti.htm" target="_blank">DVD-Multi</a> drives.

[quote]Originally posted by concentricity:
<strong>(not to mention the complete solution for creating content and then mastering it).</strong><hr></blockquote>

Although DVD Pro Studio is pretty much the same as the program Apple bought from Astarte. I'll have to admit that iDVD was(And is) the only really user friendly piece of DVD creation software. except for one point.

For some strange reason. Apple left out the DVD-Audio features of Astarte’s software. despite the fact of that it had one of the first DVD packages capable of DVD-Audio authoring ever made. this would have been perfect to integrate into the Apple DVD Player, sorta mix that with iDVD. and then have it be an even better(24-bit, 192khz, 5.1 Dolby/DTS digital suround) answer to the "We missed the CD-RW boat" thing than iMus… er. iTunes.

[quote]Originally posted by concentricity:
<strong>or not since they completely redefined what a desktop consumer machine should be?</strong><hr></blockquote>

The new iMac. while the most incredibly cool AIO machine ever(If I hadn't bought my G4 already. I'd be having a VERY difficult time deciding whether or not to buy one of the new iMacs right on the spot). is still assembled out of the same old parts(Except for that arm ). Apple needs something new, fresh and unique. like. say. <a href="http://www.dti3d.com/products.asp" target="_blank">this</a> or <a href="http://www-3.ibm.com/software/speech/mac/osx/" target="_blank">this</a>.

[quote]Originally posted by TJM:
<strong>Originally, Apple built their computers around what they considered to be the best available technology. SCSI, was light-years ahead of any other external connectivity standard, for example, except that nobody cared in the PC world because they focused on internal devices. Most of the other now-discarded technologies were greeted similarly. Better = more expensive, and the PC world prefered cheap price over all else. What made Apple finally discard them was the constant whining and griping of critics and us, the customers. The complaint was that these technologies made Apple a de facto closed system, with upgrade or replacement parts difficult to find and expensive to buy. Although ATA was (is) an inferior technology to SCSI, Apple shifted to it because that's what their customers wanted (ATA drives are 1/2 to 1/3 the price of equivalent SCSI drives, for example - or at least they were at the time). So don't beat up on Apple for giving up on these technologies - it's what we, their customers, demanded they do.</strong><hr></blockquote>

Well _I_ certainly didn't ask for it. and even if everyone else did. I don't think a lot of Mac users liked it much afterwards(Serves em' right!). as Apple's market share has dropped since then from(Correct me if I'm wrong) about 27% clear down to around 3% nowadays.

Have you ever considered how appealing the Quadra 700 would have been with an IDE hard drive, 5.12" floppy drives, 320x240 4-bit color graphics, 4-bit mono sound, PS/2 mouse(If you were lucky) and keyboard, 2 ISA slots(Probably full if you wanted graphics or sound), a parallel port, no networking at all and an extremely unhappy 68040 CPU? do you remember how far ahead the Mac OS was from DOS and Windows 3.1? do you recall how pathetic the 80286 was in comparison to our Motorola 680x0 CPUs? comparing a PC to a Mac was like putting a Model-T next to a <a href="http://www.ballard.com/trans_app.asp" target="_blank">PS2000</a>.

[quote]Originally posted by TJM:
<strong>An unfortunate side effect of Apple's initial direction is the persistent myth that Macs use only proprietary parts - its memory, hard drives, or other parts couldn't be used in a PC and vice versa (my brother and sister both gave me this one last summer!). It also gave Apple a reputation for being "uppity" or catering to snob-appeal, which turned off a lot of PC users.</strong><hr></blockquote>

If you were to swap a modern G4's ZIF slot for a Pentium's Socket7. and switch Apple's ROM chip for a Wintel BIOS chip. there wouldn't be so much as _one_ functional difference between it and an equivalent Wintel motherboard. quite truly. all that Apple makes now are wintel clones with PPCs and some flavor of UN*X on them.

[quote]Originally posted by TJM:
<strong>Overall, I think going to industry-standard parts has been a positive thing.</strong><hr></blockquote>

I think different. I don't want a Wintel box. I want a Macintosh.


Eric,

[ 03-04-2002: Message edited by: Eric D.V.H ]</p>

[TJM]

[quote]Originally posted by Eric D.V.H:
<strong>
Well _I_ certainly didn't ask for it. and even if everyone else did. I don't think a lot of Mac users liked it much afterwards(Serves em' right!). as Apple's market share has dropped since then from(Correct me if I'm wrong) about 27% clear down to around 3% nowadays.</strong><hr></blockquote>

I'll be sure to send a note to SJ to remind him to consult you before he makes any more strategic moves.
At the time, Apple was losing $100s of millions of dollars per quarter, its market share had already plunged to single digits, and it was rapidly on its way to bankruptcy. Going to PCI and ATA and standard memory (PC66 on Beige G3) saved them a ton of money and helped them survive. It was a matter of change or die. The "cachet" of owning a Mac with its unique technologies wasn't going to last long in any event.
[quote]
<strong>
If you were to swap a modern G4's ZIF slot for a Pentium's Socket7. and switch Apple's ROM chip for a Wintel BIOS chip. there wouldn't be so much as _one_ functional difference between it and an equivalent Wintel motherboard. quite truly. all that Apple makes now are wintel clones with PPCs and some flavor of UN*X on them.
I think different. I don't want a Wintel box. I want a Macintosh.


Eric,

</strong><hr></blockquote>

At this point, I'd rather they did adopt a Wintel-clone motherboard. Their current one is so outdated it's ludicrous.

Calm down for a moment, and think a bit. What is it that makes a Mac? For me, it's the ergonomics of the hardware and the software, particularly the Mac OS. Does it really matter what's inside the box? Would it run any differently if it had a solid gold case and platinum wiring? It's Apple's attention to detail in the system integration, their industrial design for the cases, and the ease-of-use in the software that make the quality of it. The technology used doesn't really matter. As long as it produces my beloved "Mac experience" they can have gerbils in a treadmill running it, for all I care.

It's one thing to use off-beat technology just to "Think Different" when it is superior or equivalent, but much of the Mac's technology at that point was out-of-date and orphaned (i.e. NuBus and ADB). ATI, 3dfx, and nVidia would never have come out with Mac video cards if they were still running NuBus. Thanks to PCI (then AGP) we have access to first-rate video. The list goes on and on.

As a "fer instance" on the relative costs, a couple years ago I bought an ATA card for my 7600 because I just couldn't see paying $350 for a 10 GB SCSI drive when I could get a 50 GB ATA drive for $120. Even after $100 for the ATA card, I was still over $100 ahead with 5x capacity. I can get memory for my G3 desktop dirt cheap because it uses PC100.

So, I appreciate your sentiment - I like Macs because they ARE different . But if different = inferior or different = outrageously expensive (with no clear benefit), you're going to have a hard time broadening your appeal or even staying in business.

[ 03-04-2002: Message edited by: TJM ]</p>

[G-News]

[quote]Wrong. remember how much support SCSI had when Apple picked it up? how about ADB? USB, DB-15, DAV, NuBus, GeoPort,
LocalTalk, ZIF, PDS ? how about _practically none_.
<hr></blockquote>

You have to differentiate between the past and the recent past. ADB, NuBus and SCSI were selected because they were superior, and in the case of SCSI, already working on other systems.
NuBus was just another standard that emerged out of the first experimenting phase of modern computer design, as was ADB and GeoPort. DAV definitely doesn't count as I have yet to see a single product that was ever released to the public for that slot.
DB-15 is functionally identical to a normal VGA port, that was just a proprietary decision, not a quality over cost one. And for USB, as you probably know, Apple helped it make a breakthrough, but they didn't invent it (Intel did) nor did they introduce it (most PCs actually had USB about a year before the iMac was originally released, just that nobody knew about it.

If you look 20 to 10 years back, you'll see that Apple had to develop and introduce new technology, because there was nothing suitable to meet their needs. In the recent past you'll soon notice that Apple just picked the best standards that were already available on other platforms, combined them and took out the hubbles of the road.
Apple's implementation of PCI is wonderful compared to the PC counterpart (both in terms of performance and software support (for example we don't have to fiddle with IRQs).

Apple hasn't been innovating in hardware in terms of developing itself, but they have been innovative in terms of making things actually usable (example USB and FireWire (partially).

If Apple adopted 3GIO or similar now, totally replacing PCI, you'd have a system with a new standard that nobody supports until the PCs adopt it too. The days of small companies making extra hardware for the Mac (ie NuBus falvor cards of their products too) are over, companies no longer an afford extra tours.

Wake up, the best thing Apple can do now is stay on top of the emerging standards, experiment with them and use the best ones for their machines, as soon as support from most sides is granted.

PCI-X, if downwards compatible, is currently the only option that you could implement right away, without awaiting support. But then again we already have 64bit PCI slots that nobody supports either.

Apple is not going to adopt 3GIO before they can be absolutely sure, that the companies that make PCI cards now, will continue making 3GIO cards. And that likely isn't going to happen before Intel hasn't got a chipset out that supports 3GIO.

Of all the standard hardware Apple has introduced during the last 5 years, name me ONE that wasn't available on other platforms before.
(FireWire is the only barely legal item)

G-News

[RazzFazz]

[quote]Originally posted by Eric D.V.H:
<strong>
Dumping the contents of the ROM chip into ultra slow dynamic RAM instead of swapping the slower ROM chips they were using at the time for speedy static memory(Which. by the way. is seldom used in large amounts due to the fact of that it costs so much more than dynamic memory. but the fact of that the Mac ROM code is only about 6-8MBs makes static memory an excellant choice for small, frequently accessed data like is on most ROMs) chips. like the SRAM used in most CPUs as cache. was probably one of the worst moves Apple has ever done.
</strong><hr></blockquote>

You honestly suggest Apple should have rather put 6-8MB (!) of SRAM onto their mainboards? This would have been enormously expensive. So I wonder how exaclty shadowing the slow ROMs in much faster RAM was such a bad idea.


[quote]<strong>And if you're refering to switching to a standard motherboard chipset across all lines. I think the PC industry has been doing that since about the day there were clones.
</strong><hr></blockquote>

Huh? They aren't even doing this right now. In fact, as of now, most vendors even use proprietary interconnects between their chipset components (HubLink, V-Link, MuTIOL), although this will probably change with the widespread adoption of HT or 3GIO.


[quote]<strong>
Yuck. DVD-R. like CD-R before it. is about the most user unfriendly storage medium ever invented. Apple already had DVD-RAM drives in their G4s.</strong><hr></blockquote>

While I wholeheartedly agree in preferring DVD-RAM, DVD-R is what the most customers seem to be demanding.


[quote]<strong>which. aside from their far superior hard disc like user experience. also costed roughly $750 less than Apple's DVD-R drive at the time. and currently cost $250 less</strong><hr></blockquote>

The media costs more, though, IIRC.


[quote]<strong>
If you were to swap a modern G4's ZIF slot for a Pentium's Socket7.</strong><hr></blockquote>

G4s don't use ZIF sockets any more (and actually, Socket/ is a ZIF socket).


[quote]<strong>and switch Apple's ROM chip for a Wintel BIOS chip. there wouldn't be so much as _one_ functional difference between it and an equivalent Wintel motherboard. quite truly.</strong><hr></blockquote>

Well, since both are mainboard after all, there can hardly be very much variation in the first place.

There are a lot of significant details, though, like GBit ethernet on-board and not on the PCI, same for FireWire, 64bit PCI slots, OpenFirmware rather than real mode BIOS, Target Disk Mode and others.


[quote]<strong>
all that Apple makes now are wintel clones with PPCs and some flavor of UN*X on them.
</strong><hr></blockquote>

You do realize that Apple have their own, proprietary North- and Southbridge? They don't (and couldn't, actually) just go ahead and use chips also found on x86 mainboards.

Bye,
RazzFazz

[concentricity]

Rather than spend 2 hours explaining how terribly wrong a certain above post is, can we all just acknowledge that Eric D.V.H. is very, very, wrong about 97% of his post? thanks.

[Arty50]

[quote]Originally posted by concentricity:
<strong>Rather than spend 2 hours explaining how terribly wrong a certain above post is, can we all just acknowledge that Eric D.V.H. is very, very, wrong about 97% of his post? thanks.
</strong><hr></blockquote>

But I just can't resist.

[quote]Originally posted by Eric D.V.H.
<strong>That's just what they want you to think. in this Api NetWorks/Sibyte whitepaper and this Api NetWorks executive summary. they say that: "The 50-ohm impedance and differential signaling also permit trace lengths up to 24 inches, and they span board interconnects well." meaning that HyperTransport works perfectly well across the shattered pins and traces at the bottom of a PCB card.

They also said that: "There is an ongoing effort with major connector companies to define a variety of connectors that can fit different price/performance parameters. More information on this topic will be available in 2001."

And in a recent AMD whitepaper. they discussed Plug ‘n Play in it's session layer.

The final clincher though. is on AMD's online HyperTransport FAQ. where they more cautiously echo the precise words of the Api NetWorks/Sibyte pieces by saying: "A HyperTransport connector has not been endorsed at this time; however, some members of the Consortium are exploring possible use of connectors for different applications."

So why are they pretending that HyperTransport is an intra-board-only standard? darned if I know.</strong><hr></blockquote>

Yawn. PCI-X is here already. 3GIO is around the corner. All you've listed here are ideas that exist only on paper or at best are buried deep in some geeks lab. Do you think this stuff will just pop up overnight? Will these technologies even work, or will impassable problems arise? Can the companies that are creating these designs sucessfully get them to market? Considering all that still needs to be done, then how long will they take to reach the marketplace?

So what you're saying is that Apple should pass on technologies that are in the very near future just to implement stuff that merely exists on paper.

What are you <img src="graemlins/smokin.gif" border="0" alt="[Chilling]" /> , cause I'll try to avoid that batch?

[Eric D.V.H]

[quote]Originally posted by TJM:
<strong>At this point, I'd rather they did adopt a Wintel-clone motherboard. Their current one is so outdated it's ludicrous.</strong><hr></blockquote>

That's why Apple should use HyperTransport as soon as possible. and before they do.

[quote]Originally posted by TJM:
<strong>Calm down for a moment, and think a bit. What is it that makes a Mac? For me, it's the ergonomics of the hardware and the software, particularly the Mac OS. Does it really matter what's inside the box? Would it run any differently if it had a solid gold case and platinum wiring? It's Apple's attention to detail in the system integration, their industrial design for the cases, and the ease-of-use in the software that make the quality of it. The technology used doesn't really matter. As long as it produces my beloved "Mac experience" they can have gerbils in a treadmill running it, for all I care.</strong><hr></blockquote>

You forget that revolutions like the Macintosh are only possible by using totally new software [i]and[i] hardware. in order to make a uniquely better machine. you need to use uniquely better components.

[quote]Originally posted by TJM:
<strong>It's one thing to use off-beat technology just to "Think Different" when it is superior or equivalent, but much of the Mac's technology at that point was out-of-date and orphaned (i.e. NuBus and ADB). ATI, 3dfx, and nVidia would never have come out with Mac video cards if they were still running NuBus. Thanks to PCI (then AGP) we have access to first-rate video. The list goes on and on.</strong><hr></blockquote>

Ugh. I wasn't implying that Apple should have remained frozen in the 80s . I was saying that. in their prime. those technologies totally outclassed nearly every other solution on the market _at the time_. there were obviously vastly superior. competing solutions back then too. read "Apple bets on Intel's bus". in a circa 1994 issue of MacUser magazine.

[quote]Originally posted by TJM:
<strong>As a "fer instance" on the relative costs, a couple years ago I bought an ATA card for my 7600 because I just couldn't see paying $350 for a 10 GB SCSI drive when I could get a 50 GB ATA drive for $120. Even after $100 for the ATA card, I was still over $100 ahead with 5x capacity. I can get memory for my G3 desktop dirt cheap because it uses PC100.</strong><hr></blockquote>

Yes. but your(And my) machine aren't several times better. hands down. than the best IBM PC on the market. which the Mac used to be back when it used it's own. superior standards.

[quote]Originally posted by TJM:
<strong>So, I appreciate your sentiment - I like Macs because they ARE different . But if different = inferior or different = outrageously expensive (with no clear benefit), you're going to have a hard time broadening your appeal or even staying in business.</strong><hr></blockquote>

Exactly. that's the reason Apple's market share is so low now. Mac sites all over the web are proclaiming that it "Doesn't really matter which platform you use. just whichever you like". they never would have said that back then.


Eric,

[ 03-05-2002: Message edited by: Eric D.V.H ]</p>

[G-News]

I say it again eric: WAKE UP.
Times have changed and there is no way a company could possibly reinvent the personal computer in both hardware and software as Apple did back in 1984.
Building a platform today is made by taking the best standards around and implementing them as good as possible, not buy spending a few billion dollars on a proprietary design that eventually nobody else will use or support. back in the 80s a garage company could do these things, simply because there were different market and industry situations. Today that is only possible in software anymore.

The first example is probably the adoption of PCI back in 1995 in the PM 9500. that was already about 1 or evne 2 years behind the PC, and Apple chose PCI because it was: superior to Nubus (which was superior to ISA admittably). Instead they could have developped NuBud further and gotten more performance out of it, but they didn't because: It would have cost a lot of R&D and it would have brought with it the same problems that NuBus already had, namely that only very few select companies made products for it.
So yes, PCI was the only reasonable choice back then, and gladly Apple didn't spoil it.
I can tell you one thing: without PCI, we'd be in Atari land today. they kept using old hardware until they were hopelessly lost and now they're dead. But their OS and their machines were among the very best in the mid to late 80s.

Right now there are various new technologies emerging, and as I said, the best thing Apple can do is stay updated and be ready for release of a product incorporating those new techs as soon as they're generally accepted and supported.

G-News

[Eric D.V.H]

[quote]Originally posted by G-News:
<strong>I say it again eric: WAKE UP.
Times have changed and there is no way a company could possibly reinvent the personal computer in both hardware and software as Apple did back in 1984.
Building a platform today is made by taking the best standards around and implementing them as good as possible, not buy spending a few billion dollars on a proprietary design that eventually nobody else will use or support. back in the 80s a garage company could do these things, simply because there were different market and industry situations. Today that is only possible in software anymore.</strong><hr></blockquote>

From my other post:
Actually. HyperTransport is backwards compatible too. as you can drive multiple PCI, Infiniband etc. buses. as well as an AGP bus. with a HyperTransport based system. I would also expect a HyperTransport slot to PCI slot adapter. much like the PDS to NuBus adapters of yore.

[quote]Originally posted by G-News:
<strong>The first example is probably the adoption of PCI back in 1995 in the PM 9500. that was already about 1 or evne 2 years behind the PC, and Apple chose PCI because it was: superior to Nubus (which was superior to ISA admittably). Instead they could have developped NuBud further and gotten more performance out of it, but they didn't because: It would have cost a lot of R&D and it would have brought with it the same problems that NuBus already had, namely that only very few select companies made products for it.
So yes, PCI was the only reasonable choice back then, and gladly Apple didn't spoil it.
I can tell you one thing: without PCI, we'd be in Atari land today. they kept using old hardware until they were hopelessly lost and now they're dead. But their OS and their machines were among the very best in the mid to late 80s.</strong><hr></blockquote>

Atari? were you thinking of Amiga? they're still keeping a sort of market in europe. 2-3%. just like Apple in the US. so I guess we are in _Amiga_ land today.

[quote]Originally posted by G-News:
<strong>Right now there are various new technologies emerging, and as I said, the best thing Apple can do is stay updated and be ready for release of a product incorporating those new techs as soon as they're generally accepted and supported.</strong><hr></blockquote>

From my other post as well:
What if it just lies there and rots like USB or VCD? someone needs to take action. and with everyone else as leadbottomed as they are. that someone is Apple.

Eric,

[Eric D.V.H]

[quote]Originally posted by G-News:
<strong> You have to differentiate between the past and the recent past. ADB, NuBus and SCSI were selected because they were superior, and in the case of SCSI, already working on other systems.</strong><hr></blockquote>

Yup.

[quote]Originally posted by G-News:
<strong>NuBus was just another standard that emerged out of the first experimenting phase of modern computer design, as was ADB and GeoPort.</strong><hr></blockquote>

All of these were better than their mainstream counterparts.

[quote]Originally posted by G-News:
<strong>DAV definitely doesn't count as I have yet to see a single product that was ever released to the public for that slot.</strong><hr></blockquote>

Try <a href="http://www.allelec.com/AVIDinfo.html" target="_blank">this Avid card</a>.

[quote]Originally posted by G-News:
<strong>DB-15 is functionally identical to a normal VGA port, that was just a proprietary decision, not a quality over cost one.</strong><hr></blockquote>

Yes. but I was trying to point out that Apple has gone on it's own before.

[quote]Originally posted by G-News:
<strong>And for USB, as you probably know, Apple helped it make a breakthrough, but they didn't invent it (Intel did) nor did they introduce it (most PCs actually had USB about a year before the iMac was originally released, just that nobody knew about it.</strong><hr></blockquote>

Adopting HyperTransport now would be kind of half-way between when Apple got USB and when they got SCSI.


[quote]Originally posted by G-News:
<strong>If you look 20 to 10 years back, you'll see that Apple had to develop and introduce new technology, because there was nothing suitable to meet their needs. In the recent past you'll soon notice that Apple just picked the best standards that were already available on other platforms, combined them and took out the hubbles of the road.
Apple's implementation of PCI is wonderful compared to the PC counterpart (both in terms of performance and software support (for example we don't have to fiddle with IRQs).</strong><hr></blockquote>

I agree. and PCI/AGP just don't look like they'll keep meeting Apple's needs for long.

[quote]Originally posted by G-News:
<strong>Apple hasn't been innovating in hardware in terms of developing itself, but they have been innovative in terms of making things actually usable (example USB and FireWire (partially).</strong><hr></blockquote>

Apple is the one that invented FireWire. and I think it was pretty revolutionary(Too bad they waited so long to use it ).

[quote]Originally posted by G-News:
<strong>If Apple adopted 3GIO or similar now, totally replacing PCI, you'd have a system with a new standard that nobody supports until the PCs adopt it too. The days of small companies making extra hardware for the Mac (ie NuBus falvor cards of their products too) are over, companies no longer an afford extra tours.</strong><hr></blockquote>

Actually. HyperTransport is backwards compatible too. as you can drive multiple PCI, Infiniband etc. buses. as well as an AGP bus. with a HyperTransport based system. I would also expect a HyperTransport slot to PCI slot adapter. much like the PDS to NuBus adapters of yore.

[quote]Originally posted by G-News:
<strong>Wake up, the best thing Apple can do now is stay on top of the emerging standards, experiment with them and use the best ones for their machines, as soon as support from most sides is granted.</strong><hr></blockquote>

What if it just lies there and rots like USB or VCD? someone needs to take action. and with everyone else as leadbottomed as they are. that someone is Apple.

[quote]Originally posted by G-News:
<strong>PCI-X, if downwards compatible, is currently the only option that you could implement right away, without awaiting support. But then again we already have 64bit PCI slots that nobody supports either.</strong><hr></blockquote>

Refer to prior comment.

[quote]Originally posted by G-News:
<strong>Apple is not going to adopt 3GIO before they can be absolutely sure, that the companies that make PCI cards now, will continue making 3GIO cards. And that likely isn't going to happen before Intel hasn't got a chipset out that supports 3GIO.</strong><hr></blockquote>

I can think of one kind of company that would gladly make HyperTransport cards. GPU makers. ATI and nVIDIA are already starting to feel the pain from the Kyro II. and I'll bet that they'll start burning the midnight oil to get out HyperTransport based chipsets and cards once the Kyro III comes onto the market.

[quote]Originally posted by G-News:
<strong>Of all the standard hardware Apple has introduced during the last 5 years, name me ONE that wasn't available on other platforms before.
(FireWire is the only barely legal item)</strong><hr></blockquote>

Isn't that what I said?


Eric,

[ 03-05-2002: Message edited by: Eric D.V.H ]</p>

[Eric D.V.H]

Sorry. I forgot.

[quote]Originally posted by TJM:
<strong>I'll be sure to send a note to SJ to remind him to consult you before he makes any more strategic moves.</strong><hr></blockquote>

<img src="graemlins/lol.gif" border="0" alt="[Laughing]" /> Steve Jobs didn't even work at Apple when they switched to PCI. I'm not quite sure. but I think it was that dolt Scully.

[quote]Originally posted by TJM:
<strong>At the time, Apple was losing $100s of millions of dollars per quarter, its market share had already plunged to single digits, and it was rapidly on its way to bankruptcy. Going to PCI and ATA and standard memory (PC66 on Beige G3) saved them a ton of money and helped them survive. It was a matter of change or die. The "cachet" of owning a Mac with its unique technologies wasn't going to last long in any event.</strong><hr></blockquote>

And what's our marketshare at now?

Eric,

[Eric D.V.H]

[quote]Originally posted by Arty50:
<strong>Yawn. PCI-X is here already. 3GIO is around the corner. All you've listed here are ideas that exist only on paper or at best are buried deep in some geeks lab. Do you think this stuff will just pop up overnight? Will these technologies even work, or will impassable problems arise? Can the companies that are creating these designs sucessfully get them to market? Considering all that still needs to be done, then how long will they take to reach the marketplace?</strong><hr></blockquote>

Read that stuff more carefully. Hyper transport IS HERE NOW. it entered the market TWO YEARS AGO. the problems have already arisen and been vanquished in testing OVER TWO YEARS AGO. people are using it in things they bought from these companies. and they say it works JUST FINE.

[quote]Originally posted by Arty50:
<strong>So what you're saying is that Apple should pass on technologies that are in the very near future just to implement stuff that merely exists on paper. </strong><hr></blockquote>

PCI-X and AGP are set to just barely exit the experimental phase this year. 3GIO/Aprahoe actually _is_ only on paper or at best buried deep in some geeks lab. HyperTransport is already gathering momentum across the industry. and needs only a strong supporter to break the barriers. for since it's already on the market. that means Apple can start right now. or already has.

Eric,

[Eric D.V.H]

[quote]Originally posted by RazzFazz:
<strong>You honestly suggest Apple should have rather put 6-8MB (!) of SRAM onto their mainboards? This would have been enormously expensive. So I wonder how exaclty shadowing the slow ROMs in much faster RAM was such a bad idea.</strong><hr></blockquote>

It can't have been _that_ expensive. but even if it was. Apple should have used a faster variety of DRAM. in a separate block. directly connected to the CPU. so as to increase access speed to this oft consulted data.

[quote]Originally posted by RazzFazz:
<strong>Huh? They aren't even doing this right now. In fact, as of now, most vendors even use proprietary interconnects between their chipset components (HubLink, V-Link, MuTIOL), although this will probably change with the widespread adoption of HT or 3GIO.</strong><hr></blockquote>

I didn't mean the PC industry as a whole. I meant individual PC vendors like Dell, Compaq, Gateway etc…
They use a lot of the same parts. and pretty much always have.

[quote]Originally posted by RazzFazz:
<strong>While I wholeheartedly agree in preferring DVD-RAM, DVD-R is what the most customers seem to be demanding.

The media costs more, though, IIRC.</strong><hr></blockquote>

Yeah. fortunately there's <a href="http://www.dvdforum.com/tech-dvdmulti.htm" target="_blank">DVD-Multi</a>.

[quote]Originally posted by RazzFazz:
<strong>G4s don't use ZIF sockets any more (and actually, Socket/ is a ZIF socket).</strong><hr></blockquote>

I couldn't say either way. <a href="http://developer.apple.com/techpubs/hardware/Developer_Notes/Macintosh_CPUs-G4/PowerMacG4/2Architecture/index.html" target="_blank">Apple's docs</a> just say "a 300-pin connector".

[quote]Originally posted by RazzFazz:
<strong>Well, since both are mainboard after all, there can hardly be very much variation in the first place.

There are a lot of significant details, though, like GBit ethernet on-board and not on the PCI, same for FireWire, 64bit PCI slots, OpenFirmware rather than real mode BIOS, Target Disk Mode and others.</strong><hr></blockquote>

Hmm… while the <a href="http://developer.apple.com/techpubs/hardware/Developer_Notes/Macintosh_CPUs-G4/PowerMacG4/2Architecture/KeyLargo_I_O_Controller.html" target="_blank">KeyLargo I/O controller</a> looks suspiciously generic. Apple's docs <a href="http://developer.apple.com/techpubs/hardware/Developer_Notes/Macintosh_CPUs-G4/PowerMacG4/2Architecture/Uni_N_Bridg__Controller.html" target="_blank">don't mention</a> any companies. so Apple _could_ have had it designed just for themselves.

[quote]Originally posted by RazzFazz:
<strong>You do realize that Apple have their own, proprietary North- and Southbridge? They don't (and couldn't, actually) just go ahead and use chips also found on x86 mainboards.</strong><hr></blockquote>

I'm not exactly sure on this one either. so you might be right.


Eric,

[G-News]

You can't be serious on those posts, really.
You do know that HyperTransport is a bus technology that is designed to replace systems like the current MaxBus, Intel's and AMD's incarnations of their front side busses etc, right?
It's not aimed at peripheral cards, the fact that it can support line lengths to card degrees, pinnage etc only implies that it's feasible to make slots, similar to Slot A and similar, ie for CPUs and other extremely performance sensitive parts of a computer system.
HyperTransport is just going to change the way a CPU can communicate with its peripherals, however by peripherals you have to understand that these are chips like keyboard controllers, PCI busses etc etc, the stuff we have today on our mainboards, not the stuff we plug INTO the mainboards today.

In that way HyperTransport and RapidIO (which are kind of the same thing from another company, with different target applications) are going to be adopted soon, and I wouldn't be surprised if Apple adopted it as one of the first companies out there. However that has nothing to do with 3GIO that we were talking about in the first place, since 3GIO is like PCI, ISA, NuBus, AGP (which is just a PCI derivate) and PCI-X a so called Peripheral Interconnect Bus, and not a system bus or a CPU bus or anything like that.

You are obviously mixing things that don't belong into the same basket at all.

Also wtf do you mean by talking about the Kyro 2?
The Kyro 2 is:
-a PC only modern class graphics GPU
-exists only on AGP bus, as far as I know, PCI is probably possible
-is based on a tile-based rendering system, unlike the (correct me if I'm wrong) polygon based rendering system of Matrox, ATI and nVidia cards.
-is not incredibly slow and, most important of all:
-the company that made those boards just went belly up a few months ago, that's why you can have a Kyro 2 for like 50$ today.
-Kyro 3 is therefore likely never going to show up.

I have no idea what you're mixing there again, but apart from the rendering engine approach, the Kyro boards are cards like ever other card as well.
Chips and connectors on a PCB plate with gold pins that go into an AGP slot, driven by a 2x or 4x AGP slot. No HyperTransport, no RapidIO, no 3GIO and no nothing like that.

last but not least, the link to your DAV card that you were going to tell me about (although it surely existed, I even know there was one or two products for that slot, just that only about 0.004% of all DAV owners ever used that slot), doesn't work: 404 Object Not Found. I think that speaks for itself.

So if your statement is that Apple should adopt HyperTransport (and, more likely also RapidIO with the G5), then my answer is: they surely will.

If your statement is that Apple should accept 3GIO, then my answer is still: they will, once it's ready and widely supported.

If your statement is that Apple should invent a sort of HyperTransport slot, replacing AGP and PCI, then my answer is: not going to happen anytime soon, neither from Apple nor anyone else.

maybe you have seen this: [quote]Has a board-to-board connector for HyperTransport™ been defined?

Answer:
A HyperTransport connector has not been endorsed at this time; however, some members of the Consortium are exploring possible use of connectors for different applications.<hr></blockquote> Thus yes, it's feasible, but then again, it would bring the same problems with it that I already mentioned: a connector without a card is just lost money. Apple is a member of the HT consortium, and they're surely looking at it very closely, have actually already implemented some ideas of it into their current motherboards, but this stuff takes time. Maybe (hopefully) with the G5, we'll see more.

last but not least let me show you this image, right off their docu, for some clarification:



edit: I can't believe how much wrong info you seem to have. The ROM is accessed exactly once, and that's during startup, then everything is in the RAM, which is faster in any way. Since the iMac, we even have the biggest part of the ROM on the harddrive, which is fast and inexpensive. I don't know where you're stuck in tech development, but I know I wasn't even born back then.

[ 03-05-2002: Message edited by: G-News ]

And one last thing:
Based upon my current knowledge, the following pict shows the best possible mainboard architecture for future Macs. I'm not expert in these things, but based on what I know so far, this is roughly feasible. Maybe you meant that.



[ 03-05-2002: Message edited by: G-News ]</p>

[Arty50]

Well, I was going to reply yet once again, but G-News laid it all out perfectly and then some.

[applenut]

phew... someone has less of a life than me. <img src="graemlins/lol.gif" border="0" alt="[Laughing]" />

[Arty50]

Life? What's that? Is that what happens when you work in a building that has windows?

[ 03-05-2002: Message edited by: Arty50 ]</p>

[AirSluf]

[Eric D.V.H]

[quote]Originally posted by AirSluf:
<strong>Arrrggghhh, my last post disappeared! Alas though, sanity has been restored.</strong><hr></blockquote>

I always feel like my brain exploded whenever that happens. I'm usually to lazy to write posts in something with autosave like FrameMaker though.

[quote]Originally posted by AirSluf:
<strong>My brain hurts from the relentless length of some of those posts though.</strong><hr></blockquote>

Sorry.


Eric,

[ 03-06-2002: Message edited by: Eric D.V.H ]</p>

[Eric D.V.H]

[quote]Originally posted by G-News:
<strong>You can't be …SNIPPED…viously mixing things that don't belong into the same basket at all.</strong><hr></blockquote>

It does that too. but it also supports intra-board communications between various devices such as graphics accelerators, networking adapters and audio D/A divices. the fact of that HyperTransport features a full cold boot sequence instead of just having all of that pre-programmed into the ROMs of the motherboard, native PnP functionality and native device support. make it obvious that HyperTransport has had hardware support for local bus style slots from the start. needing little more than for the PCBs to be soddered on.

[quote]Originally posted by G-News:
<strong>Also wtf do you mean by talking about the Kyro 2?</strong><hr></blockquote>

I'll get to that.

[quote]Originally posted by G-News:
<strong>-is based on a tile-based rendering system, unlike the (correct me if I'm wrong) polygon based rendering system of Matrox, ATI and nVidia cards.</strong><hr></blockquote>

It's tile based. but the term "Tile" refers to the bitmapped output. not the internal geometry. it works by cutting each output image into tiles. it then analyzes each tile to see if there are any polygons hidden behind other geometry. and thusly not worth rendering. after going over the whole image. it renders it. but it only renders visible geometry. thus needing less data(Most of all textures) to be transferred in from outside the card.

[quote]Originally posted by G-News:
<strong>-the company that made those boards just went belly up a few months ago, that's why you can have a Kyro 2 for like 50$ today.

-Kyro 3 is therefore likely never going to show up.</strong><hr></blockquote>

They didn't go "belly up". they just <a href="http://us.st.com/stonline/press/news/year2002/c1146h.htm" target="_blank">pulled out of</a> the Kyro deal. although they [i]are[i] looking for a buyer. and it was the company(<a href="http://us.st.com/stonline/index.htm" target="_blank">ST Micro</a>) that _manufactured_ them.<a href="http://us.st.com/stonline/index.htm" target="_blank">Imagine Technologies</a>. the company that designs the Kyro(And it's ancestor. the PowerVR) is still going at full steam(If a bit bruised up). and ST Micro said that they're <a href="http://us.st.com/stonline/press/news/year2002/t1152p.htm" target="_blank">going in for a second bite</a> anyways. so I think that. once they have their new Kyro III chip. Imagine will find _someone_ to manufacture them.

[quote]Originally posted by G-News:
<strong>I have no idea what you're m…SNIPPED…othing like that.</strong><hr></blockquote>

Eesh. the reason I mentioned the Kyro is because it uses bandwidth more efficiently than other chipsets. why does this make ATI and nVidia shiver in their shanks?

Remember how newer GPUs. when running things with higher levels of detail. especially at lower resolutions. the frame rates seem to "Top out" at the lower resolutions until the level of detail is decreased below a certain amount?

This is due to the fact of that higher levels of detail require more data to be piped into the GPU from outside. while the GPU normally goes at full speed. as it renders the output so slowly that the data for the next frame has enough time to flow in. when the resolution is decreased to the point where the GPU can render frames faster than it can get the data for the next frame. it just sits there and "Idles" between frames. thus making an effective "Ceiling". above which the GPU's power goes to waste.

The Kyro on the other hand. due to the fact of that it generally doesn't need as much data to render the same scene. can use more of it's GPU's power at a given time than ATI and nVidia's chips.

The only way to fix this problem(Aside from work-arounds like the Kyro employs). is to increase the speed and width of the bus connecting the GPU to everything else. unless this happens. Imagine and their Kyro are destined to catch up to(And surpass) ATI and nVidia VERY soon. at which point they'll be in it _deep_.

[quote]Originally posted by G-News:
<strong>last but not least, the link to your DAV card th…SNIP…aks for itself.</strong><hr></blockquote>

Yes. I guess that _everyone_ who did video out were only 0.004% of all DAV owners.

[quote]Originally posted by G-News:
<strong>So if your statement is that Apple should adopt HyperTransport (and, more likely also RapidIO with the G5), then my answer is: they surely will.</strong><hr></blockquote>

I hope so.

[quote]Originally posted by G-News:
<strong>If your statement is that Apple should accept 3GIO, then my answer is still: they will, once it's ready and widely supported.</strong><hr></blockquote>

3GIO is vomit.

[quote]Originally posted by G-News:
<strong>If your statement is that Apple should invent a sort of HyperTransport slot, replacing AGP and PCI, then my answer is: not going to happen anytime soon, neither from Apple nor anyone else.

maybe you have seen this: Thus yes, it's feasible, but then again, it would bring the same problems with it that I already mentioned: a connector without a card is just lost money. Apple is a member of the HT consortium, and they're surely looking at it very closely, have actually already implemented some ideas of it into their current motherboards, but this stuff takes time. Maybe (hopefully) with the G5, we'll see more.</strong><hr></blockquote>

What I was saying is that. in my estimation. based off of the facts stated above. the HyperTransport standard already has _full support_ for cold swap alteration of the daisy-chain. and. judging from AMD's use pf the term "endorsed" instead of "defined". that the work on making a HyperTransport slot has almost unquestionably _already been done_ for Apple by one of several companies. so Apple needs only to side with one of them. thus aquiring access to a complete. fully functioning HyperTransport slot at _no cost to them_.

The use of Hypertransport slots now would give Apple a strategic advantage over waiting for the slower 3GIO and RapidIO to come to them is enormous. and I think that Apple would be foolish not to take advantage of it.

[quote]Originally posted by G-News:
<strong>last but not least let me show you this image, right off their docu, for some clarification:</strong><hr></blockquote>

That image makes out HyperTransport to be far more centralized than it really is. this image is from <a href="http://www.sibyte.com/mercurian/docs/whitepaper_ldt.pdf" target="_blank">another one of their docs</a>:



As you can see. HyperTransport is a fully daisy-chained(Like FireWire or SCSI) bus. allowing for switches, bridges, terminating devices, open chains, device to device communications and native devices.

[quote]Originally posted by G-News:
<strong>edit: I can't believe how much wrong info you seem to have. The ROM is accessed exactly once, and that's during startup, then everything is in the RAM, which is faster in any way. Since the iMac, we even have the biggest part of the ROM on the harddrive, which is fast and inexpensive. I don't know where you're stuck in tech development, but I know I wasn't even born back then.</strong><hr></blockquote>

That's just how it works now. the ROM chip contains(Or at least used to contain) more than just boot-up code. Mac ROMs usually contained extremely extremely frequently accessed code. such as the toolbox. thus making rapid and unimpeded access to it's contents vital for the efficient operation of a system.

[quote]Originally posted by G-News:
<strong>And one last thing:
Based upon my current knowledge, the following pict shows the best possible mainboard architecture for future Macs. I'm not expert in these things, but based on what I know so far, this is roughly feasible. Maybe you meant that.</strong><hr></blockquote>

No. I meant something like this:




Eric,

[ 03-06-2002: Message edited by: Eric D.V.H ]</p>

[G-News]

That looks unlikely to ever happen, as this graph shows that the CPU has to support LDT (an older name variant of HT) on chip, while my newer graph shows that the CPUs can run a seperate bus to the HT controller.
Thus, unless Motorola decides to drop RapidIO in future chips in favor of HT, were not going to see a solution like this, but rather like the one I painted above.
As for HT being slottable: I said that it's out of question whether it can be done or not, but the questiom is, whether it would make sense or not.
Apart from a CPU/GPU, I can't think of any part that could possibly exploit 12.8GB bandwidth. And then again, as I said in the beginning, these cards would have to be manufactured and engineered first.

I'd find it likely that Apple would allow ofr one "personality slot" using HT, like they made a Personality slot in the Beige G3s, using a PCI variant.

From what I read, general consensus about HT is that it's not going to replace PCI (&co) as a peripheral interconnect for cards, but that it's going to replace PCI for mainboard applications, something the macs doesnt do anymore since the Beige G3, afaik. (FireWire, Gigabit Ethernet etc are all handled on their own busses, not over an integrated PCI bus, as seen on every PC today.
(Basically, as soon as a PC motherboard has something on board today, that you can have as a PCI card separately, that something is connected to the FSB using a PCI bus, just that it's integrated into the logicboard and not slotted. This creates a 133MB/sec bottleneck for all these PC peripherals, and it's only obvious that AMD and co want to remove that bottleneck, using a new standard, ie HT.

as for the Kyro and it's "render only what's needed" stuff. You may be aware that but nVidia and ATI also have certain features that reduce rendering overhead. In ATI's case it's called Hyper-Z and is aparently highly efficient, in nVidias case, it's write combining technologies and some driver tweaks.
As good as the idea may sound, atm the Kyro still lags way behind the ATI and nVidia offerings, overhead reduced or not. And with the upcoming AGP8x, performance is getting some headroom to go once again.

Last but not least, what remains to be seen is how HT performs REALLY. 12.8GB/sec sounds awfully nice, but it's pure theory and is certainly doing do depend on implementations etc. Maybe the Hammer will provide the first platform to experiment with.

G-News

[Eric D.V.H]

[quote]Originally posted by G-News:
<strong>That looks unlikely to ever happen, as this graph shows that the CPU has to support LDT (an older name variant of HT) on chip, while my newer graph shows that the CPUs can run a seperate bus to the HT controller.</strong><hr></blockquote>

Careful with that vocabulary fella. "name variant" makes it sound too much like LDT is a dead branch-off HyperTransport. for those folks in the audience. LDT was just the developmental codename for HyperTransport.

[quote]Originally posted by G-News:
<strong>Thus, unless Motorola decides to drop RapidIO in future chips in favor of HT, were not going to see a solution like this, but rather like the one I painted above.
As for HT being slottable: I said that it's out of question whether it can be done or not, but the questiom is, whether it would make sense or not.</strong><hr></blockquote>

I think the illustrator just drew it as being on-chip for simplicity's sake. but even if HyperTransport does require the I/O port to be on-chip whenever daisy chaining is used(Which makes absolutely no sense whatsoever). Apple could just preach the gospel of HyperTransport to Motorola. or promise them a RapidIO bridge would make it onto each motherboard.

[quote]Originally posted by G-News:
<strong>Apart from a CPU/GPU, I can't think of any part that could possibly exploit 12.8GB bandwidth. And then again, as I said in the beginning, these cards would have to be manufactured and engineered first.</strong><hr></blockquote>

The newer varients of nearly everything you can think of. 1Gb/10Gb Ethernet, Ultra 640 SCSI, even faster ATM and FibreChannel and many more. as well as new external busses like InfiniBand.

Also. lets not forget that Apple wouldn't be going it _entirely_ alone for all of the future. HyperTransport is an industry wide standard. and Apple would just be leading the way. Apple would. of course. cajole the rest of the computer industry to adopt it. Apple would be alone for a while. but they would be seen by the rest of the industry as an early adopter. instead of a futurist radical like usual. this strategy would temporalily combine the safety of when they started using USB with the tremendous advantage of when the got NuBus.

[quote]Originally posted by G-News:
<strong>I'd find it likely that Apple would allow ofr one "personality slot" using HT, like they made a Personality slot in the Beige G3s, using a PCI variant.

[QUOTE]Originally posted by G-News:
[QB]From what I read, general consensus about HT is that it's not going to replace PCI (&co) as a peripheral interconnect for cards, but that it's going to replace PCI for mainboard applications,</strong><hr></blockquote>

That's because most people don't know what I told you. so they never even consider the possibility.

[quote]Originally posted by G-News:
<strong>as for the Kyro and it's "render only what's needed" stuff. You may be aware that but nVidia and ATI also have certain features that reduce rendering overhead. In ATI's case it's called Hyper-Z and is aparently highly efficient, in nVidias case, it's write combining technologies and some driver tweaks.
As good as the idea may sound, atm the Kyro still lags way behind the ATI and nVidia offerings, overhead reduced or not. And with the upcoming AGP8x, performance is getting some headroom to go once again.</strong><hr></blockquote>

ATI and nVidia's techniques are cheap tricks compared to tile based rendering. once Imagine Tech gets in gear and raises the speed of the Kyro's core to higher levels. there'll be no stopping them. and although nVidia <a href="http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/archive/19962.html" target="_blank">owns something like that called Gigapixel</a> that it got in it's purchase of (God bless their souls)3DFX. it's been about a year since nVidia <a href="http://www.nvidia.com/view.asp?IO=IO_20010530_5354" target="_blank">acquired them</a>. and nVidia hasn't said word one about using it. that. combined with ATI and nVidia's legendary lazyness when it comes to radically altering the fundamental design of their chips. prompts me to think that they would probably choose shifting to HyperTransport over increasing the intelligence of their chips.

As for AGP 8X. the thing to remember is that HyperTransport is here _right now_. and has been for a over two years. as well. ATI and nVidia(Especially them) heve had very extensive HyperTransport experience for a quite a while. I'll bet some engineer in nVidia already has a design he/she thought of for a GeForce HyperTransport card taped on their wall(And even if they don't. a soldered on GPU chipset al´a iMac would still totally rock). AGP 8X(And PCI-X) standards are [I]just[I] exiting the _experimental stage_ as we speak. no one on earth has experience with a shipping version. and nearly no one has experience with prototypes. with the fact of that HyperTransport supports slots are perfectly easy. there's no good reason for them to choose anything else.


[quote]Originally posted by G-News:
<strong>Last but not least, what remains to be seen is how HT performs REALLY. 12.8GB/sec sounds awfully nice, but it's pure theory and is certainly doing do depend on implementations etc. Maybe the Hammer will provide the first platform to experiment with.</strong><hr></blockquote>

AMD has kept their promises so far. lets just sit back and hope for the best(As well as harassing Apple to use HT as soon as possible. and AMD to endorse some HT PCB ).


Eric,

[ 03-06-2002: Message edited by: Eric D.V.H ]</p>