Apple to use 970, confirmed by IBM - Page 3

[quote]Originally posted by shetline:
<strong>

. . . But the question remains, if the 970 is ready to roll much sooner than 10.3, and if 64-bitness is not something Apple wants to graft into a 10.2.x OS release, does anyone here think that Apple would be satisfied to ship a 970 system, with full 64-bit OS support not included, but "coming soon"? . . .

</strong><hr></blockquote>

If we are giving out opinions, I think Apple would ship with 10.2.

If the 970 is ready to go well before OS X 10.3, I don't believe Apple would hold back the new PowerMacs. From what IBM has said, a 32 bit OS needs relatively few changes to work with the 970. Since Apple had this information before we did, they may have rolled those minor changes into 10.2 already, especially if they suspected 10.3 might be the critical path.

Who wouldn't buy a new PowerMac with an IBM 970 running OS 10.2? It will still run 64 bit applications, even if the OS is 32 bits, and we know that OS X will soon be upgraded to 64 bits too.

[ 03-15-2003: Message edited by: snoopy ]</p>

[quote]Originally posted by Amorph:
<strong>

Jobs apparently loved the eMate.

I would not put it past him to revive something very much like it.</strong><hr></blockquote>

Your first line I assumed was sarcasm since Steve quickly axed the Newton (and the eMate which ran the same OS) but you second line sounded serious. I find it hard to believe he would revive something like the eMate. Was I just missing a little more sarcasm?

[quote]Your first line I assumed was sarcasm since Steve quickly axed the Newton (and the eMate which ran the same OS) but you second line sounded serious. I find it hard to believe he would revive something like the eMate. Was I just missing a little more sarcasm?<hr></blockquote>

Nope. Amorph is right-- Steve did like the eMate, which is why his rolling Newton, Inc. back into Apple and then killing the entire platform wholesale was a bit of a surprise. And to think Newton, Inc. was about to post it's first profitable quarter ever...

[quote]Originally posted by snoopy:
<strong>Who wouldn't buy a new PowerMac with an IBM 970 running OS 10.2? It will still run 64 bit applications, even if the OS is 32 bits, and we know that OS X will soon be upgraded to 64 bits too.</strong><hr></blockquote>

This is incorrect -- if the OS isn't "64-bit" then it cannot present any 64-bit APIs or even a 64-bit address space to any 64-bit applications. The OS support for 64-bitness must be in place before any 64-bit applications can be created for it. The cart before the horse, and all that.

For what its worth I think we'll see 10.3 (64-bit) and the 970 hardware appear at the same time. There might be a few limitations on what 64-bit apps can have access to, but they'll deliver. Apple has actually had a pretty good software release track record since 10.1 arrived... at least compared to their history (and most of the rest of the industry).

[quote]Originally posted by hmurchison:
<strong>Your theory hinges on the difficulty of moving OSX to 64bit.</strong><hr></blockquote>

Actually, I'd originally stated that I know many people have said that bringing OS X to 64 bits won't be that hard.

But even if all you had to do was change five #define lines and recompile, you can bet that there'd still be at least three months of internal QA work, and then a beta test phase, to make sure those little changes didn't result in a subtle bug or two or cause some instability.

Plus, as a marketing and as a philosophical milestone, going to 64-bit support is enough of a big step, regardless of the technical difficulty (or lack thereof) of doing so, that I think the change would warrant a major version change -- to 10.3. This would then tie 64-bitness together with who knows what other features are planned for 10.3.

64-bitness might be easy, but better Windows file sharing, fixing Finder bugs (still a few of those in Jaguar!), or the tele-olfactory version of iChat might be running behind schedule. That would mean no 64-bit support until the whole enchilada is ready to go.

This is why I postulate the idea of a 10.2.x release that does nothing more than tweak the OS to recognize the 970 and makes sure it runs in its 32-bit compatibility mode.

This might be better in the Looprumors 970 thread, particularly because this thread seems to be wondering toward another newton returns thread (and Fran isn't contributing? :eek: )

But I'll put it here anyway:

Just heard a rumor that 10.3 isn't scheduled until fall. This does make some sense with 10.2 coming out last fall, but it doesn't seem to jive with when 970 shipments are to begin to Apple.

Just throwing that out for whatever it's worth to you.

(One disclaimer: this is a rumor I heard, and thus comes from a much different source than previous info that I have recieved, some of which I've shared with you folks.)

Oh, and Apple's had a heck of a long time to plan for the move to the 970 and the 64bitness that comes with, so I would sure hope that they have done all they can to make it easy for themselves when they finally flip the 64bit switch in gcc (or whatever).

Where are all the lonely people that normally dig through Mac OS's to find interesting strings and such? If there is support in 10.2 already, has Apple really hidden any such references so well that people with time on their hands can't find them? :confused:

Or has no one looked? I doubt that.

Thank Programmer for genial precision and rationality. Thank God (Apple) for IBM. Don't thank Florida for W.

----------------------------------
970 bound in Nashville

[quote]Originally posted by Programmer:
<strong>

This is incorrect -- if the OS isn't "64-bit" then it cannot present any 64-bit APIs or even a 64-bit address space to any 64-bit applications. The OS support for 64-bitness must be in place before any 64-bit applications can be created for it. The cart before the horse, and all that.

For what its worth I think we'll see 10.3 (64-bit) and the 970 hardware appear at the same time. . .

</strong><hr></blockquote>


Ah, in that case I change my mind, and agree with your last comment above. I don't believe Apple will ship new PowerMacs unless they run 64 bit applications. I think Apple will make a big deal of 64 bits and the future of computing, and will want 64 bits working right from the start. They likely will have one or more 64 bit applications ready to go, just to make their point.

Thanks for the correction. I assumed too much from IBM's statement that the 970 would work with a 32 bit OS, with just a few minor changes.

IIRC the IBM PowerSeries chips were designed to run different OSes that IBM uses with the setting of one-bit software switches. I don't see why this can't be done with OS X, which is Unix Based. Therefore they could set a switch in the 970 to run 32-bit or 64-bit OS X if they wanted to. This would also give IBM the ability to run their OSes on the 970, which I am sure they are planning on.

[quote]Originally posted by Bigc:
<strong>IIRC the IBM PowerSeries chips were designed to run different OSes that IBM uses with the setting of one-bit software switches. I don't see why this can't be done with OS X, which is Unix Based. Therefore they could set a switch in the 970 to run 32-bit or 64-bit OS X if they wanted to. This would also give IBM the ability to run their OSes on the 970, which I am sure they are planning on.</strong><hr></blockquote>

Yes, this is correct -- but unless your OS is 64-bit aware you cannot run 64-bit applications in it. 64-bit applications require a 64-bit OS. If they ship a 10.2.x update with support for the 970 (which is easily doable) then only 32-bit applications will be able to run on it. When the OS is 64-bit it will look at the application, decide if it is a 32-bit or 64-bit app and setup the mode bit plus the address space accordingly. A 32-bit OS doesn't know how to do that... if it did it would be a 64-bit OS!

For what its worth, MacOS X 10.2 shipped last August and its not unreasonable for Apple to plan on a .1 increment roughly annually. The 970 hardware looks like it'll be ready in the Aug-Sept timeframe. This is an interesting co-incidence, is it not? Last time I checked August was a summer month so shipping in August would fullfill the "before fall" rumour. Applying Occam's Razor we should therefore conclude that the most likely course of events will be a preview at WWDC to allow developers to start preparing, followed by an August introduction.

Yes, understood about the 32/64-bit switch and I was real tempted to get the DP 1.42, has anyone seen speed comparison between the original DP 1 GHz (Jan 2002) and the 1.42?. I'd still consider if it has a 50% speed increase over the DP-gigger

Does it really matter? If you need a machine now, buy it now. You really aren't going to notice a +/- 10% speed difference anyhow unless you have hard real-time constraints (in which case you probably don't want a Mac or a Windows box).

Nope it doesn't really matter, its just my mental aberration (justification) to not buy a new Mac until I can gain a 50% increase in speed over my old one. My DP gigger suits me fine for my level of work (in most cases except limited use of 3-d rendering in POV-ray and 700 MB tiff file work in AI/PS)

If those exeptions are the only where your current 1gigger isn't fast enough for you, I'd say wait for the good stuff, the 1,42Ghz DP one is still not going to be fast enough for you, since 40-50% is pretty unnoticeable on that kind of work IMO. Unless you have no problems throwing lots of cash on a small step-up in speed, I don't think there's a very good point in upgrading to the current top-end.

I kind of get that same feeling.

I'd like to contest your conclusion that a 64-bit app would need a 64-bit OS.

As we've been told the 970 will be able to run 32-bit software without skipping a beat. This implies that we have both 64-bit and 32-bit instruction sets.

Therefore, the operating system API can be 32-bit even on a 64-bit processor. If Apple decides to make OS X 970 aware that does not imply that awareness will force all 64-bit (or 32-bit) instructions to be ignored (it's not an either/or proposition).

What we could have is a 64-bit enabled processor with 32-bit APIs running applications that can be either 32-bit or 64-bit, BUT have both type call on the 32-bit APIs (existing OS X 10.2.x).

When the OS is ready for full 64-bit operation those applications that are taking advantage of the 64-bit instruction set could be re-linked with 64-bit API libraries (OS X 10.3).

The 32-bit applications would have to call the 32-bit APIs for the rest of their product lives anyway, so a 32-bit API must be in place even if the operating system is pure 64-bit code.

Those that would like to adopt the 64-bit instruction set early would have to chose between developing their own 64-bit to 32-bit API translation layer or pick up the Apple supplied version if the OS is not fully 64-bit at the time of the 970 release.

I would be very surprised if Apple does not already have an API strategy already in place.

None the less as long as the 970 has the 64-bitness bit enabled by the OS developers could use 64-bit instructions to develop custom code (alas rendering, audio processing, etc.) that runs on a 32-bit OS.

Please let me know where I may have made a mistake in my reasoning.

The main point of using 64 bits is the ability to address memory using 64 bit pointers. If your OS (which does all the memory management) only uses 32 bits for memory addresses there is no way it can understand the pointers a 64 bit programme will want to pass to it.

The ability to use the 64 bit instructions (basically 64 bit integers) is not, of itself, enough, and indeed, very few programmes would benefit from using them.

michael

Yes, but, you are linking against OS provided libraries. When you call malloc, you will get a 32-bit pointer back. As mentioned, the OS in doing memory management, CPU management, etc. is still treating everything in 32-bit (in your scenario).

Though I would suspect 10.3 will be our 64-bit OS, from the sounds of IBM's quote, there could be a 10.2.x that was only for the 970 and supported 64-bit.

OK, I understand all the objections. This to me simply means that a 970 Mac MUST have a 64-bit OS on practical grounds.

This conclusion leads us to the questions:

Will Apple have the OS X 10.3 (64-bit) code ready at the introduction of the 970 based Mac?

Will the 970 be available in short order from IBM?

The problem is that BOTH the OS and CPU must be ready for the new Mac to appear (not to mention a number things people are asking for on these forums: FW2, USB2, Serial ATA, etc. plus things we don't even think of).

We can only hope that Apple has everything properly lined up for July. I sure hope so, because I will not be able to take any more insta-pundit comments such as the latest Dvorak column.

And what about PCI-Express or other fast bus to replace the present PCI/AGP busses? I had heard that Apple was interested in the fiber channel some time back, but not much recently. PCI Express is probably not to be had in PCs until Q1 or Q2 next year unless Dell is pulling a fast one. Did you know that the AGP 8X spec allows for *two* AGP 8X slots??? That would allow some interesting possibilities (even if you only install AGP 4X cards in the slot).

Its possible that Apple could ship a revision of 10.2.x which supports the 970, with no support for 64-bit applications. This would allow them to ship the new super-fast hardware without delivering 10.3 at the same time. They probably have this ready as a contingency in case there are severe problems that delay the delivery of the full 64-bit OS. My guess is (still) that we'll see the new hardware + OS arrive in August or September.

I agree with you, Programmer.
However Apple's trend since Steve's return has been to make new ideas and changes to the platform as brain-free as possible.
I think from a satanic-marketing perspective that:

PowerMac G4 - 32bit OS, 32bit apps then...
PowerMac 970 - 32bit OS, 32bit apps then...
PowerMac 970 - 64bit OS, 32bit apps then...
PowerMac 970 - 64bit OS, 64bit apps .

Is too much for us simple purchasers to get our heads around.
They would much rather see us dazzled by:

PowerMac G4 - 32bit OS, 32bit apps then...
PowerMac 970 - 64bit OS, 64bit apps.

However with slow developer support (and let's be honest they're a bit pants, consider Quark!) I think you're more likely that they'll settle for:

PowerMac G4 - 32bit OS, 32bit apps then...
PowerMac 970 - 64bit OS, 32bit apps then...
PowerMac 970 - 64bit OS, 64bit apps .

With a huge media blitz on the 64 bit supercomputer power of the new PM 970 with Mac OS X the worlds first 64bit Desktop OS, with a nice extra of the 32-64 bit compatibiltiy to make up for no actual shippping 64bit photoshop or office, all wrapped up in a nice simple advert with a smooth reassuring american voice to make us docile....

Cynical? Moi?....

With Apple rescheduling WWDC for June to showcase 10.3 Panther for developpers, we should have 10.3 ready in august/september for customers long 64 bits Powermacs...

What I am wondering is if Apple is gonna give 10.3 to developpers at WWDC : it should be 32 bits version, unless Apple want the developpers admiring the CD until Powermac 970 are released...

So why not a 32 bits only Beta version of Panther and a 64 bits final one ?

I'm trying to figure out why Apple would delay WWDC due to Panther. If they are going to show a pre-release then does it really matter how early a pre-release they use? These are developers, after all, and they've given developers pre-alpha previews before. Is it because they want to have preview hardware? I'm sure they have had prototype 970s for some time now, and if its just a developer preview then it doesn't really matter how early the hardware is -- its actually better the more different it is from the final shipping hardware. If you are showing pre-release stuff, is it worth delaying an enormous event by a month to show slightly less pre-release stuff?! I don't think so... so why else delay the show, unless you are ready to ship? Nah.... couldn't be.

Could it?

Just an opinion...but...

Maybe the delay of the show on the grounds of Panther is to allow Apple to give out a 32 and 64bit version to developers. I would have thought this bodes extremely well for a late summer release of 970 powered Macs...

Alternatively it's just an excuse to put the date back and the real reason is that they want to have 970 boxes to preview under NDA.

From MacWhispers:

"March 21, 2003
Confirmed: New PowerMac Motherboards To Use PPC 970

A source inside one of the three OEM manufacturing companies now preparing bids on producing the two next generation PowerMac motherboards offered additional information about the new boards late Thursday.

According to our source, the new motherboards are designed around the IBM PPC 970 processor, with one board being a single processor design, and the other running two processors. This source states that he has seen and inspected pre-production board samples populated with the PPC 970 chips. Additionally, the bid deadline for constructing these boards was reaffirmed as March 28th, only one-week from today."

-Spacemonk

I agree, but I also thought of this:

Since the PPC 970 doesn't run unmodified 32-bit OS's (does not require a large modification though), maybe Apple needs that extra month to complete the transition to 64-bit OS X. They can't really show PPC970's unless they have a (prefereably well-working) 64-bit OS, and they will probably want to have new hardware (the 970) to either show spesific features of the OS (that requires the 970, but hopefully not), or something that the 970 helps alot. Maybe they just want to be sure they have both the 970 and 64-bit Panther, tested and complete for either shipping, or other reasons.

Could it be something else, not only 10.3 on 970? Something so important that a month makes sense? Or could it be so that Apple hasn't even started working on 10.3?

Heh, some people are eternally pessimistic. 10.3 is going to take a lot longer to build than from now until June, they will have had to start it pretty much as soon as Jaguar shipped. The incremental improvements in Jaguar are just the changes made in parallel to both branches of their codebase.

Apple has gotten quite good with their software releases in the last couple of years, I don't think such negativity is called for.

I'm with you programmer, this can only really be good news.

Maybe Apple is delaying not because of 10.3 but because they want a 64 bit app to show off how great it is. Maybe a 64 bit preview of final cut pro or some other baseless speculation type thing.

I do not really understand why people are in a panic with Mac OS 10.3 needing to be 64 bit code allowing it to be shown on a 970. You are forgetting that Apple is very good at backwards engineering.

There will no doubt be a version of Mac OS 10.3 that runs on current Mac's and Apple has not stated otherwise that it will be running (or previewing in this case) on anything more than just that: hardware that is currently shipping!

I think this line on the WWDC page says it all:

I believe they said that last year too...

Maybe because of PANTHER ?

I read in MacCentral that (quoting from article):

'Ron Okamoto, Apple's vice president of Worldwide Developer Relations. "Moving to June ensures that every developer will leave the event with a copy of Panther in their hands." '.

So, as you said Programmer, "Nah.... couldn't be".



>>>But I can sure hope!

It's also possible that Apple wants to have production 970's to run 10.3 in all it's 64 bit glory, while taking orders for the first ones off the production lines to give the developers priority orders before MWNY's unvailing of the 970 for "the rest of us".
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