"Whole widget" prognostications

boy_analog · March 31, 2002 8:00PM

As we know, Steve is heavily into synergies. When it comes to Apple, this manifests as the "whole widget" philosophy: Apple creates unique capabilities because it controls the whole widget. The iPod is a beautiful demonstration of this.

A few ideas have been bubbling away in various threads (especially <a href="http://forums.appleinsider.com/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic&f=1&t=001460"; target="_blank">this one</a>) which I think have laid out a few worthwhile clues about Apple's imminent directions.

Bandwidth is already a major bottleneck on Macs -- see BadAndy's posts in ArsTechnica.

64-bit computing is coming to the Mac -- witness BLAST and the Nothing Real acquisition. These are two areas that will benefit immediately from the large data-sets afforded by 64-bit computing.

The large data-sets associated with such applications are going to make Mac bandwidth problems even worse.

If we're aware of these things, then Apple's management and engineers must be acutely aware of them. So they will undoubtedly set about to fix them. Since this is Apple we're talking about here, I'm expecting that the solution will be elegant and powerful.

I think that we are about to see a radical re-design of Apple's motherboards. Perhaps it will be a CPU+RAM daughtercard. Perhaps it will be some sort of SGI-like UMA implementation. I don't know what the feasible possibilities are here: I'm not an engineer.

But it does seem clear that Apple is seeking a competitive advantage by going after the markets that will benefit from 64-bit computing. So they will undoubtedly have the hardware in place to accommodate this strategy.

Comments?

junkyard dawg · March 31, 2002 10:59PM

I think Apple can design the most bad-ass motherboard the world has ever seen, but it will be hobbled by the CPU supplied by Motorola until the G5 is ready. Even with the G5, unless it is announced soon, then it won't be very powerful next to the available x86 CPUs out there. A 1.6 GHz G5 next year isn't going to make waves.

boy_analog · April 1, 2002 5:28AM

JYD:

Yes, when I'm talking about 64-bit computing, I'm assuming that it won't be a G4!

As for the rest, I seem to have caught you at a pessimistic time. Sometimes I'm up, sometimes I'm down on PPC futures. At the moment I'm up.

I was initially skeptical about the rumours that Apple was taking its CPU design in-house, but lately I've changed my mind. Steve-o is by all accounts a bit of a control freak, god bless him. So: if Steve was less than delighted with where he saw Motorola heading, he would have put together an in-house CPU design team long ago.

One more thing. Repeat after me: performance does not scale linearly with MHz, performance does not scale linearly with MHz, performance does not scale linearly with MHz, performance does not scale linearly with MHz, performance does not scale linearly with MHz ... especially when it's a P4 we're talking about!