<strong>I know what you are saying and I worded my response poorly in that area, such is the case when at work trying to fire off a quick one. I wanted to make a point about the difference in design philosophy vs performance/MHz. Hmmm, maybe I'll wait til I get home before I get into this too much.</strong><hr></blockquote>
You should read the <a href="http://arstechnica.com/cpu/01q2/p4andg4e/p4andg4e-1.html"; target="_blank">comparison</a> between the P4 and the G4 at arstechnica. It explains the different design philosophies very well. The difference is basically:
(P4) Very high clock rate, low performance per Mhz
(G4) Lower clock rate, high performance per Mhz
The advantage of the approach that the G4 uses is a very low heat dissipation, a much smaller die (which is a big factor in the production costs) and a much smaller reliance on the bus.
The P4 wins in the Mhz race. It also seems that a deep pipeline can scale very fast, although that might better be explained by the presence of top-engineers within Intel.
My personal favorites are multi-processing with G4-like processors or a clockless processor. The first favorite comes from my habit to do 5 things at a time and the desire to have a silent computer, the clockless processor is just an awfully efficient architecture. You avoid the heat-dissipation that propagating the clocksignals takes (making an idle processor truly idle) and save a lot on die-size. And operations no longer have to fit in a clocktick, they just take as long as they need. This avoids the inefficiencies of trying to chop different types of instructions in fixed discrete chunks.
[edit] completely misunderstood post I was replying to, therefore this response has been removed for being too silly and having no useful value. [/edit]
You should read the <a href="http://arstechnica.com/cpu/01q2/p4andg4e/p4andg4e-1.html"; target="_blank">comparison</a> between the P4 and the G4 at arstechnica. It explains the different design philosophies very well. The difference is basically:
(P4) Very high clock rate, low performance per Mhz
(G4) Lower clock rate, high performance per Mhz
.</strong><hr></blockquote>
Thanks for the link, the explanation of ars technica are very clear,i enjoy the read, and i come back here from time to time to learn some basic notions about chip's architecture.
[quote] One of the risks [Motorola are] taking, to cut costs, is reducing the rate at which air is replaced within the fabs. This does indeed cut costs up front, but as Eskimo has said, it means their fabs are dirty. So they're essentially hoping that they'll be lucky enough that the dirt getting into their chips and equipment won't cost them more than they're saving. The technical term for this sort of tactic, I believe, is "Hail Mary." <hr></blockquote>
Amorph, this is one of the most disturbing things I have ever read about Motorola. I can't help but think that Apple would feel the same way.
To answer JD's question - I think you'd see an announcement from Apple that they were switching to AMD chips. The obvious problem is Carbon. I think we might see some kind of weird solution like hybrid PowerMacs with one AMD processor and one G4 (at least until nobody used Carbon apps anymore), or a really complicated on-the-fly emulator.</strong><hr></blockquote>
Ok, so Apple moves to AMD or Intel. Tell me how they are going to be able to justify selling these new computers for the price difference that there is today between the Apple and Wintel computers?
Do you think people are really going to shell out almost twice as much money for an Apple AMD/Intel box just to run OS X with a small software selection?
Apple makes most of their money on hardware. I just don't see Apple being able to sell the almost identical boxes as wintel makers with the profit margins they have today on their PowerPC boxes.
if Apple move to the X86 chips or a different chip from the PPC chips they are dead, a new emulator would be a disaster. If it arrive i would leave the mac, dispite my great affection for this mervellous computer.</strong><hr></blockquote>
HEY! Then you could get an AMD PC and finally have a decent OS to run on it! Good thinking.
Comments
<strong>I know what you are saying and I worded my response poorly in that area, such is the case when at work trying to fire off a quick one. I wanted to make a point about the difference in design philosophy vs performance/MHz. Hmmm, maybe I'll wait til I get home before I get into this too much.</strong><hr></blockquote>
You should read the <a href="http://arstechnica.com/cpu/01q2/p4andg4e/p4andg4e-1.html"; target="_blank">comparison</a> between the P4 and the G4 at arstechnica. It explains the different design philosophies very well. The difference is basically:
(P4) Very high clock rate, low performance per Mhz
(G4) Lower clock rate, high performance per Mhz
The advantage of the approach that the G4 uses is a very low heat dissipation, a much smaller die (which is a big factor in the production costs) and a much smaller reliance on the bus.
The P4 wins in the Mhz race. It also seems that a deep pipeline can scale very fast, although that might better be explained by the presence of top-engineers within Intel.
My personal favorites are multi-processing with G4-like processors or a clockless processor. The first favorite comes from my habit to do 5 things at a time and the desire to have a silent computer, the clockless processor is just an awfully efficient architecture. You avoid the heat-dissipation that propagating the clocksignals takes (making an idle processor truly idle) and save a lot on die-size. And operations no longer have to fit in a clocktick, they just take as long as they need. This avoids the inefficiencies of trying to chop different types of instructions in fixed discrete chunks.
[ 04-05-2002: Message edited by: PBG4 Dude ]</p>
<strong>
You should read the <a href="http://arstechnica.com/cpu/01q2/p4andg4e/p4andg4e-1.html"; target="_blank">comparison</a> between the P4 and the G4 at arstechnica. It explains the different design philosophies very well. The difference is basically:
(P4) Very high clock rate, low performance per Mhz
(G4) Lower clock rate, high performance per Mhz
.</strong><hr></blockquote>
Thanks for the link, the explanation of ars technica are very clear,i enjoy the read, and i come back here from time to time to learn some basic notions about chip's architecture.
Amorph, this is one of the most disturbing things I have ever read about Motorola. I can't help but think that Apple would feel the same way.
<strong>
To answer JD's question - I think you'd see an announcement from Apple that they were switching to AMD chips. The obvious problem is Carbon. I think we might see some kind of weird solution like hybrid PowerMacs with one AMD processor and one G4 (at least until nobody used Carbon apps anymore), or a really complicated on-the-fly emulator.</strong><hr></blockquote>
Ok, so Apple moves to AMD or Intel. Tell me how they are going to be able to justify selling these new computers for the price difference that there is today between the Apple and Wintel computers?
Do you think people are really going to shell out almost twice as much money for an Apple AMD/Intel box just to run OS X with a small software selection?
Apple makes most of their money on hardware. I just don't see Apple being able to sell the almost identical boxes as wintel makers with the profit margins they have today on their PowerPC boxes.
<strong>
if Apple move to the X86 chips or a different chip from the PPC chips they are dead, a new emulator would be a disaster. If it arrive i would leave the mac, dispite my great affection for this mervellous computer.</strong><hr></blockquote>
HEY! Then you could get an AMD PC and finally have a decent OS to run on it! Good thinking.
P.