Intel at 4 GHz??? Come on Motorola...

Posted:
in Future Apple Hardware edited January 2014
I will admit - I am still stuck in the WinTel world with my aging and utterly useless 133 MHz Dell until I can scrape up the cash to get a new Imac.



The only think that makes we wonder about Apple, is Motorola. Why in the world are they lagging so badly in the MHz area? I now that is only one measure of speed, but it took Motorola nearly 2 1/2 years to go from 500 MHz to 1 GHz. And within the next year Intel will boost their speeds up to 4 GHz.



Here is the article:



<a href="http://www.msnbc.com/news/716875.asp?0dm=C12RT"; target="_blank">http://www.msnbc.com/news/716875.asp?0dm=C12RT</a>;



Apple has the computing experience down pat - that I know. But when are they going to be the ones to be at the top of the MHz chart or at least in the same area? With Motorola laying off people and slowly increasing clock speed by incremental amounts every so often, is Apple doomed to always be 1/2 the clock speed or less? This used to not be the case.



Regardless, I will still buy a Mac when I get my next computer. Would be nice though to have a 1.5 GHz iMac sitting on my desk - 800 MHz will do for now...
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Comments

  • Reply 1 of 170
    g-newsg-news Posts: 1,107member
    Can't have everything.



    G-News
  • Reply 2 of 170
    I agree with maui2020. Motorola really needs to sit down and and create at least a 3GHz processor to make their computers look impressive. If you look now a 800MHz iMac is $1799. You can get a 2GHz pc at $1499. Althought apples computers run at higher speeds then advertised, it's not impressive to a amuture. Also motorola has to compete with Amd also. They are coming out with a Barton and Hammer processor which will range in the 2GHz. Who knows, motorola may suprise us. Lets just hope they do :cool:
  • Reply 3 of 170
    hmurchisonhmurchison Posts: 12,419member
    1. The Intel 4Ghz was water cooled.



    2. It wasn't running anything but a Frequency tester.



    3. AMD's Clawhammer and Sledgehammer look more impressive as they will ship this year <a href="http://www.anandtech.com/cpu/showdoc.html?i=1591"; target="_blank">http://www.anandtech.com/cpu/showdoc.html?i=1591</a>;



    4. Motorola tends to keep quiet about their product announcements. They really don't have as much competition as AMD vs Intel generates.
  • Reply 4 of 170
    onlookeronlooker Posts: 5,252member
    I'm not all that concerned about a procssor that's not shipping for some time, and it's P4 at that. The P3 is still a faster processor if you live in reality (the Mac world) intel, and their users have always based their processors on x-Hz. But we base ours on actual performnance. The P3 will still out pace the P4 at an = clock cycle (MHz), and if I was looking for a processor to take to 4GHz I would taken he P3 up to 4GHz. A P3 at 4GHz would most likely out perform a P4 at the same 4GHz by 50%.



    We'll probably have one more G4 revision before the G5 supermachine is released. I would imagine (based on some reasonable rumors) that the G5 @ 3GHz will out perform a 4GHz pentium 4 in all categorys, and decimate it in Photoshop, and all the usual Altivec applications, and then some. The Velocity Engine is catching on.



    Everybody wants some. I want some too! EVH, AVH, MA, DLR.
  • Reply 5 of 170
    AMD's market cap - $4.367 billion

    Apple's cash reserve - Approximately 4.5 billion.



    If Apple buys AMD, Apple gains it's resources and technology. The fact that AMD is taken out of the equation in the x86 world also benefits Apple; Intel's competition is dramatically reduced.
  • Reply 6 of 170
    [quote]

    Everybody wants some. I want some too! EVH, AVH, MA, DLR.[/QB]<hr></blockquote>





    --------------------------------------------------------



    VH Rulez.
  • Reply 7 of 170
    [quote]Originally posted by Nostradamus:

    <strong>AMD's market cap - $4.367 billion

    Apple's cash reserve - Approximately 4.5 billion.



    If Apple buys AMD, Apple gains it's resources and technology. The fact that AMD is taken out of the equation in the x86 world also benefits Apple; Intel's competition is dramatically reduced.</strong><hr></blockquote>



    If your figures for AMD market cap are correct, then that's a very interesting idea. Apple would probably not purchase them outright though, since that would greatly compromise their reserve, and Apple is said to only make a profit in recent quarters due to that reserve. But, Apple could procure enough shares to make a partnership between the two companies stable. Then the AIM alliance could switch over to the AAI alliance.



    [ 02-27-2002: Message edited by: Big Mac ]</p>
  • Reply 8 of 170
    serranoserrano Posts: 1,806member
    [quote]Originally posted by hmurchison:

    <strong>1. The Intel 4Ghz was water cooled.

    </strong><hr></blockquote>



    <a href="http://www.hitachi.com"; target="_blank">hitachi</a> doesn't seem to think theres anything wrong with a <a href="http://www.pcworld.com/news/article/0,aid,86363,00.asp"; target="_blank">water cooled notebook.</a>
  • Reply 9 of 170
    Onlooker,



    I find it highly unlikely that Motorola will release anything that will be a discrete jump in performance. The semi-conductor world seldom has seen such breakthroughs. Can you even think of the last time anything has been a revolution rather than an evolution?



    The benchmarks for the initial release of the P4 were rather underwhelming. From an IPC standpoint or rather a performance/frequency standpoint the P4 looked rather miserable. However, bear in mind that from the initial debut of the P4 (with a top speed of 1.5GHz? Feel free to correct me if I'm off). Since that initial release, the P4 has scaled rather nicely and currently sits at 2.2GHz. Furthermore, postulating what the performance of a 4GHz P3 would be is rather pointless--Is there any reason to believe that Intel could have possibly scaled the P3 fast enough to keep it competitive with AMD much less to 4GHz? I don't think so. Finally, while that 4GHz chip was water-cooled, Intel did demo an air-cooled 3GHz P4.



    <a href="http://www.anandtech.com/cpu/showdoc.html?i=1589&p=2"; target="_blank">check this out</a>



    Anyways, getting back on topic. Being a Mac' fan has been tough over the last couple of years. Motorola has been left in the dust by AMD and Intel. To think otherwise is utter denial of the current situation. Can Motorola pull off something incredible with the G5? It had better. Otherwise, they might as well just drop out of the business of making general purpose desktop CPU's.



    Imagine, there was a time when Intel was nervous about falling behind the PPC...



    btw...I'm not really new to these boards. I just don't post much.



    agou9
  • Reply 10 of 170
    :eek: heh. looks like the last time that I posted was before the forums went down...
  • Reply 11 of 170
    kidredkidred Posts: 2,402member
    I wouldn't worry about Moto, as I thing IBM will be doing Apple's chips in the future.
  • Reply 12 of 170
    airslufairsluf Posts: 1,861member
  • Reply 13 of 170
    onlookeronlooker Posts: 5,252member
    Oops!



    [ 02-28-2002: Message edited by: onlooker ]</p>
  • Reply 14 of 170
    onlookeronlooker Posts: 5,252member
    AAI aliance? what's wrong with an AAIM? 4 is better than 3. Unless your talking about balls then 2 will do, but you can get by with 1 <img src="graemlins/lol.gif" border="0" alt="[Laughing]" /> I think I've had enough to drink this evening.



    Good night John Boy.
  • Reply 15 of 170
    [quote]Originally posted by Eskimo:

    <strong>



    How in the world would eliminating competition for Intel in any way benefit Apple?



    </strong><hr></blockquote>



    Intel shall be transformed into a monopoly in the x86 world. Their rate of increases in clockspeed shall decrease and prices shall increase. This benefits Apple and Motorola whose prices are comparatively high and rate of clockspeed increase low.
  • Reply 16 of 170
    g-newsg-news Posts: 1,107member
    Rules and guidelines, we all know how much companies have sticked to these in the past.

    Intel aparently has made compiler optimisations that create benefit especially for SPEC.



    SDRAM is a standard, with very strict guidelines and rules, yet there are companies that do not stick to it 100% and you'll see their RAM fail on certain controllers.



    Bluetooth interferes with Airport and co, because it doesn't stick to rules.



    Microsoft has failed to deliver secure software for 20 years because they give a **** about rules.



    The computer industry is built from humans, and humans are known to abandon rules as soon as there's a way to over-advantage another.



    As soon as something depensd on morals, it's no longer a viable benchmark.



    That is my opinion.



    G-news
  • Reply 17 of 170
    xmogerxmoger Posts: 242member
    [quote]If Apple buys AMD, Apple gains it's resources and technology. The fact that AMD is taken out of the equation in the x86 world also benefits Apple; Intel's competition is dramatically reduced.

    <hr></blockquote>

    AMD wouldn't go willingly into this arrangement. If they shut down x86 production, what are they gonna do, sell most of their fab space in this market and make ppc's with the rest? Actually they are expanding their capacity and their product lines with server products(hammer) and low-power embedded processors when they bought Alchemy. In a year or two they'll be able to produce 50% of the world's cpu's and actually be a viable alternative for a customer as big as dell. They don't want to use part of their cpu resources when they get into a period of real growth.

    I definitely don't see stevie adopting x86 either.
  • Reply 18 of 170
    [quote]Originally posted by xmoger:

    <strong>

    AMD wouldn't go willingly into this arrangement. If they shut down x86 production, what are they gonna do, sell most of their fab space in this market and make ppc's with the rest? Actually they are expanding their capacity and their product lines with server products(hammer) and low-power embedded processors when they bought Alchemy. In a year or two they'll be able to produce 50% of the world's cpu's and actually be a viable alternative for a customer as big as dell. They don't want to use part of their cpu resources when they get into a period of real growth.

    I definitely don't see stevie adopting x86 either.</strong><hr></blockquote>



    Who said anything about keeping AMD? And who cares if AMD is willing or not? As long as Apple has the cash, it can engauge in a hostile takeover.

    I proposed that Apple buy AMD to kill it and eliminate the x86 competition Intel faces, not switch to x86. Sure, Apple would lose a few billion, but so what?

    I'm sure Hammer's technology can incorporated into the G5 and other future PPC's.
  • Reply 19 of 170
    g-newsg-news Posts: 1,107member
    If Apple killed AMD it would be the most hated company of the next 2 decades within 5 minutes after the takeover. 20 million pimply AMD geeks would demonstrate at infinite loop with transparents stating: "Giv uz bak our CS machines. We want to OWN stil!" or something like that.

    Also Apple has no interest in

    a: losing several billion

    b: killing a company that does not directly compete

    c: killing a company that does infact even help battle Intel



    Last but not least, the figure of just about 4.38 billion dollar is certainly false, a company with that much market share on the CPU market (around 20% now I assume) is very unlikely to still have the same worth as it had with about 1% back in the K-5 days.



    G-News
  • Reply 20 of 170
    Since this thread will inevitably draw the "Mhz Myth" proponents like flies to dog sh!t, maybe this piece of relevant information should be added:



    The german chip magazine c't apparently finally ran the spec cpu2000 tests on our performance champ 1Ghz PPC G4. Now we know why Motorola has been refraining from disclosing spec scores, or avoiding it rather.



    [quote]SPECint_base2000: 306

    SPECfp_base2000 : 187



    compiled with OS X gcc 2.95.2, Absoft Pro Fortran 7.0<hr></blockquote>



    The word "dismal" immediately comes to mind. The scores are on a level with a PIII 667 Mhz for integer and even worse for FPU.



    Now, some people will go on and on about how real-world performance matters and spec is a synthetic benchmark that's worthless etc. I'd like to reminad those people that spec is the one and only benchmark that's brought up in every high-performance CPU presentation at events like the microprocessor forum. Not to mention the fact that the algorithms used in spec are in fact taken from real-world scientific applications that are used everyday in high-performance computing.



    This means a few things.



    a) The G4 is a piece of cr4p



    b) PPC compilers that are available are completely useless



    c) Apple has been squeezing more juice out of the G4 with their close hardware/software integration than we thought. It is a testament to Apple's good engineering that the PowerMacs are as fast as they currently are for most tasks.
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