Yes, but it is Apple's choice who's CPUs to put in their motherboards.
I mean, Apple needs to look after their products. If Motorola looks like having no chance to produce CPUs on par with the rest of the industry, then Apple needs to talk to other makers (eg IBM, UMC, TSMC) to license produce Moto CPUs, develop and produce CPUs for Apple (IBM, AMD or Intel) or develop CPUs themselves and get others to manufacture them.
Motorola makes below-par CPUs for high-end desktop computers. But Apple chooses to put them in high-end desktop computers.
We all live in fairly free-maket economies. So if you don't like what Apple is doing, buy something else. Thats what makes the (free-market) world go round.
<strong>No, he was totally wrong. The other sites had predicted 800Mhz top-end, same mobo. The only unique features his source predicted, DDR and 867Mhz, turned out to be wrong.</strong><hr></blockquote>
AH. Well, therein lies the problem: I don't read rumor sites other than this one. And what's more I don't read this one for the rumors but for the other stuff mostly. I fully retract my statement about said source.
<strong>Yes, but it is Apple's choice who's CPUs to put in their motherboards.
I mean, Apple needs to look after their products. If Motorola looks like having no chance to produce CPUs on par with the rest of the industry, then Apple needs to talk to other makers (eg IBM, UMC, TSMC) to license produce Moto CPUs, develop and produce CPUs for Apple (IBM, AMD or Intel) or develop CPUs themselves and get others to manufacture them.
Motorola makes below-par CPUs for high-end desktop computers. But Apple chooses to put them in high-end desktop computers.
We all live in fairly free-maket economies. So if you don't like what Apple is doing, buy something else. Thats what makes the (free-market) world go round.
<strong>Yes, but it is Apple's choice who's CPUs to put in their motherboards.</strong><hr></blockquote>
The alternatives are.... ?
[quote]<strong>I mean, Apple needs to look after their products. If Motorola looks like having no chance to produce CPUs on par with the rest of the industry, then Apple needs to talk to other makers (eg IBM, UMC, TSMC) to license produce Moto CPUs, develop and produce CPUs for Apple (IBM, AMD or Intel) or develop CPUs themselves and get others to manufacture them.</strong><hr></blockquote>
Apple can't just talk to anyone and tell them to license Mot's designs. Mot happens to have a say in who gets to license their designs, and on what terms. It's not in Mot's interest to have TSMC or IBM fab their high-end chips. They'll contract out (like they did with the flawed 7400) but only as a last resort. The problems they're facing are inept management and dirty fabs. The inept management is apparently getting cleaned out to ward off a mob of angry shareholders. The dirty fabs are a (dubious) belt-tightening measure - Mot SPS will clean them up as soon as their heads are off the proverbial chopping block, because they know that it's not a good idea (they'd better...).
This only applies to their latest & greatest fabs, though (the ones that the PPCs we're interested in will be fabbed on). For parts that can be fabbed on older tech, Mot is using TSMC, because it's cheaper to pay them than it is to keep a few aging fabs on line. Actually, I'm not even sure if TSMC has anything like Mot's HiPerMOS7 fab, in which case Mot has an edge in fabrication technology, which means better CPUs.
[quote]<strong>We all live in fairly free-maket economies. So if you don't like what Apple is doing, buy something else. Thats what makes the (free-market) world go round.</strong><hr></blockquote>
That sort of free market applies to commodities. I can switch from Sony to Panasonic pretty seamlessly for most home electronics, or from Converse to New Balance for sneakers, or GE to Philips for light bulbs, or Dell and Compaq for PCs. Once you get out of the commodities markets, that argument starts falling apart. If I don't see any Macs I like, I hold on to the one I have. Because now all of a sudden there's a real cost to switching. Things are substantively different, and there are learning curves and cross-grades to new applications, incompatibilities and losses in functionality. If Apple isn't happy with Mot's G4s, who else offers them? IBM, but only if Mot contracts them to in order to meet demand (and then IBM reams them for the privilege). So Apple's only option is to switch platforms, and that's painful for a large number of reasons - painful enough that Apple wouldn't be willing to do it unless it was essentially permanent.
This summer Apple gains the right to buy out Mot's share in AIM, essentially, and with that it gains a number of important PPC-related licenses. Things might get interesting then. For the time being, Apple is stuck with what Mot offers.
(I have to add that while the G4 might not be the ultimate solution for the towers in particular, it's doing a great job everywhere else. Notebook computers have the same requirements that traditional embedded environments do.)
We pay a premium- if we're buying the "BMW" of the computer world, why doesn't the high-end offer more features and outperform competitors, the way high-end BMW's do?
Because Apple doesn't make the "BMWs" of the computer world. They make the computer equivalent of a Pontiac Trans Am with a 4 cylinder engine, drum brakes, and a 3 speed automatic. Glam on the outside, antiquated components on the inside.
And Apple doesn't have any choice. They must maintain exorbitant margins because their volume is relatively low and they have to fund all of their own R&D. The only way out for Apple is to increase their market share, so they can sell a larger volume and thus lower their profit margins."
While your comments about DDR support are definitely true, my points about integrated IDE RAID and 5.1 sound are extremely valid ones.
After all, neither one is dependent on Motorola to implement, just Apple.
I'm also hoping that FireWire 2 will get integrated in sooner rather than later, especially with the Zayante purchase.
The scenario that I'm really hoping is true is that Apple's engineers have been busy working on a major paradigm shift, a la the NUMA architecture talked about earlier, and so decided to skimp on resources furthering the Uni-N chipset and invest the majority of their time and energy into this new architecture.
If this scenario isn't true, then I really wonder quite what Apple's been doing as Uni-N has been showing its age for a while now...
5.1 sound is in there desperately trying to get out. I think Apple just hasn't been able to properly pull the plug on the rest of it's implementation. They have been trumpeting the OS X Audio Frameworks fully support 5.1 so I think it's just a matter of time (I actually think they were hoping they could nudge Creative into working with them to get the implementation out, but Creatives management couldn't cut their way out of a tissue paper bag so... we wait for Apple to finally get to it).
Is a link to an e-mail reply to xlr8yourmac by creative's Brian Souder.
The important part of the e-mail:
"I think they have plans of doing USB or 1394 based speakers for this someday (this is a guess) because they discourage vendors from making PCI devices."
"I think they have plans of doing USB or 1394 based speakers for this someday (this is a guess) because they discourage vendors from making PCI devices."</strong><hr></blockquote>
For a company that mostly makes machines without PCI slots, this actually makes a lot of sense. They should just hurry the heck up and get the product to market, encourage somebody else to get it there. With FireWire speakers you could do a lot better than 5.1 support too. "Digital hub", remember.
Hopefully some smart 3rd party will make a FireWire -> conventional 5.1 converter so that we can all plug our existing FireWire equipped Macs into existing 5.1 systems. This could be done quite cheaply, I imagine (FireWire in, RCA or optical out).
<strong>No, he was totally wrong. The other sites had predicted 800Mhz top-end, same mobo. The only unique features his source predicted, DDR and 867Mhz, turned out to be wrong.</strong><hr></blockquote>
Maybe his "source" was refering to the 1Mb L3 cache which is DDR SDRAM. I might be mistaken, but if it were interpeted that way he wouldn't be totally wrong.
Today I got my hands on some MPC8540 documentation (this is the embedded version of the G5 architecture). Until now we were not sure if the 8540 will be a 32 or 64 bit CPU, so maybe this will disappoint you a bit: the MPC8540 is a 32 bit CPU. Yes, it fulfuills the Book E requirements, but no, it does not have 64 bit registers.
Of course this tells us nothing about the G5 that Apple might use someday in a PowerMac. Unfortunately I still haven't got hands an details about upcoming desktop CPUs, but I'm getting closer...
[I was going to list the reasons but as I wrote them I felt like I was providing info that might really out him. So they have been removed]
The date of his last post is about the only clue I can give. I sure hope I'm wrong but if he works for the company I think he does... Dorsal will not return.
Dave
P.S. If you do figure it out please don't post it.
Comments
I mean, Apple needs to look after their products. If Motorola looks like having no chance to produce CPUs on par with the rest of the industry, then Apple needs to talk to other makers (eg IBM, UMC, TSMC) to license produce Moto CPUs, develop and produce CPUs for Apple (IBM, AMD or Intel) or develop CPUs themselves and get others to manufacture them.
Motorola makes below-par CPUs for high-end desktop computers. But Apple chooses to put them in high-end desktop computers.
We all live in fairly free-maket economies. So if you don't like what Apple is doing, buy something else. Thats what makes the (free-market) world go round.
Barto
[ 05-01-2002: Message edited by: Barto ]</p>
<strong>No, he was totally wrong. The other sites had predicted 800Mhz top-end, same mobo. The only unique features his source predicted, DDR and 867Mhz, turned out to be wrong.</strong><hr></blockquote>
AH. Well, therein lies the problem: I don't read rumor sites other than this one. And what's more I don't read this one for the rumors but for the other stuff mostly. I fully retract my statement about said source.
Did I mention the G5 is vaporware yet?
<strong>Yes, but it is Apple's choice who's CPUs to put in their motherboards.
I mean, Apple needs to look after their products. If Motorola looks like having no chance to produce CPUs on par with the rest of the industry, then Apple needs to talk to other makers (eg IBM, UMC, TSMC) to license produce Moto CPUs, develop and produce CPUs for Apple (IBM, AMD or Intel) or develop CPUs themselves and get others to manufacture them.
Motorola makes below-par CPUs for high-end desktop computers. But Apple chooses to put them in high-end desktop computers.
We all live in fairly free-maket economies. So if you don't like what Apple is doing, buy something else. Thats what makes the (free-market) world go round.
Barto
[ 05-01-2002: Message edited by: Barto ]</strong><hr></blockquote>
The opposite of a vector is a vector going in the oposite direction, a scalar is just how big something is
<strong>Yes, but it is Apple's choice who's CPUs to put in their motherboards.</strong><hr></blockquote>
The alternatives are.... ?
[quote]<strong>I mean, Apple needs to look after their products. If Motorola looks like having no chance to produce CPUs on par with the rest of the industry, then Apple needs to talk to other makers (eg IBM, UMC, TSMC) to license produce Moto CPUs, develop and produce CPUs for Apple (IBM, AMD or Intel) or develop CPUs themselves and get others to manufacture them.</strong><hr></blockquote>
Apple can't just talk to anyone and tell them to license Mot's designs. Mot happens to have a say in who gets to license their designs, and on what terms. It's not in Mot's interest to have TSMC or IBM fab their high-end chips. They'll contract out (like they did with the flawed 7400) but only as a last resort. The problems they're facing are inept management and dirty fabs. The inept management is apparently getting cleaned out to ward off a mob of angry shareholders. The dirty fabs are a (dubious) belt-tightening measure - Mot SPS will clean them up as soon as their heads are off the proverbial chopping block, because they know that it's not a good idea (they'd better...).
This only applies to their latest & greatest fabs, though (the ones that the PPCs we're interested in will be fabbed on). For parts that can be fabbed on older tech, Mot is using TSMC, because it's cheaper to pay them than it is to keep a few aging fabs on line. Actually, I'm not even sure if TSMC has anything like Mot's HiPerMOS7 fab, in which case Mot has an edge in fabrication technology, which means better CPUs.
[quote]<strong>We all live in fairly free-maket economies. So if you don't like what Apple is doing, buy something else. Thats what makes the (free-market) world go round.</strong><hr></blockquote>
That sort of free market applies to commodities. I can switch from Sony to Panasonic pretty seamlessly for most home electronics, or from Converse to New Balance for sneakers, or GE to Philips for light bulbs, or Dell and Compaq for PCs. Once you get out of the commodities markets, that argument starts falling apart. If I don't see any Macs I like, I hold on to the one I have. Because now all of a sudden there's a real cost to switching. Things are substantively different, and there are learning curves and cross-grades to new applications, incompatibilities and losses in functionality. If Apple isn't happy with Mot's G4s, who else offers them? IBM, but only if Mot contracts them to in order to meet demand (and then IBM reams them for the privilege). So Apple's only option is to switch platforms, and that's painful for a large number of reasons - painful enough that Apple wouldn't be willing to do it unless it was essentially permanent.
This summer Apple gains the right to buy out Mot's share in AIM, essentially, and with that it gains a number of important PPC-related licenses. Things might get interesting then. For the time being, Apple is stuck with what Mot offers.
(I have to add that while the G4 might not be the ultimate solution for the towers in particular, it's doing a great job everywhere else. Notebook computers have the same requirements that traditional embedded environments do.)
[ 05-01-2002: Message edited by: Amorph ]</p>
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
We pay a premium- if we're buying the "BMW" of the computer world, why doesn't the high-end offer more features and outperform competitors, the way high-end BMW's do?
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Because Apple doesn't make the "BMWs" of the computer world. They make the computer equivalent of a Pontiac Trans Am with a 4 cylinder engine, drum brakes, and a 3 speed automatic. Glam on the outside, antiquated components on the inside.
And Apple doesn't have any choice. They must maintain exorbitant margins because their volume is relatively low and they have to fund all of their own R&D. The only way out for Apple is to increase their market share, so they can sell a larger volume and thus lower their profit margins."
Yeah.
All shell and no candy...?
Lemon Bon Bon
<strong>The opposite of a vector is a vector going in the oposite direction, a scalar is just how big something is</strong><hr></blockquote>
He said "the opposite of vector", not "the opposite of a vector". The opposite of the term, not an instance.
Me thinks its just a pun about the G4/altivec. Scaler = scales well.
<img src="graemlins/lol.gif" border="0" alt="[Laughing]" />
While your comments about DDR support are definitely true, my points about integrated IDE RAID and 5.1 sound are extremely valid ones.
After all, neither one is dependent on Motorola to implement, just Apple.
I'm also hoping that FireWire 2 will get integrated in sooner rather than later, especially with the Zayante purchase.
The scenario that I'm really hoping is true is that Apple's engineers have been busy working on a major paradigm shift, a la the NUMA architecture talked about earlier, and so decided to skimp on resources furthering the Uni-N chipset and invest the majority of their time and energy into this new architecture.
If this scenario isn't true, then I really wonder quite what Apple's been doing as Uni-N has been showing its age for a while now...
-HOS
<strong>The guy also spells it "scaler", not scalar.
Me thinks its just a pun about the G4/altivec. Scaler = scales well.
<img src="graemlins/lol.gif" border="0" alt="[Laughing]" /> </strong><hr></blockquote>
Yes! There is a mac/physics pun in my sig! And I misspelled scalar!
And thanks programmer for pointing out that I said "of vector" not "of a vector".
Barto
<strong>
5.1 sound is in there desperately trying to get out. I think Apple just hasn't been able to properly pull the plug on the rest of it's implementation. They have been trumpeting the OS X Audio Frameworks fully support 5.1 so I think it's just a matter of time (I actually think they were hoping they could nudge Creative into working with them to get the implementation out, but Creatives management couldn't cut their way out of a tissue paper bag so... we wait for Apple to finally get to it).
</strong><hr></blockquote>
<a href="http://www.xlr8yourmac.com/audio/mac_ac3_openal_audio.html"; target="_blank">http://www.xlr8yourmac.com/audio/mac_ac3_openal_audio.html</a>;
Is a link to an e-mail reply to xlr8yourmac by creative's Brian Souder.
The important part of the e-mail:
"I think they have plans of doing USB or 1394 based speakers for this someday (this is a guess) because they discourage vendors from making PCI devices."
Barto
Simply put, Apple must NEVER release a true Pro machine without DDR System RAM again.
Thye know this. We know this. But can they make it happen (new processor availability, stable mobo, R&D)?
We had hoped they would debut this with the new Tibooks.
arg....
[ 05-02-2002: Message edited by: jccbin ]</p>
<strong>
"I think they have plans of doing USB or 1394 based speakers for this someday (this is a guess) because they discourage vendors from making PCI devices."</strong><hr></blockquote>
For a company that mostly makes machines without PCI slots, this actually makes a lot of sense. They should just hurry the heck up and get the product to market, encourage somebody else to get it there. With FireWire speakers you could do a lot better than 5.1 support too. "Digital hub", remember.
Hopefully some smart 3rd party will make a FireWire -> conventional 5.1 converter so that we can all plug our existing FireWire equipped Macs into existing 5.1 systems. This could be done quite cheaply, I imagine (FireWire in, RCA or optical out).
<strong>No, he was totally wrong. The other sites had predicted 800Mhz top-end, same mobo. The only unique features his source predicted, DDR and 867Mhz, turned out to be wrong.</strong><hr></blockquote>
Maybe his "source" was refering to the 1Mb L3 cache which is DDR SDRAM. I might be mistaken, but if it were interpeted that way he wouldn't be totally wrong.
Thanks for the effort, though.
Just plain wrong, I was.
Of course this tells us nothing about the G5 that Apple might use someday in a PowerMac. Unfortunately I still haven't got hands an details about upcoming desktop CPUs, but I'm getting closer...
I have a funny feeling Dorsal might not return...
[I was going to list the reasons but as I wrote them I felt like I was providing info that might really out him. So they have been removed]
The date of his last post is about the only clue I can give. I sure hope I'm wrong but if he works for the company I think he does... Dorsal will not return.
Dave
P.S. If you do figure it out please don't post it.
[ 05-03-2002: Message edited by: DaveGee ]</p>