Is Intel hinting at future G5's...Wild speculation inside

Posted:
in Future Apple Hardware edited January 2014
Intel is going to a new naming structure instead of listing GHZ outright.



Could Intel be duing this in fear of IBM going on a huge ramp-up in speed?



Or might they have more information than the rest of us? Quite possible.



Or could it be a combination of Intel having many problems with their own 90 nano chips not ramping and IBM?



Like I said Wild Speculation but why when you have been the MHZ and GHZ king for so long and made so much $$$$ duing it would you stop and go to a confusing numbering system?
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Comments

  • Reply 1 of 35
    plan-bplan-b Posts: 36member
    I should imagine that with them only having a single (think im right in saying this) 3.06 proccesor available top range....hows that going to look pitched against dual 3ghz ( and its beautiful design) so i should think they will start calling them things like 4000+ or somthing to make it look faster than what it is, shame really ....... i dont know what the harm is telling people what the proccesor speed is....
  • Reply 2 of 35
    amorphamorph Posts: 7,112member
    I don't think they're as much worried about IBM or AMD as they are about their own CPU lines.



    Intel has two immediate problems: First, they're running into a wall with the Pentium cores (not the first wall they've run into, to be sure); second, they have two products (Itanium and Pentium M/Centrino) that they want to succeed, both of which are clocked significantly lower than the Pentium series are, and they're not selling. Centrino, despite being an impressive mobile architecture, is bombing. This is becauses Intel's old marketing strategy is coming back to haunt them. They have a SPARC-like strategy at the high end and a Motorola-like strategy in the portable space, and thanks to their own marketing they're defeating themselves as surely as they defeated Sun and Motorola (in the PC space).



    I'm sure IBM in general and Steve in particular will be more than happy to twist the knife by riding the perception that Intel has worked so hard to create and pointing out that the 970 severely out-clocks the Itanium, while leaving Intel to scream "MHz doesn't matter!" as futilely (and, sadly, as correctly) as Apple and Motorola did not so long ago.



    I actually hope Intel succeeds, just because there are many more variables to consider beside clock speed when you're designing a platform, especially in the rapidly growing portable space. It won't be much skin off IBM, since the 970 is a good performer in real terms, and it will undo a great deal of damage that Intel did by skewing perception away from reality.
  • Reply 3 of 35
    tuttletuttle Posts: 301member
    Intel is concerned more with AMD than IBM.



    http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=14923



    A good sign a company is in trouble is when their PR department is issuing statements denying there is any trouble.



    AMD looks like they may take a significant bite out of Intel's market-share this year.
  • Reply 4 of 35
    concordconcord Posts: 312member
    Competition is good for everyone... if AMD can stick it Intel this year - more power to 'em.



    That said, I would caution against counting on Intel running into some wall with their processors that they won't be able to circumvent. When push comes to shove - they are still Intel.





    Cheers,



    C.
  • Reply 5 of 35
    jadejade Posts: 379member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by Amorph

    I don't think they're as much worried about IBM or AMD as they are about their own CPU lines.



    Intel has two immediate problems: First, they're running into a wall with the Pentium cores (not the first wall they've run into, to be sure); second, they have two products (Itanium and Pentium M/Centrino) that they want to succeed, both of which are clocked significantly lower than the Pentium series are, and they're not selling. Centrino, despite being an impressive mobile architecture, is bombing.






    The Centrinos are doing pretty well..but the average price of laptops is decreasing and that is where intel is failing. By allowing manufacturers to use desktop chips in the notebooks, it makes for a "speedier" and cheaper notebook. Only the business people and travellers (and Apple users) pay mre than about $1500 for a notebook. The average price is actually about $1050 these days...and the Centrinos are significantly more. Intel was not having much success with the previous versions of the pentium M becasue the performance was significantly worse than the desktop chips, and the battery life was marginally better. Unlike the Centrino notebooks are the best of both worlds with performance, battery life and smaller size. Intel doesn't have to sell only Centrinos, but it helps a lot because the margin is a lot higher on these notebook chips. And this in turn helps the manufacturers who are seeing their margin decrease with all the desktop CPU notebooks (also known as the "fat and hots")
  • Reply 6 of 35
    jadejade Posts: 379member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by Tuttle

    Intel is concerned more with AMD than IBM.



    http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=14923



    A good sign a company is in trouble is when their PR department is issuing statements denying there is any trouble.



    AMD looks like they may take a significant bite out of Intel's market-share this year.






    As for Intel vs AMD. Intel has an overwhelming lead on the desktop, but AMD is making serious enroads in the high-margin server and blade markets. For those uses, the enterprise doesn't care who is inside, as long as it works and is compatible.
  • Reply 7 of 35
    Quote:

    Originally posted by PLAN-B

    I should imagine that with them only having a single (think im right in saying this) 3.06 proccesor available top range....hows that going to look pitched against dual 3ghz ( and its beautiful design) so i should think they will start calling them things like 4000+ or somthing to make it look faster than what it is, shame really ....... i dont know what the harm is telling people what the proccesor speed is....



    just for the record, Intel has multiple 3.4GHz processors out. the 3.06 is old. it was the first released with HT.
  • Reply 8 of 35
    plan-bplan-b Posts: 36member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by concentricity

    just for the record, Intel has multiple 3.4GHz processors out. the 3.06 is old. it was the first released with HT.



    thanks for that



    wasnt quite sure with intel and really didnt want to look it up cheers
  • Reply 9 of 35
    dmband0026dmband0026 Posts: 2,345member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by concentricity

    just for the record, Intel has multiple 3.4GHz processors out. the 3.06 is old. it was the first released with HT.



    I was going to say this too, but whether its at 3.06 or 3.4...the fact is, they've maxed out (as Amorph said "hit a wall"). We'll see where they go from here. I remember reading that they've been melting chips trying to ramp up to 3.6, it's just to hot, and the power consumption is ungodly.

    So the question remains...how will intel get around this? Will they go to a 90nm, 65nm? Or stick with current clock speeds and try to figure out a way to improve cooling and or system architecture? There are a lot of unknowns right now, and I for one hope that IBM takes advantage of Intel's moment of weakness here and pounces on some more of the market.
  • Reply 10 of 35
    e1618978e1618978 Posts: 6,075member
    Wouldn't it be great if Intel and AMD joined the

    PowerPC group and started producing G4/G5

    compatible processors?



    PowerPC would become the standard, and

    processors would be commodity products.

    All compilers would generate the same

    machine instructions, and life would be good.
  • Reply 11 of 35
    The reason why the x86 platform is so popular is due to its legacy support. Not everyone buys new systems every 3 years. This is why Intel and AMD will never join the PPC side. Its the same reason Microsoft can't completely redesign their OS, like Apple did. Programs having to be rewritten, business couldn't upgrade right away. Its great if you can do it, and Apple couldn't of done it if they had like 25% market share. People would get pissed. Legacy support is why x86 is strong, and legacy will keep it strong.
  • Reply 12 of 35
    kenaustuskenaustus Posts: 924member
    Longhorn (if it ever arrives) may turn out to be the break away from the x86. It all depends on MS's ability to move to a new platform and provide a minimal level of legacy support. Maybe they'll let you run "

    old" Windows under VPC . . .
  • Reply 13 of 35
    scavangerscavanger Posts: 286member
    Longhorn will still be legacy. It'll still use a registry model, Longhorn will get rid of DOS and probably some Win95 legacy support. Expect stuff form the 98/ME era to still work.
  • Reply 14 of 35
    jobjob Posts: 420member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by e1618978

    Wouldn't it be great if Intel and AMD joined the

    PowerPC group and started producing G4/G5

    compatible processors?



    PowerPC would become the standard, and

    processors would be commodity products.

    All compilers would generate the same

    machine instructions, and life would be good.




    The world would implode.
  • Reply 15 of 35
    rhumgodrhumgod Posts: 1,289member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by scavanger

    The reason why the x86 platform is so popular is due to its legacy support. Not everyone buys new systems every 3 years. This is why Intel and AMD will never join the PPC side. Its the same reason Microsoft can't completely redesign their OS, like Apple did. Programs having to be rewritten, business couldn't upgrade right away. Its great if you can do it, and Apple couldn't of done it if they had like 25% market share. People would get pissed. Legacy support is why x86 is strong, and legacy will keep it strong.



    Huge marketshare can be a drawback when a processor line your OS depends on is at a standstill. Think about it - 90% of the market uses Windows, on x86. Take away the x86 and you have a ton of pissed off users that have no where to turn.



    And guess what, it will happen in the next year or so. Longhorn has to have some kind of legacy support - unfortunately the existing Windows code just plain sucks for virus and security penetration. They have to do some kind of emulation like Apple did with Classic. I really don't think despite having god-knows how many more developers working on emulation, they won't get it close to what Apple did with Mac OS X. For all the negativity, they moved a platform to a new OS without too many problems.



    Of course, look at the move to PPC from the 68x line. That was REALLY cool!
  • Reply 16 of 35
    concordconcord Posts: 312member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by Rhumgod:

    Take away the x86 and you have a ton of pissed off users that have no where to turn.



    And guess what, it will happen in the next year or so.



    Just as I'd like to have a dollar for every time I hear someone say Apple's going out of business, I'd also like to have a dollar for every time some wishful thinker believes Intel is going to run into some kind of wall they can't surmount. \ The Pentium core is going bye-bye btw - Conroe (desktop), Meron (mobile), Tukwilla (64-bit) and some dual-core stuff is what's on the horizon from them. AMD has their K9(?) on the horizon, etc...

    Quote:

    They have to do some kind of emulation like Apple did with Classic.



    No. I haven't heard anything like that happening.

    Quote:

    Of course, look at the move to PPC from the 68x line. That was REALLY cool!



    This I agree with.



    Cheers,



    C.
  • Reply 17 of 35
    oldmacfanoldmacfan Posts: 501member
    Yes, x86 Legacy must die. Classic must die. I know that last part is fightin words with some, but it needs to go.



    I had a women complain to me that she was upset because all the "new" mac software was coming out for OS X and not OS 9. She is still refusing to upgrade her OS. I tried for almost two weeks to explain it too her. I failed.



    I should have known when she made the comment that Win 95 software still works on Win 98.





    Back on topic now. Intel is in a world of hurt right now. Most likely they will come out of it but this is the time for APPLE-IBM to make their move on them.
  • Reply 18 of 35
    rhumgodrhumgod Posts: 1,289member
    Concord -> oh yes, they MUST have some kind of emulation layer - can you hear the storm from the hords of people that will want to stone MS/Intel for not providing an emulation layer for x86? It is a CERTAINTY!



    Apple is poised and has always stated that Darwin is for greater development of the platform. Why do you think they released an x86 version? Hmmmm.



    I think big, very big, things are coming on this front in the next year or two.

  • Reply 19 of 35
    charlesscharless Posts: 301member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by oldmacfan

    Classic must die. I know that last part is fightin words with some, but it needs to go.



    WTF? Give me one good reason for that. The Classic layer is already there, the work is done, and it works quite well. Why should Apple all of a sudden stop including it and make it impossible to use craploads of old software without having to reboot into OS 9?



    Are you on crack?
  • Reply 20 of 35
    craiger77craiger77 Posts: 133member
    While I am optimistic that IBM will be able to keep ramping up the speed of their processors, I have find these discussions disturbingly reminiscent of what was said at the time the original powerpc processors where coming out. There was lots of reports that Intel was doomed...CISC processors where the at the end of the line...Macs where going to blow anything Intel could come up with in the coming years out of the water, etc. Unfortunately we all know what happened. I just hope history doesn't repeat itself!!
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