[opendtv] Re: Its a standard intel platform was: Re: Re: Apple toditch IBM, switch to Intel chips
- From: Craig Birkmaier <craig@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: opendtv@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Fri, 10 Jun 2005 10:00:34 -0400
John is mistaken.
Not the first time...
Regards
Craig
At 1:08 PM -0700 6/9/05, John Willkie wrote:
>the comment from Craig was blissfully ignorant of what a move to Intel
>hardware means. The term is Wintel, but the Win part only rides (no alpha
>binaries for many yeas) atop what is made by Intel. If apple is going to
>have an operating system that runs on Intel, then windows apps will run on
>the same hardware, and the same os will run on all Intel platforms.
>
>Keep drinking the kool-aid, Craig: this is only marketing, not a fundamental
>change ...
>
>John Willkie
>----- Original Message -----
>From: "Kon Wilms" <kon@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
>To: <opendtv@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
>Sent: Thursday, June 09, 2005 8:51 AM
>Subject: [opendtv] Its a standard intel platform was: Re: Re: Apple toditch
>IBM, switch to Intel chips
>
>
>> On Thu, 2005-06-09 at 08:06 -0400, Craig Birkmaier wrote:
>> > And I hate to throw cold water on your plans John, but you can forget
>> > about Active-X controls on Macs running on Intel hardware. These
>> > machines will still be Macs, just running on Intel processors. OS-X
>> > will not run on generic PCs, and Apple is not going to bring a bunch
>> > of Microsoft dirty laundry to the party. What we will have is a world
>> > class OS running on Intel hardware.
>>
>> It won't? The development stations ship in the configuration of... a
>> standard PC -- Phoenix BIOS, onboard Intel GFX, etc.
>>
>> Its going to be really hard for Apple to justify high prices based on
>> appearance. Hopefully their customers are not as stupid this time
>> around.
>>
>> In addition (from xlr8yourmac.com -- ignore the cell processor comments,
>> this guy is a moron in that respect):
>>
>> " I'm going to keep this brief, so please write me with the questions
>> you have and any tests you want run on one of the dev kits. I will have
>> one of my own next week as well.
>> First, the thing is fast. Native apps readily beat a single 2.7 G5, and
>> sometimes beat duals. Really.
>> (I asked about real-world apps - if any were already available in native
>> code-Mike)
>> All the iLife apps other than iTunes, plus all the other apps that come
>> with the OS are already universal binaries....
>>
>> They are using a Pentium 4 660. This is a 3.6 GHz chip. It supports 64
>> bit extensions, but Apple does not support that *yet*. The 660 is a
>> single core processor. However, the engineers said that this chip would
>> not be used in a shipping product and that we need to look at Intel's
>> roadmap for that time to see what Apple will ship.
>>
>> It uses DDR-2 RAM at 533 MHz. SATA-2. It is using Intel GMA 900
>> integrated graphics and it supports Quartz Extreme. The Intel 900
>> doesn't compare favorably to any shipping card from ATi or nVidia. The
>> Apple engineers says they dev kit will work with regular PC graphics
>> cards, but that you need a driver. Apple does not write ANY graphics
>> drivers. They just submit bug reports to ATi/nVidia. So, when we asked
>> where to get drivers for better cards the engineers said "The ATI guys
>> are here." He's right, they've been in the compatibility lab several
>> times.
>>
>> It has FireWire 400, but not 800. USB 2 as well. USB 2 booting is
>> supported, FireWire booting is not. NetBoot works.
>>
>> The machines do not have Open Firmware. They use a Phoenix BIOS. That;s
>> right, a Mac with a BIOS.
>> (I asked if the Bios had any tweaks like Memory Timing which is common
>> for many PC motherboards, although Intel OEM motherboards don't usually
>> have any end user tweaks like that.-Mike)
>> They won't tell us how to get in the BIOS. I'm sure we can figure it out
>> when out dev kits arrive.
>>
>> They run Windows fine. All the chipset is standard Intel stuff, so you
>> can download drivers and run XP on the box.
>>
>> Rosetta is amazing. (see earlier post on limitations of the Rosetta
>> emulator - it's a G3 emulator basically - will not run Altivec code,
>> etc. and performance isn't going to be as good as native code, but most
> > Mac apps will run on a G3.-Mike) The tests I've run, both app tests and
>> benchmarks, peg it at between a dual 800 MHz G4 and and a dual 2 G5
>> depending on what you are doing.
>> (I mentioned to him the limitations of Rosetta (posted below)-Mike)
>> It's true Rosetta does not support Altivec, but most apps run on a G3,
>> right? Rosetta tells PPC apps that it is a G3. Apps should fall back to
>> their G3 code tree. Everyone I tested did.
>>
>> The UI tests in Xbench exceed a dual 2.7 by a large margin. (other
>> specific tests are much lower than a G5 per Xbench site results.-Mike)
>>
>> I've been talking to and watching a lot of devs. There are a lot of apps
>> from big names running in the Compatibility lab already. Some people
>> face more pain, sure, but Jobs wasn't kidding when he said that this
>> transition would be less painful than OS 9 to OS X or 68K to PPC.
>>
>> Game devs seem optimistic. They see porting Windows/x86 to Mac/x86 as
>> much easier. They look forward to the day they don't have to support
>> PPC.
>> I was talking to a (game Developer) that said about 1/3 of the process
>> is handling endian issues, the rest is Win32/DirectX. For the next 3-5
>> years, their job will be harder since they have to port to two processor
>> architectures and most bugs *are* endian related and that they will have
>> a hard time making the PPC versions run as well as the x86 versions.
>>
>> This transition is not about current P4 vs G5. It is about the future
>> directions of the processor families. Intel is committed to
>> desktop/notebook and server in a big way. Freescale/IBM are chasing the
>> embedded market and console market. Apple would have been in a lurch in
>> 2 years.
>>
>> Also, all the cell people and the AMD people need to be quiet. Apple
>> evaluated both. AMD has the same, if not worse, supply problems as IBM.
>> Their roadmap is fine, but the production capacity is not.
>>
>> The tested Cell as well. That processor is NOT intended for PC
>> applications. (it was designed for game systems, not as a general use
>> CPU) The lack of out of order execution and ILP control logic creates
>> very poor performance with existing software. Having developers rewrite
>> for cell would have been MUCH more work than reworking for Intel. And
>> that's what this is, you rework your codebase in ALL cases, not rewrite
>> it. "
>>
>> Cheers
>> Kon
>>
>>
>>
>>
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