[HarriganC]

I have dont plenty of searching, and still can't find the answer to my question. Okay, now I am no genius about exactly how computers work, I know all the main components and what they do. I have always wondered why IBM is a processor manufacturer, so why don't they use there own processors in there computers? I am sure there is a technical reason that I am just naive to. Any light that anyone can shed on me? Or am I being to inquisitive on something that I just wouldn't understand?

Appreciated,

Chris

[MrForgetable]

Interesting, I have never thoguht of that!

[chabig]

In the early days of PCs, IBM didn't make microprocessors. They were a mainframe company after all. When they built the first PC, it was a secret program to get a machine on the market as quickly as possible. Thus they outsourced the processor and the OS. That's why Intel and Microsoft are the behemoths they are today.

Chris

[HarriganC]

Well from what I heard IBM took over cyrix, who made low end processors in the Pentium MMX days, but seeing that ibm still manufactures computers, and now have a processor division, it puzzles me that they don't utilize there own product within there systems. ....weird.... I think too much

[spiky_dog]

you're forgetting that ibm makes many ranges of computers. in particular some of their high end servers use powerpc-family chips. take the power4 for example: http://www-1.ibm.com/servers/eserver...rs/power4.html

[elbles]

IBM would have loved to use PowerPC chips in their PCs, and created the chip, along with Apple and Motorola, so that their reliance on Intel could be minimized. IBM prepared AIX (for the high end stuff) and OS/2 (for most people) for a desktop PowerPC reference platform (initially called CHRP, later PowerPC Reference Platform), but it never worked out the way IBM first desired . . .

[Graymalkin]

IBM did not buy Cyrix, Via did. Via is the Taiwanese company that produces a whole slew of PC products from motherboard chipsets to Firewire controllers. Via now markets modified versions of Cyrix's old Centaur chips under the C3 brand name. They're Pentium-compatible and runs extremely cool for the amount of power they've got.

IBM does use their own processors in their own computers. They have far more computer lines than their Windows PCs. They build large server systems, workstations, and smaller servers around their own POWER-based processors. Many of these systems run IBM's own version of Unix called AIX but several models now run Linux.

IBM ships Windows-compatible desktops and servers in order to provide a wider solution to their customers. If you want to equip an office with some PCs for basic stuff you really don't need to spend $6,000 a pop on a Unix workstation, a $599 Windows PC will probably work out just fine. This is the same reason IBM sells Windows server systems, a small business office needs a Windows-compatible workgroup server not a 64 processor affair running a heavy duty Unix variant.

[iPoder]

IBM basically retreats itself from the cut-throat PC business except selling its desktop and notbooks to business users for higher profit margin.

In the next console war, Nintendo and Microsoft are going to use IBM's PowerPC chip in one form or the other (sometime next year or 2006).

I even doubt that IBM has enough capacity to supply all the demands in additional to Apple's, considering all the chip shortage problems recently.

[Eug Wanker]

IBM's JS20 servers use G5s.

[Snake]

Perhaps Intel can provide cheaper chip alternatives.

[hldan]

Originally posted by HarriganC:
I have dont plenty of searching, and still can't find the answer to my question. Okay, now I am no genius about exactly how computers work, I know all the main components and what they do. I have always wondered why IBM is a processor manufacturer, so why don't they use there own processors in there computers? I am sure there is a technical reason that I am just naive to. Any light that anyone can shed on me? Or am I being to inquisitive on something that I just wouldn't understand?

Appreciated,

Chris

For the record, that's not a stupid question at all, in fact it's probably one of the best questions of the year. Personally I don't understand what difference it makes what type of processor is in the computer driving the OS.
I don't see why Apple can't use the Pentium M chips to run OSX or why PC's can't use the PPC processor?

[s0litude]

Originally posted by hldan:
For the record, that's not a stupid question at all, in fact it's probably one of the best questions of the year. Personally I don't understand what difference it makes what type of processor is in the computer driving the OS.
I don't see why Apple can't use the Pentium M chips to run OSX or why PC's can't use the PPC processor?

Big endian vs. Little endian machines.

[dodo_nutter]

Isn't there something to do with RISC and CISC in there. I seem to remember Macs use RISC and Windows uses CISC processors and these aren't interchangeable. Im sure someone knowledgeable about all this can post with a LOT more info!!

[dreilly1]

IBM does make all sorts of different types of chips. But as far as PC processors go, the Intel Architecture is the standard in the Windows world, and there aren't very many companies who can make compatible chips that are fast enough and cheap enough.

There's nothing keeping IBM from reverse-engineering the x86 instruction set and makign their own compatible chip, but by the time they put in all the engineering effort, they wouldn't be able to sell the chips at a price which would make them profitable and competitive with Intel and AMD.

Remember that even big companies like IBM and Intel only have a finite number of engineers, and they need them working on things that will generate a profit. Just because something is technically possible doesn't mean it's in their best interest to do so...

[iPoder]

Originally posted by s0litude:
Big endian vs. Little endian machines.

This is not a big problem. A simple conversion will solve little-endian vs. big-endian issue.

After all, NextStep (what Mac OS X is originated from) at one time supported Intel machine.

[iPoder]

Originally posted by dodo_nutter:
Isn't there something to do with RISC and CISC in there. I seem to remember Macs use RISC and Windows uses CISC processors and these aren't interchangeable. Im sure someone knowledgeable about all this can post with a LOT more info!!

The line has blurred between CISC and RISC.

RISC stands for "Reduced Instruction Set Computer" (Motorola chips are typically referred to this).

The believer of RISC thinks the simple CPU instruction sets will make the chip design simpler and faster, because each CPU instruction takes a very short time to execute a simple command, such as adding two numbers together. All other computing instructions can be done by the executing multiple simple instructions. Each instruction usually takes only few CPU cycles to complete. However, complicated function will need to execute multiple instructions to complete.

CISC stands for "Complex Instruction Set Computer" (Intel on the other hand).

The supporter of CISC believes it is more efficient to design a rich instruction set in the CPU, where each CPU instruction can do marvelous thing (such as MMX instruction on Intel chips). Some instructions may take many CPU cycles to complete.

However, when the chip technologies advanced, no chip vendor is completely CISC or RISC. Morotola, or Freescale, has AltiVec technologies, and Intel uses aggressive code pipelining (breaking a complicated instruction to many small steps, i.e. micro-instruction) to make the chip run faster.

Here is a link to an explanation from Stanford
http://cse.stanford.edu/class/sophom...risc/risccisc/

Mac OS X is a micro-kernel OS, which means only a small set of OS functions are tightly related to the hardware. All other layers of OS are just wrapped around the micro-kernel. All Apple needs to do is make this micro kernel working on the Intel chip, the other parts of OS will just fall in place (they have done it before as in NextStep, and probably a working Mac OS X on Intel in the Apple labs secretly).

Windows are more complex internally, due to the long history of patch works done by Microsoft, so it is more difficult for it to support non-Intel chip. But Microsoft did one time have a version of Windows NT supporting none-Intel chips such as MIPS, so it is not impossible.

[Graymalkin]

What is different about the PowerPC and x86 chips are their instruction sets. An instruction set is a set of high-level commands a processor is given to get work done. A processor instruction might tell the processor to add two numbers together, a PowerPC instruction will be different from the x86 one but they'll be getting the same thing done; this is the same way I'd say jump where someone else might say salto, we both mean the same thing but we say it in different ways.

A program compiled to run on x86 chips can't be run on a PowerPC chip because all of the instructions are set up different. If you had an OSX program compiled for PowerPC and were trying to run it on OSX on a PC it would not run. Developers would need to ship multiple versions of a program just to keep up with the various processor architectures OSX would run on. Sometimes programs can simply be recompiled for a particular instruction set with little difficulty. Many times however the way you'd write a program on one instruction set might not work correctly in another. This is especially true if you hand-code instructions to get the most speed out of them.

Writing code that is generic enough to work properly on multiple chip architectures means you have to leave out processor-specific code that can give you really nice performance boosts. You couldn't use AltiVec code in something you wanted to run on an x86 PC. OSX is loaded to the gills with processor-specific optimizations. It will run on processors without AltiVec (G3s) but not nearly as fast as on G4s and G5s. The core of OSX - Darwin - already runs on x86 PCs. The rest of the OS could run as well were Apple to decide to switch architectures. They would however have to spend a great deal of time retuning the OS to run well on Pentiums and Athlons.

I wish the meme about IBM not being able to fill demand on processors would die out soon. IBM is not having the same sort of delivery problems Motorola had with the 500MHz G4. IBM wasn't having any problem shipping out scores of 130nm G5s when the machines were first produced. They ran into some problems with their manufacturing of 90nm chips but many of the bugs in the production lines have been worked out and IBM's even signed contracts with other companies to produce chips in their foundry. Notably VIA signed with IBM to produce their new Esther in the Fishkill plant. Many of the problems early on weren't due the fact the individual chips were on a 90nm process but the fact the wafers were 300mm (12").

[runejoha]

Originally posted by HarriganC:
I have dont plenty of searching, and still can't find the answer to my question. Okay, now I am no genius about exactly how computers work, I know all the main components and what they do. I have always wondered why IBM is a processor manufacturer, so why don't they use there own processors in there computers? I am sure there is a technical reason that I am just naive to. Any light that anyone can shed on me? Or am I being to inquisitive on something that I just wouldn't understand?

Appreciated,

Chris

IBM is indeed a big company with several markets. Their x86 market and developement is not the same as their RISC research etc. Compare it to HPs choice to not use the Itanium 64 in their servers, but AMD 64 :-)

Apples success with G5 might change this approach over time, but "Wintel" has to much market influence today

PS! No questions are to stupid!

Runejoha