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spb · Apr 4, 2002, 11:14 AM

If Moto continue with their snail like progress , is there any possibility that apple could ditch them & go with an alternative?

Maybe they'll roll their own ? With $4bn cash they should be able to make some serious progress...!!!

Cipher13 · Apr 4, 2002, 11:20 AM

$4 billion is nothing.

They'd be starting from scratch; they'd need processor engineers, huge amounts of $ for R&D, they'd need a plant, fab engineers, and hell, a fab process.

You can't just buy all that.

Perhaps if they bought PowerPC... I mean then at least they'd have somewhere to start.

Alternatives... well, anything is possible. Athlon... meh. It's fast, it's nice, it's closer to RISC than most chips, but it'd lose out in the transition. Transmeta, well, the code morphing is interesting, but, ultimately inferior, speedwise - and when it boils down to it, thats what counts.

Other PowerPC options... well, IBM is the best bet. A cut down version of the Power4 (such as what the G5 is supposed to be) would be very sweet indeed.

As much as Motorola rock, its time to find someone more serious about their market.

Immortal K-Mart Employee · Apr 4, 2002, 11:21 AM

spb · Apr 4, 2002, 11:24 AM

Athlon !?,Athlon !?,Athlon !?,Athlon !?,Athlon !?,Athlon !?....

reeeeeealy ??

SMacTech · Apr 4, 2002, 11:25 AM

Can we reinvent the wheel while we are at it too?

cpt kangarooski · Apr 4, 2002, 12:15 PM

Aside from the fact that it'd piss off MS mightily, Intel is the way to go. The whole _need_ to bother with countermarketing to make up for the poor performance of the PPC in recent years would evaporate, there'd be a significant speed boost and price reduction, virtually no worries about chip shortages, and very likely a ready supply of ancillary commodity hardware to go along with it.

Cipher13 · Apr 4, 2002, 12:22 PM

Originally posted by cpt kangarooski:
<STRONG>Aside from the fact that it'd piss off MS mightily, Intel is the way to go. The whole _need_ to bother with countermarketing to make up for the poor performance of the PPC in recent years would evaporate, there'd be a significant speed boost and price reduction, virtually no worries about chip shortages, and very likely a ready supply of ancillary commodity hardware to go along with it.</STRONG>

The Pentium 4 is a HORRIBLE processor.
Not only that, but Intel are quickly painting themselves into a corner.

Their next generation chip is only half the clockspeed of their P4 - the reasoning being the former was designed for speed, and the latter to look good to consumers.

Where do they go now?

spb · Apr 4, 2002, 12:33 PM

i read 'somewhere' that the p4 was clockable to 10ghz- this should give plenty of elbow room..

godzookie2k · Apr 4, 2002, 12:38 PM

If Apple went with an Athlon or with a pentium, they might as well throw every iMac into the trash while they're at it. Also the PBG4's....and the iBooks for that matter. The Athlon and the Pentium are simply too hot for Apple's fan-less designs. They'd have to go with the Pentium and athlon mobile editions which are severely under-powered and not worth the processor change over hassles. The G4 towers would also gain a few hundred decibels with having to throw in multiple fans. They could, instead of fans use water based cooling systems, but that would probably increase the price on apple computers by another hundred bucks or so.

spb · Apr 4, 2002, 12:41 PM

how about g4 for laptops , p4 for desktops...

its only 8 letters difference ...

MWeinstein · Apr 4, 2002, 12:42 PM

I don't think the problem lies strictly on the PowerPC architecture here. Last year, IBM showed a PowerPC chip running at 15GHz. It's not that the PowerPC CAN'T do it, it's that Motorola only allows IBM to manufacture the PowetrPC chips for Macs outside of the United States.

Maybe this will change soon, but until it does, Apple is a slave to Motorola.

Originally posted by spb:
<STRONG>If Moto continue with their snail like progress , is there any possibility that apple could ditch them & go with an alternative?

Maybe they'll roll their own ? With $4bn cash they should be able to make some serious progress...!!!</STRONG>

spb · Apr 4, 2002, 01:43 PM

As i thought - moto are to blame.. as usual

this company is utterly crap in every way. even their mobiles suck

i hope they go bust , then apple can use ibm chips..!

actually , this COULD happen !

OreoCookie · Apr 4, 2002, 02:00 PM

Moving to a non-RISC alternative is not an option. How about the future, first of all (64 bit, anyone). Is there any viable option for 64 bit? No, not yet.

Think about the Itanic, it's not quite cheap, very demanding when it comes to power and not easy to program.
How about the Hammer family by AMD. Is there any product out? No. Is it a standard for 64 bit computing yet? No.

The only RISC option there is is Sun's UltraSPARC family. (AlphA? Dead. PA-RISC? Dead.)

These are just the hardware-related issues that arise when switching the platform. MacOS X would have to be ported!

The best option IMHO is that IBM and Apple buy Motorolas PowerPC assets and combine the best of the best.

If that doesn't work out, Apple should stick to IBM. They already have a 64 bit PowerPC working. Expensive, but working.

By the way, did you know that Apple does a lot of the CPU designing?

spb · Apr 4, 2002, 02:04 PM

posted by oreocookie -

nullBy the way, did you know that Apple does a lot of the CPU designing?

VERY, VERY, VERRRRRRY INTERESTING !!!

!!!!!!!!

OreoCookie · Apr 4, 2002, 02:27 PM

Another interesting tid-bit: G4 CPUs are actually cheaper than P4s.

I will post them when I find the thread.