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FlameFlash
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Minnesota, USA
Dec 2001
time: 23:21
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Guys... arguing to Asher about Apple is like arguing to Clinton that he should stay devoted to one woman... he won't listen.
There's some kind of magic to Apple and Macintosh... that much is certain. This from a guy who undoubtably will be signing up for the .Mac service when I see the Jaguar features...
Anyway, monolith, weren't you with me in the Mac thread a while back on this same topic? Can't remember... don't remember Cloud9 but glad to see that as I start to venture out of my Mac-forums cave (and CtP/SMAX forums) and onto OT that there are going to be others who are "enlightened."
We like Macs, Asher attempts to tell us that there's nothing special about them.
I can mention the fact that Apple computers were classified as weapons and supercomputers because of the gigaflops they were pulling and couldn't be exported to other countries...
Asher will point out, big deal, the Chinese aren't likly to really want to use Apple since it won't be able to run anything they steal from the American public.
I'll counter with Virtual PC.
Asher: poor excuse for an emulator, if you're wanting to run Windows in the first place, you should have bought a PC.
etc, etc, etc.
Each side has its failings, I won't deny that, each side had its pluses, I won't deny that. I mean, Windows XP is going to have that critical update pretty soon so you can remove IE and Media Player if you want to.
Apple, if it was as big as Microsoft, would start getting in trouble for not better supporting OS 9 and trying to force users to upgrade.
It goes on and on, in a never ending circle.
And the megahertz myth only goes so far... use that, and the fact that the G4 architecture can multithread... and you might have a chance, but not against Asher (hey look, I just complimented you man!)
You can also use the arguement that you can creat AppleSeeds (multi-processing G4 systems created by networking as many G4s and G3s as you can get your grubby hands on) much easier than any comparable Linux network... and do the exact same computations etc.
(Never heard Asher's point against that one for the plus sides of Apple, never brought it up before.)
Personally, I'm hoping that this secret G5 processor that seems to be on the back burner is 64-bit... otherwise, Apple is screwed.
Just think if Apple and AMD did some kind of joint project... I mean, AMD's 64-bit chips are going to be backward compatible... if they could somehow emulate the Apple architecture as well they'd have it made.
(But then, Apple would sue their butts off if AMD did that.)
I'm ranting now... so I'll shut up and await the flames from both sides.
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Asher
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Calgary, Alberta
Nov 1999
time: 22:21
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quote:
I can mention the fact that Apple computers were classified as weapons and supercomputers because of the gigaflops they were pulling and couldn't be exported to other countries... |
If I have one thing to say about Apple is that they've got unusual marketing.
While it's true that they were classified as weapons and supercomputers because of their gigaflops, PCs already had been as well at the time. It simply was a non-issue for PC users, it was an obscure obsolete law that nobody had paid attention to -- except for Apple's Marketing. They saw that any computer capable of more than 1 GFLOPS was classified as a supercomputer, and as were most PCs at the time, but they marketed their computer as the supercomputer as such. So many people bought it. 
quote:
And the megahertz myth only goes so far... use that, and the fact that the G4 architecture can multithread... and you might have a chance, but not against Asher (hey look, I just complimented you man!) |
G4s cannot multithread, unless you're referring to doing stuff in AltiVec while at the same time doing stuff with the rest of the chip. That's true, but it's no different than SSE2 on the Pentium 4. In fact, AltiVec can only handle 32-bit floats while SSE2 can handle 64-bit... 
The only true multithreaded computer chip is Intel's Pentium 4 Xeons, and you can enable/disable Simultaneous Multithreading (SMT) in the BIOS.
The next consumer version of the Pentium 4, called Prescott, will feature SMT as well as 1MB of full-speed L2 cache, and an 800MHz system bus, as well as x86-64 support (which may or may not be enabled, depending on Intel's politics). It's more likely this core will be called Pentium 5.
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Asher
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Calgary, Alberta
Nov 1999
time: 22:21
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I think you're confusing some of the terminology. All CPUs attainable by consumers today are single threaded, with the exception of the new Pentium 4 Xeons, which can handle up to two threads (effectively acting as two CPUs on one chip).
AltiVec does something else, as does SSE/SSE2 and 3DNow. They can perform the same operation on a vector of numbers in the same time it takes a regular CPU to perform the operation on one set.
SSE and AltiVec can both operate on 4 32-bit numbers at once (4 x 32 = 128, where the "128-bits" comes from in their marketing).
SSE2 can do 4 32-bit numbers OR 2 64-bit numbers (64-bit numbers are considered double precision, and this is pretty vital in stuff like professional 3D rendering where AltiVec can't be used due to only being 32-bit/single precision).
I'm not sure where "4-8" would come into play anywhere.
About Prescott... Prescott is being designed to be 64-bit (using x86-64), but Intel doesn't want everyone knowing about it. Intel doesn't want the market to adopt x86-64, and instead wants them to wait a couple years and ditch x86 completely and use Intel's new IA-64 (which the Intel Itanium and Itanium 2 chips use). So depending how "vital" they see 64-bit consumer chips at the time it comes out, they may or may not enable it.
The main problem is AMD's upcoming Hammer series of chips run x86-64, which would mean Intel would have a 32-bit consumer chip for 1-2 years while AMD had a 64-bit on the market. (Note that 64-bit isn't inherently faster than 32-bit, it just supports larger system RAM and integer precision, which Intel argues isn't needed for the desktop yet)
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FlameFlash
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Minnesota, USA
Dec 2001
time: 23:21
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Fez, flaming Apple is one thing, talking constructivly about it like Asher does is another. (And enlightening us as to what Apple Marketing does is just stretching the truth.)
And last I heard, Apple's Switch Marketing sceme was actually working better than they expected, so for their share to be dropping doesn't make much sense. (Could you provide some kind of quotes?)
It won't take AMD long, you're right, and I haven't even heard Asher counter the benchmark tests on Adobe Photoshop with the G4s (okay, so maybe he's just looking for data to prove me wrong on this one, but he hasn't yet), so blanketly stating that Apple is slower all around without showing benchmarks that say so is just asking for a fight. 
Windows, as I said, to my logic circuits doesn't make sense... it means my personality is the type that desires a little more intuitive OS (like OS X). There's nothing wrong with that, and blanketly trolling against Apple is uncalled for.
At least when you buy hardware that says "Mac compatible" you know you're not going to have to bend over backwards when some company like Creative makes lousy drivers to get the supposedly "compatible" crap to actually work. It'll work, period. 
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FlameFlash
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Minnesota, USA
Dec 2001
time: 23:21
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*nods* However, those "recent problems" to use your own article:
quote:
Anderson, in a conference call, portrayed Apple as a victim of the same forces stalking the rest of the moribund personal computer industry. |
Apple is getting hit harder because they have a smaller share and high prices...
quote:
...as well as the broader industry downturn. |
I do agree with the article though (at the end of it)... and Apple's eMac is the answer to that quandry, it just hasn't been marketed very well yet.
So Jobs, as usual, isn't very good at being a businessman... no surprise there. Just because they're being hit harder by what is hitting the tech world doesn't mean they make a sub-standard product, it means they need to work on cost diferentiation even more.
And comparing Apple to AMD or Intel is unfair, if you were to compare Motorola to those other chip-makers that would be...
The article also points to Dell vs. Apple. Dell lost 4% as opposed to Apple's 18%, however Dell also makes cheaper products that have to be serviced more often
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Asher
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Calgary, Alberta
Nov 1999
time: 22:21
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quote:
Originally posted by FlameFlash
I take it Intel just isn't taking in the average computer geek that will see 64-bit and go, "I want that! Just THINK of how much RAM I can drop in now!"
AMD is at least letting the public decide (though dangerously) it's probably my favorite chip company. If they made Apple clones I'd go with them in a heartbeat (or if I ever actually bought anything Windows.) |
The problem is using x86-64 is the cheap/lazy way to go about getting 64-bit chips. x86 is way too old, and huge chunks of modern x86 processors exist just to get around the limitations of x86 itself. It was never meant to last this long, and technology has advanced so much that we need a clean break from x86 (IMO).
Intel and HP spent the last ten years developing something called IA-64, which is a totally and completely new instruction set and design philosophy that actually significantly outperforms Apple's G4 at the same clockrate (the 1GHz Itanium 2s score 8-10x higher in the SPEC benchmarks than Apple's G4). The problem is, the technology is still being "perfected" in the high end server and workstation market, and it's not expected to trickle down to the consumer market for a couple more years.
It is also pretty slow emulating old x86 programs right now, which is a main problem for consumer PCs as well.
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Apple is for more of those people who want something simple, slow, and expensive. |
Oh, believe me, Apple would kill for a fast processor.  The problem is, Motorola is a huge company that mostly makes its processors for the embedded market. That is, their CPUs are designed around a "low power" type approach rather than speed. There simply aren't enough G4s sold to warrant all of the R&D spent on one single chip like Intel and AMD can afford to do. There were talks a year or two ago about AMD making Apple's next chip, but AMD couldn't afford to spend so much money developing an architecture for such a limited market.
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It won't take AMD long, you're right, and I haven't even heard Asher counter the benchmark tests on Adobe Photoshop with the G4s (okay, so maybe he's just looking for data to prove me wrong on this one, but he hasn't yet), so blanketly stating that Apple is slower all around without showing benchmarks that say so is just asking for a fight. |
TechTV benchmarked 6 Adobe Photoshop filters of a G4 vs. Pentium 4, and the Pentium 4 won on 5 of those, the G4 on the other. It's quite a mystery why Apple won on the color conversion one, and it's speculated that it has AltiVec enhancements and not SSE/SSE2 (Photoshop is, after all, native to PowerPC). http://www.techtv.com/callforhelp/p...3339307,00.html
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$32 million is pathetic to what a company AMD or Intel would make even with recent problems. |
AMD lost $9M in that same period.
Intel made $936M in that same period.
AMD doesn't have much of an idea on how to run a business. It's a shame, really, since they finally have decent engineers.
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Asher
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Calgary, Alberta
Nov 1999
time: 22:21
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quote:
Originally posted by FlameFlash
That is odd about the color converstion... is that, then, what Apple Marketing always flashes around when they "show off" their benchmarks? |
Yep, it's the odd filter like that that outperforms the Pentium 4, and they'll just generalize it as "faster in Photoshop*", then at the bottom put "* in certain filter(s).". It doesn't matter that it would be outpaced in the vast majority of filters, it takes just one to satisfy them. And the filter it does win in is most likely optimized for AltiVec and not for SSE/SSE2. Certainly not SSE2, as far as I know Photoshop 7 only uses SSE, and only sometimes. Not to sound like a man in a tinfoil hat, but I think Apple might give Adobe some "incentive" to leave the odd filter AltiVec optimized and not SSE, for benchmarking purposes.
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*sighs* Though I can't wait until home electronics actually use that BlueTooth (was that the name of the IR tech where your computer talks to your home appliances?) stuff... Motorola should start making some money and maybe be willing to speed up their chips some more after that. |
Bluetooth was developed by 3Com, Agere, Ericsson, IBM, Intel, Microsoft, Motorola, Nokia and Toshiba, I don't think any one company is going to be making lots of money off of it unless they specifically build Bluetooth devices and sell those (MS is going to sell Bluetooth keyboards and mice this year).
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24-07-2002 07:48
Thanks Cloud9.
)
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