Ars posts hypothetical x86 Mac roadmap

Jon Stokes at Ars has posted his thoughts on the Apple-to-Intel transition and postulates a roadmap for Apple's adoption of x86 chips.

Much of it does make sense, but I'd be surprised if the Mac mini and iBook got the dual-core Yonah. The Mac mini and iBook are low cost machines, and I would expect them to get single-core variants of Yonah to keep costs down. The single-core Yonah parts would be more than sufficient, since even at 1.66 GHz, they are faster than the fastest G4 in current PowerBooks.

I would agree the PowerBooks will get dual-core Yonah chips. However, I am not entirely sure what will happen to the iMac. Like Ars, I would expect it to get a dual-core chip of some sort, but I don't think we can exclude just yet the possibility that it could get a single-core chip, since it is a consumer-oriented machine after all.

IBM caught off guard with the Apple switch

The New York Times has an interesting piece about Apple's switch to Intel, and says that IBM was one of the last to hear about the deal. While it may be technically true that IBM was told of the final decision from Jobs just a few days before the keynote, it's clear that negotiations with both parties had been going on for quite some time. (Now we finally know what Otellini, CEO of Intel, meant when he suggested those interested in security might want to try a Mac.)

While Steve Jobs talked in his keynote about the uninspiring roadmap and performance per Watt worries for PowerPC, the NYT sources suggested the main issue was chip pricing. In other words, they suggest business and economic concerns were the overriding issues, not technical. I don't really see this as being necessarily separate. IBM is no slouch at chip design and chip fabbing, but it's clear that they had not been able to meet Apple's needs with the resources at hand. For IBM to be profitable on this deal, they would have asked for more money to meet Apple's speed and power goals in a relatively short time, but Apple simply balked at that idea. Basically it was likely a combination of both financial and technical concerns.

However, I'm guessing that IBM actually knew something about the Intel talks, but thought like I did, that switching to Intel was simply too crazy to consider at this point, and that Jobs was merely using the Intel talks as a negotiation tool with IBM. IBM probably thought he was bluffing, and overplayed their hand. Mind you, it's not as if IBM had a choice anyway, if they were not going to be profitable under the terms Apple wanted. On the other hand, if IBM had truly been in the dark about the latest round of talks with Intel, perhaps it was because Apple simply didn't care to negotiate any longer with IBM if it felt that no acceptable deal could possibly be reached. If so, that's simply good business. However, like I said, it's likely that IBM knew all along that something was up. We shouldn't forget that IBM bragged that they kept Intel out of the Mac the back in 2003.

Also in the article there is mention that Apple spoke with Sony about Cell, but felt that the chip was inappropriate for Macs. This is not surprising, since Cell isn't built as a chip for general desktop computing. While OS X has likely been tweaked already to run on Cell, its anemic single PPE unit and unsupported SPE units made use of this chip both unfeasible and undesirable. This random forum post claims IBM was also actively pushing Cell at Apple, but Apple just wouldn't bite, and for good reason.

In the meantime, there are definitely still deals in place to ensure some supply of new PowerPC chips for Macs are forthcoming. Jobs told us himself during the keynote. With regards as to what those chips are, Freescale has already said they will be releasing G4 chips for the Mac mini and iBook. Curiously no mention of the PowerBook (or eMac) is made, despite the fact that the G4 7448 would be the perfect drop-in upgrade for the PowerBook. Could a G5 PowerBook still be on the way? Given Jobs' remarks about (the lack of) such a beast, I'm not confident we'll see one. However, I still do expect to see dual-core G5 970MP machines (including possibly the quad) released in the coming year. The Power Macs are the most in need of stable and native software support that the G5 will offer during this transition period, and consequently Apple would probably like to keep them around as long as possible. I would not be surprised to see two more iterations of the G5 Power Macs, including at least one 970MP model.

We may never know what truly happened behind closed doors with Apple and IBM, but as long as Intel can keep up their end of the bargain and Apple can make the transition relatively painless for its customers, that's all that really matters.

Sony: Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger can run on Playstation 3

Ken Kutaragi, President of Sony Computer Entertainment, has been saying that they may preinstall Linux on the optional Playstation 3 hard drive, to allow the PS3 to function more like a general purpose computer instead of just a console. He also says that it could run Windows or Mac OS X.

While technically true I think he may just be trying to generate buzz with the statements about Mac OS X and Windows, without any sanctioned support from either Apple or Microsoft. Apple traditionally has not liked people running its OS on non-Apple machines, and Microsoft most certainly wouldn't bring Windows to the PS3 before it brought it to the Xbox 360. Microsoft never allowed a full-fledged Windows to run on the Xbox, and there is no indication Microsoft will bring it to the Xbox 360 either. However, the comment about Linux is still intriguing. A PS3 running Linux and Linspire (along with the appropriate peripherals) could easily negate the need for a separate computer for many lower end users.

Apple to push Intel's Extensible Firmware Interface standard?

For quite some time now Intel has been developing its Extensible Firmware Interface as a replacement to the BIOS that has been used on motherboards for just about forever. However, motherboard makers have been slow to adopt the new EFI standard in x86 PCs for whatever reason.

Mac developers at WWDC had expressed concern that the current x86 demo machines sport a standard PC BIOS, and doesn't support basic Mac features like Firewire booting. Current Macs use Open Firmware but Apple has already said that it is abandoning it in its new x86 machines, but hasn't officially said what it will adopt. Perhaps to ease those concerns, Apple appears to be hinting that it will adopt EFI:

We realize there are lots of folks that need to know what is going to be in the ROMs on these new machines, and what partition scheme will be used. Unfortunately, we are not yet in a position to make that information available, but we will communicate it as soon as we reasonably can. Don't assume that what you see in the transition boxes represents what will be present in the final product.

The general consensus I've heard from other developers is:
1) They don't want us to use BIOS
2) If they haven't heard of EFI, they want us to use OF
3) If they have heard of EFI, they want us to use EFI

This is not a statement about what Apple will use, just what I've heard from developers that have an opinion on the subject.

Just like Apple's iMac gave the USB standard the boost it needed, Apple's x86 Macs may turn out to be the kickstart for EFI, too.

Porting pains plague programmers & Put a Pentium in your G5 Power Mac

The issues with Mac OS X PowerPC application porting to the x86 architecture are already starting to cause headaches for many programmers. This Nikon software programmer has this to say:

My Wintel colleague and I have just completed some large SIMD optimizations for a very well known image processing application. I also see the same performance ratio - the AltiVec version is easily more than twice as fast as the SSE2 version (take the fastest G5 you can find and the fastest x86 you can find and the AltiVec-G5 version is easily twice as fast). I've taken pride in being able to handily beat the SSE2 version and in many cases doing so with far less instructions. I don't drink the Kool-aid.

I had a conversation with an engineer from a certain fruit company today and he said that even Intel engineers were having problems getting SSE2/3 versions of some of the Apple Altivec sample code running at anything better than half the speed of the Altivec code, and this on a CPU with twice the clock speed of a G5. Steve can sit in his distortion field all he wants but that doesn't change the fact that Altivec is far superior to SSE2/3.

It's not surprising to see this, as many have said that for some usage Altivec has distinct advantages over the various iterations of Intel's SSE. Don't expect this to change either, as Intel has no known plans to add Altivec-like functionality to its chips, and is not known to build custom chips for its customers either.

Interestingly, this Apple employee states that x86 PCI-X upgrade cards are coming to the G5 Power Macs:

Apple has maintained rights to the PPC architecture. The rights to this technology is incorporated in Apple's "Rosetta" Transitive based solution so that carbonized applications built for the PPC will work on x86 and visa-versa.

Customers with existing PPC G5's will have the option of a PCI-X based add-on card with a native Intel follow-on to the P4 "D" chip and of-course the Transitive/"Rosetta" bundle.

That would represent an interesting option to those apprehensive to buying a PowerPC Power Mac during the transition. Although I've already said that the Power PC Power Macs are probably the best option in terms of compability during this period, such an upgrade card with a G5 Power Mac could provide the best of both worlds to allow native support of both PowerPC and x86 application binaries. This would be especially useful for current developers, since it would allow development and testing of x86 ports on current G5 hardware and would negate the need for the developer to pay for Apple's x86 developer kit. One wonders however if these cards will really appear, and if so, when and for how much.

[Update June 17, 2005]

This man may not be an Apple employee after all (despite speaking as such and being on the Apple Computer SETI team). No record of his working at Apple has been found so far, according to one poster online. That would mean there is no such x86 add-in card (which would make sense if a low end x86 Mac came out within the next 9 months, since the card wouldn't be any cheaper than an x86 Mac mini anyway).

Pentium M Yonah pricing from the DigiTimes

The DigiTimes reports on possible Intel Yonah pricing at its launch in the first quarter of 2006:

X50 dual-core 2.16 GHz: US$637
X40 dual-core 2.00 GHz: US$423
X30 dual-core 1.83 GHz: US$294
X20 dual-core 1.66 GHz: US$241
Single-core 1.66 GHz: US$209

It's heartening to see (again) the specs of these chips, as they are likely to be used in future Mac laptops. The dual-core Yonah, with its 2 MB L2 cache and 667 MHz bus, should be competitive overall with a dual-core G5 970MP at a similar ballpark clockspeed. In other words, a Pentium M Yonah 17" PowerBook in 2006 could be as fast as one of the slower dual G5 Power Macs of today in many tasks (Rosetta translation notwithstanding). Impressive.

The single-core 1.66 GHz should also be quite a nice chip, likely sporting 1 MB L2 cache. It's significantly faster than the fastest current PowerBook G4 CPU, but is aimed at the budget market, perfect for the iBook. If Apple does release an iBook with this Celeron M Yonah 1.66 GHz, I may just update my current PowerBook Titanium 1.0 GHz to an iBook instead of a dual-core PowerBook.