Apple is going 64bit

[drag]

I did not know this before, but the next generation of power macs are going to be 64bit. Unfortunately OS X is still 32 bit for right now. Apperently they are having some problems with GCC 3's support of the new IBM 64bit powerPC 970 proccessors, but I suppose the 64bit OS X is not to far off... (IBM's proccessor runs 32bit code natively.)

linky

 

[Bremen]

Any links besides the register? I don't doubt they report something true once in awhile (ok, they're not that bad). But this is really just rumour.

 

[lowtech1]

AppleInsider -- Apple to Announce the Power Mac G5 at WWDC

" The new Power Mac G5s will sport a completely new motherboard design utilizing DDR 400 RAM as well as AGP 8x graphics, FireWire 800 (FireWire 2), and USB 2.0, sources said. "In the box" connectivity among the news systems is based on Hypertransport -- a universal chip-to-chip interconnect developed by AMD and partners -- which provides 64-bit addressing and will replace Apple's multilevel bus architecture found in current systems. This royalty-free technology sports a low manufacturing cost and is capable of transferring data at up to 12.8 Gigabytes per second.

The new Power Macs will be powered by IBM's 64 bit PPC 970 processor, otherwise known to Apple Marketing as the the "G5." Initial offerings of the Power Mac G5 are said to boast 1.4 to 1.8GHz, single core PPC 970 processors, with the possibility of a dual 1.8GHz chips shortly thereafter.

According to sources, Apple plans to make the Power Mac G5 available to the public following their introduction on June 23rd. These initial units will ship with Mac OS 10.2, and hence, will not be optimized for the 64 bit PPC 970 processor. Consumers who purchase these Power Mac G5s will receive a coupon for a free copy of Mac OS 10.3 (Panther), which will ship in September and will be optimized for the new 64 bit processor."

 

[Barnaby W. Füi]

It's all speculation right now.

 

[Nothinman]

It's all speculation right now.

Sure, but it's not like they have anywhere else to go.

 

[Bremen]

128 bit anyone? :0)

 

[Buddha Bart]

eff 64 bit, thats like the single least important detail of apple moving to the new IBM chip.

How about a drastically wider, deeper, smarter, and generally faster CPU coupled with a completely overhauld set of busses like the front side bus, memory bus, and available chipset bandwith.

A unix desktop with an extremely well developed GUI, amazing applications, near flawless hardware support, and now it'll actually perform?

The only thing they're still not competitive on is price, but frankly for that feature set, you are getting what you pay for and then some.

bart

 

[drag]

hells bells, bart.

That would be nice if apple had a powerful chip again. G4's are lagging at least a year behind everyone else in terms of performance and that strange thing they do by putting out dual proccessors power macss is sexy and all that, but you are not gaining a whole lot for the increase of price and complexety.

Everything else with the Macs is top notch, it's just the retarded reliance on regular sdram/slow bus speeds and Motorola that is causing them to be burned. If they actually created powerful computers that ran cool and quiet then the extra cost would be well worth it.

Oh well, I can dream, can't I?

 

[addragyn]

Originally posted by: Bremen
Any links besides the register? I don't doubt they report something true once in awhile (ok, they're not that bad). But this is really just rumour.

http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,3959,1121736,00.asp

 

[Go3iverson]

I'm ultra excited about this. I'm actually one of the WWDC2003 scholarship winners, so I'll get to see Jaguar and, hopefully, the new PPC970 chip first hand!

No matter what, these are going to be substantially faster machines. They may release CPUs only up to 1.8GHz or possibly 2.0GHz, but the bus is so many times faster and stronger, it'll seem like an entirely new experience.

 

[Barnaby W. Füi]

Originally posted by: Nothinman

It's all speculation right now.

Sure, but it's not like they have anywhere else to go.

Exactly, so then how is it news? I just think it's pointless to sit around reading speculation from a bunch of different places when it will come from the horses mouth soon enough.

 

[Nothinman]

They may release CPUs only up to 1.8GHz or possibly 2.0GHz, but the bus is so many times faster and stronger, it'll seem like an entirely new experience.

Which won't help them win the money of people buying P4 3Ghz chips because they're 3Ghz, no matter what the real performance of them is.

 

[Go3iverson]

True, but the people that would want to purchase a 3.0GHz P4 would know enough about FSB and other components to make a good decision, you'd think. You'd have to believe that a Mac OS X.3 user experience on a dual 1.8GHz 970 chip with the hypertransport bus would be amazing. I've found OSX to be extremely stable in my use of it. My 1GHz TiBook seems very quick and fast to me. I can't fathom how fast that new config really is. Consider this.... You sit down and play with a Dual 1.42GHz G4 machine. It's fast, feels responsive due to OS X's multiprocessing capabilities. Now, you sit down at the 970 box.....Dual chip....400MHz more per chip......possibly bigger L3 cache size, FSB increase from 167MHz to the 900MHz range and full DDR use.......That's a massive upgrade.

 

[Nothinman]

Then imagine you realize that none of your favorite apps run on the OS you have to use...

 

[Go3iverson]

Why wouldn't my apps run?

A. Most of my favorites Apple makes (FCP, iTunes, iDVD, Safari, Mail)

B. The chips are 32 bit backwards compatible....so wouldn't they still run on them?

C. From what I understand, it's not a major undertaking, just a simple re-work. I'm sure most major vendors are well underway in this area. If not, they'll get their CD when I get mine at WWDC.

 

[Nothinman]

I was referring to the people who were also looking at 3Ghz P4s. OS X may be a decent OS but the 3rd party app support is very thin compared to Windows and last time I tried it running X apps wasn't he most fun, but maybe it's gotten better now that they're actually working on the X server.

I'm a Linux guy so almost all my apps would compile and run fine on OS X, but most people are Windows people and think of things like Kazaa and WinAMP when they think of a computer. I know a Windows guy who owns a G4 tower and a TiBook (he's got too much money) but while he thinks OS X itself is really cool, and he even think it's better than XP in many ways, he almost never touches them because everything he's used to only runs on his XP boxes. Hell I don't even think MS released IE 6 for OS X yet and it's been out for how long now?

 

[drag]

this 3ghz vs 1.4 or 1.8 is just going to have to come down to marketing, and probably pretty dirty things, too.

Something like:

Guy: Why should I pay more for a computer that is slower?

Sales Person: Because it's better. Here are some examples of why:
You know how you sometimes have things called IRQ conflicts and other driver issues?

G: Sure.

SP: And you know about Blue screen of Death?

G: Sure.

SP: And virus's?

G: Sure

SP: And the "the regristry"?

G: Um... a little bit..

SP: You like XP's activation sceme?

G: nope.

SP: You don't like having to deal with that sort of stuff don't you?

G: no, of course not.

SP: SO, If someone built a computer that avoided having those problems, (or at least reduced them to a bare minimum,) and was easy to use, had a established history of very good multimedia, and had security built-in that doesn't cost extra, and would still be usefull 5 years from now, you would buy it wouldn't you?

G: Of course I would, who wouldn't? But were am I going to find a computer like that?

SP: Here


(BTW check it out, Quark express 6 is out, NOW I CAN KISS classic mode goodbye!!! WOOT!)

 

[n0cmonkey]

If Apple does start using these chips in the near future, I bet OS X is still going to be 32 bit. Not that it really matters anyhow.


EDIT: /.

 

[DeadMilkman]

Panther (10.3) is set to have complete 64bit support. This has been in the pipeline for awhile.

Now if they release the chips before 10.3 who knows......

edit: clarification it isn't quite known if os x will go completely 64bit but knowing apple it will overtime. I wanna hear more on this myself at Apple's WWDC.

 

[drag]

How big of a deal is it realy for apple to switch to 64bit? What a kernel modification and recompiling the OS?

All that is left is just to work out the bugs that may crop up, do some testing and that's it, isn't it?

 

[n0cmonkey]

Originally posted by: drag
How big of a deal is it realy for apple to switch to 64bit? What a kernel modification and recompiling the OS?

All that is left is just to work out the bugs that may crop up, do some testing and that's it, isn't it?

I am sure it is more work than that. Memory mapping and all the rest of that crap I don't understand

 

[Nothinman]

How big of a deal is it realy for apple to switch to 64bit? What a kernel modification and recompiling the OS?

For the kernel it can be a big deal, no idea how much 64-bit cleansing the Mach kernel has gone though though. Most userland apps could care less, but there are still the occiasional ones that need special treatment to work on 64-bit systems.