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elektro80
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 Posted: Mon May 22, 2006 9:49 am Post subject:
Rumours! PPC vs. Intel - the untold story |
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PA Semi is a silicon-valley startup that boasts having lead designers of the DEC Alpha and StrongARM chips, as well as designers from the Opteron, Itanium, and UltraSparc. It currently plans on quad-core versions of its chips to ship by late 2007, and an eight-core version in 2008.
PA Semi's first chip is a dual-core Altivec-compatible chip with 2 MB of L2 cache, support for DDR2 and PCI-Express. In addition, when running at 2 Ghz, the chip consumes only 7 watts of power according to PA Semi. Comparatively, Intel's Core Duo consumes between 21 and 25 watts.
| Quote: | | PA Semi - a maker of low-power Power processors - formed a tight relationship with Apple - one meant to result in it delivering chips for Apple's notebook line and possibly desktops. The two companies shared software engineering work, trying to see how Apple's applications could be ported onto PA Semi's silicon. When word leaked out that Apple had signed on with Intel, it shocked the PA Semi staff, according to multiple sources. |
http://www.reghardware.co.uk/2006/05/19/pasemi_apple/
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mosc
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| Posted: Mon May 22, 2006 11:08 am Post subject:
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Apple has always done "research" on alternative microprocessors and networking chips. I know this becuase I was involved in the FDDI-2 and Crisp microprocessor projects that Apple funded at Bell Labs. Apple knows how to fund research and not get too attached to it. I know how PA Semi feels. It's easy to get carried away thinking you'll have chips in every Apple laptop. Some of the Japanese companies do this too, but Apple is probably the most active research farmer in the computer industry.
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Kassen
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| Posted: Mon May 22, 2006 4:11 pm Post subject:
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| Quote: | | By choosing to move to microprocessors from Intel, Apple has created headaches for some of its most important software partners, who face a difficult and lengthy porting process. Apple has also had to provide a compatibility layer called Rosetta, from Transitive, to run old Power PC software. Such issues could have been avoided if Apple had found a compatible, and competitive chip supplier or two. |
Yeah, that's one way of putting it.... You could also say that porting is now within the reach of even more people and that supporting two platforms now creates less overhead for software companies.
I thought it was a rather strange article. It's not like Apple is completely stupid; no doubt they saw all of those concerns and evaluated them against others. Also, 7watts at 2GHz doesn't actually mean anything. It may be good if it gets alot of work done per cycle or perhaps it doesn't...
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