Why the Intel switch is bad

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

Begin forwarded message:

From: Santi Alonso <santi () honeymelon org>
Date: June 6, 2005 6:08:53 PM EDT
To: dave () farber net
Subject: Why the Intel switch is bad
From: http://angelusfade.spymac.com/blog/




The reasons why this is bad:

- x86 is a technology from the 70s. Yes they made large steps forward  
using new technology and incorporating this into new Processors. But  
at its inner core the processor is still 16bit, bored once (starting  
with the i386SX) to 32 bit and now again with AMD64 or E64MT to 64- 
bit. The whole Pnetium Processor range including AMDs are big chunk  
of patchwork around a crappy 16bit processor. (actually the patchwork  
is 95% of the processor nowadays and the original processor is barely  
there but it still is). Sure they prolly can push this forward and  
forward with even more patchwork... looks to be fun.

- Altivec is one of the best vector engines which made the Cell  
processor possible. It is way beyond anything SSE2 can do on Intel.

- The PowerPC design was 64-bit from the beginning, they saw the time  
was not right and downtuned it, but with the G5 they just had to pull  
the "64-bit" switch and transition was seemless. The G5 uses 1/4th of  
the transistors of a P4, giving it much more room for future growth.  
Derived from the Power Processors, which are without any doubt the  
best server processors one can buy, this architecture could have  
blown away in a year or two, if IBM would be able to produce chips  
derived from the Power5 and Power6, which are looking to be the best  
CPUs ever made.

- Though Cell technology is nothing for a consumer PC, some of the  
technologies used in this processor blow my mind. IBM already  
announced parts of this design will go towards the Power family of  
chips, if this would have been directed also to the PowerPC lines,  
imagine what would have been possible.

- Every single Company that has the oportunity to start with a fresh  
design (mainly gaming consoles but also many embedded) are going for  
a PowerPC design. Not only is the design more promising for the  
future, it is simply better than tuned up 70s technology.

- No matter what "the Steve" says: The switch when we had to transit  
from 68k to PPC did hurt. I had one of the last "quadras", it was a  
good machine, but there were only a few to distribute fat binaries  
and I had to buy a new machine sooner than I wanted to keep stuff.

- No matter what "the Steve" says: The transition from OS 9 to OS X  
did hurt. Yes I agree that OS X is by far better and that it was  
necessary as OS 9 was outdated technology. But it was a hard time and  
there are still things from OS 9 that I miss in OS X. The good side  
on this was: They went with the best available technology. Mach  
undoubtly being one of the best kernel architectures, FreeBSD being  
one of the most secure and best Unix systems available... This is  
just not the fact with Intel. Yes they are currently making quite  
fast processors (not that much faster than my G5 I think or was all  
that Steve told me crap?), but they do it by pressing the last juice  
out of outdated technology.

- The BIOS issue. Yes I know Apple can still use theoretically  
OpenBoot and stull like that. But some of the smart things Apple did  
was use special hardware that was not that PC market stuff but there  
are problems that arise... If they use PC stuff they will be up to  
the same level in speed than current PCs, having the same problems as  
you have in Wintel machines today, not the OS, but some parts have  
such a short time to market, that problems have to occur. As seen in  
various chipsets and so on, many problems the Wintel crowd blames MS  
for are actually hardware issues. Or Apple could go with "we only use  
premium", but then they will be a tad behing the crowd. Or the 3rd  
choice they become Alienware 2.0 and for using handselected measured  
chipsets they have to cut down other things to a point where the  
things prolly work due to selected hardware but if not you are in for  
a whole hell off support pain, still you would have faster things on  
hand-build Wintel PCs.

- The NeXT thing: Fat binaries anyone? Yay now they named them  
"universal" binaries. Who the hell wants them? I can see many many  
developers that stick with the Mac go "Uh that thing may be universal  
but it sure is fat, avtually twice as big as it needs to be... Hey  
all geeks should go Intel anyway I skip the PPC compile..." Same  
thing happened when we switched from 68k to PPC, most fat binaries  
were shareware from devoted fans, first were games to skip the old CPU 
(Apple still sold 68k Macs when Command and Conquer came out only for  
PPC), then there was Adobe and the rest of the crowd. I bet Adobe CS3  
next year will run on Mactel, but fat binary? I doubt that, the CS  
products are fat enough as it is.

And there are even more reasons but I am to upset and need to go sulk  
in a corner.

Yes maybe in 3-4 years the whole thing will settle and Intel will  
again own the whole PC (Wintel and Mactel) market and the PowerPC  
will be history. It will be a sad day then, but one thing is for  
sure: I will rather go and buy an Alienware Laptop to replace my  
dated PowerBook than buy an Apple for the next 3 years. Maybe I will  
buy a Mac again someday, but for the time being I am switched, back  
to an Intel Notebook prolly running Linux.




-------------------------------------
You are subscribed as lists-ip () insecure org
To manage your subscription, go to
 http://v2.listbox.com/member/?listname=ip

Archives at: http://www.interesting-people.org/archives/interesting-people/