AMD to make PPCs?!

I don't think so. It does not make sense for AMD to make a whole product line of PPC just for Apple. Motorola and IBM have other customers for their chips. Apple is too small for that.

Nothing new:

<a href="http://www.heise.de/ct/99/20/021/" target="_blank">http://www.heise.de/ct/99/20/021/</a>

"Planned the MPC7500 is for approximately 2002, with a start clock by 2GHz, manufactured in the 0,10-m-copperprocess, and possibly in Dresden. Here the information compresses itself that Motorola wants to
also enter with AMD."

Ok, its from 1999 ;)

Not many rumour sites are renowned for their 'accuracy'. Heck, even Apple can't predict their own shipping dates!!!

:D

Lemon Bon Bon

Well, Moki has hinted that AMD may be a surprise/powerful allie in the fight against...well...the 'dark side' ;)

So, rather than 'dual boot' systems as I summised...perhaps AMD is just one of a few companies Apple have farmed out PPC production to.

The Moto' contract was up and over months ago (by all accounts...) so. What do you do?

Take bids on motherboard production.

Take bids on CPU production?

AMD can sure make chips cheap as 'chips' :D

Maybe AMD are just helping with yields?

Maybe Apple are planning a double whammy of chips. Maybe even a tripple whammy?

G3+simd.
G5 from Moto'.
970 from IBM.

Let's face it. That would cover a revolution in terms of Apple's line-up from Uberworkstation to 'POWER'Macs to Consumer iMacs and laptops.

In short, if I'm honest, Apple's products need a revolution in terms of CPUs across the board. The G3 and G4 are tired and well ooooooooooooooolduh. Time to collect their pension books. I'd like Apple to really shake things up. After all, what the hell has been going on for the last four years?! Not alot? Maybe IBM, Apple, AMD and Moto' found some common ground and each may work to their respective strengths over the next year.

We'll see. But I'd like to see Apple storm the gates. Hell, they've got 4 billion in the bank. Time to start taking some prisoners.

Thinksecret are talking about iWorks (replacing Appleworks 7...). Looks like Apple are squaring up to M$. 'Bout time. If Apple are going to do a 2004 Superbowl ad' as rumoured...then Apple had sure better MAKE SURE that all the planets are in alignment... That includes OS, Software and hardware(and hardware? I'm talking cpu/motherboard specs on steroids...)

Maybe Moto' can design a G5 but can't make it in their dirty fabs. AMD could well make it for Apple. AMD and Moto' have worked closely in the past. Moki expressed remote possibility of a G5 coming from Moto' anytime soon. But the Microprocessor report editor seemed to think not only was Apple going 970...but that a Moto G5 part was STILL on track for late 2003.

Make of that what you will.

Maybe apple plans aggressive price and expansion over the next year. They're going to need some help if they're going to make enough cpus and get the price down. Because growth aint going to come from Apple's premium pricing policy of the past. Or from lagging mhz on their 'sales engine'. Both strategies have got them to 3-5% worldwide. They have to compete with x86 land for buyers. Reality. And now that Apple have finally woken up to this...we'll get to see Apple kick some ass. 'Bout time. ;)

All the signs point to Apple really wanting to get their next gen' chip just right. If they have to sweeten AMD with a multimillion bung then I'm sure AMD (who can't buy a profit...) would take a medium term contract to help stem the red ticker tape.

And for Apple to do that...they need chip partners with a proven track record of delivery. IBM and AMD sound okay to me. Apple maybe cut a strategic deal... There's got to be a reason why Apple execs hang with AMD earlier this year. Reports of AMD/Apple 'secret' meetings? Smoke without fire? I'm sure AMD could do with the revenue in their fight with Intel. I'm sure making a G5 for Moto wouldn't take up the whole of Dresden. Apple need those 'G5/970' yields. By hook or crook. They can't afford to keep letting 'power'Mac sales dwindle like they have quarter upon quarter. They need a compelling CPU to stop the bleeding. Ironic that they 'might' go to AMD. :D

Maybe it's all about 'options'. Steve Jobs was very cryptic about that.

Until somebody can categorically state otherwise. I'm open minded.

Lemon Bon Bon

[ 03-16-2003: Message edited by: Lemon Bon Bon ]

[ 03-16-2003: Message edited by: Lemon Bon Bon ]</p>

I'm not saying I believe any of this (or that I don't :) ), but remember a few of the known facts:

- IBM and AMD recently announced a technology sharing arrangement.

- IBM is planning to produce the 970 in only one fab. This kind of single-source production is risky and corporations (like Apple and IBM itself) will usually try to secure a second source. Apple likes to have options, remember.

- AMD's market is currently limited by their competition with Intel. Considering the aggressive pricing of x86 chips it would be hard for AMD to justify investment in expanding their production capacity on the chance that they can increase their x86 and x86-64 sales. Having a completely seperate product to keep a fab busy would give them that justification more flexibility in their production volumes.

- It would allow AMD to diversify and lessen their dependence on x86, the future of which is always a little hazy and usually more under the control of Intel than AMD.

If this were to happen I would imagine it would be a simple fabrication arrangement for the 970 similar to back when IBM was producing G4s under license from Motorola. I'd be surprised to see AMD getting into the PPC design business -- that requires too much investment for minimal return. Another (very slim) possibility is that Apple has a design of their own that they'll get AMD to manufacture (possibly the infamous G5 designed with Motorola but which Moto bailed on).

[quote]Originally posted by 709:
<strong>

That's where my question was leading. Any guesses on how much would Apple have to spend to buy these rights from Moto? $400 Million?

Slim possibility, yes...but it's an option.</strong><hr></blockquote>

Depending on the contract, perhaps nothing. If Moto bailed on a contract the design rights could simply fall to Apple as compensation. Without a contract to look at, however, this is all fanciful guesswork. Personally I doubt the G5 design exists, and its probably not as impressive as the 970 if it does.

[quote]Originally posted by mac fan:
<strong>Since intel and AMD are he same company</strong><hr></blockquote>

What planet are you on?

[quote]Originally posted by mac fan:
<strong>You must be new to macs. Its just th truth that I tell. You need to look on the internet once in a while. I am a mac veteran, and you, Lemon Bon Bon, Fran 441, and os10geek is idiots.</strong><hr></blockquote>

:rolleyes:

[quote]Originally posted by Amorph:
<strong>Remember, kids: Don't feed the trolls.</strong><hr></blockquote>

Yes, dont feed them, our holy admins will take care of them for you ;)

[quote] is <hr></blockquote>

'are'

Lemon Bon Bon

[quote] What planet are you on?

<hr></blockquote>

<img src="graemlins/lol.gif" border="0" alt="[Laughing]" />

Lemon Bon Bon

os10geek is really "ali g"? <img src="graemlins/lol.gif" border="0" alt="[Laughing]" />

[quote] Is it possible that any Cocoa app can actually run on X86 under OS X with a simple "switch" thrown in gcc at compile time?<hr></blockquote>

Yes but that would require OS X on x86: The Topic That Will Not Die. Cocoa may be portable to Windows but that's a bit risky when Apple doesn't control the rest of the OS.

[quote]Originally posted by mooseman:
<strong>...

But, and I'm really just a programming newbie, if I understand it correctly. Cocoa apps basically have a type of VM in which the apps are actually executed (sorta like Java only with a much smaller performance penalty). Is it possible that any Cocoa app can actually run on X86 under OS X with a simple "switch" thrown in gcc at compile time?

...</strong><hr></blockquote>Cocoa apps do not require a virtual machine to run. They run natively on whichever platform they have been ported to. To date, only the PPC version of Cocoa has seen the light of day. Cocoa is the successor environment to Rhapsody's Yellow Box. The Yellow Box was planned to be portable across operating operating systems as well as processors.

It should be borne in mind that Cocoa APIs are interoperable with the APIs of Carbon and Darwin. For example, Apple actually recommends that developers generate their Carbon apps' GUIs using Cocoa. Mozilla is an example of mixing Darwin Mach and Carbon, IIRC. These "mixed-mode" applications would not be possible in an environment of virtual machines.

[ 03-16-2003: Message edited by: Mr. Me ]</p>

[quote]Originally posted by Lemon Bon Bon:
<strong>Maybe AMD are just helping with yields?</strong><hr></blockquote>

I somewhat doubt that given they can't even get decent yields on their Barton or Hammer cpus and have had major set backs with fabrication over the past year.

[quote]Originally posted by dfiler:
<strong>Please. Please go do some work with (or even reading on) Cocoa before spreading such disinformation! Cocoa requires preinstalled binary libraries that include many virtual machine like functions, maintaining user information not associated with any particular program.</strong><hr></blockquote>A set of preinstalled binary libraries do not in and of themselves make a virtual machine. By that definition all major operating systems today are virtual machines.

[quote]<strong>Not only was Cocoa not developed by Apple, it wasn't even designed for the powerPC platform. It has been and is available for many platforms including x86. Cocoa is over a decade old and was not developed as a successor to yellow box.</strong><hr></blockquote>You are confusing OpenSTEP with Cocoa.

[ 03-17-2003: Message edited by: Mr. Me ]</p>

[quote]Originally posted by Lemon Bon Bon:
<strong>... There's got to be a reason why Apple execs hang with AMD earlier this year. Reports of AMD/Apple 'secret' meetings? </strong><hr></blockquote>

you've got pictures ;) <img src="graemlins/lol.gif" border="0" alt="[Laughing]" />

[quote] Hey Lemon, any chance of cutting the sig, I think we've all read it now? It gets a bit boring when you all you do is post a smiley and 100 words of sig - and you do that a lot!

<hr></blockquote>

Just for 'Caustic' Clive.

Lemon Bon Bon

Originally posted by dfiler
Rest assured, I fully realize the differences between hardware abstraction/emulation and the functionality provided by Cocoa. I was merely trying to point out that the Cocoa 'API' falls into a gray area that usually separates other lower-level and less-dynamic languages from the category of 'virtual machines'.

I was mainly trying to refute the following two statements: Cocoa is the successor environment to Rhapsody's Yellow Box. To date, only the PPC version of Cocoa has seen the light of day.


For Cocoa to run on different hardware would require a recompile to the new machine code. To me that means it does not run on a "virtual" machine. Cocoa is a class framework, plain and simple. It just happens to be implemented in Objective-C which has a more dynamic form of runtime binding that is normal in C/C++ (but less than in various other languages).

Cocoa is Yellow Box which is NeXTStep. These are all just a series of versions of the same class framework, albeit implemented atop a changing set of low-level services. Looked at like this, the PowerPC version follows the 68k and x86 versions.

Originally posted by dfiler
Well... not exactly. That is why I'm pointing out that what is actually at issue is the definition of a 'virtual machine'. The functionality of cocoa is quite easy to pin down. Its classes like NSSound and NSEvent that blur the definition. Neither class is remotely possible without platform/hardware specific code. That hardware specific code is as much a virtual machine as the JVM.

Yes, well my point was that a machine is only virtual if its not "concrete" (being the opposite of virtual). A machine which has a few abstractions but leaves some piece still anchored on a specific piece of hardware is still concrete, and therefore not virtual. I agree that it could be a fuzzy line, but the generally accepted meaning these days of "virtual machine" means that the executable is not represented in the specific machine code of any particular physical processor. We've had support libraries for a very long time, and nobody bothered to call them "virtual machines".

We really need more than the two classifications of virtual machine and non-VM. It?s like trying to define whether an SUV is a car or a truck. Its neither and both, so a new term was coined.

There is a term that describes Cocoa just fine: "framework". Or "class framework" to be a little more specific. What is interesting is that when you use this class framework in conjunction with the Java Virtual Machine then your code is running in a virtual machine... but that's due to Java's VM, not Cocoa.

I think we're also in agreement about the relationship of Yellow Box and Cocoa. It is just important to note that Cocoa was around prior to Apple's Box nomenclature. Cocoa is not a Yellow box derivative.

This depends on what you mean by "derivative". YellowBox was a derivative of NeXTStep in the sense that they took the NeXTStep technology and used it to build the YellowBox. Cocoa is derivative in that they took parts (or possibly all) of the YellowBox work and named that Cocoa and made whatever changes were necessary to make it interoperable with the Carbon runtime environment (i.e. they made the Foundation classes visible to Carbon, which may or may not have required changes to their original Objective-C implementation). I'm not privvy to the details of the current Cocoa implementation, but from the point of view of the developer using the framework they are all just successive versions of exactly the same thing. YellowBox and Cocoa may be exactly the same thing in all but name -- and YellowBox was called that simply because Apple hadn't come up with the name Cocoa yet but they had this box representing the NeXTStep framework on their slides, and it happened to be the colour yellow.

Why do you keep wanting to talk about AMD/PPC? This is far more interesting... :)

First I must concede defeat on the etymology of Cocoa. It seems that my memory of the NeXTStep days are a bit hazy... maybe I should have held onto that cube longer. When Apple coined the term Cocoa, much of the open/nextstep documentation was rereleased virtually unchanged except in title. I suppose it would have confused people to keep developing under the same name which was used interchangeably for the OS and high level API. I'll go eat my crow now, sorry folks.

Cocoa was an interesting choice in names. Its ironic (or perhaps deliberate) that the name is a play off of Java's name. Both provide hardware abstraction and platform agnosticism via high-level APIs. As programmer pointed out, framework is a more precise classification for Cocoa.

Java's virtual machine is an interesting and prominent anomaly in the world of 'virtual machines'. While Java native hardware was initially envisioned, the world only adopted Java's API and the binary libraries needed to make applications run. The role of byte code has also evolved as Java's role is nudge by Sun in new directions. From a programmer's and user's perspective, there is little functional differences in what must be done to get code running on multiple platforms. Java is the primary reason why the scope of the term 'virtual machine' has become ambiguous. Anyone care to categorize .net?

Doesn't it sucks when improper or laymen use of a term can obfuscate a word's original technical meaning? In this case, the most prominent use of the the term happens to be a slight misuse. I'll even admit that hardware-abstracting APIs (frameworks) might be an acceptable peg on which to hang the 'virtual machine' name tag. It is quite reasonable to dispute this last point. Yet, its important to note that the term's connotation is changing, as evidenced by conversations with recent CS BS recipients.

The question is, how long do you fight to preserve a word against an improper connotation becoming definition number-one in the dictionary?

I guess it depends on whether you are British or not? ;)

Originally posted by dfiler
Cocoa was an interesting choice in names. Its ironic (or perhaps deliberate) that the name is a play off of Java's name. Both provide hardware abstraction and platform agnosticism via high-level APIs. As programmer pointed out, framework is a more precise classification for Cocoa.

Apple basically added Java support to Yellow Box, which up until that point was Obj.C-only, so they renamed it Cocoa to reflex the Java "flavour".

Originally posted by dfiler

The Shared Source CLI archive contains the following technologies in source code form: (http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=3A1C93FA-7462-47D0-8E56-8DD34C6292F0&displaylang=en)
An implementation of the runtime for the Common Language Infrastructure (ECMA-335) that builds and runs on Windows XP, the FreeBSD operating system, and Mac OS X 10.2. The Platform Adaptation Layer (PAL) used to port the Shared Source CLI from Windows XP to FreeBSD and Mac OS X.I too have yet to use .NET although I?d be willing to bet that just about any implementation would be have a cleaner API than java. As much as I love to hate MS, an industry wide trend towards cross-platform compatibility can only be good for our platform.

Thanks for the link -- the looks like good news if it operates as claimed. The main complaint I've heard about CLI is that it uses a ridiculous amount of memory just to get running (~256 MB). And why did they call it CLI when the traditional meaning of that acronym is Command Line Interface? Ugh...

Originally posted by OverToasty
"Managed C++"?

Sounds like an oxymoron.

What's the difference?

It runs on the Common Language Infrastructure, restricts some language features, adds reflection / introspection, garbage collection, access to their new class frameworks, and a few other of CLI's services.

Originally posted by Eskimo
Hmmm, that would be interesting...

hmmm... wouldn't it though...

Originally posted by rickag
Wouldn't Motorola be slightly peeved? Without knowing the agreements between IBM, Motorola and Apple concerning PowerPC development this is almost impossible to determine the veracity of this rumor.

Considering all the hints from folks we know to be under NDA's on this board, it probably makes sense ...

To re-cap.
(this has already been said many times elsewhere)

1 - Moto for years had a great design team but dirty fabs.

2 - Staying competitive in the hi-end fab market is getting to be more and more impossible for Moto, it's just too expensive:

THUS:

3 - Work out a deal with another chip maker that has good fabs, [AMD, Apple's potential "wonderful Ally" as Moki once said] so your kick butt designs can get made on a half decent fab and they can then see the light of day.

Who knows if this is still going on however, maybe the G5 from Moto is a complete waste of time since the 970 is getting so much press (IBM certainly doesn't need AMD's fabs) ...

Anywho ... that's the recap.
Hello 'sckimo, hope all is going well at the chip company ;)

Originally posted by OverToasty
1 - Moto for years had a great design team but dirty fabs.

2 - Staying competitive in the hi-end fab market is getting to be more and more impossible for Moto, it's just too expensive: Those same two points are true for AMD as well as Moto. AMD is progressively doing less and less of its own fabrication let alone anybody elses.

Originally posted by Eskimo
Hmmm, that would be interesting...

Is that a moki imitation I hear? And wasn't Eskimo an AMD insider?

Originally posted by Eskimo
The first point in no way correctly represents AMD. AMD's yields and process technology rival anyone in the industry for advanced CMOS fabrication. It's true they don't have dirty fabs (I was being lazy and trying not to type) but it's also true they have been overly variable with yields over the past year and lets not mention SOI.

Point is AMD was a frontrunner before they slipped. AMD is better than most (throwing them in the same bin as Motorola's fabs was unfair) but they aren't a front runner currently. Maybe they are on the verge of a jump back into the running but they are still yet to actually do it.