found this link that suggest mac might not be using intel cpu's anymore. i got all excited hoping apple would ditch x86. anyone have any thoughs on this? i assume they would use pasemi ppc now.

http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/08 ... _hood.html

matt

Well, as the same pasemi folks were involved earlier in ARM processors, we would not term the result 'ppc' (IBM would probably stopped that anyway as they rely on Intel -- after all, IBM has a monopoly to think about).

The probable situation is that whatever Apple decides to use next (if they do as they do) it will be a 'Mac/Apple Processor' and nothing less. Whatever it was before -- knowledge from here, technology from there -- it will be branded and known as a *new* processor and it will be 'all Apple.'

We admire what they have done. The 'semiconductor industry' never understood it was a _system industry_ and now they are going to pay for it.

R&B :)

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Apple may drop Intel for the core but still keeps a x86 chipset from another vendor. And a note tells "This should not be confused with the primary CPU, which will continue to come from Intel".

About PA Semi processors, I think they will build ARM ones optimized and well designed thanks to the huge knowledge of the PA Semi team. So Apple killed the most advanced PowerPC technology.

Hi corto, Apple killed the most advanced PowerPC technology? If we could read the license agreement between PASemi and IBM, then we might be able to understand whether that statement was fully accurate.

One of the big disappointments we had recently was not the purchase of PASemi by Apple, but the situation faced by Tundra.

Basically, Tundra took a license and what they licensed could not be or would not be delivered. We think there is much more going on in these matters than technology -- the business issues drive the outcomes.

R&B :)

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I agree with most comments here which, by the way, don't look as fanboy-ish as the "news" that we are commenting. I'll take those with a pinch of salt.
Come on, they have an "article" bragging about "Apple is releasing something that will leave all competition behind", and then say nothing? It's so childish it reminds me the whole Amiga era.
Also, the article said the CPU will still come from Intel, it's the chipset that's supposed to change. And that's supposed to be something worth talking about? It has zero commercial effect, people don't care a damn about CPUs, go figure about chipsets.

I can't figure out why an agreement between PA Semi and IBM would exist. I know about Apple taking over PA Semi, but don't see IBM in the picture. Can anyone enlighten me?

Next stop for us: Getting the final production MPC5121e, and have, at last, truckloads of cool cheap hardware to start world domination. Hey, where did this BeagleBoard thing came from? It was supposed to be OUR turn!
It's disturbing (although MorphZone guys prefer looking elsewhere), when you finally think you have your own niche to live on, and someone else stumbles upon it. First, it was the set-top box business, which just faded out itself, and when we finally find out that community assisted embedded computers are hot, the BeagleBoard guys step in. Doh!

It's more likely that they are using PASemi's technology for memory controller, ethernet, PCI Express bus, DMA engine, cryptographic offload and so on (since they own their own intellectual property on this) and make a new Northbridge/Southbridge combination (perhaps with a lot of integrated peripherals)

You look at the Intel chipset offerings right now and you have the processor (Core 2 Duo), northbridge (i965 or something), southbridge, wireless chipset for the Santa Rosa platform.

That's a lot of chips and a lot of board space required. Why not integrate all the relevant peripherals into one chip, so you just have a Core 2 Duo with a SuperNorthbridge? For graphics, you can always dump an AMD or nVidia graphics chipset on there, for something the same spec as a MacBook Pro but with half the major components.

I'd say that's far, far more likely than a move to a new CPU. It would secure the Mac as using an industry standard processor line (x86) while having just enough difference between their Northbridge and Intel's to adequately move themselves away from the "run MacOS On My PC" crowd, and the Mac Cloners like Psystar (you won't be able to build a true Mac Clone, only a Core Duo PC that just happens to be able to be hacked to run OS X).

Their PowerPC laptops used to have much better power consumption - and therefore much longer battery life - than the x86 competition. Moving to x86 kind of nuked that advantage. Now, I think, they are moving to get it back.

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@jcmarcos

Anyone developing and making or having made a processor with a PowerPC core must sign a license agreement with IBM and be bound by the terms and conditions therein (including Freescale). PASemi certainly had such an agreement.

R&B :)

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..No they didn't.

My PB 12" G4 1.5 GHz had around 4-4,5h battery-life with
WiFi enabled. (This was with a new battery after the big
Sony-recall..)

I have the same battery-time today with my MacBook 13.3"
with 2 GHz C2D.

2-3 times the speed, larger display - same battery-life.

It's possible that the PowerPC was a real low-power CPU
five years back*, but alot has happened since then.

* Before the G5..

WA-h matters ^^

I think you overexaggerate a bit here. I have here a powerbook 12" G4 1Ghz and a Macbook pro 15" and I'm still using the powerbook. The powerbook -with a new battery- gets up to 4h (max) and the macbook has never stayed up more than 2.5h (maybe 3h with zero load).
So, don't try to overesteem the efficiency of the new intel apple offerings. They still have a long way to go to reach the performance of the ppc ones. Not to mention that you can actually boil eggs on the macbook pro, it's not nearly a "laptop" anymore :)
No it's not just "possible", it's actually a fact. PPCs still are way more efficient than any x86 offering. See the latest measurements for Atom/Nano?

http://arstechnica.com/reviews/hardware ... view.ars/8

Yes, 50Wts at IDLE. That's more than 2x as much as the 8610 typical draw, so get your facts straight. A 8610-laptop with a nice gfx chip -or without if you don't care about gfx/3D performance- could be a serious contender to the current x86 offerings, despite its being a single-core chip. With current battery technology, it would not be out of the question to expect 6h or even more battery-time from such a laptop.

If we wanted even more power, a 8640D would be a better option, with again much less power drawn than the C2D offerings. The 8610 I have here, requires just a small fan/heatsink, as the ones used in PC northbridges. Try doing that on a C2D and see it melt. :D

Markos:
Guess I can't prove my MacBook battery time better than
this. The battery is at 95%.



This MacBook is 1 year old with GMA950.

battery-time indication from inside OS != real battery-time. It's just an indication, which changes constantly depending on cpu/disk/etc load. If it stays on for ~4 hours, then ok, I will stand corrected. But it still doesn't mean that x86 is better than ppc in terms of power efficiency. It just means that macbook has a better battery than the pro and the powerbook (which is logical considering it has 3 years of technology advances against the powerbook).

The MacBook battery-life is alot better than MacBook Pro.

The graphics card and display are very different..

Come on, it's very annoying ...

Battery:

iBook (2005): 50Wh
Powerbook (2005): 58Wh
MacBook (2008): 55Wh
MacBookPro (2008): 68Wh

And the PPC Books had a much longer battery life than the AppTels.

Leave the RDF as long as you can ^^

Yes, this is because you are comparing a chip running on a 65nm process to one designed on a 130nm process. An LCD screen and backlight designed before certain advancements in the technology which reduced power. Discrete ATI/nVidia graphics vs. integrated Intel. Sorry, but you simply are comparing Apples to Oranges here.

When your PowerBook came out, 4 and a half hours was unheard of on an x86 laptop. The x86 competition was on the same process (actually moving to 90nm) and the Pentium M was just hitting the scene, but that didn't really help against the 7447A and Apple's notebook design :)

At the time you may consider that, it was just before the announcement of the switch, and Intel were definitely catching up. With Core Solo/Duo, ULV versions and Atom processors now, Intel really have an extraordinary line of CPU cores which are incredibly low power (4W for the Atom!), however, the northbridge/southbridge combination easily bumps the power consumption of the system to 50W or 60W.

This is still quite heavy for a laptop..
Did every G3 and G4-class processor double in power consumption just because IBM made that donkey?

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Matt Sealey