“The G5 could not have come at a better time. It was first announced by IBM in October 2002, as a new Altivec-enabled desktop 64-bit processor called the PowerPC 970.
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“…back in the race.”
How about “way ahead of the pack”? Seriously, through Apple alone IBM has sold something like ten times more 64-bit processors than Intel and AMD combined. This is a joke.
It’s going to be a tough time for Windows zealots when the 90nm G5s start shipping. Even using clock speed as the only yardstick, the Mac will have gone up over a GHz in the time the Pentium has gone up 400MHz, and the Mac has gone 64-bit as well. If only Intel weren’t pressuring Microsoft to delay the Athlon64 native XP version, the Windows machines might have a chance of keeping up.
The article does give a good synopsis of the problems Apple had with Motorola though. Interesting point about what the G4 would have become if IBM had developed their own variant early on.
Of course in the above, I mean 90nm PowerMac G5s. I know the XServe is already using the 2GHz chip.
As I recall….IBM was NOT too crazy about the “Veleocity Engine” and would not support it at the time Motorola was pushing it and were thinking of waltzing out of the partnership. But I guess with Apple on the contract IBM decided to go ahead and deal with it. That’s why the last G3’s were IBM’s and the G4’s were Motorola’s. It’s good to have IBM back in the track.
“The computer in each Mars Exploration Rover runs with a 32-bit Rad6000 microprocessor, a radiation hardened version of the PowerPC chip used in some models of Macintosh Computers, operating at a speed of 20 million instructions per second.” 128mb RAM, 256mb Flash memory.
I was wondering what I could do with that old Powerbook.
64-bits <> 18 terabytes, more like 18 exabytes (I think, or is it petabytes, either way wrong)
Go the back of the class!
Apple has never looked at IBM as a competitor.
CitizenX: “Apple has never looked at IBM as a competitor.”
Hey man! don’t you remember years 1976 thru 1985?
Even the 1984 ad was directed against Big Blue’s dominance!!!!
One thing I am worried about: What will happen if Apple becomes too succesful in the server market?
“The G5 could not have come at a better time.” Actually, 1999 would have been a better time. Or even 2002.
fef,
I do remember because I was there. Bought my first PC in 1977 sold my first one in 1980. I was there for the introduction. The 1984 ad was about empowering people to accomplish things. Not about beating IBM who obviously didn’t have a clue at that time.
fef,
At the time of introduction of the IBM PC, they thought they MIGHT be able to sell 100,000 of them.
hummmm….. 2 exp 64 is
18,446,744,073,709,551,616
It is not TeraByte but Exa Bytes you should say.
But it is true that that much ram or hd space will
not be seen for a while.
CitizenX: the IBM PC and its compatible clones were introduced by IBM specifically to compete with Macintosh – which, as with the Apple I and II was showing exponential growth in the market. They were so worried that Apple may dominate this emerging “PC” market that they hurriedly entered into a deal with M$ to write the software for there own line of IBM PC’s. They were in such a hurry that they overlooked the small print on that deal – a deal which gave M$ a royalty payment per installation. The rest is history ….
“CitizenX: the IBM PC and its compatible clones were introduced by IBM specifically to compete with Macintosh”
Uhhhmmm… the IBM PC was introduced when, 1981, the Mac in 1984. Speaking of clones, when was the Compaq portable introduced? Well before the Macintosh. As a matter of fact, Compaq was the first company to have sales of over $100,000,000 in its first year. They gave us coffee mugs at the Byte Shop Northwest, to commemerate the event as we sold fully 20 percent of that.
I was there and Apple didn’t “care” about IBM.
john and Citizen X– keep the historical facts straight. The IBM PC was introduced in late summer of 1981. The Mac didn’t get introduced until January 1984. IBM was as surprised by the success of the PC as anyone. By the time the Mac was introduced and began shipping in 1984, IBM owned a big chunk of the PC market, clones (except Compaq) were still struggling. Originally, there were two OS’s for the PC — IBM-DOS (from Microsoft) and a 16 bit version of CP/M which sold for about two to three times as much as the IBM DOS version. Applications began showing up immediately for the DOS version and that won the market. Microsoft didn’t “write” the DOS software for IBM. They bought it from another company that owned a 16-bit OS which was modified to run on the Intel 8088 chip in the IBM PC (at a whopping 4.67 mhz). Back in those days each brand of PC (clones) had their own version of MS-DOS with only file compatibility between platforms. It was a mess. And it didn’t get “unified” under one MS-DOS version until version 5.0 in about 1990 or so, a few years before Windows 3.0.
The first few versions of Windows were really bad. 3.0 and 3.1 were sad. 95 and 98 were Mac-like enough to sell plenty. NT was decent. ME was the suckiest. 2000 was decent. XP is decent. OSX Panther just rocks.
I wonder if the G5 updates will come late Spring (May).
“john and Citizen X– keep the historical facts straight. The IBM PC was introduced in late summer of 1981. The Mac didn’t get introduced until January 1984. IBM was as surprised by the success of the PC as anyone. By the time the Mac was introduced and began shipping in 1984, IBM owned a big chunk of the PC market, clones (except Compaq) were still struggling.”
I know my history as I was there da Ronz. Yes, IBM sold a lot of machines in 84, but they were far from owning the market.
As well as selling a lot of IBM pcs, we sold just as many if not more Compaqs, TI Professionals and Zenith.
“Originally, there were two OS’s for the PC — IBM-DOS (from Microsoft) and a 16 bit version of CP/M which sold for about two to three times as much as the IBM DOS version.”
The IBM PC pretty much came with their DOS, Compaqs theirs, etc. It was possible to run IBM DOS on a Compaq and vice versa. That was early on because all BIOSs at that time were pretty much the same between machines. An exception was the TI Professional, which because of changes to the BIOS, handled graphics differently.
“Applications began showing up immediately for the DOS version and that won the market.”
There were already applications for Apples and other computers. Companies bought IBM because of the name. That was all of the cachet buying a PC had. It didn’t win the market because of how great a tool it was.
“Microsoft didn’t “write” the DOS software for IBM. They bought it from another company that owned a 16-bit OS which was modified to run on the Intel 8088 chip in the IBM PC (at a whopping 4.67 mhz). Back in those days each brand of PC (clones) had their own version of MS-DOS with only file compatibility between platforms. It was a mess. And it didn’t get “unified” under one MS-DOS version until version 5.0 in about 1990 or so, a few years before Windows 3.0.”
It was only a mess if you had a machine like the TI Professional. I had a Zenith Z-100, an S-100 based machine. I ran IBM, Compaq and Z-DOS on it.
“The first few versions of Windows were really bad. 3.0 and 3.1 were sad. 95 and 98 were Mac-like enough to sell plenty. NT was decent. ME was the suckiest. 2000 was decent. XP is decent.”
I’ll agree to that
“OSX Panther just rocks.”
The Mac just works.
“They were in such a hurry that they overlooked the small print on that deal – a deal which gave M$ a royalty payment per installation. The rest is history ….”
Even more significantly they didn’t protect the BIOS so Compaq was able to reverse engineer. If IBM had bought DOS and kept their BIOS from being copied, there would be no clone market and IBM would be a much bigger company.
Hey John, Citizen X and da Ronz:
What you all said is exactly my point!!!
IBM was Apple’s (and I mean Apple before the Mac) primary contender…
IBM was king of the Business’s Machines Market (no pund intended), they shared it with Compaq and HP. But, Apple introduced their Apple I and then Apple II (IIe, IIc) for the consumer market!
With the Macintosh in ’84 they intended to introduced themselves to the Corporate market (IBM’s turf) therefore they had to educate the public that IBM wasn’t the only choice nor the best solution. Apple learned a few wisdom tips before this with the US$10,000 Apple Lisa.
At that time, IBM was Apple’s archienemy. This drove Apple to invite M$ to make software for them. They lend them a machine for they to ‘examine’ Apple’s OS and the rest is history (M$ ripped off Apple’s OS with Windows). IBM licensed their consumer PC to others (remember the ‘IBM compatible’ label?); M$ supplied the SW; IBM began to loose market to others; M$ DOS became the defacto OS and etc… M$ became Apple’s enemy ’til nowadays.
Then came the AIM alliance (Apple IBM Motorola) to produce a new chip that may possibly have started the third wave in the Computer history. Along came the PowerPC 6800; Then the G3 wich by the way was way faster than P2 and P3 in the early days but despite that Apple continued to loose market; Motorola’s G4 didn’t do Apple much justice compared to the P4…
But then, as a gift from God, came the PowerPC 970 from IBM…
Hallelujah!!!! Praise the Lord!! Apple introduced the G5 wich topped out at dual 2.0 Ghz then they upgraded to 970 90nm chips and the G5 speed arrived to 2.5 Ghz. By Summer 2004, Apple announced speeds of 3 Ghz and previewed a native 64bits OS X Server for handling databases and Multimedia Content. By summer 2005, Apple announced the improved G6 which… okay, sorry I got a little carried away with the prophetic message there.
My point is: Apple once looked IBM as a competitor.
fef
“Hey John, Citizen X and da Ronz:
What you all said is exactly my point!!!
IBM was Apple’s (and I mean Apple before the Mac) primary contender…”
naaahhh….
“IBM was king of the Business’s Machines Market (no pund intended), they shared it with Compaq and HP. But, Apple introduced their Apple I and then Apple II (IIe, IIc) for the consumer market!”
Damn near everyone was the consumer market and or education. Big orders from large corporations were rare pre 83. For example, I was doing education sales in 1983 and whenever we did have a business customer, I handled it as we really didn’t have a business unit. And we not a rinky dink store. The is the Byte Shop, original and that year we were #149 on the INC top 500 fastest growing companies. I was there. I know the conditions.
With the Macintosh in ’84 they intended to introduced themselves to the Corporate market (IBM’s turf) therefore they had to educate the public that IBM wasn’t the only choice nor the best solution. Apple learned a few wisdom tips before this with the US$10,000 Apple Lisa.
Of course they wanted to sell to business. The Apple III was their business machine, much more than the Mac. The Mac is the computer for the rest of us. Does that sound like its really a business machine.
“At that time, IBM was Apple’s archienemy.”
Never. Never have been, never will be.
“This drove Apple to invite M$ to make software for them. They lend them a machine for they to ‘examine’ Apple’s OS and the rest is history (M$ ripped off Apple’s OS with Windows).”
Drove….. well, M$ was a company that already had software for Apple machines. It wasn’t unatural for Micro$oft to write applications for the Mac. Duh…. we know windows is a rip off.
IBM licensed their consumer PC to others (remember the ‘IBM compatible’ label?
IBM licensed nothing. It was copied (reverse engineered) by Compaq and used in their portable.
“); M$ supplied the SW; IBM began to loose market to others; M$ DOS became the defacto OS and etc…”
And so it goes….
“M$ became Apple’s enemy ’til nowadays.
Then came the AIM alliance
<snip>
fef”
Apple is competing against M$, Sony, Walmart, Shell, Linksys, RCA, NBC, for the future. It isn’t about Micro$oft.
Citizen X — and others:
I’ve mentioned this several times before in these MDN forums. The reality is that the RAD6000 is NOT based upon the PowerPC. No version of the RAD6000 was ever in any Macintosh. No version of the RAD6000 will ever be in any Macintosh.
The POWER name is really an acronym. It stands for Performance Optimized With Enhaced RISC. The “enhanced” part is a reference to the original IBM RT systems of the early 80s as the POWER chip sets were greatly enhanced when compared to the original RT chip sets.
The RAD6000 is based upon a radiation hardened version of the single chip version of the original POWER chip set. The original POWER chip set was a set of 5 or 7 chips just to make up the CPU. The original POWER chip sets were 32bit machines with a 48 bit address space so they never had the 4GB limit of other 32 bit systems. IBM did a LOT of work to get the multi chip versions into a single chip version.
What was then IBM Federal Systems (Manassas, VA; back in the early 90s) used almost the exact same masks as the single chip version of the POWER chip set in their radiation hard processes to create the RAD6000. They tested it in the IBM workstation based upon the single chip version of the POWER chip — the RS/6000 workstations. In fact, after radiation testing one chip to over one megarad, they put it into a stock RS/6000 machine (after it cooled, of course) to see if it would run properly. It ran without a hitch.
The only other CPUs at that time which could function perfectly after a megarad dose were based upon Silicon-on-Saphire processes (extremely expensive — sometimes resulting in >>$100,000 chipsets) and were ony 16 bit systems.
The PowerPC is a very different animal from the original POWER chip sets (even the single chip version). The instruction set of the original PowerPC 601 and the single chipe version of the POWER chip set is almost identical, but not precisely so. The PowerPC was a joint venture between Apple, IBM and Motorola. Apple brought the OS and the user base. (In the early 90s Apple had a market share well in excess of 10%.) IBM brought the single chip version of the POWER CPU. Motorola brought the 88000 CPU. They took the execution pipelines and such from the POWER CPU. The took the data paths and the designed in extensibility from the 88000 CPU.
The 88000 was designed from the beginning to be able to add things like a Graphics Processing Unit [GPU] and Vector Processing Unit [VPU] [such as the AltiVec unit] to the overall CPU. The original POWER CPU had no such design capabilities in place. Thus the PowerPC was a completely new design based upon the best ideas from Apple, IBM and Motorola.
The IBM Manassass team (which became Loral, then Lockheed, now BAE) has since done a rad hard version of the PowerPC 603, and their latest creation rad hard chip is based upon the PowerPC 750. However, neither of these are based upon the RAD6000.
It is a lot of fun to tell people Mac chips are being used on Mars. It just is not true.
All this history, and not one mention of Commodore. Now there was a company that knew how to throw it all away….
Ahhhh. I remember the days when Choplifter and Castle Wolfenstien (by Salas Warner from Broderbund Software) were popular on the Apple II, II+ and IIe. That game scared the living daylights outta me when the SS troopers came in fast screaming “HALT!”. Then the 3D version came out on the PC’s 386’s and it lost its appeal and scare factor. Oh well.