[Ham-Mac] MacOS X x86 Intel Support

[Bill Coleman]

On Jun 7, 2005, at 12:22 AM, Tod Glenn wrote:

>
>
>>> "At Apple's Worldwide Developer Conference today, CEO Steve Jobs  
>>> announced plans to deliver Macs using Intel microprocessors by  
>>> this time next year, and to transition all of its Macs to using  
>>> Intel microprocessors by the end of 2007"
>>>
>>>
>>
>> One curious nit -- no where in any of the PR material does it say  
>> "Intel x86" processors. It just says Intel processors.
>>
>> It could just as well be Intel 64-bit processors, or an Intel  
>> processor of specific design for Apple.
>>
>
>
> Since Mac OS X is now 64 bit, I'd assume 64 bit processors.  I  
> don't see Apple taking a step backwards.

And look what it brings to Intel -- Intel is interesting in pressing  
forward to 64-bit in the desktop market -- but the most common OS for  
that processor family (Windows) is stuck in the 32-bit world and will  
be for a while.

That sorta makes sense to me.

You do have the ask the question: what does the switch offer to  
Intel, and what would Intel offer Apple to entice them to switch?  
Intel has very deep pockets and they can apply very large economies  
of scale. I think there's more to the story here other than the obvious.

One thing that bothers me immensely is that the x86 instruction set  
is a limiting factor in Intel CPUs. The superscalar core of the later  
pentium processors is capable of a lot more than the x86 instruction  
set allows, so they end up doing a lot of speculative execution just  
because there are processor resources to burn.

The PowerPC doesn't have this problem because the instruction set is  
much more scalable.



Bill Coleman, AA4LR, PP-ASEL        Mail: aa4lr at arrl.net
Quote: "Not within a thousand years will man ever fly!"
             -- Wilbur Wright, 1901