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Intel Employee – Apple Likely to Use Stock Chips


Shuddertrix

Mashugly interviewed an Intel employee:

 

I had the chance recently to speak with an Intel employee working in the Fab. department where Apple’s next-gen Intel chips are being made. He spoke under condition of anonymity, giving only his opinions and not the official sentiments of Intel. His credibility is sterling.

 

He gave us his opinions and insider’s perspective on Apple’s move to Intel. Note that while he states that there are many ways that Apple could restrict their OS, the assumption of he and his colleagues is that Apple will use stock production chips. But that’s not all he had to say... read on.

 

1. What is the atmosphere in your dept? Excitement? Slight nervousness?

First, let me give you a bit better understanding of what it is I do. I'm a technician in the "FAB", that is one of the factories where the processors are manufactured. When I see the chips they are still in complete wafers and several weeks if not months from being what you would know as the chip in your computer. People in my department, and the rest of the FAB, are concerned with keeping our tools running and processing the wafers to get them out of the FAB. We manufacture several different processor types (i.e. laptop, desktop and server) so there isn't really a whole lot of attention paid to what product is running on a tool at any given time.

 

What I can tell you is that in the seven plus years I have been working for Intel this is the first time in the past few years...

 

...that I have seen the majority of the people in the FAB excited about the direction the company is moving in. The Apple deal is part of that but the confidence in our new CEO and our new products has a lot more to do with it. Intel has always had a mind set of "we can achieve anything we set our minds to". With the resources the company has for the most part that is true. There are not many other chip companies that can afford to spend billions of dollars to develop new technologies. One thing that people totally overlook in the whole Intel vs. AMD thing is that in the past few years Intel has completely redesigned its chips from the core out. There were a lot of problems to overcome in making that happen and that is the source of the majority of the performance issues that people have seen in Intel chips during that time period. AMD is still designing on a processor core that is getting to the end of it's usable life cycle. It will continue to get harder and harder for them to get more performance out of this older design while Intel will start to fine tune it's newer designs.

2. Will the parts that are used in the first Intel Macs be generic P4s or will they be a special processor made just for Apple?

I do not know for sure but I would highly doubt that we are making special parts for Apple. It's just too expensive to design a special part, work out the manufacturing bugs and then ramp it into production. Again you have to look at it from the Intel point of view. We manufacture hundreds of millions of processors each year. While we are proud of the fact that Apple is using our chips they will be a very small percentage of the product we make. I would be more inclined to believe that during the design cycle of our new chips input from Apple was used to decide what features would be included in the final design. As we all have now learned Apple and Intel have been talking for a long time about a lot of things. Also Apple has been working on porting their OS to an x86 platform for at least a few years now so I'm sure there were a lot of ideas exchanged over that time.

 

3. How did you (and your colleagues) react to the news of OS X being hacked to normal hardware? About breaking the TPM?

I didn't know about it until I saw what you had reported on it. I'm not surprised that there is a hack floating around out there. Not many people at Intel are really into Macs. You have to remember that until very recently they were the competition. I still get some funny looks when I walk around with my iPod. :)

4. Is Apple planning on using the TPM or something similar to restrict OS X to their own hardware in the final product?

No idea about this one. There are many things that can actually be built right into the chip that could be used to restrict what OS is ran with it. Each chip has it's own ID and I'm sure it would be possible for Intel to use a special convention for the ID code for chips intended to go in Apple machines. Features such as clock speed and amounts of cache are actually set when the chip is e-tested and they see how that chip performs. When they come out of the Fab there is no difference between 3 gig P4 and a 3.6 gig P4. It's how the chip performs at e-test that decides what speed it will be certified at and the final configuration is burned in to the chip at e-test.

 

5. Are most of the people you work with Apple fans? Or are they just working in that Dept. because they were assigned to it?

Again reference the fact that we don't make chips just for Apple at the Fab I work in. As far as being fans I would say that most people are happy that we are working with Apple but it's not the most exciting thing in the world to them. Another big misconception that people have about us folks at Intel is that we are all big computer geeks. I have actually known a few people who work for the company that don't even have computers at home.

 

6. In your opinion, who will benefit most from the Intel-Apple partnership?

I think both companies will benefit in the short and long term. How much comes out of this is mostly in Apple's hands if you ask me. They are in a position where they have to make some very important decisions about Apple's future. Once Intel chips go into Macs there will be no difference between a Mac and a Dell but the OS running on the machine. If they decide to stay with their image of the "rebel" company that prides it self on doing things differently then there is no way that they will separate their OS from their machines and sell it on it's own. If they do that, they will put themselves in competition with all the other PC makers out there and they will learn what the rest have learned. Profit margins are very small and to make any money you have to sell a lot of computers - way more than 4 or 5 percent of the market. The other thing that selling their OS by itself will do is get them the attention of all the hacker and virus writers that until now have left them alone. If Apple had as many people trying to break it's code as Windows does I don't think that it would keep it's rep for being so stable and secure for very long. On the other hand if they do decide to try and go big in the market and expand their share by opening up their OS to be ran on PCs Intel is a great partner to have from the perspective of supplying parts and supporting their new design ideas. As I've said before, I think Apple will be one of our most demanding customers but that will only make Intel better and force us to move in new directions.

 

7. What do you think was so attractive about Intel to Apple? I mean, other than the obvious stuff (like what Jobs said about lower wattage) what can you offer Apple that IBM/PPC couldn't?

Since I'm going under the assumption that Apple will be using normal production chips from us I think that Apple likes the idea of having their chips made by a company with such a strong history in pushing the computer industry and also the fact that making processors is our first and most important job. It is what defines Intel so we are going to be sure to do everything we can to make things better all the time. IBM is such a big company and involved in so many different things that making chips for Apple was just one more thing on their to do list. I don't think it was a real priority for them. Also we can supply more chips than anyone else could.

 

8. Any ideas on what they're planning on calling the chips for Apple? If not a final name, what codename are you using?

No word on that yet at all.

 

Thanks for your time!

 

Russian translation (thanks Kajy)


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Very informative. If Apple is using stock Intel stuff without proprietary restrictions and such, it will likely be easier to get generic support working (permitted by Apple or not).

 

The fewer patches needed, the better. Most patches break something (at least in the first release) :P

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Very informative. If Apple is using stock Intel stuff without proprietary restrictions and such, it will likely be easier to get generic support working (permitted by Apple or not).

 

Nice thought, but don't bet on it...

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If Apple are smart what they will do is release their OS to anyone but then produce their usual high quality top line Mac's to sell to the Apple faithful.

 

No offence meant here guys but reading stuff on this site everyone thinks that Apple is a major player in the PC market and the fact is they're not. Apple will gain from this deal with performance processors and Intel will gain by taking market share from IBM. It's a coo for Intel not to have Apple use Intel chips but to have taken something (Apple saying that the PPC's can't compete) from IBM (and the cell processor).

 

Like the man said this isn't a big deal for Intel who currently has 90% of the desktop market already.

 

I'd buy OS X to develope Apps on it (dual boot it from my already very powerful PC) but I wouldn't buy a Mac to get OS X. We'll all just have to wait and hope that Apple let us buy it.

 

The truth of the matter is that most users that aren't technical (which is most users) buy Apples because of how they look, they will STILL buy an expensive looking Mac to use but if Apple want to increase market share then they need to let Mac OS be sold spearately.

 

Selling OS X for regular PC's would present a whole lot of issues that I don't think Apple currently have the support infrastructure to cope with (you never know OS X may not have been "such a surprise" being hacked so easily as you might think) so if they did do it they would need to be quite specific about hardware compatibily and what they will and won't support. Thinking about it this is reason alone for Apple NOT to release OS X for a regular PC if they keep control of the hardware the keep control of the support costs and their image. Oh well we'll just have to wait and hope

 

;)

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If Apple are smart what they will do is release their OS to anyone but then produce their usual high quality top line Mac's to sell to the Apple faithful. (blah...blah...blah...)

 

You know, it is refreshing how absolutely little you actually know.

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This is never going to happen. Apple may be less than a major player in the PC market, but they will lose 50% of their user base in weeks if they do this. You don't realize the Mac community's mindset; this would be viewed as a major betrayal.

 

Have you ever heard of Be? NeXT? These companies all desperately released their OSes for Intel, and look what happened to them. The iPod can only stay in style for so long.

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You know, it is refreshing how absolutely little you actually know.

 

I work for a very very large PC retailer (and these are my opions only and not representative of any company) and where I work has a high contingent of mac users and we sell more mac's that most outlets. I speak to and deal with many mac users on a daily basis and many of my firends are mac users. So I might know more than you give me credit for (since it's my job to understand these people).

 

I agree though there are three types of Apple user

 

a) the people that know nothing about computers and buy Apples because 'they look nice'

 

b ) the people that just prefer using Apples, regular people

 

and then there's

 

c) the elitest Apple snobs that buy Apple as some sort of status symbol or anti-microsoft statement, a way of saying that they're better than the average person. These people tend to be arrogant and aggressive in defense of the Mac's to the point of being obsessive.

 

Just to give you an example of the 'c' type of Apple user I was on a case modding site some months ago and there was an article about how some guy has scrapped the insides of a G5 tower and built a regular PC inside (he'd actually managed to buy and empty chasis). They had to take the page down because within 2 weeks yes just 2 WEEKS he'd received over 5000 death threats???? what the hell was that all about??? if you'd of taken the most expensive PC on the market scrapped the insides and built a Mac into it everyone would of said 'cool' or not even cared but death threats!!!!

 

I'm sure that Steve Jobs knows that he might lose some of the Apple faithful but I'm sure that he and his share holders would gladly sacrifice a small % of these people to gain another 5% of the PC market.

 

But I think you'll find that the majority of mac users either

 

a) will think it's a good thing not a bad thing as Mac users can only gain from an increased user base. The more users there are the more developers will produce new software and hardware for Macs and the more people will buy them perpetuating the cycle increasing what mac's can do.

 

b ) might be upset for a while but it wont stop them buying Mac's as they like windows even less which is the only real viable alternative

 

and we're back to 'c' and yes these are the same group of people as above

 

c) well these are the people that you might lose and to be honest is that such a bad thing. As a small company these people are great but as you grow these type of people end up hurting your business because other users don't want to be associated with this kind of user.

 

Steve and his share holders will have to make a very real decision about what direction the want to take Apple in and if they wan't to grow their business. Apple will sell more Apple branded PC's if they release OS X by itself because more people will see it and use it and WAN'T and official Apple machine to run it on. Not releasing OS X by itself will just result in Apple not gaining market share because they will just be exactly where they are today but with a different CPU and 99% of people don't care what's inside the box.........

 

An Intel CPU alone isn't going to sell more mac's......

 

'Think differently' has just moved Apple backwards in terms of market share maybe now they need to think differently. Yes Apple make lifestyle products but the iPod has shown them that to survive they have to be more mass market products. The only way Apple will do this with computers is to get more developers on board producing more software. They need OS X out there more and today their PC's have very limited appeal because unless you're willing to learn unix, you have a very specific use for an apple for business or you're willing to write your own software what use is an Apple???

 

Computer users wan't something that they can take home, is easy to use and easy to get support for and have a large choice of extra's for.

 

Walk into any PC vendor buy a media centre off the shlef and you can be certain that you can buy just about anything that you want for it, you can get your kids any form of educational software, you can buy games and there are literally tens of thousands of bits of off the shelf hardware and software.

 

Don't get me wrong there is a lot of stuff out there for Apple's but they're not as readily available as Windows products are and you can't touch what a media centre can do. For this to change Apple will need to expand it's user base by getting OS X out there only then will things start to change.

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Congratulations. About one and a half thousand words, but absolutely no news at all, yet a lot of marketing babble from a questionable Intel guy. A "technician"? I guess you could also have talked to a cleaning woman, and received the same uninformed and speculative results. What a pathetic try to get some attention. This could be such a great place, but so often the visitors and (which feels much more discomforting to me) even the maintainers of this site sound like some naive, immature high school kids.

 

I'm really no big AMD fan (the last AMD CPU that I have bought was a 486-derived X5 in 1996, which, being overclocked from 133 to 160Mhz since the beginning and thus giving roughly the performance of a Pentium at 90 Mhz, is still going strong nowadays in a minor application), but the contention that Intel is top-notch and AMD getting into struggle with its upcoming processor designs is ridiculous. The P4 has been a complete dud from the start because of its power-hungry design and misrelation between clock speed and performance (AMD, for a long time, has been able to reach comparable performance at much lower clock rates). A P4 core needs to be clocked roughly one and a half/third times higher than a P3 to reach the same speed! Talk about efficiency. That's also the reason why P4-based designs have been dropped from the Intel roadmap in favor of revisions of the "Centrino-CPU" P-M, which is basically a revamped P3 [1].

 

Because of this, I strongly hope that there won't be a "generic P4" in coming Intel-Macs. Assuming that Apple will start the transition with its entry-level consumer products, the Mac Mini will be the first to get an Intel CPU. And apart of the G5, I cannot imagine any other mainstream CPU than the P4 that would be less suited for such a cramped design. Cooling is a serious issue, even more so with the current, braindead Prescott core [2]. The P-M, though, is an excellent design and could fit in nicely.

 

Apple wanted special treatment and wanted a special processor,

Huh? Where did he say THAT?

 

They can take the Pentium 4

Hopefully they won't. The P-M is much better and it has already been declared quite long ago that it will be Intel's path into the future, and that the P4 is a dead end.

 

[1] http://arstechnica.com/articles/paedia/cpu/pentium-m.ars/1

 

[2] http://arstechnica.com/articles/paedia/cpu/prescott.ars/1

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Indeed. Over 1000 words is a lot. There's such an abudancy of people here who have so many long posts to make with so little to say.

 

"I would highly doubt that we are making special parts for Apple. It's just too expensive to design a special part, work out the manufacturing bugs and then ramp it into production."

 

Try reading the 2nd question in the article. It's basically asking if Apple is going to get a special chip from Intel. Like I said, they get no special treatment. Reading is good, keeping things concise is good, and most importantly, learning to use commas and periods where appropriate. It may save some of you a few hours of typing utter nonsense that nobody will ever bother to read.

 

That is speculative opinion from a tech, and your opinion on try to read more into it then there is.

 

No where is anything factual, good try, but no prize

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Sorry dude, but that was an awful interview.

 

Next time, take notes about general questions you want to ask and ask them if they're necessary. You are allowed to skip a question if, based on a previous response, it's obvious he doesn't have the knowledge/information required to answer it.

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If Apple are smart what they will do is release their OS to anyone but then produce their usual high quality top line Mac's to sell to the Apple faithful.

 

I highly doubt that Apple is going to release OSX for generic white boxen. I'd love to buy OSX86 and dual boot on my current PC but I unfortunately doubt that will happen, for several reasons:

 

- Without good drivers for a lot of different hardware, OSX would be in the same situation that Linux was a few years ago. You'd essentially have to check your PC against an (at first horribly short) 'whitelist' of hardware supported by OSX. So it is unlikely that you'll see a huge influx of Windows users buying OSX and installing on their current computer. This would also increase the workload of Apple support.

 

- Microsoft would take it as an attack on their crown jewel - their near monopoly on the x86 operating system market. Microsoft has always gone to all out war mode when they sense a threat to one of their core markets, and they have a lot of experience in how to kill competitors.

 

- Profit margins for x86 PC manufacturers are razor slim. If Apple wants to keep their current profits on Mac hardware, customers must be willing to pay at least 20% more than an equivalent grey box. Any income lost due to current Apple customers buying grey and / or Apple decreasing their price to closer to generic hardware must be made up by OSX sales.

 

- Potentially alienating a lot of loyal customers. The allure of Apple Macintosh being something special is gone if any Joe Schmoe can run OSX on generic x86 hardware. Not to mention that those Joe Schmoes will complain about their soundcard not working and strange crashes. The 'it just works' won't be there anymore.

 

I think that for the forseeable future (which admittedly in this business is kind of short - something like 3 years) Apple would be better served by locking OSX to Apple hardware and sort of turning a blind eye to the fringe that plays with patched OSX. At the very least until the driver situation has improved and Apple feels that they are in a strong enough position to take Microsoft head on.

 

No offence meant here guys but reading stuff on this site everyone thinks that Apple is a major player in the PC market and the fact is they're not.

 

Yeah, I wonder where exactly the idea that Intel might do a special x86 CPU for Apple came from.

 

When you are pretty much the single customer for a line of CPUs, like Apple was for the PPC desktop chips it is obvious that they have a certain power to direct future development. But that's just not the situation in the x86 market. If Apple were shipping x86 Macs today, they'd have about 3% of the market share. Which puts them in fifth place - not that far behind IBM (well, Leonov now) and Gateway, but way behind HP (20%) and Dell (30+%). Dell doesn't have the power to tell Intel to make a special magic sauce CPU for them, so why would someone believe that Apple would have that power?

 

No offence intended here either, but Apple simply is not in the same position with Intel as they were with IBM. Which means that the inside of an x86 Mac is unlikely to be much different from a Dell using the same off the shelf components.

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Wow, tough crowd.

 

Sorry dude, but that was an awful interview.

 

First, I sent those questions in one email - no way to edit them after I sent it, obviously.

 

Secondly, I was under the impression before I got the email that he knew a little more about Apple's plans than he did. Nevertheless, he does have a perspective that none of us can give.

 

Congratulations. About one and a half thousand words, but absolutely no news at all, yet a lot of marketing babble from a questionable Intel guy. A "technician"? I guess you could also have talked to a cleaning woman, and received the same uninformed and speculative results. What a pathetic try to get some attention. This could be such a great place, but so often the visitors and (which feels much more discomforting to me) even the maintainers of this site sound like some naive, immature high school kids.

 

Did you read the article? Yes, he didn't know all of Apple's plans, but you didn't honestly think I was going to get to talk with Otellini, did you? It was worth a shot interviewing this man, as there was the possibility that he knew some pretty juicy stuff. Obviously he didn't, but I didn't know that until after I got his responses back, and I thought I would post the interview anyway since it gave a perspective that you, terry, didn't have before. If this site is SO juvenial, feel free to talk with me about enhancing the content. That's why we have that "Submit News" button on the front page. If you've got something better, you're always welcome to send it our way.

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Wow, tough crowd.
Tough words, perhaps. But also look at the comments at digg.com. They are pretty much in line with the criticism here. So something must have gone wrong with the interview, don't you think?

 

Regarding my harsh wording: Please let me say that for my part, I appreciate the tough work that you folks have put in creating this place. As you can see, I registered here quite early, so there must be something about this place that attracts me. It's just how you handle things sometimes that irritates me pretty much. One example: The people here are hacking, cracking, tweaking, pirating, operating on the fringe of legality, everything of that was foreseeable and -- in my opinion -- this forum has always been actively supporting it (that's the very nature of it), but at one time you got frightened about the DMCA as if you had never heard about such a thing as copyright regulations. Very strange.

 

Secondly, I was under the impression before I got the email that he knew a little more about Apple's plans than he did.
You are not obliged to post an interview in which you obviously have been fooled around.

 

Nevertheless, he does have a perspective that none of us can give.
Really? I do not see one original idea in the interview. Not a single one.

 

Did you read the article?
Please, don't make fun of me. Of course I have read it, even twice, as I am quite obviously not a native speaker and was seriously worried that I must have missed something important.

 

Yes, he didn't know all of Apple's plans,
"He didn't know all of Apple's plans"? He didn't know nuttin' (Intel's very own, already publicized plans included)! Or at least he didn't want to tell.

 

but you didn't honestly think I was going to get to talk with Otellini, did you?
No, of course not.

 

It was worth a shot interviewing this man, as there was the possibility that he knew some pretty juicy stuff. Obviously he didn't, but I didn't know that until after I got his responses back, and I thought I would post the interview anyway
And that's the mistake. This man was fooling you. When you asked about the P4 (I guess you did so because you saw it in the developer machines), this guy didn't even bother to explain to you that this processor architecture is essentially dead, which will be the reason why it either won't be built into the first Macs at all or otherwise will be dismissed very soon. Come on, you don't really expect (or want) to see a CPU that heats up like a blowtorch with a thermal design power of maybe around 90-100 watts in a computer as tiny as the Mac Mini, do you? This might burn nicer than the original magnesium NeXT cubes when set on fire.

 

"The Pentium 4 performs much less work per cycle than other CPUs (such as the various Athlon or older Pentium III architectures) but the original design objective - to sacrifice instructions per clock cycle in order to achieve a greater number of cycles per second (i.e. greater frequency or clockspeed) - has been fulfilled until the platform ran into unsolvable thermal problems before reaching 4 GHz, far short of the original scalability claim of 10 GHz. As of mid-2005, Intel has abandoned further work on Pentium 4 to focus on cooler running Pentium M derived solutions for the desktop PC and small server market. This essentially means Intel has returned to the Pentium III CPU core and only the system bus of the Pentium 4 will live on."

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pentium_4

 

If you've got something better, you're always welcome to send it our way.
The definite article on the matter, which is of course also just speculation, but not of the uninformed kind, is this one:

 

"Hell freezes over; it must've been the liquid cooling: Hannibal on the Apple-to-Intel transition"

http://arstechnica.com/columns/mac/mac-20050608.ars

 

As it dates back to June 08, 2005, I simply thought that everyone knew it already and it wasn't worth talking about any more.

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Hi just a couple of things i'd like to say I keep seeing that everyone here is under the impression that the P4 is dead that's not quite right the Pentium M does have some advantages as does the P4.

 

What you will see going forward is a chip containing elements of both designs, neither the pentium 4 or the pentium M.

 

The current Pentium D processors are largley based on P4's and the newer Pentium D's (and furture multicore chips) are still going to be largely based on this design but with some of the Pentium M optimisations and power reduction properties. Some of the technology in the Pentium M's is going to filter accross the intel product range starting with modified server processors and then desktop processors later on this technology WILL NOT be surplanting the entire existing core but rather enhancing it.

 

The pentium 4 in it's current incarnation will dissappear but it is by no means an obsolete technology the core will still be around powering pentium d's. What people need to also understand is that intel are currently shipping the third generation of Pentium M's which have undergone design changes with each new generation and even with this third generation these CPU's will not be replacing the current desktop counterparts. As I said some of the design elements will be included in all future CPU's. The pentium M is a lower power CPU with a good performance per watt but for the most computational power you will be looking at pentium d's.

 

The next gen of multicore cpu's will incorporate some of the Pentium M technology to improve the performance per watt, they will not be as power effcient as the M but they will be computationally more poweful (provided that developers can get to grips with programming for them which at present they seem to be struggling with).

 

The pentium M however is still a fantastic chip.

 

Apple will not gain market share simply by having an Intel CPU it just won't happen. And saying that Apple need to maintain and elitest stand point keeping Mac's special obviously isn't working otherwise Apple would already have a larger market share which has gone backwards not forwards using excatly that view.

 

All of the people I have met who have purchased Mac mini's buy becausse of the gimmick, a tiny little box. I bet they don't buy a second one......

 

Apple need to broaden their user base and releasing OS X to the masses via authorised OEM's? or directly will do that. As for upsetting some of the Apple faithful you can't make an omlette without breaking some eggs.......

 

With regard to the interview it did read totally like you were trying to get the technician to say 'yeah Apple are ace thank god they came along' which obviously isn't the case. It came over totally biased...

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terry-

 

Well, thanks for your comments. I understand that it wasn't a fantastic interview - I hesitated to post it, as I knew that he didn't know as much as I thought he did. He didn't "fool" me though - he made no claims as to what he knew before the interview.

 

But the fact that he works at Intel does count for something. First, no other news site has gotten such an interview, regardless of quality. Secondly, rumors do float around the "fab" which might have told him something we didn't already know. "What was that memo I saw about production being changed to another fab the other day?" "Oh, something to do with Apple. Word is that they..." You know how it goes.

 

And on the DMCA thing - yeah, we did delete some things that were clearly in violation of the DMCA, and if necessary, we will continue to do so. While we still want to remain compliant, we're also working out a clear standard for what can and can't be posted. I'm also aware of copyright law (although I had to educate myself about the DMCA once this site grew), but when other sites are recieving C/D letters, it just makes sense to batton down the hatches.

 

Constructive criticism is fine, and I truly welcome it. Asking that I live up to the standard set by Ars Tecnica is unfair - I'm a college student doing this on the side and I have no industry connections whatsoever. However, when I try to find unique content for this site and discover that it's called "totally biased" (OSX Blows - to what questions were you refering?) and that it "sucked," it makes me question why I bother providing this content at all.

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Hi just a couple of things i'd like to say I keep seeing that everyone here is under the impression that the P4 is dead that's not quite right the Pentium M does have some advantages as does the P4.

 

What you will see going forward is a chip containing elements of both designs, neither the pentium 4 or the pentium M.

 

The current Pentium D processors are largley based on P4's and the newer Pentium D's (and furture multicore chips) are still going to be largely based on this design but with some of the Pentium M optimisations and power reduction properties.

No, it is rather vice versa.

 

Of course the P4 chips built on the Netburst architecture are only slowly phased out, which will take some time (they won't fall from the face of the earth in a second). Serious further development of this technology has been abandoned, however. Tejas (the evolution in Netburst design) has been dropped in favor of Merom (and its cache-increased desktop-tweak Conroe), which had been planned as the natural successor to Yonah in Notebooks, but is now extended to the desktop series and small servers.

 

Intel to Cancel NetBurst, Pentium 4, Xeon Evolution.

Tejas, Jayhawk Reportedly Shelved

http://www.xbitlabs.com/news/cpu/display/20040507000306.html

 

Intel faces performance struggle for two hard years

The Roadmap to Recovery: Part I 10GHz was dreaming the impossible dream

http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=19105

 

How Intel will rip up its current roadmaps

The Roadmap to Recovery II Competition is the name of the game

http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=19110

 

Intel to unveil 'next-generation architecture'

http://cio.co.nz/cio.nsf/0/AC1B8C0AFF0D06F...B3?OpenDocument

 

What Intel is touting now as its "new" micro-architecture is basically an evolution of the Pentium M design (adapted for better scalability) with some remnants of the old Netburst architecture thrown in. Of course Intel is not willing to admit that their Netburst design was a failure, so what they're saying is rather that they "combined" the strengths of both Netburst and their Pentium M line:

 

"Intel will introduce the micro-architecture in the second half of 2006, which combines the strength of the company's current Intel NetBurst® and Pentium M® micro-architectures and adds new features."

Intel CEO Outlines New Platform Directions

http://www.intel.com/pressroom/archive/rel...0050823corp.htm

 

But let's take a close look. What lives on from Netburst in Intel's upcoming designs? Not much. The pipeline's depth is reduced from 30 stages in the Pentium 4 to 14 stages in the new chips. Hyperthreading is dropped, but may come back in later revisions (the point is that with the Pentium M design, hyperthreading does not yield the performance gains seen in Netburst, anyway). It largely boils down to the bus interface and 64bit-support that the new chips will inherit from Netburst (yet don't let us forget that the 64bit-extensions originally come from AMD!), and that isn't much:

 

"To put it bluntly, the next-generation microprocessor architecture borrows the FSB and 64-bit capabilities of NetBurst and combines it with the power saving features of the Pentium M platform."

Fall IDF 2005 - Day 1: Intel's New Architecture Details Revealed

http://www.anandtech.com/tradeshows/showdoc.aspx?i=2504

 

Fall IDF 2005: Intel's unified processor architecture

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20050823-5232.html

 

Intel reveals details of new CPU design

http://techreport.com/onearticle.x/8695

 

Intel to move to common CPU architecture

http://techreport.com/onearticle.x/8694

 

IDF Fall 2005 wrap

Intel aims for more performance per watt

http://techreport.com/etc/2005q3/idf/index.x?pg=1

 

Some of the technology in the Pentium M's is going to filter accross the intel product range starting with modified server processors and then desktop processors later on this technology WILL NOT be surplanting the entire existing core but rather enhancing it.
Again, it's vice versa, and considering your last remark: no, completely wrong. First come new notebook processors, quickly followed by their desktop counterparts (also see my remarks above about their direct relationship), and the server processor will be the last to make the transition. Woodcrest, Cloverton and Whitefield (the multi-core server processors based on the new architecture) are scheduled for the time period between mid to late 2006 and 2007, IIRC, and with their introduction Intel's entire Netburst-based product portfolio WILL have been surplanted.

 

The pentium 4 in it's current incarnation will dissappear but it is by no means an obsolete technology the core will still be around powering pentium d's. What people need to also understand is that intel are currently shipping the third generation of Pentium M's which have undergone design changes with each new generation and even with this third generation these CPU's will not be replacing the current desktop counterparts.
Huh? Sorry, according to what I know of Intel's roadmap, all Netburst-based designs will have been abandoned already by mid-2006 in the notebook, desktop and small server department with exception of the high-end server market, which is expected to make the transition complete somewhen in 2007.

 

I am particularly referring to this slide which was shown at the last IDF:

 

http://www.pcperspective.com/images/reviews/164/01.jpg

 

Which can be found in the following article:

 

A New Micro-Architecture

http://www.pcper.com/article.php?aid=164

 

The pentium M is a lower power CPU with a good performance per watt but for the most computational power you will be looking at pentium d's.
Conroe, which together with Merom is the next evolution of the upcoming dual-core Pentium M known as Yonah, is scheduled for mid-2006 and expected to be twice as fast as the processor it is about to substitute: the last Netburst-based, dual-core (Pentium D) CPU in that segment, Presler, which isn't even out yet and will be debuting at the beginning of next year, only half a year before the lauch of its successor.

 

FALL IDF - Conroe might be business-bound in 2006

http://www.webwereld.nl/articles/36937

 

Twice as fast, isn't that fast enough for a start?

 

The pentium M however is still a fantastic chip.
Yes, indeed, it is.

 

With regard to the interview it did read totally like you were trying to get the technician to say 'yeah Apple are ace thank god they came along' which obviously isn't the case. It came over totally biased...
Yep, that pretty much reflects my own sentiments.
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Mashugly,

 

as I said already, generally speaking I really DO appreciate all the work you guys put into this place... But then I am reading comments from some of your comrades like this Shuddertrix guy on other OS X for Intel related forums like Simon's...

 

http://www.win2osx.net/forum/showpost.php?...26&postcount=20

 

...and then I am asking myself: what is all that fuss about? What are the true intentions of the people that have created this site? Really the advancement of the community? Or is it in the first place rather a narrow-minded, perhaps juvenile attempt to bolster one's ego as one is getting media attention and hosting a site that is frequented by many people? My personal opinion on that matter is that Simon did a really great job with his resource center at a time when YOU (i.e., this site) were (was) struggling with DMCA woes. During this time I really wasn't often here, but as far as I can remember (I sincerely do not want to do you wrong here -- perhaps it is just my own misperception, I hope you can clear that up) it was Simon's place where all the progress was going on that finally lead to Mac OS X and its GUI running on ordinary white boxes. Why do at least some of you stir up such competition and do not acknowledge each other's efforts and successes?

 

This is the reason why I reacted so harshly to this interview. I thought: Is getting media attention, being the best and greatest, competition... the only thing you're after? Is that more important than to deliver quality, and to be honest to your audience? Are you just playing games here? To be frank: After reading your interview, I felt pissed.

 

First, no other news site has gotten such an interview, regardless of quality.
How can YOU tell? The fact that nowhere else such reports have popped up does not necessarily mean that there weren't a myriad of self-proclaimed "insiders" queueing up to "reveal" irrelevant rubbish to journalists. It might rather be the case that other editors decided not to publish stuff that didn't comply with their own high quality standards, which make up their reputation and credibility.

 

However, when I try to find unique content for this site and discover that it's called "totally biased" (OSX Blows - to what questions were you refering?) and that it "sucked," it makes me question why I bother providing this content at all.

Yes, and that's also my question. When I read such postings from guys like Shuddertrix (see my link above), I'm really wondering whether you (not YOU personally, but the maintainers of this site in general) are doing that because of dedication to the community or because of ego-related reasons (which would be, in the end, a severe disservice to the whole Mac-on-Intel-interested crowd).

 

I feel like this guy on the other forum (although I am not that old yet):

 

OK, I'm 46 years old and all this childishness looks pretty silly.

 

None of you are '1337. There is no point in "competition". We are a community of enthusiasts, and all we want is to share information and help each other get this thing working. I don't care whether I get it from here, from OSX86Project, from 360Hacker, from *anywhere*. "Harrassing mods"? Enough already.

 

If you are in this game to be "competitive", or to generate more page views for your site, or for any reason other than to be egalitarian and share the (info) wealth, you should take your site down and let someone else do it that will be.

http://www.win2osx.net/forum/showpost.php?...42&postcount=36

 

This is BY NO MEANS meant to be a personal attack, but rather a serious, sincere question by me which I have been asking myself again and again quickly since having become a registered member here, and even more so after having seen that elsewhere (like on Simon's forum), things can go differently.

 

Constructive criticism is fine, and I truly welcome it.
I hope you don't mind that I have taken this for an invitation to finally say what's been on my heart for quite some time now, silently watching what is going on here.
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They need OS X out there more and today their PC's have very limited appeal because unless you're willing to learn unix, you have a very specific use for an apple for business or you're willing to write your own software what use is an Apple???

 

Most developers SHOULD know unix or have learned how to program in it while in school.

 

 

And you forgot group d) of apple users, professionals.

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This is never going to happen. Apple may be less than a major player in the PC market, but they will lose 50% of their user base in weeks if they do this. You don't realize the Mac community's mindset; this would be viewed as a major betrayal.

 

Have you ever heard of Be? NeXT? These companies all desperately released their OSes for Intel,

 

Not true.

 

Be was getting massive press and was expected to start becoming a huge player. Beos Personal was being downloaded by many many people, and those who did, liked it.

 

So what happenned? The company suddenly decided to shift gears towards the PDA market just as the operating system started to hit its stride..

 

 

Next, while they were not huge, they stopped because Apple bought the OS, it became OSX, and the company president/owner was Steve Jobs, after he had been outed. When they bought Next, Jobs came with it. More of like a 2 for 1 deal. Next was basically absorbed back into Apple from wence it came.

 

 

 

Neither Next or Be was necessarily forced onto Intel, and neither was really locked onto one processor, even though both company owners presided over Apple at one time or another.

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Not true.

 

Be was getting massive press and was expected to start becoming a huge player. Beos Personal was being downloaded by many many people, and those who did, liked it.

 

So what happenned? The company suddenly decided to shift gears towards the PDA market just as the operating system started to hit its stride..

Next, while they were not huge, they stopped because Apple bought the OS, it became OSX, and the company president/owner was Steve Jobs, after he had been outed. When they bought Next, Jobs came with it. More of like a 2 for 1 deal. Next was basically absorbed back into Apple from wence it came.

Neither Next or Be was necessarily forced onto Intel, and neither was really locked onto one processor, even though both company owners presided over Apple at one time or another.

 

That could be said. However, if Be thought they would do well in the OS market, they wouldn't have switched over to PDAs. Be obviously believed that they could get a piece of the Internet appliance/mobile/PDA market if they decided to make such a drastic change.

 

It's not as clear-cut with NeXT, since Steve Jobs was running the company, and he clearly was not happy with Apple. Here's a quote from http://www.simson.net/nextworld/NextWorld_...ExpoSpec04.html :

By porting NeXTstep to more industry-standard systems and licensing NeXTstep to major PC vendors, NeXT hopes to shed its proprietary image. "Everybody thinks of us as a closed company, but we're really an open company," said Mike Slade, NeXT's director of marketing. While Slade wouldn't comment on which other PC vendors NeXT has talked to, he confirmed the company is hoping to sign up numerous OEMs of NeXTstep in the next few months. Slade acknowledged that '486 systems running NeXTstep will not necessarily be any less expensive than NeXT machines because of the required memory, hard disk, and video.

 

While the debut of NeXTstep '486 makes NeXT a software supplier, it does not mean that NeXT will become a major seller of shrinkwrapped software. Instead, the emphasis will be on forging relationships with PC vendors who will bundle the software with their systems, said Slade. Whether or not NeXT will decide to package the software separately had not been determined at press time.

 

Now, it seems to me that NeXT was fairly reluctant to get into the shrink-wrapped software business and that they still wanted a hold over the hardware NeXTstep came out on.

 

I'm not saying anyone was forced onto Intel, just that they made a business decision to abandon proprietary boxes and that they got absorbed by bigger companies.

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