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Originally Posted by KRL
Any of you Mac guys know why did Apple decided to go with Intel CPU's all of a sudden?
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mostly due to the fact that IBM's roadmap for providing a mobile/low-heat version of the G5 processor to replace the aging Motorola G4 in its portable line, the G4 is hopelessly mired by its slow 167MHz frontside bus... the dual-core Intel 'Yonah' is quite a boon to the Apple portable line, and its pretty much Apple's only choice at this stage, their portable line is too important to let get any further behind the performance curve and still command Apple's high-margin pricing. but...
...while its understandable that Apple has no choice but to move their entire product line over to Intel hardware as continued development on the OS and their many pro software packages (Final Cut Pro, Motion, Logic, Aperature, etc.) would be cost prohibitive on two totally different architecures (PPC vs. X86) it isn't the most wonderful news when it comes to the high-end Powermac line of workstations in a lot of ways... the current Intel offerings do not offer anything over the current G5 units, but there are future designs on the Intel roadmap that hopefully will fill the current void.
IBM's G5 processor running in its natural environment (a Powermac, not a castrated iMac) is really a great CPU; *very* high floating-point performance, and a proven ability to run at an astonishing 1.35GHz frontside bus (albeit w/ a liquid-cooling solution in the dual 2.7GHz Powermac)... the only thing in Intel's arsenal that even comes close to the top-shelf G5 is the Itanium processor, which fetches a bin price 5x higher than IBM's G5 so don't hold your breath for Itanium-based Powermacs. but Apple has already stated that the Powermac line will be the last to migrate to the X86 architecture so there will be a lot of legacy support for PPC for a good many years, at least up until 10.5 is released.
makes business sense for both Apple and Intel, Apple can get access to both processors and chipsets all at once... and Intel gets to finally prove to the world that the problem w/ everyones PC's isn't their contribution, its the OS that makes it suck..
