Steve Jobs: G4 is slower than Intel CPUs

[asian1]

Hello
On today BBC Business Report, Steve Jobs said:
"Once Motorola PowerPC G4 is faster than
Intel X86 CPU, but now Intel had leapfrogged
Motorola. Therefore we had a joint project with
IBM to develop G5 and regain the leadership".
Why AmigaOne still use the old slow G4?
Also from News.com.com:
While Intel and AMD had increased its prediction
on 3rd Quarter result, IBM Microelectronic
(who manufacture PowerPC and G5) was forced
to fire 600 employees.
Why IBM had to fire the employees, if their
products are faster and better than Intel CPUs?

[Tomas]

Why AmigaOne still use the old slow G4?

Cause ibm has sold every chip to apple..  Eyetech/genesi would have to order ALOT of them to get any of them yet.

Why IBM had to fire the employees, if their

Good products, does not mean they will do well, just look at Microsoft... They do VERY WELL even though competitors had much better products. Amiga was great, still they died  :-(

[Darth_X]

Look here:
HERE


"Why AmigaOne still use the old slow G4?"

 I don't know if anyone has the answer except for MAI Logic. Of course Apple seemed to have gobbled the early production G5's.  

"Why IBM had to fire the employees, if their
products are faster and better than Intel CPUs?"

Large corporations tend to do that. Departments that aren't profitable are usually shut down and the staff let go.  Of course Large companies have job posting in other departments that are profitable, where those employees can go apply for.

Even if one company makes better products, that doesn't change that fact that many more people like to buy junky cheaper built product from other companies to save money :-D
 :

[csirac_]

And of course, the tendancy these days is to fire in-house people and outsource/subcontract.

Which is what I'm learning near the end of me M-EE degree, that there are next to zero full time employment options as an Micro-EE at a decent company in Brisbane or even Australia as a whole.. . most are 1 to three person companies, who take on contract jobs, apparently. Bugger.

[iamaboringperson]

Why AmigaOne still use the old slow G4?

That's a start. :-)
(I would prefer the pegII or III myself)

Why IBM had to fire the employees, if their
products are faster and better than Intel CPUs?

If fewer people buy the CPU's they can't go employing a #### load of people. Intel can probably employ more because their CPU's are more popular.
Just logic, really.

[DIABLO_NEGRO]

what the world needs is education becouse people are like stupid sheep and these giant corps are the herders.

[iamaboringperson]

DIABLO_NEGRO wrote:
what the world needs is education becouse people are like stupid sheep and these giant corps are the herders.

So, let me just ask you:

Is "DIABLO_NEGRO" like a stupid sheep?

[DaveP]

Because single or dual/quad G4s is the limit of what ArticiaS(Peg1/AmigaONE) and Marvell Discovery (Peg2) are designed to cater for ( in fact Marvell Discovery is only designed for G3s, that it works with G4s is in incidence of compatibility ).

To use a G5 requires a new northbridge, which requires getting one from the same place Apple does or waiting for a supplier of northbridges to come out with their own. Oh, and that is just the start of your design issues.

That G4 became outclassed was mostly down to Motorola and Apple, that IBM favoured its higher end POWER series was entirely down to Apple sticking with Morotola against the evidence.

We KNOW that the A1 and Pegasos range is behind the curve technically for even personal computing, it is a start, this time next year if we are still all stuck with G4, then is the time to whinge.

If you want to look at the outside reasons why IBM shaved off parts of its 320,000 strong workforce I suggest you look at last years and the year befores published 4th quarter report.

Trying to say that the G5 should have saved that workforce is tacit admission of ignorance of corporate politics and shortsightedness - not least no G5s had gone on sale.

Me? I don't know what you are moaning about. :-)

[Crumb]

@ iamaboringperson

Is "DIABLO_NEGRO" like a stupid sheep?

no, it only means "Black devil"...

I guess you were thinking in "Black sheep"/"oveja negra" but the meaning in spanish is not to refer to somebody stupid but somebody who is different or doesn't do the same as others

[iamaboringperson]

Crumb wrote:
@ iamaboringperson

Is "DIABLO_NEGRO" like a stupid sheep?

no, it only means "Black devil"...

I guess you were thinking in "Black sheep"/"oveja negra" but the meaning in spanish is not to refer to somebody stupid but somebody who is different or doesn't do the same as others

:lol: I had a fair idea of what it ment ;-)

I was actually refering to the poster(an amiga.org member) ;-)

[ksk]

"Why IBM had to fire the employees, if their
products are faster and better than Intel CPUs?"

IBM is a big company, they do a lot more than just processors. IBM manufactures embedded CPUs, desktop CPUs, server CPUs, servers, desktops, laptops and offer a lot of different kind of services.

So, from what department did they fire employees?

An example: Nokia  (as whole) continue to make profit and they gain more and more market share on cell phone business and at still they fire people (from the cell phone networks division which is not as profitable business).


btw. here might be some relevant reading (about CPU performance): http://www.barefeats.com/pentium4.html

[Waccoon]

DaveP:  To use a G5 requires a new northbridge, which requires getting one from the same place Apple does or waiting for a supplier of northbridges to come out with their own. Oh, and that is just the start of your design issues.

Why, oh why, couldn't people see that earlier?  Even if the CPU was faster than any X86 chip, you still have to deal with the motherboard.  I don't care what hardware I use so long as it's a good value.  PowerPC systems, on the whole, are not.

The big reason I'm so harsh on PowerPC is because I really hate proprietary hardware, in general.  With so few choices in that market, you just have to take what's there.  Hardware is only a means to an end.  Software is what matters.  Why people absolutely kill themselves just so they have the novelty of using "non Intel" hardware is beyond me.

Recently, Kodak offered us an "upgrade" to our DLS photo minilab workstation. They told us that after working with IBM for a while, they couldn't get any systems with newer motherboards to work, because they aren't compatible with their proprietary SCSI film scanner.  Yes, regular SCSI wasn't good enough for them, so they made their *own* SCSI card, that just happens to work in only one IBM motherboard.  So, they are offering us the "only thing they can":  A CPU upgrade.  For $5,000, we'll get a refurbished machine, exactly the same as we already have, but instead of having dual 450 Mhz processors, it will have 800Mhz processors.  Nothing else will change.

Hmm...  800Mhz, same hard drive models, same memory, same SCSI config (3 controllers and five hard drives), all squeezed into a minitower... and it's *USED*, all for an amazing bargain of $5,000!  Wow!  Where do I sign up?!

Of course, my boss DID sign up, because, "It's the only upgrade they offer."  I told him that buying it is a very bad idea, because the DLS system is very hard-drive crazy, and new CPUs won't noticably improve performance without newer hard drives, and for $5,000 the system is a complete ripoff.  I told him, point blank, that the upgrade is near worthless and we should go without.

To that, my boss said... quote, "You need to get into the 21st century."

Oh yeah, and they hard-code their software by CPU serial number and an exact model of SCSI card, so if you try to upgrade the CPUs or HD controllers on your own, your license is rendered invalid and the software won't boot... plus, your service warantee is void.

I think I'm in the wrong business.

[JoannaK]

DaveP: Making unjustified rumours ain't polite.. Especially as they
are (apparently once again) coming from 'well trusted sources' of
belgian origin :-)

You don't etiher know (or care) that Marvell Discovery is *THE*
chipset used on Motorolas own Dual G4 evaluation boards? Do you really
belive they'd used those cause they 'just happen to work'?

In the end, I think you never had even readed (not even assuming
understanding) full techical docs for Marvell Discovery series nor Mai
Articia-S. Besides.. There are multitude of Discovery geenrations, I
hope you'll been followed them all before commenting what they can and
can't do :-)


Concerning G5 .. For Amiga-market only there is no point on making
such board. There are no user base nor software to make it worth
effort (not to mention even gettign even economically). Only way to
make it happen is to make system that has makes strong sales on other
markets. Linux, BSD, QNX etc.. With those, there is hope on getting
even, not on Amigas..

But before G5 can happen, there is need to available Bridge chip
(Apple uses their own, not for sale), now first such chip has been
announced by Marvell and it's bound to become reality in next half a
years time. We'll see then what happens... If there is any company
willing to take a risk (and find funding) to make such computer.

[plexus]

Why, why, why, why???
eg:
Why is Morphos much faster on 600 Mhz PPC cpu than WindowsXP on 3000 Mhz intel cpu?

Because you can not just look at the CPU power, you must count the whole system together to get a good speed.

Motherboard,cpu, harddrive and Operating system all this together can give you a system that is good enought for you!
Thats why I Bought AmigaOne

[zacman]

>in fact Marvell Discovery is only designed for G3s,
>that it works with G4s is in incidence of
>compatibility

This is nonsense. The Discovery is being promoted
by Motorola as prefered system controller for the G4
and Motorola uses the Discovery on their own
evaluation boards.