Why IBM?

[ADEX]

The Niagra CPUs might sound impressive. But have you seen the prices? I think the best deal you can get right now on a server with a single T1 CPU is still over $10,000USD. And considering that with 8 core it is not even twice as fast as a baseline 2 CPU intel box even running the type of application it was designed to run...

Huh?
You evidently haven't seen any benchmarks, Niagara outguns 6-8 core x86 (AMD or Intel) systems on the tasks it's designed for, it even outguns an 8 way POWER5 box in one benchmark, they're not usually outgunned by anything.

IIRC the lowest cost machine is something in the region of $4000 but you can probably get a hefty discount on it.

 

[Fox5]

That's not really x86 though, is it? Anymore than Cell is PPC. Unless their 'Cell' version is just multicore x86s, which isn't then a 'Cell' version.

X86 + extensions, the current x86 has SSE, x87, and some other instructions that weren't native to x86, but at its heart it's still the x86 instruction set.

This is false. Apple was just their most high profile customer. But the reality is that Apple was one of the smallest PowerPC customers IBM had. Only a small fraction of PowerPC CPUs ended up in Apple desktops.

If you are only looking at the consumer products space, then it might look like Apple was the only customer for the Power Architecture. But if you look at the enterprise and business systems space you will see this is not the case. These CPUs get used everywhere from routers to dedicated mass storage devices.

Car radios and routers don't exactly need high performance.
Most of the applications for Power processors were embedded applications. I believe IBM's two highest end processors were the Power5 and Power4, Apple got a cut down version of the Power4 and the Power5...dominated the ultra highend workstation and server market.

 

[randycat99]

Car radios and routers don't exactly need high performance.

When he mentions routers, these aren't the $50 ones you get with your DSL installation. PPC exists in full featured corporate routers that process transmissions at Gb/s. The fanciest car radios these days aren't exactly slackers, either, in what they do.

 

[Fox5]

When he mentions routers, these aren't the $50 ones you get with your DSL installation. PPC exists in full featured corporate routers that process transmissions at Gb/s. The fanciest car radios these days aren't exactly slackers, either, in what they do.

I still doubt they use Power5s or Power4s. Doesn't Freescale take care of most of these apps and their most powerful chip is the G4, and they're likely not even using that in these. Ruggedness + low heat > raw power for these applications.

 

[randycat99]

Well no one said Power4/5's were put into routers. PPC encompasses quite a bit more than just the Power series.

 

[Fox5]

Well no one said Power4/5's were put into routers. PPC encompasses quite a bit more than just the Power series.

Yes, but the original quote referred to:

When the next gen consoles started to be designed the MIPS architecture, UltraSparc and other MIPS architectures were oblitterated by the x86, only the PowerPC survived because the Apple computers needs good performance against the PC.

Obviously the PowerPC chips being put into routers and cars aren't anywhere near what was being put into Apple computers, and definitely not usable for a console. (maybe one of those radica baseball tv game things) Apple was one of the few users of the high end powerpc chips, and may have even had the most significant volume of them.

 

[randycat99]

That may be too broad a stroke to generalize all PPC's. A lot of times, it is more a matter of the architecture being groomed for a specific/range of tasks, rather than the latest incarnation in the PPC family being the most "powerful". The Power chips are designed for server duties. The G5 was a rework from there to focus on desktop tasks. Can't forget about G3/G4/603/604's, either. All of those have found a home in the Apple family of computers. The PPC's that get used in corporate routers are aimed for router/networking kinds of tasks. They are all "powerful" in their own ways, and not all tasks work best on a single "kind" of uber processor. It's not impossible that one of these "router" chips have found their way into consoles with appropriate reworking, and appeared as the "PPE" we know of today.

 

[Fox5]

That may be too broad a stroke to generalize all PPC's. A lot of times, it is more a matter of the architecture being groomed for a specific/range of tasks, rather than the latest incarnation in the PPC family being the most "powerful". The Power chips are designed for server duties. The G5 was a rework from there to focus on desktop tasks. Can't forget about G3/G4/603/604's, either. All of those have found a home in the Apple family of computers. The PPC's that get used in corporate routers are aimed for router/networking kinds of tasks. They are all "powerful" in their own ways, and not all tasks work best on a single "kind" of uber processor. It's not impossible that one of these "router" chips have found their way into consoles with appropriate reworking, and appeared as the "PPE" we know of today.

Argh, suppositions have killed me!

 

[Urian]

I was only saying that when the next gen consoles started their design IBM was the better choice that they can made for a SuperScalar RISC Processor because the continuous concurrency of Apple computers with x86 compatible computers.

Now that Apple has jump to x86 and IBM is offering to their server clients the Broadband Engine (for scientific computing is better than the 970 thanks to the huge floating point capability of Cell) with the trademark POWER istead of PowerPC it seems that the PowerPC is going to be reduced to the embedded market.