A recent post attempted to compare machines with the new 64bit Itanium processor from HP and Intel with G4 Macs. The comparison of course - could not be made but the post set me thinking. How will this new processor technology affect the Mac/PC dynamic?

Itanium has no real parallel on the Mac platform and that may be very sinificant as one of the base objectives of the processor is compatibility with Intel’s x86 technology. This single fact will take the processor out of workstation land and make its huge processing power accessible to the Intel desktop. What is the implication of this? .. it means that the powerful parallelism (effected by multiple ALUs etc. on the single chip) built into the processor will make for very powerful multimedia desktop machines on the Wintel side that will blow away every advantage of the most powerful Macs (speaking G4’s optimized with altivec(ed) applications). I am half expecting that Motorola will be soon announcing a product design to eventually compete with Itanium (aka IA-64) - I know that 64 bit powerpc chips are in the works BUT are not comparable with the Itanium technology - as for IBM - they are planning on using IA-64 processors too (as are many other big players with their own processor technologies).

The question is - when these powerful Intel desktop/workstation machines come out at competitive pricepoints to the most powerful G4 Macs and with demonstrably much more capable and powerful processing capacity - will they make inroads into the last bastion of Mac resistance - the graphic/creative professional market? I have to think yes - and it will be soon upon us folks - sometime in 2002 the Itanium desktops will start shipping.

Just as an aside the raw clock speed will be about 1.5Ghz at the low end but the parallel processing capabilities makes the MHz moot - (I know Apple claims this too but in Itanium’s case it really is true.). Both clock speed and performace will rapidly shoot-up in 2002/3 however so this is not in any way comparable to Apple’s claims.

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A man once said to the universe “Sir, I exist” - “that fact” replied the universe “does not create in me a sense of obligation”

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: Nico on 2001-07-30 02:02 ]</font>

Another good post, Nico.

I shan’t begin to argue the power issue on the Itaniums, but I will add to the mix the fact that they will bear the burden of not being able to run Mac OS X.

That said, it would be nice if Motorola could bring a 64-bit PowerPC to market sooner, rather than later.

I’ll step aside and let the gearheads among us carry the rest of this discussion.

I thought the G4 was a 64-bit chip. Or do you mean 64-bit instructions, in which case I was corn-fused again.