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Stagnated? Weren't PowerPC chips pretty advanced compared to Intel whose chips were carrying a lot of baggage at the time? Given that PowerPC chips were based o

Stagnated? Weren't PowerPC chips pretty advanced compared to Intel whose chips were carrying a lot of baggage at the time? Given that PowerPC chips were based on RISC, I'd guess they're a lot closer to the M1 than modern Intel chips are. My understanding is that IBM/Motorola's struggle with achieving volume is what doomed them not a lack of innovation. This is all way outta my area of understanding though.

ghaff 4y ago
In general, IBM was just going in a different direction with Power than Apple needed them to be going in. IBM was and is focused on the highest end, high priced end of the server market.
b3morales 4y ago
If I recall, the scuttlebutt was that Motorola had promised Apple (meaning Steve Jobs) that faster clock speeds were just around the corner for a while, and when that repeatedly failed to materialize Apple (meaning Steve Jobs) got pissed and activated the Intel backup plan.
- newsclues 4y ago
  It was driven by power and heat for the portable market. Intel x86 laptops were the best at the time and PPC couldn’t compete especially with thin and light.
- kalleboo 4y ago
  By the time Apple dropped PowerPC and went to Intel, Motorola was already out of the picture and IBM was making the G5
  - rdsnsca 4y ago
    The G5 was the desktop chip, it was Motorola's task to scale it down for laptops, which they were unable to do.
  - b3morales 4y ago
    That's a good point, thanks.
  - philwelch 4y ago
    Sort of. The G4 chip was still used in laptops until the Intel transition, and was produced by Motorola until they spun off their semiconductor division into Freescale, which continued producing the G4 until the end.
- 7speter 4y ago
  Well it wasnt really clockspeeds, it was performance per watt. The g5 was able to go into a (watercooled) powermac but IBM couldnt get it to run cool and efficient enough to go into apple laptops (or the mac mini iirc). By 2005 intel was, at the very least, probably prototyping multicore (I dont remember if IBM’s processor offering to apple was multicore at the time) chips that blew ibm (and previous intel offerings) out of the water performance and efficiency wise and apple announced the transition.
  - kergonath 4y ago
    The last generation of PowerMacs had dual-core G5s. They still ran very hot and it did not change much in the end.
    - mattl 4y ago
      Last generation had quad core with water cooling I think. They were really trying to get everything out of them.
      - windowsrookie 4y ago
        It was two Dual-Core 2.5GHZ CPUs. I have one sitting under my desk right now. ;) Pretty advanced for 2005. Four 64bit CPU cores, 16GB DDR2 RAM, and liquid cooled. It's still usable today 17 years later and it could work for 90% of what I do on the computer. It draws nearly 1000 watts under full load tho....
        mattl 4y ago
        1000 watts, damn. So what can’t it do? I’m guessing modern websites struggle on it
        windowsrookie 4y ago
        Yes, websites with heavy JavaScript really slow it down. The newest browser available for it is based on a very old version of Firefox. https://github.com/classilla/tenfourfox/ https://github.com/classilla/tenfourfox/ Youtube is extremely slow, and it can only play back 360p or lower video smoothly. There is no hardware h.264 acceleration. “New” Reddit is also very slow. But old Reddit loads fine. Hacker news is very fast, loads as quickly as a modern computer.
giantrobot 4y ago
> My understanding is that IBM/Motorola's struggle with achieving volume is what doomed them not a lack of innovation. Before Apple announced their Intel transition laptops were more than half of their Mac sales. Of their desktop sales, the iMac dominated over PowerMacs. So a majority of the systems they were selling had relatively tight thermal envelopes. Neither IBM nor Motorola was willing (or able) to get computing power equivalent to x86 into those thermal envelopes. The G5 was a derivative of IBM's POWER chips they put in servers and workstations. They were largely unconcerned with thermals. Motorola saw the embedded space as more profitable and didn't want to invest in the G4 to make it more competitive. Meanwhile Intel had introduced the Pentium III derived Core series chips. Good thermals, high performance, multiple cores, and 64-bit. It was better performance than Apple's G5 in the thermal envelope of the G4. Neither IBM or Motorola had general issues with production volume. Apple switching was all about the future direction of the architecture. There was no market for desktop PowerPC chips besides Apple. Neither IBM or Motorola really wanted to compete directly with Intel and saw their fortunes in other segments. So Apple went with Intel because they were making chips compatible with what Apple wanted to do with the Mac. The first Intel Macs ran circles around the PowerPC machines they replaced with no major sacrifices needed in thermals or battery life. So Intel innovation in the 00s got Apple to switch to them and a lack thereof got them to switch away again.
GeekyBear 4y ago
> Weren't PowerPC chips pretty advanced compared to Intel PowerPC had better floating point performance which was important for graphics and publishing workflows. Photoshop performance comparisons seemed to happen at every year's MacWorld during that period. Unfortunately, IBM used Power as a workstation chip, and making a version of the chips for laptops was not on their radar. Of course, at the time, Pentium IV chips weren't known for running cool either. The more popular laptops got, the more this was a problem. After Intel transitioned to the Core architecture, Apple transitioned to Intel so they could make laptops with a much better performance per watt than PowerPC offered.
- slowmovintarget 4y ago
  People weren't buying laptops for everything during the PowerPC transition. They were buying desktops. No one doing "serious" work bought laptops in 1994. Not for coding, not for photo manipulation, or even gaming. It wasn't until the 20-teens (2013 - 2015) that Macs for coding caught on. Apple transitioning to PowerPC made perfect sense for graphics workstations.
  - GeekyBear 4y ago
    >People weren't buying laptops for everything during the PowerPC transition. That was the period where it became obvious that laptops would overtake desktops and become the most popular form factor for computers. Neither PowerPC or Pentium IV were a good fit for laptops, but once Intel transitioned from NetBurst to Core it was a new ball game. Apple even transitioned back to 32 bit for it, since Core didn't offer 64 bit support until Core 2 shipped.
  - matthewfcarlson 4y ago
    Most students in my engineering programs had macs (2010-2015)
    - slowmovintarget 4y ago
      Right, but I didn't start seeing Mac laptops show up at work (software companies in the Midwest and Eastern U.S.) until 2014 when the MBP became a serious contender to Dells and HPs. I had a Toshiba laptop in '95 for work, but it was a spare for when I was traveling. That pattern continued with Windows laptops as supplements for desktops in the office for the next 20 years. In 2015 my company went all MacBook Pro for everything, but they were trailing not trailblazing. Students are always going be the leading edge, because they have to be mobile, they get used to it, then they bring it into the new workplace when they come. It's one of the benefits of hiring in new people.
scarface74 4y ago
The PPC processors may have been decent. But they were hamstrung by having to run an emulated 68K operating system and Apple cheaper out by having slower buses.
- Affric 4y ago
  Perhaps in terms of sheer raw compute but across every scale from data centre to IoT and wearables.
  - scarface74 4y ago
    PPC processors in wearables and IOT devices?

ghaff 4y ago

In general, IBM was just going in a different direction with Power than Apple needed them to be going in. IBM was and is focused on the highest end, high priced end of the server market.

b3morales 4y ago

If I recall, the scuttlebutt was that Motorola had promised Apple (meaning Steve Jobs) that faster clock speeds were just around the corner for a while, and when that repeatedly failed to materialize Apple (meaning Steve Jobs) got pissed and activated the Intel backup plan.

newsclues 4y ago
It was driven by power and heat for the portable market. Intel x86 laptops were the best at the time and PPC couldn’t compete especially with thin and light.
kalleboo 4y ago
By the time Apple dropped PowerPC and went to Intel, Motorola was already out of the picture and IBM was making the G5
- rdsnsca 4y ago
  The G5 was the desktop chip, it was Motorola's task to scale it down for laptops, which they were unable to do.
- b3morales 4y ago
  That's a good point, thanks.
- philwelch 4y ago
  Sort of. The G4 chip was still used in laptops until the Intel transition, and was produced by Motorola until they spun off their semiconductor division into Freescale, which continued producing the G4 until the end.
7speter 4y ago
Well it wasnt really clockspeeds, it was performance per watt. The g5 was able to go into a (watercooled) powermac but IBM couldnt get it to run cool and efficient enough to go into apple laptops (or the mac mini iirc). By 2005 intel was, at the very least, probably prototyping multicore (I dont remember if IBM’s processor offering to apple was multicore at the time) chips that blew ibm (and previous intel offerings) out of the water performance and efficiency wise and apple announced the transition.
- kergonath 4y ago
  The last generation of PowerMacs had dual-core G5s. They still ran very hot and it did not change much in the end.
  - mattl 4y ago
    Last generation had quad core with water cooling I think. They were really trying to get everything out of them.
    - windowsrookie 4y ago
      It was two Dual-Core 2.5GHZ CPUs. I have one sitting under my desk right now. ;) Pretty advanced for 2005. Four 64bit CPU cores, 16GB DDR2 RAM, and liquid cooled. It's still usable today 17 years later and it could work for 90% of what I do on the computer. It draws nearly 1000 watts under full load tho....
      - mattl 4y ago
        1000 watts, damn. So what can’t it do? I’m guessing modern websites struggle on it
        windowsrookie 4y ago
        Yes, websites with heavy JavaScript really slow it down. The newest browser available for it is based on a very old version of Firefox. https://github.com/classilla/tenfourfox/ https://github.com/classilla/tenfourfox/ Youtube is extremely slow, and it can only play back 360p or lower video smoothly. There is no hardware h.264 acceleration. “New” Reddit is also very slow. But old Reddit loads fine. Hacker news is very fast, loads as quickly as a modern computer.

giantrobot 4y ago

> My understanding is that IBM/Motorola's struggle with achieving volume is what doomed them not a lack of innovation. Before Apple announced their Intel transition laptops were more than half of their Mac sales. Of their desktop sales, the iMac dominated over PowerMacs. So a majority of the systems they were selling had relatively tight thermal envelopes. Neither IBM nor Motorola was willing (or able) to get computing power equivalent to x86 into those thermal envelopes. The G5 was a derivative of IBM's POWER chips they put in servers and workstations. They were largely unconcerned with thermals. Motorola saw the embedded space as more profitable and didn't want to invest in the G4 to make it more competitive. Meanwhile Intel had introduced the Pentium III derived Core series chips. Good thermals, high performance, multiple cores, and 64-bit. It was better performance than Apple's G5 in the thermal envelope of the G4. Neither IBM or Motorola had general issues with production volume. Apple switching was all about the future direction of the architecture. There was no market for desktop PowerPC chips besides Apple. Neither IBM or Motorola really wanted to compete directly with Intel and saw their fortunes in other segments. So Apple went with Intel because they were making chips compatible with what Apple wanted to do with the Mac. The first Intel Macs ran circles around the PowerPC machines they replaced with no major sacrifices needed in thermals or battery life. So Intel innovation in the 00s got Apple to switch to them and a lack thereof got them to switch away again.

GeekyBear 4y ago

> Weren't PowerPC chips pretty advanced compared to Intel PowerPC had better floating point performance which was important for graphics and publishing workflows. Photoshop performance comparisons seemed to happen at every year's MacWorld during that period. Unfortunately, IBM used Power as a workstation chip, and making a version of the chips for laptops was not on their radar. Of course, at the time, Pentium IV chips weren't known for running cool either. The more popular laptops got, the more this was a problem. After Intel transitioned to the Core architecture, Apple transitioned to Intel so they could make laptops with a much better performance per watt than PowerPC offered.

slowmovintarget 4y ago
People weren't buying laptops for everything during the PowerPC transition. They were buying desktops. No one doing "serious" work bought laptops in 1994. Not for coding, not for photo manipulation, or even gaming. It wasn't until the 20-teens (2013 - 2015) that Macs for coding caught on. Apple transitioning to PowerPC made perfect sense for graphics workstations.
- GeekyBear 4y ago
  >People weren't buying laptops for everything during the PowerPC transition. That was the period where it became obvious that laptops would overtake desktops and become the most popular form factor for computers. Neither PowerPC or Pentium IV were a good fit for laptops, but once Intel transitioned from NetBurst to Core it was a new ball game. Apple even transitioned back to 32 bit for it, since Core didn't offer 64 bit support until Core 2 shipped.
- matthewfcarlson 4y ago
  Most students in my engineering programs had macs (2010-2015)
  - slowmovintarget 4y ago
    Right, but I didn't start seeing Mac laptops show up at work (software companies in the Midwest and Eastern U.S.) until 2014 when the MBP became a serious contender to Dells and HPs. I had a Toshiba laptop in '95 for work, but it was a spare for when I was traveling. That pattern continued with Windows laptops as supplements for desktops in the office for the next 20 years. In 2015 my company went all MacBook Pro for everything, but they were trailing not trailblazing. Students are always going be the leading edge, because they have to be mobile, they get used to it, then they bring it into the new workplace when they come. It's one of the benefits of hiring in new people.

scarface74 4y ago

The PPC processors may have been decent. But they were hamstrung by having to run an emulated 68K operating system and Apple cheaper out by having slower buses.

Affric 4y ago
Perhaps in terms of sheer raw compute but across every scale from data centre to IoT and wearables.
- scarface74 4y ago
  PPC processors in wearables and IOT devices?