At 13:49 +0200 5/7/11, Matevzť Markovicť wrote: Wow! If Apple goes to ARM on laptops, wouldn't that be like going back to the PowerPC. I know that the times are different today and that ARM is way better off than PowerPC was in 2005 as far as Apple is concerned, but still, what would the performance of say future equivalent of MacBook pro be? And what will they stick into MacPros and iMacs? Is there a ARM chip in the roadmap that can match current Xeon generation? Is there even a ARM chip that can match PowerPC 970gx?
The ARM chips do not have the AltaVec stacked arithmetic capability that the Gx series have. The idea is that vector operations which have a lot of identical processes applied to a list of values can be stacked up to that after, say 100 , clock pulses a new result comes out for each clock pulse, with a 100 pulse overall delay. That's very useful to scientists, engineers, and three-D games. Modern Intel chips don't have that either. It turns out that threaded processing available on video plug-in boards behaves in a similar fashion and it's possible to pass off mathematics to the video board in a way that's similar to AltaVec. It's what makes those 3-D views in the games react to a mouse or game control unit. Soooo. It looks like Intel with plug-in cards can multiply quickly. Probably not so for portables. -- --> Give me liberty or give me Obamacare <-- -- You received this message because you are a member of G-Group, a group for those using G3, G4, and G5 desktop Macs - with a particular focus on Power Macs. The list FAQ is at http://lowendmac.com/lists/g-list.shtml and our netiquette guide is at http://www.lowendmac.com/lists/netiquette.shtml To post to this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/g3-5-list
