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View Full Version : Apple Will Use Intel Processors in 2006!



WILL
07-06-2005, 06:15 AM
Well what was once a meer rumour has been made official by Apple themselves. Apple will be using Intel Microprocessors beginning next year, in 2006.

Originally reported by CNET in this article ('http://news.com.com/Apple+to+ditch+IBM%2C+switch+to+Intel+chips/2100-1006_3-5731398.html?tag=nl'), Steve Jobs was to report on Monday that they will be making the move away from the PowerPC brand by IBM and towards Intel. On Monday they did just that in their article that can be found here ('http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2005/jun/06intel.html').

Thanks to tux for originally pointing this out.

savage
07-06-2005, 06:36 AM
I'd like to know what Borland's thinking. Could this possibly breathe life in Kylix?

tux
07-06-2005, 12:05 PM
the developer kits are using 3.6ghz P4.

osx cant be installed on a home brew pc though :(

savage
07-06-2005, 12:09 PM
Apple want HW lockin for a good reason. If they limit the amount of hardware that the OS can run on, they will have less support issues and more control over the quality of the machines that are sold. Mac's are known for being stylish, both HW and SW, so I think Apple just want to keep control of that aspect of it. Whether that is still a good strategy, only time will tell.

tux
07-06-2005, 12:35 PM
the only way i will run out and buy a mac is if its true they can duel boot with windows. i dont have the desk space for a new machine.

im pretty sure others feel that way too

Lightning
07-06-2005, 06:29 PM
I'm for Apple having an x86 port, i don't think they will just drop PPC, remember there are already Cell Processors and even XBOX 360 seems to have 3 PPCs inside.

On the Kylix and Delphi64 issue i think you shouldn't have high hopes, they lost http://www.zenhacker.com/BorlandIsiDead.htm


1) Microsoft had bought away thirty Borland employees. Chief Architects, Senior Technology Officers, Compiler Engineers, that kind of folk. (I posted a list of names and job descriptions but that got cancelled).

Traveler
07-06-2005, 07:06 PM
On the Kylix and Delphi64 issue i think you shouldn't have high hopes, they lost http://www.zenhacker.com/BorlandIsiDead.htm


Quite a depressing article you got there. Can't say it gave me a good feeling about the next Delphi version. :(
Then again, perhaps in a few years or so, we'll all be working with FreePascal though... who knows.

Sly
07-06-2005, 10:42 PM
Danny Thorpe (I think it was Danny) went to Apple recently. He was one the major Delphi developers at Borland.

savage
08-06-2005, 06:16 AM
Are you sure it's Danny? I know that Corbin Dunn definately left Borland about 3 months ago to work at Apple.

Sly
08-06-2005, 06:17 AM
Probably Corbin then. I had the feeling I got the name wrong.

cairnswm
08-06-2005, 06:41 AM
I can never take Articles like that one seriously. Someone is having a serious rant against something else so suddenly everything is bad. :evil: I do not think thats true. There is ALWAYS something good about anything you have a look at.

In fact that article is probably similar to any review I'd write about and FPS game out there. Terrible game play, terrible camera angle, not enough interaction with my gun, lack of enjoyment etc :) Ok so I hate FPs games :) But they often have amazing graphics, they push the abilities of screen cards and effectivly drive the improvement and abilities of screen cards. So there is somthing good (even though its pretty small) about them. :twisted:

WILL
09-06-2005, 07:00 AM
Well the x86 architechure it seems will be king after 2006 once the new Mac of that era roll out. But will this make porting to Mac using FPC more complex or less? And will Borland reconsider a Mac port now?


Sorry guys, I might rant a bit here. And off-topic too, I should at least admit. :P

As per Lightning's link (very interesting article btw!), this is some of the reasoning that I had spoken to Dominique and Blue about changing the focus of the two communities DGDev.tk and DelphiGamer.com from Delphi to a more generic one, Pascal (or it's cousins, sisters and brothers). The term Delphi, just isn't cutting the mustard anymor these days. In act the name Delphi was just a marketing scheme to popularize a new standard of Pascal anyhow.

Borland in many ways has more or less hurded the Pascal crowd how they wanted for the past so many years. It defined Extended Pascal and made it standard. It designed one of the--arguably, best Pascal compilers in the languages history. And started the first Windows-based Pascal compiler that we know as Delphi. With that redefined the Object Pascal language and then later decided it wanted to call it Delphi to be neat and fancy. However needlessly, I think.

In doing all of this, noone else, (besides all the great efforts since late after Turbo Pascal was starting to get out-dated) --at least none of the big-dogs had taken up the Pascal flame and kept the language moving forward. Personally I think C was so successful because of a few big-leagers had a personal disinterest in Pascal. It did it's job well and was an excellent language. It just needed the kind of nudge that Borland put into it. C++ on the other hand... well a whole other can of worms. :)

Now after all these years when Borland is making alot of radically different moves, it's because they did it so gradually and in such a way that Pascal users are feeling the void that comes when you have only one ship for your entire fleet. Too many eggs in one basket!

It's to some releif that Free Pascal has done so well that we are not considering buying the latest C Programming in 24 Hours book.

I think that Pascal developers need solutions here. And noone is providing them. Well some are, but it's a select few that are stuck in a really remote and taboo-ed niche. We need someone to un-taboo and reinvent the idea of Pascal. Borland isn't doing it, they are just roughly trying to become on of the other misc. Pascal tool makers. Too bad they forgot that they were the top representative of the language for the past decade or more.

Lightning
10-06-2005, 10:09 AM
Well the x86 architechure it seems will be king after 2006 once the new Mac of that era roll out. But will this make porting to Mac using FPC more complex or less? And will Borland reconsider a Mac port now?

From what i've seen on #fpc it seems FPC's x86 code is more optimised than the PPC code and if Apple will swich to X86 the apps will run faster and let's not forget they will be smaller because x86 code is smaller, FPC is designed to be able to adapt the RTL to any OS so if Linux and Windows are already supprted by FPC, adding the OSX target to x86 won't be that hard since it's already supprted for PPC and there is also the Rosetta emulator wich will run PPC apps for quite a while. Also i have the feeling that Apple will not completly drop PPC, from what i know they already tested AMD and Cell processors but they claim the speed was not as good as with Intel CPUs, i feel they have made a non agression pact with Intel and will keep it that way, i wonder why the move was done only now, they have been compiling OSX on Intel for 5 years, is it the news that MS is considering all kinds of exotic chips lately, maybe the news about XBOX scared them off, also i heard that PPCs are easier to code in ASM as they are more flexible and droping this flexibility isn't going to help Apple, on the other hand the pact with Intel may hide more obscure secrets like introducing a new functionality to Intel's CPUs wich will make them the best mix of both worlds, Intel has announced that they are preparing some new technologies, will these technologies eliminate competition, only time will tell ...

tux
10-06-2005, 11:21 AM
they didnt go with amd because they would have the same problems as there having with ibm atm, they cant ship enough of the chips

LP
12-06-2005, 11:10 PM
A bit off-topic, but after reading the article posted here and FPC + 64-bit stuff wanted to ask this question:
What's so essential in 64-bit code that makes a user choose different compiler just to be able to compile for 64-bit? I haven't had much experience with 64-bit hardware but I believe 32-bit code will somehow run on 64-bit CPUs, right? Besides, there's still plenty of 32-bit hardware all around the world and to cover all the market we would like to target these as well; so I can barely see any point on developing 64-bit applications at the moment (would appreciate if someone could clarify that).

Clootie
13-06-2005, 09:46 AM
Lifepower:
1) Access for larger memory amount - good for modelling / designing apps
2) 3x (?) more general purpose registers available in x64 instruction set - no need to store local vars in memory and compilers can pass more parameters in registers instead of stack.

LP
13-06-2005, 04:45 PM
@ Clootie: thanks for reply!

3x registers?! Excellent! No more "creative thinking" on how to use few registers... ;)

Lightning
17-06-2005, 04:26 PM
I didn't knew about the larger number of registers but i know that the 64 bit apps will run faster on 64 bit CPUs and you will have access to huge memory amounts and possibly larger data types, the new hardware could use virtually unlimited resources(well depending on your pockets ;) ), there are some limitations in the 32 bit architecture that make developers dream about 64 bit.