Posted on Friday 19 August 2005 - Popularity: unranked
The official reason for the Intel switch is “performance per watt” and Intel’s processor roadmap. Most thought that just the normal evolution of the current low power Intel chips and IBM’s problems was reason enough for Apple’s decision, but why only Intel and not any x86 compatible chip? Most did answer this question with something like: “Apple made a very good deal with Intel”. Now this isn’t the only logical answer. An other one could be: “Intel is working on a revolutionary new chip architecture, a chip with extremely good performance per watt ratings.”
So let us analyze this a bit further. What gives a chip a good “performance per watt” rating? First there are all the process technologies used to fab the silicon. There really isn’t to expect much improvement anytime soon, at least not enough to make it a revolutionary chip. The second alternative would be to create a completely new architecture where a bigger percentage of the chips transistors do actual calculation and a smaller part the whole data management inside the chip. One currently a lot discussed chip that did it this way is the Cell chip used in the next Playstation. The problem with the Cell chip is that you have to optimize for the architecture to get the performance out of it, you can’t just throw general purpose code at it, something Intel would have no use for.
What Intel would need is a general purpose x86 compatible CPU with those performance advantages. A possible way to do this is with a hardware translator, basically an emulator inside the chip that translates x86 code into better processable code. Transmeta already did this with their low power chips and Intel could do the same, just better optimized for high performance with bigger caches and more cores. If this theINQ article is right, something they aren’t that often, but this one seems to be spot on, than the future of Intel based Macs would be something to really look forward to. More informations about all this is to be expected as soon as next week, when Intel’s developer forum takes place, so hold your breath (only virtually of course).
Fredi
