[Ti] PB's were in real danger of falling behind

[Glenn L. Austin]

on 1/18/2003 11:34 PM, XXL at xxl at mac.com wrote:

> I think that Apple is still way behind on processors.  I know the Mac
> faithful will go nuts when they read this but Intel has kicked Motos ass.
> Rubensteins group has done  an amazing job of making the pokey Motos shine,
> but they are really not up to the same design standards as Apples hardware.

You really can't directly compare the G4 and the Pentium.  It's kind of like
comparing a Wankel rotary to a piston engine -- about the only thing they
have in common is that they use a commodity (electricity or gas) and produce
similar results (running programs or pushing/pulling a car).

In fact, the rotary vs. piston engine argument is very similar -- a rotary
engine puts out significantly more HP/lb than a piston engine running on the
same gasoline, but they aren't as prevalent (in fact, only Mazda seems to be
one that ships a car with a rotary anymore).

I am constantly amazed at how Intel manages to squeeze more life out of a
mid-1970's processor design.  Yes, I realize that the new Pentiums are
nothing more than a RISC core running CISC emulation in hardware, but the
instruction fetch process is still pure-CISC in nature.

-- 
Glenn L. Austin <><
Computer Wizard and Race Car Driver
<glenn at austin-home.com>
<http://www.austin-home.com/glenn/>