[Ti] like hell freezing over ?

[Chris Olson]

On Jun 4, 2005, at 11:34 PM, Henry Kalir wrote:

> IF it's true - it's all for the best, and long overdue!

For the best, and long overdue?  x86 is a dead architecture.  The one 
and only reason it still exists is because of a lumbering giant called 
Microsoft that isn't light-footed enough to migrate millions of users 
and applications to anything else.  Otherwise it would've been dead 
long ago.

x86-64, while not a true 64-bit architecture like the PowerPC 970, at 
least has 64-bit extensions piled on top of the x86 instruction set 
with the caveat that once you enable 64-bit pointers everything; 
drivers and apps, must be 64-bit.  To run 32-bit code on AMD64 with the 
64-bit pointers enabled you need 32-bit emulation libraries either 
supplied by the operating system or the application.  But Intel hasn't 
embraced x86-64 - that's AMD's baby.  The only thing Intel has that 
even comes close is IA64 Itanium (otherwise known as Itanic due to its 
dismal failure in the marketplace).

PowerPC is 64-bit from the ground up, with a 32-bit subset.  This 
includes the G4 (Motorola 74xx) with a 64-bit ALU which will accomplish 
64-bit floating point arithmetic in one clock cycle.  Mac OS X Tiger, 
while not a full 64-bit operating system, since most of the interface 
uses 32-bit code, is able to use 64-bit code for applications that 
require a 64-bit address space.  The Mac and OS X, with the PowerPC 
processor, is the _one_and_only_ operating system and platform in 
existence able to run natively on both 32-bit and 64-bit architectures 
with only one version of the operating system.

And now the rumor mill thinks Apple is going to step backwards into the 
80's and port to x86 with CISC code?

For anybody who really thinks Apple will use Intel x86 processors to 
run OS X, I have some prime Lunar real estate on the dark side of the 
moon I would like to sell, and you can call me to make an immediate 
purchase.
--
Chris