The Logic Off Topic list

Colin Miller wrote:
>>The problem is, that if someone has a cheapy 2000+ Athlon machine 
>>with a DDR motherboard, and it's being suggested that they upgrade to 
>>a "superior" shiny new top-of-the-line just-released G4 2*1Gig 
>>machine, the G4's processing power with logic 5.x might not be any 
>>better than what they currently have, despite the fact that it might 
>>cost two or three times as much. And its performance with logic 
>>5.x /might/ actually be worse when it comes to running lots of 
>>sotware instruments and processing.
>
>I agree the mac processors are way behind on the speed issue. But I think
>that will change soon and there will probably be much faster stuff around
>the corner. I'm sure they are well aware they need to stay competitive.
>Remember when Macs were literally faster than intel and AMD chips (as far
>as Mhz went)? I was pretty dissapointed to hear there was no mention of new
>machines at Macworld. 

Rumour sites suggest a modest speed bump for G4 is coming next month.

While it is _possible_ that Macs could get a_big_ speed bump in the future
why would you think it likely? Sounds like wishful thinking to me. Speed
bumps from x86 manufacturers out past 3.2GHz are on the roadmaps now.

When the Power PC troika was set up in the very early 90's IBM had just
been dudded by MS over OS/2 and they had the execellent Power RISC
architecture to offer. PowerPCs were intended to run Windows NT and other
OS's as well -- it was intended to bring new generation RISC to the masses.
Well it didn't happen. PowerPC is now used in only a few percent of the
worlds desktops and in embedded applications. The R&D budget of PowerPC is
directly related to earnings and potential future earnings. It is therefore
a tiny fraction of X86 R&D. 

Niche RISC processors -- Sparc, SGI etc -- the trend is well established:
mainstream X86 processing is catching and overtaking them in performance.
Read the latest stories on how Industrial Light and Magic have switched
from SGI machines to Dell's running Linux for "20% of the price and 3x the
power."  Their rendering farm is powered by a thousand or so Athlon
processors. Macs are a little proprietory niche market. It is unlikely that
they will become competitive on price performance ratio with the mainstream
market.

IBM still has its high end Power4 architecture but this system is sold only
in very expensive servers and workstations. That's  how you make money with
small volumes -- you charge heaps for each unit. 

Regards,
Murray