Re: How many times must Apple make such DRASTIC architecture changes?

[Tim Cutts <timc@chiark.greenend.org.uk>]

In article <42A908CF.7A8A0CA7@teksavvy.com>,
JF Mezei  <jfmezei.spamnot@teksavvy.com> wrote:
>"Michael J. Mahon" wrote:
>> They are fully operational on the IA-64, and the release for AMD 64 is
>> very close, if it hasn't already occurred.
>
>No. IA-64 is Intel's failed experiment in EPIC, marketed as Itanium and
>used by HP and SGI for their proprietary OS. It is totally different
>from the 8086 architecture.

I wouldn't say it's failed.  It's relegated to a niche market, yes, but
it has not failed.  It's the fastest CPU I have access to, bar none.

>Apple will be using whatrever models of the 8086 are available at the
>time the computers are being produced with whatever name Intel markets
>them as. (Pentium-xx , Xeon, Celeron, etc etc).

I very much doubt they will be using 32-bit versions.  The 32-bit
versions are dropping out of the market extremely quickly.  It's already
pretty much impossible to buy a Xeon which isn't EM64T, for example.
After all, it can run the 32-bit Windows and Linux stuff just as well as
ever, and if you want to run 64-bit Linux instead, well you can.  We're
about to put 280 dual-processor Xeon EM64T blade servers into
production, most of which will probably be running the 64-bit x86_64
version of Debian.

Given that OS X is already well on the way to being a full 64-bit OS, it
seems the natural way to go.

Tim