[geeks] this is where the mac should be

Sridhar Ayengar ploopster at gmail.com
Thu Oct 12 10:38:08 CDT 2006


John Francini wrote:
> It's not clear from this short article if the Power6 chip would have  
> the AltiVec vector accelerator on it.

It will.  IBM calls it "VMX".

> I didn't believe the PowerPC chips intended for IBM's own server  
> consumption had AltiVec.

They don't currently.

I think the main reason these chips wouldn't be good for Macs is their 
cost.  They're just too expensive.  Apple could have moved to a 
POWER5-derivative if they had wanted, but the cost was just too high.

Peace...  Sridhar



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