[HN Gopher] Apple CPU Architecture Through the Ages
___________________________________________________________________
Apple CPU Architecture Through the Ages
Author : jakey_bakey
Score : 47 points
Date : 2023-10-30 19:51 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (jacobbartlett.substack.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (jacobbartlett.substack.com)
| spandextwins wrote:
| The 68k was a great little chip series. Really miss coding in
| assembler on that thing.
| sroussey wrote:
| I cut my (very young) teeth on 6502. I did like all the
| Motorola series cpus.
| gumby wrote:
| This is the history of _Mac_ CPUs. The Apple I, II, and variants
| were 6502. The Lisa used the 68000.
| cameroncooper wrote:
| Fun fact, the Apple 1 could also use a Motorola 6800 CPU
| gumby wrote:
| In this case that fact really _is_ fun!
| runjake wrote:
| One must not forget the IIgs and it's 65C816 processor -- a
| bizarro 16-bit variant of the 6502. :)
| monocasa wrote:
| Same processor as the SNES.
| klelatti wrote:
| By complete coincidence, I also wrote a post about Mac
| transitions a few days ago - with perhaps a bit more emphasis on
| the architectures that almost made it into the Mac - which may be
| of interest.
|
| https://thechipletter.substack.com/p/apple-transitions-68k-t...
| xnx wrote:
| Amazing willingness on Apple's part to switch architectures
| significantly 4 times and leave behind so much code. I know Apple
| has done some clever stuff with translation and emulation, but
| this is so different than the Microsoft Windows approach to
| backward compatibility where you can upgrade from Windows 1.0 all
| the way to Windows 11:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nW4rk3gFOxM
| jasonwatkinspdx wrote:
| The big difference is that Apple has, throughout most of its,
| been vertically integrated in a way where they control the
| whole stack. MS on the other hand has to deal with a bazillion
| IHVs that are lazy as all heck about updating their drivers.
| HappyDaoDude wrote:
| You could not critic either direction too heavily. Do you want
| a fresh technology base or legacy support? There is no wrong
| answer.
| dmitrygr wrote:
| Lost me two paragraphs in, due to gross inaccuracy:
| > Intel 8088 : 8/16-bit microprocessor -- 8-bit registers with a
| 16-bit data bus.
|
| Uhh...8088 is 16-bit CPU. Its external bus is 8-bits wide to save
| on pins...
|
| It does not get better further in: > 20-bit
| memory addressing range -- supports 640kB of RAM.
|
| It supports 1MB of addressable space, which the system integrator
| may allocate as they desire. 640kB is something that PCs did, but
| apple was in no way tied to..
| w10-1 wrote:
| Probably the most significant rewrite was from the original 68K
| assembly, not surprisingly championed by Jean-Louis Gassee who
| also opened up the hardware side.
|
| Once code was in C (which was being standardized), they could
| work on porting across CPU's. The huge mistakes of Copland and
| Taligent were largely due to trying to also jump into some
| variant of C++ and object-oriented language at the OS level. Of
| course, that was at the same time Linus stuck with C for Linux
| and made much more relative headway.
|
| This also gave Apple a lot more leverage in the application
| space. They spun applications out to Claris originally because
| the apps were such a pain point, but once C and MPW settled they
| could duck MS O$$ice leverage/fees with their own more integrated
| approach (and sell Works + round pink blobs to creatives et al).
| That made it feasible for Steve to ink the deal with Bill to keep
| Microsoft apps relevant on Mac's, when most of the other vendors
| were giving up on that 10% of PC share.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2023-10-30 23:00 UTC)