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Rumors Of MP PowerMac G4 Flying!
Maktoo writes: "Well, this has been a favorite rumour in the Mac world for quite some time, but with the approach of WWDC (next Monday) things are starting to heat up.
MacOSRumors, AppleInsider, and Go2Mac are all predicting MP G4s soon ... with Go2Mac actually claiming that CompUSA has SKUs for the systems. The keynote on Monday should be interesting. I don't see why Apple would release MP machines before MacOS X ... but we might get a demo at least. I'm excited enough that I'll be getting a copy of MacOS X Beta when I walk in the door ... but an MP G4 would be nice too."
So why not see if the product exists in the CompUSA database?
n fo.asp?prodzip=&product_code={SKU}
http://www.compusastores.com/products/product_i
where {SKU} is a six digit number. I'm guessing it will be in the 270000 to 280000 range. That's only 10K.
Of course, they could have added it to the system but flagged it such that it wouldn't get displayed on their web page.
Anyone care to check?
Insanity is the last line of defence for the master diplomat. But you have to lay the groundwork early.
You have a good point, and perhaps I was just being lazy not hitting the +1 bonus, but I still think it's wrong to mark it off topic - over rated perhaps, would have been better.
Hey Rob, Thanks for that tarball!
"Going to war without France is like going deer hunting without your accordion." - Jed Babbin
...is an RS/6000! Seriously now, since the world at large has never embraced Apple's hardware or software for enterprise data systems, what fantasy land do you have to live in to believe that adding a second CPU under a yet-to-be-released OS will make it an enterprise server?
I think at best Apple will stay a niche player in the video and prepress arena. Apple knows it can't compete with Dell, HP, Compaq, etc for the enterprise marketplace, which means it will never be more than a funny-looking multimedia machine for the types of people that buy funny-looking multimedia machines (I work in advertising, I know who you are...)
If Apple had any brains, they'd take their overvalued stock and buy SGI. Buying SGI would give them access to hard-core visualization hadrware and software, and may let them back-door into the real computing world, where something serious gets done. It would also give them a cool new product, the SGiMac!
How developed is SMP in the PPC world?
There hasn't really been such a thing as SMP PPC Mac until now. Yeah, there were some early dual proc Macs, and IBM makes a slew of SMP PPC based systems, but you really can't make any comparison whatsoever to the hypothetical SMP G4 running the prototype OS/X. That said, you can rest assured it will prolly kill anything consumer market short of a quad Xeon.
.sig: Now legally binding!
Running benchmarks is useless unless you run benchmarks for a living. I don't. I use Quark, Photoshop and Illustrator. The speed the G4 runs those applications are all that matters. Other trivial things (Open source software, open hardware, proprietary hardware issues) don't help me get my work done any faster so I could care less. Thank you, have a nice day.
--
Don't lead me into temptation... I can find it myself.
The Rage 128 has awesome 2d graphics. Might not be great for games but for Office and Photoshop, you can't ask for anything better. BTW, I don't know of many OEM PC manufacturers that put 3dfx cards in their machines. nVidea OTOH... thats a different story.
--
Don't lead me into temptation... I can find it myself.
The tremendous number of Apple related posts are clearly indicative of that.
Like one ever week or two?
In my opinion, Apple is far worse than Microsoft when it comes to proprietary software.
How much software has Microsoft released into open source again? Apple has released Darwin, QuickTime Streaming Server, OpenPlay/NetSprocket and HeaderDoc. The Open Source Initiative in general, and ESR, specifically, have stated that the ASPL qualifies as a "true" open source license. Apple has also contributed to the Apache project.
Apple is after all the company that would like to control both hardware and software.
Dude, why do you think Macs tend to just work? Apple makes vastly less money on software then they do on hardware. It's not like they're just trying to grab all the profit. There's a real added value in having one developer create the entire product, not just assemble things piecemeal and hope to end up with a frankenstein that is able to walk.
But wait, Apple is joining the open source movement with Darwin. Unfortunately, all the other components are still proprietary, and they're probably going to stay that way.
So you're suggesting Apple just up and release their core assets into the public and watch the shareholders lynch Jobs? Huh? I don't think that's a very fair expectation. Apple is the first commercial computer company to release any major asset into an open-source compliant license. That's something not Microsoft, Sun nor Compaq have done.
Besides, the only reason that I can see why Apple is releasing the source code for Darwin is because their developers are not competent enough to continue development on the BSD Unix software they have ripped off.
Their "incompetent developers" include Avie Tevanian who had a large part in developing the Mach kernel, which was later handed over to the FSF. It was Tevanian who championed Apple's open source projects.
By the way, wasn't rhapsody the operating system that was going to show us all? Where is that NT killer these days?
The Rhapsody project, initialized by Gil Amelio, Steve Jobs's predecessor, was recognized by the current management staff as a recipe for disaster -- naming because it would force developers to completely rewrite their apps. Rhapsody was tranformed into what is available today Mac OS X Server.
Anyway, Apple and its devoted followers are scum as far as I'm concerned.
That's mature. Certainly lends creditability to your argument.
Besides, when was the last time Apple released anything other than their obnoxious QuickTime player and a new patch level for their dated operating system?
Visit http://apple.com/pr/.
All I'm waiting for is a proper website to open about computer technology in general without the clearly biased opinions.
Unless they're Linux-biased, right?
- Scott
------
Scott Stevenson
Scott Stevenson
Tree House Ideas
Nice troll! If you were really for free software you wouldn't be championing M$ and you;d find a different thread to post in, one that would piss-off more people.
no sig.
I am still hoping that someone will port Darwin (and by extension MacOS X) to the RS/6000 architecture. Those high-end IBM systems would complement Apple's hardware offerings quite nicely.
--
Mozilla for Mac OS X is going to be the BSD version with a Carbon interface. They were calling it "Fizzila" at one point. Not sure when it or Netscape 6 for Mac OS X will be ready.
... it's out in beta right now. Looks simly amazing under Mac OS X. Everything anti-aliased and very slick.
IE is already Carbon and will be on Mac OS X from the start. There's also the Omni browser, which is Cocoa, and descended from NeXTSTEP
There may also be a basic Apple browser included in Mac OS X. They have a ton of HTML and XML going on in the OS, so who knows? Mac OS X will also include Apple's (Cocoa) email app (from NeXTSTEP), which people seem to either love or hate.
Apparently the MP Mac's were ready for market with the G3, but Apple delayed the release due to concerns of legal hassles with the RIAA. And its a shame because it would be great to see a large company like apple actively supporting MPG3..
-
air and light and time and space
I'm not sure about LinuxPPC, but mkLinux does support SMP, apparently very well, on the old MP Power Macs, which included:
A universal set of widgets would make my life suck less.
I can't find the stats you're describing at distributed.net. I'd like to, though.
Consider:
- They won't let anyone else build Mac-compatible machines anymore.
- They won't let anyone else sell Macs online unlessthe store arranges for customers who already own a Mac to setup a password/account/etc
- If they had their way, nobody but Apple owners would have been able to use a graphical interface. (Bogus lawsuits, copyrights, patents on GUIs)
- Quicktime, all under Apple's control.
- FireWire® - registering a trademarked name for an IEEE standard. Only they can use the name if they so choose!
Apple is much worse than Microsoft. The difference between Steve Jobs and Bill Gates is that Gates was smarter, and made more money. If Apple had its way, it'd be even more of a monopoly than the boys in Redmond.actually, i am. im using a dual 604e running in a powercomputing power-tower-pro. its got yellowdog champion server 1.1 and the uptime is going on 165 days.
i have never had a problem with my this box since i configured it.
das
The MP in Darwin is in the mk (Mach). Mach in Darwin is under Apple licensing. Can you say "dirty code"? Also, I really dont know how easy it is to convert MP code for the Mach microkernel to the beast we all know and love as Linux. (Though, it would be easier to go to linux than some monster like MacOS).
--
Though I use a Macintosh, I am not a mac-bigot. I just hate Windoze.
PowerPC instructions are all of a constant size, each has only one mode (the processor can predict exactly what will be needed to execute an add instruction), and there's no microcode involved in PowerPC instruction processing. This is what makes PowerPC RISC. "Reduced Instruction Set Complexity."
If you took all the possible different types of instructions possible with the x86 set (add is really "load memory, load memory, store memory; load mem, load reg, store mem; load reg, load reg, store reg...), you would get a higher instruction count than PowerPC indeed.
The AltiVec extensions are intended to speed specific operations that otherwise go slowly; RISC would be a bad philosophy to take in a vector processing unit. In terms of mode switching and cleanliness, AltiVec is simpler (more "reduced" than MMX or 3DNow!).
So, however you take it, PowerPC is really RISC. No marketing involved. (Besides, this is from Motorola, not exactly marketing masters...)
No, I'm not a mac bigot - I'm a PPC bigot. And yes, that's AltiVec assembler in my sig.
Ramble on!
mfspr r3, pc / lvxl v0, 0, r3 / li r0, 16 / stvxl v0, r3, r0
Check out Project Upper/Mute, an all-around awesome compiler fra
The Mac has a much wider selection of OSes than the Alpha platform
Huh?
On Alpha I count:
Tru64 Unix / DEC Unix / whatever the hell its called this week
OpenVMS
Linux
WinNT -- ok discontinued... count as half
*BSD
On Mac I count:
Linux
MacOS
*BSD
DrLunch.com The site that tells you what's for lunch!
Because if you just started in 1995, then that's not that many years.
That said, your comments on preemptive multitasking and memory protection have some merit. Certainly the former is a major stumbling block to performance when multiple applications are running (which is pretty much all the time).
Your doubt about the veracity of Photoshop performance is ill-founded, however. Independant testers such as Henry Norr have found those photoshop results to be direct reflections of real-world performance for normal professional users. I have no trouble believing this because I have seen similar results with my own eye. They really are that fast. That shows the power of the processor, though, on a task not greatly slowed by the poor OS performance. Nutscrape Navigator, on the other hand, is a case in point about problems with the Mac - it's slow(even on wicked-fast G4s), it crashes a lot(often bringing the system with it), and it hogs CPU time even when idling.
In conclusion: PowerPC=very fast. MacOS subsystems=very crappy. I think that's more or less where you were going with this anyway. But those benchmarks are for real, and those Macs were not overclocked, nor were the PCs crippled.
-N
I am the one true god. However, as an atheist, I don't believe in myself. I guess I have a self-esteem problem.
- A.P.
--
"One World, one Web, one Program" - Microsoft promotional ad
"Remember when the U.S. had a drug problem, and then we declared a War On Drugs, and now you can't buy drugs anymore?"
I hear what you are saying and I look forward to playing around with MacOS X. Hopefully, _POSIX_C_SOURCE works under MacOS X for all aspects of POSIX. But I still believe that I will have problems with widgets. Legacy code dating back 10 years can sometimes be difficult to maintain.
He saw the apple marketing ad where they show all the little boxes representing "CPU stuff" smoothly going in parallel, labelled "G4," as opposed to the boxes jumbling up as they tried to fit through a small opening which was labelled "Pentium"
As far as I call tell, either apple was claiming that G4s are superscalar and pentiums are not, or apple marketing staff smokes a lot of cheap crack.
I think you're wasting your time correcting someone who bases their understanding of CPU architecture on Apple advertisements.
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/ch ronicle/archive/2000/04/17/BU1016CH.DTL "Power Mac Bests the Gigahertz PCs"
Of course this is Photoshop-specific; Microsoft Orifice will always run faster on Microsoft operating systems, because Microsoft wants it that way. I couldn't point you to a good thorough benchmark that's cross-platform, sorry.
-- "Those who cast the votes decide nothing. Those who count the votes decide everything." -Joseph Stalin
I'm not saying this is unfair, or lying or a half truth or anything like that since Intel has MMX, but I feel it's a somewhat skewed view of things.
Nope, I never thought it wasn't fair. Please read the quote from my original post above.
I see it this way: When new generation Pentium, Sparc or Alpha processors come out, you don't have to recompile things to make them take advantage of the speed increase. Sure, recompiling them might make them faster, but with the Velocity Engine, you actually have to modify the program where as with the processors mentioned above, they can take advantage of the speed increase without any changes.
I do enjoy the fact that Photoshop can take advantage of this special feature with just a plugin, however I don't beleive the vast majority of applications can do this (a simple plugin).
What? Is this a joke? The "William Tell". I truly hope this a joke, for the sake of nerds/geeks/etc. everywhere.
I think the idea of MP Macs is great. While I am not an avid mac users, I try to dabble in them as much as possible. With MacOSX hopefully on it way soon I can see where MP Macs could come into use very quickly.
Though I haven't gotten much info on OS-X I've heard is based partialy on Unix. So I wonder if the kernel will need to be rebuilt for an MP style system and has Apple given the ability to alter that in OS-X? Or will it be prebuilt with an added on/off software switch? Either way, I can see some very stable Mac servers on there way. I feel that this is an area that Apple has been very slow in approching. How often do you hear about the new high performance Mac webserver?
All I can say is that I think it's a great idea, since if nothing else, you can always slap a copy of yellow dog or ppc-Linux on it.
Trying to be different, just like everyone else.
Indeed. If my memory serves me, according to www.mackido.com, it was quicker to run Word 97 under emulation than native Word 6. That is beyond crappy. That is sabotage.
What I have found is that even the most obscure platforms usually have some form of application support if you are willing to support someone to develop it for you.
Macs have a number of software titles and also have the ability to emulate intel machines with the software. Also you can run linux on them which is a plus.
What is power if not for the furtherance of power. Power is a gift in it's own right and a means unto itself.
The trouble is you are not Apple's perfect customer. The graphic design industry is full of people more concerned with maximium power than cost, and it's been a surprisingly long time since there has been anything capable of running indstry standard apps in the over $4000 range, so there is a pent up demand for this sort of machine, and it seems Apple will have this sector pretty much to themselves for the forseeable future, therefore they won't have to price these boxes too keenly.
So, who will pay over $4000 for the top Macs? Simple - the same people who bought $4000+ Macs last time Apple made them... I vaguely recall my old MacIIfx set-up was in that bracket.
- Andy R.
A pizza of radius z and thickness a has a volume of pi z z a
Actually, though, ALL modern processors can execute multiple operations per cycle. Pentiums can hit 3-6 ops/cycle and IA-64 will support 6-12. Most often, though, you only get a number closer to 2 ops/cycle (or slightly less) due to the state of today's compilers and the the difficulty of the scheduling problem.
The real difficulty in benchmarking two different architectures, IMHO, is that the processor is just one of dozens of crucial variables. Ok, so Photoshop or Netscape run slower on a Mac with a processor a than on a PC with processor b. So what? Maybe Adobe and Netscape don't work as hard on the Mac versions of their products to optimize them (true, esp for Netscape). Maybe the MacOS is just slow and outdated (true, esp for OS 8). Maybe the PC compilers are better (certainly possible, though hard to tell). See what I mean?
That said, I think the best way to compare is to look at price/performance and other benchmarks on EXACTLY the applications you use. So, the Photoshop test is meaningless to me, because I don't particularly do graphics. But it's not meaningless to a graphic artist, who could care less what specific components cause the machine to run PS well.
--JRZ
The G4 spec allows a single G4 chip to have MULTIPLE CORES; which means, that a single processing chip can have multiple processors ON THE SAME CHIP. Why should Apple make a multiple processor machine when they can simply get a multiple core processor from Motorola and stick it on a board?
Even if a dual Mac G4 comes out, affordability is a major issue. Anyone remember that comparo that had a 500MHz Mac at twice the price of an 600MHz Athlon? Add a dual mobo and another CPU and you've got a machine more than twice the price that is very unlikely to give even close to twice the performance. Dual G4's will serve to strengthen Apple's tiny strongholds in publishing and education. I for one would rather have two fast Athlon machines than one dual Mac... The good side is that with a single company making the CPU, chipset, and mobo, reliability should be great.
Queens of the Stone Age - they rule
Yeah, but when the Linux fad, like bell-bottoms before it, dies down, you can still format your hard drives and throw Win2K on there, assuming that you're not one of the few non-x86 Linux users. If you got a Mac, though, you're kinda screwed. ;)
Cheers,
ZicoKnows@hotmail.com
--- ... Isn't that when marketshare is very very high, causing that company to have an unnaturally strong command over the market?
FYI, marketshare is not the defining factor in a monopoly. A monopoly is made when a company has a command over the market, no substitutes exist, and entry by other firms is barred.
---
No substitutes exist
Apple has no more than 10% of the market. Many people are daily faced with the prospect of buying either a Mac or a PC, both of which perform more or less the same functionality. When the competition receives 90% of the business, you can't be a monopoly.
Really, all you've done is defined monopoly. It's still the same thing.
- Jeff A. Campbell
- VelociNews (http://www.velocinews.com)
- Jeff
Friends don't let friends use multiple inheritance.
Man, 5 whole years without a "significant" upgrade. Sorta reminiscent of the '80-'95 period - 15 years of DOS without a significant upgrade while Apple showed us some truly revolutionary stuff.
In the last 5 years we got Win95, WinNT4 (a slightly improved "industrial strength" version), Win98 (a new layered version of 95), and Win2k (merging 95 and NT back together). Really, one big step with refinements.
It also depends on what you consider significant, I suppose. Some of the user features rolled out in OS 8 and 9 were pretty nifty. And don't forget that virtually the entire OS was rewritten for a different hardware during this period, with essentially no impact to end users! That's pretty remarkable in itself.
Apple made the step to a friendly UI 10 years earlier than MS did. (Apple did a better job, IMO.) Apple is making the step to a "modern" core 5 years later than MS did. (And Apple is doing a better job here, too, IMO.)
Yeah, I'm an Apple enthusiast, and don't have a lot of love for MS. (I'll give them credit when its due, but I don't think Gates is the godsend so many have claimed him to be.) It just seems that people bashing Apple for being behind MS the last 5 years seem to forget the 11 years before that.
Constitutionally Correct
What Apple was illustrating with that ad, is that the G4's altivec unit can process data in 128 bit chunks (or 2 64 bit chunks at a time, or 4 32 bit chunks...). It can do vector permute ops as well, integer or FP. It's basically a far, far better SIMD than Intel's MMX stuff.
-- "Those who cast the votes decide nothing. Those who count the votes decide everything." -Joseph Stalin
-jcl
Which unfortuantely means, guys, that....:
G4 500Mhz != K7 750Mhz.
The K7'll be faster. I'm terribly sorry. I think Motorola chips are cute. I even used to have a Motorola cellular telephone. But factz are factz. Don't take it too hard. No empire lasts forever. It won't even matter in a few decades. All this will seem like old technology, and all arguments over technology like this will seem quite humourous. The archeologists of 3000 will say:
"I say ol chap! look at this crap!" (pointing to a PIII and G4 lying next to eachother). Eventually, they'll pack up, leave the excavation site, and go home to their wives.
"You'll never believe what we saw today. Ancient technology." He'll go on to describe the chips to his wife, she'll be amazed at the simplicity of the chips.
The next day, he'll go to the site, and scale the chips for himself, so that one day, when he has a child of his own, he can say to that child: "This is an ancient peice of technology, guard it well, for it is a classic." His parter will take the other chip. Both would become heirlooms to their respective family lines.
All that was long ago, though. Currently, no technology actively survives. Only 2 chips - a PIII and a G4. They have been passed down from generation to generation. The world is now a desert wasteland. But the man you see before you wears a talisman containing a single chip - the G4. To him, it's no longer a simple, ancient peice of technology. But a marvel of another age.
no sig
Of course we true make users know Mhz doesnt mean anything.
tcd004
I believe it refers to the nature of the rumors because they are so fleeting.
What is power if not for the furtherance of power. Power is a gift in it's own right and a means unto itself.
Funny that the community service message got a -1 and the moderator flame got a 2. Methinks the moderators are toying with us.
;-)
Re: The G4MP's they would kick some serious ass but I'm not going to hold my breath. I can remember when the Mac IIfx was just a roumor and yet that came through. Damn I think I have my poster I got at a Mac World in SF of the Mac IIfx's motherboard back when it was unveiled. Had a tagline something to the effect of Necessity is the mother of invention. If Apple really intends to get into the Server market then having a MP system is a necessity.
PS I wish SETI would make their client use the Velocity engine, I'd like to see if my G4 can do fast fourier transforms faster than my 4 way Sun Enterprise 4000.
-- This space intentionally left blank.
Of course, it goes without saying that this idiot isn't posting a link to my site - it's a link to the http://www.natalieportman.com/ site... Another bad link. Expect this idiot to keep doing this.
Hey Rob, Thanks for that tarball!
"Going to war without France is like going deer hunting without your accordion." - Jed Babbin
What is MP?
I'd rather have someone respond than be modded up.
see subject
What is power if not for the furtherance of power. Power is a gift in it's own right and a means unto itself.
One of the best pieces of software for the MacOS is BBEdit, the best text editing software I've had the pleasure of working with. It integrates nicely with the Mac versions of Perl and Python, and the SSH and FTP tools you can get are the nicest I've worked with on any platform. There is a usability aesthetic to the design of Mac software that both the Win and Lin worlds would do well to emulate.
On the Linux partition -- yup, I've got one -- I use Yellow Dog Linux, which on a 300MHz iBook runs circles around an equally RAM- and drive-equipped Toshiba 400MHz Celeron running Red Hat. And yes, it knows what do to with a two- and three-button mouse...
As for iBook style, nobody said that nerd != stylin'.
if people see you're comment, you will recieve a lot of criticism =) "linux fad" "dies down"...
on a primarily linux site...
hehe...
im doubting that too, its not a fad, why would it be a fad when people see the better alternative? a fad would be just getting on the bandwagon to be like others. thats not whats happening.
"spare the lachrymosity when the fulminations have inveighed"
"spare the lachrymosity when the fulminations have inveighed"
-madd
Since WWDC is just a week away, why not resist and wait a week?
i'm not sure whether thats a valid comment...and about adobe and microsoft cutting off the ports? where did you hear this? especially adobe.
since the imac ports to macs have gone up, they may be going back down a little now, or going up and down at the same time, meaning virtually staying the same...
***But*** wouldn't most much rather use macintosh hardware? Or should I say IBM, Motorola chips and stuff, I think most can agree how much better the G4s are...and how much better IBM [and Motorola] is at innovating and inventing...and making chips than AMD and Intel.
"spare the lachrymosity when the fulminations have inveighed"
"spare the lachrymosity when the fulminations have inveighed"
-madd
NASTY LINK WARNING! It's the idiot any his bung hole again...
Hey Rob, Thanks for that tarball!
"Going to war without France is like going deer hunting without your accordion." - Jed Babbin
About the only thing I can get my dual-604e processor card to do (with an SMP kernel) in my 7500 is crash. There aren't enough Linux developers who even know anything about PPC, let alone SMP PPC. I think that there's one guy who used to work on it.
Other people have gotten other kinds of SMP macs to boot, some even have no problems. But there's probably only about 5 people in the world running SMP linux on macs.
In short, don't expect any linux to work on this architecture for years. 2004 would be a reasonable guess for full support, iff people actually care enough to try to get linux to work at all. Which is still doubtful, esp. considering that you can run MacOS X on these by the time you will be able to buy them. Who would invest time in porting yet another unix clone to a system that only a few thousand people will be able to buy? LinuxPPC.org hasn't gotten any support from Apple in about 2 years, why should they change anything now?
hello ac, god here. Hmmm, yes. I see your point. Kul3r su>orz. From this point on, sky...grey, leaves...black, water, beige. Oh, hope you like black cars. As I type on my G3 with a 4 button scroll mouse. Cheers, god
Reality does not happen until you analyze the dots. -Don DeLillo (Underworld)
Of course, there are more differences between MacOS7 and MacOS9 than there are between Win 3.1, and Win9x and NT. Just because Apple uses proper VERSION NUMBERS does not mean that there are not significant changes. Microsoft is HOPING you think the radical name changes == radical new OS.
Tom
Reality does not happen until you analyze the dots. -Don DeLillo (Underworld)
Not only that, the Rage 128 supports OpenGL, which Quake3 really likes. Who needs 3dfx?
- Sinistral @ Fractal Edge
OK, so you hate them. Don't post on Apple topics, then. Or, is it that "I hate them" and "When they do something I do not like, than I feel fuzzy and justified", but if "They do something cool, I can dismiss it". Hmmmm. Very balanced atttitude.
Tom
Reality does not happen until you analyze the dots. -Don DeLillo (Underworld)
typical /. poster:
...
/.
blah blah blah Macs are dead blah blah blah Linux rules blah blah blah they're just toys blah blah blah Mine is the most tumescent system of all time
man, the anti-mac postings on here sound suspiciously like homophobic rants by men who are too insecure in their manliness. i'm about done with
Mindy: "Well...desserts aren't always right." Homer: "But they're so sweet!"
I have heard of AFOAF running an 8 cpu G4 prototype machine soon to be released. Anyone else care to confirm this?
By that standard, it's not fair that you should actually have to learn to drive just to use a car....
I'm pretty impressed that Photoshop can be compiled to run on non-Altivec processors, but can still take advantage of G4s with a simple plug-in.
What is the robbing of a bank, compared to the founding of a bank? -- Bertolt Brecht
nah, there 's only one test of processing power:
Squeak
Since it's platorm independent, you'll get a truer reflection of what the case really is. (course, you'll still need to worry to a certain extent about the state of the C compilers for the various platforms), but it'll be a better indication than Photoshop, for sure.
no sig
On Mac I count:
:)
Linux
MacOS
*BSD
You forgot:
WinNT (discontinued also, count as half)
MacOS X/MacOS X Server/Darwin/whatever -- should really count as separate from the traditional MacOS, even if they are made by the same company.
BeOS -- doesn't work on newer machines, pretty much discontinued, but it ought to count for something.
Alright, I'm sure we're forgetting some on both ends, I just wanted to even it out a little.
Mod down posts with a "Free Mac Mini/iPod" sig, they're spam!
....A Beowulf Cluster of these??????
no sig
Solid +2 material there.
Really interesting that little comment. The school that I attended used a solaris machine for years for their unix instruction. Finally the sysadmin ditched it and went with Red Hat 6.1. Worked quite well.
Also as I recall doing some window shopping at gap.com bell bottomed trousers were en vouge again.
The mac has stood the test of time quite well. Considering that you say their user base is "kinda screwed". The company still makes money.
What I disaprove of all around is the gereral lack of tact that Microsoft has for customers and the world's populace. Computers and their associated periphrials would be significantly cheaper without addition of windows for people who don't even want it in the first place.
Sir I have checked out your previous posting history and found similar comments in their spirit. Exactly how do you claim industry knowledge of any of your facts. Practices endorced by microsoft seem to indicate that they may be creating artificial demand by increasing "features" such as the dancing paperclip and now the talking weasel (or whatever they have now for their office suite).
Businesses do not require windows products to attain sufficient revenue nor is it totally necessary to be an "industry standard". What should be noted is that from a practical standpoint open specifications and standard file formats that can be converted between applications have fueled adoption of many new technologies and software systems.
What is power if not for the furtherance of power. Power is a gift in it's own right and a means unto itself.
A UPC is a code that identifies not just a product, but where it comes from. The UPC is a standard from the Uniform Code Council, and is a 12-digit number, in the format 0-12345-67890-1. The "12345" part identifies the manufacturer, the 1st digit (0 in this example) is the site from which it came, and the "67890" uniquely identifies the product. The last digit is a check digit for accuracy.
As for equating order numbers with product numbers, that would seem to be pretty confusing. How would I tell John Doe's order from Mary Sue's, if they order the same goods? Typically, you'll see an order # that defines a particular order, and then underneath that you'll see order lines which each reference a given SKU and quantity.
Example:
Order #: 12345
Line 1: SKU# 928375B, Qty 5
Line 2: SKU# 132487C, Qty 3
Each of those SKU's would then have their own UPC, which is represented by the bar code that can be scanned anywhere along the way.
I hope I've confused the issue sufficiently...
Stop by my site where I write about ERP systems & more
Of course it's not symmetric if there's only one processor. If you have a mac with two processors (like some 9500s) then interfacing the MP library will result in symmetric multiprocessing.
I'm no Win32 or Linux expert, but my understanding was that preemptive threads on any platform couldn't directly interact with GUI processes anyway, unless they use things like deferred or remote calls or semaphores, etc.
I agree with the prior author's point though, MP and MacOS X aren't joined at the hip. MP is available for any system back to OS 8.6. What MacOS X will add is that it will run each application task in their own separate threads, rather than grouping all application tasks under one "MacOS" task. That doesn't mean that it's not already possible to create preemptive tasks outside of this MacOS task.
WinNT4 (a slightly improved "industrial strength" version)
I think that you Mac folks need to get your facts straight. Windows NT is the 'Ground-up Rewrite Modern OS' version of Windows. It also shipped in 1993. (So Apple is ~7 years behind...)
Windows 95 is more like MS's System 7 versus Win 3.1 (System 5, if even).
Of course, NT/2000 has never had a sexy interface overhaul like OS X is getting and Windows 95 got, so the assumption is that it's just a "slightly improved version" of the old OS.
Microsoft's OS strategy is rather bizzare. Imagine if Apple introduces OS X this year, but never stops developing the old OS. In 2007 Apple introduces OS X version 3.0 to much hype, soon to be followed by MacOS System 11.1. This is exactly what Microsoft is doing with Win2000 (3rd major release of NT) and WindowsME (DOS/Windows version 4.2).
When I hear the word 'innovation', I reach for my pistol.
There's a site called accelerateyourmac... you can find the link of www.macsurfer.com. They have benchmarks et al. Sure, MS Office runs faster on a Winders machine, but, really, is speed a big issue when you're word processing? Photoshop, on the other hand is insanely resource intensive. I remember in the (not so) good old days, putting off certain filter combos until lunch time. I haven't had to bring a magazine to work since I got the G4...
2 1337 4 u!
Win98 == DOS
I've had it with that rediculous statement. DOS is just barely an operating system at all, and Windows 98 really only uses it as a convenient boot loader, and for backwards compatibility with rather old apps. I would say that Windows98 is less similar to DOS than it is to unix OR MacOS, in that all three provide fundamental OS features, like process scheduling, memory management, and hardware abstractions.
DOS is Windows98, in about the same way that sh, lilo, and libc together ARE linux.
Trees can't go dancing
So do them a big favor
Pretend dancing stinks!
Powerlogix had a dual processor card on their website, I beleive it was called the Zforce 2.0. It accepted two G4's. It seems like they were ready to ship in January and even had prices(around $180 w/o processors) and an upgrade path from older upgrades, but than it just mysteriously dissappeared from the website. the rumor was they could not ship before Apple. So if you wanted to you could probably get a regular uniprocessor G4 and a Powerlogix upgrade with a matching processor and forget about Apple pricing these boxes throught the roof. It should cost around the same as a regular G4 upgrade. This could be alright for a 400mhz box.
-schwaahed
"a special Photoshop plugin is required to make use of the Velocity Engine.
What does this mean? Quite simply, an application must specifically be written (or re-written) to take advantage of the Velocity Engine."
the plugins came to less than 5 megs downloadable, and installed by being dropped in a folder. All you had to do was restart the photoshop app to get a massive speed boost. On windows you have to restart if you change your ip address, and with linux y'all are doing stuff like recompling kernals so I cant see how plugins are unreasonable.
As for video, OpenGL is supported on all the ATI cards and I belive the 3dfx ones too, on the mac. it a nice open starnard that at least could be running on lots of cards....
a) if it's 350 mhz it's a Yikes!
b) if it's a 400 and there's only one firewire port it's a Yikes!
c) All others are Sawtooth.
The whole point of the Yikes! config was to get a cheap G4 out the door. It was a stop gap measure. If you own one, I'd suggest painting it blue and telling everyone you have a "Yosemite SE"
2 1337 4 u!
A sku is wear u lern.
It's not the OS that determines whether apps are multithreaded.. it's the developers.
Can you give any technical reasons that BeOS gives better performance than Linux, given the same application on the same system?
that doesn't matter...ummm honestly are you going to go with the original one, or the better one?
some people feel ibm made the first pc, some people feel that apple did, I'm guessing you don't like both of these companies even though one of them <B>INVENTED</B> the PC huh? How's that for innovation?
even though intel did, i feel it doesn't give it the crown for best chips now.............just as you may feel apple or ibm don't deserve the crown for pcs....this is clear enough
"spare the lachrymosity when the fulminations have inveighed"
"spare the lachrymosity when the fulminations have inveighed"
-madd
Usually, the photoshop benchmarks do not test compilers. This is because time-critical parts of photoshop are written in assembly language. And for short snippets like blur and scale, it's not difficult to get optimal assembly language representations.
One of these days, I'm going to learn the altivec instruction set so that I can do these tests myself - I'll submit the results to slashdot when I do.
-Dave Turner.
Become a FSF associate member before the low #s are used
Depends on what you are doing. MP on linux is pretty much useless when you only have one hefty process. The MP support in the current MacOS is really based on the pthread model. Even on linux you have to specifically code for true parallel processing in the same task.
You know the old saying: I'm not Ryan Meader, I just imitate him on Slashdot.
The apple commercial for the G4 I believe pointed out the fact that the government of the United States indicated that it came into the realm of a "supercomputer" class machine.
Because of export restrictions on these classes of computers to unfriendly countries the military has at least on paper needed to keep an eye on them.
What is power if not for the furtherance of power. Power is a gift in it's own right and a means unto itself.
You have seemed to have forgotten that Darwin is the core of Mac OS X. Seeing as the source is going to be (fairly) freely available, I don't see why developer's cant simply look at the Darwin source and figure out how to get Linux working on SMP machines.
This is presuming that the SMP libraries are to be included in Darwin...
clearly you have no idea what you are talking about. in reality the opposite is true, support has been,is, and shall continue to grow for the platform, esp since the codebase is now opensource and based upon BSD/Mach. for a current listing of mac compatible products go to: http://guide.apple.com/usindex.html _please drive through_
You're just trolling, but Adobe makes more than half of their money on their Mac products.
The ports probably are a little down right now, simply because of people holding off 'till Mac OS X to port, given how Mac OS X has two new API's, and discourages use of the old one...
--Arcum
They have released an "open source" (I know, it's not really, but Apple's trying anyway) version of the core and it's called 'Darwin'.
Actually, it is really open source. The Open Source Initiative approves of the APSL (Apple Public Source License). In fact, ESR was on hand at the announcement and approved of calling it open source.
though rumour has it that it won't support Mac's older than the original iMac
It's not a rumor. Mac OS X will run on anything that is G3 powered or newer. It may run on older machines, but it won't be supported.
- Scott
------
Scott Stevenson
Scott Stevenson
Tree House Ideas
Yes, that's correct. Current MP support in MacOS is a lot like the way most operating systems don't support MP -- they require the application to be written to access the other processors.
And to think they were bragging about it when they added that feature . . .
This is just like television, only you can see much further.
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
I don't know the extent to which it's implemented, but MP is already in the traditional MacOS NanoKernel. What's that, you didn't know the macos was on top of a kernel? That's been the case for over a year, and people were wondering "why" for just as long. Well, now we have our answer, in case people want to run that os on upcoming MP macs.
h tml#mpapi
Still believe the MacOS doesn't have system level preemptive multiprocessing support? go here:
http://developer.apple.com/technotes/tn/tn1176.
"Let him go, Ralph. He knows what he's doing." --Otto Mann (simpsons)
Some of us write code that runs under Linux, but does not run under MacOS X.
What the hell are you talking about?! You would have to write some seriously messed up code (or be writing a kernel module) to not be compatible with all UN*X like OS's. I can take just about any GNU/Linux/UN*X program out there, make a few trivial changes (mostly to autoconf) and recompile on Mac OS X Server just fine. And with Mac OS X having feature parity with FreeBSD, this will be even easier.
add Minix to the list...
2 1337 4 u!
I'm pretty sure what the previous poster meant to say was that NT4 was a small and incremental step up from NT3.5 - which is very true.
I used 3.5 back in the day, and as much as I hated the klunky Windows interface, I had to admit that it was a rock-solid 32-bit platform. The NT4 client had a few improvements... most notable to the luser was that it looked like Win95 instead of Win3.x.
The older versions of Windows were a step up from DOS in some ways, but it was not until the release of Win95 that MS had a GUI that could even hold a candle to MacOS 7.0. Remember what a pain networking was on the old Win3.x boxes?
The old Mac vs. Windows debate is pretty much over as far as I'm concerned. I use NT when I need to at work (not for much longer... I'm shifting careers to UNIX Admin), LINUX for almost everything else, a G3 in my music studio, and a Win95 box for games. Once LINUX catches up in the game market, and OS X comes out for the Mac, then everything I do will be *NIX-based.
It all comes down to using the right tool for the job... and LINUX is slowly becoming the right tool for every job. :)
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
Having two threads only makes things faster *if* the processing load is split such that each processor takes on a significant percentage of the cpu load.
If one thread is doing only a few minor GUI things, and the other thread is doing all the work, then there will be little measurable difference.
Plus, all the context switching might make things worse on the processor caches, in certain circumstances. Linux doesn't require a GUI, when you're doing really heavy lifting. Doe BeOS have a gui-free mode?
Just because it's different than what you're used to doesn't make the Macintosh operating system any less "real."
Also, to say that there's no way applications can run as well on MacOS as they can on other platforms is patently false. As with writing any software, it's a matter of using the appropriate tools during your development. When you were working on a Mac application, did you bother to find out what tools were available to help your debugging? Did you use Jasik Designs' "The Debugger"? Did you try Onyx's QC and Spotlight (a memory debugger like Purify but easy to use and 1/10 the price)? Did you actually ask Mac developers for help with problems you encountered on Usenet, IRC, or mailing lists? Did you read the tech notes on Apple's web site? Did you join an Apple developer program and use a support incident with Developer Technical Support? Or did you just throw up your hands when you encountered difficulties and shout "Macs are crashy and hard to program so our code will crash, too bad! MAC SUX D00DZ!!111"
I see the latter happen a lot among PC coders who're tasked with writing Mac software. It'd be far better for everyone involved if companies that decide they want to support the Macintosh just hire real Macintosh developers such as myself to do the work.
---
Why should they? They are a monopoly in every sense of the word except marketshare.
---
Am I the only one who sees the inherant discord in this statement?
The independant bookstore on the corner is a monopoly in every sense of the word except marketshare as well. Somehow I don't think Amazon or Barnes & Noble care very much.
Marketshare is the single defining factor of a monopoly. By definition a company cannot be a monopoly if they have low marketshare.
---
I've always hated Apples, and when they cut out the clones why that just justified my hatred of them.
---
By chance did you own a clone? So did I (PowerTower Pro 225 - a kick ass machine for its time). I was pissed too, but at the time their company was leaking 700+ million a quarter with no end in sight. In the end, it's hard to argue against Jobs' turnaround.
I too feel that clones are essential to the growth of the Mac platform. But, Apple should make sure they've taken up as far as they can before they open the floodgates again, and next time be more careful about it. If you haven't noticed, recent technological changes in the OS and hardware have made it much easier for cloners to exist.
- Jeff A. Campbell
- VelociNews (http://www.velocinews.com)
- Jeff
A Rage Pro?!?! Jesus Christ...when is Apple going to put a decent video subsystem into their machines? Sun puts those pieces of shit into their Ultra 5 boxes too...i don't get the fascination with coupling drastically obsolete 3D technology from ATI with overpriced proprietary hardware.
Whether you got a motherboard with two CPU slots, or a motherboard with one slot holding two CPUs, or a motherboard with one single-CPU slot was quite another matter, of course.
The same system logic was used in all of the Apples shipped, whether high- or low-end, desktop or laptop. Have a look under the hood and check out the part number on the north bridge to see for yourself.
Lacking <sarcasm> tags,
I know when Apple is moving to a 128bit memory bus... -7 months! The G4 has 128 bit memory paths so..... well there!
For those of you who are asking the inevitable question, "What about linux support"? I think you should have some faith in the good people of the world out there. You might want to see some of the stuff that TerraSoft Solutions is doing with YellowDog Linux and BlackLab Linux. I'm not sure how much a lot of this applies, but they've gotten it to run on some of CSP's Quad G4 boards and other nifty configurations.
My Slashdot account is old enough to drink...
Are you listening, Apple?
The wheel is turning but the hamster is dead.
The wheel is turning, but the hamster is dead.
I know that the Linux Kernel supports SMP on x86 and alpha, I just don't know if Multiple Processors are supported on a PPC build. Sometimes I think it would be easier to download the source myself.
Had it been meant to be understood by all people, then I would have gladly made it that way....nah...=) I meant to convey the MP as Military Police instead of that implied Multiprocessing. I'm sorry if my spontaneous declaration disturbed or confused you.
Geez. There's a lot of anti-Mac fud and humor here. Sorta like some giant smacktalk from a legion of Ford Escort owners toward a small group of guys who drive Lexus cars. Anyways, if the hardware and OS will support SMP, then we're talking about a VERY formidable machine, and noone really should be laughing about its performance. Take,for instance, the stats coming in from Distributed.Net. G4 Macs, in all their SlashDot-assumed-patheticness, are among the fastest single-cpu crunching boxes in the entire RC5-64 contest. Compare a 500 MHz G4's performance vs. a 1 GHz Athlon or a Xeon.. The "slower" G4 is almost 30% faster (approximately 4.8 Mkeys/sec) than the fastest PC. Imagine what kind of number cruncher a double/quad Altivec would be. As for ignorant people who assume that nerds would never use a Mac.. well, you people are just perfect for a Think Ignorant(TM) ad. People find the most suitable machine for the tasks they do. I happen to enjoy working on a Mac for web development, HTML programming, and multimedia design. It works fine for me and doesn't get in the way of my creative process. I can find a generous amount of Mac software/hardware at retailers, thank you very much. You may enjoy Windoze or Linux because its "behavior" suits your own creative process. Fine. So quit flaming other people's platform preferences as long as they don't end up stepping on your toes. Do your work and refrain from bothering others.. they're getting ready for their MP Macs =)
-----
Linux user: if (nt == unstable) { switchTo.linux() }
Those who laugh at you for you having a Mac.. are the people who constantly call you to fix their PC.
Why should I lock myself into one vendor hardware, one distributer and a limited selection of OSs? I'll take a Compaq (ick) Alpha any day! However the cases are nice... :)
That said, the G4 is still far ahead of twice-as-'fast' Pentium IIIs - several reviews have shown that, with Altivec-native programs like Photoshop, a G4 at 450MHz creams a Pentium III at 1GHz, by 30% in some instances. With Mac OS X on dual or quad G4s, and with much better G4s (dual altivec units, and deeper pipelining to allow higher clock speeds) coming this fall, the Mac platform's about to get a massive boost.
I've heard of this before. Are you referring to the "vector processing unit" or Velocity Engine? For those of you who haven't seen the benchmarks, here is a link to an article with a few benchmarks.
The only thing I don't like about this is the fact that in order to beat the PIII's, a special Photoshop plugin is required to make use of the Velocity Engine.
What does this mean? Quite simply, an application must specifically be written (or re-written) to take advantage of the Velocity Engine. I'm not saying this is unfair, or lying or a half truth or anything like that since Intel has MMX, but I feel it's a somewhat skewed view of things.
Many video cards are like this as well. I remember reading an interview with one of the programmers at iD (Gremme I beleive) where he stated the largest problem with game performance is having to write code that works with all sorts of video cards. Many individual cards such as 3Dfx have propritary APIs such as Glide that gives a great performance boost, but obviously Glide apps will only run on 3Dfx cards (wrappers non-withstanding).
Thus, I have nothing against Macs (hey, progress is progress, and people everyone likes or hates things for his or her own reasons), however I don't think that just Photoshop benchmarks with a plugin which makes use of a Mac specific co-processor tell the whole story.
True! True!
Not that it REALLY matters, but:
a) The 350s were only using Yikes! mobos for a few weeks before they were updated to Sawtooth.
b) The 400 Yikes! machines (like mine) have two external Firewire ports, but no internal like the Sawtooth.
Not sure why I felt the need to clarify this, but I guess I'm just anal-retentive that way.
A SKU is a stock keeping unit , a numeric code for inventory control usually in an electronic database.
This is similar to a Universal Product Code, which is the barcode found on virtually everything these days.
Both refer to a number. A UPC has a standard barcode and numbering system. A SKU isn't universal, and can be different no matter where you are.
SKUs sometimes include letters, too, whereas UPCs are strictly numeric.
I think.
Take an x86 processor for example. Usually, there is a premium associated with buying in at the top of the speed end. A 1GHZ chip is bound to be more than twice the price of 2 500Mhz chips. Absolutely bound to be. It's the membership fee for that exclusive club that last about 2 weeks before the next speed ramp comes along.
Anyone with any sense knows that comparing on Mhz along is lame. If you can effectively double your processing ability whilst still being able to use more commonly available (and cheaper) chips, you're bound to be on a winner. The pressure is taken off developing a 2Ghz processor if you can set 4 500Mhz processors working together nicely. Apple has had the MP support in the OS for a little while now, although I wouldn't want to hazard a guess on how effective it is.
Any guesses on whether they can put a cube design together ? I'd like to see something like that rip through my RC5 blocks.... :-)
M.
Yes and no. Like a Mac you can not run without the GUI, but Be can run command line apps from the terminal which runs a POSIX compliant Bash shell. So it doesn't have a GUI free-mode from the OS standpoint, but from the application standpoint it does (kinda).
As for how the multiple threads are ponied out, you will have to ask someone else since I am not a developer. I also haven't put it to the test, since I run a K6/2-500 BeOS machine and don't plan on going MP until dual athlons are available (or if I run into a sweet deal on a Powermac 9600 MP or find a quad PPro board at the local chip shop).
Insanity is the last line of defence for the master diplomat. But you have to lay the groundwork early.
Rage 128 Pro. Still, it's not the greatest, but it beats Apple's older proprietary video chipsets rather handily.
--srj/mmv
Here's a handy template you can use to start your own Mac rumor site:
At the upcoming Macworld|Seybold|WWDC, Apple will announce:
new Powerbooks (or not)
new 17" iMacs (or not)
MP PowerMacs (or not)
an Apple PDA (or not)
MacOS X is shipping (or not)
In other words, these guys predict anything that could possibly happen, so some of it is bound be true.
I code in Perl all day on my mac, because BBEdit kicks the shit out of vi & emacs.
Of course, BBEdit saves the files to my linux box over FTP, so you could kind of say I program on linux, but I'm doing all the typing on my mac.
So I guess that makes one.
Check out DRM-free movies at http://www.bside.com
Victory by Definition:
Do they use a Mac Development Platform? if yes then they are not a geek; if no then they can be, run subroutine to check.
HTML isn't a programming language in and of itself, but once you start talking PERL, Python, ASP (no flames please), &c then Web Pages can be programmed.
-Hartwell
-Hartwell
Uh...I doubt Netscape will be the most used app on the Mac. The only people who install Netscape are the people upgrading from older Macs that don't mind the instability. If you've used Mac OS 8 or 9 you'd notice that IE 4 (and 4.5) are the default browser with Netscape residing on the CD. People buying their first computer and choosing an iMac are most likely sticking with IE. I doubt Netscape will make it to carbonization unless AOL decides to make the DNS registry Netscape-only.
I'm a loner Dottie, a Rebel.
This is what I have been wating for... Apple has really dragged its feet with dual cpu machines. From what I have read, 2 G4's work VERY well together. Apartently you get near 100 boost once you add the second CPU, when using MaxBus.
Has anyone seen any good benchmarks for G4's vs Sparc, Alpha, etc... I have done a but of altivec programming, and golly, that vector unit is sweet. You just can't beat the RISC architechure.
I wonder what version of LinuxPPC will support it. How developed is SMP in the PPC world?
In closing, man these rummors better be true, hmmm.... maybe I will use my free WWDC pass after all...
Peace out.
Ryan
--"Yup."
Quad systems will be expensive. This means that they will have relatively little impact (low sales volumes). A much more interesting announcement would be the availability of cheap single CPU boards maybe based on IBM's POP specification.
Deleted
Slashdot has always been whay Hemos CmdrTaco and crew have wanted to post, methinks you've been reading slashdot for a month rather than two years. I don't give a shit about what Stallman is boycotting. Just because I like GPL software doesn't make anyone my Messiah. Most if not all of your comments are merely trolling for bunnies. Go back under the bridge dude.
I'm a loner Dottie, a Rebel.
Interesting...
I don't see it making much of a difference, though. If the BeOS library calls are the most processor-intensive tasks being done, then it could be important that they be able to run on multiple processors simultaneously.
However, most real apps do their work in the application code. Rendering HTML, recalculating a spreadsheet, figuring out where the Strogg demon is going to walk next.. those are the tasks that really use the CPU most, and multithreaded OS calls won't make a difference there.
Now, if you want to argue that X is a slow means of providing a desktop GUI, I'll agree with you. If you say that its network transparency as implemented adds so much overhead, that linux desktops will never seem crisp as-is, I'll not argue with you.
Neither of those criticisms of X, though, have anything to do with being multithreaded or not, though.
Thanks. Are there say a good comparataive list of UPC or other products that can be compared for a lowers price similar to books under ISBN?
What is power if not for the furtherance of power. Power is a gift in it's own right and a means unto itself.
the sake of completeness, there have been MP Macs before. The 9600 series had an MP box and so did the 7200 IIRC. They had dual PPC 604e and 603 chips rather than 7400s but were indeed multi-processor boxes. Right now the problem with SMP on any platform is the lack of SMP support in apps. I can build an 8 processor Xeon box running Linux but if none of my apps are multi-threaded it isn't going to speed anything up. This is an advantage Be has which I hope other people get a handle on soon, all of their apps are multi-threaded and they treat SMP as a de facto thing rather than something only crazy power hungry people use. Even in single processor systems multithreading boosts performance especially when you've got a good superscalar chip under the hood. Lets hear it for SMP!
I'm a loner Dottie, a Rebel.
The solution to the branch-prediction problem is actually in IA-64: predication, the ability to "skip over" a given instruction without branching around it. It's like a real, general pupose, instruction-level verion of the C-language "if" construct that doesn't use branches (and thus doesn't create a separate execution path to screw up multi-op fetches). But, I agree, this is all off-topic.
My big worry for Macs is that these things will be RIDICULOUSLY expensive. A nice G4-450 (not the fastest G4 out there) will run you noticeably over $2500. Remember how expensive multi-processor PCs were a few years ago before they started cranking 'em out in bulk? Plus, even OS-X won't be particularly well optimized for multiple processors, considering this is the first release and the developers had a lot of more important issues than SMP to consider (like getting it to run). I'd expect the price/performance for these machines to be pretty unimpressive, especially when compared with other, more mature SMP-solutions.
Now, I wish they could just boot some next-generation, 64-bit MacOS on RS6000 PPC hardware. I mean, come on, if you REALLY want to run photoshop fast, and price isn't an object, why not shell out for a $100,000 IBM workstation? Mmmm... 8 GB of RAM... 32 MB of L2 cache. . .
--JRZ
I have a 350 Mhz G4 and a 800 Mhz PIII. I love them both. they were pretty darn close in price. the PIII seems faster to me.
I don't have any benchmarks to show but I don't believe the above claims. Has anyone else had a similar experience?
G4s may kick ass compared to PIIIs with similar Mhz ratings, but I think apple's claims are a little overzealous with all the 2x as fast stuff.
Maybe OSX will help. I am eagerly awaiting.
I provide you with a clue Clue
is at 9.8 meters per second per second. People, don't give in to the five fruits flavors any more than you would give in to the five fruity BSODs. It you want color, make a clear plastic cover and put a bright LED inside. Pink plastic on a computer case is just embarassing. And WTF is up with the 'Yum' advertisements? One of the students here tried to lick the new iMac that we got. Damn Apple. Damn them to.. to.. Microsoft's Programming Division. Heh heh heh.
"however I don't think that just Photoshop benchmarks with a plugin which makes use of a Mac specific co-processor tell the whole story."
Fair enough, but it is technically not a co-processor. It's an additional execution unit within the main processor. Moreover, several parts of the operating system already support it - certain memory operations *systemwide* as of Mac OS 9.0.2, for example. Under Mac OS X, much more of the OS will be Altivec-enhanced, which will give a big speed boost.
Yes, applications have to be written specifically to take the BEST advantage of Altivec (to use the new instruction set, vector permutes and the like) but they only need to be recompiled with the latest Codewarrior to take SOME advantage - to treat the Altivec unit as an additional fp unit. Obviously full altivec optimization is best, but the point is that there can be some improvements with just a recompile.
Under Mac OS X, a *lot* will be done with system services - not just process and I/O management with the kernel, but Quicktime, Aqua, OpenGL, and possibly even the system libraries for Carbon and Cocoa will be heavily Altivec-optimized. OpenGL already is under Mac OS 9. So it's a little like the shift to PowerPC... at first, only a couple apps supported it, and Photoshop needed a plugin for support! Over time, it got better and better, however. The same will happen with Altivec.
Incidentally, the same system services that are Altivec-optimized should also be MP-capable, and applications that make use of those services will see those benefits.
-- "Those who cast the votes decide nothing. Those who count the votes decide everything." -Joseph Stalin
damn! you're right! shit, man.
=)
"spare the lachrymosity when the fulminations have inveighed"
"spare the lachrymosity when the fulminations have inveighed"
-madd
Just to clear up the confusion and silly (read: funny)... MP means Multi-Processor.
Again, I'm not sure whether there is much point in Apple actually putting these machines up for sale. MacOS X should be an excellent OS for SMP applications, but MacOS 9 most definitely is NOT. I think if APple were to release these systems now it might lead to a little ridicule to the uselessness of the current/classic MacOS at using SMP. (Symmetric MP)
I will be there with notepad in hand!
Actually, MacOS X Server *does not* support SMP systems. The Mach 2.x kernel that they used is very bad at figuring out what to do with more than one processor. :+)
;)
No, MacOS X will be where these machines will shine. They stressed at WWDC 99 that they would be building in very good SMP support into the MACH 3.0 (which is included in Darwin of course). This year there are a few sessions dedicated to the topic. I will be there.
FYI, marketshare is not the defining factor in a monopoly. A monopoly is made when a company has a command over the market, no substitutes exist, and entry by other firms is barred.
This Sig Intentionally left blank
Well...apparently a lot of peopl...about 10% of the home computing market.
Anyway, the software selection isn't that small....'cept for games.
Who the hell wants Win2k anyway. It sucks.
Apple's sold multi processor systems (dual; Daystar sold quads) before, but the Mac OS at present has very poor MP support. Mac OS 9 is somewhat improved; some Finder operations will take advantage of a second processor, as will all Quicktime operations; applications that are explicitly parallel get a big boost (Photoshop, for example). However, you don't get what you get in Linux, where a given single-threaded process runs on the lowest-loaded processor at the time.
However, I don't think Apple's going to be SELLING these machines in May or June. I think Apple's going to be demonstrating them to developers, showing what a boost Mac OS X gets with a dual or quad G4 machine - and what a boost a dual or quad machine gets under OS X. Since OS X is slated for release sometime this summer (probably Macworld Expo New York in July), that will likely tie the two together. I'm sure these machines will run Mac OS 9 as well, but don't expect too much.
That said, the G4 is still far ahead of twice-as-'fast' Pentium IIIs - several reviews have shown that, with Altivec-native programs like Photoshop, a G4 at 450MHz creams a Pentium III at 1GHz, by 30% in some instances. With Mac OS X on dual or quad G4s, and with much better G4s (dual altivec units, and deeper pipelining to allow higher clock speeds) coming this fall, the Mac platform's about to get a massive boost.
That said, I fear that Apple will price these dual or quad machines way out of reach. An additional processor doesn't add that much to the price - maybe $500 reasonably. The smart approach with MP is not to double up on the very fastest chips; they just cost too much. Rather, it's better to step down the clock speed a little bit to allow for more processors at a reasonable price point. Thus, I think dual G4s at only 400 or 450MHz would make a lot of sense, and could be reasonably priced. I say could be; I have little faith in Apple to do this, though Apple's been much better about price-performance lately than they used to be.
-- "Those who cast the votes decide nothing. Those who count the votes decide everything." -Joseph Stalin
Ehm..that's bullshit. The MacOS platform is growing steadily, and has gained quite a lot of market share in the last two years compared to Apple's bad period under that Gill guy. More and more companies are porting their software to the Mac, amongst them Id Software with Quake 2, and Unreal Tournament etc.
As for Adobe ditching the Mac, that's complete nonsense. Macs are widely used by creative professionals and thus Adobe makes a lot of money from their MacOS Photoshop, which is not ported but developed natively....and Office is still going strong on the Mac, not that I use it.
Don't foget how these terms are all shoved down our throats all the time...the only one that matters is when the machines are on the shelf at the store.
-- Are you an EFF member yet?
Eh? What would Apple then be using? x86? I don't think so. Apple is a hardware company, not a software company that sells its OS, like Microsoft. If they'd port MacOS to x86 they'd die SO fast.
You might have had some good points in there but your post is impossible to read. Please reformat it with HTML code. Thanks
--
Don't lead me into temptation... I can find it myself.
Got a IBM ppc 750 running here on my embedded project running mklinux. bus clock is 33Mhz
(internally multiplied to 450-ish)
it does about 1.2 Mkeys/sec for rc5.
At Apple's site they clearly state that MacOS X will be out. Commercialy. No more waiting. Now, what's that about MP mac's?
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after some of the crap MOSR has said before, I wouldn't be surprised if they claimed the new machines were capable of flight ;)
One time I threw a brick at a duck.
Does the LinuxPPC kernel support it? Imagine the potential for this thing on distributed.net.
MutilGigaflops could crack rc5 pretty efficiently, I'd imagine.
Posted by Nr9:
The reason Apple's a closed company right now is because of Microsoft. The competition's fuckin killing them. The mac market is very small. if Apple opens up, the (company) dies. There would be no support for mac users, nothing, just a bunch of loosely organized programmers on the net who make some mac os x shit. Before microsoft emerged as a real competitior, apple was really open(apple II). Apple is closed now to save its own ass. Computer Manufacturers who make their motherboards, cases, and support thier own hardware with operating systems can't survive without being closed. In the PC market, system makers don't need much R and D because they just buy motherboards from companies like intel and asus. A few years ago, apple tried to open up the mac clone market but that almost killed them. look what happened to IBM, before, and after they opened up the licensing. A company like apple can't afford to be open. if they do, they will cease to exist in its current form, a form that many mac users are used to, and love.
You are completely right.
h ronicle/archive/2000/04/17/BU1016CH.DTL
And Apple shines. The 450 MHz PowerPC G4 beats out both Intel's and AMD's 1 GHz offerings using a true test of processing power, Photoshop.
You can read about it here:
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c
OK, so I've noticed some conspiracy theories in these comments to explain the slowness of software such as Office, on MacOS compared with similar Wintel machines. Its all Apple's fault. They kept a crappy OS alive for way to long.
Slow Microsoft software was Microsoft's fault. Word 6 on the Mac sucked worse than any application that has ever sucked before. Microsoft knew this, customers knew this, Apple knew this. Several years and agreements later, we got Word 98 -- a completely rewrite. The difference is astounding. Word 98 quick, functional and easy to use.
- Scott
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Scott Stevenson
Scott Stevenson
Tree House Ideas
Huh, I thought the highest bus multiplier the Revision 3.0, the newest revision, of the 750 was 10x and 10 times 33.3MHz is a 333MHz. Of course I may be wrong, you could be using something else.
Impersonating Tycho from Penny Arcade since before there was a PA.
Right on.
John Carmack
The iBook will give you five to six hours of real work. I plug mine in at night to charge, but the rest of the time I just use it without worrying about battery life or plugging in any cables. AirPort is really excellent. It really makes a difference when you just don't have to plug a portable into anything at all. Truly portable.
Looks like this rumor got it's start from a fake advertisement made by some wannabe advertising people.
macnn.com feature on 'espionage' ad
How long did you develop for the Macintosh? What did you try to write? How much time did you spend learning the system, and how much depth did you go into?
I did a whole lot of work on MacPPP 2.5 and FreePPP, PPP Menu, Internet Setup Monkey , Gearbox, I was a SE at Apple (twice), Adobe, Netscape, etc. etc. etc. I've spent years in Macsbug and Jasik deep in the system. I got my first Mac in 1995. Do I qualify as someone who is knowlegeable about the MacOS? So... from in-depth knowledge of the MacOS, I still sat that without full preemption, memory protection, etc. Software on a Mac cannot out perform software on a real OS. I guess you actually believed those smoke and mirror demos at WWDC that pit Photoshop on a ultra overclocked Mac that will never ship next to a crappy PC out of the box.
I realize that mac's are largely used by the graphic design community but A few photoshop filters which show the absolute best a G4 can do dont accurately describe system speed it seems to me from what I know of altivec it would be of little or no use in things like large compiles large database manipulations etc. I think unless one is going to say that the purpose of a mac is to run photoshop and no more its the benchmarks showing a few photoshop filters mean next to to non photoshop users.
Granted I am pretty certain that the G4 is a superior chip to the PIII in terms of engineering elegance one really has to be fair and do all around benchmarks on a machine not just single photoshop filters.
me
very tiny selection of software/hardware? well, wouldn't everyone agree its the same thing with linux (not the dead part...)?
"spare the lachrymosity when the fulminations have inveighed"
"spare the lachrymosity when the fulminations have inveighed"
-madd
First off;
I've never had the opportunity to work on a MAC though I've revered their design from an engineering standpoint for more than a decade; They have simply been at the engineering forefront of personal computers and OS since MAC was first introduced. Just too pricy for me.
Secondly;
Those of you interested in discussing benchmarking on a MAC need to compare apples to apples, no pun intended. The only way to compare stats across platforms is to use the same OS (Linux) with the same benchmarking suite that has been compiled *without* cpu specific optimizations. The Seti@Home client uses this "blended optimization" approach for statistical homogeneity, though I question the veracity of utilizing *it* for an accurate cross platform benchmark.
Thirdly;
Those of you hungering for knowledge and proof that the PPC/Linux pairing has *NOT* been "borne a dying", used only within the confines of some university geek lab, check out www.terrasoftsolutions.com, the maker of YellowDog Linux and BlackLab Linux. Their products are used in major government research centers. Using BlackLab Linux, "support for the Motorola AltiVec technology offers an increase in performance of 150-300% over non-AltiVec systems with some Linux applications running in excess of 10 times (1,000%) faster."
Now for the flame bait 0:-)
They, along with CSPI have created integrated high-performance multicomputer boards and systems designed for use in a variety of compute-intensive applications using Black Lab Linux as the embedded operating system running MPI. Can anyone say *Beowulf* ?
Well,
I imagine if anything it's because half of the OS X equation has already been released...OS X Server, which I believe supports multiple processors. Since it seems to make quite a bit of sense to me to have MP server boxes, I see this as a great thing (if/when it happens).
-fp
Microsoft is working on the William Tell, and that will leave Macs in the dust because in my opinion MacOS is just a cheap take off of Windows. Also in my opinion, because Macontosh's only other advantage over PC (even thought technically a mac is a PC) is speed, and now that that's gone...
arg...Penus
GatorMan
sup #mf