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Apple To Discuss HyperTransport For Future Macs

Posted by timothy on from the think-hyper dept.

macrealist writes "CNET is reporting that Apple will discuss the use of HyperTransport in Macs at the Developer's conference. The interesting thing is that the article claims that Apple is not likely to use hypertransport to link the CPU to the memory, but instead to link chipsets together because IBM would have to 'to adapt it to the Power architecture.' But according to arstechnica, the 970 does have a frontside bus that operates at similar speeds to Hypertransport."

6 of 86 comments (clear)

  1. Technically Cool Hardware, or Fast and Cheap? by tyagiUK · · Score: 5, Insightful

    As many people (keep) saying, Apple kit isn't necessarily the fastest out there in terms of raw speed. However, from a day-to-day point of view, is raw speed what you want on a minute-by-minute basis? Probably not. If you do, then you've probably got a dual or quad processor x86 box churning away with your favourite SMP kernel-based OS. For everyday use (productivity apps, Internet, media manipulation) Apple kit does a really good job. Firewire is fast and convenient. More importantly, Apple kit (and software) is very stable in my experience. Apple looks like it is selective in its choice of cool new tech (tm) to incorporate into its products. This is a Good Thing.

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    1. Re:Technically Cool Hardware, or Fast and Cheap? by Otter · · Score: 2, Insightful
      However, from a day-to-day point of view, is raw speed what you want on a minute-by-minute basis?

      No, the most important performance factor for me is GUI responsiveness -- and that's where Apple really isn't cutting it these days. Neither are the user-friendly Linux desktop apps.

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    2. Re:Technically Cool Hardware, or Fast and Cheap? by WatertonMan · · Score: 2, Insightful
      The GUI in the Finder is pretty slow - especially when doing drag and drop of multiple files. The context menu in the Finder is horrenduously slow. (Presumably because it doesn't cache file types for determining context menus) Clicking on folders on the dock is very slow to display its contents. Those are just in terms of display.

      Using the GUI in the open/close is slow simply because of design and not pausing or slowdowns. It takes to long to get to where you want to get. Default Folder helps a bit but really doesn't resolve a lot of problems.

      On older machines that can't access Aqua Extreme there are also some slowdowns that are annoying.

      Having said that though the speed problems of the Finder between 10.0 and 10.2 are dramatically different. Until 10.2 it was nearly unusuable for me as I have many directories with more than 30 files. I think most people expect the big advantage with 10.3 to be a new Finder.

    3. Re:Technically Cool Hardware, or Fast and Cheap? by WatertonMan · · Score: 2, Insightful
      Saying don't use the context menu really just illustrates the problem of the Finder. Further there are context menus that could be useful. It's very easy to create a context menu that passes a file to a shell script, for instance. There are context menus for uncompressing or unstuffing. There are context menus for opening a file with a particular applicaiton. In theory the context menu is very powerful. In practice though...

      The alternatives to the Finder really aren't much better. I've used all of them at one time or an other and try the latest versions every few months. Most of them are just variations on the Finder anyway. I wish there was a real alternative. However we'll have to see what Apple has up their sleeve. Rumor is that they hired a lot of the Nautilus team from Gnome to work on it.

      I think they'd have been far better to have hired the folks who write OmniGraffle to rewrite the Finder. But that's me.

      We'll see what happens with 10.3. If the Finder isn't significantly better there will be a lot of pissed off people as it is by far the weakest part of OSX.

  2. Re:Switch? by pauljlucas · · Score: 4, Insightful
    I have been thinking of switching over to Apple, and now that many designers are coming up with cool products with OSX support, I am paying much more attention to Mac.
    Does that imply that you are using your current computers for out-of-the-ordinary things that Macs currently can not do either at all or at least as well? If the answer is "no," then you could have already switched.
    So looking at Hyper Transport, at this stage, I'm a tad leery of it because it didn't come from Apple.
    Uhm, the CPUs don't come from Apple (they're not in the CPU business); the hard drives don't come from Apple (they're not in the hard drive business); the memory doesn't come from Apple (they're not in the memory business); the LCD screens don't come from Apple (they're not in the LCD business); etc.

    Apple contracts with dozens of commodity hardware manufactures to build components. Rebranding other-manufacturer items with the Apple logo doesn't make them "come from Apple."

    ... is this going to be the next evolutionary step for Apple, or is it just an added hardware feature that is relatively minor?
    Is this issue really the show-stopper preventing you from using Macs? Seems kind of odd.
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  3. Re:Switch? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    the graphics generated by Photo Shop for Mac are better than PC for some reason

    I worked in the graphic arts for ten years. Here's the honest-to-god truth: people who use Macs for art applications like Photoshop and Illustrator are generally more talented than people who use PC's.

    Yes, I'm painting with a broad brush. But when you pick a random piece of work generated on a Mac, you're going to find that it looks better than a random piece of work generated on a PC.

    Cause and effect? No idea. I'm just saying that in my not-entirely-insignificant experience, there's a definite correlation.

    Seriously, to get me to switch to Mac, there will have to be carnage involved, or a scary-looking skin/theme mod for OSX.

    Uh. If you want to make your Mac look ugly, there are ways. But it's not a good idea. First, because it's UGLY. And second, because Apple, collectively, knows more about designing human user interfaces that are more aesthetically pleasing and more functional than anybody else in the world. If you change your Mac's look, you are ALMOST guaranteed to be making it WORSE, both looks-wise and works-wise.

    The guy in it hates the Mac and complains about things that scare me, too.

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