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Will MacIntel Hardware Open The Door for Mac OS X CAD?
xcleetusx wonders: "I've been a fan of Apple for years, and with their current strangle-hold on mainstream media my desire to make the switch has been growing ever more, but the same nagging issue that has prevented my switch for years still remains: I'm an engineer, and I simply can't invest in a computer that won't run modeling/simulation software like CATIA and Solidworks. Since this software is available on Unix (which Mac OS X is built on) and also on Windows (Intel hardware), is the Apple switch to Intel-based hardware going to better my chances for a Mac OS X CAD workstation, or will it remain a pipedream?"
Programs run on operating systems, not CPUs. Your best chance is if the new Apple/Intel hardware dual-boots, or if Apple gains enough market share that CAD companies decide to start coding for them.
Dear Slashdot: next time you want to mess with the site, add a rich-text editor for comments.
'm an engineer, and I simply can't invest in a computer that won't run modeling/simulation software like CATIA and Solidworks.
You do realize that Solidworks is available for OS X, right?
This is a viewer application, it's on Linux too. One can see data created via Solidworks on a win32 PC, that's about it. Well, measure, etc...
Solidworks is about as closely married to the win32 API as one can get. They stated this goal early in their development process and have not deviated one iota.
The whole integrated deal will keep a lot of MCAD off of Mac and Linux for a very long time to come yet. Microsoft is very aggressive in this area, working with vendors closely to interlink CAD with Office. The combination is good, however it will remain win32 as well. (Sigh...)
The older cad packages, that still have UNIX versions, are more likely ports. We have PTC on Linux today, it's not too much of a stretch to see OSX --provided there is demand. That's what all the vendors what to see. Tell them and tell your friends to tell them.
Better: Inquire about their software, get them to do a demo, then tell 'em you need it on the Mac. As they walk out the door, know they will be carrying that information with them to their technical marketing people. --Those are the folks that need to be sold.
Don't say Mac up front either... just keep the discussion about CAD and needs. The assumption will be win32. (It always is) Then drop the Mac bomb on them.
Blogging because I can...
]]] Consider that Wintel ISN'T the platform of choice for most if not all CAD software.
It is now.
]]] The platform of choice 5 years ago was Solaris
I know. That was 5 years ago and now is now.
]]] These applications needed more memory, stability, and horsepower than the average PC had.
The average PC still doesn't have that kind of horsepower. CAD isn't run on average PCs. They are Wintel PCs still. As for stability... a PC provides plenty stability if you only run your CAD and Office.
]]] Many applications wanted to be in a 64 bit address space.
Which is probably the only reason Unix versions are still made. But most people don't need 64 bits, and buy Windows versions.
]]] MS products were more aimed at the home than the back server room from the beginning.
Huh? What back server room? A CAD workstation sits on the engineer's desktop, not in any back server room.
]]] Come on now. Only recently the perferred platform for these types of applications has become Linux on 64 bit Operterons.
I see now. You must be confusing CAD software with something else, like movie rendering farms. No CAD software that I'm aware of runs on a 64-bit Linux. Maybe there's an unsupported version of CATIA that does, I'm not sure.
better not tell the people at Architosh.com that there is not a MacOS CAD workstation
You mean, like this?
Except that it is, and they don't.
Programs run on operating systems, not CPUs.
Nope, they run on CPUs also. Operating systems do to. Operating systems and programs are both software. They both run on CPUs. The operating system schedules what programs get to run when, and when the OS itself runs, but everything happens on the CPU.
Now what you may have been trying to say is that programs are built to be run with certain operating systems, which would be correct.
My understanding is that CAD software has a lot of processor specific opitizations. There lies one of the biggest problems with porting. A move to x86 will certainly help with porting.
Burn Hollywood Burn
Don't count on it. A lot of the serious maths is farmed out to external libraries. Those libraries are often highly portable. Given the inherent complexity of many of the algorithms involved, and the frequency of new compiler/processor releases, there isn't really time to do much platform-specific optimisation work beyond setting sensible compiler options and the like.
Even if there was time to spend on micro-optimisation, it wouldn't help that much anyway. In this business, you usually count performance benefits in powers of N (where N is usually something like the number of geometric figures in a particular part of a model or the number of control points on a NURBS figure), or in orders of magnitude (typically where some new algorithm is developed to do some key processing), not the odd 10% speed up gained by micro-optimisation of a particular implementation of a particular algorithm on a particular platform with a particular compiler version.
Obviously I'm generalising somewhat. There's clearly a lot of scope for parallel processing on some platforms, for example, particularly as mainstream processors become multi-core by default, and serious CAD workstations come with multiple physical processors. Again, though, the interest is more in how readily parallelisable the algorithms are in this case than in using some particularly clever combination of MMX/SSE/whatever instructions to squeeze an extra 5% out of a particular build.
Just MHO, of course, and all opinions here are my own and do not represent those of any CAD software vendor, mathematical library vendor, tech pundit, CAD software user, or anyone else for that matter...
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.