...Researchers at the Ohio Aerospace Institute in Brookpark did exactly that, linking 15 Apple Macintosh G4 personal computers to tackle chores once the realm of Cray supercomputers... Overall performance beats a commercial cluster of Silicon Graphics computers costing twice as much.
so the prerelease itaniums promise to do better in march? apple/moto arent sitting still either. faster g4s on faster buses are due in january. but id love to see performance numbers and an explanation when you can post them. post at appleinsider. thanks
id give a longer reply but i have to run; the guys in web development have fired up the unreal server...
i agree with some of what youve said, but what remains of that gap is closing fast, aided by economics: there are far more consoles out there than pcs with hardware up to snuff. the number of copies of a console game sold is an order of magnitude better than what an equivalent pc game can hope for
yes, id love fast opengl. but what good is it without any games to play?
to answer the original question: darwin (mosx sans gui) is available for intel. the gui is closed, you cant port it. so you have to compare the whole system: 600 mhz duron with win/linux to imac with os x
the usual "depending on whose benchmarks you believe and which part of system performance you are looking at" applies
it already _does_ support a certain level of gaming (see ac post). but for serious gaming, people buy a game console. for $200 you get hardware as powerful as your computer
i wonder if the business model of desktop computers will have to change...
sony announced the delay was caused by the need to firewall napster in all products. walkmans are currently being recalled for firewalling
____
sony is currently developing firewall:IT (tm) technology to firewall audio cds. sony, inc. based in japan is dedicated to consumer products and is a world leader in firewall technology
youre forgetting timescale and quantity. your basketball example doesnt work for technology and evolution because even if there will never in history be someone who makes as many baskets as jordan, two average nba players together could make as many. basketball doesnt let you keep adding people to the game but evolution does. in the worst case it might just take a little longer
but this assumes that people like einstien and newton were abberations and it is extremely unlikely alien civilizations get people like them. why? imagine a bell curve of intelligence. sure there are fewer geniuses, but there are always _some_ geniuses! just as there are always a large number of averages. who knows aliens even have bell curves skewed towards geniuses naturally or through genetic engineering
the point is if it wasnt einstien there would have been another genius. or some combination of subgeniuses working concurrently or sequentially. our technology is advanced both by einstiens and by averages like me. and in the next thousand years there will still be a number of geniuses and a boatload of averages to come
a modern _proprietary_ beta os with a much poorer development environment and no market or mind share
NeXT ran on x86 too. not running x86 was a business decision and be wouldnt have changed that
if linuxppc and yellowdog and suse and others can write for apple hardware why not be?
current apple equipment... wait, you bought apple hardware when it was lagging x86 and with archaic os 9 but wont by the upcoming g4e with os x?!
polymer cell technology is around the corner which supposedly offers twice the battery capacity for half the weight in the same size
as better graphics chips and more drives/peripherals are used in laptops, a processors share of power consumption (and relevance to power saving) will continue to drop
transmeta better be able to do more than low power consumption
Slashdot Mirror
from apples website:
...Researchers at the Ohio Aerospace Institute in Brookpark did exactly that, linking 15 Apple Macintosh G4 personal computers to tackle chores once the realm of Cray supercomputers ... Overall performance beats a commercial cluster of Silicon Graphics computers costing twice as much.
so the prerelease itaniums promise to do better in march? apple/moto arent sitting still either. faster g4s on faster buses are due in january. but id love to see performance numbers and an explanation when you can post them. post at appleinsider. thanks
more fun stuff at apple.com/g4
sgi _may_ have several gigaflops/node next year? puh-leez! g4s have been doing this since _last_ year!
id give a longer reply but i have to run; the guys in web development have fired up the unreal server...
i agree with some of what youve said, but what remains of that gap is closing fast, aided by economics: there are far more consoles out there than pcs with hardware up to snuff. the number of copies of a console game sold is an order of magnitude better than what an equivalent pc game can hope for
yes, id love fast opengl. but what good is it without any games to play?
the low end imac is at least as fast
and in chick magnetism, it wins hands down!
to answer the original question: darwin (mosx sans gui) is available for intel. the gui is closed, you cant port it. so you have to compare the whole system: 600 mhz duron with win/linux to imac with os x
the usual "depending on whose benchmarks you believe and which part of system performance you are looking at" applies
it already _does_ support a certain level of gaming (see ac post). but for serious gaming, people buy a game console. for $200 you get hardware as powerful as your computer
i wonder if the business model of desktop computers will have to change...
lighten up!
like bill gates said in the pirates of silicon valley?!
im going to start quoting "roar" from the lion king now
sony announced the delay was caused by the need to firewall napster in all products. walkmans are currently being recalled for firewalling
____
sony is currently developing firewall:IT (tm) technology to firewall audio cds. sony, inc. based in japan is dedicated to consumer products and is a world leader in firewall technology
youre forgetting timescale and quantity. your basketball example doesnt work for technology and evolution because even if there will never in history be someone who makes as many baskets as jordan, two average nba players together could make as many. basketball doesnt let you keep adding people to the game but evolution does. in the worst case it might just take a little longer
but this assumes that people like einstien and newton were abberations and it is extremely unlikely alien civilizations get people like them. why? imagine a bell curve of intelligence. sure there are fewer geniuses, but there are always _some_ geniuses! just as there are always a large number of averages. who knows aliens even have bell curves skewed towards geniuses naturally or through genetic engineering
the point is if it wasnt einstien there would have been another genius. or some combination of subgeniuses working concurrently or sequentially. our technology is advanced both by einstiens and by averages like me. and in the next thousand years there will still be a number of geniuses and a boatload of averages to come
i swear one day i will learn to put periods at the ends of sentences that end paragraphs. really
a modern _proprietary_ beta os with a much poorer development environment and no market or mind share NeXT ran on x86 too. not running x86 was a business decision and be wouldnt have changed that if linuxppc and yellowdog and suse and others can write for apple hardware why not be? current apple equipment... wait, you bought apple hardware when it was lagging x86 and with archaic os 9 but wont by the upcoming g4e with os x?!
polymer cell technology is around the corner which supposedly offers twice the battery capacity for half the weight in the same size as better graphics chips and more drives/peripherals are used in laptops, a processors share of power consumption (and relevance to power saving) will continue to drop transmeta better be able to do more than low power consumption
read also this rumour from the same author about the cube