Let's take the 128-bit vector processing operations. Say, best case, you wanted to issue and execute one of those every clock cycle, at 500 MHz, that would require 128/8*500= 8,000 MByte/sec memory bandwidth. The Apple available today has 20x less!
Your math would be correct 10 years ago, but not today. That's what caches are for, especially the PPC backside cache. With the new cache prefetch channels, the math comes out very differently. For real-world applications the G4 can hit 10-25% of the theoretical 4 GFLOP-limit while using full memory bandwidth.
Quite a change to read a more balanced article from the usual mindless Apple-bashing here on/.
Many non-Apple users lump "Apple the company", "Apple products" and "Apple hardware/software designers" into a single unit... for most companies this might be convenient, but for talking about Apple that's a mistake.
I'm an Apple user since 1977, a Mac user since 1984. In that time I've liked many Apple products (and despised a few), complained about many of Apple's policies as a company... but I've no complaints about the hardware and software designers, many of which are top-notch.
If sometimes (or often, depending on whoever you ask) the effective results could be better, that's only to be expected; getting these 3 vectors into alignment seems to be nearly impossible. Meanwhile, I own a Daystar Genesis and a B/W G3 on which I do 90% of my work, very nicely... and a much-accursed Pentium II for running a high-priced Windows-only EDA package.
Linux? I've hired a Linux consultant to set up a server... for my desktop it's not ready. I'd rather wait for Mac OS X (workstation). DR1 looks promising.
Slashdot Mirror
Your math would be correct 10 years ago, but not today. That's what caches are for, especially the PPC backside cache. With the new cache prefetch channels, the math comes out very differently. For real-world applications the G4 can hit 10-25% of the theoretical 4 GFLOP-limit while using full memory bandwidth.
Many non-Apple users lump "Apple the company", "Apple products" and "Apple hardware/software designers" into a single unit... for most companies this might be convenient, but for talking about Apple that's a mistake.
I'm an Apple user since 1977, a Mac user since 1984. In that time I've liked many Apple products (and despised a few), complained about many of Apple's policies as a company... but I've no complaints about the hardware and software designers, many of which are top-notch.
If sometimes (or often, depending on whoever you ask) the effective results could be better, that's only to be expected; getting these 3 vectors into alignment seems to be nearly impossible. Meanwhile, I own a Daystar Genesis and a B/W G3 on which I do 90% of my work, very nicely... and a much-accursed Pentium II for running a high-priced Windows-only EDA package.
Linux? I've hired a Linux consultant to set up a server... for my desktop it's not ready. I'd rather wait for Mac OS X (workstation). DR1 looks promising.