just speculation

thuh freakthuh freak
Posted:
in Future Apple Hardware edited January 2014
i was just thinking of dual procs, and ideas of the switch to x86 or some other intel branded chip. there used to be a mac (~7200?), i think from the gil era, with 1 motorola proc and 1 intel. iirc it was wildly unpopular. but with the darwin shit being able to port well to x86 (and assuming cocoa and aqua can transfer well) what about doing something like that, as a transition. is it possible for the kernel to take advantage of 2 procs from completely diff architectures like that?

Comments

  • Reply 1 of 9
    aphelionaphelion Posts: 736member
    there is no evidence relating to any such information.
  • Reply 2 of 9
    junkyard dawgjunkyard dawg Posts: 2,801member
    Good idea! Sell a dual processor Powermac with one Pentium 4 and one G4. You can have the mobo split up the code so that the G4 gets altivec code, and the pentium 4 gets the x86 code! That way you could run Windows apps in OS X, AND Mac OS X apps! Just make sure that the mobo has a flux capacitor to mix the calculations from each CPU together when they're done calculating.



    Even better would be a tri-processor mac, with one G4, one Pentium 4, and one MIPS CPU. Then you could process THREE kinds of code all at once! It would be the fastestest computer in the land!~
  • Reply 3 of 9
    xaqtlyxaqtly Posts: 450member
    You're talking about the Dos Compatible models. There were a couple of them. They did not have an x86 chip on the logic board, they had what was essentially an Orange Micro expansion card, and that had an x86 chip on it.



    The point was to run Windows in hardware. I used one for a while and it worked, but it was very, very, very slow. In fact at the time I don't recall it being all that much faster than SoftPC. It was faster, just not by a large margin. I think the speed issues had to do with translating all the instructions from x86 to PowerPC code.
  • Reply 4 of 9
    jcgjcg Posts: 777member
    [quote]Originally posted by Junkyard Dawg:

    <strong>Good idea! Sell a dual processor Powermac with one Pentium 4 and one G4. You can have the mobo split up the code so that the G4 gets altivec code, and the pentium 4 gets the x86 code! That way you could run Windows apps in OS X, AND Mac OS X apps! Just make sure that the mobo has a flux capacitor to mix the calculations from each CPU together when they're done calculating.



    Even better would be a tri-processor mac, with one G4, one Pentium 4, and one MIPS CPU. Then you could process THREE kinds of code all at once! It would be the fastestest computer in the land!~</strong><hr></blockquote>





    What processor would you compile it for? Remember that for each processor you have the OS on you would need a recompile so that it will run, you cant just take PPC versions of a program and run it on an X86 version of OS X
  • Reply 5 of 9
    fotnsfotns Posts: 301member
    [quote]Originally posted by JCG:

    <strong>





    What processor would you compile it for? Remember that for each processor you have the OS on you would need a recompile so that it will run, you cant just take PPC versions of a program and run it on an X86 version of OS X</strong><hr></blockquote>



    You realize he was being sarcastic, don't you?
  • Reply 6 of 9
    smithjoelsmithjoel Posts: 240member
    Yeah, the DOS compatiblity boards were also like a generation behinde on the PC side to. And they didn't run both apps in the same window, you had to use a key command to switch modes. Not to mention the fact that your CPU didn't double, but the ram, and disk space were shared. So, effectivly your computer was slower than it could be on the Mac and PC side.
  • Reply 7 of 9
    gumby5647gumby5647 Posts: 241member
    [quote]Originally posted by Junkyard Dawg:

    <strong>Good idea! Sell a dual processor Powermac with one Pentium 4 and one G4. You can have the mobo split up the code so that the G4 gets altivec code, and the pentium 4 gets the x86 code! That way you could run Windows apps in OS X, AND Mac OS X apps! Just make sure that the mobo has a flux capacitor to mix the calculations from each CPU together when they're done calculating.



    Even better would be a tri-processor mac, with one G4, one Pentium 4, and one MIPS CPU. Then you could process THREE kinds of code all at once! It would be the fastestest computer in the land!~</strong><hr></blockquote>



    Don't forget the 1.21 Gigawatts it would take to power the sucker
  • Reply 8 of 9
    junkyard dawgjunkyard dawg Posts: 2,801member
    [quote]Originally posted by JCG:

    <strong>





    What processor would you compile it for? Remember that for each processor you have the OS on you would need a recompile so that it will run, you cant just take PPC versions of a program and run it on an X86 version of OS X</strong><hr></blockquote>



    Ummm, NO. As long as you've got the flux capacitor, there is no need to recompile any code. It will be parsed out to the appropriate CPU in real time, and then the flux generator will mix all the calculations back together at the end of the pipelines from each CPU. Thus, x86 and PPC will work together quite harmoniously.



    Using this approach, there is no reason why Apple couldn't make a G4/Pentium 4 Powermac that could run both the OS X and Windows versions of Photoshop AT THE SAME TIME! Imagine the possibilities! One could use the Windows PS to run a Gaussian blur, while the OS X PS would be running another filter. it would be like having a bake-off while you work! And of course, since the two CPUs would be competing, each one would run FASTER than if it ran alone, because of course they run faster when in direct competition.



    By using separate RAM for each CPU, we could minimize the amount of sh!t they talk to each other and keep the "your momma" pollution of branch prediction down to a low level.
  • Reply 9 of 9
    aphelionaphelion Posts: 736member
    JYD ~ I thought this thread would be a total waste of bandwidth but you gave me a good laugh on this ...
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