Future Hardware: An 'Average' of 'Dual Core'?
Quote:
Microsoft is expected to recommend that the "average" Longhorn PC feature a dual-core CPU running at 4 to 6GHz; a minimum of 2 gigs of RAM; up to a terabyte of storage; a 1 Gbit, built-in, Ethernet-wired port and an 802.11g wireless link; and a graphics processor that runs three times faster than those on the market today.
Microsoft is expected to recommend that the "average" Longhorn PC feature a dual-core CPU running at 4 to 6GHz; a minimum of 2 gigs of RAM; up to a terabyte of storage; a 1 Gbit, built-in, Ethernet-wired port and an 802.11g wireless link; and a graphics processor that runs three times faster than those on the market today.
http://www.microsoft-watch.com/artic...1581842,00.asp
Okay, in light of the G3s running 'X' like a Hamster on its spinny wheel...and 'X' only just getting a bit of 'snap' running on G5s...
...will the Mac OS X that goes up against 'Longhorn' need this level of spec on 'average'?
Lemon Bon Bon
PS. I can't imagine something running 3 times faster than the ATI x800!?!
PPS. Can you imagine the radioactive fall out and heat shielding needed for a dual core Prescott running at 5 gig?
PPPS. A terabyte of storage? 2 gigs of ram...on 'average'. Chain pulling?
er...
(Muses...a dual core 9xx running at 4.5 gig with Altivec II (der-rool with 3D enhancements and something to wipe up the drool...), 4 gigs of ram, 500 gig hard drive...something three times as powerful as x800. Running on...Mac OS X Lynx 10.8 (by the time Long Horn ships?!)
Comments
So you put Longhorn on the shelves somehwere around October 2009!! (on a 14 month OSX.# cycle)
Most likely, it will still run on a single P4 3Ghz, but the same way OS X runs on my 400Mhz Tibook - slow as molasses.
The advanced GPU will be necessary since MS is trying to leapfrog Quartz Extreme - if Apple advances QE to something like Quartz G3, they will require similar graphic power.
Originally posted by Smircle
Those specs don't sound completely unreasonable. Longhorn will be built on C#, which is a vastly easier language to program to than C, C++, or objC ...
... "vastly easier than objC" ...?!?!
feh
Anybody from the Omni group, Aqua Minds, Stone Design, or the plethora of other small dev shops that are competing with major software houses wanna handle this one?
Or maybe we should ask that computer company that put the best happy face on Unix there is, and a major release out every year, what they think?
Originally posted by Smircle
if Apple advances QE to something like Quartz G3, they will require similar graphic power.
Now, where this "G3" specifier come from? Do you picked it at random or does it means something?
Originally posted by PB
Now, where this "G3" specifier come from? Do you picked it at random or does it means something?
Quarts = Quarts G1
Quarts Extreme = Quarts G2
Quarts Super Duper Advance Beat LongHorn Extreme in 10.x = Quarts G3.
Originally posted by T'hain Esh Kelch
Quarts = Quarts G1
Quarts Extreme = Quarts G2
Quarts Super Duper Advance Beat LongHorn Extreme in 10.x = Quarts G3.
It is ok, let me supply you with some "z"'s.
z z z z z z z z z z z z z z z
Quartz
Quarts almost = Liters
Originally posted by oldmacfan
It is ok, let me supply you with some "z"'s.
z z z z z z z z z z z z z z z
Quartz
Quarts almost = Liters
Oh well...
First; everyone must realize by now that modern operating systems cry out for SMP hardware. The only question I have in mind is how many logical processors would be required. Don't forget Apple is very likely to be the first to market with dual core machines and for all intents its pro line is only SMP. That is the single chip 1.6 doesn't sell enough to be counted. So references to SMP are not a stretch considering present day realities. SMP is very much a requirement for many professional uses. The actual spped of the processors is not important, it appears that the speeds mentioned are only projections.
As to memory, I run 1gig on my Linux machine I use everyday. Memory is one of the best investments a single user multitasking machine can have thrown at it. Again the numbers quoted seem to be nothing more than projections based on where technology will be at that time. Just as older SDRAM is no longer cost effective, what we commonly use today will soon age away.
As far as video displays go, well I'm not satisfied with anything that I've seen recently in a price range that I'd want to pay. To be able to effectively drive a large screen display at very high resolutions require a fast GPU. Don't forget we have only recently left the world of benchmarking video systems at low resolution and 1280x1024 is not exactly high resolution. When the LCD manufactures start to manufacture large panels (+18"), at resolutions well beyond 1280x1024, you will see that the current video hardware is not all it is cracked up to be.
Screen size is probally the biggest missing parameter on this spec list or projection. The move to ever larger LCD panels has to go hand in hand with higher pixel densities than what is mainstream today. Have you ever noticed in the sunday fliers that horizontal and vertical resolutions are not specified on mainstream panels anymore irregardless of size? The problem is they are all of the same resolution. That makes the larger panels great for people with bad eyesite, but they don't convey anymore information to the average user. I suspect that we will soon see a jump to much higher resolution in the larger mainstream screens. Greater than 2000 horizontal pixels would be a good start, with vertical resolution varing based on aspect ratio.
Thanks
Dave
Originally posted by Lemon Bon Bon
http://www.microsoft-watch.com/artic...1581842,00.asp
Okay, in light of the G3s running 'X' like a Hamster on its spinny wheel...and 'X' only just getting a bit of 'snap' running on G5s...
...will the Mac OS X that goes up against 'Longhorn' need this level of spec on 'average'?
Lemon Bon Bon
PS. I can't imagine something running 3 times faster than the ATI x800!?!
PPS. Can you imagine the radioactive fall out and heat shielding needed for a dual core Prescott running at 5 gig?
PPPS. A terabyte of storage? 2 gigs of ram...on 'average'. Chain pulling?
er...
(Muses...a dual core 9xx running at 4.5 gig with Altivec II (der-rool with 3D enhancements and something to wipe up the drool...), 4 gigs of ram, 500 gig hard drive...something three times as powerful as x800. Running on...Mac OS X Lynx 10.8 (by the time Long Horn ships?!)
Originally posted by OverToasty
... "vastly easier than objC" ...?!?!
feh
Anybody from the Omni group, Aqua Minds, Stone Design, or the plethora of other small dev shops that are competing with major software houses wanna handle this one?
Or maybe we should ask that computer company that put the best happy face on Unix there is, and a major release out every year, what they think?
"Handle" it in what sense? He's right, C# is superiour to Obj-C (hardly surprising for a language that is approximately 20 years younger). I would choose C# over Obj-C any day, and I hope that Apple sees the light and adopts it as a supported language (MS has already provided the CLI runtime as an academic project for MacOS X). Adopting the .NET framework might be interesting as well, although this is far less clearly superiour to Cocoa... but it is much more complete.
Originally posted by Programmer
Adopting the .NET framework might be interesting as well, although this is far less clearly superiour to Cocoa... but it is much more complete.
"Interesting" in what sense. I understand the inroads they could make, but to serve what purpose? I think Apple's direction seems to be leading to more open standards. FWIW, I cannot get the theory made a while ago about "Apple going down the x86 road when people are just dissatisfied enough" out of my head.
I thought of a song, about the many, many viruses and money lost because of it, to the tune of Rudolph the Red Nose Reindeer the other night and posted it to my website....(click www to read it, if not interested, simply ignore).
Seriously, I think they may adopt more cooperation with MS, but not into a closed environment.
1. Longhorn is do or die for them (otherwise, Linux, OSX, et al.) win, and
2. The only sure way they can get customers to buy their OS is without their choice --- i.e., by bundling it with new computers.
Hence, spec out ballsy computers, and make Longhorn required to run such hardware.
I also read that they're patenting Longhorn up the wazoo with 10+ patent applications per day. Since s/w patents are just an artificial business defense instituted by lawyers (USPTO's Bruce Lehmann et al.) to feed lawyers, this strategy explains how MS plans to spend their $50B (monopoly spoils) to defend their monopoly. Makes sense, but it seems pretty desperate. Frankly, I'm a little surprised since MS was (surprisingly enough) good about not abusing the patent system for years, and now they're suddenly (?) doing so all too aggressively.
I wouldn't short their stock just yet, but Longhorn may be the beginning of the end, especially if Linux runs just fine on all those retiring not-quite-Longhorn-capable computers.
Just 2c.
Originally posted by Rhumgod
"Interesting" in what sense. I understand the inroads they could make, but to serve what purpose? I think Apple's direction seems to be leading to more open standards. FWIW, I cannot get the theory made a while ago about "Apple going down the x86 road when people are just dissatisfied enough" out of my head.
Interesting because all of a sudden a lot of software would suddenly run on the Mac, and a some really good development tools could be used on the Mac... taking away an advantage that Windows currently has. To make this happen Apple & Microsoft would need to come to an agreement -- cloning .NET wouldn't do for Apple (i.e. Mono isn't a commercial product). Doing that would establish it as a standard, and might even allow the Mono project to make much better headway. For that reason alone (among many), I don't think this will ever happen. That's a pity though because Microsoft has finally gotten something right.
It has nothing to do with Apple using x86. Microsoft's common language runtime is ISA independent and can run on PPC just as well as it runs on x86. It is based on a Java-like virtual machine & just-in-time compiler.
As for open standards... unfortunately there are no good open standards of the scope and depth of MS' .NET framework. Cocoa would be the logical starting place for Apple, but that is just as closed as .NET is.
Originally posted by oldmacfan
It is ok, let me supply you with some "z"'s.
z z z z z z z z z z z z z z z
Quartz
Quarts almost = Liters
now let me help you out.
Quarts almost = litre s
G
Originally posted by g::masta
now let me help you out.
Quarts almost = litre s
Actually liters and litres are both correct. Same as meter and metre. They are commonly accepted variants of one another. Whether one came out of the American english and one out of proper English I have no idea but they're both in the dictionary.
Originally posted by Telomar
Whether one came out of the American english and one out of proper English I have no idea but they're both in the dictionary.
According to Wordreference, meter is the US spelling of metre; same for liter.
Originally posted by Lemon Bon Bon
...Mac OS X Lynx 10.8 (by the time Long Horn ships?!) [/B]
Except that by the time Longhorn actually ships, we will be at OS XII
;^p
Originally posted by Smircle
Those specs don't sound completely unreasonable. Longhorn will be built on C#, which is a vastly easier language to program to than C, C++, or objC, but gobbles up vastly more resources, too. It is much like Java in this respect.
???? Where did you get that from? The .net runtime is a package that is 23mb big. Note: this includes almost all classes (system, web, etc) and compilers. The 2 step compilation is a smart move and builds fast code, which is normally only few percent slower than c++. If you compare for example .net calls with COM calls you gain a lot of speed with .net. IMO C# is the best thing that ms made so far. I'm using C# in combination with unmanaged code for 3 years and believe me if you used C# for some time you will never want to go back to unmanaged c++. Even less when you only get a few percent performance.
End of Line
Smircle: I was led to believe that one of the best features of C# is 'garbage collection' which I took to mean freeing of memory (automatically, ie: w/out express instructions from the programmer). Wouldn't this necessarily mean better use of ram?
Y'all ever heard of mono?
The Mono Project is a community initiative to develop an open source, Linux-based version of the Microsoft.NET development platform. The goal is to add the C# language to the arsenal of open-source development tools and allow the creation of operating-system-independent .NET programs.
So don't sweat it too much.