Right, exactly. They're great for those who know specifically that their apps can use them. They're not that useful for me because 1) I don't often use apps that use or need them and 2) I don't often do multiple processor-intensive things at once. If I can save some money with a single processor machine, it's a much better deal for me. And I bet I'm not unlike most Mac users.
Unfortunately you are basing your opinion on in accurate information. If you are running OS/X the you have the ability to make use of extra proccessors even if specific applications are single threaded. It is not just a case of multi thread applications that benefit, the system as a whole improves due to processes running in parallel.
As far as the better deal that is an open question. Duals are a cheap way to dramatically improve a systems performance. So is additional RAM. From my perspective RAM comes first for the average user with dual proccessors a close second.
Quote:
At some point there must be diminishing returns though, right? Would quads really be a good idea, even if they could do it?
Quads would be an excellent idea. Better yet quads with SMT support.
What you need to understand is that we are at the cross roads where single processor machines will quickly die out just like the dinosaurs. Multi tasking, multi threaded systems will be the rock that smashes the single processor era. Intel has already clearly laid out where they are going, I do believe that IBM and Apple are slightly ahead of Intel in this regard. Expect to see systems with 4 to eight logical processors in the near future. Within a couple of years it would be expected that any worthwhile system will have atleast 6 logical processors.
It is not just a case of PC's either; Sony, MS and everybody else are moving to SMP in GAME machines. They are doing so because it is the only reasonable way to get the required performance.
Well I should have known that I'd cause problems by questioning MP systems.
OS X does not make single-threaded apps run faster. There was some discussion when X first came out that perhaps that might be true, but the data I've seen seem to show that's false.
Sure they make multi-threaded apps run faster. They're fantastic for people who spend lots of time waiting for multi-threaded apps to crunch through data. And X allows you to have multiple apps, multi-threaded or not, crunch data at the same time a lot faster. But I only spend approximately 1.6% of my time in one of those two situations, and I'd bet that's true of most Mac users.
I'm not "anti MP systems." I think all PowerMacs should be MP so the iMacs can be singles at the same Mhz. I just think their utility is narrower, at least right now, than what most folks on these boards seem to think.
RE: quads, again that's great for some folks, but probably not worth the extra cost for most of us. And I can't help shake the feeling that if they did this, it would be because of their failure to get to 3 Ghz as promised.
But I only spend approximately 1.6% of my time in one of those two situations, and I'd bet that's true of most Mac users.
Well I don't know about you, but I spend a lot of time with multiple Apps working at once, and that is just at home. Let's see: At present I have Mail, Text Edit, Safari and a distributed computing project, all running at the same time. I am surprised that my little iBook 600 can even keep up, but it does. I can only imagine what it could do with dual processors.
While dual processors won't speed up a single threaded App, they do speed up a lot of the background processes, that don't have to compete for cycles with the Apps themselves, and the status quo now days is for most users to have mail apps, browsers and other programs, often all running at once.
And it isn't just the Graphics and Video folks that need the power. At work I will usually have office, a database program, web browser, mail and 2 to 5 other apps, all running at once. That is one place where I could really use the power of 2 processors. It would benefit me more then a single "fast" processor.
Well...And I can't help shake the feeling that if they did this, it would be because of their failure to get to 3 Ghz as promised.
Ding! Ding! Ding! Winner!
Unless I am grossly mistaken, the only reason the MP system exists at all is because they fell so far behind in clock and performance that MP was the only way to save face. It had nothing to do with delivering a better experience. It had to do with not becoming a total laughing stock in the industry. I am fairly convince that Apple hates MP systems because it reminds them of how far behind they really are. Imagine if we were comparing the Wintel crop of systems to SP Macs. Even the 2 GHz G5 would look like a joke which is why such a system was never demoed. Whenever Apple thinks they have something good, they will fall back to SP. The G5 1.6 and the original 1.8 are good examples. Apple actually thought they could get away with only one MP product because the G5 was just sooo good. Well, they soon learned a valuable lesson that probably want soon repeat.
Now, they are backed into a marketing corner. They have conditioned Mac users to believe that the only way to do any real computing is with an MP system. Mac users automatically think "low-end" when they see a SP Mac, and for good reason. Before the G5, they were forced to go all MP because speeds were a joke. I look forward to the day when a Mac can compete with a PC without having to throw twice as many processors at the task. Theoretically, a three GHz would do it.
I guess we can all thank Moto for something useful after all.
Apple will continue to sell the current G5 models at a discount to clear existing inventory; the cut prices will reportedly be $1,599 for the 1.6GHz G5, $2,199 for the Dual-1.8GHz, and $2,499 for the Dual-2GHz model.
Either this update has got to be priced insanely high, or Jobs has an expensive crack habit. If the "old" dual 2 ghz model is still $2500, what are the dual 2.6 going to cost? $3500 or something insanely stupid like that?
Either this update has got to be priced insanely high, or Jobs has an expensive crack habit. If the "old" dual 2 ghz model is still $2500, what are the dual 2.6 going to cost? $3500 or something insanely stupid like that?
Nick
I knew I smelled a fish, thanks for showing me where he died.
First: for those clinging to the idea that Apple will have 3 GHz G5s in the summer, drop it. It's okay not to increase clock speed by 50% in one year - in fact, it's rarely feasible for that to happen for any company.
Consider this. A 2.6 GHz G5 is a 30% clock speed improvement over the original 2 GHz from 2003. In contrast, the Pentium 4 was just reaching 3.2 GHz when the G5 was announced. Intel's next CPU update will bring 3.6 GHz. That's just 12.5% at best! And Intel as of late has been known to do paper launches, so 3.6 GHz may not even be available for a few weeks after it's announced.
Now I know that clock speed gains aren't one-for-one indicators of performance gains, but I wouldn't be especially disappointed with a dual 2.6 GHz G5's performance, especially not if it has PCI Express.
For a "Voyer" you don't seem to understand what you see happening around you. Apple loves it's SMP systems because they offer real value to the user and considering PPC cheaper chips, they allow Apple to be more than competitive with the PC world.
One thing that you allude to but seem to mis is that Apples customer are the one rejecting single processor machines in favor of SMP machines. If single processor machines where all they are described by you to be, Apple would not have had to upgrade the single processor 1.8GHz machine to SMP.
The clock rate issue was real but what you missed her is that SMP did offer more than just an alternative. Once the user base became familair with the responsiveness of SMP systems there was little incentive to look a single processor systems.
More disturbing than all of the above is that you seem to have no idea where the hardware and software world is moving to. SMP is the near term solution for acceptable machine performance. A year and a half from now it is very likely that we will see machines with 4 to 8 logical processors, maybe even more. Games may lead the march to SMP but I think Apple is going to jump on the chance to lead the way here.
Dave
Quote:
Originally posted by Mac Voyer
Ding! Ding! Ding! Winner!
Unless I am grossly mistaken, the only reason the MP system exists at all is because they fell so far behind in clock and performance that MP was the only way to save face. It had nothing to do with delivering a better experience. It had to do with not becoming a total laughing stock in the industry. I am fairly convince that Apple hates MP systems because it reminds them of how far behind they really are. Imagine if we were comparing the Wintel crop of systems to SP Macs. Even the 2 GHz G5 would look like a joke which is why such a system was never demoed. Whenever Apple thinks they have something good, they will fall back to SP. The G5 1.6 and the original 1.8 are good examples. Apple actually thought they could get away with only one MP product because the G5 was just sooo good. Well, they soon learned a valuable lesson that probably want soon repeat.
Now, they are backed into a marketing corner. They have conditioned Mac users to believe that the only way to do any real computing is with an MP system. Mac users automatically think "low-end" when they see a SP Mac, and for good reason. Before the G5, they were forced to go all MP because speeds were a joke. I look forward to the day when a Mac can compete with a PC without having to throw twice as many processors at the task. Theoretically, a three GHz would do it.
I guess we can all thank Moto for something useful after all.
And it isn't just the Graphics and Video folks that need the power. At work I will usually have office, a database program, web browser, mail and 2 to 5 other apps, all running at once. That is one place where I could really use the power of 2 processors. It would benefit me more then a single "fast" processor.
Gosh, some of you folks are mighty talented. I have enough trouble using one program at a time. An idle program in the background has little need for dual processors.
Now, they are backed into a marketing corner. They have conditioned Mac users to believe that the only way to do any real computing is with an MP system. Mac users automatically think "low-end" when they see a SP Mac, and for good reason. Before the G5, they were forced to go all MP because speeds were a joke. I look forward to the day when a Mac can compete with a PC without having to throw twice as many processors at the task.
You are partly correct. Apple realized with the G4 that it was not going to clock high with 4/7 pipes. The only thing they could do was add two. If they had wanted to engage AMD/Intel in clockspeed they'd have just ran the pipeline stages up to the 12-15 X86 had at that time. Now Apple's forsight is looking brilliant in light of Intel cancelling Tejas because of clock/heat issues. Intel validated everything Apple has done by this overlooked choice.
Wizard69 is right. SMP has been the future for some time. No one expected Prescott to be as hot as it is. I believe the engineers thought 90nm would lead to more efficiency..that hasn't happened so rather than scale vertically we're moving to scaling horizontally. Bring on the multiple CPU/Core with SMT!!
Gosh, some of you folks are mighty talented. I have enough trouble using one program at a time. An idle program in the background has little need for dual processors.
Well sure at home. At work I have 10, 12 sometimes more apps running all the time. Let's see, Mail, Entourage (freakin Microsoft, release a TRUE Exchange client already!), Safari, iCal, Dreamweaver/Flash MX 2004, dbvis, Terminal, Word, Excel, and sometimes VNC, Grab, Photoshop, and various other spur of the moment type apps... I would love duals, but my budget dictates that I use a PowerBook. I am in heaven though, even at my paltry 867MHz.... Duals rock, though. We have several at work and they literally scream in comparison to single CPU machines. It definitely makes a difference!
Either this update has got to be priced insanely high, or Jobs has an expensive crack habit. If the "old" dual 2 ghz model is still $2500, what are the dual 2.6 going to cost? $3500 or something insanely stupid like that?
Nick
Yeah if true that's not good news. Assuming they're not going to raise prices this would only make sense if the new mid-range was a dual 2.0 Ghz.
For a "Voyer" you don't seem to understand what you see happening around you. Apple loves it's SMP systems because they offer real value to the user and considering PPC cheaper chips, they allow Apple to be more than competitive with the PC world.
One thing that you allude to but seem to mis is that Apples customer are the one rejecting single processor machines in favor of SMP machines. If single processor machines where all they are described by you to be, Apple would not have had to upgrade the single processor 1.8GHz machine to SMP.
The clock rate issue was real but what you missed her is that SMP did offer more than just an alternative. Once the user base became familair with the responsiveness of SMP systems there was little incentive to look a single processor systems.
More disturbing than all of the above is that you seem to have no idea where the hardware and software world is moving to. SMP is the near term solution for acceptable machine performance. A year and a half from now it is very likely that we will see machines with 4 to 8 logical processors, maybe even more. Games may lead the march to SMP but I think Apple is going to jump on the chance to lead the way here.
Dave
I'm man enough to take that. But my point was mostly that Apple swerved into MP systems because of Moto's inability to produce better CPUs, not because of an intentional MP strategy. As I implied, if Apple was so fund of the idea, they would have offered the whole G5 line in MP configuration. They did practically the opposite. The Mac community demanded MP because they have been conditioned to think a certain way about the Mac offerings. That is not necessarily a bad thing. Moto's ineptness forced Apple to lead the way to the future in that regard. But it was not because they saw the light on MP vs SP IMO.
Under MacOS X (and Window NT/2K/XP/etc) there is always something for the second processor to do, even when you're only running a single app. Graphics, I/O, file system, etc can all run on the 2nd processor while your app is using the first.
Multiple cores is the way of the future, and that has been clear for years -- only now is it really becoming obvious to everyone. Clock rate scaling is dead, and even Intel knows it. Power efficiency and multiple cores w/ multiple threads.
Yes, and if anything Motorola just jumped on the train a little early.
Some of you might remember the mighty dual-CPU Power Mac 9600, or the DayStar boards that added multiple 604s to a Power Mac. Apple had done MP years before the G4. Robust support for SMP was built into the G4 from the absolute beginning, before any debacles had hit, and there was even rumbling from Motorola about dual core variants of the original G4. It might be true that Apple jumped to SMP under less than ideal circumstances, but there is absolutely no question that it was a familiar jump, and a planned one. My guess is that Apple planned to go multi-CPU and/or multi-core with the release of OS X.
As to BRussell's argument: The only machines in Apple's line that use dual CPUs are the professional towers, which are aimed very specifically at people who need all the power they can get their hands on, and priced accordingly. For everyone else, there's the eMac, iMac, iBook, and PowerBook. That said, I've heard widespread reports that the duals are "silkier" and more responsive generally than singles, and that makes sense: If you have the system running on one CPU and your app running on another, the machine will feel more responsive even if you're only using a fraction of its power. Nothing beats concurrent execution.
[B]Unless I am grossly mistaken, the only reason the MP system exists at all is because they fell so far behind in clock and performance that MP was the only way to save face.
This was likely true in the OS 9 days when Apple could only update a single 500 MHz G4 to a dual, and the second processor was useless outside of Photoshop and a few other apps. Today, you are grossly mistaken. Any OS X machine under any usage pattern will benefit from multiple processors. You may think you're only doing one task at a time, but behind the scenes there are multiple processes running simultaneously.
Quote:
I am fairly convince that Apple hates MP systems because it reminds them of how far behind they really are. Imagine if we were comparing the Wintel crop of systems to SP Macs. Even the 2 GHz G5 would look like a joke which is why such a system was never demoed. Whenever Apple thinks they have something good, they will fall back to SP.
Why? Let's say IBM was magically able to produce a 4GHz PPC 975 next month. Why would Apple be content to be only mildly faster than the competition with SP systems, when they could have clear dominance with MP?
I'm man enough to take that. But my point was mostly that Apple swerved into MP systems because of Moto's inability to produce better CPUs, not because of an intentional MP strategy. As I implied, if Apple was so fund of the idea, they would have offered the whole G5 line in MP configuration. They did practically the opposite. The Mac community demanded MP because they have been conditioned to think a certain way about the Mac offerings. That is not necessarily a bad thing. Moto's ineptness forced Apple to lead the way to the future in that regard. But it was not because they saw the light on MP vs SP IMO.
Apple put MP systems out, with the help of Daystar before the OS could really support it. They dropped that with the end of the clones, and the advent of the G3 (which didn't really support it anyway). Based on that I would say that you are partly right, Apple prematurely advanced a longer term plan to get back to MP professional systems to make up for motorolla stalling at 500 mhz for 18 months. If you look at the fact that the G4 supported MP systems, and the built in support of them in OS X I think that it would be hard to conclude that Apple didn't plan on getting back to MP systems when the time was right. Also I seem to recall the original "Wish List" of potential features put out by IBM and Motorolla for the next gen chip which included multi-core chips, again pointing to a MP future for Macs and the Mac OS.
Comments
Originally posted by BRussell
Right, exactly. They're great for those who know specifically that their apps can use them. They're not that useful for me because 1) I don't often use apps that use or need them and 2) I don't often do multiple processor-intensive things at once. If I can save some money with a single processor machine, it's a much better deal for me. And I bet I'm not unlike most Mac users.
Unfortunately you are basing your opinion on in accurate information. If you are running OS/X the you have the ability to make use of extra proccessors even if specific applications are single threaded. It is not just a case of multi thread applications that benefit, the system as a whole improves due to processes running in parallel.
As far as the better deal that is an open question. Duals are a cheap way to dramatically improve a systems performance. So is additional RAM. From my perspective RAM comes first for the average user with dual proccessors a close second.
At some point there must be diminishing returns though, right? Would quads really be a good idea, even if they could do it?
Quads would be an excellent idea. Better yet quads with SMT support.
What you need to understand is that we are at the cross roads where single processor machines will quickly die out just like the dinosaurs. Multi tasking, multi threaded systems will be the rock that smashes the single processor era. Intel has already clearly laid out where they are going, I do believe that IBM and Apple are slightly ahead of Intel in this regard. Expect to see systems with 4 to eight logical processors in the near future. Within a couple of years it would be expected that any worthwhile system will have atleast 6 logical processors.
It is not just a case of PC's either; Sony, MS and everybody else are moving to SMP in GAME machines. They are doing so because it is the only reasonable way to get the required performance.
Originally posted by BRussell
Question: Would apps written for duals also take advantage of quads?
I dunno, I've never been a very big fan of duals, and I think people tend to overestimate their advantages. Same goes, but even more so, for quads.
You jest, I'm sure...
OS X does not make single-threaded apps run faster. There was some discussion when X first came out that perhaps that might be true, but the data I've seen seem to show that's false.
Sure they make multi-threaded apps run faster. They're fantastic for people who spend lots of time waiting for multi-threaded apps to crunch through data. And X allows you to have multiple apps, multi-threaded or not, crunch data at the same time a lot faster. But I only spend approximately 1.6% of my time in one of those two situations, and I'd bet that's true of most Mac users.
I'm not "anti MP systems." I think all PowerMacs should be MP so the iMacs can be singles at the same Mhz. I just think their utility is narrower, at least right now, than what most folks on these boards seem to think.
RE: quads, again that's great for some folks, but probably not worth the extra cost for most of us. And I can't help shake the feeling that if they did this, it would be because of their failure to get to 3 Ghz as promised.
Originally posted by BRussell
But I only spend approximately 1.6% of my time in one of those two situations, and I'd bet that's true of most Mac users.
Well I don't know about you, but I spend a lot of time with multiple Apps working at once, and that is just at home. Let's see: At present I have Mail, Text Edit, Safari and a distributed computing project, all running at the same time. I am surprised that my little iBook 600 can even keep up, but it does. I can only imagine what it could do with dual processors.
While dual processors won't speed up a single threaded App, they do speed up a lot of the background processes, that don't have to compete for cycles with the Apps themselves, and the status quo now days is for most users to have mail apps, browsers and other programs, often all running at once.
And it isn't just the Graphics and Video folks that need the power. At work I will usually have office, a database program, web browser, mail and 2 to 5 other apps, all running at once. That is one place where I could really use the power of 2 processors. It would benefit me more then a single "fast" processor.
Originally posted by BRussell
Well...And I can't help shake the feeling that if they did this, it would be because of their failure to get to 3 Ghz as promised.
Ding! Ding! Ding! Winner!
Unless I am grossly mistaken, the only reason the MP system exists at all is because they fell so far behind in clock and performance that MP was the only way to save face. It had nothing to do with delivering a better experience. It had to do with not becoming a total laughing stock in the industry. I am fairly convince that Apple hates MP systems because it reminds them of how far behind they really are. Imagine if we were comparing the Wintel crop of systems to SP Macs. Even the 2 GHz G5 would look like a joke which is why such a system was never demoed. Whenever Apple thinks they have something good, they will fall back to SP. The G5 1.6 and the original 1.8 are good examples. Apple actually thought they could get away with only one MP product because the G5 was just sooo good. Well, they soon learned a valuable lesson that probably want soon repeat.
Now, they are backed into a marketing corner. They have conditioned Mac users to believe that the only way to do any real computing is with an MP system. Mac users automatically think "low-end" when they see a SP Mac, and for good reason. Before the G5, they were forced to go all MP because speeds were a joke. I look forward to the day when a Mac can compete with a PC without having to throw twice as many processors at the task. Theoretically, a three GHz would do it.
I guess we can all thank Moto for something useful after all.
Apple will continue to sell the current G5 models at a discount to clear existing inventory; the cut prices will reportedly be $1,599 for the 1.6GHz G5, $2,199 for the Dual-1.8GHz, and $2,499 for the Dual-2GHz model.
Either this update has got to be priced insanely high, or Jobs has an expensive crack habit. If the "old" dual 2 ghz model is still $2500, what are the dual 2.6 going to cost? $3500 or something insanely stupid like that?
Nick
Originally posted by trumptman
Anyone read more than the top two lines?
Either this update has got to be priced insanely high, or Jobs has an expensive crack habit. If the "old" dual 2 ghz model is still $2500, what are the dual 2.6 going to cost? $3500 or something insanely stupid like that?
Nick
I knew I smelled a fish, thanks for showing me where he died.
Consider this. A 2.6 GHz G5 is a 30% clock speed improvement over the original 2 GHz from 2003. In contrast, the Pentium 4 was just reaching 3.2 GHz when the G5 was announced. Intel's next CPU update will bring 3.6 GHz. That's just 12.5% at best! And Intel as of late has been known to do paper launches, so 3.6 GHz may not even be available for a few weeks after it's announced.
Now I know that clock speed gains aren't one-for-one indicators of performance gains, but I wouldn't be especially disappointed with a dual 2.6 GHz G5's performance, especially not if it has PCI Express.
One thing that you allude to but seem to mis is that Apples customer are the one rejecting single processor machines in favor of SMP machines. If single processor machines where all they are described by you to be, Apple would not have had to upgrade the single processor 1.8GHz machine to SMP.
The clock rate issue was real but what you missed her is that SMP did offer more than just an alternative. Once the user base became familair with the responsiveness of SMP systems there was little incentive to look a single processor systems.
More disturbing than all of the above is that you seem to have no idea where the hardware and software world is moving to. SMP is the near term solution for acceptable machine performance. A year and a half from now it is very likely that we will see machines with 4 to 8 logical processors, maybe even more. Games may lead the march to SMP but I think Apple is going to jump on the chance to lead the way here.
Dave
Originally posted by Mac Voyer
Ding! Ding! Ding! Winner!
Unless I am grossly mistaken, the only reason the MP system exists at all is because they fell so far behind in clock and performance that MP was the only way to save face. It had nothing to do with delivering a better experience. It had to do with not becoming a total laughing stock in the industry. I am fairly convince that Apple hates MP systems because it reminds them of how far behind they really are. Imagine if we were comparing the Wintel crop of systems to SP Macs. Even the 2 GHz G5 would look like a joke which is why such a system was never demoed. Whenever Apple thinks they have something good, they will fall back to SP. The G5 1.6 and the original 1.8 are good examples. Apple actually thought they could get away with only one MP product because the G5 was just sooo good. Well, they soon learned a valuable lesson that probably want soon repeat.
Now, they are backed into a marketing corner. They have conditioned Mac users to believe that the only way to do any real computing is with an MP system. Mac users automatically think "low-end" when they see a SP Mac, and for good reason. Before the G5, they were forced to go all MP because speeds were a joke. I look forward to the day when a Mac can compete with a PC without having to throw twice as many processors at the task. Theoretically, a three GHz would do it.
I guess we can all thank Moto for something useful after all.
Originally posted by Shaktai
And it isn't just the Graphics and Video folks that need the power. At work I will usually have office, a database program, web browser, mail and 2 to 5 other apps, all running at once. That is one place where I could really use the power of 2 processors. It would benefit me more then a single "fast" processor.
Gosh, some of you folks are mighty talented. I have enough trouble using one program at a time. An idle program in the background has little need for dual processors.
Now, they are backed into a marketing corner. They have conditioned Mac users to believe that the only way to do any real computing is with an MP system. Mac users automatically think "low-end" when they see a SP Mac, and for good reason. Before the G5, they were forced to go all MP because speeds were a joke. I look forward to the day when a Mac can compete with a PC without having to throw twice as many processors at the task.
You are partly correct. Apple realized with the G4 that it was not going to clock high with 4/7 pipes. The only thing they could do was add two. If they had wanted to engage AMD/Intel in clockspeed they'd have just ran the pipeline stages up to the 12-15 X86 had at that time. Now Apple's forsight is looking brilliant in light of Intel cancelling Tejas because of clock/heat issues. Intel validated everything Apple has done by this overlooked choice.
Wizard69 is right. SMP has been the future for some time. No one expected Prescott to be as hot as it is. I believe the engineers thought 90nm would lead to more efficiency..that hasn't happened so rather than scale vertically we're moving to scaling horizontally. Bring on the multiple CPU/Core with SMT!!
Originally posted by iDave
Gosh, some of you folks are mighty talented. I have enough trouble using one program at a time. An idle program in the background has little need for dual processors.
Well sure at home. At work I have 10, 12 sometimes more apps running all the time. Let's see, Mail, Entourage (freakin Microsoft, release a TRUE Exchange client already!), Safari, iCal, Dreamweaver/Flash MX 2004, dbvis, Terminal, Word, Excel, and sometimes VNC, Grab, Photoshop, and various other spur of the moment type apps... I would love duals, but my budget dictates that I use a PowerBook. I am in heaven though, even at my paltry 867MHz.... Duals rock, though. We have several at work and they literally scream in comparison to single CPU machines. It definitely makes a difference!
Originally posted by trumptman
Anyone read more than the top two lines?
Either this update has got to be priced insanely high, or Jobs has an expensive crack habit. If the "old" dual 2 ghz model is still $2500, what are the dual 2.6 going to cost? $3500 or something insanely stupid like that?
Nick
Yeah if true that's not good news. Assuming they're not going to raise prices
(old) single 1.6, $1500
(new) single 1.8 Ghz, $1800
(old) dual 1.8, $2200
(new) dual 2.0 Ghz, $2500
(old) dual 2.0, $2500
(new) dual 2.4 Ghz, $3000
Originally posted by wizard69
For a "Voyer" you don't seem to understand what you see happening around you. Apple loves it's SMP systems because they offer real value to the user and considering PPC cheaper chips, they allow Apple to be more than competitive with the PC world.
One thing that you allude to but seem to mis is that Apples customer are the one rejecting single processor machines in favor of SMP machines. If single processor machines where all they are described by you to be, Apple would not have had to upgrade the single processor 1.8GHz machine to SMP.
The clock rate issue was real but what you missed her is that SMP did offer more than just an alternative. Once the user base became familair with the responsiveness of SMP systems there was little incentive to look a single processor systems.
More disturbing than all of the above is that you seem to have no idea where the hardware and software world is moving to. SMP is the near term solution for acceptable machine performance. A year and a half from now it is very likely that we will see machines with 4 to 8 logical processors, maybe even more. Games may lead the march to SMP but I think Apple is going to jump on the chance to lead the way here.
Dave
I'm man enough to take that.
Multiple cores is the way of the future, and that has been clear for years -- only now is it really becoming obvious to everyone. Clock rate scaling is dead, and even Intel knows it. Power efficiency and multiple cores w/ multiple threads.
Some of you might remember the mighty dual-CPU Power Mac 9600, or the DayStar boards that added multiple 604s to a Power Mac. Apple had done MP years before the G4. Robust support for SMP was built into the G4 from the absolute beginning, before any debacles had hit, and there was even rumbling from Motorola about dual core variants of the original G4. It might be true that Apple jumped to SMP under less than ideal circumstances, but there is absolutely no question that it was a familiar jump, and a planned one. My guess is that Apple planned to go multi-CPU and/or multi-core with the release of OS X.
As to BRussell's argument: The only machines in Apple's line that use dual CPUs are the professional towers, which are aimed very specifically at people who need all the power they can get their hands on, and priced accordingly. For everyone else, there's the eMac, iMac, iBook, and PowerBook.
Originally posted by Mac Voyer
[B]Unless I am grossly mistaken, the only reason the MP system exists at all is because they fell so far behind in clock and performance that MP was the only way to save face.
This was likely true in the OS 9 days when Apple could only update a single 500 MHz G4 to a dual, and the second processor was useless outside of Photoshop and a few other apps. Today, you are grossly mistaken. Any OS X machine under any usage pattern will benefit from multiple processors. You may think you're only doing one task at a time, but behind the scenes there are multiple processes running simultaneously.
I am fairly convince that Apple hates MP systems because it reminds them of how far behind they really are. Imagine if we were comparing the Wintel crop of systems to SP Macs. Even the 2 GHz G5 would look like a joke which is why such a system was never demoed. Whenever Apple thinks they have something good, they will fall back to SP.
Why? Let's say IBM was magically able to produce a 4GHz PPC 975 next month. Why would Apple be content to be only mildly faster than the competition with SP systems, when they could have clear dominance with MP?
Originally posted by Mac Voyer
I'm man enough to take that.
Apple put MP systems out, with the help of Daystar before the OS could really support it. They dropped that with the end of the clones, and the advent of the G3 (which didn't really support it anyway). Based on that I would say that you are partly right, Apple prematurely advanced a longer term plan to get back to MP professional systems to make up for motorolla stalling at 500 mhz for 18 months. If you look at the fact that the G4 supported MP systems, and the built in support of them in OS X I think that it would be hard to conclude that Apple didn't plan on getting back to MP systems when the time was right. Also I seem to recall the original "Wish List" of potential features put out by IBM and Motorolla for the next gen chip which included multi-core chips, again pointing to a MP future for Macs and the Mac OS.