[1] Yeah, Personal Oracle. But that's not what I'm talking about. You can run that on a laptop now.
This must be the Patent pending Amorph endnote :P
I also think Apple should create Quad systems however what are your feelings about the heat dissipation requirements of such system and IBM yields of 970MP processors.
I could see yield issues hampering the shipment of Quads. However considering that a Quad system would likely be as high as $3999 perhaps the demand would be low enough to ameliorte any yield issues.
Quad Xserves sound VERY nice. Should Apple look to create a 2U Xserve for this market?
What do all you smart folks think about the efficiency of quads, though? I'm sure that if you're interested in squeezing every last drop out of your machines, and money is no object, you'll buy them (hell, some people will even string xserves up with cable and make a supercomputer). But there's always going to be diminishing returns with MP systems, and I have to wonder about where it becomes non-cost-effective.
What do all you smart folks think about the efficiency of quads, though? I'm sure that if you're interested in squeezing every last drop out of your machines, and money is no object, you'll buy them (hell, some people will even string xserves up with cable and make a supercomputer). But there's always going to be diminishing returns with MP systems, and I have to wonder about where it becomes non-cost-effective.
Audio -
Protools HD systems cost upwards of $10k. The expensive DSP cards are used to run plugins. The great sounding plugins all take a lot of power.
Even Native apps like Logic, DP and Cubase all have access to plugins but the best plugins always demand a lot of your processor. Altiverb is a $495 software reverb that sounds better than $1k hardware reverbs. The catch is it sucks up CPU power.
In Audio you are always balancing how many tracks you can record with enough processing via plugins. More power is always desired.
Video -
The requirements of video make Audio look like a joke sometimes. Uncompressed video requires RAIDs that can write 200MB per second. No small task. Just like Audio they have plugins and effects that require rendering. Users have begged Apple for background rendering in FCP because it takes that much time and cpu power. True Real Time is what seperates FCP from a $100k Avid system.
MPEG2 isn't that hard to encode for but if you want best quality be prepared to do two pass encoding that may take 4-6 hrs for 2hrs of footage. Apple moving to AVC is going to make this worse because AVC is much harder to encode/decode although the resulting file is smaller and sharper the cost is in the encode/decode process.
3D
3D Graphics cards only let you visualize quickly. You still have to take a lot of time to render your final graphics. Want to render at HD resolutions...much more time. Want to create a renderfarm..that's expensive too.
A Powermac Quad isn't going to make miracles but for the people in the above fields the more power they can get in a small package the better. Tiger is synced with BSD 5.x which has numerous improvements in SMP. The diminishing returns will not be that bad at all.
Dual core and SMT can work together very well. In fact, that describes the POWER5 itself.
Questions questions...
How does SMT work? I've understand that it'll enhance the performance of a processor by around 30% or so by doing two threads simultaneously. These two threads.. Is one thread getting ~100% and the other ~30% or is it that each thread gets ~65%?
If was doing some heavy single threaded stuff, I wouldn't like it to be stuck with only 30% or 65%. Will there be a way to disable SMT per thread basis?
I've studied the CPU meter while doing SETI@Home, a single threaded task on my 2x2 G5 and a Dual Xserve. The load seems to be switching from une CPU to another. I guess this might be considered a good thing since the total process load will tax the CPUs evenly if they keep changing CPU all the time. If a process can change CPU a task scheduler might stack menial tasks on one CPU and give the other CPU to a high pririty process. When that task calms down it can be moved to the other CPU and leave the previous for some other task that's more important.
However.. Can't this behavior be quite performance degrating since stuff loaded in caches have to be moved back and forth between the CPUs. Or if they eventually fill both caches with the same data, wouldn't that be quite redundant?
Protools HD systems cost upwards of $10k. The expensive DSP cards are used to run plugins. The great sounding plugins all take a lot of power.
Even Native apps like Logic, DP and Cubase all have access to plugins but the best plugins always demand a lot of your processor. Altiverb is a $495 software reverb that sounds better than $1k hardware reverbs. The catch is it sucks up CPU power.
In Audio you are always balancing how many tracks you can record with enough processing via plugins. More power is always desired.
Video -
The requirements of video make Audio look like a joke sometimes. Uncompressed video requires RAIDs that can write 200MB per second. No small task. Just like Audio they have plugins and effects that require rendering. Users have begged Apple for background rendering in FCP because it takes that much time and cpu power. True Real Time is what seperates FCP from a $100k Avid system.
MPEG2 isn't that hard to encode for but if you want best quality be prepared to do two pass encoding that may take 4-6 hrs for 2hrs of footage. Apple moving to AVC is going to make this worse because AVC is much harder to encode/decode although the resulting file is smaller and sharper the cost is in the encode/decode process.
3D
3D Graphics cards only let you visualize quickly. You still have to take a lot of time to render your final graphics. Want to render at HD resolutions...much more time. Want to create a renderfarm..that's expensive too.
A Powermac Quad isn't going to make miracles but for the people in the above fields the more power they can get in a small package the better. Tiger is synced with BSD 5.x which has numerous improvements in SMP. The diminishing returns will not be that bad at all.
Exactly..., and I have to add that if you look at Apple pro applications you have to wonder if they do not offer a Dual socket - Dual core PowerMac, (I think the 2U server sounds good too) Why did they bother buying these fantastic pro Applications, and developing them as well as they have just to let them get ousted in their primary stage (which is the regular consumer) because they don't intend to offer the hardware required to adequately run these Applications as good as a Pro.
Because of this - until Apple does something about their pro hardware you have to wonder if that is the reason for these "half a great app" light versions - AKA Final Cut Express.
Was this their intentions from the beginning? Was Apple intending on abandoning the core users that stood by through all the years of falling behind, over, and over waiting for the greener pastures on the other side to arise from this long road over mountains of frustration, and comparative hardware mediocrity - for what? I "Bleep"ing hope not.
I figured the XServes, Clusters nodes, and RAIDS were for HUGE players, (like PIxar, or WETA, and things like science, and government intelligence) and they would eventually offer more configurations in the PowerMac lineup for configuring appropriate Workstations that were a bit more expensive than the PowerMacs but still obtainable.
But, I don't think the sky is falling because it has not happened yet. I don't think the user of a highend workstation, semi-professional, or smaller industry player has been abandoned. I think Apple secured some places in their path with the server lineup first (which is brilliant) to secure sales in large quantities to those who appreciate the need, and require such high demanding products in their selected fields.
Something that you said about 3D sparked this on hmurchison.
(I smell a new thread starting soon)
The last note: If an "effective" pro workstation is in the cards for the fortunate Mac users that have waited for it forever. It's obvious that highend 3D graphics cards would be made available. It's like hmurchison said. Your graphics card does the actual screen rendering while working which is highly demanding, and can slow your workflow down to a stand still if your lacking in that department. Pro level graphics cards is a "must have" item when making your purchasing decision. Just like comparing what others are offering in your price range.
Which is why I put my focus on SIGGRAPH. (I said I was going to buy a PC after WWDC, but Apple, and Alias kept me interested until SIGGRAPH) - SIGGRAPH is the Mecca of the Pro's. So from a 3D stand point I think we'll see a second Nvidia offering at SIGGRAPH showcasing the 6800 DDL with Quadro features fully enabled, and optional from the Apple store as Nvidia BTO #3 a long with what ever else Apple is holding up it's sleeves to warrant such a large place at this years SIGGRAPH.
I cant talk about multi core options yet because it seems just way too far off. At last 4 -5 months - maybe by MWSF.
I fully understand that there are computer-intensive applications out there. I'm interested in whether those applications that you name would fully utilize quad processors in an efficient manner.
I miss serious workstation class graphics for Macs. Some of the market for quad G5s will ignore them if there aren't any really high performace cards. Shouldn't Apple go after the likes of Sun and SGI here?
I fully understand that there are computer-intensive applications out there. I'm interested in whether those applications that you name would fully utilize quad processors in an efficient manner.
Multi-channel Audio can utilize as many processors are there are channels and then some. One CPU for the OS, one for the app, and one for each channel.
Mr hmurchison created a nice list here. The above interests and many more are not likely to have enough processing power, by a very large margin, any time in the next ten years. So if Apple or AMD can deliver such systems there will be people buying them.
As to the issue of adding all those processors and keeping them operating in a productive manner that is an engineering task. At this point in time 4 processors on a mother board are feasable technically, it is only a question of Apple being willing to meet customer expectations. I suspect intially Apple will try to address this issue buy making use of the rumored 970MP. That will be a very short term solution though as the competition will very quickly have available dual core chips on quad socket mother boards.
One very real possibility is that Apple will run into memory bandwidth issues. So we can expect changes on that front in the near future.
This is really a combination of questions in my mind.
From the software perspective the Application has to be written for a multithreaded environment and has to be able to generate enough threads to use all those processors. How well a program does that depends on its problem domain and the approach taken to solve that problem. Some problems can be very difficult to solve in a parallel manner.
Full utilization of hardware is another issue. As that can be a hardware issue as much as a software issue. A well designed quad board has to deal with contention issues to perform well. AMD solves this issue partly buy putting memory management on chip, but that can create its own issues. Generally each approach has its good points and bad points as a result you seldom get 2X or 4X from 2x and 4x SMP systems.
Quote:
Originally posted by BRussell
I fully understand that there are computer-intensive applications out there. I'm interested in whether those applications that you name would fully utilize quad processors in an efficient manner.
That will be a very short term solution though as the competition will very quickly have available dual core chips on quad socket mother boards.
Dave I agree. I see AMD pushing both Intel and IBM. With Tyan already shipping 4 socket Opteron boards once dual-core Opterons hit Tyan will be there with support. Apple can't sit back and rest.
BRussell
I know Logic Pro supports the duals fine. Logic 7 is in beta and might even improve the SMP support. I see all of Apple's Pro apps supporting SMP very nicely. The guys that use Shake love the Qmaster rendering and word is Qmaster will be making its way to FCP soon(it's already there just not enabled). I think Final Cut Pro 5 is going to be a wicked upgrade. Many of the video guys would love a Quad system with a beefy GPU.
I think Quads will be standard for Powermacs in 2 years. Consumer Macs will be dual and entry level or portables will be single processor.
Dave I agree. I see AMD pushing both Intel and IBM. With Tyan already shipping 4 socket Opteron boards once dual-core Opterons hit Tyan will be there with support. Apple can't sit back and rest.
BRussell
I know Logic Pro supports the duals fine. Logic 7 is in beta and might even improve the SMP support. I see all of Apple's Pro apps supporting SMP very nicely. The guys that use Shake love the Qmaster rendering and word is Qmaster will be making its way to FCP soon(it's already there just not enabled). I think Final Cut Pro 5 is going to be a wicked upgrade. Many of the video guys would love a Quad system with a beefy GPU.
I think Quads will be standard for Powermacs in 2 years. Consumer Macs will be dual and entry level or portables will be single processor.
Not many people use the quad socket motherboard. I looked at one, and was not impressed because of what it lacked in comparison to the dual.
Although I do still think that Apple has to launch that dual core processor in a Dual socket motherboard, and take advantage of this odd quad processing situation because there will be quad socket motherboards available for AMD, and that could be equivalent to a 4 processor edge.
So you could be correct in saying that Apple will probably have to have a quad option available as a choice for us in the future.
But as long as they have a dual PCIe capable system when they do announce PCIe, and Quadro's are available (I hope in a few weeks) I will remain happy until then.
Dave I agree. I see AMD pushing both Intel and IBM. With Tyan already shipping 4 socket Opteron boards once dual-core Opterons hit Tyan will be there with support. Apple can't sit back and rest.
.
If They get Dual PCIe in one of those Quad AMD boards soon I'll have 4 AMD processors, and 2 Quadro 4000 PCIe's before you will be able to blink.
If They get Dual PCIe in one of those Quad AMD boards soon I'll have 4 AMD processors, and 2 Quadro 4000 PCIe's before you will be able to blink.
I don't even want to think about the $$$$$$ that would be
Quote:
Not many people use the quad socket motherboard. I looked at one, and was not impressed because of what it lacked in comparison to the dual.
Yeah the Quad Tyans are for servers. They generally have old Ati graphics on the board suitable for monitoring but not much else.
Yeah I agree with Amorph ..there really is no reason not to do Quads since it can be accomplished in 2 sockets. I don't think the Quads would be cheap but there would be a market for them even at Pixar
I can wait for the Quads. I think it's time to get the Quadro on the Mac. Siggraph is just 2 weeks away.
I don't even want to think about the $$$$$$ that would be
It's not the $$$ that bothers me when I decide It's a necessary spenditure. because it's the debt that actually sucks the life out of you. j/k Somethings that show benefits like monumental time savings are worth it. That's why I've used Mac's sense my first computer. If I could get something done in one click rather than twelve I was saving time. (which is money)
Quote:
Originally posted by hmurchison
Yeah the Quad Tyans are for servers. They generally have old Ati graphics on the board suitable for monitoring but not much else.
That's what I thought too. It wasn't much of a 3D board. I would have had to use a 2U rack which I thought was kinda cool, but still lacking in the area needed most. But, it looked like it would be great in a render cluster, but I only need a better workstation for now.
Quote:
Originally posted by hmurchison
Yeah I agree with Amorph ..there really is no reason not to do Quads since it can be accomplished in 2 sockets. I don't think the Quads would be cheap but there would be a market for them even at Pixar
Once AMD goes dual core, and Tyan releases a 4 socket motherboard for these dual core AMD processors (you know they will too) a Quad socket AMD board will have equivalent to 4 processors more than a dual socket, dual core setup in a G5. Or G6. Imagine the render times you could get with that thing.
Quote:
Originally posted by hmurchison
I can wait for the Quads. I think it's time to get the Quadro on the Mac. Siggraph is just 2 weeks away.
That would be dream come true for me. And I would finally place that G5 order.
I fully understand that there are computer-intensive applications out there. I'm interested in whether those applications that you name would fully utilize quad processors in an efficient manner.
Since most of those applications are of the there-can't-be-enough-power variety, they'll adapt to whatever the fastest hardware is. Multiprocessor architectures and massively MP systems have been fairly common at the high end (SGI, for example), so a quad PowerMac would mostly just bring the cost of entry way, way down. Threading and clustering support are already fairly pervasive with high-end creative apps, just because the jobs they do can easily consume as many cycles as you throw at them, and after a certain point (render farms, for example) you have no choice but to go with SMP and/or clustering and/or distributed computing.
I think this will trickle down pretty quickly, too. After all, at the highest level, the user gets essentially the same benefits on an SMP system from running 12 single-threaded applications that they do from running one application with 12 threads. A putative quad-core iMac might never run any single application that taxed it, but its user could multitask like gangbusters without the system losing much, or any, responsiveness. That makes the system more user-friendly and more intuitive. So I can see Apple pushing multicore and SMT systems down to the consumer lines pretty quickly. Especially if Freescale comes through with low power dual-core CPUs.
Freescale = Motoblowya. I think they are full of themselves, and can not be counted on for anything other than cellular telephones.
I'll give Freescale the benefit of the doubt. I'm glad the iMac 3G(3rd Generation) is a G5 though. I wouldn't mind seeing an all Dual Core lineup in 2H 2005.
eMac/iBook- Dual Core e600 Freescale chips.
iMac/Powerbook- Dual Core G5
Powermac- Dual Core lowend. Quad midrange and highend.
This would getting more Mac apps threaded right and SMP savvy.
We'd have 64bit computing from the iMac on up. 32bit computing in the eMac/iBooks.
Comments
[1] Yeah, Personal Oracle. But that's not what I'm talking about. You can run that on a laptop now.
I also think Apple should create Quad systems however what are your feelings about the heat dissipation requirements of such system and IBM yields of 970MP processors.
I could see yield issues hampering the shipment of Quads. However considering that a Quad system would likely be as high as $3999 perhaps the demand would be low enough to ameliorte any yield issues.
Quad Xserves sound VERY nice. Should Apple look to create a 2U Xserve for this market?
Originally posted by BRussell
What do all you smart folks think about the efficiency of quads, though? I'm sure that if you're interested in squeezing every last drop out of your machines, and money is no object, you'll buy them (hell, some people will even string xserves up with cable and make a supercomputer). But there's always going to be diminishing returns with MP systems, and I have to wonder about where it becomes non-cost-effective.
Audio -
Protools HD systems cost upwards of $10k. The expensive DSP cards are used to run plugins. The great sounding plugins all take a lot of power.
Even Native apps like Logic, DP and Cubase all have access to plugins but the best plugins always demand a lot of your processor. Altiverb is a $495 software reverb that sounds better than $1k hardware reverbs. The catch is it sucks up CPU power.
In Audio you are always balancing how many tracks you can record with enough processing via plugins. More power is always desired.
Video -
The requirements of video make Audio look like a joke sometimes. Uncompressed video requires RAIDs that can write 200MB per second. No small task. Just like Audio they have plugins and effects that require rendering. Users have begged Apple for background rendering in FCP because it takes that much time and cpu power. True Real Time is what seperates FCP from a $100k Avid system.
MPEG2 isn't that hard to encode for but if you want best quality be prepared to do two pass encoding that may take 4-6 hrs for 2hrs of footage. Apple moving to AVC is going to make this worse because AVC is much harder to encode/decode although the resulting file is smaller and sharper the cost is in the encode/decode process.
3D
3D Graphics cards only let you visualize quickly. You still have to take a lot of time to render your final graphics. Want to render at HD resolutions...much more time. Want to create a renderfarm..that's expensive too.
A Powermac Quad isn't going to make miracles but for the people in the above fields the more power they can get in a small package the better. Tiger is synced with BSD 5.x which has numerous improvements in SMP. The diminishing returns will not be that bad at all.
Originally posted by Amorph
Dual core and SMT can work together very well. In fact, that describes the POWER5 itself.
Questions questions...
How does SMT work? I've understand that it'll enhance the performance of a processor by around 30% or so by doing two threads simultaneously. These two threads.. Is one thread getting ~100% and the other ~30% or is it that each thread gets ~65%?
If was doing some heavy single threaded stuff, I wouldn't like it to be stuck with only 30% or 65%. Will there be a way to disable SMT per thread basis?
I've studied the CPU meter while doing SETI@Home, a single threaded task on my 2x2 G5 and a Dual Xserve. The load seems to be switching from une CPU to another. I guess this might be considered a good thing since the total process load will tax the CPUs evenly if they keep changing CPU all the time. If a process can change CPU a task scheduler might stack menial tasks on one CPU and give the other CPU to a high pririty process. When that task calms down it can be moved to the other CPU and leave the previous for some other task that's more important.
However.. Can't this behavior be quite performance degrating since stuff loaded in caches have to be moved back and forth between the CPUs. Or if they eventually fill both caches with the same data, wouldn't that be quite redundant?
How is other operating systems handling this?
And.. how will this be affected by SMT?
http://www.cs.washington.edu/research/smt/
Originally posted by hmurchison
Audio -
Protools HD systems cost upwards of $10k. The expensive DSP cards are used to run plugins. The great sounding plugins all take a lot of power.
Even Native apps like Logic, DP and Cubase all have access to plugins but the best plugins always demand a lot of your processor. Altiverb is a $495 software reverb that sounds better than $1k hardware reverbs. The catch is it sucks up CPU power.
In Audio you are always balancing how many tracks you can record with enough processing via plugins. More power is always desired.
Video -
The requirements of video make Audio look like a joke sometimes. Uncompressed video requires RAIDs that can write 200MB per second. No small task. Just like Audio they have plugins and effects that require rendering. Users have begged Apple for background rendering in FCP because it takes that much time and cpu power. True Real Time is what seperates FCP from a $100k Avid system.
MPEG2 isn't that hard to encode for but if you want best quality be prepared to do two pass encoding that may take 4-6 hrs for 2hrs of footage. Apple moving to AVC is going to make this worse because AVC is much harder to encode/decode although the resulting file is smaller and sharper the cost is in the encode/decode process.
3D
3D Graphics cards only let you visualize quickly. You still have to take a lot of time to render your final graphics. Want to render at HD resolutions...much more time. Want to create a renderfarm..that's expensive too.
A Powermac Quad isn't going to make miracles but for the people in the above fields the more power they can get in a small package the better. Tiger is synced with BSD 5.x which has numerous improvements in SMP. The diminishing returns will not be that bad at all.
Exactly..., and I have to add that if you look at Apple pro applications you have to wonder if they do not offer a Dual socket - Dual core PowerMac, (I think the 2U server sounds good too) Why did they bother buying these fantastic pro Applications, and developing them as well as they have just to let them get ousted in their primary stage (which is the regular consumer) because they don't intend to offer the hardware required to adequately run these Applications as good as a Pro.
Because of this - until Apple does something about their pro hardware you have to wonder if that is the reason for these "half a great app" light versions - AKA Final Cut Express.
Was this their intentions from the beginning? Was Apple intending on abandoning the core users that stood by through all the years of falling behind, over, and over waiting for the greener pastures on the other side to arise from this long road over mountains of frustration, and comparative hardware mediocrity - for what? I "Bleep"ing hope not.
I figured the XServes, Clusters nodes, and RAIDS were for HUGE players, (like PIxar, or WETA, and things like science, and government intelligence) and they would eventually offer more configurations in the PowerMac lineup for configuring appropriate Workstations that were a bit more expensive than the PowerMacs but still obtainable.
But, I don't think the sky is falling because it has not happened yet. I don't think the user of a highend workstation, semi-professional, or smaller industry player has been abandoned. I think Apple secured some places in their path with the server lineup first (which is brilliant) to secure sales in large quantities to those who appreciate the need, and require such high demanding products in their selected fields.
Something that you said about 3D sparked this on hmurchison.
(I smell a new thread starting soon)
The last note: If an "effective" pro workstation is in the cards for the fortunate Mac users that have waited for it forever. It's obvious that highend 3D graphics cards would be made available. It's like hmurchison said. Your graphics card does the actual screen rendering while working which is highly demanding, and can slow your workflow down to a stand still if your lacking in that department. Pro level graphics cards is a "must have" item when making your purchasing decision. Just like comparing what others are offering in your price range.
Which is why I put my focus on SIGGRAPH. (I said I was going to buy a PC after WWDC, but Apple, and Alias kept me interested until SIGGRAPH) - SIGGRAPH is the Mecca of the Pro's. So from a 3D stand point I think we'll see a second Nvidia offering at SIGGRAPH showcasing the 6800 DDL with Quadro features fully enabled, and optional from the Apple store as Nvidia BTO #3 a long with what ever else Apple is holding up it's sleeves to warrant such a large place at this years SIGGRAPH.
I cant talk about multi core options yet because it seems just way too far off. At last 4 -5 months - maybe by MWSF.
Originally posted by hmurchison
Audio -
etc.
I fully understand that there are computer-intensive applications out there. I'm interested in whether those applications that you name would fully utilize quad processors in an efficient manner.
Originally posted by BRussell
I fully understand that there are computer-intensive applications out there. I'm interested in whether those applications that you name would fully utilize quad processors in an efficient manner.
Multi-channel Audio can utilize as many processors are there are channels and then some. One CPU for the OS, one for the app, and one for each channel.
Originally posted by hmurchison
Audio -
Video -
3D
Mr hmurchison created a nice list here. The above interests and many more are not likely to have enough processing power, by a very large margin, any time in the next ten years. So if Apple or AMD can deliver such systems there will be people buying them.
As to the issue of adding all those processors and keeping them operating in a productive manner that is an engineering task. At this point in time 4 processors on a mother board are feasable technically, it is only a question of Apple being willing to meet customer expectations. I suspect intially Apple will try to address this issue buy making use of the rumored 970MP. That will be a very short term solution though as the competition will very quickly have available dual core chips on quad socket mother boards.
One very real possibility is that Apple will run into memory bandwidth issues. So we can expect changes on that front in the near future.
From the software perspective the Application has to be written for a multithreaded environment and has to be able to generate enough threads to use all those processors. How well a program does that depends on its problem domain and the approach taken to solve that problem. Some problems can be very difficult to solve in a parallel manner.
Full utilization of hardware is another issue. As that can be a hardware issue as much as a software issue. A well designed quad board has to deal with contention issues to perform well. AMD solves this issue partly buy putting memory management on chip, but that can create its own issues. Generally each approach has its good points and bad points as a result you seldom get 2X or 4X from 2x and 4x SMP systems.
Originally posted by BRussell
I fully understand that there are computer-intensive applications out there. I'm interested in whether those applications that you name would fully utilize quad processors in an efficient manner.
That will be a very short term solution though as the competition will very quickly have available dual core chips on quad socket mother boards.
Dave I agree. I see AMD pushing both Intel and IBM. With Tyan already shipping 4 socket Opteron boards once dual-core Opterons hit Tyan will be there with support. Apple can't sit back and rest.
BRussell
I know Logic Pro supports the duals fine. Logic 7 is in beta and might even improve the SMP support. I see all of Apple's Pro apps supporting SMP very nicely. The guys that use Shake love the Qmaster rendering and word is Qmaster will be making its way to FCP soon(it's already there just not enabled). I think Final Cut Pro 5 is going to be a wicked upgrade. Many of the video guys would love a Quad system with a beefy GPU.
I think Quads will be standard for Powermacs in 2 years. Consumer Macs will be dual and entry level or portables will be single processor.
Originally posted by hmurchison
Dave I agree. I see AMD pushing both Intel and IBM. With Tyan already shipping 4 socket Opteron boards once dual-core Opterons hit Tyan will be there with support. Apple can't sit back and rest.
BRussell
I know Logic Pro supports the duals fine. Logic 7 is in beta and might even improve the SMP support. I see all of Apple's Pro apps supporting SMP very nicely. The guys that use Shake love the Qmaster rendering and word is Qmaster will be making its way to FCP soon(it's already there just not enabled). I think Final Cut Pro 5 is going to be a wicked upgrade. Many of the video guys would love a Quad system with a beefy GPU.
I think Quads will be standard for Powermacs in 2 years. Consumer Macs will be dual and entry level or portables will be single processor.
Not many people use the quad socket motherboard. I looked at one, and was not impressed because of what it lacked in comparison to the dual.
Although I do still think that Apple has to launch that dual core processor in a Dual socket motherboard, and take advantage of this odd quad processing situation because there will be quad socket motherboards available for AMD, and that could be equivalent to a 4 processor edge.
So you could be correct in saying that Apple will probably have to have a quad option available as a choice for us in the future.
But as long as they have a dual PCIe capable system when they do announce PCIe, and Quadro's are available (I hope in a few weeks) I will remain happy until then.
Originally posted by hmurchison
Dave I agree. I see AMD pushing both Intel and IBM. With Tyan already shipping 4 socket Opteron boards once dual-core Opterons hit Tyan will be there with support. Apple can't sit back and rest.
.
If They get Dual PCIe in one of those Quad AMD boards soon I'll have 4 AMD processors, and 2 Quadro 4000 PCIe's before you will be able to blink.
Originally posted by onlooker
If They get Dual PCIe in one of those Quad AMD boards soon I'll have 4 AMD processors, and 2 Quadro 4000 PCIe's before you will be able to blink.
I don't even want to think about the $$$$$$ that would be
Not many people use the quad socket motherboard. I looked at one, and was not impressed because of what it lacked in comparison to the dual.
Yeah the Quad Tyans are for servers. They generally have old Ati graphics on the board suitable for monitoring but not much else.
Yeah I agree with Amorph ..there really is no reason not to do Quads since it can be accomplished in 2 sockets. I don't think the Quads would be cheap but there would be a market for them even at Pixar
I can wait for the Quads. I think it's time to get the Quadro on the Mac. Siggraph is just 2 weeks away.
Originally posted by hmurchison
I don't even want to think about the $$$$$$ that would be
It's not the $$$ that bothers me when I decide It's a necessary spenditure. because it's the debt that actually sucks the life out of you.
Originally posted by hmurchison
Yeah the Quad Tyans are for servers. They generally have old Ati graphics on the board suitable for monitoring but not much else.
http://www.tyan.com/products/html/thunderk8qspro.html
That's what I thought too. It wasn't much of a 3D board. I would have had to use a 2U rack which I thought was kinda cool, but still lacking in the area needed most. But, it looked like it would be great in a render cluster, but I only need a better workstation for now.
Originally posted by hmurchison
Yeah I agree with Amorph ..there really is no reason not to do Quads since it can be accomplished in 2 sockets. I don't think the Quads would be cheap but there would be a market for them even at Pixar
Once AMD goes dual core, and Tyan releases a 4 socket motherboard for these dual core AMD processors (you know they will too) a Quad socket AMD board will have equivalent to 4 processors more than a dual socket, dual core setup in a G5. Or G6. Imagine the render times you could get with that thing.
Originally posted by hmurchison
I can wait for the Quads. I think it's time to get the Quadro on the Mac. Siggraph is just 2 weeks away.
That would be dream come true for me. And I would finally place that G5 order.
Originally posted by BRussell
I fully understand that there are computer-intensive applications out there. I'm interested in whether those applications that you name would fully utilize quad processors in an efficient manner.
Since most of those applications are of the there-can't-be-enough-power variety, they'll adapt to whatever the fastest hardware is. Multiprocessor architectures and massively MP systems have been fairly common at the high end (SGI, for example), so a quad PowerMac would mostly just bring the cost of entry way, way down. Threading and clustering support are already fairly pervasive with high-end creative apps, just because the jobs they do can easily consume as many cycles as you throw at them, and after a certain point (render farms, for example) you have no choice but to go with SMP and/or clustering and/or distributed computing.
I think this will trickle down pretty quickly, too. After all, at the highest level, the user gets essentially the same benefits on an SMP system from running 12 single-threaded applications that they do from running one application with 12 threads. A putative quad-core iMac might never run any single application that taxed it, but its user could multitask like gangbusters without the system losing much, or any, responsiveness. That makes the system more user-friendly and more intuitive. So I can see Apple pushing multicore and SMT systems down to the consumer lines pretty quickly. Especially if Freescale comes through with low power dual-core CPUs.
Originally posted by onlooker
Freescale = Motoblowya. I think they are full of themselves, and can not be counted on for anything other than cellular telephones.
I'll give Freescale the benefit of the doubt. I'm glad the iMac 3G(3rd Generation) is a G5 though. I wouldn't mind seeing an all Dual Core lineup in 2H 2005.
eMac/iBook- Dual Core e600 Freescale chips.
iMac/Powerbook- Dual Core G5
Powermac- Dual Core lowend. Quad midrange and highend.
This would getting more Mac apps threaded right and SMP savvy.
We'd have 64bit computing from the iMac on up. 32bit computing in the eMac/iBooks.
Originally posted by hmurchison
I'm glad the iMac 3G is a G5 though.
What exactly is the iMac 3G?