There are all kind of reasons to expect that intel will be faster than ppc for OS x, and I remember thinking that OS X 1.0 was a dog compared to NextStep on Intel, yet for a Cocoa app it should have been similar, no?
reasons include.
1) Mach-0 binary format optimised for Intel
2) Much better compilers - either GCC or Intel - the Intel GCC compiler is maintained by the community much better than the PPC one, too
The 1.8SP has a lot of empty space too. It's more or less just a MicroATX board in that case. If a dual xeon machine had been used instead, all that space would have been used it. Apple gave the developers enough computer to get everything done.
I agree with that. The developer machines are far from being top-of-the-line. They are probably comparable (not speed) to the 1.8 GHz single processor model that is being sold now. Like you said, just enough to get by with during development.
" I'm going to keep this brief, so please write me with the questions you have and any tests you want run on one of the dev kits. I will have one of my own next week as well.
First, the thing is fast. Native apps readily beat a single 2.7 G5, and sometimes beat duals. Really.
(I asked about real-world apps - if any were already available in native code-Mike)
All the iLife apps other than iTunes, plus all the other apps that come with the OS are already universal binaries....
They are using a Pentium 4 660. This is a 3.6 GHz chip. It supports 64 bit extensions, but Apple does not support that *yet*. The 660 is a single core processor. However, the engineers said that this chip would not be used in a shipping product and that we need to look at Intel's roadmap for that time to see what Apple will ship.
It uses DDR-2 RAM at 533 MHz. SATA-2. It is using Intel GMA 900 integrated graphics and it supports Quartz Extreme. The Intel 900 doesn't compare favorably to any shipping card from ATi or nVidia. The Apple engineers says the dev kit will work with regular PC graphics cards, but that you need a driver. Apple does not write ANY graphics drivers. They just submit bug reports to ATi/nVidia. So, when we asked where to get drivers for better cards the engineers said "The ATI guys are here." He's right, they've been in the compatibility lab several times.
It has FireWire 400, but not 800. USB 2 as well. USB 2 booting is supported, FireWire booting is not. NetBoot works.
The machines do not have Open Firmware. They use a Phoenix BIOS. That's right, a Mac with a BIOS.
(I asked if the Bios had any tweaks like Memory Timing which is common for many PC motherboards, although Intel OEM motherboards don't usually have any end user tweaks like that.-Mike)
They won't tell us how to get in the BIOS. I'm sure we can figure it out when out dev kits arrive.
They run Windows fine. All the chipset is standard Intel stuff, so you can download drivers and run XP on the box.
Rosetta is amazing. (see earlier post on limitations of the Rosetta emulator - it's a G3 emulator basically - will not run Altivec code, etc. and performance isn't going to be as good as native code, but most Mac apps will run on a G3.-Mike) The tests I've run, both app tests and benchmarks, peg it at between a dual 800 MHz G4 and and a dual 2 G5 depending on what you are doing.
(I mentioned to him the limitations of Rosetta (posted below)-Mike)
It's true Rosetta does not support Altivec, but most apps run on a G3, right? Rosetta tells PPC apps that it is a G3. Apps should fall back to their G3 code tree. Everyone I tested did.
The UI tests in Xbench exceed a dual 2.7 by a large margin. (other specific tests are much lower than a G5 per Xbench site results.-Mike)
I've been talking to and watching a lot of devs. There are a lot of apps from big names running in the Compatibility lab already. Some people face more pain, sure, but Jobs wasn't kidding when he said that this transition would be less painful than OS 9 to OS X or 68K to PPC.
Game devs seem optimistic. They see porting Windows/x86 to Mac/x86 as much easier. They look forward to the day they don't have to support PPC.
I was talking to a (game Developer) that said about 1/3 of the process is handling endian issues, the rest is Win32/DirectX. For the next 3-5 years, their job will be harder since they have to port to two processor architectures and most bugs *are* endian related and that they will have a hard time making the PPC versions run as well as the x86 versions.
This transition is not about current P4 vs G5. It is about the future directions of the processor families. Intel is committed to desktop/notebook and server in a big way. Freescale/IBM are chasing the embedded market and console market. Apple would have been in a lurch in 2 years.
Also, all the cell people and the AMD people need to be quiet. Apple evaluated both. AMD has the same, if not worse, supply problems as IBM. Their roadmap is fine, but the production capacity is not.
The tested Cell as well. That processor is NOT intended for PC applications. (it was designed for game systems, not as a general use CPU) The lack of out of order execution and ILP control logic creates very poor performance with existing software. Having developers rewrite for cell would have been MUCH more work than reworking for Intel. And that's what this is, you rework your codebase in ALL cases, not rewrite it. "
Faster than 2.7 Duals in some apps, already. Wow. I am so happy Apple made this move.
And Windows XP runs on it.
And it has standard hardware.
I feel like I'm going to go around my neighborhood hugging everyone.
The XBENCH numbers are absolutely stupid. Anyone who looks at those # and claims that it can IN ANY WAY MEASURE performance on INTEL computer with OS X is just wrong.
Macrumors claims it should be nearly the same, in emulation, what a joke. If it's not directly written for Intel then it's not. It might be fine with a standard app but this is a benchmarking suite. We don't know official benchmarks until something actually gets released. Regardless this product will be over a year old by the time intel stuff actually ships.
I can tell you it's faster in everything i played with.
Quote:
Originally posted by krispie
Why do you care what XBench shows? Unless you make your living out of running XBench, which I suspect you don't, it's an irrelevance.
a friend is having a heart atack about the fact the the Mac will be able to load/run windows apps fast, that developers will bail on the mac version and we'll all be booting windows on our shiney new PM's like the Old OS2 thing. Whats your take webmail, what was the feeling on the show floor from developers?
I agree with that. The developer machines are far from being top-of-the-line. They are probably comparable (not speed) to the 1.8 GHz single processor model that is being sold now. Like you said, just enough to get by with during development.
The developer's machines use 3.6 GHz Pentium 4 CPUs. Not top of the line but OK.
a friend is having a heart atack about the fact the the Mac will be able to load/run windows apps fast, that developers will bail on the mac version and we'll all be booting windows on our shiney new PM's like the Old OS2 thing. Whats your take webmail, what was the feeling on the show floor from developers?
The problem with this, and all of it's related posts on here is that it supposes that for some unknown reason, people would willingly choose to run Windows over MacOS X all other things being equal.
The problem with this, and all of it's related posts on here is that it supposes that for some unknown reason, people would willingly choose to run Windows over MacOS X all other things being equal.
Exactly!
Mac developers aren't going to stop developing for the Mac just because you can now run Windows on one. Windows has always been available to Mac users. But the Mac hasn't been that available to Window users. That's the difference. Once you use OS X, why in hell would you want to use those Windows OS's?
And remember that this is just a completely standard box for development purposes, not the actual hardware x86Macs are going to have. It is exactly parallel to (but the opposite of) Microsoft using G5 PowerMacs as dev kits for their XBox360s.
The "real" Mac hardware will: be faster, be slicker, be non-standard enough so that OSX will only run on it, and probably won't boot Windows straight out of the box. My guess is that you won't want to run Windows anyhow... it will be better (in most cases) to run one of the emulation environments I expect will be created. "VirtualPC" is going to rock on these things.
For most apps the Intel chips are faster than the PPC chips we have. The 970 really sings in heavy floating point apps and with vector code (which is where my interests lie, unfortunately)... but for most people this is going to be a big step up, especially when you look at the Intel 2006-7 roadmap.
Mac developers aren't going to stop developing for the Mac just because you can now run Windows on one. Windows has always been available to Mac users. But the Mac hasn't been that available to Window users. That's the difference. Once you use OS X, why in hell would you want to use those Windows OS's?
Exactly - no user would want to run both Mac and Windows they would prefer to get everything done on one platform. Developers may abandon the Mac platform to avoid the re-writing but not because Windows can be run on a Mac. If that happened it would be stupid - why buy a Mac to run Windows?
Once you use OS X, why in hell would you want to use those Windows OS's?
You have too much faith in the average user out there. Why people wanted to use Windows when they tried NeXT? Why they wanted to use Windows when they tried BeOS? Why they wanted to use Windows when they tried OS/2?
Where are all those GREAT systems of the past? What? To the grave? Right. Guess where OS X will be once Apple makes Windows installation on an Intel-Mac completely painless.
Comments
Originally posted by D.J. Adequate
...All the Xbench numbers show so far is that emulate performance isn't quite a rosy as some assumed....
Why do you care what XBench shows? Unless you make your living out of running XBench, which I suspect you don't, it's an irrelevance.
reasons include.
1) Mach-0 binary format optimised for Intel
2) Much better compilers - either GCC or Intel - the Intel GCC compiler is maintained by the community much better than the PPC one, too
3) Better bus throughput.
Pentium M is a killer.
Originally posted by BenRoethig
The 1.8SP has a lot of empty space too. It's more or less just a MicroATX board in that case. If a dual xeon machine had been used instead, all that space would have been used it. Apple gave the developers enough computer to get everything done.
I agree with that. The developer machines are far from being top-of-the-line. They are probably comparable (not speed) to the 1.8 GHz single processor model that is being sold now. Like you said, just enough to get by with during development.
" I'm going to keep this brief, so please write me with the questions you have and any tests you want run on one of the dev kits. I will have one of my own next week as well.
First, the thing is fast. Native apps readily beat a single 2.7 G5, and sometimes beat duals. Really.
(I asked about real-world apps - if any were already available in native code-Mike)
All the iLife apps other than iTunes, plus all the other apps that come with the OS are already universal binaries....
They are using a Pentium 4 660. This is a 3.6 GHz chip. It supports 64 bit extensions, but Apple does not support that *yet*. The 660 is a single core processor. However, the engineers said that this chip would not be used in a shipping product and that we need to look at Intel's roadmap for that time to see what Apple will ship.
It uses DDR-2 RAM at 533 MHz. SATA-2. It is using Intel GMA 900 integrated graphics and it supports Quartz Extreme. The Intel 900 doesn't compare favorably to any shipping card from ATi or nVidia. The Apple engineers says the dev kit will work with regular PC graphics cards, but that you need a driver. Apple does not write ANY graphics drivers. They just submit bug reports to ATi/nVidia. So, when we asked where to get drivers for better cards the engineers said "The ATI guys are here." He's right, they've been in the compatibility lab several times.
It has FireWire 400, but not 800. USB 2 as well. USB 2 booting is supported, FireWire booting is not. NetBoot works.
The machines do not have Open Firmware. They use a Phoenix BIOS. That's right, a Mac with a BIOS.
(I asked if the Bios had any tweaks like Memory Timing which is common for many PC motherboards, although Intel OEM motherboards don't usually have any end user tweaks like that.-Mike)
They won't tell us how to get in the BIOS. I'm sure we can figure it out when out dev kits arrive.
They run Windows fine. All the chipset is standard Intel stuff, so you can download drivers and run XP on the box.
Rosetta is amazing. (see earlier post on limitations of the Rosetta emulator - it's a G3 emulator basically - will not run Altivec code, etc. and performance isn't going to be as good as native code, but most Mac apps will run on a G3.-Mike) The tests I've run, both app tests and benchmarks, peg it at between a dual 800 MHz G4 and and a dual 2 G5 depending on what you are doing.
(I mentioned to him the limitations of Rosetta (posted below)-Mike)
It's true Rosetta does not support Altivec, but most apps run on a G3, right? Rosetta tells PPC apps that it is a G3. Apps should fall back to their G3 code tree. Everyone I tested did.
The UI tests in Xbench exceed a dual 2.7 by a large margin. (other specific tests are much lower than a G5 per Xbench site results.-Mike)
I've been talking to and watching a lot of devs. There are a lot of apps from big names running in the Compatibility lab already. Some people face more pain, sure, but Jobs wasn't kidding when he said that this transition would be less painful than OS 9 to OS X or 68K to PPC.
Game devs seem optimistic. They see porting Windows/x86 to Mac/x86 as much easier. They look forward to the day they don't have to support PPC.
I was talking to a (game Developer) that said about 1/3 of the process is handling endian issues, the rest is Win32/DirectX. For the next 3-5 years, their job will be harder since they have to port to two processor architectures and most bugs *are* endian related and that they will have a hard time making the PPC versions run as well as the x86 versions.
This transition is not about current P4 vs G5. It is about the future directions of the processor families. Intel is committed to desktop/notebook and server in a big way. Freescale/IBM are chasing the embedded market and console market. Apple would have been in a lurch in 2 years.
Also, all the cell people and the AMD people need to be quiet. Apple evaluated both. AMD has the same, if not worse, supply problems as IBM. Their roadmap is fine, but the production capacity is not.
The tested Cell as well. That processor is NOT intended for PC applications. (it was designed for game systems, not as a general use CPU) The lack of out of order execution and ILP control logic creates very poor performance with existing software. Having developers rewrite for cell would have been MUCH more work than reworking for Intel. And that's what this is, you rework your codebase in ALL cases, not rewrite it. "
Faster than 2.7 Duals in some apps, already. Wow. I am so happy Apple made this move.
And Windows XP runs on it.
And it has standard hardware.
I feel like I'm going to go around my neighborhood hugging everyone.
Macrumors claims it should be nearly the same, in emulation, what a joke. If it's not directly written for Intel then it's not. It might be fine with a standard app but this is a benchmarking suite. We don't know official benchmarks until something actually gets released. Regardless this product will be over a year old by the time intel stuff actually ships.
I can tell you it's faster in everything i played with.
Originally posted by krispie
Why do you care what XBench shows? Unless you make your living out of running XBench, which I suspect you don't, it's an irrelevance.
Originally posted by ZoranS
http://www.tomshardware.com/cpu/20050525/index.html
Pentium M is a killer.
Starts shaking in anticipation already.. dual core 2.4ish ghz powerbook...
I agree with that. The developer machines are far from being top-of-the-line. They are probably comparable (not speed) to the 1.8 GHz single processor model that is being sold now. Like you said, just enough to get by with during development.
The developer's machines use 3.6 GHz Pentium 4 CPUs. Not top of the line but OK.
Here's what http://xlr8yourmac.com/ has to say:
First, the thing is fast. Native apps readily beat a single 2.7 G5, and sometimes beat duals. Really.
(I asked about real-world apps - if any were already available in native code-Mike)
All the iLife apps other than iTunes, plus all the other apps that come with the OS are already universal binaries....
Originally posted by mikenap
a friend is having a heart atack about the fact the the Mac will be able to load/run windows apps fast, that developers will bail on the mac version and we'll all be booting windows on our shiney new PM's like the Old OS2 thing. Whats your take webmail, what was the feeling on the show floor from developers?
The problem with this, and all of it's related posts on here is that it supposes that for some unknown reason, people would willingly choose to run Windows over MacOS X all other things being equal.
Originally posted by OBJRA10
The problem with this, and all of it's related posts on here is that it supposes that for some unknown reason, people would willingly choose to run Windows over MacOS X all other things being equal.
Exactly!
Mac developers aren't going to stop developing for the Mac just because you can now run Windows on one. Windows has always been available to Mac users. But the Mac hasn't been that available to Window users. That's the difference. Once you use OS X, why in hell would you want to use those Windows OS's?
Originally posted by FallenFromTheTree
Holy butt f**k Batman!
I just checked out the price of a single 2 GB registered PC3200 RAM stick at Crucial
ONLY $950.99
I did say in another year...
Originally posted by Thereubster
I did say in another year...
I understand that time will help these prices go down, but that price I quoted
was for DDR2
2GB \t\tCT25672AB40E \t DDR2 PC2-3200 ¥ CL=3 ¥ REGISTERED ¥ ECC ¥ DDR2-400 ¥ 1.8V ¥ 256Meg x 72
\tUS $950.99
The "real" Mac hardware will: be faster, be slicker, be non-standard enough so that OSX will only run on it, and probably won't boot Windows straight out of the box. My guess is that you won't want to run Windows anyhow... it will be better (in most cases) to run one of the emulation environments I expect will be created. "VirtualPC" is going to rock on these things.
For most apps the Intel chips are faster than the PPC chips we have. The 970 really sings in heavy floating point apps and with vector code (which is where my interests lie, unfortunately)... but for most people this is going to be a big step up, especially when you look at the Intel 2006-7 roadmap.
Originally posted by Placebo
From xlr8yourmac
The tests I've run, both app tests and benchmarks, peg it at between a dual 800 MHz G4 and and a dual 2 G5 depending on what you are doing.
Hot dang. My Mac at work is a Quicksilver 933, the rest are slower. Upgrading to the first IntelliMac will be huge for us.
Originally posted by OBJRA10
friends, can we please try to limit the number of redundant threads!
Just a suggestion, but maybe it wouldn't be a bad idea to slice a subforum out of Hardware and add an All Things Intel Forum.
Originally posted by inslider
Just a suggestion, but maybe it wouldn't be a bad idea to slice a subforum out of Hardware and add an All Things Intel Forum.
If you wouldn't mind, post that in the "Feedback" forum, so the appropriate people can see/consider it.
Originally posted by iPeon
Exactly!
Mac developers aren't going to stop developing for the Mac just because you can now run Windows on one. Windows has always been available to Mac users. But the Mac hasn't been that available to Window users. That's the difference. Once you use OS X, why in hell would you want to use those Windows OS's?
Exactly - no user would want to run both Mac and Windows they would prefer to get everything done on one platform. Developers may abandon the Mac platform to avoid the re-writing but not because Windows can be run on a Mac. If that happened it would be stupid - why buy a Mac to run Windows?
Originally posted by iPeon
Once you use OS X, why in hell would you want to use those Windows OS's?
You have too much faith in the average user out there. Why people wanted to use Windows when they tried NeXT? Why they wanted to use Windows when they tried BeOS? Why they wanted to use Windows when they tried OS/2?
Where are all those GREAT systems of the past? What? To the grave? Right. Guess where OS X will be once Apple makes Windows installation on an Intel-Mac completely painless.