If you need to run something so CPU intensive that VPC won't do, the cheapest and easiest solution will still be to buy a cheap PC. This is especially true for rendering.
If you need to run something so CPU intensive that VPC won't do, the cheapest and easiest solution will still be to buy a cheap PC. This is especially true for rendering.
That would surely be the best way now.
But with the Mactels', I don't think that it will continue to be true.
If a Mactel is equipped the same as a PC , the power will be the same. Getting a cheap PC will be getting a PC that could be much less powerful them the Mac you have.
It would be good only if you needed to do to intensive tasks at once, or if the PC task didn't require the same power as your Mac task.
An interesting article by Rob Enderle, the guy we love to hate, has been coming around to the view that Apple will really have something with the new machines which he calls "Aptels"
He seems to think that the OS will perform much better on x86 than it has been on PPC, because of the x86 roots of FreeBSD. He could be right. Reports I 've been getting from friends involved say that speedups are significant.
He seems to think that the OS will perform much better on x86 than it has been on PPC, because of the x86 roots of FreeBSD. He could be right. Reports I 've been getting from friends involved say that speedups are significant.
What component of OS X that GUI applications rely on has anything to do with FreeBSD?
What component of OS X that GUI applications rely on has anything to do with FreeBSD?
Multi-processor support, most likely. Although FreeBSD has been slower than other OSs in terms of that. With 6.x, things do seem better however. Not that it has any impact on where Apple is now going. I just hope Finder itself is faster. It has been a dog throughout OS X's lifetime.
Multi-processor support, most likely. Although FreeBSD has been slower than other OSs in terms of that. With 6.x, things do seem better however. Not that it has any impact on where Apple is now going. I just hope Finder itself is faster. It has been a dog throughout OS X's lifetime.
I really don't see the Finder being impacted much at all by the processor architecture.
Yes, things like multi-processor support are ported from FreeBSD to the XNU kernel; most of OS X's high-level stuff has little to do with FreeBSD at all, however.
I really don't see the Finder being impacted much at all by the processor architecture.
Yes, things like multi-processor support are ported from FreeBSD to the XNU kernel; most of OS X's high-level stuff has little to do with FreeBSD at all, however.
The idea seems far-fetched to me.
You are wrong. the reports from the developers are that the finder is much faster running under a 3.6GHz Pentium 4 than on any PPC Mac.
Please forgive my rudeness for just jumping in here!
I'm really excited about the new intel microprocessors. However, some people I've talked to are worried about whether they will eventually turn into the average, pay-for-what-you-get type of non-elegant pc. What say you?
Multi-processor support, most likely. Although FreeBSD has been slower than other OSs in terms of that. With 6.x, things do seem better however. Not that it has any impact on where Apple is now going.
AFAIK, Darwin's MP support comes from Mach, not FreeBSD.
Actually, I recall comments at WWDC that the newer FreeBSD base helped improve multiprocessing. I could be wrong.
I think this probably was something along the lines of "helped improve performance on MP systems", e.g. through finer-grained locking in the VFS stack etc. This is, however, not something that's architecture dependent, so it won't be inherently faster on x86.
Please forgive my rudeness for just jumping in here!
I'm really excited about the new intel microprocessors. However, some people I've talked to are worried about whether they will eventually turn into the average, pay-for-what-you-get type of non-elegant pc. What say you?
Welcome, superhall, and jump right in!
No need to worry about them producing non-elegant machines. Apple can't compete with Dell on price, so there's no way Apple will create cheapie machines. It's not in their blood, anyway.
iPods weren't the cheapest MP3 players when they first came out. The Mac mini is relatively inexpensive, but not as cheap (in all senses of the word ) as a Dell.
No, don't worry my child. Apple will produce nice machines . . . and you'll pay for it.
BSD includes file system, communications, and memory management support. If these perform better on x86 hardware you would see a small across-the-board improvement. I think a bigger factor is that GCC has an x86 heritage as well, and has always produced better x86 code than PPC code (plus Apple may provide Intel's compiler, which is quite good). This will affect everything compiled for the x86.
BSD includes file system, communications, and memory management support. If these perform better on x86 hardware you would see a small across-the-board improvement.
I still doubt that much of this is really somehow "optimized for x86". AFAIK, only a small part of the FreeBSD kernel is architecture-dependent.
Quote:
I think a bigger factor is that GCC has an x86 heritage as well, and has always produced better x86 code than PPC code (plus Apple may provide Intel's compiler, which is quite good). This will affect everything compiled for the x86.
Yes, I think this is going to be a much more important factor (although I kinda doubt they'll provide icc with OS X).
It's also a pity, really -- generating good PPC code should actually be easier (more registers, more orthogonal instruction set, whatnot), but I guess it's tough to beat the sheer amount of optimization that went (and still goes) into gcc's x86 backend...
Comments
Originally posted by strobe
If you need to run something so CPU intensive that VPC won't do, the cheapest and easiest solution will still be to buy a cheap PC. This is especially true for rendering.
That would surely be the best way now.
But with the Mactels', I don't think that it will continue to be true.
If a Mactel is equipped the same as a PC , the power will be the same. Getting a cheap PC will be getting a PC that could be much less powerful them the Mac you have.
It would be good only if you needed to do to intensive tasks at once, or if the PC task didn't require the same power as your Mac task.
An interesting article by Rob Enderle, the guy we love to hate, has been coming around to the view that Apple will really have something with the new machines which he calls "Aptels"
He seems to think that the OS will perform much better on x86 than it has been on PPC, because of the x86 roots of FreeBSD. He could be right. Reports I 've been getting from friends involved say that speedups are significant.
Read his article;
http://www.macnewsworld.com/story/nr...Tel-Line.xhtml
Originally posted by melgross
He seems to think that the OS will perform much better on x86 than it has been on PPC, because of the x86 roots of FreeBSD. He could be right. Reports I 've been getting from friends involved say that speedups are significant.
What component of OS X that GUI applications rely on has anything to do with FreeBSD?
Originally posted by Chucker
What component of OS X that GUI applications rely on has anything to do with FreeBSD?
Multi-processor support, most likely. Although FreeBSD has been slower than other OSs in terms of that. With 6.x, things do seem better however. Not that it has any impact on where Apple is now going. I just hope Finder itself is faster. It has been a dog throughout OS X's lifetime.
Originally posted by Rhumgod
Multi-processor support, most likely. Although FreeBSD has been slower than other OSs in terms of that. With 6.x, things do seem better however. Not that it has any impact on where Apple is now going. I just hope Finder itself is faster. It has been a dog throughout OS X's lifetime.
I really don't see the Finder being impacted much at all by the processor architecture.
Yes, things like multi-processor support are ported from FreeBSD to the XNU kernel; most of OS X's high-level stuff has little to do with FreeBSD at all, however.
The idea seems far-fetched to me.
Originally posted by Chucker
What component of OS X that GUI applications rely on has anything to do with FreeBSD?
The GUI is only part of the app remember?
Besides, any GUI works through the underlying OS, which is Darwin, which is Apple's version of FreeBSD.
Originally posted by Chucker
I really don't see the Finder being impacted much at all by the processor architecture.
Yes, things like multi-processor support are ported from FreeBSD to the XNU kernel; most of OS X's high-level stuff has little to do with FreeBSD at all, however.
The idea seems far-fetched to me.
You are wrong. the reports from the developers are that the finder is much faster running under a 3.6GHz Pentium 4 than on any PPC Mac.
Originally posted by melgross
Besides, any GUI works through the underlying OS, which is Darwin, which is Apple's version of FreeBSD.
Darwin is much more than "a version of FreeBSD". Most notably, the kernel is not a BSD kernel.
Originally posted by Chucker
Darwin is much more than "a version of FreeBSD". Most notably, the kernel is not a BSD kernel.
I know it's much more, that's why it's Apple's version. They changed, and added to it.
We all know that the lernel is MACH.
Originally posted by melgross
I know it's much more, that's why it's Apple's version. They changed, and added to it.
We all know that the lernel is MACH.
The kernel is no pure Mach either, nor is it (like Mach would be) a microkernel.
Saying Darwin is Apple's version of FreeBSD is like saying Windows NT is Microsoft's version of VMS.
Originally posted by Chucker
The kernel is no pure Mach either, nor is it (like Mach would be) a microkernel.
Saying Darwin is Apple's version of FreeBSD is like saying Windows NT is Microsoft's version of VMS.
Microkernels are out. Have been for years.
Darwin is more like XP is to NT.
Originally posted by melgross
Microkernels are out. Have been for years.
That's besides the point.
Darwin is more like XP is to NT.
Er. I think I give up.
I'm really excited about the new intel microprocessors. However, some people I've talked to are worried about whether they will eventually turn into the average, pay-for-what-you-get type of non-elegant pc. What say you?
Originally posted by Rhumgod
Multi-processor support, most likely. Although FreeBSD has been slower than other OSs in terms of that. With 6.x, things do seem better however. Not that it has any impact on where Apple is now going.
AFAIK, Darwin's MP support comes from Mach, not FreeBSD.
Originally posted by RazzFazz
AFAIK, Darwin's MP support comes from Mach, not FreeBSD.
Actually, I recall comments at WWDC that the newer FreeBSD base helped improve multiprocessing. I could be wrong.
Originally posted by Chucker
Actually, I recall comments at WWDC that the newer FreeBSD base helped improve multiprocessing. I could be wrong.
I think this probably was something along the lines of "helped improve performance on MP systems", e.g. through finer-grained locking in the VFS stack etc. This is, however, not something that's architecture dependent, so it won't be inherently faster on x86.
Originally posted by superhall
Please forgive my rudeness for just jumping in here!
I'm really excited about the new intel microprocessors. However, some people I've talked to are worried about whether they will eventually turn into the average, pay-for-what-you-get type of non-elegant pc. What say you?
Welcome, superhall, and jump right in!
No need to worry about them producing non-elegant machines. Apple can't compete with Dell on price, so there's no way Apple will create cheapie machines. It's not in their blood, anyway.
iPods weren't the cheapest MP3 players when they first came out. The Mac mini is relatively inexpensive, but not as cheap (in all senses of the word
No, don't worry my child. Apple will produce nice machines . . . and you'll pay for it.
Originally posted by Programmer
BSD includes file system, communications, and memory management support. If these perform better on x86 hardware you would see a small across-the-board improvement.
I still doubt that much of this is really somehow "optimized for x86". AFAIK, only a small part of the FreeBSD kernel is architecture-dependent.
I think a bigger factor is that GCC has an x86 heritage as well, and has always produced better x86 code than PPC code (plus Apple may provide Intel's compiler, which is quite good). This will affect everything compiled for the x86.
Yes, I think this is going to be a much more important factor (although I kinda doubt they'll provide icc with OS X).
It's also a pity, really -- generating good PPC code should actually be easier (more registers, more orthogonal instruction set, whatnot), but I guess it's tough to beat the sheer amount of optimization that went (and still goes) into gcc's x86 backend...
Originally posted by RazzFazz
I guess it's tough to beat the sheer amount of optimization that went (and still goes) into gcc's x86 backend...
Beats the rear-ending Apple has gotten from Motorola/IBM.