Does Mac Os fully use 2 processors?
the other day i finally got around to cleaning out my dual processor G5 after 2 1/2 years of neglect. when i opened up the case i was met with a very dusty place indeed. after pulling out the two cooling fans for the cpus i noticed that the top heat sink was totally caked with dust, but the bottom heat sink was still basically clear. i sat puzzled, wondering if what i was looking at was that the one cpu has actually been doing the majority of the processing all this time.
does anyone know of how dual processing occurs and if our dual processor Macs are fully being exploited? would this also apply to the memory, since the ram is split between the processors...
ghi
does anyone know of how dual processing occurs and if our dual processor Macs are fully being exploited? would this also apply to the memory, since the ram is split between the processors...
ghi
Comments
If they weren't, no doubt you would have heard of the well-publicized class action that would have put Apple out of business.
Not every application is multi-thread capable, but even if it isn't, the OS can move it's threads to the unused processor.
the top heat sink was totally caked with dust, but the bottom heat sink was still basically clear. i sat puzzled, wondering if what i was looking at was that the one cpu has actually been doing the majority of the processing all this time.
One possible reason is that as heat rises, the top CPU got hotter than the bottom, hence the top fan had to work harder, hence more dust got onto the top heat sink. So it doesn't matter if one was working harder than the other. However, another interpretation would be that as the top fan was working harder it would have blown more of the dust out of the heatsink, so take that with a large dose of salt.