So When Will MAC DIE!!!

Discussion in 'Computer Science & Culture' started by Eggsited, Feb 3, 2004.

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  1. CuriousGene Supreme Allied Commander Registered Senior Member

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    I would love to see OS X run on the new AMD FX chips. I would similarly love to see OS X run on dual Intel hyperthreading chips.

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    And yes, all of the above mixed in with the latest in FSB, PCI technology, ATI/Nvidia chipset, striped RAID, and of course a 30 in. flat screen display.

    Fuck, let's just have OS X run on top of quad G5's, quad AMD's and quad hyperthreading chips. Bam! With even 2 hyperthreading chips, my threads will all be happy! Although altivec is great, hyperthreading is for free. We have some xeon hyperthreading chips at work with linux running over them and CPU utilization looks beautiful when maxed out with 8 Java processes churning away on one box!

    I think OS X is worth buying an Apple box alone. That's my 99 cents.

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  3. Wrong Robot Registered Senior Member

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    I have heard taht hyperthreading aides some processes, but it hinders many others. it's more hot air than actual boon.

    But I could be mistaken, I think I read about it on ars.
     
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  5. CuriousGene Supreme Allied Commander Registered Senior Member

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    Well, I've used hyperthreading, and so far it works. Enough said.
     
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  7. river-wind Valued Senior Member

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    you guys should go check out ARStechnica.com/ we have gone over all this stuff many, many times.


    as a quicl note, it is rumored that the xBox2 will have three 970's in it. However, given a Wattage rating of 27 @2Ghz, even on the 90nm process, that isn't going to happen. The San Jose news article which first mentioned that idea may have gotten the notion of having the north and south brige chips integrated in the main CPU system as a "three ship system".
    Microsoft has confirmed that they will be using a PPC Chip in the xbox2, but there has been no confirmation on what chip. the 970 is a likely canidate, though given the xbox's time frame, it may even end up being a 980, the POWER5 dirivitive chip which is rumored for Apple systems come 2006.
    either way, most likely, it will be a one chip system for the simple reason that coding for multi-chip systems is difficult, esp for games. This is one of the main reasons that the Sega Saturn died a quick death. When playing a game, you don't need to thread things - you have on application, one interface, one rendering engine...having more procs adds power, but significanly hinders dev time.

    OSX is great for me because I can do all the things I need on one system: play Medal of Honor, browse windows networks, edit video and photos in FCE and Photoshop respectively. And then I can take my ibook to work, and use gcc to compile C code I wrote in vi, then compile the same code on a heafty server running Linux with the same tools and the same options.

    And it doesn't randomly loose track of it's main HD partition like my roomate's Sony XP machine. It randomly decided that it couldn't find the C: drive- after two days of paid computer professionsals fighting with it, he re-formatted, and lost about half his data.

    I use OSX for a reason. or 20. They have their own problems, too (like the ibook logic board failures which have been an issue for a while, though Apple is now fixing, free of charge, any iBooks with logic board problems made in the past 2 years). I have faired better in the past with apple systems, and the design of the UI allows me to work more efficiently. Better multi-tasking ability with a non-MDI interface such as many windows applications have.


    edit: and it is not a marketing lie when people say that the PPC ISA was designed to run both 32 ans 64 bit instructions. If fact, the PPC ISA *is* a 64 bit instruction ISA, which was then designed down to 32 bit for the production of the 601 chips back in the day- for desktop use.
    the x86 instruction set was never designed to go 64 bit. Such is the problem right now in the x86 world. Intel has created a PPC-like ISA (ie, its much more of a RISC design over x86) called IA-64, and has produced the Itainium chip series with it. the Itainium I sucked A$$, so they revamped the design, and now a an ok but expensive Itainium 2. At the same time, AMD has created the x86-64 ISA extention to the x86 ISA to run 64 and 32 bit stuff on the same chip. Now that this area has begun to take off, Intel is finnally sucking it up, admitting the large flop that is Itanium, and introducing their own x86-64 chips by the end of this month. THe design was pretty good, the implimentation sucks pretty badly.

    SOOOO, soon, in the 64bit area, we'll have the G5 at 2.4 Ghz, an AMD 64 bit chip @2.7Ghz, and and a 64-bit Prescott derivitive at some unknown speed, all running faster than the 32bit Prescott Intel P4's which are out now (given that the P4 is comparible to or slower than the current offerings). Due to the G5's Altivec unit, it will continue to kill on large FPU work, and will be about on par with the AMD offering RE: integer unit math. I have no idea how the Intel offering will perform, we'll have to see how their transition to 90 nanometers continues - it's been difficult for them so far. The new 90nm P4 will actually use *more* watts that then 130nm chips, based on increased e- leakage.
    The PPC series still has alot of life left in it's design. the x86 ISA is already being patch to keep it hobbling along. The next gen Pentium 4 will be slower clock-for-clock than the current version, thought it shuld reach 5Ghz by 2006.

    PS:
    I should be fair, XP is not bad. However, I do progromming on Windows in both 2000 Pro and XP Pro 50 hours a week. I also do scripting, web dev and C coding on a Mac about 20 hours a week, and *then* I do all my relaxing computer work, like photoshop, etc. After all them hours on both Macs and Windows, I can say that both are functional systems. I would rather work on my mac than on my Windows machine, however - I run into many more frustrations with Windows than with OSX, so I use Windows only when I have to.

    PPS:
    and lastly, even Anand from Anandtech.com is going to try out Macs. and he's a Windows/linux/x86 fanatic.

    for those interested, check out the Mac history over at folklore.org
     
    Last edited: Feb 8, 2004
  8. CuriousGene Supreme Allied Commander Registered Senior Member

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    Read those articles a while back. But, how many people have actually used hyperthreading chips extensively? I was merely offering my experience with them.

    You also mention altivec and how "it will continue to kill on large FPU work." I think it's important to remind people that altivec requires software to use the altivec API and be rewritten while hyperthreading is free. Even with applications that tend to be FPU-bound, there are few altivec versions available.

    Regarding OS X (which is more germane to this thread), I believe its strength lies with it's ability to inspire the user with an exhilirating feel (please read my previous post for a description). I believe too many people criticize windows as not working or broken like with your C drive example. The fact is, Windows is a fairly stable machine and to site those rare examples fails to highlight the strength of OS X.
     
  9. river-wind Valued Senior Member

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    as long as the application is threaded, then yes, HT is "free". Altivec does need to be coded for, however, the second version of the new IBM compilers (XLC and XLF) supposedly will do alot of automatic vectorization to more heavily use the altivec unit.

    HT is a nice feature, however, IBM appears to have a similar system working in the POWER5.
     
  10. Wrong Robot Registered Senior Member

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    Yeah, ars is great, I don't read it as much as I should, but I find myself getting caught up there from time to time and just sit around reading articles for hours!
     
  11. testify Look, a puppy! Registered Senior Member

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    river-wind: Which do you find easier to dev for? OSX or Windows? Which languages? I have no experience with OSX development. Hell, I don't even know what languages the OS uses other than the obvious (and godly) java.
     
  12. CuriousGene Supreme Allied Commander Registered Senior Member

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    That is not true. HT is always free. As an example, throw two processes on a linux box running over a hyperthreading chip and hit top and tell me how those processes are running. I think you'll happily find both of them running. However, just in case someone hasn't read about HT, it's def. not equivalent to SMP. But hey, if you buy a chip, it's nice to know that you get some more free work out of it

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    This is especially true when you're using I/O bound applications. I believe these HT chips only have one FPU so HPC may not be that interesting.

    Geez, let's talk about OS X. Sorry guys for the digression. I love talking about chip technology. :m:
     
  13. CuriousGene Supreme Allied Commander Registered Senior Member

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    OS X has the typical languages you would expect to find on most systems. C, C++, Java, all the typical Unix scripting languages (sh, zsh, csh, awk, sed, perl, python, etc.) are all available. In addition, you'll find Objective-C and Apple script available too. The main APIs are Carbon and Cocoa. There are even Java bindings for Cocoa if one doesn't want to use Objective-C.

    You should compare Win32 API to Carbon and Cocoa to get a feel for the difference in native systems programming between Windows and OS X.
     
  14. Mr. Chips Banned Banned

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    Hey river-wind, thanks for the informative rap. Interesting to hear that of Anand. I'll have to go see what he comes up with, always a good read at anandtech
     
  15. river-wind Valued Senior Member

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  16. river-wind Valued Senior Member

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    also, the .net framework and C#, MS's newish programming environment is set to use their new API set (winfx) to replace win32. closer to cocoa with it OO approach, itslargely a platform specific version of java from what I can gather. Haven't played around with it much, though.
     
  17. testify Look, a puppy! Registered Senior Member

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    SO you're saying that MS is going to move .NET over to OSX as well? Somehow that doesn't sound right, although I might have misinterpreted your last post. Also, I wouldn't be going around comparing the .NET framework to java or you will surely be cornered in a dark alley by some fanatical java fans. This is not to say I'm one of them...

    ...actually yeah I am, so watch out.

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  18. river-wind Valued Senior Member

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    no, while some Open Source guys are working on making a .net env. for OSX (mainly for linux, but OSX is close enough that some are porting the linux work over), I was just compairing C# to Cocoa in the amount of built-in functionality that it has.

    From what I know, C#, the main language for .net development, is the second generation of MS's failed attempt at a Java killer, J++. I would compare C# to Java, as it has a near direct ancestory (sun's Java->MS's crapptacular ripoff J++->C#). It considerably more capable than java (in the number of std functions available), though at the expense of platform flexability and C-level execution speed.

    With the current JIT compilers for Java, C# appears to run only marginally faster than Java; however, from what I have read, garbage cleanup in C# is better than Java, and it's additional system functions (such as drawwindows, gui contol, etc) gives it advanteges for Windows programming over java.
    I have limited Java exp, and pretty much no C# expirieence, though. Would you disagree?
     
    Last edited: Feb 9, 2004
  19. testify Look, a puppy! Registered Senior Member

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    I have pretty much no experience with C#, so I can't really give my opinion on how their compared. All I can really say is that the ability to be system independant in my mind far outweighs the small advantage of having faster execution time.

    I can't say for sure about the garbage cleanup, but I can bet the reason for the "additional system functions". It's pretty simple, they don't have to build gui's and layouts for different OS's. Java requires the capability to make a different gui and layout for almost every OS out there. This makes it hard for java to be more efficient than C#.
     
  20. river-wind Valued Senior Member

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    2,671
    yeah, exactly right. They currently have a programming env. for Windows in .NET. However, if a .NET compilation env. was developed for a non-Windows OS, you could then compile windows .NET programs for those systems without having to make any changes to the code. The final compiled program would use the OS's native UI widgets, native machine code, etc, and run as a truely native application (and not in a VM).
    However, this is just the idea. There aren't any .NET compilers for Mac, Linux, etc. Until there is, the cross-platform idea behind .NET is just a dream.

    It may be that .NET was announced as a cross-platform thing to appease the Justice Department, who was still activly prosecuting MS when it was first introduced.


    edit: the main Linux .Net implimentation is called project 'mono'
    some handy info from Miguel here:
    http://mail.gnome.org/archives/gnome-hackers/2002-February/msg00031.html
     
    Last edited: Feb 11, 2004
  21. firdroirich A friend of The Friends Registered Senior Member

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    I'm enough of windows to be honest if I could trade in an MCSE for Mac/Unix qualifications I would; since I used a mac I cant use xp to the point that I have a mac skin running on my xp box using desktopx, not that there is any change in the low-level running but just the look & feel is better than XP. Mac anyday!
     
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