Other Leopard Improvements: Multicore Support

[MacRumors]

Now that Intel has moved their processor line primarily to multicore, most of Apple's shipping Macs have at least 2 cores (and as many as 8). According to Apple's Leopard pages, Apple has introduced significant performance improvements into Leopard to take advantage of all these multicore processors.

The new Leopard scheduler is very efficient at allocating tasks across multiple cores and processors. So Leopard spends less time managing tasks and more time performing computations. A new multithreaded network stack speeds up networking by handling network inputs and outputs in parallel.

Apple's applications such as Mail, Address Book and Font Utility have been updated to be multicore ready:

Each of these apps breaks up processor-intensive actions into a series of more manageable steps that execute one by one on single-CPU computers and in parallel on newer, multicore systems. Cocoa uses that same technology to speed up Spotlight searches and Dictionary lookups.

Apple also introduced a new API (NSOperation) which makes it easier for programmers to take advantage of multicore processing: "You simply describe the operations in a program along with their dependencies. Cocoa takes care of the rest."

According to one unverified first hand report, the new finder has also seen improved performance:

The new finder is absolutely the best part. How many years have we wanted a cocoa finder? ... Proper multi-threaded support. ... No more beachball so far.

[Master Atrus]

All I can say is that this is about time and I cannot wait until Leopard is out! It looks like it will be a great improvement!

[2A Batterie]

Oy. Just another reminder that I need to ditch the G5.

[furious]

Wow cool! never saw this coming at all.

[DMann]

Originally Posted by 2A Batterie

Oy. Just another reminder that I need to ditch the G5.

This, by itself, makes Leopard an amazingly upgrade, and a great incentive to upgrade that G5. Sell it on eBay with apps pre-installed
Now, why didn't Steve draw more attention to this during the Keynote?

[flopticalcube]

Now THAT'S something to shout about! Much better than the eye candy fluff.

PS I thought all shipping Macs now were multi-cored?

Originally Posted by Macrumors

Now that Intel has moved their processor line primarily to multicore, most of Apple's shipping Macs have at least 2 cores

[Sbrocket]

The more I see news like this, the more I hope that Leopard's final production release really has some amazing performance and under-the-hood gains to offset all these claims of a "Vista-esque update".

Originally Posted by flopticalcube

Now THAT'S something to shout about! Much better than the eye candy fluff.

PS I thought all Macs now were multi-cored?

All new Macs that come off the production line are now, but that certainly isn't all Macs that people use.

[idea_hamster]

After all the halts, hiccups, delays, and half-assed implementation (ZFS), finally a headline I can get on board with:

BREAKING: Leopard to Work With Chip!

I like to think that I don't usually troll, but the whole WWDC has been, shall we say, under-whelming.

Maybe later I'll be in a glass-half-full mood and rate this "positive."

[dartzorichalcos]

Because of this, will the Quad Core G5, Mac Pros and Octo Core Mac Pros will run even faster?

[coolfactor]

Originally Posted by 2A Batterie

Oy. Just another reminder that I need to ditch the G5.

Leopard will run way better on your G5 than Tiger currently does, which is no slouch, I'm guessing. It'll be like having a new machine without having to buy one.

[flopticalcube]

Originally Posted by idea_hamster

After all the halts, hiccups, delays, and half-assed implementation (ZFS), finally a headline I can get on board with:

BREAKING: Leopard to Work With Chip!

I like to think that I don't usually troll, but the whole WWDC has been, shall we say, under-whelming.

Maybe later I'll be in a glass-half-full mood and rate this "positive."

QFT! Totally! 1000% agree with you!

[itcomesinwaves]

Been waiting a while for the multi-threaded Finder.

[Counter]

Originally Posted by idea_hamster

After all the halts, hiccups, delays, and half-assed implementation (ZFS), finally a headline I can get on board with:

BREAKING: Leopard to Work With Chip!

I like to think that I don't usually troll, but the whole WWDC has been, shall we say, under-whelming.

Maybe later I'll be in a glass-half-full mood and rate this "positive."

Ha, brilliant.

I do think it's good that Leopard will work with chip though.

I mean, it is good.

Ya know?

[Luis]

Originally Posted by DMann

This, by itself, makes Leopard an amazingly upgrade, and a great incentive to upgrade that G5. Sell it on eBay with apps pre-installed
Now, why didn't Steve draw more attention to this during the Keynote?

Steve seemed to draw the attention to not so important things now that we know a lot of the features...

[Macula]

Within the first few seconds of the Leopard demonstration it became clear that this is indeed a VERY SNAPPY operating system, despite all the cycle-consuming additions (quickview, core animation, etc.). We should not underestimate this achievement: It is an OS that we are talking about, and higher speed is not simply a "feature" but an all-encompassing improvement. Keeping up its tradition, the latest Mac OS is faster than its predecessor. Now, compare that to Windows!

[darwen]

Originally Posted by Macrumors

Apple's applications such as Mail, Address Book and Font Utility have been updated to be multicore ready

Good thing too. Mail has been going really slow and I am glad I can finally get all of my cores working on things like address book.

Give me a break! Difficult tasks in Mail and Address Book? I can see splitting the work load in Spotlight maybe, what is there to split in Mail though? One core checks spelling and the other adds the signature?

[samh004]

Originally Posted by flopticalcube

PS I thought all shipping Macs now were multi-cored?

Well not the AppleTV, but I guess it's not really a Mac

Can't wait to utilize my current equipment better than it is already performing, this bit of news is really positive.

[j-a-x]

Awesome. This is what I wanted to know - more about what was going on "under the hood" of Leopard. The flashy stuff like Coverflow doesn't impress me that much (although I like the groups of apps in the finder, the current finder seems to load folder contents really slowly when you right click them in the dock). Anyways, great to see a coacoa finder and multi core support. Too bad I have an old G4 laptop.

[Grimace]

Umm....multiple cores in Mail and Address Book? That's like needing 8GB of RAM to run Word "faster".

[ISMPlus]

Loving it, can't wait! I'm actually anticipating the release of Leopard as much as the iPhone (2nd gen ). Sweeeeet!

[darwen]

Originally Posted by Grimace

Umm....multiple cores in Mail and Address Book? That's like needing 8GB of RAM to run Word "faster".

Don't forget Font Book. They updated that too!

[ISMPlus]

Originally Posted by Grimace

Umm....multiple cores in Mail and Address Book? That's like needing 8GB of RAM to run Word "faster".

mmmm, hey! I'm not complaining!

[Luis]

Originally Posted by darwen

Don't forget Font Book. They updated that too!

WOW, now changing font is going to be really snappy!

[kalisphoenix]

Threads are beautiful things.

[DMann]

Originally Posted by darwen

Good thing too. Mail has been going really slow and I am glad I can finally get all of my cores working on things like address book.

Give me a break! Difficult tasks in Mail and Address Book? I can see splitting the work load in Spotlight maybe, what is there to split in Mail though? One core checks spelling and the other adds the signature?

Have you ever noticed how long it takes to launch Address Book, iCal, and Mail? Multi-Core addressing will help them to open as quickly as, let's say, TextEdit. Address Book, iCal, and Mail are integrated with each other, and this slows them down considerably. Multi-Core addressing will be highly welcome with these apps, as well as the proapps; FCP, Logic, Photoshop, and iLife & iWork suites. Even bloated Word could benefit from multi-threading, but I don't imagine MS will put that much effort into it.