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8-Core Mac Pro with Clovertown... in November?
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paulvee said:
The intel machines use intel standard parts. No proprietary CPU riser cards or what have you. If you can get to the CPU, that is.
Great news! Let's hope it's true, as it would be nice to see Apple forge forward with frequent updates in this manner as they have already done to an extent. The days of waiting months for a 100 MHz PPC speed bump are long gone! 
Glad To See We Finally Have Some Other Multi-Core Needers Here
Any of you who don't think a 16-core Mac Pro will be a hit in a year can really only be into word processing.
On the video front, crushing video down to mp4 files is a two stage process which each use 3-4 cores. Hosing an 8-core Mac Pro will be no problem. Those of you who think that 8-cores is a lot and crazy have no experience with multi-core applications and the idea of running multiple instances of even single core applications simultaneously. You are going to have to begin to RETHINK how you execute your workflow - i.e. the ORDER in which you initiate processes - to get the most bang out of an 8-core Mac Pro and to begin learning how to get more work done in far less time than you do today.dante@sisna.com said:
Thank you for both those posts. I have felt pretty alone on these 8-core threads thus far. Glad to finally see someone else who understands and can explain so well why 8-cores is still not going to be enough joining in on these discussions.dante@sisna.com said:
Any of you who don't think a 16-core Mac Pro will be a hit in a year can really only be into word processing.
To be fair, the days of waiting months for a 200MHz Intel speed bump are also long gone. This is a new paradigm from the chip manufacturers.~Shard~ said:Great news! Let's hope it's true, as it would be nice to see Apple forge forward with frequent updates in this manner as they have already done to an extent. The days of waiting months for a 100 MHz PPC speed bump are long gone!
Pretty damn good though isn't it.
bigwig said:
Tiger was the first big step in breaking the monolithic threading model of the BSD layer that was inherited from BSD (not a MACH issue). Leopard is going beyond that in a few key areas, for example to allow better efficiency on high-core count per socket systems.
XNU handles multiple cores just fine but improvements can always be made and they are being made.
bigwig said:
That is simply false. The schedular in Mac OS X handles 8 cores just fine... what Applications do with them in a different story.
bigwig said:
At the rate SGI is going, I could probably buy SGI myself for whatever is in my pocket within the next year. Talk about a company that failed to follow the industry and adapt with the times... No point in anyone buying them, the only thing keeping them afloat is the few tidbits of technology they've licensed over the years, which is all just about obsolete now anyway. SGI hasn't had a new, innovative product in over 10 years. I think the first sign of the end was when SGI released their attempt at Windows workstations back in '98 and they were 1/3 the price and more than twice as powerful as any of their desktop Irix workstations. I ran a quad-CPU SGI540 for several years as a development server and render box with a dual-CPU SGI 340 as a workstation. Picked both of them up second-hand for a steal... Very nice systems, too bad SGI never followed through with support for them.
Sad too because I essentially started doing commercial 3D graphics work on an SGI Indigo. Owned various SGIs over the years - Indy, a few Indigo2 models, O2 (crap), Octane... 1 Origin 200 server. Never considered buying Fuel or Tezro (their last two workstation attempts) -- way too expensive and very much underpowered compared to PC/Mac.
Multimedia said:
Looks like others have addressed it, but OSX along with the Tiger kernel updates, scales pretty good. Every bit as good as any Linux implementation and probably as good or better than WinXP.
They will ship Clovertowns as soon as they can... As I've said, it's a software issue, so know your software before you choose 8-core vs. 4-core. But there's plenty of software out their that can benefit from the 8-core system. Like I've said, Photoshop itself isn't multithreaded/multi-core capable directly, but various plug-ins are. It's also possible to spread multiple batch instances across CPU cores, so even though much of our current software is limited (or just plain multi-core ignorant), there's still ways to utilize the multiple cores within just about any production workflow.
... any proof ?
Considering that Windows supports up to 64 CPU cores, and that 64 core Windows machines are available - it would be nice if you could show some proof that OSX on a 64 CPU machine scales better than Windows or Linux....AppliedVisual said:
BenRoethig said:
Anandtech did a test with two Clovertown engineering samples several weeks ago. Seemed to work just fine. The only thing I could see as an issue is the BIOS/EFI might need an update in addition to simply swapping the CPUs.
AidenShaw said:
Are you being overly pedantic or do you just want to argue? I said WinXP. -- "probably as good or better than WinXP". WinXP only supports two CPUs with a max of 4 cores each right now as per the EULA. The Windows kernel itself actually handles CPU division and scales dynamically based on addressable CPUs within a system all the way up to 256 CPUs or cores, with support for up to 4 logical or virtual CPUs each. And just think where those 64-CPU Windows systems are going to be in the near future as they're updraded with quad-core CPUs from AMD/Intel...
BTW: You have to buy Windows Server Datacenter Edition to get to all those CPUs.
128 Cores Is Still Half A Decade Away
32 cores in 2008
64 cores in 2009
128 cores in 2010
You want to wait 'til 2010 at the soonest?
16 cores in 2007paeza said:
32 cores in 2008
64 cores in 2009
128 cores in 2010
You want to wait 'til 2010 at the soonest?
Multimedia said:16 cores in 2007
32 cores in 2008
64 cores in 2009
128 cores in 2010
You want to wait 'til 2010 at the soonest?
4 years. Cant wait. My emailing exploits will just zip along.
How many chips would it span though?
Hmmmm
After much debate and anguish i finally decided to order my Mac Pro yesterday... figures this would come up now.... /sigh. I am assuming they will only add a higher end config, but honestley... do any of us know?
After much debate and anguish i finally decided to order my Mac Pro yesterday... figures this would come up now.... /sigh. I am assuming they will only add a higher end config, but honestley... do any of us know?
I'm actually pretty thrilled with my new Dual 3.0 Xeon. Should hold me in good stead for a couple of years of heavy video crunching and motion graphics, as well as photoshop once it goes native. In the meantime, I use my Dual G5 2.0 for that.
And when the Octos get updated in a year and a half, I can be the first to jump on that bandwagon.
And when the Octos get updated in a year and a half, I can be the first to jump on that bandwagon.
I am pretty excited about this, because if i read it right...
the new mac pro's will possibly come out at the same price point's as the higher end model's.
which when these come out... would mean that the ones out now may DROP in price. hey just a thought. a good one
the new mac pro's will possibly come out at the same price point's as the higher end model's.
which when these come out... would mean that the ones out now may DROP in price. hey just a thought. a good one
mdntcallr said:I am pretty excited about this, because if i read it right...
the new mac pro's will possibly come out at the same price point's as the higher end model's.
which when these come out... would mean that the ones out now may DROP in price. hey just a thought. a good one
Thats what i'm worried about!!! Ahhhhh!!! guess i can always wait a month and pay my 250 dollar restock!
Macinposh said:
No -- WE DO THIS KIND OF WORK EVERYDAY. We are a production lab with a 20 year history. We have used Photoshop in Isolation on multiple One Gig Files using Actions to process as many as 40 files at one -- so nearly 40 Gig.
Run an RGB to CMYK conversion on a 1 Gig Photoshop file with embedded profiles -- watch activity monitor. See that all four processors kick in for this processes. Many Photoshop processes efficiently use all four processors.
Besides the main point of the original post is that users don't see much improvement with Quad Cores --- this is just plain WRONG.
Multimedia said:Thank you for both those posts. I have felt pretty alone on these 8-core threads thus far. Glad to finally see someone else who understands and can explain so well why 8-cores is still not going to be enough joining in on these discussions.
Any of you who don't think a 16-core Mac Pro will be a hit in a year can really only be into word processing.
You are welcome.
I have been reading your Mac Rumors posts for a long time and I am amazed at the bashing you take sometimes. I recall the days when people complained of Apple boxes being "too slow."
Now the posts I read on supposed pro sites like Mac Rumors are filled with users chiding one's need for speed -- I get the feeling that many of the users in this forum do simply have the workload to truly push these machines -- there is almost a sense of envy at users who do.
My suggestion to users feeling this envy is as follows: Learn new skills. If you make your living using a Mac as we do, then evolve with your box. Buy new software. Seek out new clients who want higher end multimedia for web and other distribution. Push the market to evolve.
Anyhow, I will contribute as much as my schedule allows.
Best regards to all.
Dante
dante@sisna.com said:
Just wanted to note...
It is easy to confuse a single thread bouncing among available cores as it gets scheduled (which happens easily on Mac OS X) and multiple threads executing in parallel on multiple cores if you look at per CPU utilization graphs because of sampling artifacts.
In top you want to look at "CPU usage" or in activity monitor look at "% Idle". If idle CPU usage is close to zero then you are truly utilizing the cores in your system which often implies that the application you are using is spreading the work across the available cores. In a four core system if idle CPU is around 75% (usually several percentage points under that because of system related threads supporting the application) then the application is really only using a single core (single threaded). In a four core system if idle CPU is around 50% then the application is really only using two cores (two threads). etc.
You can also look at load average in top. If the load average is around 1 then the work load on the system is on average only utilizing one core. If the load average is around 2, then on average two cores are being utilized. etc. If the load average is greater then the number of cores in the system then the work load is greater then what the cores in the system can run concurrently.
Note load average (and CPU %) will be depressed if the work load is IO bound and not CPU bound... so an application could be attempting to utilize multiple cores (use multiple threads) but IO bandwidth, etc. is starving those threads of the data they need and hence preventing them from executing.
The best way to know that an application is utilizing multiple threads for a task is to use tools like sample and Shark.
The computers will not become obsolete much2 sooner but your bragging rights will.Alpinism said:
If You Seriously Ordered Only Yesterday, Cancel And Get 8-Core
So you didn't know they were going 8-Core next month? It's only gonna be an extra $300 over the price of the 4-Core 3GHz model for the 8-Core 2.66GHz model. If you are into video and especially compression, 8-cores will make a big productivity difference.Sm0kejaguar said: