Apple violates Moore's Law

[Lord Bodak]

Re: Re: Apple violates Moore's Law

Originally posted by illumin8
Sorry, you need to do better at your math. 2Ghz. to 3Ghz. is basically a 50% increase in one year. Extrapolate that out to 18 months and you're looking at Apple's computing power increasing by 75% every 18 months. That's still not even with Moore's Law.

I have a feeling that if you look at Apple 5 years from now you will see that they have more or less kept pace with Intel in the processor speed race. IBM should allow them to reach Moore's Law type speed doubling.

Moore's Law has nothing to do with clock speeds! Moore's Law states that the density of transistors we can squeeze onto a given piece of silicon will double every 18 months. On some architectures, that leads to big clock speed jumps, on some it doesn't. Clock speed really is a meaningless comparison between two processors-- sometimes even in the same family (i.e., we know the new 7457 G4 outperforms the older ones at the same clock speed).

 

[Makosuke]

Meaningless Moore's "law" arguments aside, I still find it baffling how many people still seem to think that fully 64bit OS = greater user-space speed. I've never read a single informed tech document anywhere that made that comparison. Roughly speaking, 64bit OS = ability to address way more memory than a 32bit OS. Not double speed, not the ability to process twice as much data at once (in a handfull of cases cases, possibly, but not for the average app). More memory. Which Panther, and even 10.2.7, can already do (among other specific 64bit optimizations).

What we DO want is an OS that is optimized for the G5. That does not mean pure 64bit--it means optimized for the style of programming that takes full advantage of the PPC970 architecture. That will mean a huge speed increase over unoptimized or G4 optimized code.

And, considering that every developer and his brother seems to be talking about G5 speed increases on the order of 30% with Panther, it looks like Apple has that under control.

I buy my computers based on what makes me more productive--which would be my G4 533DP over an Opteron box--but the G5s are exciting chips, and we may well see an ongoing speed parity, or even lead, with them given time. Whether Panther is a 64bit OS or not.

 

[MrMacMan]

Originally posted by krohde
All I'm saying is why build a 64-bit computer, market it as 64-bit and then install an OS that only partly takes advantage of the power in the machine. I know the compatability and all that but I'm sure they could have come up with something better. Apparently they needed this out of the door...

This will screw everyone w/o a G5...


So its either 'Get a G5' or Don't get the next OS?



Your logic is not only flawed, it has a big gapping hole.

 

[See]

Seeing the light

First, thanks to the Intel guy who has time to contribute to this mac forum. You seem concerned about g5, 64 bit and panther. I work with both macs and pc's. Rendering is what makes me wait. Rendering video, and 3d animations. Stability is a major concern. I tell you this only to remind everyone what the point is. We use these machines to do things. This is not the socks versus the yankees. The only microsoft system that has even been stable for me was dos 1, which Bill didn't write. The best windows operating system from microsoft for me was 3.1. XP pro crashes all the time. It trashes hard drives. Now, for games, windows office and photoshop; XP pro works great and a system is cheap and fast; but, for 3d, video ..., XP pro can't cut it. As for 64 bit, i need it first of all, because 1 gig (512 x 2) of ddr is not adequate. (I could get my pc to 2, or 3 gigs, but the chips would cost twice what the whole system cost.) 4, 8 or 16 will do my work fine. (I can get to 5 gigs cheap on the g5 dual.) AMD 64 processors have no 64 operation system, yet. Intel says we don't need 64 bit. They are 95% right: for office programs, photoshop or games there is no need. I have to get things done so I got a dual 2 g, g5. I am moving everything i can from my 3g amd XP pro system to the g5. So far, i have noticed a major improvement. Again thanks to all the pc, microsoft employees and friends, who never use macs, but makes such useful contributions to mac message boards.