Does anyone know if there are any programs from third party developers that currently take advantage of Grand Central Dispatch in Snow Leopard? Or is it currently just a theoretical programing advantage?
Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
GCD in Mac OS X Snow Leopard
- Thread starter manymanyfish
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
Nothing significant has advertised using it. It's still a pretty new thing, plus it isn't really supported outside of Snow Leopard (although a FreeBSD port is well underway). One thing to understand though, is that it is not some kind of magical "go faster" sauce. If a program does not use every core for everything, it does not mean that its dev are lazy people who need to "Use Grand Central". At the same time, it will not do anything for apps already using all cores, like Handbrake.
Leopard added a method called an operation queue that made it easier for developers to use multiple cores. However, the underlying code wasn't anything too special. In Snow Leopard, GCD is used to power the operation queues, so apps automatically inherit GCD in Snow Leopard when using operation queues. My guess is then, there are quite a few apps using GCD, and some may not even know it 