Leopard 64bit

[powderblue17]

So I guess the core of the os is 64-bit but I'm pretty sure all the desktop type apps are still 32-bit. I remember Apple saying that the only app which will be 64-bit is XCode because it would see a speed increase being 64-bit while all the other apps would not.

 

[Tracer]

Stop Worrying about 64-Bit, SSE4 is What You Want.

SSE4 will make the new Penryn Mac Pro's a beast.

Check out a quick series of benchmarks:

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20070417-intel-details-penryn-performance-sse4.html

This will boost performance immediately and we won't have to wait for the coders to reprogram their Apps to utilize the 64-Bit technology.

Tracer

 

[Transeau]

So I guess the core of the os is 64-bit but I'm pretty sure all the desktop type apps are still 32-bit. I remember Apple saying that the only app which will be 64-bit is XCode because it would see a speed increase being 64-bit while all the other apps would not.

Apps that would be able to see a gain, will be 64-bit. Things that will see no gains will still be 32-bit, as there is no reason for bigger code without gains.

the new iMovie would see a nice gain, as it would be able to use more memory for editing, and use the 64-bit registers and instructions for compressing, as well as iDVD and Garageband. But iTunes wouldn't get anything out of it. QuickTime would, as it's used to rip/compress audio. iChat - nothing at all.

I'm sure that someday, EVERYTHING will be 64-Bit, just to get rid of the 32-bit subsystems. This would ultimately make the installed system use less disk space, and possibly stabilize the system more - not having to use separate VM states for 32-bit and 64-bit.

 

[Anonymous Freak]

SSE4 will make the new Penryn Mac Pro's a beast.

Check out a quick series of benchmarks:

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20070417-intel-details-penryn-performance-sse4.html

This will boost performance immediately and we won't have to wait for the coders to reprogram their Apps to utilize the 64-Bit technology.

Tracer

No, this won't boost anything immediately. Programs will have to be rewritten and recompiled to take advantage of SSE4. Admittedly, this is probably easier than rewriting for 64-bit, but it still requires rewriting.

edit: It does appear that while SSE4 itself will need recompilations to see any benefit, Penryn-based processors ALSO improve their implementation of previous SSE levels as well. So even without SSE4 improvements, programs that use SSE-SSE3 will see SOME improvement simply because Penryn handles those better than current processors. This is *NOT* because of anything having to do with SSE4, though. For example, if Intel releases a "Celeron" based on Penryn that lacks SSE4, it will still be faster at the pre-SSE4 instructions than a pre-Penryn processor of the same clock speed, cache size, and bus speed. But an otherwise identical Penryn with SSE4 will be the exact same speed on non-SSE4 programs. It's only on SSE4-aware programs that we will see the huge (200%) improvements. (Although 15-40% is nothing to sneeze at, either.)

 

[jyavenard]

It does led me to believe that Leopard is a full 64 bits OS

None of the application compiled with gcc works on 10.4.

Simplest code ever:
void main(void) {
printf("hello world\n");
}

In Terminal, this code compiled with gcc in 10.5, will run in 10.5 (obviously) but not in 10.4 (it gives a Bus Error).

If compiled in 10.4, it works in 10.4 *and* in 10.5

Now need to find the gcc arg to compile an application that will run in 10.4 !!

Edit: incorrect assumption, it was an issue of incompatible framework, need to add -mmacosx-version-min=10.3 to compile something on 10.5 so it runs in 10.4 and 10.3