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Err...Steve Jobs IS recently quoted as basically saying traditional PC's are dying. He has stated it. That is of course HIS opinion, and not one that gels with the numbers.

He didn't say they were dying he said they are like trucks and the analogy fits very well. I think we can give him credit enough to know the place trucks have in American society. Currently desktops are a vital part of Apple's ecosystem and that isn't going to change any time soon. Just because it may not be their primary focus does not mean that it is essentially "done". Apple's level communication is obviously a huge problem with this belief, but they aren't really acting one way or the other, it is generally how people are reading in to it usually with concern and thus worst case scenarios arise . Nothing they have said or done really backs the idea that they are done with desktops or the mac as a whole any more than it highlights their behaviour of secrecy.
 
I'm with you on this. I mean, more power to those who do go out of their way to customize their iMac, but investments also need warranty, and that's just something I really value. I'm sorry, but until these are officially designated as "user-replaceable" by Apple, I'll gladly go for the Mac Pro.

Edit: Though I believe when light peak iMacs come around, this won't be an issue as most expansions will likely exist as external solutions. So we probably may never see user-replaceable internal hard drives or graphics cards for the iMac...ever... if that is, everything goes according to Apple's plan.

SJ may not want users to open Apple computers and he has a thing for extremely streamlined products. So be it. But the result is a very un-Apple like mess of stuff hanging off or plugged into an iMac. It seems to me the elegant Mac Pro is the ideal solution.
 
He didn't say they were dying he said they are like trucks and the analogy fits very well. I think we can give him credit enough to know the place trucks have in American society. Currently desktops are a vital part of Apple's ecosystem and that isn't going to change any time soon. Just because it may not be their primary focus does not mean that it is essentially "done". Apple's level communication is obviously a huge problem with this belief, but they aren't really acting one way or the other, it is generally how people are reading in to it usually with concern and thus worst case scenarios arise . Nothing they have said or done really backs the idea that they are done with desktops or the mac as a whole any more than it highlights their behaviour of secrecy.

Did you read the article I linked too? Have you read his comments about "PC users feeling like their world is slipping away,and they are right"?
 
Did you read the article I linked too? Have you read his comments about "PC users feeling like their world is slipping away,and they are right"?

I read both. What he does say, in consumers not needing PCs and PC users feeling like that, does not equate to a statement that Apple are abandoning those areas.
 
I read both. What he does say, in consumers not needing PCs and PC users feeling like that, does not equate to a statement that Apple are abandoning those areas.
No, but they are being neglected. Actually, re-prioritized to a lower status for new product development is much more accurate. And it's not just based on hardware, but their pro apps as well.

It's a mistake to do this without any rectification of personnel time shortages for the project load, or notification IMO. I can understand that good people are hard to find, and the desire to be very selective. But an official, unquestionably clear announcement would allay the panic/fear of abandonment that's setting in.
 
"Less Sophisticated" = fewer transistors used. The reason, is to make smaller parts for the mainstream market, which means more parts per wafer.
well that makes sense for advancements wrt that, but it means that if you have 4 DIMMs that you now can use 3 in the correct ratio, then the 4th is different. I guess the motherboard manufacturers have to comply to the new features.

As per channels, the mainstream parts will have fewer, as it's not beneficial for such parts. It's the enterprise market that can benefit from it, and where Intel has expanded the channel count on future parts in the Xeon lines.
do you think it wise for intel/manufactures to separator the consumer and enterprise parts even more? If a customer wants tri channel memory then they must go to xeons, and the consumers stay with dual channel?


Turbo Boost = feature, as is Hyper Threading,... Some, such as ECC, are present in multiple parts, but not Enabled (i.e. i7-920 vs. W3520), and is continued with the newer parts (i.e. Xeon vs. Enthusiast Desktop parts that use LGA1366).
What is their reasoning for not enabling ECC? From a production POV it must be easier to only develop the one chip then just enable/disable features. Any other justification?


The reason is because it's the ONLY way to get a Dual Processor system. Desktop parts are impossible to do this with (technical reasons).
aahhh. Of course! Silly me.

There's also the fact that "Xeon" invokes stablity under 100% load conditions in high availability environments (24/7 operation, as you tend to find with servers). Even if it's not used that way, it makes users feel confident that the system is reliable.
marketing stuff i guess. The stability of my consumer CPU components seem fine. I was under the impression that they were both identical in reliability etc, and that RAM, HDD were the reasons for the instability of consumer machines.
 
I read both. What he does say, in consumers not needing PCs and PC users feeling like that, does not equate to a statement that Apple are abandoning those areas.

No, his words, along with complete neglect of certain areas of their business that used to be the driving force of the company equate to abandoning those areas. I mean, at the friggin developer conference they eliminated mac software design awards entirely! For? Yes, that's right, iOS software design awards!

Apple literally talked about zero Mac OSX things at their annual developer conference. Ridiculous.

Microsoft has already stated Windows 8 will be revolutionary. I believe them. Google is working on Chrome OS. Things aren't standing still. Apple needs to get back on it, or people won't want to be doing their work on OSX, and their iGadgets will fall to Android gadgets etc. It happened to the first Mac, it can happen again. Steve Jobs has a history of starting something great then running it into the ground. Will it repeat? I hope not.
 
Apple literally talked about zero Mac OSX things at their annual developer conference. Ridiculous.

just because they dont talk about it doesnt mean that work isnt happening on it. apple has stated that 10.7 will be an awsome improvement. it will be the "tick" upgrade, and i hope that it brings some nice software improvements (coding wise).
 
We should all email Steve to remind him to refresh the MacPro lineup. Maybe he'll eventually respond to one of us.
 
well that makes sense for advancements wrt that, but it means that if you have 4 DIMMs that you now can use 3 in the correct ratio, then the 4th is different. I guess the motherboard manufacturers have to comply to the new features.
The issue with the DIMM slots is a result of Apple, not the Intel architecture. Most other boards in the ATX board format are fitting 6x DIMM slots (3x channels, 2x DIMMs can be interleaved per channel).

Server boards can go higher than that as they're on larger boards, such as EATX or SSI EEB specifications (more physical real estate to fit them).

do you think it wise for intel/manufactures to separator the consumer and enterprise parts even more? If a customer wants tri channel memory then they must go to xeons, and the consumers stay with dual channel?
Not entirely true.

Intel makes LGA1366 parts in both Xeon and i7 monikers, both with triple channel DDR3. Granted they're the SP parts, and between these, the difference is only ECC (disabled on the enthusiast desktop parts).

Now where the line will get blured in the near future, is when SP parts reach 8 cores per chip. Then there won't be a need to use DP parts for workstations, and they'll be relegated to server duty exclusively (and the architecture definitely support this, such as the DDR3 channels are scaling up in some models).

What is their reasoning for not enabling ECC? From a production POV it must be easier to only develop the one chip then just enable/disable features. Any other justification?
Think backwards.

Bin the chips, and see what's viable as a Xeon. Those that aren't, get ECC disabled. It's definitely cost effective to do it this way.

marketing stuff i guess. The stability of my consumer CPU components seem fine. I was under the impression that they were both identical in reliability etc, and that RAM, HDD were the reasons for the instability of consumer machines.
It's more than just marketing from Intel, as the parts actually have to be able to do it.

Now whether or not a user actually needs that level of duty cycle, is another matter. And in such instances, could be/is used as a marketing technique.

As they're the same chips, the reliablility is the same. But there are variances between parts, and why they bin them. Separate the weaker parts from those that can survive a grueling existance. Most of the decisions are based on filling need though, as they put a lot of time into making the process consistant = high yeilds. They don't want a lot of failures (true failures) that can't be used at all.

But a chip that may not be well suited as a Xeon would make a fine desktop part. Far less waste that way = making money on the vast majority of what's produced. ;)
 
Apple literally talked about zero Mac OSX things at their annual developer conference. Ridiculous.

What is ridiculous is to equate the keynote speech to the whole conference. Steve Job's keynote speech is a entertainment infomercial gathering. It is also substantially shorter than the conference so you can't possibly talk about all of the issues in a high level briefing. These product releases are just a sideshow. It has zip to do with the core purpose of the conference itself.

Go look at the sessions:

http://developer.apple.com/wwdc/

There is Mac OS X content it is just way down. Much if it where there is an overlap between iOS and Mac OS X.



Microsoft has already stated Windows 8 will be revolutionary. I believe them.

Then you are gullible. Not there won't be new stuff in them, but won't be any more 'revolutionary' than iOS/Mac OS stuff is. It is a term cavalierly thrown around by both Apple and Microsoft.

What Windows needed was less "revolutionary" and more quality. Shooting themselves in the head with a crufty Vista provides years of comic material for Apple to easily leverage. Steadily providing quality improvements is all that is really necessary.
 
The issue with the DIMM slots is a result of Apple, not the Intel architecture. Most other boards in the ATX board format are fitting 6x DIMM slots (3x channels, 2x DIMMs can be interleaved per channel).

And take a speed hit when double down multiple DIMMs on a single channel. That got tweaked in the 3600/5600 series. Apple also going horizontal certainly is another constraint; the box isn't wide enough for 6 slots.

Now where the line will get blured in the near future, is when SP parts reach 8 cores per chip. Then there won't be a need to use DP parts for workstations, and they'll be relegated to server duty exclusively

This is one of those "640K is enough for everyone" moments. Some folks are just computational hogs who have enough money not to have to share. For those folks the convenience of putting a server cluster inside of their box is still going to be a better tradeoff. Their numbers will shrink over time (some who thought there were power users will not see growth in workload complexity will drop out of the workstation market, but it will still exist.).

Intel is still going to drop dual sockets for a long while. What will happen is that 16 core 4x4 package sets up will drift down to 16 core 2 x 8 package set ups.





Think backwards.

Bin the chips, and see what's viable as a Xeon. Those that aren't, get ECC disabled. It's definitely cost effective to do it this way.


It's more than just marketing from Intel, as the parts actually have to be able to do it.

Now whether or not a user actually needs that level of duty cycle, is another matter. And in such instances, could be/is used as a marketing technique.

As they're the same chips, the reliablility is the same. But there are variances between parts, and why they bin them.

Reliability has to be measured. With no ECC don't necessarily know when there is a problem because not testing. Can't know if don't test. The top end 7500 parts are now getting more RAS features ( trickling down from Itanium). No reason someone using a workstation as a personal server would not need RAS features also if data has high value. For now Intel will use it as market segmentation mechanism but will gradually trickle down over time.
 
What is ridiculous is to equate the keynote speech to the whole conference. Steve Job's keynote speech is a entertainment infomercial gathering. It is also substantially shorter than the conference so you can't possibly talk about all of the issues in a high level briefing. These product releases are just a sideshow. It has zip to do with the core purpose of the conference itself.

Go look at the sessions:

http://developer.apple.com/wwdc/

There is Mac OS X content it is just way down. Much if it where there is an overlap between iOS and Mac OS X.

Then you are gullible. Not there won't be new stuff in them, but won't be any more 'revolutionary' than iOS/Mac OS stuff is. It is a term cavalierly thrown around by both Apple and Microsoft.

What Windows needed was less "revolutionary" and more quality. Shooting themselves in the head with a crufty Vista provides years of comic material for Apple to easily leverage. Steadily providing quality improvements is all that is really necessary.

So, why were all Mac OSX software design awards eliminated from the show? Yeah that sends a great message.

There is talk about Windows 8 virtualizing all of the current registry/dll stuff and having a new base to start from. They are obviously operating differently than they were in the past, and their OS is their livelihood (along with Office of course). I don't think there is anything gullible at thinking they are likely telling the truth. Maybe things will fall apart, but I imagine we will know more in a year or two.

Gullible, is believing the Apple marketing regarding the quality of Windows. :)
 
And take a speed hit when double down multiple DIMMs on a single channel. That got tweaked in the 3600/5600 series.
That's part of interleaving though. And in most cases, more RAM is usually far more advantageous than raw throughput, as precious little software is capable of utilizing it fully (i.e. 1x DIMM per channel).

Apple also going horizontal certainly is another constraint; the box isn't wide enough for 6 slots.
I realize that. But they could have, had they made different choices (i.e. different case that could accomodate a larger board for DP systems). It is doable in the current enclosure with SP systems. But the daughterboard configuration would have had to be skipped (processor + RAM anyway, they still could have attempted a daugherboard for RAM only).

This is one of those "640K is enough for everyone" moments.
Not really, as a cluster is where the trends are going for "heavy lifting", as I'm sure you're aware. And it makes sense, as you can attach a workstation to the cluster (dedicated or shared, if necessary) for computational work that's too complex for the workstation to complete within the available time.

I've already seen simulations going this route now, and the newer parts will make it more cost effective (fewer systems necessary to build the cluster for a given performance level with those currently available).

Intel is still going to drop dual sockets for a long while. What will happen is that 16 core 4x4 package sets up will drift down to 16 core 2 x 8 package set ups.
Of course, and they'll continue with Multi Processor systems as well (such as the 7xxx series).

Reliability has to be measured.
What I'm talking about is testing. Specifically the binning results per part. Some will make it as x part, some y,... as mistakes do occur during processing (not just marking chips with a specific CPUID to meet a quota, when there's nothing wrong with it).

Fabs can take parts and disable individual sections (i.e. cores, QPI channels, memory channels,...) and turn what otherwise would be "trash" for the best possible CPUID (fastest clock, and all logic operational well within tolerances) into a sellable part.
 
.
Does iPhone 4 mean death of the Mac?

Part of the article:

"Dear Macintosh,

I hate to tell you this, but my guess is you’ve probably been sensing it already. I don’t know any good way to say it so let me just be blunt: You’ve been dropped. Dumped. It’s over.

I’m sorry. I know this hurts. But you need to face up to the truth–Steve Jobs just broke up with you. This happened yesterday at the World Wide Developers Conference. I know–why couldn’t he just do it in private? Well, you know Steve. He loves the spotlight.

So what did he talk about? He talked about iPads, and the App Store, and iBooks, and videogames. He talked about the new iPhone 4, with new video-chat software called FaceTime and a gyroscope that lets you shoot missiles into outer space and take pictures of Saturn or something. And he had lots and lots to say about his new mobile-phone operating system, which used to be called iPhone OS and now has changed its name to iOS 4.

But one thing Steve didn’t have much to say about was you. In fact, he didn’t talk about you at all. That’s not how it used to be. Remember the old days?

Why it seems like only yesterday that you, Mac, were all Steve wanted to talk about. You and your wonderful stable operating system that was so much better than Windows.

And remember those cool “I’m a Mac” ads? They were everywhere.

To anyone out there who thinks yesterday’s radio silence on the Macintosh was not significant, or who still is attempting to build a business around the—and, yes, I’m talking to you, Macworld magazine, and Macworld Expo, and Mac Life, and Macalope, and MacTech, and MyMac, and MacUser, and all the rest of you—well, dear friends, listen up...."

Reading that kind of made me sad a little. My first computer was a Mac. I have never owned anything else. Kind of sucks to see Apple just kind of ignore their baby.
 
The Mac will now be ignored because it has served it's purpose. It saved Apple from oblivion. Steve can now concentrate of the real reason he wanted to get back to Apple.

His Ego!

The iMac was a brilliant idea, take something already existing and put a purple semi-transparent cover on it, slap a small crap CRT on the front and make $800 profit from everyone. The iPod was the beginning of the end for the computer side of Apple. Yes thy made the switch to intel, that was only to cut their cost and increase the profit. Everyone believed the crap about them running to hot etc. If that were true, why are Power Chips still used around the world. Steve didn't want to invest in development.

He now has a cash cow and can get away with it. Apple needs a stinker to bring Jobs and the board back to reality.
 
The Mac will now be ignored because it has served it's purpose. It saved Apple from oblivion. Steve can now concentrate of the real reason he wanted to get back to Apple.


Err...wasn't it the iPod that saved Apple from oblivion?
 
Seriously?

No way Apple is going to dump the Mac.
The Mac Pro is the flagship of the line.

Of course all of the shiny iProducts are highlighted and hyped.
They have made Apple #1 in sales, etc.
My opinion is that this gives Steve et al the luxury of continuing to develop the Mac and OSX.

I am certain that Mr. Jobs has a certain pride in knowing that Apple's high end systems are being used for so much "high profile" content creation.
I cannot imagine that he is willing to dump the years of tweaking and refinement that have led to the current combo of the Mac Pro and OSX.
With Apple's huge revenue, the Mac becomes a jewel in the crown.
I seriously doubt that they will throw this jewel in to the trash bin.

But, I could be wrong.
 
Seriously?

No way Apple is going to dump the Mac.
The Mac Pro is the flagship of the line.

Of course all of the shiny iProducts are highlighted and hyped.
They have made Apple #1 in sales, etc.
My opinion is that this gives Steve et al the luxury of continuing to develop the Mac and OSX.

I am certain that Mr. Jobs has a certain pride in knowing that Apple's high end systems are being used for so much "high profile" content creation.
I cannot imagine that he is willing to dump the years of tweaking and refinement that have led to the current combo of the Mac Pro and OSX.
With Apple's huge revenue, the Mac becomes a jewel in the crown.
I seriously doubt that they will throw this jewel in to the trash bin.

But, I could be wrong.

I'm right there with ya. Just think about it, it would be so stupid for Apple to completely dump the Mac. Could you imagine Steve Jobs talking on staging announcing that they are no longer going to make Macs? Ridiculous. I don't really even understand why people would ever think they will dump the Mac. The Mac Pro, maybe, but there is a very small chance of that happening. Extremely small chance in my opinion.
 
Yep ... people seem to start threads, because they cannot google info on the Intel Workstation roadmap and see that the hexacore chips are expected to "begin" shipping in quantity this month and the next chipset is slated around summer 2011.

Maybe we should remove MR forums? I mean, if all information is out there already on the web, why do we bother?

I agree with you to a certain extent, excessive duplicate threads can be annoying, but come on...give the guy a break. A forum is about discussion, maybe this thread is subtly different to the others?
 
Maybe we should remove MR forums? I mean, if all information is out there already on the web, why do we bother?

I agree with you to a certain extent, excessive duplicate threads can be annoying, but come on...give the guy a break. A forum is about discussion, maybe this thread is subtly different to the others?

and as they say, "the squeaky wheel gets the grease". ;)
 
That's part of interleaving though. And in most cases, more RAM is usually far more advantageous than raw throughput, as precious little software is capable of utilizing it fully (i.e. 1x DIMM per channel).

First, no application software change is required. The chip should do the parallelism transparently. If you put a crossbar switch between the 4 cores and the 3 memory controllers, then 3 different cores can pull data from three different controllers in parallel with no change in software. If you don't have too much data sitting behind a single controller then the work will naturally spread out. In contrast, if put a high amount of memory on the other side of a controller than it is more likely that 2 cores will both be pulling data from that pool of memory. At the extreme, if all four cores are pulling data from a single memory pool you have the "front side bus" configuration that was abandoned by this Nehalem architecture. Intel has a pretty bonehead design if that parallelism doesn't get leveraged on a common basis. Likewise, the OS is pretty bubblegum if it tends to herd multiple applications into single memory pools.


There is an additionally incremental speed hit if interleave, but not leveraging the multiple memory controllers is a waste of money on the new tech. Might has well stuck with a Core2 arch box.


Secondly, lots of memory slots is driven as much for many folks because of the current nonlinear pricing on 4GB DIMMs. If 4GB DIMMs were 2.0 or even 2.2 times as expensive at as 2GB DIMMS most folks would use 4 4GB DIMMs to get to 16GB rather than buying up 8 2GB DIMMs. Currently, they are 3x as expensive. The double down is to get cheaper DIMMs not necessarily more memory. Those are not necessarily equivalent in many cases ( sure the folks at the fully populated DIMM slot extreme but...

When 4GB eventually drop into the 2.2 multiple range the Mac Pro design will make more sense to a larger set of folks. Even so, for the single processor package set up can go 8GB and for dual package set up 16GB without dipping into the 4GB DIMMs. For the folks whose working set is smaller than that, it works and it is faster (if the work doesn't collide more than average.).


Double down only has big impact for those who have immediate term need for > 8GB (to avoid swapping) , but less than 4 cores of parallelism. There are some folks who need 32GB dual package set-ups, but not a huge number.


configuration would have had to be skipped (processor + RAM anyway, they still could have attempted a daugherboard for RAM only).

A daughterboard just for RAM is misguided. What you want are taller heatsinks on the processor packages since they are going to be more effective. One thing that the daughtercard does is orient the heatsinks in the same direction as the longest dimension of the box. There is no significant height constraint for RAM need to avoid. It is more a surface area constraint... which again going to the daughter card allows more efficient use of space because consuming "width" not "height" in consumption and keep trace lengths down.


Not really, as a cluster is where the trends are going for "heavy lifting", as I'm sure you're aware.

That is not a new trend. That is where the computer market has been since the start. Big machines did big jobs. The only "new" factor is gluing a "big machine" out of smaller decoupled components.

You are skipping past the point I was making. Workstation are not going to obviate all clusters. Most clusters are expensive. That means you have to share with someone else to make them cost effective. Workstations give you the freedom to do whatever crazy computational load you want and nobody else cares because they are using something else. For folks with heavy jobs that fit on a workstation it often pays to get the workstation (given would have to "pay" to get time on the cluster). Can also prune off smaller test run jobs just to see what the computation does without burning tons of cluster time. Once have the tweaks right can run larger job on the farm.

I get your point in the context where might have a number of workstations in a LAN and only infrequently/nonconcurrently a single person at a time needs to run a job on the cluster (perhaps overnight when everyone goes home. John Doe gets Monday and Wednesday nights, Fred Flintstone gets Tuesdays and Thursday, Barney gets Friday and Saturday, etc. )

Even Blade servers come as often with DP setups as SP ones. As long as there is an ever increasing ways to consume computational cycles, it will keep the pressure up on cluster nodes to pack more cores into a single unit.
You still have data locality issues, which if can avoid, gets you results faster if move the cores closer to the data. There is also little benefit in have a higher number of power supplies to feed.

If all the heavy lifting is done in the cluster could just get a Mac mini since main app running to accomplish that is an Xterm or VNC on the real machine.


and the newer parts will make it more cost effective (fewer systems necessary to build the cluster for a given performance level with those currently available).

And when the number of systems is one then don't need anything more than a workstation if workstations and servers use approximately the exact same computation engine.

The other problem is software costs. If the software is licensed per system and it is a significant percentage of the Workstation/Server it costs more to put it into a cluster. For example (assuming workload is embarrassingly parallel) :

4 Mac Minis ==> 8 cores ( approx $2,400 hardware cost)

1 Mac Pro Octo ==> 8 cores ( approx $3,200 hardware costs).


However, if need to buy an $800 software license per system then the total costs are:

Mini Cluster system ==> $5,600
Mac Pro Octo system ==> $4,000


If software is licensed per core then Mini cluster could be cheaper.

This is almost the mirror image of folks are avoiding non linear DIMMs; only it is software system (versus core) licensing.
 
So, why were all Mac OSX software design awards eliminated from the show? Yeah that sends a great message.

A message that was already communicated. This WWDC is about iOS.
They were not going to announce anything about 10.7. They have already spent the last two WWDC with major emphasis on 10.6.

It is a little lame because really should not have taken much time to run both. Arstechnica ran one with relatively little notice. Perhaps this is a opportunity for MacWorld to make themselves more relevant. There is a problem when have too large a broad spectrum of content to cover in a limited conference space.


There is talk about Windows 8 virtualizing all of the current registry/dll stuff and having a new base to start from.

Just like how the file system was going to get a revolutoinary make over for Vista ... They don't need to virtualize crap. Need to put more App specific stuff in its own directory. If that is using more symlinks ... whoop de doo.



They are obviously operating differently than they were in the past,

Vista was more of the abnormality. They in part rushed something out the door because had contractual obligations to deliver an update.... so they delivered "anything". Vista also was a "thrown in the kitchen sink" kind of update. Again usually had not done that before (at least with the mainstream OS that most folks install. )


I don't think there is anything gullible at thinking they are likely telling the truth.

Perhaps they have spin doctored symlinks and seperate directories into "revolutionary". Revolutionary would be a solution that didn't exist on some other system previously. Extremely dubious it will be anything like that. It will be something with with more "sugar" but stantially the same stuff so that don't break everything.
 
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