Moron Question about Universal

[aminadab]

So I ordered a 17" MBP. I've read on here that one can strip the x86 architecture from the PPC in Universal Applications. Whould doing so boost performace? I'm getting Logic Pro 7.2; does the PPC code get in the way, so to speak? Thanks for schooling me.

 

[yellow]

AFAIK, the app being universal should not effect it's performance at all.


EDIT: Forgot the all important "not".

 

[killmoms]

Wherever you heard that, it's nonsense. There are actually two completely separate binary sets in the app package, if you have x86 it loads those, if you have PPC it loads those... the end. There's no crossover, so to speak.

 

[epochblue]

Performance? No. Size? Maybe.

Now, I'm by no means certain, but I imagine that Universal Binaries simply have some kind of branching logic that says "if this machine is PPC, run the PPC version, if it's x86, run the x86 version."

So, the performance would likely be *exactly* the same as it was before. HOWEVER, due to the fact that you'd be removing the architecture branch code (if it exists) and ALL the PPC byte code, I feel pretty confident in saying that you'd likely see a difference (perhaps VERY slight) in file size.

...so, unless HDD space is at a serious premium (and if it is, I suggest external storage options), I wouldn't worry about it.

 

[mduser63]

Now, I'm by no means certain, but I imagine that Universal Binaries simply have some kind of branching logic that says "if this machine is PPC, run the PPC version, if it's x86, run the x86 version."

So, the performance would likely be *exactly* the same as it was before. HOWEVER, due to the fact that you'd be removing the architecture branch code (if it exists) and ALL the PPC byte code, I feel pretty confident in saying that you'd likely see a difference (perhaps VERY slight) in file size.

...so, unless HDD space is at a serious premium (and if it is, I suggest external storage options), I wouldn't worry about it.

AFAIK, OS X itself decides which code to load in a Universal app, so there is no (app-specific anyway) "branch code." There is another thread right now about an app called TrimTheFat that will remove either PPC or Intel code from Universal applications. I have to say that IMO, it's not a big deal. Most big applications are big because they have lots of resources (pictures, sounds, etc) that are not architecture dependent. The actual executable code is fairly small. So stripping half of it out, will not cut the app size in half, it will actually not have a very big effect in most cases. However, stripping unneeded localizations out of an app can have a huge effect on size. IIRC, iWeb went down in size by a factor of six when I took all the languages other than English out of it.