quad-powermacs

sure they are......when is the question , and NO ONE will be able to tell you until they hit the streets some years from now.
Paul

 

NO

NO they are not coming. Several members have posted in the past regarding this. Applications are written for two at most processors and 4 processors wouldn't get used properly...is how I understand it.

 

Re: NO

I find it hard to believe that a modern operating system like OS X does not support more than 2 processors. It is different to say that current applications will have to be re-written, but I would hate to think OS X will not support more than 2 processors. I am not an expert, so I hope someone else will explain why OS X will not support more than 2 processors, not that current applications can.
Paul

 

well.. i dont think it is particularly hard to write programs that would take advantage of a quad processor system, especially if the system supports it...

well, os x could support 4 processors -- its just a matter of doing the work, but what is the point of creating a system that supports 4 procsessors if apple hasnt made 4 processor systems yet....

also, if the system supported 4 processors you would still have an advantage with programs that dont have mp (multi-processort) acceleration -- it would allow you yto run more programs at one more quickly because there is a total of more cpu power available.

for instance, the way that a program that doesnt support multi processors today works like this:

so apps take up a certain amount of cpu time based on the how complicated the task is. lets say that you are running serveral intense program that require more resources than what is available on one processor -- then the porgrams have to cycle the processor -- they take turns at using the processor for some amount of time, which makes the syustem run quite slowly. However with a second processor, you can cut down on this "cycling" process by just doing that extra work on the second processor, saving precous cpu time.

however, apps that take advantage of both cpus can do the same amount of work in half the time because it can split apart one job so that both prcessors can process it -- as opposed to puttiung the entire job on one cpu and haveing to wait for the current calculation to finish until the next one can start, while two calculations can be going on at the same time on both processors, instead.

 

sure the operating system could use four processors, but if an operating system needs four processors to run at a decent speed then there is something wrong with it and it shouldn't be used at all. the only place that quad processors would even be useful is for professional editing systems, and apple doesn't sell enough of those to actually be worth the time and money to research/produce the machines. so why don't people just give up their dreaming of having more and more processors. bragging rights is not a good enough answer for that either

 

Wait a minute. I thought OS X could support 32 processors. I remember reading something like that a long while back. I also remember reading a while back that Apple uses a few Quad-Processor Macs. If Apple ever introduced a Quad model it probably would be targeted at people who absolutely NEED them. Along with that, I would also expect a faster bus, more RAM, and a rather large price tag.

 

Application programmes written for Mac OS X should care less how many processors the physical machine has and simply break apart the tasks into threads which the operating system can send to whatever processor is convenient and available.

Perhaps the operating system is ready for more than two processors, but someone needs to read the new Darwin code which is not yet available.

I know from dealing with IBM's OS/400 which ran on the PowerPC AS processors, that it had to be re-worked a bit as they supported more physical processors. They're up to 24 now, I believe, but the operating system will also operate on single processors as well.

 

im not sure how much it would take to configure it for more, nor do i know how many OS X Server is prepared for. Quad and higher machines only have significant use in server apps anyways.