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Quad Processor Intel Mac?
- Thread starter MacBytes
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Haven't read the rest of this thread, but this is most certainly a cracked, illegal version of OS X running on a quad intel machine. And yes, I'd say it's a real shot, but still nothing to do with Apple - just pirates.
digitalbiker said:Sorry it is a very real and valid arguement.
I guess you don't pay attention to press releases.
Adobe has already come out and said not to expect CS for Intel Mac until at least late 2006 if not sometime in 2007. The CEO for Adobe said that Jobs was down-playing the difficulty of conversion and that it was a very daunting task that would require a lot of man-hours of work.
In addition, Rosetta emulates as a 800 mhz G3. (No Altivec code). Almost every pro app uses Alti-vec code somewhere in it's implementation. Therefore altivec dependant code designed for a G4 & G5 will either run slow or not at all.
Even FCP which should be the first to go Intel native has not yet been converted by Apple.
Adobe already has the code for x86, they just need to wrap a GUI around it.....right?
Or am I missing something.
Someone fill me in.
MacTruck said:
What says these aren't Xeon chips? The relatively low clock speeds? No, that fits with Xeons. The fact that there are four in a box with hyperthreading enabled? No, that also fits with a Quad-Xeon box.
Why do you say that because Intel only makes quad-Xeon chipsets and not quad-P4 chipsets that this is obviously some special Apple prototype? Seems like building a zebra from a set of horseshoe tracks in Central Park to me.
"Genuine Intel"
There is no reason whatsoever this could not be a real prototype. There is no reason such a machine couldn't be released late next year. On the other hand, it seems very odd the system info says "Genuine Intel". Transition machines don't say that.
My predictions: First, there is no connection to this week's announcement. This week's announcement is a video iPod. Second, we will see multicore machines throughout the Mac line. Next year will be dubbed the year of multicore. It starts in earnest next May. We will see single processor machines with dual cores throughout the pro laptop line. We will see dual processor machines with four cores throughout the pro desktop and server lines. And in 2007 we will see MAC OSX handle CPU blades to let it run as many dual core processors as you can fit in a box.
There is no reason whatsoever this could not be a real prototype. There is no reason such a machine couldn't be released late next year. On the other hand, it seems very odd the system info says "Genuine Intel". Transition machines don't say that.
My predictions: First, there is no connection to this week's announcement. This week's announcement is a video iPod. Second, we will see multicore machines throughout the Mac line. Next year will be dubbed the year of multicore. It starts in earnest next May. We will see single processor machines with dual cores throughout the pro laptop line. We will see dual processor machines with four cores throughout the pro desktop and server lines. And in 2007 we will see MAC OSX handle CPU blades to let it run as many dual core processors as you can fit in a box.
grabberslasher said:
But who has a quad CPU system just laying around, outside of legit developers.
I know plenty of geeks, but none who would buy a quad CPU server from intel just for testing their illegal version of OS X.
But anything is possible I guess.
Let's assume for a moment it's real. I fail to see the "whoa! Quad CPU machine!"-excitement. I mean, it could very well be dual dual-core machine. It would register as four CPU's, and with hyperthreading, it would seem like 8 CPU's. Although Intel is discontinuing hyperthreading, IIRC.
'Although Intel is discontinuing hyperthreading, IIRC.'
Sort of, not really.
Their press release is vague on the subject.
Don't really know what to make of company spiel though.
Sort of, not really.
Their press release is vague on the subject.
Don't really know what to make of company spiel though.
Frobozz said:
Nevertheless, this is the future of computing. The "low-hanging fruit" has been picked, and until we get nanodevices building carbon-tube processors decades from now with on-chip >1GB of RAM, the rate of progress is going to continue to slow in single-CPU performance. Light only travels so fast, and in a 3GHz machine that distance is about 4 inches per clock cycle, and electrons even slower than that, so the physical barriers of the universe are actually within sight now.
Pervasive multithreading, a major effort of systems like the BeOS, are going to become buzzwords again really soon, and every app is going to have to do as much as it can with as many processors as possible.
Who says this isn't running Xeon processors? Xeon chips are software compatible with Pentium chips.MacTruck said:
The article and screen shots do not say "Pentium". They say "GenuineIntel", which is the CPUID string generated by all Intel-manufactured x86 chips, including Celeron, Pentium and Xeon.
IMO, this is neither fake nor from Apple. I think someone took a hacked copy of OS X, and ran it on a generic 4-CPU PC. Possibly a Dell or Compaq server of some kind.
The fact that this works doesn't surprise me either. Once you have a proper multiprocessing kernel (which would be needed to support the dual-PPC configurations), allowing it to detect and use more than two should not be a big deal. Note that the multiprocessing Linux kernel supports as many CPUs as you can cram onto a motherboard.
I think this is a real possibility (though in now way connected to tomorrows event), but the whole PS3 thing you comment on just bugged me.stefan15 said:
Not you personally, really, but everyone who keeps hyping those machines...
The Xbox 360 and PS3 will NOT, I repeat, NOT be anything special. Does anyone honestly think that the entire science and economy behind computing changed overnight? That suddenly gaming consoles will outperform high end computers and at a fraction of the price?
Obviously some folks do, but I'll stand by trusty old logic.
As is usual with consoles, when they are released, they will be about on par with high end PCs in gaming(and ONLY gaming), and quickly be surpassed in the coming months and years.
That is my entirely off topic rant for the day.
igetbanned said:
Yeah, you're missing something. "wrap a GUI around it" is a hell of a lot of work. Not to mention the back-end libraries they might be using to do specific tasks that are Windows-specific will not exist on OSX/x86.
It's often a heck of a lot easier to fix endian-ness issues and change Altivec to SSE than to deal with switching out a bunch of libraries and the GUI front end.
Still, the x86 code does often exist (except where, as I said, it's tied to a library), so it makes sense to use it instead of re-inventing. But it's hardly an "easy" process even so.
Compound any development issues with the fact that you also have to get an essentially rewritten program through QA and fit it into a release cycle which is appealing as a forward-moving release not just to the folks who are going to be buying the first MacIntel off the line but also to your loyal user base who are sticking with their G5s for another year, and ... well, that takes time.
Maybe we're only talking about a week of development time for some apps, maybe months for others. My project took about a day of development time to flip out, recompile, and dev-qual. But it's still not getting released for several more months. Getting an app out the door is not just a simple matter of hacking together the code and booting it out. At least, not if you want your company around for the next paycheck it isn't!
mwuhahahahahaha! We shall lay the smack down upon our enemies! We shall bathe in the misery they all share, lusting after our super-death machines of infinite whoop-assness!
Real or not, it's a sure bet that such a thing is coming--just not soon.
Intel is going dual-core, and Apple is going Intel. Apple has long been dual-CPU, and dual-CPU plus dual-cores means 4 processors, just like the image shows. (Or 8 with HT.)
I expect we'll see such a thing shortly with G5s, and then next year with Intel chips.
Intel is going dual-core, and Apple is going Intel. Apple has long been dual-CPU, and dual-CPU plus dual-cores means 4 processors, just like the image shows. (Or 8 with HT.)
I expect we'll see such a thing shortly with G5s, and then next year with Intel chips.
jettredmont said:
Sorry I asked.
I was just guessing that Adobe properly separated their logic from their gui.
My bad.
I think it's a hoax.
Still, a Mac with this CPU (twin dual-core) configuration will probably exist in the not-too distant future.
Still, a Mac with this CPU (twin dual-core) configuration will probably exist in the not-too distant future.
What does this have to do with Apple's release schedule? Adobe also took a long time porting their code to OS X when it first came out.digitalbiker said:
It emulates a G3. The effective clock speed will depend on what speed Mac you're running. Or do you think Apple has speed-limiting code to make sure nother will ever run faster than an 800MHz G3?digitalbiker said:
Go read the developer docs on porting to x86.digitalbiker said:
Most apps use AltiVec only indirectly - going through various Cocoa APIs and system obejcts. These apps won't need any changes, since Apple will have already ported that code to use SSE code.
We're not just talking about GUI widgets here. Apple provides the Accelerate Framework specifically in order to allow code to use vector processing in a cross-platform way. This framework has been in Mac OS since 10.3, so developers have had plenty of time to start using it.
And how would you know this? The fact that it hasn't yet been released means nothing. They won't release any of their apps for Intel before the hardware is released.digitalbiker said:Even FCP which should be the first to go Intel native has not yet been converted by Apple.
Ahhh... some meaty Mac news. Some days when the all that can be rumored is a new iPod color, it's a little sad.
There was a post above on quad horsepower. When I sold my Dell PII 266 MHz tower with 8 Megs of VRAM and 64 MB of Ram in 2007 (brand new at the time, but needed a notebook and couldn't afford both) the person who bought it from me said something like, this is more horsepower than anyone needs for anything. Eight years on, I don't think that thing could even run XP.
There was a post above on quad horsepower. When I sold my Dell PII 266 MHz tower with 8 Megs of VRAM and 64 MB of Ram in 2007 (brand new at the time, but needed a notebook and couldn't afford both) the person who bought it from me said something like, this is more horsepower than anyone needs for anything. Eight years on, I don't think that thing could even run XP.
igetbanned said:
Well, in my office we have a few quad-Xeon machines in QA which get wiped fairly regularly. I wouldn't put it out of the question for someone to sit down in the middle of a long boring night when the box wasn't being used, install OS X just to see if it would run, and get a screenshot of it. I mean, total time commitment here is maybe two hours, right? Why the heck not? At 4:19AM...
Hmmmm ... may have to ask around to see who was here early last Thursday ...
Seriously, I don't think our situation is unique. Any company worth its salt selling a product to run on high-end servers should have such a box in QA if not also in Engineering or certainly in Client Installation. It's not nearly as improbable as you seem to think!
Quad boards are not hard to come by. While it may cost a ton of money to buy a 4-way server from a major manufacturer, they cost a lot less if you choose to build one yourself.igetbanned said:
Who says the server was build just for testing out this OS X build? Maybe it's a corporate server that the IT department is in the process of erasing and re-imaging, and someone working there decided to borrow it for an afternoon to see if the OS X code would run on it or not.
That's the result of the switch to crappy Intel processors - it takes four of them to do the work of two G5's
yes indeed
Indeed, you are right, with the HT activated a 4 physical CPU-based MacIntel will be recognize as a 8 logical-based computer.
and as mentioned a dual dualcore with HT will also appear in the CPU monitor as a 8 logical CPU based computer
I think it was discovered by macbidouille/hardmac.com, I mean the same websitenagromme said:
Indeed, you are right, with the HT activated a 4 physical CPU-based MacIntel will be recognize as a 8 logical-based computer.
and as mentioned a dual dualcore with HT will also appear in the CPU monitor as a 8 logical CPU based computer