Quad Processor Intel Mac?

[Lord Blackadder]

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.

This is probably the likely scenario if the pics are indeed real. Anyway it isn't very exciting.

I think it's pretty much asssumed that Apple will continue to sell dual CPU machines after the Intel switch, and the chances are very good that they will use dual-core CPUs. I don't know enough about Intel's roadmap to guess whether we'll see Hyperthreading on the Yonah and Merom.

Still, I do have a soft spot for quad CPU computers...The Daystar Genesis quad 604e was the baddest Mac ever.

 

[Trekkie]

Uh, only read the first page but 2 dual core processors can = four processors, don't discount it too much. Every two socket chip Intel makes by that time could have four cores, if not more.

 

[strydr]

What in the world did you have 3 quad Xeons servers for?

Just curious.

You're not the average 'geek' I'm talking about.

(And you do know you wasted your money on them.....don't cha )

Actually, they were FREE-- A bonus to being the guy swaping them out for new 4-ways....

I used them for heaters. Kept my toes toasty on cold nights. Actually, they were for my own personal arsenal.. Sold them cause they were overkill.. and outdated.

 

[iostream.h]

Fake, and here is why:

(I didn't read through all the replies, so please excuse me if these are repeats)

1) Real mactels don't say "Genuine Intel"
2) 10.4.1

 

[iGary]

Let's not forget how reliable MacBioduioduosiudosiudouile is.

Remember the BIG BLACK CURTAINS at MEParis?

 

[Anonymous Freak]

Dual, dual-core Hyperthreading Xeons.

Intel just announced 'em.

Two processor sockets, two cores per socket, with hyperthreading.

Four physical processors, pretending to be eight.

They are their Xeon processors. They've had Xeons for a long time, but they are finally going dual-core. (In fact, Hyperthreading was first introduced on the Xeon line.)

It would not surprise me at all to see these go into the Power Macs and the Xserves. As the Xeon is Intel's high-end 'workstation/server' processor, this would fit perfectly into the Power Mac and Xserve line (or the Xeon's sucessor, the Woodcrest.) The iMac/eMac and the PowerBook would likely get the Pentiumg 4/Pentium-D sucessor (Conroe and the iBook and mini would probably get the Centrino/Pentium-M sucessor (Merom.)

Oh, and Intel has announced 4-core-in-a-single-socket Xeons codenamed 'Whitefield' and 'Dunnington'. Linky. Not sure if those two are based on the older 'NetBurst' Pentium 4 architecture, or if they're going to be Conroe/Woodcrest derivatives.

 

[iGuy]

dreamer..., you know you are a dreamer... (Supertramp)

According to Steve when he announced the switch to Intel, they demonstrated how quickly current apps could be ported over to Intel (was it Mathematica?). They also said that older non-Carbon apps would need to be re-written. They provided the application for porting apps to developers at WWDC. That was MONTHS ago. Many major apps, likely including Adobe Suite, etc. have probably been ported and are being worked on already. Rosetta will allow the slower transition apps to continue to run, so I can't agree that this is a valid argument. Sorry.

It wasn't that long ago that the President of Adobe said publicly that the transition to Intel is not as simple as SJ has made out. It will take some time before the Adobe Creative Suite is ported.

Of course he could be lying. Steve may well introduce new quad processor Intel PowerBooks at an incredible thin half inch, and invite the Adobe President on stage to announce CS3 for Intel wich includes Adobe Dreamweaver and Adobe Flash Professional, shipping imediately and at a bargan price of only $5.00 (canadian).

Then again, he might not be lying.

~dmg

 

[aegisdesign]

it could be a dual core dual processor system if apple makes one. Intel already makes a dual core processor with hyperthreading so thats 4 logical cpus, add another one and you have 8 logical processors.

That would be the Pentium D. You can't in theory run two Pentium Ds in the same box though as Intel explicitly prevents you from doing that and affecting their Xeon sales.

I'd be surprised though if there's not some hack to let you run two though. Back in 1999 I was running BeOS on an overclocked dual Celeron equipped motherboard even though Intel said you couldn't. That machine rocked at the time.

 

[themacman]

WOWOW
even though it could be fake thing how fast that thing would be. A dual 2.7 pm g5 is fast thing about this. Four CPU's eight cores. wow

 

[risc]

I work with Xeon servers every day and a quad Xeon box is nothing special, but if you actually look at the screenshots it shows 4x 2.8 GHz DUAL CORE processors. Intel actually have a dual core 2.8 GHz Xeon the "Paxville". I am not sure if it is actually shipping yet, but if it is this is great news for Apple. Or maybe it is just 4 processors with hyperthreading enabled?

Personally I don't know if the screenshots are fake because if you look at them seperately both CPU monitors match up. Especially the 2nd one where it has 6 processes running at close to 100% usage per core which matches up perfectly with the 2 CPU monitors on the screen.

Interesting times.

I'll still wait for a Dual Woodcrest based Mactel though.

 

[igetbanned]

Actually, they were FREE-- A bonus to being the guy swaping them out for new 4-ways....

I used them for heaters. Kept my toes toasty on cold nights. Actually, they were for my own personal arsenal.. Sold them cause they were overkill.. and outdated.

Free makes perfect sense then.

I was praying to the tiki gods that you didn't actually pay for them out of pocket.

 

[igetbanned]

It's a G5 enclosure and it's mostly empty.

And like I said, 4 CPUs ain't gonna fit into a PM.

They might 'fit' dimensions wise (although it'd be super cramped, and if you've had the pleasure of installing one of those heat sinks pictured in the photo, you'd change your mind) but the amount of heat coming from them would require several noisy fans.

And trust me, the newest intel CPUs will refuse to run if they even think they're going to overheat.

 

[aegisdesign]

Server systems don't have major video cards. Most support 800x600 and 1024x768 only.

They also quite often don't have AGP sockets and usually really crap graphic cards so it'd probably suck at running Doom3. At least that's what I'm telling myself to not feel envious.

But that's all you need in a server that spends most of it's time running with no screen on anyway.

 

[risc]

They also quite often don't have AGP sockets and usually really crap graphic cards so it'd probably suck at running Doom3. At least that's what I'm telling myself to not feel envious.

But that's all you need in a server that spends most of it's time running with no screen on anyway.

I've actually used servers with PCIe x 16 riser boards in them.

 

[shamino]

This has got to be a fake. Why would anyone run the system at such a low resolution if it is a quad processor mac?

To get a screen-shot that fits on a web page?

I always reduce my resolution to 800x600 before taking full-screen snapshots. Otherwise, the image makes the web page too wide for most people to view comfortably.

Second, if it is an illegal copy of the OS X developer code, there may not be high resolution drivers available for the video card in that computer.

Third, if the person borrowed a server box, it may not have decent video. Most systems sold as servers have lousy graphics, because the computer is expected to be installed in a rack in a machine room, not the desktop.

 

[rockthecasbah]

Intel just announced 'em.

Two processor sockets, two cores per socket, with hyperthreading.

Four physical processors, pretending to be eight.

They are their Xeon processors. They've had Xeons for a long time, but they are finally going dual-core. (In fact, Hyperthreading was first introduced on the Xeon line.)

It would not surprise me at all to see these go into the Power Macs and the Xserves. As the Xeon is Intel's high-end 'workstation/server' processor, this would fit perfectly into the Power Mac and Xserve line (or the Xeon's sucessor, the Woodcrest.) The iMac/eMac and the PowerBook would likely get the Pentiumg 4/Pentium-D sucessor (Conroe and the iBook and mini would probably get the Centrino/Pentium-M sucessor (Merom.)

Oh, and Intel has announced 4-core-in-a-single-socket Xeons codenamed 'Whitefield' and 'Dunnington'. Linky. Not sure if those two are based on the older 'NetBurst' Pentium 4 architecture, or if they're going to be Conroe/Woodcrest derivatives.

very plausible reasoning, i almost forgot Apple still made them . Any word on how those have been selling by the way? I know the rest of Apple's computers have been slumping as of late.

 

[igetbanned]

Xeons in the PMs would be a total waste of money.

Starting at $1043/each (per thousand).

That's an 'Apple Tax' for that arse.

 

[shamino]

Supposedly the next gen 'Xeon' is scalable to 32 processors.

They'll have to be really small, or use really big motherboards!

With that many CPUs, the real problem is going to be the bus to interconnect them all.

It will also be interesting to see how/if they get beyond the point of diminishing returns. IBM did studies back in the 60's and found that adding processors beyond 8 doesn't gain you very much, due to all the locking and bus contention issues that inevitably result. (Some studies showed that even moving beyond 4 CPUs doesn't gain all that much.)

UNIX systems with lots of processors (like those from IBM and Sun) and massively parallel systems (which may have thousands of processors) typically have motherboards with only 2 or 4 CPUs, in conjunction with a high-speed (and often proprietary) network to link the boards together. But these systems are really more like a cluster than a single computer.

 

[lee1210]

Not neccesarily 4 processors...

My post basically theorized the same thing as others above: 2 dual cores w/ hyperthreading per core, equalling 8 logical processors in the OS., hence the edit.

 

[Trekkie]

That would be the Pentium D. You can't in theory run two Pentium Ds in the same box though as Intel explicitly prevents you from doing that and affecting their Xeon sales.

I'd be surprised though if there's not some hack to let you run two though. Back in 1999 I was running BeOS on an overclocked dual Celeron equipped motherboard even though Intel said you couldn't. That machine rocked at the time.

There is nothing stopping them from a Xeon-D or equivalent Workstation class machiens from IBM and others use Xeon chips (Z Pro line in IBM's case) instead of Pentium class chips

 

[igetbanned]

motherboards with only 2 or 4 CPUs, in conjunction with a high-speed (and often proprietary) network to link the boards together. But these systems are really more like a cluster than a single computer.

I'm sure this is what they're referring to.

Intel's next big thing is 'embedded virtualization'.

 

[shamino]

It wasn't that long ago that the President of Adobe said publicly that the transition to Intel is not as simple as SJ has made out. It will take some time before the Adobe Creative Suite is ported.

But this just means it will take Adobe a long time to port their apps.

They were one of the last (with Quark being the absolute last, IIRC) to port to OS X. I don't think it's any harder for them (unless their code is an absolute mess). I think they won't bother even starting the porting effort until the PPC Macs are discontinued and customers start complaining about the lack of an x86 version.

 

[Robertk2012]

hmmmm

What if the intel boxes are released much sooner than what they said. If they said that it was going to happen now then sales of power pc would have been zilch. But if they annouce now they will experience no drop in sales as the expect launch approaches because it will happen now unexpectedly. And they will also get a jump on vista.

 

[nagromme]

All this talk about a quad system is ludicrous. It if anything is a dual processor system with 2 dual core chips.

Dual dual core is BETTER than quad chips. It's still 4 CPUs, but dual core CPUs can share data faster than two separate chips.

(The reason it looks like 8 in the screenshot--if real--isn't quad-duals, its just four CPUs, looking like 8 due to Hyperthreading.)

 

[Mr Maui]

It wasn't that long ago that the President of Adobe said publicly that the transition to Intel is not as simple as SJ has made out. It will take some time before the Adobe Creative Suite is ported.

Sorry to say, that I can't read every announcement made by every software executive and have somehow missed the one you state was made by the president of Adobe. Guess I need to sleep less and focus more on every possible comment made by every executive out there. I'll get right on it.