Some interesting Points...
Some other interesting points not mentioned yet (from the Apple site)...
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UNIX certification.
Leopard is now an Open Brand UNIX 03 Registered Product, conforming to the SUSv3 and POSIX 1003.1 specifications for the C API, Shell Utilities, and Threads. Since Leopard can compile and run all your existing UNIX 03-compliant code, you can deploy it in environments that demand full conformance — complete with hooks to maintain compatibility with existing software."
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Multiple cores, multiple efficiencies.
The new Leopard scheduler is very efficient at allocating tasks across multiple cores and processors. So Leopard spends less time managing tasks and more time performing computations. A new multithreaded network stack speeds up networking by handling network inputs and outputs in parallel."
...more...
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Multicore apps in Leopard.
Apple engineers have updated several applications in Leopard — including Mail, Address Book, and Font Utility — to be fully multicore ready. Each of these apps breaks up processor-intensive actions into a series of more manageable steps that execute one by one on single-CPU computers and in parallel on newer, multicore systems. Cocoa uses that same technology to speed up Spotlight searches and Dictionary lookups."
...more....
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Smooth operator.
How did Apple engineers pull this off? By using NSOperation, a breakthrough new API that optimizes applications for the world of multicore processing. Independent chunks of computation (operations) are added to an NSOperationQueue, which dynamically determines how many operations to run in parallel based on the current architectures. So there’s no need to hand-code the complexities of threading and locking. You simply describe the operations in a program along with their dependencies. Cocoa takes care of the rest."
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Streaming I/O.
The new IOStream class in IOKit provides a high-level API for managing DMAs and other high-bandwidth data transfers, without the need to optimize caching strategies for different hardware architectures. This also forms the basis of the new IOVideo family,
designed to support professional-level video cards. These new APIs make it easier for developers to
take full advantage of both cutting-edge and previous-generation hardware"
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Self-Tuning TCP.
Leopard gets the best possible bandwidth from either broadband or narrowband networks by optimizing buffer sizes according to the local resources and connection type. Starting with a larger window helps TCP with ongoing dynamic optimization. This is especially valuable when connecting to high-bandwidth/high-latency networks like Verizon’s FiOS, which previously required specialized tools such as Broadband Tuner."
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Autofs.
The brand-new multithreaded autofs filesystem layer keeps track of which paths are actually located on remote AFP, SMB, or NFS fileservers — even across symlinks — and automatically mounts the appropriate server. The Finder and other applications needn’t wait for one mount to complete before requesting another. Now you can specify automount paths for your entire organization using the same standard automounter maps (e.g., NIS) supported by Linux or Solaris."
