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Apple Businesses

Rumors Of MP PowerMac G4 Flying! 216

Posted by timothy from the with-sufficient-thrust-naturally dept.
Maktoo writes: "Well, this has been a favorite rumour in the Mac world for quite some time, but with the approach of WWDC (next Monday) things are starting to heat up. MacOSRumors, AppleInsider, and Go2Mac are all predicting MP G4s soon ... with Go2Mac actually claiming that CompUSA has SKUs for the systems. The keynote on Monday should be interesting. I don't see why Apple would release MP machines before MacOS X ... but we might get a demo at least. I'm excited enough that I'll be getting a copy of MacOS X Beta when I walk in the door ... but an MP G4 would be nice too."
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Rumors Of MP PowerMac G4 Flying! More

Rumors Of MP PowerMac G4 Flying!

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  • So why not see if the product exists in the CompUSA database?

    http://www.compusastores.com/products/product_in fo.asp?prodzip=&product_code={SKU}

    where {SKU} is a six digit number. I'm guessing it will be in the 270000 to 280000 range. That's only 10K.

    Of course, they could have added it to the system but flagged it such that it wouldn't get displayed on their web page.

    Anyone care to check?
  • If I remember correctly there is no specific advantage if the apps are created equally. But in Be all apps must have at least two threads. So in Be, by default, all apps are prepared to run well on multiple processors. I guess you could say the OS dictates that the developers write for multiple processors.

  • You have a good point, and perhaps I was just being lazy not hitting the +1 bonus, but I still think it's wrong to mark it off topic - over rated perhaps, would have been better.

    Hey Rob, Thanks for that tarball!
  • ...is an RS/6000! Seriously now, since the world at large has never embraced Apple's hardware or software for enterprise data systems, what fantasy land do you have to live in to believe that adding a second CPU under a yet-to-be-released OS will make it an enterprise server?

    I think at best Apple will stay a niche player in the video and prepress arena. Apple knows it can't compete with Dell, HP, Compaq, etc for the enterprise marketplace, which means it will never be more than a funny-looking multimedia machine for the types of people that buy funny-looking multimedia machines (I work in advertising, I know who you are...)

    If Apple had any brains, they'd take their overvalued stock and buy SGI. Buying SGI would give them access to hard-core visualization hadrware and software, and may let them back-door into the real computing world, where something serious gets done. It would also give them a cool new product, the SGiMac!

  • How developed is SMP in the PPC world?

    There hasn't really been such a thing as SMP PPC Mac until now. Yeah, there were some early dual proc Macs, and IBM makes a slew of SMP PPC based systems, but you really can't make any comparison whatsoever to the hypothetical SMP G4 running the prototype OS/X. That said, you can rest assured it will prolly kill anything consumer market short of a quad Xeon.

  • Running benchmarks is useless unless you run benchmarks for a living. I don't. I use Quark, Photoshop and Illustrator. The speed the G4 runs those applications are all that matters. Other trivial things (Open source software, open hardware, proprietary hardware issues) don't help me get my work done any faster so I could care less. Thank you, have a nice day.
    --
  • The Rage 128 has awesome 2d graphics. Might not be great for games but for Office and Photoshop, you can't ask for anything better. BTW, I don't know of many OEM PC manufacturers that put 3dfx cards in their machines. nVidea OTOH... thats a different story.
    --
  • The tremendous number of Apple related posts are clearly indicative of that.

    Like one ever week or two?

    In my opinion, Apple is far worse than Microsoft when it comes to proprietary software.

    How much software has Microsoft released into open source again? Apple has released Darwin, QuickTime Streaming Server, OpenPlay/NetSprocket and HeaderDoc. The Open Source Initiative in general, and ESR, specifically, have stated that the ASPL qualifies as a "true" open source license. Apple has also contributed to the Apache project.

    Apple is after all the company that would like to control both hardware and software.

    Dude, why do you think Macs tend to just work? Apple makes vastly less money on software then they do on hardware. It's not like they're just trying to grab all the profit. There's a real added value in having one developer create the entire product, not just assemble things piecemeal and hope to end up with a frankenstein that is able to walk.

    But wait, Apple is joining the open source movement with Darwin. Unfortunately, all the other components are still proprietary, and they're probably going to stay that way.

    So you're suggesting Apple just up and release their core assets into the public and watch the shareholders lynch Jobs? Huh? I don't think that's a very fair expectation. Apple is the first commercial computer company to release any major asset into an open-source compliant license. That's something not Microsoft, Sun nor Compaq have done.

    Besides, the only reason that I can see why Apple is releasing the source code for Darwin is because their developers are not competent enough to continue development on the BSD Unix software they have ripped off.

    Their "incompetent developers" include Avie Tevanian who had a large part in developing the Mach kernel, which was later handed over to the FSF. It was Tevanian who championed Apple's open source projects.

    By the way, wasn't rhapsody the operating system that was going to show us all? Where is that NT killer these days?

    The Rhapsody project, initialized by Gil Amelio, Steve Jobs's predecessor, was recognized by the current management staff as a recipe for disaster -- naming because it would force developers to completely rewrite their apps. Rhapsody was tranformed into what is available today Mac OS X Server.

    Anyway, Apple and its devoted followers are scum as far as I'm concerned.

    That's mature. Certainly lends creditability to your argument.

    Besides, when was the last time Apple released anything other than their obnoxious QuickTime player and a new patch level for their dated operating system?

    Visit http://apple.com/pr/ [apple.com].

    All I'm waiting for is a proper website to open about computer technology in general without the clearly biased opinions.

    Unless they're Linux-biased, right?

    - Scott


    ------
    Scott Stevenson
  • Nice troll! If you were really for free software you wouldn't be championing M$ and you;d find a different thread to post in, one that would piss-off more people.

  • Not trollish, just stupid. The Mac has a much wider selection of OSes than the Alpha platform.

    I am still hoping that someone will port Darwin (and by extension MacOS X) to the RS/6000 [ibm.com] architecture. Those high-end IBM systems would complement Apple's hardware offerings quite nicely.

    --

  • Mozilla for Mac OS X is going to be the BSD version with a Carbon interface. They were calling it "Fizzila" at one point. Not sure when it or Netscape 6 for Mac OS X will be ready.

    IE is already Carbon and will be on Mac OS X from the start. There's also the Omni browser, which is Cocoa, and descended from NeXTSTEP ... it's out in beta right now. Looks simly amazing under Mac OS X. Everything anti-aliased and very slick.

    There may also be a basic Apple browser included in Mac OS X. They have a ton of HTML and XML going on in the OS, so who knows? Mac OS X will also include Apple's (Cocoa) email app (from NeXTSTEP), which people seem to either love or hate.
  • Apparently the MP Mac's were ready for market with the G3, but Apple delayed the release due to concerns of legal hassles with the RIAA. And its a shame because it would be great to see a large company like apple actively supporting MPG3..
    -
  • How developed is SMP in the PPC world?

    I'm not sure about LinuxPPC, but mkLinux [mklinux.org] does support SMP, apparently very well, on the old MP Power Macs, which included:

    • Apple Power Mac 9500/180MP [macintoshos.com]
    • Apple Power Mac 9600/200MP [macintoshos.com]
    • DayStar Genes is MP600 [macintoshos.com] (Quad 604/150's!)
    • ...and some MP upgrade cards.
  • Some of us write code that runs under Linux, but does not run under MacOS X. While not totally complete, I will run my Mac programs using MacOnLinux under LinuxPPC. But the main point is this: if my code doesn't run in some OS, then why run this OS?

    A universal set of widgets would make my life suck less.

  • I can't find the stats you're describing at distributed.net. I'd like to, though.
  • Aside from the token Darwin effort by Apple, why is it that the Slashdot crowd seems to be so enthusastic about Apple? They are the epitome of closed-everything.

    Consider:

    • They won't let anyone else build Mac-compatible machines anymore.
    • They won't let anyone else sell Macs online unlessthe store arranges for customers who already own a Mac to setup a password/account/etc
    • If they had their way, nobody but Apple owners would have been able to use a graphical interface. (Bogus lawsuits, copyrights, patents on GUIs)
    • Quicktime, all under Apple's control.
    • FireWire&reg - registering a trademarked name for an IEEE standard. Only they can use the name if they so choose!
    Apple is much worse than Microsoft. The difference between Steve Jobs and Bill Gates is that Gates was smarter, and made more money. If Apple had its way, it'd be even more of a monopoly than the boys in Redmond.
  • actually, i am. im using a dual 604e running in a powercomputing power-tower-pro. its got yellowdog champion server 1.1 and the uptime is going on 165 days.

    i have never had a problem with my this box since i configured it.

    das

  • The RC5-64 performance breakdown by platform can be found here [distributed.net].
  • The MP in Darwin is in the mk (Mach). Mach in Darwin is under Apple licensing. Can you say "dirty code"? Also, I really dont know how easy it is to convert MP code for the Mach microkernel to the beast we all know and love as Linux. (Though, it would be easier to go to linux than some monster like MacOS).
    --
    Though I use a Macintosh, I am not a mac-bigot. I just hate Windoze.
  • PowerPC instructions are all of a constant size, each has only one mode (the processor can predict exactly what will be needed to execute an add instruction), and there's no microcode involved in PowerPC instruction processing. This is what makes PowerPC RISC. "Reduced Instruction Set Complexity."
    If you took all the possible different types of instructions possible with the x86 set (add is really "load memory, load memory, store memory; load mem, load reg, store mem; load reg, load reg, store reg...), you would get a higher instruction count than PowerPC indeed.

    The AltiVec extensions are intended to speed specific operations that otherwise go slowly; RISC would be a bad philosophy to take in a vector processing unit. In terms of mode switching and cleanliness, AltiVec is simpler (more "reduced" than MMX or 3DNow!).

    So, however you take it, PowerPC is really RISC. No marketing involved. (Besides, this is from Motorola, not exactly marketing masters...)

    No, I'm not a mac bigot - I'm a PPC bigot. And yes, that's AltiVec assembler in my sig.

    Ramble on!
    mfspr r3, pc / lvxl v0, 0, r3 / li r0, 16 / stvxl v0, r3, r0
  • The Mac has a much wider selection of OSes than the Alpha platform

    Huh?

    On Alpha I count:

    Tru64 Unix / DEC Unix / whatever the hell its called this week
    OpenVMS
    Linux
    WinNT -- ok discontinued... count as half
    *BSD

    On Mac I count:

    Linux
    MacOS
    *BSD
  • Because if you just started in 1995, then that's not that many years.

    That said, your comments on preemptive multitasking and memory protection have some merit. Certainly the former is a major stumbling block to performance when multiple applications are running (which is pretty much all the time).

    Your doubt about the veracity of Photoshop performance is ill-founded, however. Independant testers such as Henry Norr have found those photoshop results to be direct reflections of real-world performance for normal professional users. I have no trouble believing this because I have seen similar results with my own eye. They really are that fast. That shows the power of the processor, though, on a task not greatly slowed by the poor OS performance. Nutscrape Navigator, on the other hand, is a case in point about problems with the Mac - it's slow(even on wicked-fast G4s), it crashes a lot(often bringing the system with it), and it hogs CPU time even when idling.

    In conclusion: PowerPC=very fast. MacOS subsystems=very crappy. I think that's more or less where you were going with this anyway. But those benchmarks are for real, and those Macs were not overclocked, nor were the PCs crippled.

    -N
  • Looks like the guy sat down with a stopwatch and ran photoshop a couple times. I'm impressed, not.

    - A.P.
    --


    "One World, one Web, one Program" - Microsoft promotional ad

  • Widgets my friend, lots of widgets like in XtVaCreateManagedWidget. Additionally, and unfortunately, big/little endian cause I/O problems. I now try to use XDR to get around this problem. I've rewritten much of my code so that it is cross-platform with SGI's, HP's, Sun's, x86 Linux, and PPC Linux. This transition was not really non-trivial.

    I hear what you are saying and I look forward to playing around with MacOS X. Hopefully, _POSIX_C_SOURCE works under MacOS X for all aspects of POSIX. But I still believe that I will have problems with widgets. Legacy code dating back 10 years can sometimes be difficult to maintain.

  • Re:Apple is putting MP's (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    He saw the apple marketing ad where they show all the little boxes representing "CPU stuff" smoothly going in parallel, labelled "G4," as opposed to the boxes jumbling up as they tried to fit through a small opening which was labelled "Pentium"

    As far as I call tell, either apple was claiming that G4s are superscalar and pentiums are not, or apple marketing staff smokes a lot of cheap crack.

    I think you're wasting your time correcting someone who bases their understanding of CPU architecture on Apple advertisements.
  • http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/ch ronicle/archive/2000/04/17/BU1016CH.DTL [sfgate.com] "Power Mac Bests the Gigahertz PCs"
    Of course this is Photoshop-specific; Microsoft Orifice will always run faster on Microsoft operating systems, because Microsoft wants it that way. I couldn't point you to a good thorough benchmark that's cross-platform, sorry.
  • I'm not saying this is unfair, or lying or a half truth or anything like that since Intel has MMX, but I feel it's a somewhat skewed view of things.

    Nope, I never thought it wasn't fair. Please read the quote from my original post above.

    I see it this way: When new generation Pentium, Sparc or Alpha processors come out, you don't have to recompile things to make them take advantage of the speed increase. Sure, recompiling them might make them faster, but with the Velocity Engine, you actually have to modify the program where as with the processors mentioned above, they can take advantage of the speed increase without any changes.

    I do enjoy the fact that Photoshop can take advantage of this special feature with just a plugin, however I don't beleive the vast majority of applications can do this (a simple plugin).
  • What? Is this a joke? The "William Tell". I truly hope this a joke, for the sake of nerds/geeks/etc. everywhere.
  • I think the idea of MP Macs is great. While I am not an avid mac users, I try to dabble in them as much as possible. With MacOSX hopefully on it way soon I can see where MP Macs could come into use very quickly.

    Though I haven't gotten much info on OS-X I've heard is based partialy on Unix. So I wonder if the kernel will need to be rebuilt for an MP style system and has Apple given the ability to alter that in OS-X? Or will it be prebuilt with an added on/off software switch? Either way, I can see some very stable Mac servers on there way. I feel that this is an area that Apple has been very slow in approching. How often do you hear about the new high performance Mac webserver?

    All I can say is that I think it's a great idea, since if nothing else, you can always slap a copy of yellow dog or ppc-Linux on it.

  • Indeed. If my memory serves me, according to www.mackido.com, it was quicker to run Word 97 under emulation than native Word 6. That is beyond crappy. That is sabotage.
  • What I have found is that even the most obscure platforms usually have some form of application support if you are willing to support someone to develop it for you.

    Macs have a number of software titles and also have the ability to emulate intel machines with the software. Also you can run linux on them which is a plus.

  • So, you want a $1000 G4 machine running at 500+ Mhz?

    The trouble is you are not Apple's perfect customer. The graphic design industry is full of people more concerned with maximium power than cost, and it's been a surprisingly long time since there has been anything capable of running indstry standard apps in the over $4000 range, so there is a pent up demand for this sort of machine, and it seems Apple will have this sector pretty much to themselves for the forseeable future, therefore they won't have to price these boxes too keenly.

    So, who will pay over $4000 for the top Macs? Simple - the same people who bought $4000+ Macs last time Apple made them... I vaguely recall my old MacIIfx set-up was in that bracket.

    - Andy R.

  • Re:Apple is putting MP's (Score:4)

    by JohnZed ( 20191 ) on Monday May 08, 2000 @12:18PM (#1083947)
    Actually, though, ALL modern processors can execute multiple operations per cycle. Pentiums can hit 3-6 ops/cycle and IA-64 will support 6-12. Most often, though, you only get a number closer to 2 ops/cycle (or slightly less) due to the state of today's compilers and the the difficulty of the scheduling problem.
    The real difficulty in benchmarking two different architectures, IMHO, is that the processor is just one of dozens of crucial variables. Ok, so Photoshop or Netscape run slower on a Mac with a processor a than on a PC with processor b. So what? Maybe Adobe and Netscape don't work as hard on the Mac versions of their products to optimize them (true, esp for Netscape). Maybe the MacOS is just slow and outdated (true, esp for OS 8). Maybe the PC compilers are better (certainly possible, though hard to tell). See what I mean?
    That said, I think the best way to compare is to look at price/performance and other benchmarks on EXACTLY the applications you use. So, the Photoshop test is meaningless to me, because I don't particularly do graphics. But it's not meaningless to a graphic artist, who could care less what specific components cause the machine to run PS well.
    --JRZ
  • The G4 spec allows a single G4 chip to have MULTIPLE CORES; which means, that a single processing chip can have multiple processors ON THE SAME CHIP. Why should Apple make a multiple processor machine when they can simply get a multiple core processor from Motorola and stick it on a board?
  • Even if a dual Mac G4 comes out, affordability is a major issue. Anyone remember that comparo that had a 500MHz Mac at twice the price of an 600MHz Athlon? Add a dual mobo and another CPU and you've got a machine more than twice the price that is very unlikely to give even close to twice the performance. Dual G4's will serve to strengthen Apple's tiny strongholds in publishing and education. I for one would rather have two fast Athlon machines than one dual Mac... The good side is that with a single company making the CPU, chipset, and mobo, reliability should be great.

  • Yeah, but when the Linux fad, like bell-bottoms before it, dies down, you can still format your hard drives and throw Win2K on there, assuming that you're not one of the few non-x86 Linux users. If you got a Mac, though, you're kinda screwed. ;)

    Cheers,
    ZicoKnows@hotmail.com

  • ---
    FYI, marketshare is not the defining factor in a monopoly. A monopoly is made when a company has a command over the market, no substitutes exist, and entry by other firms is barred.
    ---
    No substitutes exist ... Isn't that when marketshare is very very high, causing that company to have an unnaturally strong command over the market?

    Apple has no more than 10% of the market. Many people are daily faced with the prospect of buying either a Mac or a PC, both of which perform more or less the same functionality. When the competition receives 90% of the business, you can't be a monopoly.

    Really, all you've done is defined monopoly. It's still the same thing.

    - Jeff A. Campbell
    - VelociNews (http://www.velocinews.com [velocinews.com])
  • Actually, OS X is a UNIX operating system. It's kernel is based on NetBSD's kernel. It even has a lot of UNIX-like features.

  • As much as you may hate MS, they have at least delivered three new OSs in that timeframe (95, NT, and 2000), while Apple has merely layered OS versions onto MacOS without a significant upgrade.

    Man, 5 whole years without a "significant" upgrade. Sorta reminiscent of the '80-'95 period - 15 years of DOS without a significant upgrade while Apple showed us some truly revolutionary stuff.

    In the last 5 years we got Win95, WinNT4 (a slightly improved "industrial strength" version), Win98 (a new layered version of 95), and Win2k (merging 95 and NT back together). Really, one big step with refinements.

    It also depends on what you consider significant, I suppose. Some of the user features rolled out in OS 8 and 9 were pretty nifty. And don't forget that virtually the entire OS was rewritten for a different hardware during this period, with essentially no impact to end users! That's pretty remarkable in itself.

    Apple made the step to a friendly UI 10 years earlier than MS did. (Apple did a better job, IMO.) Apple is making the step to a "modern" core 5 years later than MS did. (And Apple is doing a better job here, too, IMO.)

    Yeah, I'm an Apple enthusiast, and don't have a lot of love for MS. (I'll give them credit when its due, but I don't think Gates is the godsend so many have claimed him to be.) It just seems that people bashing Apple for being behind MS the last 5 years seem to forget the 11 years before that.

  • What Apple was illustrating with that ad, is that the G4's altivec unit can process data in 128 bit chunks (or 2 64 bit chunks at a time, or 4 32 bit chunks...). It can do vector permute ops as well, integer or FP. It's basically a far, far better SIMD than Intel's MMX stuff.
  • Well, there's a rumor that Matrox is going to release a Mac version of the G400, and that there's a chance that Apple will take a look at dropping ATI. It's not exactly state-of-the-art, but it's a damn fine card and unquestioably a step up.

    -jcl

  • Bravo. I was waiting for a point by point rebuttal to that mind numbing post. Non-factual garbage...
    --
  • Which unfortuantely means, guys, that....:

    G4 500Mhz != K7 750Mhz.

    The K7'll be faster. I'm terribly sorry. I think Motorola chips are cute. I even used to have a Motorola cellular telephone. But factz are factz. Don't take it too hard. No empire lasts forever. It won't even matter in a few decades. All this will seem like old technology, and all arguments over technology like this will seem quite humourous. The archeologists of 3000 will say:

    "I say ol chap! look at this crap!" (pointing to a PIII and G4 lying next to eachother). Eventually, they'll pack up, leave the excavation site, and go home to their wives.

    "You'll never believe what we saw today. Ancient technology." He'll go on to describe the chips to his wife, she'll be amazed at the simplicity of the chips.

    The next day, he'll go to the site, and scale the chips for himself, so that one day, when he has a child of his own, he can say to that child: "This is an ancient peice of technology, guard it well, for it is a classic." His parter will take the other chip. Both would become heirlooms to their respective family lines.

    All that was long ago, though. Currently, no technology actively survives. Only 2 chips - a PIII and a G4. They have been passed down from generation to generation. The world is now a desert wasteland. But the man you see before you wears a talisman containing a single chip - the G4. To him, it's no longer a simple, ancient peice of technology. But a marvel of another age.

  • I know a few people who had PowerComputing mac clones, and they were fine. The nice thing was, you could get a machine that fit in a niche Apple wasn't pursuing - say, more than three PCI slots. :)
  • for marketing reasons. They need to do someting since they're about 500Mhz behind everyone else.

    Of course we true make users know Mhz doesnt mean anything.

    tcd004

  • I believe it refers to the nature of the rumors because they are so fleeting.
  • Funny that the community service message got a -1 and the moderator flame got a 2. Methinks the moderators are toying with us.

    Re: The G4MP's they would kick some serious ass but I'm not going to hold my breath. I can remember when the Mac IIfx was just a roumor and yet that came through. Damn I think I have my poster I got at a Mac World in SF of the Mac IIfx's motherboard back when it was unveiled. Had a tagline something to the effect of Necessity is the mother of invention. If Apple really intends to get into the Server market then having a MP system is a necessity.

    PS I wish SETI would make their client use the Velocity engine, I'd like to see if my G4 can do fast fourier transforms faster than my 4 way Sun Enterprise 4000. ;-)
  • Of course, it goes without saying that this idiot isn't posting a link to my site - it's a link to the http://www.natalieportman.com/ site... Another bad link. Expect this idiot to keep doing this.

    Hey Rob, Thanks for that tarball!

  • MP? (Score:1)

    by cvd6262 ( 180823 )
    What is MP?
  • Hardly true. I've found my iBook to be one of the best development platforms for both MacOS and Linux. Replace the stock 3.2G drive with a 12G and install an Airport Card, and you have a wicked development machine that lets you move freely about the office. I've gotten over five hours' life on the battery, which I have to get from any laptop of any make.

    One of the best pieces of software for the MacOS is BBEdit, the best text editing software I've had the pleasure of working with. It integrates nicely with the Mac versions of Perl and Python, and the SSH and FTP tools you can get are the nicest I've worked with on any platform. There is a usability aesthetic to the design of Mac software that both the Win and Lin worlds would do well to emulate.

    On the Linux partition -- yup, I've got one -- I use Yellow Dog Linux, which on a 300MHz iBook runs circles around an equally RAM- and drive-equipped Toshiba 400MHz Celeron running Red Hat. And yes, it knows what do to with a two- and three-button mouse...

    As for iBook style, nobody said that nerd != stylin'.

  • I believe it's Multi-Processor.
  • if people see you're comment, you will recieve a lot of criticism =) "linux fad" "dies down"...
    on a primarily linux site...
    hehe...
    im doubting that too, its not a fad, why would it be a fad when people see the better alternative? a fad would be just getting on the bandwagon to be like others. thats not whats happening.

    "spare the lachrymosity when the fulminations have inveighed"

  • Why is this news? (Score:5)

    by sloth jr ( 88200 ) on Monday May 08, 2000 @12:25PM (#1083968)
    Is Slashdot now reporting on rumors? The Mac rumor sites in particular have a lousy reputation for accuracy - how about reporting on news when it's news? Right now, it's just a bunch of folks saying, yeah, it'll happen, oh yeah, trust me.

    Since WWDC is just a week away, why not resist and wait a week?

  • i'm not sure whether thats a valid comment...and about adobe and microsoft cutting off the ports? where did you hear this? especially adobe.

    since the imac ports to macs have gone up, they may be going back down a little now, or going up and down at the same time, meaning virtually staying the same...

    ***But*** wouldn't most much rather use macintosh hardware? Or should I say IBM, Motorola chips and stuff, I think most can agree how much better the G4s are...and how much better IBM [and Motorola] is at innovating and inventing...and making chips than AMD and Intel.

    "spare the lachrymosity when the fulminations have inveighed"
  • NASTY LINK WARNING! It's the idiot any his bung hole again...

    Hey Rob, Thanks for that tarball!

  • Don't expect much from Linux support (Score:3)

    by Tony Hammitt ( 73675 ) on Monday May 08, 2000 @12:28PM (#1083971)
    About the only thing I can get my dual-604e processor card to do (with an SMP kernel) in my 7500 is crash. There aren't enough Linux developers who even know anything about PPC, let alone SMP PPC. I think that there's one guy who used to work on it.

    Other people have gotten other kinds of SMP macs to boot, some even have no problems. But there's probably only about 5 people in the world running SMP linux on macs.

    In short, don't expect any linux to work on this architecture for years. 2004 would be a reasonable guess for full support, iff people actually care enough to try to get linux to work at all. Which is still doubtful, esp. considering that you can run MacOS X on these by the time you will be able to buy them. Who would invest time in porting yet another unix clone to a system that only a few thousand people will be able to buy? LinuxPPC.org hasn't gotten any support from Apple in about 2 years, why should they change anything now?
  • hello ac, god here. Hmmm, yes. I see your point. Kul3r su>orz. From this point on, sky...grey, leaves...black, water, beige. Oh, hope you like black cars. As I type on my G3 with a 4 button scroll mouse. Cheers, god
  • Of course, there are more differences between MacOS7 and MacOS9 than there are between Win 3.1, and Win9x and NT. Just because Apple uses proper VERSION NUMBERS does not mean that there are not significant changes. Microsoft is HOPING you think the radical name changes == radical new OS.

    Tom

  • Not only that, the Rage 128 supports OpenGL, which Quake3 really likes. Who needs 3dfx?

    - Sinistral @ Fractal Edge
  • OK, so you hate them. Don't post on Apple topics, then. Or, is it that "I hate them" and "When they do something I do not like, than I feel fuzzy and justified", but if "They do something cool, I can dismiss it". Hmmmm. Very balanced atttitude.

    Tom
  • Imagine having to reconcile releasing a program as extensive as Photoshop for two very different and verry inflexible platforms? Ive used it on both macs and pcs. Afer trying the GIMP on various Freenix boxes I was blown away by the power of modest Intel machines to generate amazing results fast. EventullY I downloaded the GIMPfor Windows and give it one of those good old A-B tsts like many folks do for MacvsWin Photoshop comparisons only this time,it was GIMP vs Photoshop! Well Imagine my surprise when the still-in-development version of GIMP ported to windows out performed Photoshop on many typical blur and rescale tasks! It smells like a case for versatile and extensible toolkit over corporate bloat.
  • typical /. poster:

    blah blah blah Macs are dead blah blah blah Linux rules blah blah blah they're just toys blah blah blah Mine is the most tumescent system of all time ...

    man, the anti-mac postings on here sound suspiciously like homophobic rants by men who are too insecure in their manliness. i'm about done with /.
  • I have heard of AFOAF running an 8 cpu G4 prototype machine soon to be released. Anyone else care to confirm this?
  • Actually, no it didn't get a 2 - my karma is high enough that I can post with a 2. The nice thing about a karma of 30 is that I can get away with that every once in a while. Of course, at one point, my karma was 36... Not that karma is all that important to me, but I do hate stupid idiot moderators who moderate things down for no good reason - like the warning about that link. This isn't the only time one of the stupid moderators has done this. I really thought meta moderation whould do something about these idiots. Guess I was wrong.

    Hey Rob, Thanks for that tarball!
  • How about Photoshop running on (very common) SMP Wintel boxes? That should beat the single CPU G4.
  • * They won't let anyone else build Mac-compatible machines anymore.

    Nothing's really stopping you. They don't license their designs anymore, but that doesn't mean you couldn't build a compatible machine. No guarantees that future releases of MacOS would work on it, but the same goes for any OS running on hardware that the OS creators don't specifically say will be supported in the future.

    * They won't let anyone else sell Macs online unlessthe store arranges for customers who already own a Mac to setup a password/account/etc

    Ok, I don't quite understand what you're saying here. I see lots of places selling Macs online, and they just have the normal sign-in-so-we-can-ship-the-thing-to-you system.

    * If they had their way, nobody but Apple owners would have been able to use a graphical interface. (Bogus lawsuits, copyrights, patents on GUIs)

    Conceded.

    * Quicktime, all under Apple's control.

    QuickTime itself is a completely open specification. You are confusing the format with the codec, like I see all over the place. QuickTime is just a format for mixing various time-dependent media. The thing everyone really should complain about is the Sorenson Video codec and the QDesign audio codecs, neither of which were created by Apple. Now Apple may have entered into some exclusive agreement with them in exchange for shipping the codecs standard with QuickTime, I don't know.

    * FireWire® - registering a trademarked name for an IEEE standard. Only they can use the name if they so choose!

    Sony has its own name for it too. I don't know if it's trademarked or not, though. Apple did invent the whole 1394 thing, so I think they deserve to call it whatever they want.
  • Whuh???? You don't think it's fair that a program needs to be compiled for a given processor just to take advantage of that processor?

    By that standard, it's not fair that you should actually have to learn to drive just to use a car....

    I'm pretty impressed that Photoshop can be compiled to run on non-Altivec processors, but can still take advantage of G4s with a simple plug-in.

  • nah, there 's only one test of processing power:
    Squeak [squeak.org]
    Since it's platorm independent, you'll get a truer reflection of what the case really is. (course, you'll still need to worry to a certain extent about the state of the C compilers for the various platforms), but it'll be a better indication than Photoshop, for sure.

  • On Mac I count:

    Linux
    MacOS
    *BSD

    You forgot:

    WinNT (discontinued also, count as half)
    MacOS X/MacOS X Server/Darwin/whatever -- should really count as separate from the traditional MacOS, even if they are made by the same company.
    BeOS -- doesn't work on newer machines, pretty much discontinued, but it ought to count for something.

    Alright, I'm sure we're forgetting some on both ends, I just wanted to even it out a little. :)
  • ....A Beowulf Cluster of these??????

  • Solid +2 material there.
  • You have seemed to have forgotten that Darwin is the core of Mac OS X. Seeing as the source is going to be (fairly) freely available, I don't see why developer's cant simply look at the Darwin source and figure out how to get Linux working on SMP machines.

    This is presuming that the SMP libraries are to be included in Darwin...
  • Photoshop is one of the few applications I know of that really challenges today's computers, and where extra computer power can really do a lot of good.

    It may not be a fair test for the PC platform as a whole, but it's a great test for Photoshop users :-).

    D

    ----

  • Re:Just in time for mac OS X... (Score:3)

    by alhaz ( 11039 ) on Monday May 08, 2000 @01:21PM (#1084017) Homepage
    Yes, that's correct. Current MP support in MacOS is a lot like the way most operating systems don't support MP -- they require the application to be written to access the other processors.

    And to think they were bragging about it when they added that feature . . .

  • I don't know the extent to which it's implemented, but MP is already in the traditional MacOS NanoKernel. What's that, you didn't know the macos was on top of a kernel? That's been the case for over a year, and people were wondering "why" for just as long. Well, now we have our answer, in case people want to run that os on upcoming MP macs.

    Still believe the MacOS doesn't have system level preemptive multiprocessing support? go here:

    http://developer.apple.com/technotes/tn/tn1176.h tml#mpapi
  • They won't let anyone else build Mac-compatible machines anymore

    did you ever _use_ a Mac clone? amalgamations of piles of commodity parts loosely patched together into something resembling something that looked like a functional computer. they _sucked_, badly, and because they were associated with Apple because of the OS, they contributed to much of Apple's bad press and consumer appeal of the mid-1990's.

    They won't let anyone else sell Macs online unlessthe store arranges for customers who already own a Mac to setup a password/account/etc

    Poorly reported, misread, misrepeated, misunderstood and complete _myth_. Well, either that, or no one's paying attention to the "rule" or whatever. Take a moment to look at a few Mac online stores.

    If they had their way, nobody but Apple owners would have been able to use a graphical interface. (Bogus lawsuits, copyrights, patents on GUIs)

    What lawsuits are still around? Apple hasn't pushed a lawsuit since they sued Microsoft, which Apple pursued only in the same vane that Sony persued Connectix and Bleem! for PSX emulators... not because they could win. They sued to keep anyone from getting any ideas about doing anything that would _seriously_ infringe on their turf.

    Quicktime, all under Apple's control.

    Someone else pointed out before me that QuickTime is a suite of codecs and bundling technologies that are largely open. Unfortunately, the Sorenson Codec is the one everyone is hot to trot for... and that one is not Apple's intellectual property.

    FireWire® - registering a trademarked name for an IEEE standard. Only they can use the name if they so choose!

    Well gee, they only _invented_ the damned thing. It was "FireWire" long before it was IEEE 1394, and the global Digital Multimedia saw what it was and what it could do, so Apple submitted it to the IEEE with Sony (who calls it "iLink"), and got it approved. Anyone can make an "IEEE 1394" card w/o paying royalties. If you want to call it "FireWire," you have to pay for the brand recognition.

    Pray tell... you can download Red Hat Linux and modify it and sell it as your own distributions. It's Linux, jah, but can you market it as "Red Hat"?
  • ---
    Why should they? They are a monopoly in every sense of the word except marketshare.
    ---

    Am I the only one who sees the inherant discord in this statement?

    The independant bookstore on the corner is a monopoly in every sense of the word except marketshare as well. Somehow I don't think Amazon or Barnes & Noble care very much.

    Marketshare is the single defining factor of a monopoly. By definition a company cannot be a monopoly if they have low marketshare.

    ---
    I've always hated Apples, and when they cut out the clones why that just justified my hatred of them.
    ---

    By chance did you own a clone? So did I (PowerTower Pro 225 - a kick ass machine for its time). I was pissed too, but at the time their company was leaking 700+ million a quarter with no end in sight. In the end, it's hard to argue against Jobs' turnaround.

    I too feel that clones are essential to the growth of the Mac platform. But, Apple should make sure they've taken up as far as they can before they open the floodgates again, and next time be more careful about it. If you haven't noticed, recent technological changes in the OS and hardware have made it much easier for cloners to exist.


    - Jeff A. Campbell
    - VelociNews (http://www.velocinews.com [velocinews.com])
  • The system logic for all of the Mac G4 machines shipped since last summer (about 2 million units so far) have been designed for MP operation.

    Whether you got a motherboard with two CPU slots, or a motherboard with one slot holding two CPUs, or a motherboard with one single-CPU slot was quite another matter, of course.

    The same system logic was used in all of the Apples shipped, whether high- or low-end, desktop or laptop. Have a look under the hood and check out the part number on the north bridge to see for yourself.

  • Linux Support (Score:3)

    by pridkett ( 2666 ) on Monday May 08, 2000 @01:00PM (#1084036) Homepage Journal

    For those of you who are asking the inevitable question, "What about linux support"? I think you should have some faith in the good people of the world out there. You might want to see some of the stuff that TerraSoft Solutions is doing with YellowDog Linux [yellowdoglinux.com] and BlackLab Linux [blacklablinux.com]. I'm not sure how much a lot of this applies, but they've gotten it to run on some of CSP's Quad G4 boards and other nifty configurations.

  • Considering Apple's history of pricing machines, they'll only make quad and dual-processor boxen out of the fastest CPUs they have. They'll charge an arm and a leg for these machines (the cost of a dual-processor machine will be much more than the SP version + CPU cost). I really want to get a G4 with MacOS X, but I don't want the iMac and I don't want to pay $2000 for the unit. I want a $1000 G4 machine running at 500+ Mhz -- I already have a monitor.

    Are you listening, Apple?

    The wheel is turning but the hamster is dead.

  • Geez. There's a lot of anti-Mac fud and humor here. Sorta like some giant smacktalk from a legion of Ford Escort owners toward a small group of guys who drive Lexus cars. Anyways, if the hardware and OS will support SMP, then we're talking about a VERY formidable machine, and noone really should be laughing about its performance. Take,for instance, the stats coming in from Distributed.Net. G4 Macs, in all their SlashDot-assumed-patheticness, are among the fastest single-cpu crunching boxes in the entire RC5-64 contest. Compare a 500 MHz G4's performance vs. a 1 GHz Athlon or a Xeon.. The "slower" G4 is almost 30% faster (approximately 4.8 Mkeys/sec) than the fastest PC. Imagine what kind of number cruncher a double/quad Altivec would be. As for ignorant people who assume that nerds would never use a Mac.. well, you people are just perfect for a Think Ignorant(TM) ad. People find the most suitable machine for the tasks they do. I happen to enjoy working on a Mac for web development, HTML programming, and multimedia design. It works fine for me and doesn't get in the way of my creative process. I can find a generous amount of Mac software/hardware at retailers, thank you very much. You may enjoy Windoze or Linux because its "behavior" suits your own creative process. Fine. So quit flaming other people's platform preferences as long as they don't end up stepping on your toes. Do your work and refrain from bothering others.. they're getting ready for their MP Macs =)

    -----
    Linux user: if (nt == unstable) { switchTo.linux() }
  • That said, the G4 is still far ahead of twice-as-'fast' Pentium IIIs - several reviews have shown that, with Altivec-native programs like Photoshop, a G4 at 450MHz creams a Pentium III at 1GHz, by 30% in some instances. With Mac OS X on dual or quad G4s, and with much better G4s (dual altivec units, and deeper pipelining to allow higher clock speeds) coming this fall, the Mac platform's about to get a massive boost.

    I've heard of this before. Are you referring to the "vector processing unit" or Velocity Engine? For those of you who haven't seen the benchmarks, here [sfgate.com] is a link to an article with a few benchmarks.

    The only thing I don't like about this is the fact that in order to beat the PIII's, a special Photoshop plugin is required to make use of the Velocity Engine.

    What does this mean? Quite simply, an application must specifically be written (or re-written) to take advantage of the Velocity Engine. I'm not saying this is unfair, or lying or a half truth or anything like that since Intel has MMX, but I feel it's a somewhat skewed view of things.

    Many video cards are like this as well. I remember reading an interview with one of the programmers at iD (Gremme I beleive) where he stated the largest problem with game performance is having to write code that works with all sorts of video cards. Many individual cards such as 3Dfx have propritary APIs such as Glide that gives a great performance boost, but obviously Glide apps will only run on 3Dfx cards (wrappers non-withstanding).

    Thus, I have nothing against Macs (hey, progress is progress, and people everyone likes or hates things for his or her own reasons), however I don't think that just Photoshop benchmarks with a plugin which makes use of a Mac specific co-processor tell the whole story.

  • Re:What is an SKU? (Score:4)

    by socratic method ( 15936 ) on Monday May 08, 2000 @11:59AM (#1084046)
    A SKU is a stock keeping unit , a numeric code for inventory control usually in an electronic database.

    This is similar to a Universal Product Code, which is the barcode found on virtually everything these days.

    Both refer to a number. A UPC has a standard barcode and numbering system. A SKU isn't universal, and can be different no matter where you are.

    SKUs sometimes include letters, too, whereas UPCs are strictly numeric.

    I think.
  • Please refer to Mac-on-Linux [maconlinux.com]. It's a virtual machine that runs MacOS hosted inside Linux running on some PPC machine. It does not have to be a Mac, although it helps. It does require the MacOS ROM file in order to boot, but that file ships with every copy of MacOS. Obviously it's copyrighted and so forth, but so is the OS, and you get both. The user can supply it easily.

    Clearly this could be used to build a Mac-compatible machine. At worst, just make it run a PPC linux and then get this program working, although that would fairly suck. The problems are that there would be no guarantee of compatibility with future OS releases, and Apple handles the current demand for Macintosh computers plenty well.

  • Mac rumor sites (Score:5)

    by Wesley Felter ( 138342 ) <wesley@felter.org> on Monday May 08, 2000 @12:00PM (#1084052) Homepage
    Here's a handy template you can use to start your own Mac rumor site:

    At the upcoming Macworld|Seybold|WWDC, Apple will announce:

    new Powerbooks (or not)
    new 17" iMacs (or not)
    MP PowerMacs (or not)
    an Apple PDA (or not)
    MacOS X is shipping (or not)

    In other words, these guys predict anything that could possibly happen, so some of it is bound be true.
  • Uh...I doubt Netscape will be the most used app on the Mac. The only people who install Netscape are the people upgrading from older Macs that don't mind the instability. If you've used Mac OS 8 or 9 you'd notice that IE 4 (and 4.5) are the default browser with Netscape residing on the CD. People buying their first computer and choosing an iMac are most likely sticking with IE. I doubt Netscape will make it to carbonization unless AOL decides to make the DNS registry Netscape-only.
  • This is what I have been wating for... Apple has really dragged its feet with dual cpu machines. From what I have read, 2 G4's work VERY well together. Apartently you get near 100 boost once you add the second CPU, when using MaxBus.

    Has anyone seen any good benchmarks for G4's vs Sparc, Alpha, etc... I have done a but of altivec programming, and golly, that vector unit is sweet. You just can't beat the RISC architechure.

    I wonder what version of LinuxPPC will support it. How developed is SMP in the PPC world?

    In closing, man these rummors better be true, hmmm.... maybe I will use my free WWDC pass after all...

    Peace out.
    Ryan

    --"Yup."
  • Slashdot has always been whay Hemos CmdrTaco and crew have wanted to post, methinks you've been reading slashdot for a month rather than two years. I don't give a shit about what Stallman is boycotting. Just because I like GPL software doesn't make anyone my Messiah. Most if not all of your comments are merely trolling for bunnies. Go back under the bridge dude.
  • the sake of completeness, there have been MP Macs before. The 9600 series had an MP box and so did the 7200 IIRC. They had dual PPC 604e and 603 chips rather than 7400s but were indeed multi-processor boxes. Right now the problem with SMP on any platform is the lack of SMP support in apps. I can build an 8 processor Xeon box running Linux but if none of my apps are multi-threaded it isn't going to speed anything up. This is an advantage Be has which I hope other people get a handle on soon, all of their apps are multi-threaded and they treat SMP as a de facto thing rather than something only crazy power hungry people use. Even in single processor systems multithreading boosts performance especially when you've got a good superscalar chip under the hood. Lets hear it for SMP!
  • The solution to the branch-prediction problem is actually in IA-64: predication, the ability to "skip over" a given instruction without branching around it. It's like a real, general pupose, instruction-level verion of the C-language "if" construct that doesn't use branches (and thus doesn't create a separate execution path to screw up multi-op fetches). But, I agree, this is all off-topic.
    My big worry for Macs is that these things will be RIDICULOUSLY expensive. A nice G4-450 (not the fastest G4 out there) will run you noticeably over $2500. Remember how expensive multi-processor PCs were a few years ago before they started cranking 'em out in bulk? Plus, even OS-X won't be particularly well optimized for multiple processors, considering this is the first release and the developers had a lot of more important issues than SMP to consider (like getting it to run). I'd expect the price/performance for these machines to be pretty unimpressive, especially when compared with other, more mature SMP-solutions.
    Now, I wish they could just boot some next-generation, 64-bit MacOS on RS6000 PPC hardware. I mean, come on, if you REALLY want to run photoshop fast, and price isn't an object, why not shell out for a $100,000 IBM workstation? Mmmm... 8 GB of RAM... 32 MB of L2 cache. . .
    --JRZ
  • Apple's probably listening, but as long as they have a big shortage of those 500mhz chips, I doubt that they can do much about it.

    I wonder if Apple pricing is impacted in any way by Steve Jobs' income. I know that the more I earn, the less $ 1,000 seems to matter. If he's selling primarily to the top 1% of incomes in this country, his pricing is really about right. Since Steve himself is somewhere at the top .00001% of incomes, that probably doesn't seem like a big deal to him. Heck, even his most expensive computer isn't any more than a month's rent of a half-decent house in Malibu -- or just about anywhere in the Bay Area.

    D

    ----

  • Re:MP? (Score:3)

    by iphayd ( 170761 ) on Monday May 08, 2000 @12:05PM (#1084087) Homepage Journal
    Macintosh Performa
    Mutha Phucka
    Military Police
    Maybe Purple
    Multiple Processors
    Medium Power

    of course it really is...

    Metallica Pirates

  • Just in time for mac OS X... (Score:5)

    by Noer ( 85363 ) on Monday May 08, 2000 @12:05PM (#1084090)
    Apple's sold multi processor systems (dual; Daystar sold quads) before, but the Mac OS at present has very poor MP support. Mac OS 9 is somewhat improved; some Finder operations will take advantage of a second processor, as will all Quicktime operations; applications that are explicitly parallel get a big boost (Photoshop, for example). However, you don't get what you get in Linux, where a given single-threaded process runs on the lowest-loaded processor at the time.

    However, I don't think Apple's going to be SELLING these machines in May or June. I think Apple's going to be demonstrating them to developers, showing what a boost Mac OS X gets with a dual or quad G4 machine - and what a boost a dual or quad machine gets under OS X. Since OS X is slated for release sometime this summer (probably Macworld Expo New York in July), that will likely tie the two together. I'm sure these machines will run Mac OS 9 as well, but don't expect too much.

    That said, the G4 is still far ahead of twice-as-'fast' Pentium IIIs - several reviews have shown that, with Altivec-native programs like Photoshop, a G4 at 450MHz creams a Pentium III at 1GHz, by 30% in some instances. With Mac OS X on dual or quad G4s, and with much better G4s (dual altivec units, and deeper pipelining to allow higher clock speeds) coming this fall, the Mac platform's about to get a massive boost.

    That said, I fear that Apple will price these dual or quad machines way out of reach. An additional processor doesn't add that much to the price - maybe $500 reasonably. The smart approach with MP is not to double up on the very fastest chips; they just cost too much. Rather, it's better to step down the clock speed a little bit to allow for more processors at a reasonable price point. Thus, I think dual G4s at only 400 or 450MHz would make a lot of sense, and could be reasonably priced. I say could be; I have little faith in Apple to do this, though Apple's been much better about price-performance lately than they used to be.
  • Got a IBM ppc 750 running here on my embedded project running mklinux. bus clock is 33Mhz

    (internally multiplied to 450-ish)

    it does about 1.2 Mkeys/sec for rc5.

  • Re:Apple is putting MP's (Score:2)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Well, if you are biased towards Macs then you want to compare Photoshop. Since it is one of the few apps that was completely written and optimized for the Mac, it performs much better than on a PC. If it wasn't for Photoshop, in my opinion, Macs wouldn't still be using Motorola chips.

    If you want to see an unbiased comparison of Macs, PCs, Alphas, etc., look at the published SPEC performance at spec.org. (Although Apple will not publish official SPEC numbers since they are so low; you can find the Motorola G4 scores at the Motorola website.)

    All modern processors are superscalar ("perform multiple operations per clock"), not just Macs.
  • Who ever the TOTAL moron was who moderated me down for doing a comunity service - FUCK YOU!!! FUCK YOU AND THE HORSE YOU RODE IN ON!

    Hey Rob, Thanks for that tarball!
  • Ryan? Is that you?


    Pope

    Freedom is Slavery! Ignorance is Strength! Monopolies offer Choice!
  • Looks like this rumor got it's start from a fake advertisement made by some wannabe advertising people.

    macnn.com feature on 'espionage' ad [macnn.com]

  • Why Before Mac OS X? --The Answer (Score:3)

    by fridgepimp ( 136338 ) on Monday May 08, 2000 @12:10PM (#1084123) Homepage
    Well,

    I imagine if anything it's because half of the OS X equation has already been released...OS X Server, which I believe supports multiple processors. Since it seems to make quite a bit of sense to me to have MP server boxes, I see this as a great thing (if/when it happens).

    -fp

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