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Apple Businesses

PowerPC Linux Beats Apple To Full G4 SMP Support 92

Posted by timothy from the whaddya-know? dept.
dburcaw writes: "PowerPC Linux developer Troy Benjegerdes just released the first patch adding SMP support for the brand new dual processor Power Macintosh G4 systems just hours before Steve Jobs is set to release the Mac OS X Public Beta at Apple Expo in Paris. This makes PowerPC Linux the first available operating system to contain full SMP support for the new machines. The patch and test binary kernel is available here."
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PowerPC Linux Beats Apple To Full G4 SMP Support More

PowerPC Linux Beats Apple To Full G4 SMP Support

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  • That is a good point, but I think most Linux programmers would have too much pride to use BSD stuff.

  • SMP has part of Mac OS since 8.6 (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Everybody seems to be overlooking the fact that regular Mac OS has had SMP support since 8.6. The only limitation is that portions of the OS are not preemption-safe, but that doesn't affect the SMP-ness of the OS (non-threaded code on Unix or Windows isn't distributed on multiple processors either).
  • Sorry, Celeron II wil not do smp.
  • 'nuff said...

  • Thats what they said about the Celeron. However I have two on my system, on an Abit BP6 motherboard. According to rumour, the VP6 will supposedly be able to do the same for the Cel-2, and since its also by Abit, I believe that it just might. Plus there's a new version of the Powerleap slotket (Neo 370? I forget) which looks like it'll enable Cel-2's to be SMP'd.

    Information courtesy of BP6.COM [bp6.com]

    Pax,

    White Rabbit +++ Divide by Cucumber Error ++

  • We've had a quad g3 and a quad g4 machine at work for several months (almost a year in the case of the g3). It makes me laugh that G4 SMP is supposed to be such great news.
    Anyway, the machines are running Linux and they are really fast. With Intel's solution it's better to just buy a faster CPU then to get dual SMP. At least with the g4 you get real scalability.
    I hope that Apple and PPC bring the cost of g4 setups down because in light of the Athlon, I don't think that they are worth their price, for home anyway.
  • Ok, this is the gratiutous "sue" post.

    So, is Jobs now going to sue PowerPC Linux for stealing his thunder?
  • Well, you may be interested to know, then, that the announce was posted to Slashdot by a TerraSoft employee ;)

    In this case, you should read "Linux/PPC" as the "Linux running on the PPC platform", not LinuxPPC Inc. (the distro).

  • Linux will suffer the same fate that Apple did if they keep trying to go after the same market as M$. The clueless desktop user market belongs to M$ for the forseeable future. DVD, absolutely, USB, definately, Winmodems? Fuck no!. We use linux because of speed and stability, a software driven modem takes away from the available system resources.

    Go for the high end, go for the power users, M$'s foundation is too big to wear away, but you can leapfrog them and take the top.

    LK
  • I have a BP6 as well. However, every thread that I have read on BP6 says that CII smp won't happen. Ever. The smp pin is not attached to the chip.

  • Pentium is still based on old 8088/86 technology.

    No, they just understand the same instruction set. From the P6 core and beyond, they're superscalar RISC machines on the other side of the decode unit.
    ___ CmdrTHAC0 ___

  • I said: The dual 450 (which doesn't have the DVD-RAM, half the memory and no gigabit ethernet) is a much more palatable 1600 pounds or so.

    Where? At Dabs (typical, cheaper-than-most Mac dealer), the Dual 450 is 1600 plus VAT (at 17.5 percent, dont forget), for a 128Mb Model. The dual-500 is 2400 plus VAT, (Thats nearly 3000 altogether, BTW) for a 256Mb model.

    Oooh, so sue me for not including the VAT. Guess I do too much purchasing. Yup, mea culpa - we were ordering 1Gb dual 500s, the base is 256Mb. I notice you didn't reply to the gigabit ethernet and DVD-RAM bits. All I'm asking is for you to compare like with like.

    you been doing magic mushies?

    Hardly - the season's a couple of weeks away.

  • Could you imagine emacs ported to OS X (I mean, using Aqua instead of X windows)? I'd pay money for that!

    Heh. Observe this post from the macosx-dev list yesterday. Might be closer than you think :)

    Message: 11
    Date: Tue, 12 Sep 2000 14:25:06 -0400
    Subject: Re: Emacs.app
    From: Marc Respass
    To:
    CC: Mike Elston ,

    on 9/12/00 12:54 PM, Michael B. Johnson at wave@pixar.com wrote:

    > Marc Respass wrote:
    >>
    >> How is Emacs.app different from running emacs in Terminal? I've never seen
    >> Emacs.app
    >>
    >
    > Emacs.app was a wonderful, reasonably full-on native port of gnu-emacs for
    > NeXTSTEP. It integrated
    > seemlessly into the old, old Project Builder (i.e. double-click on a compile
    > error in PB, it brought
    > you to the correct line and file in Emacs.app). It had color, fonts, multiple
    > windows, all the
    > things one is used to under UNIX/X11 with gnu-emacs, but are sorely missed
    > from bring "emacs" up in
    > a Terminal.
    >
    > Now that I'm dipping my toe back in OSX, I miss it terribly as well.

    Oh, that sounds awesome. Is the source to Emacs.app available somewhere? I'd
    love to have a look.

    --Marc R

  • Mozilla runs on my BeOS 5PE box. Be careful how you judge an OS. If you judge by applications then you could pick an app that doesn't work/isn't available and diss any OS but maybe that is the point.

  • Alas, Apple hardware is propietary. In order to write software for a chipset that you have no specs for, it must be reverse engineered. Therefore, in the eyes of Be, reverse engineering is kinda shady and unprofessional, and we get to use no more new Apple hardware.

    Perhaps, after 10 years have passes, Apple will release specs for B&W G3 machines.
  • He's got some real points. Yes, a dual G4 BeOS box WOULD be nice. Yes, MacOS X's SMP support just MIGHT be better for a while or in the long run. Maybe Linux's SMP support ISN'T the best.

    Holy crap.

  • Clarification: LinuxPPC, our claims, AltiVec (Score:5)

    by haaz ( 3346 ) on Wednesday September 13, 2000 @05:58AM (#783813) Homepage
    Hi all, this is Jason Haas, one of the co-founders of LinuxPPC Inc. I'm mostly famous for alost having been killed by this drunk fuck in a massive SUV back in March. ;-)

    LinuxPPC is not making any claims about Apple. We are not making any claims about our alleged "superiority" over Apple. We're thousands of times smaller than Apple, for one thing. Linux _might_ be superior to the MacOS, performance-wise, but Linux in general still has a ways to go before ease of use becomes more standard. We never compare ourselves to Apple. Never have, don't plan on doing that in the future.

    Second, we're not announcing the SMP support. It will soon be on our FTP server, however.

    Third, AFAIK, AltiVec (a.k.a. "Velocity Engine") has kernel support in some kernels, and Motorola has released patches for gcc, though I don't know if they've been intergrated yet.

    Personally, I think it has a limited future. What would it help under Linux, anyway? ;-) (I honestly don't know!)

    Last, I am doing much better despite Jerk Boy's efforts to kill me (literally). He didn't try hard enough. ;-)

    Best,

    Haaz: Co-founder, LinuxPPC Inc., making Linux for PowerPC since 1996.
  • The first one is not always the best...

    How about we wait until we see the way MacOS X handles... then we'll judge. MacOS X has something that will probably make it a better smp OS, and that is it's Mach Foundry. By Using Mach, or any microkernel for that matter, smp implementions become much easier, and much more efficient.

  • I'm quite sure that Celeron II's are not SMP capable. Everyone loved the Abit BP6 and being able to take advantage of the cheap old PPGA Celeron's, but Intel wisened up and not only completey disabled SMP in their Celeron II, but crippled their Celeron II to have much less power than a similarly clocked Coppermine. As a result, they have a vastly inferior "budget" system, with their 66mhz bus vs the AMD "200mhz" (100DDR) on the Duron. What is this Abit VP6?
  • And after. You forgot after. The Apple release is probably going to be "more" stable at first, but anything 100 developers can make, a million users can and will break. That's why it's still a big deal that the Linux version was out first/simultaneously.
  • let's ascribe the actions to the right groups.

    CODE : LinuxPPC
    BRAGGING : /.

    now then, in *that* light how 'bout we stop badmouthing the developers and give them their proper credit for the technical achievement of G4 SMP.
  • Have you heard of full duplex?
  • Ok so you made a MAC do SMP but can you turn a Palm Pilot into an oscilloscope? (Don't flame me its an inside joke) :) Troy rocks!
  • ---
    Ooo! Ooo! First nonsensical Mac Zealot Interface Post!
    ---

    You make a lot of assumptions based on lack of information. You have no clue about my opinions and experiences of Apple's operating systems or that of others.

    Now, if the definition of a 'Mac Zealot' is a person who uses a Mac and doesn't agree with all of your opinions, then I guess I fit the bill. Otherwise, you're pretty far off the mark.

    To put it short, my only bitch with OSX is in the interface. A zealot would just take what Apple gives them and not question it - I have ... erm ... some issues with what they are doing (and most of it revolves around the dock).

    Zealot indeed.

    - Jeff A. Campbell
    - VelociNews (http://www.velocinews.com [velocinews.com])
  • USB? Got it... At least very nearly so. DVD? Dunno, ask those goons tryin' to get DeCSS destroyed. Winmodems? go bug the winmodem makers. Some of them do work.
  • Yep.

    (telnet is off by default though)

    - Jeff A. Campbell
    - VelociNews (http://www.velocinews.com [velocinews.com])
  • <p><i>"has anyone fixed that whole no DVD, USB, winmodem support problem yet."</i>

    <p>DVD drives seem to work fairly well in PowerPC Linux, at least as CD-ROMs, and if you compile in the UDF filesystem. USB also works pretty good on the PowerPC, it supports most keyboards and mice with Linux 2.2, and with the optional 2.4-USB backport, you can use many USB addons. Winmodem support really isn't a problem, as Apple has not shipped a machine with a Winmodem, in about 4 years now (the built in ones are pretty much standard hardware).

    <p><i>"Why concentrate so much on all these great new things (don't get me
    wrong this is good) when we can't even support the huge hardware base of our biggest competitor."</i>

    <p>Who really gives a f?ck about our greatest competitor. They are free to do what they want. Not to mention PPC Linux is already getting far better.

    <p><i>"Regular users don't want SMP support that want to be able to connect to the internet and type documents that there boss can read."</i>

    <p>Well for many people SMP is more useful. Especially people with CPU intensive stuff. That other stuff can always be done some othertime.

  • Powerlogix' dual-G4 press-release was in February. As of today, the card still isnt listed on their website as a shipping product. Even if it was available, it would still be a daughterboard upgrade, and the early motherboard would still be a performance issue. Plus, the dual-350 card was listed at 1200 bucks. That would be around 800 UKP; The dual-400 G4 card was listed at 1600 bucks. Call that at least 1200 UKP.

    Even if it weren't vapourware, no thanks. Like I say, I dont like the hefty price premium that goes with Macs.

    Pax,

    White Rabbit +++ Divide by Cucumber Error ++

  • Mac OS X has been released (its 10 AM in Paris :) ) and its up on the apple site (apple.com/macosx/). also, the new iBooks have been released :) apple.com/ibook

    ---
  • How stable is it NOW compared to the Mac just released. What limitations do each of the systems have, if any.

    First is not always best.


    ---
  • Hehe. Of course, Apple had it working in the labs for quite some time. The difference here is that Apple engineers did have the informations about how it was implemented in HW (especially how to start the second CPU), while we didn't and we had to reverse engineer it ;)

    It was just "fun" to announce it just before MacOS X Beta ;)
  • Looking it at, your brain must have mirrored the keyboard around the axis connecting the Y and B keys... :)

    Pax,

    White Rabbit +++ Divide by Cucumber Error ++

  • Yeah, Lintel SMP sucked for a while, but that was partly because a lot of core stuff hadn't been SMP-ified, and it was back in a whole different era of kernel development.

    I'd bet that the PPC SMP patch stuff goes _way_ smoother against the modern linux kernel source.

  • I don't think that Macs were running on PPC 16 years ago... lets frame this into a realistic idea here.

    That's like saying that IBM OS/360/370/390 beat Linux390 by decades on mainframes... true, but completely irrelevant.

    --
  • I don't see what all the fuss is about. Whatever the "theoretical" SMP restrictions on Linux have
    been, I used Linux on a dual PII Dell with kernel 2.1.x, and it really screamed for the
    applications we ran. I even benchmarked against NT, and Linux was executing our simulations 40% faster.
    (Compared with the non-SMP Linux, which was only slightly faster than WinNT 4.0 doing SMP ;-)

    When making blanket statements like, ">When is Linux going to get decent SMP support?",
    remember that performance is measured by execution time of your particular workload
    (Hennesy & Patterson).

    Still looking for a decent sig.
  • SMP == symmetric multiprocessing

    MacOS has never had symmetric multiprocessing.

    It had support for multiple processors, but it was very asymmetric.

    Basically all of the processors played hot potato with tasks until one of them got fed up and did it. =)

    Mike

    "I would kill everyone in this room for a drop of sweet beer."
  • Yes, I have seen many, I mean MANY, broken linux distro while I have never seen broken BSD distro.
  • altivec has kernel support and motorola has patches for gcc (though i don't know if they've been intergrated yet or if the altivec C extentions will be allowed).

    as for smp and altivec, saving altivec contexts is no more difficult than saving fpu contexts on an smp system.

    Though, it all seems pointless to me anyway. People by Apples so they can use MacOS.

    not everyone buys a mac for mac os. just because you do, doesn't mean everyone else on the planet does.

    Why spend all that money and then waste it by running software that wasn't designed for it?

    for the same reason people buy x86 boxes and run non-windows OSes on them. it almost sounds as if you're questioning why someone wouldn't want arch and platform dependant software.

    It'd be like getting a proprietary SGI (O2, Indy, etc) and running Linux on it instead of IRIX. The user experience would be gone. So it is with Apples. that's retarded statement. is the "user experience" lost when someone runs mac os on an old mac clone? or solaris on an x86?

  • <BenH&gt well, figuring out how to start the second CPU was entertaining ;) Then, it was only a matter of letting Troy fix bugs ;à
    <smpHozer&gt yes it was
    <smpHozer&gt and it was staring us in the face in the OF start-cpu1 code all the time ;)
    <BenH&gt Well, until I decided to drink some rhum, smoke a few pots, and decrypt the OF stuff ;)
    <slice`&gt heheh
    <slice`&gt I believe you mean..
    <slice`&gt "smoke a bowl"
    <slice`&gt get with the lingo.. man :)

  • All I'm asking is for you to compare like with like.

    Well, I'm not exactly the comparison is between a 1Ghz Intel versus a 500 G4. I'd rate the G4 around about an 800Mhz PIII, but I could be wrong. Now Dabs dont have 1Ghz PIII prices that I could find, but I guess a 933 is close enough, yeah? Or are you going to quibble over 70Mhz, maybe, even although the 500 G4 isnt exactly a brand-new chip.

    All prices are Dabs.

    • Dual Intel Motherboard&nbsp&&nbsp&&nbsp&&nbsp& 125
    • Two 933 PIII's&nbsp&&nbsp&&nbsp&&nbsp& 380 each
    • 256 Mb 133 RAM&nbsp&&nbsp&&nbsp&&nbsp& 230
    • DVD RAM&nbsp&&nbsp&&nbsp&&nbsp& 300
    • SB Live soundcard&nbsp&&nbsp&&nbsp&&nbsp& 40
    • 300W Tower case&nbsp&&nbsp&&nbsp&&nbsp& 75
    • Deluxe Kbd and Mouse&nbsp&&nbsp&&nbsp&&nbsp& 50 approx
    • DVD ROM&nbsp&&nbsp&&nbsp&&nbsp& 85
    • Gigabit ethernet&nbsp&&nbsp&&nbsp&&nbsp& 195
    • (Dual) 64Mb ATI Rage Pro card&nbsp&&nbsp&&nbsp&&nbsp& 85
    • 40Gb UDMA 66 Hard Drive&nbsp&&nbsp&&nbsp&&nbsp& 150
    Total is a shade under 2100 before VAT. Thats at least 300 cheaper before VAT. Plus I can shop around. Plus, I think 850Mhz PIIIs are faster than 500Mhz G4's so I can drop a bit on the processors. Plus its a better graphics card (Twin ATI Rage Pro versus one) and better sound. And I have the -option- to forget 200 quid worth of gigabit ethernet, since neither my home nor work networks support it, if I choose.

    Dont get me wrong. I like Macs. Just dont like the prices, and the replace-as-upgrade syndrom.

    Pax,

    White Rabbit +++ Divide by Cucumber Error ++

  • Last I checked gcc did support altivec. Check it out, announced in may

    http://slashdot.org/articles/00/03/24/1918240.sh tml
  • how much bug fixing is the question? MacOS 8.whatever still blows (we are still waiting for the savior of the earth "X") I am not comparing OS's here. Everyone has their faults, but to go so far as to say "more bugfixing"... that is bullshit. They are shoving that shit out the door just as fast as MS shoved 2.0->NT->95+ out...

    - Bill
  • Er... if I said Linux has a "toy kernel", would you not consider it a flamebait? I would. (but it wasn't me to mod down the AC, otherwise I wouldn't be posting).

  • Slow with technology? What the heck does that mean?

    • first marketed GUI
    • first plug-n-play
    • first to support multiple monitors
    • first to ditch legacy peripherals in favor of USB and FireWire
    • etc etc

    This isn't exactly what I'd call slow to push the envelope. I don't want to start a flame fest, but geez, get some facts.

  • Welp, there goes that idea. I thought Apple invented something I liked for a change.

    [shrug]Looks like I have to go a M$ one. Damn, I am going to hate doing that ...


    until (succeed) try { again(); }

  • I believe it's the 'Super Street Nvidia GeForce II Champion Edition'.

  • Hmmm (Score:3)

    by scrutty ( 24640 ) on Tuesday September 12, 2000 @11:53PM (#783843) Homepage
    This suddenly makes the macintosh a far more enticing prospect as a hardware platform. Nicely built non-intel SMP linux box = good thing.

    However I wonder how good the actually support is. I mean intel SMP under linux sucked for quite a while and this is only an initial patch. I would not be surprised if the MacOS X beta had the performance edga, at least for a while.

    What I really pont in BeOS on multiprocessor G4s. That would rock.

  • For a long time I've been waiting for Apple to come out with SMP. The last test with the Cube didn't seem to go over too well.

    Wow.. ! This means that I can video edit on a great platform, and not have to wait 40 minutes for a 4 minute video to render..

    Now I just have to get Broadcast2000 to use 1394, and port it to PPClinux, and vuala.. :) I don't think you can seporate yourself from MS any better than that!
  • Amen to that! I must stop here and just say: Whoooohoooooooo!!!! (Perhaps I have had a bit too much caffiene.)

  • Wow. (Score:4)

    by Darchmare ( 5387 ) on Tuesday September 12, 2000 @11:55PM (#783846)
    Apple beats LinuxPPC to a halfway usable user interface by around 16-17 years.

    *yawn*

    I'm impressed by LinuxPPC. I order each release they put out, and it's not bad given their marketshare. But bragging about SMP support when Apple has a lot more fish to fry is kind of stupid.

    Other people have beaten Apple to the punch in other stuff. It's not really that big of a deal. I'm more concerned at this point that Apple isn't going to fix some of the ... erm ... interface oddities in the OSX release.

    - Jeff A. Campbell
    - VelociNews (http://www.velocinews.com [velocinews.com])
  • I'm sure Stevie's speeches will be watched very closely for "errors". I remember the time when Apple claimed that theirs were the first desktops with RISC processors, when in everyone outside the US of A knew for a fact that the Archimedes was years ahead [computingmuseum.com]. But even today it's bloody difficult to correct this misinformation.
  • Your a sick mother fucker. you know that billy boy? You'd fuck tonya harding in her redneck ass. Your sick Billy. I tell ya. Sick.
  • Keep in mind that the BSD's are getting serious help from BSDi with SMP code. I'd expect to see something like this from NetBSD pretty soon. Lets not forget, if it ends up in a BSD distro, that means that anyone can use it. -> good for linux.

  • Cool... (Score:1)

    by pb ( 1020 )
    Hopefully Jobs won't whine about this one like he did last time, considering how close these two are.

    It'll be nice to have the PPC/PC rivalry about Linux/MacOS X (BSD, that is) for once, though, instead of the dead, beaten horse of the Windows/Mac flamewars.

    In my opinion, at least now everybody wins, and is on more or less equal footing. (Look, I have a GUI and a shell prompt! Hey, me too!)
    ---
    pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate [ncsu.edu].
  • What I really pont in BeOS on multiprocessor G4s. That would rock.
    That should obviously read ...What I really want is ... , *grin*.

    I'm just breaking in a new keyboard, but I have no idea how my fingers managed that transposition.

  • Re:Wow. (Score:3)

    by AustenDH ( 157687 ) on Wednesday September 13, 2000 @12:12AM (#783852)

    I agree and I don't. First of all:

    'Apple beats LinuxPPC to a halfway usable user interface by around 16-17 years.'

    Sure. But the whole point was to give apple users a different option of UI on the hardware they liked.

    'I'm impressed by LinuxPPC. I order each release they put out, and it's not bad given their marketshare. But bragging about SMP support when Apple has a lot more fish to fry is kind of stupid.'

    Why is tackeling SMP stupid? If Apple is going to be able to compete in any way against the way things are going with Intel, AMD, Alpha, etc. SMP is crucial. Apple has some incredible hardware and software to show for itself. If they didn't tackle SMP then they would be breaking their wounds. The power output per machine is not just the CPU ability, but the CPU ability to work when there are more than one present. PC's do it, and now single PC machines can outperform even the fastest Mac G4's.

    I think Mac SMP is far from stupid.

    And last:

    'Other people have beaten Apple to the punch in other stuff. It's not really that big of a deal. I'm more concerned at this point that Apple isn't going to fix some of the ... erm ... interface oddities in the OSX release.'

    I know some of the people working on OSX. Don't worry about them. OSX is in good hands. I'm sure that these people are smart and resourceful enough to find and work out 'oddities.'

    But why complain at all? You want to talk about 'oddities?' When was the last time you used Win2K?

    And for crying out loud, OSX is still *beta*

  • Kudos my man.

    I just LOVE LinuxPPC. Now I might consider buying a new dual G4.

    Or maybe I should wait for the G4e. That _should_ be a sweet chip...

    Anyone have any benchmarks using the new kernel? What about the use of Altivec?

    Peace out.
  • Yup. And it will stay, as an optional download (they don't want developers asking users to drop to a CLI to install stuff, for example).

    And yeah, it's pretty much as you'd expect. I think tcsh is by default, or maybe bash. Not sure.

    You'll be happy though. :>


    - Jeff A. Campbell
    - VelociNews (http://www.velocinews.com [velocinews.com])

  • Re:Wow. (Score:3)

    by Darchmare ( 5387 ) on Wednesday September 13, 2000 @01:13AM (#783855)
    ---
    Sure. But the whole point was to give apple users a different option of UI on the hardware they liked.
    ---

    I know, and I'm cool with that. As mentioned, I use LinuxPPC as well. But what I'm saying is that crowing about having SMP would be a lot more impressive if they had the other stuff Apple has been working on as well.

    ---
    Why is tackeling SMP stupid?
    ---

    I think I must have misrepresented myself. Tackling SMP is not stupid. Making a big deal over the fact that LinuxPPC has it first is what I think is kind of stupid. LinuxPPC is lacking some very important things as well - and Apple isn't crowing at them about it.

    Plus, I imagine OSX's SMP implementation has had more thorough testing just within Apple itself than LinuxPPC's has. They can call it 'released' as much as they want, but so far I haven't seen a lot of people relying on it yet.

    Maybe my problem is more with Slashdot thinking this was an actual story.

    ---
    But why complain at all? You want to talk about 'oddities?' When was the last time you used Win2K?
    ---

    If you want to set that as your optimal user interface benchmark, then Apple has nothing to worry about. :>

    ---
    I'm sure that these people are smart and resourceful enough to find and work out 'oddities.'
    ---

    My main concern may not be 'oddities' in the traditional sense - this has little to do with bugs. I'm confident that Apple will come up with lots of bug fixes. It's the intentional stuff that gets me. Dropping the Apple menu and replacing it with the dock is not a 'bug' according to Apple, it's a feature. Despite the fact that multiple folders in it look identical and you have to wave your mouse around like a ouija board just to get file names. That's an example of the main fundamental flaw in the OSX design goals: look cool first, usability second.

    And no, I have no problems with the dock concept. I have problems with that dock. For instance, the BeOS implementation of the same concept is actually quite nice from a usability perspective.

    It just seems sadly ironic that Apple risks going from the most usable consumer OS with the worst core foundation to the consumer OS with the best core foundation and the worst usability.

    I hope they make some major changes between now and final release - but we've already hit beta and only minor interface fixes have been made. I try to have faith, but this is the same company that sold a puck mouse and chiclit keyboard for two years and is waiting until OSX to fix some major interface fuckups with QT4 and Sherlock...

    - Jeff A. Campbell
    - VelociNews (http://www.velocinews.com [velocinews.com])
  • If you look at apples history, they have always been slow with technology.

    This is the very reason I will not use a mac. But, I would like to play around with the optical mouse ...


    until (succeed) try { again(); }

  • Or BeOS, for that matter, even though BeOS has a wonderful SMP support! That's actually the reason I'm using BeOS today: the way it scales across multiple CPUs is the best among non-servers. Only Solaris can match it, but only in some functions: the UI in BeOS is completely multithreaded.

  • MacOS doesn't support SMP. It only supports
    using more then one processor to do certain
    tasks. One processor acts as master and the
    OS has the capability to assign tasks to one or
    more slaves. That not SMP!
  • [snip shopping list]

    Total is a shade under 2100 before VAT. Thats at least 300 cheaper before VAT. Plus I can shop around. Plus, I think 850Mhz PIIIs are faster than 500Mhz G4's so I can drop a bit on the processors. Plus its a better graphics card (Twin ATI Rage Pro versus one) and better sound.

    And firewire? And a ZIP drive? See - it isn't that much of a difference.

    And I have the -option- to forget 200 quid worth of gigabit ethernet, since neither my home nor work networks support it, if I choose.

    Pah! That's cheating! But unfortunately, we don't have any gigabit over copper here either. Backbone yes, on copper, no :(

    Dont get me wrong. I like Macs. Just dont like the prices, and the replace-as-upgrade syndrom.

    Don't get me wrong. I don't really like Macs... :)

  • This article reminds me of the first post trolls!
    Woo, we did it first!!!!
    LOL

  • And firewire? And a ZIP drive? See - it isn't that much of a difference.

    Hmmm, dont see Zip drives listed on the Apple site as part of the spec. Mind you I forgot a SCSI interface. So yeah, I guess it is closer than that.

    But I did spec a good sound card and a much better graphics card.

    Maybe its closer than I estimated then, although I still say dropping the processors about 12% (to 800Mhz) in speeds saves you about 300 quid in itself. Depends how you rate the 500Mhz G4 really.

    Pax,

    White Rabbit +++ Divide by Cucumber Error ++

  • Meaningless (Score:3)

    by Th3 D0t ( 204045 ) on Wednesday September 13, 2000 @05:09AM (#783862)
    PowerPC Linux Beats Apple To Full G4 SMP Support

    See, Apple probably does these little thing called testing and bug-fixing before the release.
    ---

  • People by Apples so they can use MacOS.
    I run both MacOs and Linux on my mac. Lots of people do, go sign up for the terrasoft(a mac/linux distribution) mailing lists and behold the spam that they produce

    It'd be like getting a proprietary SGI (O2, Indy, etc) and running Linux on it instead of IRIX. The user experience would be gone. So it is with Apples.
    SGI has very steadily been working to port some IRIX features into Linux. They are not abandoning IRIX, but they seem to be eager to work with Linux. They sell Linux servers. The "user experience" can change very quickly, and in the case of Linux, the user experience is very malleble in that you may change the code so it does exactly as you like!


    $var = STDIN;
    $var =~ s/\\$//;
  • what does this have to do w/my post? Stick to the topic dork.

    - Bill
  • Suckdot [suck.com] is a lot funnier!

  • Re:Hmmm (Score:1)

    by peter ( 3389 )
    Yes, exactly. Linux SMP sucked, not because of the low-level IA32 SMP stuff, but because of e.g. coarse-grained locking. Read all about it online somewhere. The point is, now that the kernel as a whole is pretty much SMP-ready, doing SMP on a G4 should be a matter of simply detecting that there are 2 cpus, and telling the second one to start running. Once that happens, PPC SMP will work as well as IA32 SMP. (Actually better I imagine, since the G4 uses a bus protocol that support SMP very efficiently.)
    #define X(x,y) x##y
  • Can you elaborate what's wrong with Linux's threading model?
  • Don't break your arm trying to pat yourself on the back.

    I'm sure Apple has had their SMP working for quite some time. They've showed it to ISVs and other developers under NDA. They do QA testing on their software, see. (most of the time)

    --
  • > I'd pick linux over a broken BSD distro any day.

    So would I, but I'm having difficulty finding a broken BSD distro. All the ones I tried worked fine.
  • Here in the UK, a dual-500Mhz G4 costs around 2400 pounds of our dodgy UK money. In comparison to a dual-Intel system (say dual 800 PIII's, around 1400-1600 UKP max??).

    With a DVD-RAM, 1Gb PC133 RAM, 10/100/1000 ethernet? I don't think so. How much would a dual 1GHz PC cost? The dual 450 (which doesn't have the DVD-RAM, half the memory and no gigabit ethernet) is a much more palatable 1600 pounds or so. OK, Macs are overpriced (IMHO) but not as much as you say.

  • Hmmm, this isn't exactly true.

    You see, in the preliminary design of the kernel, the Be Team made a choice. They could either go for huge paging reference identifiers, which would invariably slow down kernel process threading functionality but give them large amounts of memory available for externel application interfacing, etc, or have smaller pages with higher base I/O. They chose the latter option, and that's why Mozilla doesn't link properly under BeOS. It's not a toy kernel, it's just different from most other kernels in its intial design.
  • Does LinuxPPC support Altivec though? If not, will they beat Apple to SMP Altvec support? I very much doubt so. Though, it all seems pointless to me anyway. People by Apples so they can use MacOS. Why spend all that money and then waste it by running software that wasn't designed for it? It'd be like getting a proprietary SGI (O2, Indy, etc) and running Linux on it instead of IRIX. The user experience would be gone. So it is with Apples.
  • They (LinuxPPC)support SMP now on the G4's, great. But do they support the other features, like firewire, 1Gb ethernet, and Radeon?
    --

  • The dual 450 (which doesn't have the DVD-RAM, half the memory and no gigabit ethernet) is a much more palatable 1600 pounds or so.

    Where? At Dabs (typical, cheaper-than-most Mac dealer), the Dual 450 is 1600 plus VAT (at 17.5 percent, dont forget), for a 128Mb Model. The dual-500 is 2400 plus VAT, (Thats nearly 3000 altogether, BTW) for a 256Mb model.

    Give me a URL, right now, for someone in the UK shipping Dual-500 Macs with 1Gb of memory for that price. Even Apple dont list the dual-500 as shipping with 1Gb of RAM, you been doing magic mushies?

    Pax,

    White Rabbit +++ Divide by Cucumber Error ++

  • Actually, 2.4.0-test IS stable.

    It's just not finished :).

    I've been running the 2.4.0-test kernel for a couple months now, and the only crashes I've had for the last month or so have been from running CVS versions of X :).

    test7 seems to be really great - I haven't had ANY problems with it whatsoever - and the USB support is sweet - my ATAPI CD burner has decided to die on me, so I just set up my kernel to use USB (I don't normally use it, since I have no need :), and plugged in my roommate's USB CD burner - and there is was. It just shows up as another SCSI drive - very sweet.
  • Is it me or are there more older Mac's around. It seems you can hardly find any Wintel systems running Win 3.X but there a a lot of Macs running OS 7.X.

    I would say they only seem to be slower due to marketing. Pentium is still based on old 8088/86 technology.

  • Somebody is confusing "first patch" with "full SMP support".

  • Re:Except you're wrong... (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    >MacOS has never had symmetric multiprocessing.

    Incorrect. Prior to Mac OS 8.6, yes, the MP support provided via the MPLibrary was asymmetric. The primary processor (the one the cooperative Mac OS lived on) had an entirely different scheduler than the secondary (or 3rd or 4th) processors, and as a consequence had terrible scheduling characteristics. Also, interrupts were only handled by the primary processor, and you couldn't enable virtual memory.

    Apple rewrote the kernel in its entirety (it was originally written under contract by DayStar) for Mac OS 8.6, and significantly improved it in Mac OS 9 and 9.0.4. It has full SMP support for the older dual processor 8500s and 9500s, as well as the new G4 MPs. Processing loads are dynamically balanced across all available CPUs, and all can handle interrupts and work with VM enabled. The cooperative Mac OS task can be scheduled on any of the available processors.

    The kernel supports all of the power management capabilities of the 603, 604, G3 and G4 processors, and dynamically enters the various idle states to conserve power when nothing is happening. Mac OS is generally idle 98%+ of the time, so this resulted in signficant power savings on portables when Mac OS 8.6 was introduced.

    If anyone has the time to do some benchmarking, I think you'll be surprised to find that the kernel in Mac OS 9.x has significantly lower overhead (such as task-to-task signalling) than comparable kernels (Linux and Mac OS X included).
  • I've ordered a copy of the beta, and will be providing plenty of feedback when it arrives.

    I've also spent lots of quality time with DP3 and DP4, but at this point I'm going to be a bit more focused on giving detailed feedback. It's now or never, after all. :>


    - Jeff A. Campbell
    - VelociNews (http://www.velocinews.com [velocinews.com])
  • Hey, my car stereo runs on Acorns Intel StrongARM processor, so yep, if it wern't for the Archimedes thing i wouldn't be using the machien i use today.
  • First of all, there is an easy workaround on BeOS for this minor inconvenience.
    Secondly, Mozilla links just fine, it just cannot load all of its add-ons at run time (but as I said, there is a workaround). This has nothing to do with pagesize, but rather with the fact that somebody back in the old days thought that 32 MB of plugins would be more than anybody needed (this was around the time when having 32 MB in your machine was a lot!) Then along came this lumbering hulk called Mozilla, a webbrowser that is almost an operating system by itself, and requires a whopping 50 megs of plugins just to run.
  • i wonder if this was rushed out the door today as a PR stunt, just so LinuxPPC could claim some sort of techinical superiority over Apple? they've pulled this sort of thing in the past, piling the FUD [theregister.co.uk] on TerraSoft, which makes a competing PPC Linux distro, over clustered Linux-on-Mac solutions.

    they may make the platform's #1 distro, but they play dirty as hell.
  • Hmm... Could you just pull up a Telnet client and connect to localhost?
  • > When is Linux going to get decent SMP support?

    If you mean "when will there will be a stable Linux release with decent SMP support"
    then the answer is "very soon" ie, shortly after 2.4.0 final is released.

    Linux 2.2.x is not very good at SMP. That isn't news, everyone knows it. It's no secret.

    Linux 2.4.0-test though scales MUCH better. Of course you can't recommend it to ppl yet because it's unfinished and not stable. But SMP scalability is fixed. (fixed == vastly improved, but wait for benchmarks..)

  • This new SMP kernel is hosted on Terrasoft's ftp server. If I'm not mistaken.

    --

  • Nice kit, shame about the cost. (Score:3)

    by WhyteRabbyt ( 85754 ) on Wednesday September 13, 2000 @12:40AM (#783886) Homepage

    Here in the UK, a dual-500Mhz G4 costs around 2400 pounds of our dodgy UK money. In comparison to a dual-Intel system (say dual 800 PIII's, around 1400-1600 UKP max??). Meanwhile, I cant just pull the motherboard out of my blue'n'white G3 and replace it with a dual G4-capable one. The best I can do is a single-G4 daughterboard, and compromised performance on that because of the older motherboard.

    Its one hell of a price premium on a shiny box and a fancy front end, especially if you wind up not actually using OSX anyways. Plus peripherals cost more, high-end consumer graphics boards for the Mac are impossible to find, and less likely to be supported. So even although I think they're dead pretty, and high on Cool Points, I'll pass.

    Next revision of my system is an Abit VP6 (when it comes out) and twin Celeron II's running as fast as I can get them to go. I'll save about 2 grand.

    Pax,

    White Rabbit +++ Divide by Cucumber Error ++

  • has anyone fixed that whole no DVD, USB, winmodem support problem yet. Why concentrate so much on all these great new things (don't get me wrong this is good) when we can't even support the huge hardware base of our biggest competitor. Until we can support the same stuff Windows supports we are never going to make it. I know there are great things going on but don't get all excited until we can do the simple things first. Regular users don't want SMP support that want to be able to connect to the internet and type documents that there boss can read.
  • >cant just pull the motherboard out of my blue'n'white G3 and replace it with a dual G4-capable one. The best I can do is a single-G4 daughterboard

    This is false, you can do better. There are several SMP G4 processor upgrade cards on the market. PowerLogix makes one of them if I recall correctly. There is talk of a 4-way G4 card coming out when processor supplies are not so constrained.

    --

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