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intel optimized apps(no ppc)


mikec
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##EDIT#################################################################

Progress on Mplayer: Noticeable improvement in dvd playback and divx. I've offloaded a great deal of the work onto the gpu(of supported models{GL rendering}, unsupported has an extended cache setting hardcoded).

 

Firefox: Improved page rendering, experimental support for flash(still crashes on some sites, less often

though.)

 

VLC: Exhibits some issues with gcc-4 with sse3 enabled. I'm working on fixing that this weekend. When

compiled with instructions specific to sse2 the issues go away, but playback is not as smooth due

to the lack of certain vector math routines.

 

 

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I don't know if anyone cares, but I am building intel only optimized binarys of various programs most people seem to be using. I'll host them if people want them.

Firefox

Thunderbird

Mozilla-suite

Mplayer

VLC

 

If you have other apps you want built, just comment on this topic and I'll build or attempt to build them.

 

Build system is p4 EE 3.73Ghz machine with 4Gigs of ram. x1600 so things will not take too long to build.

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somewhat smaller files and why would you want it to be a unibin if you have an intel. i also build specifically for the target cpu. p4. not athlon. if you want ppc, i'll build for g4 or g5. The whole idea of a unibin is to help in the phasing out of the ppc platform from apple. I see no purpose in a unibin of opensource software. Commerical apps like photoshop, sure, but firefox, its a waste of mine and your time.

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It would be highly optimized for the specific platform in question. Its like this, the world of unibin software is not going to evolve as apple does, its point is to phase out the no longer used architecture whilst keeping some compatibility till people jump on the x86 bandwagon. Once apple no longer sells PowerPC systems, you'll see the unibin idea die away quickly. If you remember, apple did the same thing in the 68k to PPC transition. I think it was called FatBins or something along those lines.

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unibin means also interoperability between applications. a dynamic library must have the same architecture with the executable. of course, some of them can be intel/ppc only.

anyway, unibin version does not bring any performance penalty, because there are actually two totally different applications.

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I don't know if anyone cares, but I am building intel only binarys of various programs most people seem to be using. I'll host them if people want them.

Firefox

Thunderbird

Mozilla-suite

Mplayer

VLC

 

If you have other apps you want built, just comment on this topic and I'll build or attempt to build them.

 

Build system is p4 EE 3.73Ghz machine with 4Gigs of ram. x1600 so things will not take too long to build.

 

 

Could you build also Flip4Mac and WMV Player?

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as far as flip4mac goes, contacting the author may solve that issue, but i'm looking into another way to incorporate wmv9 support. may have to be something along the lines of mplayers browser plugin.

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I think all of us would need a program like Flip4MAC (the free plugin, not the shareware) to be intel only, in order to play WMV files inside Safari, without using Rosetta.

The Flip4Mac guys have been working on UniBin for quite some time now. I hope it comes out soon. It's obviously closed-source, freeware version or not, so it's out of mikec's reach.

 

VLC's native Intel efforts are currently in Intel-only version and the nightly builds are posted at their site anyway, so I don't quite see the advantage of having a separate build.

 

The 'Intel only' concept is sort of like those 'G4-optimized', 'G5-optimized' custom builds that have been available for some apps (e.g. Firefox). Not that the general builds are bad, but I guess some people want extra oomph. Sadly, I really haven't seen much, if any, discernible performance edge using G4 optimized builds on my G4 Mac mini. In fact the customized build had more problems than official build. So forgive me for not being too hot about these kind of efforts.

 

I would be interested in seeing some benchmark numbers, though. Say, page rendering time with P4-optimized build compared to official UniBin. I mean, UniBin's Intel portion of the code is supposedly optimized for.. well.. Intel CPUs anyway, so I want to see if the effort has any meaning. If there's a need for smaller sized binary there's PPC code stripper talked about in another thread.

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Well, I like a lot movies - and thei are working quite well with divx - but what I miss most is a ac3 decoder for 5.1 sound !!! And I think a lot of people are waching movies !

Any WORKING AC3 decoder on intel macs or hackintosh will be nice .....

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The Flip4Mac guys have been working on UniBin for quite some time now. I hope it comes out soon. It's obviously closed-source, freeware version or not, so it's out of mikec's reach.

 

VLC's native Intel efforts are currently in Intel-only version and the nightly builds are posted at their site anyway, so I don't quite see the advantage of having a separate build.

 

The 'Intel only' concept is sort of like those 'G4-optimized', 'G5-optimized' custom builds that have been available for some apps (e.g. Firefox). Not that the general builds are bad, but I guess some people want extra oomph. Sadly, I really haven't seen much, if any, discernible performance edge using G4 optimized builds on my G4 Mac mini. In fact the customized build had more problems than official build. So forgive me for not being too hot about these kind of efforts.

 

I would be interested in seeing some benchmark numbers, though. Say, page rendering time with P4-optimized build compared to official UniBin. I mean, UniBin's Intel portion of the code is supposedly optimized for.. well.. Intel CPUs anyway, so I want to see if the effort has any meaning. If there's a need for smaller sized binary there's PPC code stripper talked about in another thread.

 

 

Yeah. Just compiling for the archictecture is not optimizing. Most of those so called optimized builds are not so. Take a look at optimizing things for the G4, actually optimizing it. It does speed up the application, specifically in data manipulation, etc. I'm not just building the applications, in some instances I have to rewrite portions of the code in order to take advantage of specific platform abilities. A Pentium 4 is not just a pentium 4. SSE2 is not SSE3. When I finish some of the projects, I'll gladly produce benchmarks. You'll be able to use the binary yourself to see. Just the small changes I've made to Firefox/Deerpark have improved rendering speeds, application launch times, etc. I will not however release something that is crash prone.

 

In other words, it is by no means a simple recompile, that would be pointless.

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