Future x86 Mac?

[johnniecarcinogen]

(Macs to have Pentium x4's?)

 

We are often hearing about what could be potentially lost with MacIntels transitions, without serious information regarding what could be gained with such CPU migration.

That's the reason why we have decided to release 2 screenshots sent to us by an anonymous source.

We do not think that this info will hurt Apple, since it simply demonstrates the huge potential offered to mac users by the future MacIntels.

 

 

 

 

Without giving much details, those captures shows MacOSX x86 running on a 4 physical CPU-based MacIntel with Hyperthreading enable. One can clearly see 4 physical processors recognized while 8 logical processors are recorded by the CPU monitor.

So MacOSX can really manage without problem any MacIntel based on either physical or logical processors.

 

http://www.hardmac.com/news/2005-10-10/#4588

[johnniecarcinogen]

This is interesting to me because it shows a strategy that Apple (as a hardware company) could take after the processor transition. If the Mac OS is available for x86 there is a possibility that it could be used with non-Apple hardware and making a quad pentium 4 processor Power Mac coupled with Apple's engineering savvy would definately set the Mac apart from some clone. Also since Apple's $2000 Powermac "runs Photoshop nearly two times faster than a Pentium 4-based system" as apple says on their site, a machine with this power would make it faster than your typical PC. http://www.apple.com/powermac/

 

Would you be interested in a Mac with 4 physical processors? (8 logical cores)

 

And do you think the current price of $1999 for a PowerMac would suffice for a machine like this from Apple?

[bofors]

Does anyone have a clue about the "stream_d" processes that are hogging six virtual processors in the Activity Monitor window? Is this some kind of problem or what?

 

Otherwise, I do not think Apple has any plans to make quad-processor systems. Do to diminishing performance returns and the fact that such quad-processor systems are well outside of Apple's niche, they will stick with dual processors, albeit with increasing number of cores. Something like a quad-Xeon is basically meant to be a medium weight server and OS X currently has some flaws in that area: http://anandtech.com/mac/showdoc.aspx?i=2436&p=1

 

I would much rather get dual-Cell blade for high performance computing than something like this.

[johnniecarcinogen]

Does anyone have a clue about the "stream_d" processes that are hogging six virtual processors in the Activity Monitor window? Is this some kind of problem or what?

 

stream_d is a processor benchmarking process.