The Apple News That Got Buried

An anonymous reader writes, "Apple's Showtime event was all well and good, but the big news today was on Anandtech.com. They found that the two dual-core CPUs in the Mac Pro were not only removable, but that they were able to insert two quad-core Clovertown CPUs. OS X recognized all eight cores and it worked fine. Anandtech could not release performance numbers for the new monster, but did report they were unable to max out the CPUs."

So fast, I got first post!

[GrahamCox]

Typing this on an 8-core Mac pro, I manged to get first post! Wow, it IS fast!

Coming soon to an Apple Store near you...

[ShaunC]

"Crimson and Clover."

Apple Cores

[dotslashdot]

Shouldn't they be calling them "Apple Cores?"

Re:CPU upgrade market

[mr_neke]

Not until they lift the NDA, methinks!

completely impossible statementt

[Desolator144]

"they were unable to max out the CPUs" that is ridiculous! On PC's in VB it's pretty simple:
dim Processor1Thread as new thread(addressof sub1)
dim Processor2Thread as new thread(addressof sub2)
Processor1Thread.start()
Processor2Thread.start()
dim x as integer
sub sub1()
for x = 0 to 1000000000000000
end sub
sub sub2()
dim x as integer
for x = 0 to 1000000000000000
end sub
and repeat for 6 other threads and subs. So they either proved it doesn't really work well at all or programming on a mac is impossibly hard...or they're lying to make it sound more dramatic. So whether they're lying about not maxing it out or they're lying and you just plain can't use all 8 cores at once, it's not as good as it sounds.

Couldn't max out the CPUs?

[brundog]

..."but did report they were unable to max out the CPUs."

Try installing Vista.

Re:Great!!

[mctk]

Sure, we can upgrade the CUP. But Apple has really got to work on that CUPHOLDER. Mine snapped off 2 days out of the box.

I guess

[Anonymous Coward]

with 8 cores, that no one cares about Beowulf clusters anymore. :(

Re:Great!!

[mrchaotica]

Except for the Mac Pro, Macs don't even come with cupholders anymore (cheap bastards)!

Re:Coming soon to an Apple Store near you...

[Kenshin]

"Eight Arms To Hold You"

Or "Octomac"

Re:have to ask

[phalse phace]

If you mean Windows Vista, then the answer is no. You'll need 16 cores for that.

Re:can't max out CPUs? uh oh

[jZnat]

I think they were running the wrong program. All they had to do was launch Terminal, type in "yes", press enter, and watch as their cores blew up.

Re:completely impossible statementt

[Desolator144]

I'm 19, been in college since I was 17 cuz they made me go early since I was so smart. And forget that CS theory bullshit, the department is called IT and that's what's written on the degree. People that go to 4 year colleges for programming are beyond stupid and I've heard many stories of how all that theory and little experience forced them to go to my college for a year before anyone would hire them. But gee, at least they know when C++ was invented and how they decided to name memory addresses. And thank God they got to learn a language that's not used 4 years later when they graduate. Or maybe they got lucky and wasted thousands of dollars on learning about Shakespear, atoms, Africa, grammar, and how to turn on a computer instead and finally got to programming in year 3. I on the other time don't mess around. By the time I have my degree in PC programming/Web Development with a certificate in Web Design, I'll be better at doing my job than any 4 year idiot with a CS degree. Anyway, you sort of missed the entire point of my post which was to show how easy it was to max out the cores. I could have pasted in pages of "usefull" code but then people wouldn't have gotten it as fast.
P.S. My sig says that because the teacher, a 15 year programming veteran, and some other crazy expert with natural skills like me all couldn't design the project we were working on as fast as I could and only one other person's was virtually crash proof. If I knew every command there was, I'd be the best at programming in the world but just give me a few years hehehe

Re:I guess

[heatdeath]

with 8 cores, that no one cares about Beowulf clusters anymore. :(

I suppose you could run 8 VMs on the machine and make a Beowulf cluster out of those.

Re:completely impossible statementt

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, have fun with that wanker attitude, man.
I'm sure it will serve you really well.

Also, one thing you'd notice if you weren't a wanker 19 year-old is that most of the people on slashdot are giant nerds about something else in addition to tech. You know, like shakespeare, or atoms, or Africa, or, yes, even grammar.
In fact, rip on basically anything included in a decent 4 year education and I'm sure you'll offend someone's area of nerddom on here.
Slashdotworthy geek does not equal codemonkey.
So why dont you just pipe the fuck down for a couple years?

Also, just to nitpick... "cuz they made me go early since I was so smart" ?
What the flying fuck kind of english construction is that? You must be a *real* hotshit programmer if you fuckup your flame-code and then rip on grammar while talking about how smart you are in that fashion.
Not a programmer myself, but the way i understand it, 'grammar' is pretty key.
People understand you if put you order words wrong, or just stupidly... but last time I listened to my programmer friends geek out a misplaced character can keep a whole program from working.

so yes, good luck with your whole... thing, there

p.s. why *dont* you just go ahead and post some usefull code that will max out the cores? Something tells me that someone out there may just be able to approach your great level of skill close enough to maybe glean some glittering of insight as to what you might be trying to accomplish and share its brilliance with us plebes.

Re:Heres the real way to max out the cpus!

[daverabbitz]

I'm sure I could write a better algorithm that generates more heat.

You need to utilise multiple registers in the FPU and the SIMD engine.

Probably a lot of push/pops to cook the cache as well.

and you need to do something along the lines of:

for (i=0;i16;i++) {if(!fork()) break;}

if you want to use all 4 cores on a dual-mobo.

Re:have to ask

[arjun]

i think what you _really_ wanted to say was "640k cores ought to be enough for anybody". oh dear lord...

Miss Manners

[bdwoolman]

I never eat an Apple with a fork.

Re:Apple Cores

[LazyPhoenix]

Shhh.... the Beatles will hear you! Do you want to get sued?

Re:completely impossible statementt

[GaryPatterson]

Apart from a missing 'next' statement, why wouldn't any half-decent compiler just optimise out the pointless empty looping?

I'm pretty sure you've got to do something in a loop or it'll be dropped by the compiler as a trivial optimisation. But hey! What do I know after years of VB, VBA programming, in addition to *real* languages like C++ or *useful* things like SQL? I'm a babe in the woods compared to a Uni student full of piss and vinegar!

So - when will you debunk AnandTech? Clearly you're more knowledgeable than Mr Lal Shimpi.

Re:I guess

[Gr8Apes]

take a look at the memory latency issues. That will dimm any hopes for high end rendering, I'd think.

Re:I guess

[ThatsNotFunny]

Tell ya what, this scientist could use one for quite a few things that *are* nicely parallelizable.

Congrats! You win today's "Best Euphamism for Downloading Porn" award!

Parent is correct by GP's own standards

[syntaxglitch]

GP claims correctness because he was one of the best programmers at his school, and he started school at 17. I started university at 15 and similarly out-performed (most of) the (largely mediocre) students at my (less-than-prestigious) university as well as many of the professors. Ergo, if we assume the GP's correctness, my opinions must carry equal or greater weight than the GP's, by his own arguments.

However, I agree with the parent and think the GP is full of crap. This contradicts the starting assumption that the GP's premise is correct; therefore we see, via proof by contradiction, that the only conclusion able to be drawn is that the parent is correct and the GP is, like myself, a pretentious youth with a crappy education.

Quod erat demonstrandum. (Saying things in Latin TOTALLY clinches an argument!)

Re:completely impossible statementt

[Desolator144]

lmao! okay okay, I think I've stopped laughing enough to type now. Thanks for proving my point about people with advanced degrees though. You think you're so superior because you know more about stupid useless crap. Oh yeah, you'd meet the needs of your customer by explaining the history of Unix or whatever OS/development system you're using but I agree, do leave the actual program planning and writing to people that know what they're doing. And btw I was the lead, it was an individial project. I finished first partly because I corrected the errors in the database design that the teacher accidentally left in it and only one other person caught it. My strongest point in programming is hearing the problem and coming up with the entire program's design in about a minute in my head. Then unlike others who fumble around and realize the design has flaws while they're coding, I have it all pre-tested in my head and the only thing I can screw up is syntax or if I decide to add unplanned extra features. If I can throw together a perfect program faster than anyone else and have it ready for deployment, what other experience or training could I possibly need? Btw we did learn employment and team skills in 3 different classes for my degree too because they're actually important.

Re:completely impossible statementt

[Desolator144]

"But hey! What do I know after years of VB, VBA programming"
apparently nothing, they compile fine with supposedly the best compilers in .net and C++. If it took out everything it deemed useless, you'd be missing a lot of code and your app wouldn't work. It would waste so much resources determining if that loop variable was "used usefully" anywhere because that's a human term.

Re:completely impossible statementt

[Desolator144]

way to make the 4 year assumption there. I'm going to write and sell software myself. I looked at the badly designed crap that's out there and decided to become a programmer because I can do infinitely better. That same theory applied to computer repair and that business is running pretty well for me at the moment too.
And 4 year colleges rerun all that info from high school and middle school because they assume you paid no attention and must have cheated on the SAT/ACT's or something to get in. It's an insult really.

Alternate Blog

[raftpeople]

While Jones's transformer gets installed, don't forget that my blog is directly connected to the grid so we pretty much never have a power loss. Today I mostly covered the resolution of the piece of cheesy-poof that was stuck between the letters Z and X on my keyboard (those that have been reading my blog know the entire tale). Well, to summarize, I spilled a little diet coke in that same area just this morning, the food soaked it up, and voila, out it popped. Anyway, check it out, it's at www.foopy-seech.net