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."

Yeah... really BIG news... bah

[spoco2]

Yeah, forget the set top box, forget the tinsy, tiny shuffle, forget all of that... what we really wanted to know is whether we could put in 6 more CPUs that we can afford into our Macs... THAT's what we really care about.

Really, who the frig cares from a general computing standpoint? Who needs 8 CPUs?

No, I'm not making a '640k will be enough for anyone' comment... I know 8 CPUs WILL be useful one day, and MAY be nice to have now, but generally... it's in no way the BIG news of today.

Re:Yeah... really BIG news... bah

[Jeremi]

Really, who the frig cares from a general computing standpoint? Who needs 8 CPUs?

We do! "News for Nerds", remember?

Re:How does this bode for NT6?

[dfghjk]

"...but that OS X does a better job of dividing tasks sanely to more fully utilize the chips and from what I've heard is much more capable once you move past four."

Wonder where you heard that.

"That being the case, as multiple CPUs/cores become more commonplace, I think OS X will end up with the reputation of being the faster of the two."

Reputation maybe, after all OS X has the reputation of being God's gift in certain circles. Somehow I think reality will be different just as it is now. NT's design is vastly newer, was designed from the start as SMP and has supported large CPU counts forever. OS X, on the other hand, has the antique Mach at its core and still has serious locking issues that can seriously impede performance in certain situations. Apple hasn't offering anything beyond quad-core and only recently has it offered that. OS X may be a lot of things but fast isn't one of them. Microsoft has a huge headstart here.

Re:Yeah... really BIG news... bah

[MidnightBrewer]

You mean I can have an 8-station animation render farm in one box for a fraction of the cost? Why is this not big news? As an animator, compositor and editor, I find this big news indeed.

Re:completely impossible statementt

[Anonymous Coward]

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

I'm no VB *cough* programmer, but didn't you make x a global variable in line 5, and then declare it as a local variable in sub2? And, if written properly, woudn't this *cough* program only saturate 2 processors? Finally, why not do a while(1){} type of operation on each processor rather than just counting up to a finite number (assuming VB has a while() statement)?

Just goes to show that VB *cough* programmers are a little dim...

Re:completely impossible statementt

[Anonymous Coward]

...Good luck with that degree and attitude. I have news for you: the theory (and math) learned in a computer science curriculum builds a solid foundation. Languages and frameworks come in and out of favor, but the ideas are rock solid. One that has the foundations will have a much easier time adapting to the latest and the greatest. You, your shitty attitude, and your 1337 degree on the other hand may not fare so well.

Re:How does this bode for NT6?

[Sycraft-fu]

Well I'm not going to justify their business case to you since I don't work for them. However, I'm going to go out on a limb here and say you've got no idea what you are talking about. I'm going to guess you probably do not develop enterprise telecom apps for a living. This is, in fact, what the company my friend works for does (no I'm not going to name them). I don't know why they use what they use, I don't work for them, however I'm going to guess, given that they do a good job making money, that their choice works for them. Also, given that HP markets systems for this purpose (http://www.tpc.org/tpcc/results/tpcc_result_detai l.asp?id=105112801) I'm going to guess that they aren't the only one.

Your personal feelings about Windows really aren't relevant to how useful it is or not in a given situation. Unless you have experience directly in it's use in such a situation, you are projecting your personal biases on to a situation.

Now if I were to hazard a guess as to why they might use it would be because of Visual Studio. Given that I have had developers describe it as (and I quote) "The best development environment ever," perhaps that's the reason.

Either way, I've no direct knowledge as to why they'd do this, and I'm fairly certain you don't either.

Re:I guess

[Doctor Memory]

I wonder if that's why they "couldn't max out the CPUs" — the bus was saturated.