Interesting article for Mac multicore computers

[Michele Gavazzeni]

Maybe many here have already read this articles.
http://diglloyd.com/diglloyd/free/MultiCore/index.html

also interesting and well written is this on about memory
http://diglloyd.com/diglloyd/free/MacPro/memory.html

If you don't i think you should.

Bye

 

[Vinit Borrison]

this article is from 2007 i hope a lot has changed since then...

 

[Lexicon]

Things are slowly moving in the right direction. AMD has progressively increased memory bandwidth with new chipsets and CPUs whereas Intel (until recently) has not. Nehalem will be DDR3 with no more slowpoke FSB/CPU interface and the latest Apple demo machines have been using Nehalem so you should see a significant performance increase but programs still need to be optimized for multi-core machines with more than two cores which has been the standard for over a decade now.

 

[Michele Gavazzeni]

i hope a lot has changed since then...

Not for Apple products... maybe in their next products.

 

[Alex.Mitchell]

So yeah, here's the deal. There is rarely any linear relationship between the number of cores and performance. Having used a multi core machine since the G4 days, I can tell you that an app is never going to finish X task twice as fast because you have twice as many processors. Sometimes it's a hardware thing, sometimes it's a software thing, and sometimes it's a combination.

That said, the smart thing to do with a multi-core machine is run more than one application at once. I mean, I'm rendering in Compressor, RED Rushes, Final Cut, Photoshop, etc. all at once sometimes and let me tell you, if you've got a fast enough drive and enough RAM, you're going to notice a significant speed increase. Just 'cause some guy on the internet benched CS3 under 10.4.8 last year and discovered that Gaussian blur doesn't peg all four cores at 100% doesn't mean that current multi-core design philosophy is flawed, or that the hardware sucks. It's just that only power users are going to see the difference, which is pretty much a given when you're dealing with high end workstation hardware.

And yeah, a significant amount has changed from 10.4 to 10.5. It'll become even more pronounced as we transition to 10.6.

 

[Michele Gavazzeni]

only power users are going to see the difference

dealing with high end workstation hardware

Not really the Ram bandwidth is a limitation for all users

And Software specifications are limitations for all users