The Wide, Wide World of Apple

[Barrister]

Bwahahahaha.

8GB of RAM and Snow Leopard are on their way.

[Monoriu]

I'm not worried.  A company that bets all its fortunes on an implanted liver (or whatever organ that is).  The day will come when it fails 

[derspiess]

Bwahahahaha.

8GB of RAM and Snow Leopard are on their way.

Please tell me you got next day delivery.  You're cheating yourself each day you go without Snow Leopard!!

[Ed Anger]

Bwahahahaha.

8GB of RAM and Snow Leopard are on their way.

Please tell me you got next day delivery.  You're cheating yourself each day you go without Snow Leopard!!

Right now, Dudley of the Mounties is organizing a dog sled team to bring copies of Snow Leopard to the Yukon.

They'll get through.

[Baron von Schtinkenbutt]

The Mac Pro has a Nehalem 5500 series processor.  Released December '08.

The Nehalem EP (in the Mac Pro) was released in March '09.  The Nehalem Core i7 was released in December '08.

[derspiess]

One thing that just struck me about Apple fanboys is how you heard over & over how their OS was the most secure, never gets viruses, etc.  but now all they want to talk about is how super Snow Leopard is because it fixes so many security holes

[Barrister]

The Mac Pro has a Nehalem 5500 series processor.  Released December '08.

The Nehalem EP (in the Mac Pro) was released in March '09.  The Nehalem Core i7 was released in December '08.

Meh - I had a wiki link where I got those dates from.

[Barrister]

One thing that just struck me about Apple fanboys is how you heard over & over how their OS was the most secure, never gets viruses, etc.  but now all they want to talk about is how super Snow Leopard is because it fixes so many security holes

Which fanboys are those?

I'm pretty sure I haven't heard anyone on Languish say any such thing.

[Barrister]

Bwahahahaha.

8GB of RAM and Snow Leopard are on their way.

Please tell me you got next day delivery.  You're cheating yourself each day you go without Snow Leopard!!

No such thing as overnight delivery to Yukon.

[Baron von Schtinkenbutt]

The only real difference between a Kentsfield and a Nehalem's performance is some additional multithreading capabilities that you'll never see used unless you're running the computer as a server for some reason or other.

Wow, is that off the mark.

First, the Nehalem is Intel's first true multi-core microarchitecture.  All previous "multi-core" chips have been uniprocessors connected on a single slab in the same manner they would be connected on the board if they were in individual sockets.  True multi-core processors support NUMA, which allows given cores lower latency access to local resources and allows resource sharing between local cores at a lower level, including the ability of local cores to pick data out of each other's caches.  The NUMA architecture provides performance benefits in any situation where multiple resource-intensive applications are running at once, not just for multi-threaded or multi-process applications.

Second, the Nehalem has greatly increased memory bandwidth and reduced memory latency, since it has integrated memory controllers.  In fact, the Nehalem now has the concept of an "uncore", which will eventually include other formerly separate functions.  These uncore devices are connected back to the cores via the Quickpath interconnect bus, which is a vast improvement over prior Intel buses.  Essentially, the north bridge is integrated into the chip, so boards will no longer be hamstrung by outdated chipsets since each new processor will bring along its own north bridge.

On Quickpath itself, this bus is used not only to connect the cores to the uncores and to each other, but also to connect sockets together and to peripheral buses.  Its the core of the NUMA configuration, and while this has more applicability to HPC, it still promises benefits for multimedia applications.

Third, the Nehalem doesn't simply add "some additional multithreading capabilities", it adds hardware threading.  No Intel processor to date has had true hardware threading, and like the switch to a true multi-core architecture, this will result in improvements under any form of heavy load, though particularly with applications making heavy use of the memory.

In general, given the current state of consumer software there is limited benefit to the Nehalem for the consumer, but with the capability there software will catch up.  The consumer and internet server markets are not Intel's primary target for the Nehalem anyway.  This microarchitecture is a shot across IBM's bow.  IBM botched the POWER6, and while the POWER7 is promised to be far superior, IBM has yet to put their money where their mouth is.  Intel is taking advantage of IBM's weaknesses in the POWER line to wedge into the HPC market.  So far, its very promising.

As for the memory, it's weird because they're using slow RAM for something that's supposed to be a processing powerhouse. My guess is that they modified DDR2 boards to accept DDR3 to make it look more bleeding-edge (1066 is slow DDR3, but the max you can get for DDR2). Buffering might make a bit of difference, ECC absolutely will not, and in fact, might slow down the memory.

The Nehalem's memory controllers drop the memory clock one step for each additional DIMM on the channel.  With one DIMM per channel, the bus runs at 1333MHz; two drops it to 1066MHz; three drops it to 800MHz.

[Baron von Schtinkenbutt]

Meh - I had a wiki link where I got those dates from.

First off, a correction: i7 was November, not December.

Second, I see where the confusion comes from.  The Nehalem EP was released to testers and hardware manufacturers in December '08.  It was not available for purchase, however, until March '09.

[derspiess]

Which fanboys are those?

I'm pretty sure I haven't heard anyone on Languish say any such thing.

Thankfully we keep our Languish fanboys culled to a manageable number.  I've heard that practically everywhere else a fanboy pops his head up.

[Barrister]

Which fanboys are those?

I'm pretty sure I haven't heard anyone on Languish say any such thing.

Thankfully we keep our Languish fanboys culled to a manageable number.  I've heard that practically everywhere else a fanboy pops his head up.

Well I think you should direct your comments to what is actually said in the conversation.

The general opinion I've read is that on a practical basis Mac OS X is much safer than Windows, but only due to there being such a very small number of trojans/viruses actually written for OS X, and not due to any inherent characteristic in OS X.

[DontSayBanana]

[snip reaming]

Ouch. I'll concede while I can still keep it down to a week without sitting down normally.

Thanks for the heads-up on the stepdown in banks 2 and 3, BTW; I was wondering why they were reporting the bus speed on the motherboard in such a funny way.

[Barrister]

Apple special announcement September 9.  Looks like new iPods for the holidays!






http://arstechnica.com/apple/news/2009/08/apple-confirms-september-9-2009-rock-and-roll-event.ars