Quad G4 Macs

[evildead]

More Rummors on Apple Servers

I just read some rumors about Apple servers at http://www.appleturns.com/ They have posted Server rumors before. They seem to say that Servers are a while away from now but they are in the works. I know that I would love to see A 4X G4 server in the racks next to the Sun servers in my server room.

 

[MrMacMan]

Cool

REAL APPLE SERVER's!!!! OOOOOHHHHHHH, AHHHHHHHH!!!!! WOW!!!

 

[mischief]

multiple processors

Exactly how many chips CAN OS X see? Some of the upgrade cards for older Macs are PCI so what's to stop from putting extra chips in those slots or installing multiple cards at once in an older machine? OS X and even OS 9.1 override the software that comes with most upgrade cards so the Driver issue shouldn't matter.......

Probably not feasable, but I'm VERY curious.

 

[MrMacMan]

Unix can support

16. I think. I'm not sure about Os X tho.

 

[mischief]

pure EVIL

So hypothetically, if I take a dual 500 G4 from last year and use three of those T-35 expansion chassis' to get 9 PCI slots, then get 7 of those sonnet PCI dual processor cards, I could use 16 G4 500's????!! Naw, it couldn't be that easy.

 

[evildead]

Re: pure EVIL

Originally posted by mischief
So hypothetically, if I take a dual 500 G4 from last year and use three of those T-35 expansion chassis' to get 9 PCI slots, then get 7 of those sonnet PCI dual processor cards, I could use 16 G4 500's????!! Naw, it couldn't be that easy.

You dont have to do that much work. You could just cluster a bunch of Mac's if you wanted that kind of processing power. May big univeristies are experimenting with clustering G3's and G4's. They are doing big time number crunching. Now is OS X... the sky is the limmit.

 

[mischief]

distance is key tho.....

The further appart the Chips, the less reliable and speedy the setup. I want to find a way of getting as many processor cards as possible on ONE mother board. Or use machines like Rev A iMacs that could be linked by their Mezzanines. Could you rig a board-level connection thru the AGP? How 'bout the memory slots?
I want as much bandwidth as possible with as little wire as possible.

 

[ShawnLavin]

Re: pure EVIL

Originally posted by mischief
So hypothetically, if I take a dual 500 G4 from last year and use three of those T-35 expansion chassis' to get 9 PCI slots, then get 7 of those sonnet PCI dual processor cards, I could use 16 G4 500's????!! Naw, it couldn't be that easy.

No, because the processor cards do NOT go into the PCI slots, the use of the term "PCI Mac" is used just to make it easier to distinguish between version with a compatible slot for the processor (pull the old one out, put in a faster one) as opposed to those where you have to get more creative as to where you put the processor (like fake it into the L2 cache slot).

 

[Scab Cake]

Is this what you're thinking...?

I was just perusing the net for G5 information (I'm looking to get a new g4, but I'm thinking I'm going to wait til January to see if the G5s get released), and I found this in an article on The Register:

The schedule may also affect Motorola's G5 chip, its first multi-core CPU, which is believed to contain four G4s operating in close harmony to generate four times the performance of a single chip at a given clock speed. With the cores so tightly coupled, users should get all the benefit of four-way multiprocessing without the usual CPU management overhead - what, in other words, stops the new dual-CPU Power Mac G4s from delivering double the performance of a single-CPU Mac.

Maybe the rumors that Apple has quad-processor G4 machines are mainly centered around this tidbit of information...

 

[mischief]

YEEHAW!!

Pardon me I seem to have **** my eyes. Where'd you find that?

 

[MrMacMan]

Cool

Apple is already making them? That was unclear.

 

[evildead]

I hear that they are

I hear that Apple is making quad rack mount servers. They are currently working on the cometic desine of it. It's an attemped to make Schools computer systems more centralizd. Part of Apples plan to take back education I think. And an attempt at breaking in the the IT world. If your network is OS X, then it could support everything. Now most networks cant talk to Mac's right in the IT world. So Companies foce Mac users to take them off there desks.

 

[thecube84]

Re: Its not worse

Originally posted by evildead
It's only optimized for some Applications. And some hardware too!!

The G4 is like that too. At least the velocity engine is.

 

[mach5]

Since Mac OS X is built to support up to 4 processors, the individual applications do not need to support multiple processors themselves. OS X automatically divides the tasks for other applications between the processors.

 

[mach5]

Stupid PC users

Since PC users measure performance only under MHz, all Intel has to do to make them upgrade their CPU is to create a chip with a huge pipeline and a high mhz (4ghz or so), which will actually have a WORSE performance if the pipeline is long enough, but since the pc users base performance on mhz only they will be tricked into upgrading. This way Intel can save money by stopping research, while still generating the same amount of sales. The only problem is that you will have to store the computer in liquid nitrogen to keep it cool enough.

 

[MasterX (OSiX)]

OSX

From mosr.com I recall a few things:
MacOSX supports a lot of CPUs, I think the number was 16 or 32, something Apple doesn't need to worry about.

The G5 "will" (might) have a multi-core. This means 2-4 CPUs on one motherbord, thus they exchange info at a rapid speed. I'm not shure about the CPUs sharing a cache because they're clustered. They might, but not shure onw that one.

Carbon and Cocoa apps will benifit up to 2x from a multi-processor, 4x with a 4 CPU setup.

Classic apps (under OS 9) will see little improvement from a 3rd or 4th processor, almost none if they have no multi-processor programming.

 

[Catfish_Man]

Multithreading

OSX will divide the load between processors, but it has to have something to divide. If you're running a single-threaded application it won't be able to use the second processor much (I think coresoundservices uses the second processor, so a game or music app would have some load taken off it). Multithreaded apps take full advantage of the second processor. Wouldn't it be fun to be playing Unreal 2 (when it comes out) with one processor doing graphics, one AI, one physics, and the fourth sound?

 

[spikey]

i thought the Over 500 Mhz G4s didnt have full MERSI support, so no quad processing?

 

[MrMacMan]

All G4 can multipe Process

All of them