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sturm375

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Jan 8, 2002
428
0
Bakersfield, CA
This is not ment to be sarcastic, I mearly want to know what the "rumor-heads" out there expect/plan to be able to do with the new IBM Processor?


P.S. I hope this is the correct place to post this question, if not, would a mod please move it to the appropriate forum.
 

TheFink

macrumors member
Sep 26, 2002
39
0
Re: What will you do with a 64-bit Processor?

Originally posted by sturm375
This is not ment to be sarcastic, I mearly want to know what the "rumor-heads" out there expect/plan to be able to do with the new IBM Processor?


P.S. I hope this is the correct place to post this question, if not, would a mod please move it to the appropriate forum.

If I had one, I'd pretty much just look at it and masturbate every now and then. Then I'd get back to bitching about how Quicken on Mac sucks compared to the PC version.
 

sturm375

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Jan 8, 2002
428
0
Bakersfield, CA
Re: Re: What will you do with a 64-bit Processor?

Originally posted by TheFink


If I had one, I'd pretty much just look at it and [Not Pleasent] every now and then.

So would that be an Integer, Floating Point, or Vector Operation. :eek: :D


But seriously, some application that might be enhanced would be: Graphics, Audio, File Serving, and if the app is compiled for it, gaming:)
 

Anon

macrumors member
May 23, 2002
41
0
Take a very careful look at what companies Apple has bought recently and you will get an idea of what you will be able to do with a 64 bit processor.
 

Thirteenva

macrumors 6502a
Jul 18, 2002
679
0
MMMMmmmmm 64 BITS........

homerdrooling.jpg
 

sturm375

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Jan 8, 2002
428
0
Bakersfield, CA
Correction

Originally posted by Anon
Take a very careful look at what companies Apple has bought recently and you will get an idea of what you will be able to do with a 64 bit processor.

All the software that you are talking about, can be used with a 32-bit processor. It may be greatly enhanced with a 64-bit processor, but you don't need one to use this software.

Things you need a 64-bit processor for:
-Memory addressing greater than 4 GB.
-Very large hard drives.
-Natively adding/subtracting very large numbers (or very small), in a single cycle.

My guess is that you will first see these processors in high end Power Mac, Power Mac Servers, and xServe. It will be a while before they get introduced to the PowerBook.

Unless. Steve has plans for OS X, that include such massively intensive eye candy that one needs a 64-bit processor to fully render the dock. Or perhaps the next revolution in OS Navigation: First Person Shooter style OS.

I can see it now: "Where's the BFG2000 on this directory, I've got an English Lit paper due in 1 hour.":D

ps. The bit about the First person shooter OS, was sarcasim.
 

Mr. Anderson

Moderator emeritus
Nov 1, 2001
22,568
6
VA
I'm thinking I'm going to get one of the first, depending on how Apple releases them. I'd like to have multiprocessors as well, so I might wait till they become available.

But I can't wait to see how it handles 3D rendering - it should blow my current machines out of the water.

D
 

nixd2001

macrumors regular
Aug 21, 2002
179
0
UK
What to do with more than 32 bits of address space? Hmm, the first thing to note is the difference between the size of an address space and how much memory you physically have in your machine. The BSD family (and others?) hve for a while offered the ability to "memory map files". This is an area where more than 32 bits of address space is relevant, but without needing more than 4GB of memory. Let me explain more....

The traditional approach to manipulating files is to have a "current file pointer" (or offset from the start of the file) and to perform read or write operations from this pointer to memory buffers dynamically allocated to hold data. The change to memory mapped files proposes a significantly different approach to accessing the contents of a file. In essence, using a memory mapped file involves asking the OS to provide a region (PTR) of memory that corresponds to the file. Reading (PTR+N) in memory reads byte N from the file. Writing (PTR+N) in memory writes byte N in the file. Under this model, leaping all over the file is easy, directly mapping byte sequences in the file to accessiblle data stuctures is easy and all the dynamic memory allocation within the application is eliminated - this is changed to the OS making the decision of what (how much) memory is used to cache file contents. Not only is this generally more efficient, it makes it practical to easily manipulate files over 4GB without any effort.

So i think the first real use of a 64 bit processor is not being able to put more than 4GB of memory in the machine - rather, it is the easy ability to efficiently work with very large files (think raw video files, for example). This may not be immediatelly useful to all Mac users, but for the creative video community, this will provide a range of enhanced software over time.

There are also other more esoteric applications of such large address spaces. For example, the 64 bits of address can represent 40 bits of address and 24 bits of "tag type" indicating what sort of data is contained at that address. For polymorphic interpreted languages, this can provided major improvements - although esoteric as I said.

A single DVD side/layer is about 4.7GB. A DVD can be double side and double layered, giving 4x4.7GB. A 64 bit address space means there is nothing alarming about this quantity of data. A 32 bit address space requires massive fudges to handle such quanitites of data.
 

MacHack

macrumors newbie
Mar 22, 2002
21
0
Chicagoland
Not sure, but it's a year away

I think that the current processors only work well with a maximum of 2 per machine, the 970 can efficiently use up to 16. Also, I think it can perform 8 operations per clock cycle compare to 1-?? per cycle in current processors. The bus speed of 900 MHz is something like 6 times faster and needed! As far as the 64-bit goes, it is the future. I'm sure the servers could use it today, and I'd love to have it on the desktop next October. It seems like a great time to buy a new machine, or should I wait to get the 2+GHz and .9 micron chips... actually, i just ordered an eMac as a second machine to hold me over until next fall for the first 970.
oh yeah, what would I use it for that current machines can't do? Nothing, I just want the speed!
 
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