[MacDV] Re: MAC OS X Panther?

[Michael Winter]

On Saturday, April 26, 2003, at 07:36  PM, Thubten Kunga wrote:

> 970 Macs, which will ship with Panther, will run all the current 
> 32-bit software however faster the motherboard architecture will push 
> it. Then 64-bit recompiled versions of all our software will run twice 
> as fast as that.

That's not true, 64 bit processors aren't any faster at most operations 
than 32 bit processors. The simple way to  think about it is that 
adding 2+2 doesn't take any longer than adding 02+02. The only time 64 
bits speeds things up is when working with numbers that can't be 
adequately represented in 32 bits, such as in some scientific 
applications.

Having said that, one of the biggest benefits of having 64 bits is in 
having a larger address space. 32 bits can only address 4 GB of space, 
which is one of the reasons Macs are currently limited to 4 GB of RAM 
at best.

For more info on 32 vs. 64 bit computing, the FAQ titled "The myths and 
realities of 64 bit computing" at 
<http://www.anandtech.com/guides/viewfaq.html?i=112> .

The first couple pages of 
<http://arstechnica.com/cpu/03q1/x86-64/x86-64-1.html> may be more 
approachable (or not) to some.

> My own guess is that Panther won't run on G3 Macs. But this is purely 
> a guess and not backed up by any technical knowledge.

My guess is that it will, but its no more informed than yours :-)

-Mike