[Ti] A real world comparison

[Henry Kalir]

Chris Olson wrote:

> On Jun 10, 2005, at 3:46 AM, Henry Kalir wrote:
>
>> Ditto for this one - what's the problem here? Is the Mac OS X etched 
>> in stone or something?
>
>
> Well, this is beating a dead horse because nobody is going to listen 
> anyway.  Mac fans don't want to hear that their operating system is 
> flawed.
>
I've always called a spade a spade - never said something was "perfect" 
when it clearly wasn't!

> Mac OS X's kernel is called XNU.  It's a marriage of Mach and BSD 
> kernel technologies, and is micro-kernel based.  Let's just say 
> there's some performance differences in kernel designs, and monolithic 
> kernels generally outperform micro-kernels pretty dramatically on 
> certain cpu architectures and applications.
>
> It took me a bit to find some information that's written in layman's 
> terms, but I did find a recent informative reference.  I would invite 
> anyone who's blinded by illusions of grandeur of OS X on x86 to read 
> this web page because it explains it better than I ever could:
> http://www.anandtech.com/mac/showdoc.aspx?i=2436&p=8
>
> In very basic terms, what really scares me about OS X on x86 is that 
> threading problems inherent in the kernel design can be easily made up 
> for on PowerPC by limiting your application's threads and switching to 
> vector processing (AltiVec).  On x86 this can't be done.  AltiVec 
> spanks Intel's SSE seven ways from Sunday, and Intel's 
> "hyperthreading" technology will fall flat on its face with OS X.  
> Living proof of the poor performance is already there for anybody who 
> wants to try it - in the form of x86 Darwin.
>
> Ya'll are sitting around thinking Apple is going to pull a rabbit out 
> of a hat.  It ain't gonna' happen.
>
No Chris - I **hope** that all of Apple's considerable talent is being 
applied in the most efficient manner to addressing and resolving this 
and any other transition/compatiblity issues

>> Can I ask you for something similar here? Where are you coming from? 
>> What products are you selling/developing? You seem to have an agenda 
>> that far transends a regular user's one (like myself). What gives, 
>> Chris???
>
>
> You mean where does my vested interest in PowerPC come from?  My 
> company's primary business is developing software/hardware solutions 
> for robotics processes and microprocessor-based controllers.  We're 
> into several other ventures as well.  PowerPC is used almost 
> exclusively in our robotics business, short of a limited number of 
> applications that use ARM (another RISC arch).
> -- 
> Chris

Thanks, Chris! and I think that now we all understand your concerns - 
all those changes directly affect your business. I hope that both your 
business and the Mac thrive!

Best,

Henry