[X4U] Apple QC slipping?

[David Ledger]

Been 1/4 following this while ill, so here's my 2c now my (clinical) 
temperature is down. My opinion temperature was never up, but I'd 
like to know where Ed is coming from.  It then bounced, so I've split 
it in two or three (This bit shouldn't class as top-posting).

Part 2

>To make this simple, 64 bit processors (for Apple) are not really 
>needed if they were then Apple long ago would have made systems with 
>larger memory compacity. They have stubbornly set a max memory limit 
>on most of their processors. *IF* they are doing this (and I am 
>suggesting they are) then 64 bit is NOT needed in any stretch of the 
>imagination. Any 64 bit offering would be wasting the consumers 
>money. If on the other hand the systems they (Apple) offered larger 
>memory insertion then it would be a reasonable thing to do (64 bit). 
>Its the same with any OS (not just Apple) the need must be there 
>*OR* the marketing hype people are doing an outstanding performance.

True - very few things *need* 64 bit. There's *big* databases (and I 
suppose you might try to use an Xserve rather than HP, IBM, or even 
Sun, for that; but companies with databases that big tend to stick 
with the known solutions). And up Apple's street, graphics 
manipulation of full 70mm film frames may benefit from 64 bit. You 
don't need 64bit to get more memory into the box. You just need over 
32 bits for an individual process to be able to address over 4GB. 
64bit systems in general do not perform faster than the equivalent 
32bit system. If fact some things perform slower.

For this reason I think that Apple didn't put more than 4GB in 32bit 
systems because it wasn't really necessary. You say that Apple 
"stubbornly" set a max memory limit. I suspect that the cost of 
developing the memory management system and the cost of adding it to 
a Mac, just so that a handfull of people could complain that the 
price was too high, did not make commercial sense. The time to go 
with 64bit systems is when the price of the chips is right.

I do *not* need 64bit (yet). More than 4GB of memory would be very 
useful so that I can run more 1-2 GB processes at the same time. I've 
no doubt Apple know that. Pixar will make sure they know that. That 
they haven't done it on 32bit systems tells me it would give poor 
return on the investment.


David

part 3 follows


-- 
David Ledger - Freelance Unix Sysadmin in the UK.
HP-UX specialist of hpUG technical user group (www.hpug.org.uk)
david.ledger at ivdcs.co.uk
www.ivdcs.co.uk