[TCB]

Since Panther will be a "64" bit operating system....what does this mean for everyone with G4's...?? Will the performance be slower then 10.2?? I have a dual G4 and was wondering what I can expect from Panther or if it will even run on older macs. Let me know any thoughts...

 

[PosterBoy]

jfpoole is running the Panther Develeoper Preview on his Titanium PowerBook right now, and it runs fine.

--PB

 

[jfpoole]

I'm running Panther on my PowerBook (G4 667 DVI) and it works quite well. Nothing I've seen or read indicates that there will be a 64-bit version of Panther.

 

[minnes]

then what's the point of having a 64 bit cpu if it is only used in 32 mode?

 

[jfpoole]

There's still a performance increase to be had running 32-bit code on the PowerMac G5 (especially if that code has been recompiled for the PowerMac G5). I'd imagine the applications shown at the keynote were 32-bit applications, not 64-bit applications, and they were pretty snappy.

An interesting question will be how many developers will recompile their applications to take advantage of the G5.

 

[minnes]

You mean even with 32 bit code, you need to recompile to take advantage of the G5?
Do you have to include some special library?
Would you say a same mhz G5 will perform better than a G4 ?
How far off do you think a 64 bit OS is?
We just left some people with 9 who dont have enough stuff to run 10.2 or 3, if these are the first 64 bit cpus, I wonder how many years til many apps and the os is 64 bit.

it sort of makes Apple's marketing look shallow, a 64 bit cpu, but uses only 32 bit code for the forseeable future.

 

[jfpoole]

minnes,

Developers don't have to recompile their applications in order to take advantage of the G5; the applications will just run even faster if they do. Doing such a recompile shouldn't take long; I'd imagine for our software it would take just a couple of hours.

As for the operating system, I'd imagine a 64-bit version of Mac OS X will be available soon after the PowerMac G5 starts to ship.

 

[Kosh]

Minnes, the recompiles to take advantage of the chip is nothing new. This was true when we went from the G3 to G4 and then again with every revision of the G4. But even without the compiles, as jfpoole said, you will see speed improvements.

A G5 of same Mhz will definitely perform better than a G4 of the same Mhz. I saw the specints compared somewhere, but haven't seen any real-world comparisons yet.

 

[elmer]

The G5 still uses Altivec, only supercharged - I think code that was already optimized for Altivec (G4) will still retain that advantage. The effectiveness of "just a recompile" is very dependent on the type of application.
Now, things that were hand-optimized in assembly for G4 may need some work I'm guessing after a quick look at some of Apple's knowledge base docs. A small number of the rules for assembly programming are different, eg. one or two instructions mean different things or are no longer available. But anything that was totally C or Java will be almost instantly ported to G5.
As far as taking advantage of 64-bit, some people are going to be doing lots of work on that I bet (Adobe, Steinberg, eLogic, etc). Even with the compiler's smarts at optimizing, 64-bit might only speed up code that is written in a certain way. Never fear, even if your app doesn't take advantage of 64-bit, there are lots of things about the G5 that give it more bang for the GHz than the G4, for example the number of in-flight instructions and the larger L2 cache. And that's just the processor ... :drool:

 

[elmer]

I bet Panther will run faster than Jaguar on machines that shipped with Jaguar. For one thing, GCC is maturing on the PowerPC architecture, as is altivec support in it. And it does not seem as if they are adding a lot of bloat (a la Microsoft).
I believe Jobs said something like "you may want to upgrade your ATI Rage Pro". I think that's the vintage of computer that's going to have some trouble.

 

[monokitty]

I don't think the requirements for Panther will be much higher than Jaguar requirements, but I could be totally wrong on that one. Although I do believe that you won't want a G3 for it, unless it's a fast turbo-charged one.

 

[PosterBoy]

I think a G3 will work fine, it's machines like my iBook with only a Rage128 (or older) video card that are really going to suffer.

If you think the Genie effect is rough on an old card, just wait until you see Exposé chunk along.

--PB