Question on Mac Arch

[Ashcrow]

Whenever I decide this system I currently use is dead I am going to switch architectures. I've asked questions about Sparcs 64bit arch, Alphas 64bit arch, and learned why they are at 400mhz and such. Why is Mac hardware at 400-500mhz? Is it still comparible to PC hardware running Linux?

[Ashcrow]

Also, what Linux Distro do you use on your Macs?

[gorn]

yes! more life in the mac forum!
<rejoices>

yeah macs are comparable.
(http://www.apple.com/powermac/specs.html)theres 867MHz or dual 800MHz

mhz aren't everything, it's like 9 billion rpms on ata 66, apple has "1 gigaflop" of bandwidth to/from the processor (or something like that apple compared it to a highway being to narrow)

theres other things too that keep them up to speed.


my ibook just shipped, should get it thursday ;D

i'm happy.

also mac os X you might wanna try, it's bsd based but with apples great user interface.
as for distros, theres www.linuxppc.com, the most popular (it's like redhat), www.yellowdoglinux.com, also redhat based, aimed for servers more, and there www.debian.org! i use debian, works fine on my old mac here (old world) but at work (newworld) i had a buttload of trouble getting it to dual boot. i'll make a pet about it with the ibook for os 9/X/linux.

[solo]

yes! more life in the mac forum!
<rejoices>

yeah macs are comparable.
(http://www.apple.com/powermac/specs.html)theres 867MHz or dual 800MHz

mhz aren't everything, it's like 9 billion rpms on ata 66, apple has "1 gigaflop" of bandwidth to/from the processor (or something like that apple compared it to a highway being to narrow)

theres other things too that keep them up to speed.


my ibook just shipped, should get it thursday ;D

i'm happy.

also mac os X you might wanna try, it's bsd based but with apples great user interface.
as for distros, theres www.linuxppc.com, the most popular (it's like redhat), www.yellowdoglinux.com, also redhat based, aimed for servers more, and there www.debian.org! i use debian, works fine on my old mac here (old world) but at work (newworld) i had a buttload of trouble getting it to dual boot. i'll make a pet about it with the ibook for os 9/X/linux.

I'll be interested to see that PET about the iBook (got mine on the 5th; loving it ;D ).

Yeah, Macs get slammed in the marketplace because of the "megahertz myth", Folks tend to want to buy the higher numbers, without knowing much about the power of the CPU. Like the Alpha's, and Sparc's, the PowerPC has a RISC chip architechture; whereas the Intel's, and AMD's still use a RISC/CISC hybrid chip. I'm not extremely well versed in harware terms; but amounts of data throughput are the key aspects to consider in power -vs.- speed.

[gorn]

I'll be interested to see that PET about the iBook (got mine on the 5th; loving it *;D)

for yellow dog it's simple, boot off the iso and repartion and install.

for debian it's a bitch, i'll write that pet soon though prolly over the weekend.

[Ashcrow]

Is Apples processors 64bit like Sparcs and Alphas?

[speddling]

The Velocity Engine
The secret of the PowerPC G4’s phenomenal performance is its aptly named Velocity Engine. It’s the heart of a supercomputer miniaturized onto a sliver of silicon. The Velocity Engine can process data in 128-bit chunks, instead of the smaller 32-bit or 64-bit chunks used in traditional processors (it’s the 128-bit vector processing technology used in scientific supercomputers — except that we’ve added 162 new instructions to speed up computations).

In addition, the PowerPC G4 can perform four (in some cases eight) 32-bit floating-point calculations in a single cycle — two to four times faster than traditional processors.

as quoted by Apple

[Ashcrow]

... so it's 128bit processor?!? ???

[speddling]

... so it's 128bit processor?!? *???

Ahhhh..... Welcome to the "Steve Jobs Reality Distortion Field" I've rode the fringe of it for years it gets freaky weird and completely vague. Search for PowerPC, Motorola and IBM and grab some white papers.... Apple uses the Motorola version.

733- or 867MHz PowerPC G4 processor; or dual 800MHz PowerPC G4 processors
Velocity Engine vector processing unit
Full 128-bit internal memory data paths
Powerful floating-point unit supporting single-cycle, double-precision calculations
Data stream prefetching operations supporting four simultaneous 32-bit data streams
256K on-chip L2 cache running at processor speed
2MB backside L3 cache running at one-fourth the processor speed (867MHz and dual 800MHz systems)
133MHz system bus supporting over 1-GBps data throughput

What is a bit anyway??

[Ashcrow]

lol ... I am not so sure what a bit is to a processor, but I know the more the better in general :-)