Linked by Thom Holwerda on Mon 5th Nov 2012 23:40 UTC
Another Apple-to-switch-Macs-to-ARM post. "Apple engineers have grown confident that the chip designs used for its mobile devices will one day be powerful enough to run its desktops and laptops, said three people with knowledge of the work, who asked to remain anonymous because the plans are confidential. Apple began using Intel chips for Macs in 2005." No idea when Apple will make the switch, but they will do it. I'm thinking 5-10 year timeframe.
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RE[8]: Rest assured that apple has been running arm internally
by MOS6510 on Wed 7th Nov 2012 11:44
in reply to "RE[7]: Rest assured that apple has been running arm internally"
Member since:2011-05-12
More cores will allow each core to spend more time on a certain task, but they can't work together to do one task faster (I think).
So having a whole lot of ARM chips in your Mac doesn't make it faster at CPU intensive tasks than a Mac with 4 or 8 x86 based cores.
Then again, do they need to be? Are there so many tasks that require a lot of CPU to make it show?
When you move from a normal hard disk to solid state you'll notice what a bottleneck it was.
The CPU spends a lot of time being idle. So my guess would be that a computer with a solid state disk, enough and quicker memory, faster system bus can work very well even if it has ARM CPUs compared to a x86 machine.
RE[9]: Rest assured that apple has been running arm internally
by zima on Thu 8th Nov 2012 21:12
in reply to "RE[8]: Rest assured that apple has been running arm internally"
Member since:2005-07-06
Around here I have a PC with Athlon XP 1700+ (1.46 GHz, but actually set to 1.1 GHz for hardware conservation purposes), an 11 year old CPU.
And you know what? It's still quite fine for the typical stuff (browsing, office, IM, basic media consumption), the idle thread takes ~90% of CPU time.
Though the machine has, yes, a bit more RAM than was typical in its heyday - 768 MiB. If it was dual CPU and with an SSD, I guess it would be very comfortable.
Speaking of dual - on my dual Pentium II 266 the largest "consumer" of CPU power is also the idle thread...
Features
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/24/13 17:26 UTC
So, the Xbox One disaster continues. Microsoft's policy for dealing with the used games market has reportedly leaked - and it's a clear and direct attack to destroy the used games market. Prices for used games will be set at the retail value of a new game, and retailers have to hook into Microsoft's computer systems and comply with Microsoft's terms and conditions.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/21/13 21:38 UTC
At an event earlier today, Microsoft unveiled the next Xbox - the third model, but confusingly named Xbox One. The big focus was TV, integrated Kinect, and all the other stuff we all expected to be forced down our throats. I think it took them 25 minutes to actually come to what should be the core of the story: gaming. Nothing groundbreaking in the gaming department, except for how Microsoft intends to handle the used games market and borrowing games from friends: pay up, buddy!
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/20/13 11:29 UTC
The day has finally come! Jolla has finally announced the launch device for its Sailfish operating system - and by god this is a looker. It's decidedly different from other phones out there, but it has good specifications and carries a relatively reasonably price tag - EUR 399, and it's up for pre-order today, shipping in the fourth quarter of this year.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/18/13 21:33 UTC
Why does Google get so much credit in the technology industry? Why, despite the company's many obvious failings, do many geeks and enthusiasts still hold a somewhat positive view on the all-knowing technology giant? A specific talk at Google I/O this week provides the answer.
Linked by David Adams on 05/16/13 4:23 UTC
OSNews is a sponsor of this year's O'Reilly OSCON in Portland, Oregon, USA. A lucky OSNews reader will win a free three-day pass, including two tutorials days. To win the pass, post a comment on this story saying something about Open Source Software or OSCON. We'll pick a winner at random next week. If you don't have an OSNews account, you may email us your entry. Part of the conference is the 9th annual Open Source Awards, and today the 16th is the deadline for nominations. If you'd like to nominate an outstanding open source contributor, do it here. Read on for more information about OSCON. Update: The 20% discount code for OSNews readers is "OSN."
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/11/13 21:41 UTC
"Windows is indeed slower than other operating systems in many scenarios, and the gap is worsening." That's one way to start an insider explanation of why Windows' performance isn't up to snuff. Written by someone who actually contributes code to the Windows NT kernel, the comment on Hacker News, later deleted but reposted with permission on Marc Bevand's blog, paints a very dreary picture of the state of Windows development. The root issue? Think of how Linux is developed, and you'll know the answer.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/08/13 14:22 UTC
This is one of those news items that's fun to write, fun to read, fun to comment on, and where no one will be able to say anything unkind. It's all just one big ball of awesome fluffiness. TuneTracker, the BeOS radio automation software, has just released something very special: TuneTracker System 5, the first version designed entirely and specifically for Haiku. In fact, it actually includes Haiku in the software package. Better yet, TuneTracker also unveiled several system-in-a-box products - which have Haiku and TuneTracker pre-installed.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/02/13 15:28 UTC
Exactly twenty years ago, a document was published that played a huge role in establishing the web as we know it today. Twenty years later, and this simple and straightforward document is proof of an irrefutable fact: while closed technologies can change markets, open technologies can change the world.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 04/29/13 21:06 UTC
Oh multitasking. That staple of computing that got thrown out the window with many modern smartphones. We got some rudimentary thing in its place - but even as multitasking on phone and tablets improves, its user-visible side remains cumbersome. Windows 8 has a neat implementation, and now it's time Android follows in it footsteps.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 04/24/13 22:24 UTC
They're here! Whether that excites you or not remains to be seen, but the Galaxy S4, which will most likely become the best selling Android smartphone of the year by a huge margin, has been reviewed by all the major sites, and there's lots of interesting conclusions in there - although I think most of you will get the gist.More Features »
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Member since:
2005-07-07
While there is no guaranteed improvement, I think it is imporant to keep in mind that multi-core systems can improve performance or throughput even if all they are running is single threaded processes.
Because they are almost certainly running multiple processes and being able to dedicate a core to a certain process leads to optimization options, e.g. never ever having to flush caches, potentially having dedicated memory or I/O lines, etc.
Multithreading improves the utilization of multipe-core CPUs, aber multithreading is only one of two widely deployed parallel-processing strategies (the other obviously being multiple processes)