MacOS was always the desktop environment, but Apple seems to try to make it more server-oriented soon, starting with the rack mounted servers that they will release soon, and also by introducing a number of networking software in the networking stack or the OS level. What also is worth mentioning, is that OSX is to sync with the FreeBSD 4.4 codebase for its underlying Darwin BSD subsystem (currently, MacOSX uses an older BSD 3.x version). More information and screenshots on the new OSX, codenamed Jaguar, can be found at Apple’s site.
MacOSX 10.2 to Sync with FreeBSD 4.4 Codebase
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Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
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Oh man………..Apple is on the cource to have the best OS ever with this one…….haha ms apple beat you wth the graphics :-).
I a going to be full time apple from now on.
also. with the ofloading of the graphics system to the GPU, does this mean that Altivec becomes not importent in the future, allowing Apple to begin to use the Power4 archetecture from IMB? Oh please god…that would kick butt!!!
Though after reading about the engineering prowess of the Power4 and its super performance nature, I wonder it it will be possible for Apple to take advantage of it. Some Mac users speculate that Apple would go with the Power4. It already utilizes the PowerPC ISA, so that is not an issue, but it might be a little power hungry compared to the PPC efficiency. It will be interesting to see what Jobs will say at MWNY 2002 in July… I am already too excited 🙂
I’ve been drooling over OS X and the dual-G4 PowerMac’s now for a while. Unfortunately, you’re stuck with the “Aqua”-look on the UI.
It’s too bad that Apple squashed the likes of Keliedascope (sp?) for OS X…
Cheers,
Ken
IMB, MIB, IBM,… what’s the difference?
I think the FBSD4.4-sync is great news.
Too bad I don’t have enough €€€ for 2 computers and I wont drop Wintel/BEAMD systems completely.
Apple didn’t squash kaleidoscope it simply wasn’t compatable and its creators decided not to update it.
There are themes for X. check out xthemination.maccustomise.com
Apple can move to any processor architecture they want. AltiVec is nice, but was never crutial to Apple. The problem with the Power4 is that it is damn hot and requiries a lot of power. Neither of these are dealbreakers for desktops, but the price is. The Power4 is just too expensive, but maybe not for the rackmount server they are going to introduce soon. Also Apple has gotten used to having the same processors in the portables as the desktop (the Pentium 4m is not nearly the same processor as the P4).
OSX is to sync with the FreeBSD 4.4 codebase for its underlying Darwin BSD subsystem
I am just a newbie, but I dont understand this – why are Apple taking the trouble to make a new operating system OpenDarwin and keep syching it with FreeBSD, when they can just put the Aqua over FreeBSD and forget it! (I mean they can change Aqua to make it run on FreeBSD)
The BSD license does not give you any restrictions. And they can still keep the “Aqua” user interface proprietary.
… It’s a kernel. This is kinda hard to explain Gaurang. FreeBSD is a Unix OS. The thing that makes it different from other Unix distributions is the kernel it uses, the native file system it uses, and directory structure. All the command line programs, like ls, mv, cp, ftp, echo, etc, etc are GNU programs that were compiled to run on that Unix distros kernel.
What Apple has done is compile all those programs like bash, tsch, cp, mv, top, etc on the Darwin kernel. The Darwin OS (OS X without Aqua, Quartz, QuickTime, Java, OpenGL, and other proprietary Apple technologies) is the Darwin kernel and a shell environment equivalent to FreeBSD 3.3 running on an HFS+ file system. Syncing OS X with FreeBSD 4.4 will give you an environment similar to a FreeBSD 4.4 install running on the Darwin kernel. But then you also get the benefits of all the cool Apple stuff like Quartz and QuickTime.
It’s kinda a lot more technical, but that’s a quick synopsis. Someone tell me if I’m wrong.
Second to the hardware accelerated Quartz drawing, I think GCC 3.0 has me most excited. I think it goes without saying that this new version will be better at optimizing progroms you compile with it. I’m gonna learn PPC assembly anyways because I can’t stand it when my computer is smarter than me!
>>I’m gonna learn PPC assembly anyways because I can’t stand it when my computer is smarter than me!<<
me2… let me know what documentation you find for the PPC techno… I have been going over the PDF documents from Motorola, but have not looked much further than that.
do you think IBM would develope a special CPU based on the power4 for Apple? I mean I am not happy with moto and they have been hurting a lot with the telecom problems.
and, if 10.2 is compatable with the videocards of the G3 iBooks and Desktops, you will get much better performence from it since OS X had relied a lot of the Altivec shortcuts in the g4 (that is what I have heard as why OS X is a little slugish on g3s rather than g4s).
>>do you think IBM would develope a special CPU based on the power4 for Apple?<<
Well I am not sure what is going to happen… it would be great to see IBM and Apple propose something with the Power4, it would need some slimming down from the power consumption standpoint. The Power4 is marketed towards workstations as well as servers, but what kind of workstations their talking about exactly is unclear. I think that the accomplishments that they have made with the Power4 could trickle down to the PowerPC, but I guess time will tell and what we expect to see in the future of Apple Land.
T.J. Pile, the BSD OSes do not use the GNU tools for the most part. They have their own versions of ls, mv, cp, ftp, sh, tar, etc. that predate GNU entirely. They do use gcc and some other software from the GNU project, but most of it is add-on stuff, not core. Check your manpages — you’ll see.
FreeBSD is not just a kernel. It’s a whole OS. It uses a different kernel than Darwin, however. Darwin has a BSD-flavor Unix server running on top of a Mach kernel. So, I’m not entirely sure what they mean by syncing with FreeBSD 4.4. They’re probably updating the server to support the latest features of the FreeBSD kernel, but I don’t know if this means the userland will be synced as well. Probably not, because the Darwin userland is already quite different from FreeBSD’s.
Will I finally be able to manually set my network card to full-duplex with the BSD upgrade? I know I’ve got the correct commands because I’ve done it in FreeBSD 4.5 on x86.
…because the Power4 CPUs cost $2500 EACH to manufacture. That’s Two-Thousand Five-Hundred DOLLARS EACH. This, according to Microprocessor Report/Cahner’s Instat Group. There’s a reason those machines cost in the 6 digit range.
What are the chief technical differences between the BSD kernel and
the Mach kernel? Why do Apple not use a straight BSD OS ?
Are there not components to make up a complete Mach-based OS ?
is rendezvous. I mean, when this gets picked up by 3Com, and other Card makers, this is going to make real interoperability exist in easy network set-up.
before you have touse a proprietary protocol like SMB or Appletalk, but now you get to use TCP/IP!!!!
who ever says that Apple is not the major inovator in the industry (at least during the Jobs years, the time between sucked) is a crack head.
Other than docs from Motorola and Apple, I’ve found some other documents from http://www.programmersheaven.com . At first, I was just looking around to see what it would be like, since I know a little x86 assembly. First of all I have to get a grasp of MacOS programmming, then I’ll do some inline-assembly coding.
If I remember correctly, the Power4 is compatible with the PowerPC G3. In fact it is multiple G3 cores inside of one big processor. I’m not sure if there is any special compilation that needs to be done to get this inherent multi-processing capability out of the chip. If it simply allows multiple simultaneous executions, then it could be as simple as adding an IBM fabbed motherboard to an Apple case and being on their way!
is jobs a dumb man?
no…
the latest iBook update is 6 months old, there is so much legacy equipment in the G4 series that if he was to drop support for all G3 and Pre AGP G4s he would lose a ton of cutomers.
I will bet a milllion dollors that the origional Quartz will be included and the installer will place that onthe system if you do not have the correct hardware for EQ.
so calm down, OS X was the first time that apple has ever broken Backwards compatability, according to the Apple guys that were interviews on the Eathlink Internet show when OS X was being discused.
that is 15 years of backward compatability…do you think they would break it again by forcing a hardware upgrade just a year and a half asfter OS X hit the shelfs?
Have faith in the abilities of Apple designers and developers and Business men.
Apple is going to switch to AMD x84-64 w/ GeForce. AMD and nVidia are working hand and hand, Apple already uses GeForce line, FreeBSD already supports x84-64. Makes perfect sense. Apple really will blow MS out of the water when they release this killer combo. The new Quartz running under 32 bit or 64 bit with Geforce, DDR, SMP, etc.
Apple could even include a propriety chip on the motherboards that OSX requires to run keeping clones out, since this is the big fear of Apple going to x86.
I can’t wait. And if this dream doesn’t happen I may switch once the new OSX comes out with new hardware. But there is no way I would switch now to a measily 800mhz G4.
Do you have a web link or something to prove this?
In my opinion the “clone war” (heh, no I’m not a Star Wars fan) is the least of Apple’s concern when it comes to the question of an x86 version of OSX. We’ve talked about this a lot already. Apple is a hardware and software company. To port all their software to x86 would be overkill. To support all the various x86 hardware and write drivers would be overkill.
Still, if Apple needs a cheap 64-bit CPU, Hammer is the way to go. The G5 is still shrouded in mystery. It would be fun to see Apple use AMD’s Hammer, it’ll be like a slap in the face to Motorola.
Thanx for the link, I owe ya one!
use some of the transmeta tech AMD bought? think of this….a 64-bit hammer with custom PPC emulation layer.
you get a cool CPU and get to use a new technology.
BTW, the software accelerated Quartz will still be available in Jaguar so all who fret about not being able to run Jaguar do not fear, you will just not have the hardware acceleration.
Well Apple is a member of the HyperTransport consortium, so maybe something fishy is going on over there at AMD where Apple is concerned. Though I like when Apple brings out new surprises, I don’t like all the suspense. I am waiting till after MWNY 2002 to get my next Mac, so I at least know if they make a left turn instead of the usual right turn (did that make any sense !@#$%^&*?).
Apple can just support what they support now but on the x86 platform. Nothing really changes as far as drivers go. If you plug a Win supported device in the system, it just does not support and never claimed to support it. Many manufactors would have to tweak their drivers that they write for the PPC platform a little but would not take much.
I was wondering about this: obviously the rackmount server due next week is intended for render farms (high end video and cg markets) and the scitech/ed market. But these should be relatively affordable systems. I’ve seen people say that these units shouldn’t push the high end for video cards, but if they did, could Quartz Extreme and graphics rendering be offloaded to this server product from older systems w/o the supported graphics chips? This way older systems without the GPU support could still see the benefits of Quartz Extreme even though they do not have the internal capability. This then means that maybe this “utilitarian” hardware (I’m sure it’ll still look good and could be used as a home server) will have another market space: classrooms, small design studios, homes, etc… With the rezdevous capabilities, Apple seems to have a viable home server strategy, and they’ve already stated that they have the HW too. This is what I am waiting to find out–can Quartz Extreme further offload graphics rendering not just to a GPU but to a GPU on another machine. This, I think, would be brilliant (and it seems quite possible), and it would mitigate the whining I am hearing from legacy system (and NEW iBook) owners.
that would not be practicle as the system bus can transport more information at one time than a network can.
off loading it over a network would slow it down rather than speed it up.
what would be nice is if Apple could devise a way for the iBook owners to utilise the PC card slot to accelerate their graphics…sort of like the old days when 3d acceleration was done on a daugher card.
speeking of that…my buddie back then told me I was dumb for getting a 3dLabs 2d/3d card rather than the daugher card becasue you will not be able to upgrade the 3d accelerator. oops guess who was right 🙂
Are these options still less capable than AGP? I know that otherwise the internal interconnects in the Mac world are slower than external connections. What is the transfer rate of AGP 2x?
Apple will never relese their OS on x86 hardware, for two reasons. First, Apple is a hardware company. They don’t really make money on OS X and would hardly want to go head to head with Microsoft to try to make money in the OS space. For Apple, OS X is a feature of and a reason to purchase their hardware. Second, from a technical standpoint, Apple is having enough difficult convincing all of their software vendors to port to OS X. For example, to my knowledge there is no professional music software available natively for OS X yet. Getting vendors to port their software would be even harder if Apple had to get them to do two different ports for ppc and x86. I think at this point that Apple is as firmly commited to the ppc platform as ever, especially if they’ve begun optimizing their compilers. The only question is whether they’ll buy the G5 from Motorola or IBM.
there are NO external connections that are faster than the internal ones. none, nada, zero, zip, zilch.
Gigawire can transport around 1.4 Gb/s ~175 MB/s
Gigabit ethernet can transport 1Gb/s (gigabit) ~125 MB/s
the PCI BUS can transport (if memory server) at 32 bit transfers 132 MB/s @33MHz(old spec) and 264 MB/s @ 66 MHz(new spec) , 64 bit transfers 264 MB/s @ 33 MHz (old Spec), and 528 MB/s @66MHz(new spec)
AGP 1x transfers at 266 MB/s today, AGP 4x can transfer 1 GB/s
the internal Bus is much much faster than an external bus.
even now, new external bus’ are just begining to surpass the old PCI specifications.
no one was suggesting that they make a generic port that any one can use, what they are saying is that Apple can move to x86 but have a proprietary system by keeping the OS from booting if a specific signature is not on the CPU or somthing (that can be added by AMD or who ever) and the CPU will only be available to Apple and Apple will have a diffrent PGA ziff than normal so that normal Mobos would not be able to to used.
there are tons of ways of keeping others out.
Power4 and most of IBM’s chips are based on the PPC 603, from which is born the 750 (aka G3).
Power4 is a 64bit Workstation/Mainframe/Server CPU, which is optimized for FP processing/Large Memory addressing/Parrallel and Symetrical multiprocessing.
The reason G3 was so snappy in comparison to the old 604e and it’s younger brother the G4 is that it has a lot of integer optimization which makes it “seem” snappy as the OS graphics/filesystem and apps like Office under OS9 rely heavily on Integer computes.
What is meant by workstation cpu is machines used in specialised environments to deal with one problem;
and IBM workstations are mainly used for CATIA (CAD),
Scientific, Astronomic, Atmospheric, and Weather visualisation.
These are FP heavy operations and don’t really require lots of integer operations.
In these systems memory bandwith and fancy things like NUMA, and super large caches are very important.
This just doesn’t rime with Desktop Computer.
IBM has tons of other great chips either in the works or already existing which just happen to not be Altivec based and this is where the problem lies:
a lot of energy has been put by Apple to get developpers and OSx to be optimized for the velocity engine.
IBM recently licensed Altivec from Moto, (who suxs and pretty much always has–business wise lots of red ink)
Apple I believe also has an Altivec license.
This is what I think is going to happen:
Moto is going to get out of the desktop cpu market.
They just can’t keep going the way they’ve been doing it, their CPU devision is so deep in Sh** that it’s just sad to watch them try so hard.
APPLE and IBM are either going to reafirm their partnership and design a new chip together, or Apple is going to license a lot of tech from IBM and design a new chip.
But what about AMD you ask?
well a certain CEO one day said “real man have FABS”.
Apple’s Job is really not a real Man right?
But Mr Sanders his, and he likes to share.
What happens at a FAB, such as the one in Dresden for example which is already licensed to use a lot of Motorola and IBM technology?
Which has access to Copper and SOI and .13 soon to become .9?
I think Apple has the skill and know how to make it’s own processors.
Why don’t I think they will go with x86 wholesale; because it will nothing but trouble.
As a hardware company they have a lot to loose from using undiferentiated technology.
Although I could see them do this in the 2004-05 time frame, by then things will have changed considerably.
Their business model will have had the time to adapt to OSx and they will hopefully be using it in products at the Palm end of the market, but also competing with SGI at the Origin end of the market.
At that point they will be more likely willing to diversify into the chaos of the Intel world.
maybe.
But for some reason I have faith that PPC and PPC64 are here to stay because they are technically better then Intel and AMD in terms of design (for example that the same exact chip can be used in Desktops and Notebooks and that these notebooks don’t fry an egg).
The present problems with PPC aare not really technology issues, but Moto business problems.
Moto is not putting very much energy in the G, because it don’t have the energy to spare.
Which is why I think moto needs to exit stage left, and accept a role of tech inovator, for now as it tries to get it’s sh** together at last.
It would be really really sad to loose in the same five year period, Xerox, Kmart, Polaroid, and Motorolla.
OSx support most music programs such as Cubase and Logic and ProTools has been announced and should be out by the time Quartz extreme and No more os9 comes to head.
(you have to remember OsX has almost no latency and the G4’s Altivec especially multiprocessor units have great DSP power that now permits most to have 32 tracks of realtime music without PCI accelerators.)
I’m not sure how “dp” go the idea that Apples internal buses are slower than there external buses.
What do you think feeds the external bus?
the new G4’s uses something called the MaxBus which huge, and in turns feeds the PCI bus, and here is where I think you might have read the slow issue, which is with the ATA66 bus which even though slower than ATA133, is still not any slower than either fire or USB or Gigabit ethernet.
Even when GigaFirewire comes out (IEE1394b) the internal buses will be Hypertransport and Rapid IO, which are very much speed deamons.
PS: the GPU is not necessary for a render farm, which is Headless and therefore has no need for onscreen graphics accceleration.
PPS: I agree with you Aaron except that I do think Apple could ditch both and Fab their own at AMD/TSMC/UMC.
PPPS: Ian, Apple can’t just move to x86 because it’s not the only one who has to move; and as we remember at the Raphsody stage of OSx no one wanted to move to Objective C and new API, let alone a completely new Platform.
“…Nothing really changes as far as drivers go. If you plug a Win supported device in the system, it just does not support and never claimed to support it…”
Actually it changes everything in terms of drivers. Take video card drivers for example. Current Mac drivers won’t work on x86 platform, and Windows drivers won’t work on Mac. That means developers have to writte a new set of drivers for the Mach kernel but on the x86 platform. The fact that drivers have to be rewritten is a big change enough.
“Many manufactors would have to tweak their drivers that they write for the PPC platform a little but would not take much.”
This is possible, provided that they are willing to do all that work. You make it sound so easy, try writing a device driver yourself. I don’t mean to offend you, perhaps it’s just my inability as a programmer, to write a device driver therefore I do not take this issue so lightly.
do you think that a PC card device might be devised for the iBook owners who want to use the QE? I mean I think tha tit is possable…..or perhaps 10.2.1 will have support for PCI based cards as well.
Couldn’t agree more with you seabass. Good points in your post. I overlooked the fact that AMD has its own Fab, and willing to share. Even if Apple & AMD don’t partner up to develop a chip, or if Apple doesn’t use Hammer, there are still resources to be shared.
Your prediction for the future of Apple, IBM, Motorola is same as mine. But to me it seems like Apple doesn’t have someone who focuses mainly on desktop CPUs. Intel and AMD focus mainly on desktop and notebook CPUs, their embedded processors are smaller pieces of their business. Motorola focuses mainly on embedded CPUs, and IBM focuses on server chips. So PPC on the desktop is not getting as much attention, and I do think Apple should be taking over the research and development of future chips for their platform.
hmmm
well I don’t see why IBM could not make the CPUs, or why one of the other PPC CPUs can not be used…..what would rule is if Apple make a rackmount with the power4!!!!! that would get them into the highend bigtime!!!
perhaps oneday, we will see Apple using Linux on a highend server becasue that is to become the anointed unified Unix for the industry.
well I went over there and looked at their product catalog.
the 750fx was the best performer, I do not know what the marketing name is, but it is ment for embeded situations and scales to 1 GHz.
I have no idea what they are working on so I could nottell you that, but at least apple has a source for 1 GHz CPUs if they dump Moto.
For some reason I had the impression that the Card Bus device is attached to the PCI bus, so if that’s the case I don’t think it’s possible.
Also I think people are freaking out ot much about this Extreme Quartz thing.
I’m Running X on a B&W G3 300, which is to say not a G4 with altivec; and this is fine for me. and with a Rage128 which is specifically not optimised in OSX
That EQ or is it QE is not accelerated, doesn’t mean it’s not usable.
You just wont have the bestest of the bestest. but is that always necessary?
The reason PCI is not supported is Bandwith.
PCI was designed by Intel as a replacement for ISA/EISA; but when graphics became a big deal, it very fast became a bottle neck because all the information has to go trough the CPU+cache before it reaches the memory, and go back again.
This was a major bottleneck as that cpu should be worrying about other things.
AGP was therefore designed by Intel to deal with this issue; by completely bypassing the bottleneck and Maximizing the available bandwidth between the GPU and the memory.
That’s why PCI ain’t gonna cut it, and is also a waste of time because it is about to be legacized by a combo of, infiniband (Intel), Hypertransport (AMD), and RapidIO (Motorola).
There are a couple of faster version of PCI (PCIX and MicroPCI) but they are positioned for completely different market spaces (Servers and Embeded); and are not really slated to become real in the consumer/prosumer market.
Also one of the reason there is so many different flavors of PPC cpu’s is in Market differentiation, and the only reason for Apple to produce Power4 based machines, would be to go rise the SantaClara beast against it, as well as Sun, HPQ, and it’s partner IBM.
Apple is just not in this position yet.
It first has to stay focused in the markets and price ranges where it’s strong, and at some later time start marching into SGI space, because that would be where they already have seats and attention as lower end competitors of SGI.
Then and only then will it have the real strength to go against the Big Guys; but for that it has to really offer amazing performance advantages with applications it never has had in it’s stables. (Oracle, Sybase, DB2, Websphere, etc.) it might have WebObjects and Mysql, but that ain’t going to cut it.
Jeremy, I don’t think keeping others out is Apples priority as opposed to deferentiation.
Right now, it’s very Hard to compare Apples with Intels, because an Apple and a Pare are both very good to eat, are similar, but different enough that saying one is better then the other is kind of a joke.
But when you have to compare a Granny Smith with a Red and Delicious, that is more of an issue.
The bottle neck from PCI is the fact that the PCI bus has to go through the north bridge to reach RAM, once video memory runs out. AGP was designed to have a direct path to system memory thus cutting out the need for a trip through the north bridge. On top of that, AGP runs at 66 MHz at double data rate.
During the keynote Steve made comments that work has been done to support ‘headless’ configurations.
As such don’t be surprised if the Rackmount Server Apple is about to introduce doesn’t have a graphics card at all !
(This before we get into the architectural feasibilty of offloading Aqua rendering/composition tasks through the network)
Headless configurations!!!!!
They’re only going to put a pigging X-SERVER on it aren’t they!!!!! Shame lol,I really liked the No-X Quartz layer idea.
regardless of if we should talk about it, the fact of the matter is that it won’t work anyway so lets just end the discussion all together.
the only solution to the PCI problem is for some card maker to produce a videocard for the mac that has 256MB of VRAM on it so that it will never run out and have to run the the Northbridge to get access to the main memory.
thats it!!! hey any company out there willing to supply this card should talk to apple to get support for this spesific card…..talk about extending the life of your G3s eh?