On 8 Aug 2006 at 17:57, Darcy James Argue wrote: > On 08 Aug 2006, at 5:35 PM, Tyler Turner wrote: > > > You would get this benefit from a single Core 2 Duo > > processor. The processor includes two processing > > cores. You're not getting 4 of these with the new > > Apple's - you're getting 2. They're just claiming that > > since each processor has 2 cores, you're getting the > > effect of 4 processors. > > I'm afraid I can't make any sense of what you're saying. You're > claiming that the dual-core Core 2 Duos work as well (or better than, > actually) dual processors -- which is true. But then you're saying > that if you combine two multi-core processors, they stop working like > dual processors?
I think he's making a bang-for-the-buck point. That is, if the dual core costs twice what the single core costs, you get better performance (though certainly not a doubling of it), maybe even 1.5 times (if you're lucky). But if you buy two, you've paid four times as much to get 2.25X the performance (1.5 X 1.5). That doesn't look like very good value. Plus, at a certain point, there is a performance ceiling in terms of what a user conducting normal tasks will notice. Perhaps long calculations will be greatly shortened by the 2 dual cores, but if that's not a task that's performed often, it won't be much of a real- world improvement in performance. > Seriously, Apple has been using multiple processors for *years*. . . . Because they have to, no? On PCs, you only see it in high-end workstations and servers. Why? Because there was no need for the extra power. > . . . They > have spent a long time optimizing everything in the OS to exploit > multiple processors. Every high-end Apple app is optimized for > multiple processors. I have no idea where you're getting the idea > that the second dual-core processor will just sit there, idle -- it's > simply not true. On PCs, the software is *not* optimized in that way because the hardware and OS were already fast enough to not need to throw more hardware at it to get reasonable performance. This former disadvantage may turn out to be a great advantage now, in that the real-world software on the Mac side may show real benefits from the dual cores and dual processors, while on the PC side, the software and OS are not really optimized for that yet. This could allow Apple to leapfrog over the the PC in performance after years of lagging in terms of bang for the buck. -- David W. Fenton http://dfenton.com David Fenton Associates http://dfenton.com/DFA/ _______________________________________________ Finale mailing list [email protected] http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
