You've lost me. What do you mean by "RISC optimised" versus "CISC optimised"
in this context? So far as I'm aware, and I've been involved in this business
since long before RISC or CISC were even buzzwords, there's no global strategy
that optimises ones code for "RISC" or "CISC".
There are parts of the OS that haven't been fully optimized for PPC processors like the Kernel, Mach, & the rest of Darwin. These are big parts of the OS & any improvement in performance is important. Quartz & all the other elements of the OS are optimized (mostly because those parts are Mac only instead of being part of Apple's Darwin project) This information was found out by a few web sites (I think it was Mac Observer) & it is important. The issue is really G4/G5/VMX optimizations v.s. x86 compatibility. Since P4s & Athlons don't have VMX (they use MMX, SSE, & SSE 2 & I believe 3D Now & 3D Now 2 are Vector processors) you can't make a call to them & have it work.
I believe the problem stems from the fact that Apple was worried about Moto & their 1 GHz G4s when PCs had 2+ GHz P4s & wanted to keep their foot in the x86 door but I have no proof. Another possibility was that they wanted to look good with the open source crowd & get some more programers (similar to the XBox tactic ;-). Whatever the reason, the fact still stands that we're using an x86 developed OS & Apple hasn't done everything that can to make a fully optimized version of Darwin, Mach, etc.
-Maxwell M Cabral
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