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I was watching two feeds — one at Macworld and one at Macnn.com. There wasn’t much for the common folk — the update to Mac Pro and ten features of Leopard. I was expecting more, but hey, it’s alright. Maybe they’re waiting for the next conference to really surprise us.
The PowerMac could do 16GB of RAM.
More importantly, there are TONS of hardware upgrades to this thing… it’s a monster, and very capable of replacing anything.
The XServe has gotten a lot better too it seems.
macrumors.com is a good place to watch what all happened.
BTW: Note that they Keynote said that there would be many announcements in the coming week. It’s not over yet.
The macnn feed was what I was watching, and it didn’t seem to be very complete. I’ll check out macrumors….
Bryan or Rob, could you explain to a pretty average computer user, the diffrence between a server like xserve, and a regular desktop computer like the macpro?
Like could I get an xserve and a 30″ monitor and have pretty much the same thing as having a macpro with a 30″ monitor?
Not that I am planing on doing that, but I could not see the diffrence.
The Xserve is a rack-mountable computer. There wouldn’t really be a purpose for a home user to have one of those.
It would be more expensive to run the X-Serve, but here are the BASIC differences. Yeah, rack mountable, but 1U rack mountable at that. So, slimmer case, but that also limits the peripherals you can use internally, specifcally limits cards. The remote power management feature is a new difference. The amount of RAM you can stuff into an X-Serve is different. The OS is a different version (stock). The X-Serve will only have very basic audio support. The serial port on the X-Serve is something you won’t see at all on the desktop.
I’m sure you could run the desktop OS on the server, but I dunno what the end configuration would really be like. The Mac Pro can (and often is) be used as a server, but I don’t think the X-Serve is a good solution as a desktop.
Thanks for the info. I hadnt thought about usb & firewire ports. And I did not know about the limited audio capabilities. I though they ran a diffrent OS but was not sure. Oh and probably no superdrive or similar on a server.
I haven’t been able to watch the wwdc yet. Too much traffic, cant get connected.
Oh yea, I always wanted to aks this.
How come you cant just put a bunch of processors onto or into a computer.
Like the old processors for the g3 or g4 macs. Just put like 25 or 30 in one computer and have blazing speed.
Or have like a usb dongle with a processor in it. Just plug it in and your computer runs faster.
mike3point14159 wrote:Oh yea, I always wanted to aks this.How come you cant just put a bunch of processors onto or into a computer.
Like the old processors for the g3 or g4 macs. Just put like 25 or 30 in one computer and have blazing speed.
Or have like a usb dongle with a processor in it. Just plug it in and your computer runs faster.
It’s very difficult to create an architecture that can support multiple processors, it can be like trying to have multiple brains in one’s head, though since these are artificial, it’s actually possible. However, the more processors on board, the more difficult it is to manage the power, the instruction sets, the syncronizing of these chips and more. That’s why multiple cores have become the new solution. From a power standpoint, having more than one core on a die results is FAR less power consumption, and allows for onboard control of the multiple ‘processors’. You’ll see quad-cores out very soon (not quad-processors, quad-cores on a single processor) followed by an array of multi-core upgrades. It seems that currently the pipeline leads up to a 64-core chip design. Can you imagine having 128 processors in a server? Using a dual chip design, this will be a reality before too long. I can’t wait to run Virtual Server on that!
So, to further answer your question, multiple processors have to be designed with the board they connect to, to allow multi-proc operation. I’ve seen some controller work-around type things… but the gain is marginal, you get like 10% or 15% boost on a second processor or something.
Why not on a USB? Well, the simple version is speed. The port and protocol are nowhere near fast enough to be usable as “brain-power”. But with Vista, you will see some crazy stuff like boosting your RAM with a USB drive. It won’t be fast, but it can help overall performance to a point.
I believe that temporary performance peripherals are going to be a fact of the future. In fact, it looks like the current trend is toward computer appliance type operation, and online software and storage. Then, things like “plugin performance” might actually be possible, because of the lower resource load on your local machine, coupled with higher transfer rates and lower manufacture costs.
Computers are far from the development curve slowing.
I saw the WWDC and lets just sa, as a PC user, Apple will be my next computer, so when its time, I need Rob and Bryan to help. I thought the power was awesome but the Time Machine was cool.
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