Re: 64-bit G5?

From: Christopher Browne (cbbrowne_at_acm.org)
Date: 10/07/03 

Date: 7 Oct 2003 04:02:56 GMT

Quoth raffael@mediaone.net (Raffael Cavallaro):
> I too am disappointed, and this will certainly hold Apple back in
> the enterprise server, and high end scientific workstation market,
> but I don't think Apple went to 64 bits for those sorts of
> customers.

No, I'm sure they didn't. If I want an "enterprise server," Apple is
NOT on the radar. IBM is, with eSeries. We're unhappy with our Suns,
so we're trying to get _away_ from that. It is eminently unclear what
one should consider buying from HP; neither Alpha nor PA-RISC seem
particularly viable. SGI MIPS is only barely on the map, and that on
the "scientific workstation" side.

> Apple's core market is in Video, Photographic image manipulation, and
> DTP. For these uses, 64 bit is only about allowing larger memory
> address spaces per process, and the G5 lets you do that now.

Hmm? From what I saw in Duane's comments, this isn't something that
MacOS-X supports, G5 or no. If they aren't supporting 64 bit
pointers, by default, then you have NOT got "larger memory address
spaces per process."

And this is all _quite_ disappointing. There are only two 64 bit
architectures that seem particularly viable at this point, x86-64 and
PPC. And in order to get 64 bit support on PPC, I either have to pay
BIG bucks to IBM, or hope that Linux or NetBSD support the hardware
well enough for me to scrape off MacOS-X in favor of them.

The reason to care about PPC is NOT Apple; it is IBM... 

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