The Logic Off Topic list

This article explains why macs are faster even with a slightly slower buss 
speed .. because they have multiple busses dedicated to different processes, 
while Wintel machines have a single buss which gets jammed up faster.
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<http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&ncid=77&e=2&cid=77&u=/mc/20020814

/tc_mc/analyst__dual_processors_a__smart_move_>

Analyst: Dual processors a 'smart move'
Wed Aug 14, 9:35 AM ET

by Jim Dalrymple, jdalrymple@...

While industry analysts agreed today that Apple's choice to outfit
the company's desktop line with dual processors was a good move, they
remain split on the addition of a SuperDrive equipped eMac to the
product grid. Adding yet another product to an already expanding grid
could cause confusion for consumers one analyst warned.


"This is a very smart move," Tim Bajarin, industry analyst and
president of Creative Strategies, told MacCentral. "When you deal
with the kind of work that Apple's pro users do -- in the area of
graphics, imaging and video -- you really want to have the most
powerful processors as possible. This gives the Mac community
something that's more than capable of dealing with Intel machines."

The architecture of the Power Mac is based on Apple's Xserve
rackmount server with support for up to 2GB of Double Data Rate (DDR)
memory at up to 333MHz. In addition each system includes 1MB of DDR
SRAM backside level 3 cache per processor.

The Power Mac system bus, which currently sits at up to 167MHz
supporting over 1.3GBps data throughput, doesn't look as impressive
as some PC machines currently available. Apple says there's more to
it than the numbers; architecture plays a big role in overall
performance.

"What's different in our architecture from the PC architecture --
which has a higher marketing spec number for the bus -- is that they
have every single thing on the system competing for that bus," said
Greg Joswiak, senior director of hardware product marketing at Apple.
"It has to move quickly because it has a lot of traffic and
congestion on the bus. We have each part of the system with its own
dedicated bus to the system controller. That means these things don't
have a latency or congestion as they wait for other data to migrate
through the bus."

Apple became the largest Unix ( news - web sites) operating system
vendor with the initial release of Mac OS X ( news - web sites).
Since then the company has been wooing ! the Unix developer community
to develop products for the platform and become involved with
Macintosh ( news - web sites) users. This year's Worldwide Developer
Conference in Cupertino saw the largest contingent of Unix developers
to date. Apple thinks hardware offerings of this caliber will go
further to attracting new Unix users.

"Our Power Mac customers are coming out of two places: one is our
extremely strong creative pro market and the other place we've seen
amazing interest is out of the Unix community," said Joswiak. "A dual
processor Unix workstation for $1699 is just unheard of."

With the imminent release of Mac OS X 10.2 "Jaguar," moving to dual
processors across the product line is a good move for Apple,
according to Joswiak, since the operating system takes advantage of
the dual processor architecture.

"The all dual line-up takes advantage of what we're doing with Mac OS
X," said Joswiak. "The operating system was built on an architecture
that could take! advantage of symmetric multiprocessing and not just
being a multitasking operating system, but a multithreaded operating
system. At the multitasking level, everything can take advantage of
the dual processors -- in the Mac OS 9 days, that was really only
something you would get a benefit from if the application was aware
of the dual processors. If an application is multithreaded, it can
actually split the tasks up within the application to the
multiprocessors and get another boost on performance."

"Apple has a very sensible, developmental roadmap with their pro
products -- it's important for them to add greater functionality and
greater processor speeds on a regular basis because pro users expect
that," said Tim Deal, an analyst with Technology Business Research.

eMac gets a SuperDrive

Apple also gave customers today a much-anticipated addition to its
consumer eMac. Customers can now get an eMac equipped with a
SuperDrive -- Apple's DVD! burner. Apple said customer demand made
the decision easy to add the SuperDrive as an option in the machine.

"All of us were surprised that the sell-up to the SuperDrive has been
as strong as it has been," said Joswiak. "Nobody, including
ourselves, would have predicted that 50 percent of our customers of
the flat-panel iMacs would buy up to the SuperDrive model. That's a
success you can't ignore; that's customer input that you can't ignore
and we want to give customers what they want. The SuperDrive is no
longer just a high-end feature."

Bajarin agrees with the move to put the SuperDrive in the eMac -- he
also thinks the move to get more attention from educators will
satisfy demand for the high-end optical drive.

"In the education market that is perfect, said Bajarin. "I suspect
that besides using it as a draw to get more attention in the
education market with that machine, they were probably getting beat
up from the education community. The S! uperDrive is ultimately what
people want on everything -- obviously, you pay for it, but in the
end what you want is as much flexibility as possible."

Changing product grid

After he returned to Apple, Steve Jobs ( news - web sites) simplified
the Macintosh product line to a grid of four products: a pro desktop
and portable, and a consumer desktop and portable. That product grid
has been expanding lately.

The addition of the eMac, Xserve, the availability of CRT iMacs,
Power Mac G4s, iBook and PowerBook and the iPod may add to consumer
confusion over which product best fits their needs. But Apple says
it's just covering all the bases for the customer.

"It's something we have to think about, but it's obvious that to be
successful in the consumer market you need to have broad coverage
across the main price points," said Joswiak. "If you don't cover the
price points, you may leave out an option for what they're willing to
spend."

While Tim De! al understands Apple's thought process on offering
various models of consumer and pro machines, he does see the
potential for confusing the consumer.



"My initial thought was that it would create confusion," said Deal.
"It was my understanding that when Apple introduced the flat panel
iMac they wanted to phase out the CRT models. I think they quickly
realized that if they wanted to stay competitive with their Wintel
competition they needed to have sub-$1,000 products. I see what
they're doing, trying to fill in the gaps by having products that
appeal to a wider range of consumers, but I do think it makes things
a little confusing."
iMac price cut



The iMac returned to its original selling price of $1299 today after
receiving a price hike five months ago at Macworld ( news - web
sites) Tokyo. Noting industry-wide issues with component costs for
flat panel displays and memory, Apple increased the price of the flat
panel iMac to $1399.

Lately, prices for! flat panel displays have dropped from their
previous highs, according to market research firm iSuppli/Stanford
Resources, paving the way the latest round of price reductions.

"We were in a bit of a crisis mode as far as flat panel and memory
pricing earlier in the year," said Joswiak. "It was never our
intention to keep prices high, it was all a matter of getting through
a little economic turmoil."

From: TazmnianDv@...
> This article explains why macs are faster even with a slightly slower
> buss speed .. because they have multiple busses dedicated to different
> processes, while Wintel machines have a single buss which gets jammed
> up faster.

Please note the article *never* claims Macs are faster. It just says
Apple's 167 bus speed doesn't look as impressive as some PC machines
currently available, which is very true. I'm going to buy a Mac eventually
to keep using Logic but not until either a) they honestly have as much
processing power as Windows PCs (which is still not the case) or b) some
new feature in Logic comes out that I can't live without... 

P4 motherboards have been at 400 mhz for a while now, and recently were
increased to a 533 mhz bus. I wouldn't really call 30% "slightly slower".
The SiS P4 chipsets do have multiple DMA buses similar to the multiple
buses the Macs have, and all Intel P4 chipsets have dedicated certain
amounts of bandwidth to various devices so no one device can congest the
bus, as that article says. 

Cheers :-)
Jeremy 
http://www.ixks.com/~sadus

>P4 motherboards have been at 400 mhz for a while now, and recently were
>increased to a 533 mhz bus. I wouldn't really call 30% "slightly slower".
>The SiS P4 chipsets do have multiple DMA buses similar to the multiple
>buses the Macs have, and all Intel P4 chipsets have dedicated certain
>amounts of bandwidth to various devices so no one device can congest the
>bus, as that article says. 

Evidently there are a lot of different opinions. The only way this will be 
settled (temporarily) is find an article where they actually perform the same 
task on both platforms using the same software. 

By the way, I was in Hollywood last night and saw BT give a really great 
talk. He was primarily extolling the virtues of Reason, Logic (the only 
sequencer that doesn't suck), and Absynth. However someone asked him about 
PC's and he made it clear that he does not like them at all. He said he keeps 
one in his stuido just to run Gigasampler, but he hates dealing with it. He 
also mentioned something about the fake higher speed bus rates of PC's but 
didn't want to get too technical. He is very happy with various macs - 
including a Tibook with Oygen - which he uses not only on the plane but also 
to do mobile live DJ gigs.

So if BT can 'suffer' with Macs and get done all he does with DJing, 
recording albums, producing NSync and Britney Spears, writing movie 
soundtracks (Fast and the Furious), ...., I'm sure you are wise to wait until 
Macs meet your technical requirements before moving forward.