Comments on Why does everything suck?: The False Hope Of Apple's Snow Leopard

Has anyone looked at their process list on their M...

2009-09-02T22:35:43.881-04:00

Has anyone looked at their process list on their Mac lately?
Just having the ability to run all background processes on processor A, and opening photoshop on my core B, wouldn't that make a speed increase that I would see everytime I run an app?

God you guys are dorks. Its a computer, who cares...

2009-08-31T08:03:21.998-04:00

God you guys are dorks. Its a computer, who cares. If it works and looks pretty, thats all most people care about. I could give a flip if multicores are being utilized efficiently.

you are so so so wrong my friend. let me tell you...

2009-08-28T22:11:28.644-04:00

you are so so so wrong my friend. let me tell you about this little bit of technology called pure c, it will change the game. it utilizes hyper nano threading on not just every core, but on the perimeter as well as across the total chip. It stacks and restacks each thread within itself effectivley quadrupling each threads load capacity giving searing results. so next tiem do your homework. pure c remember it. its totally oil

Even if a 486 with DOS can keep up with my typing ...

2009-05-24T14:32:45.349-04:00

Even if a 486 with DOS can keep up with my typing a document, I find comfort in the fact that once my serial processing is done, I could render texts, audio, images, video on different cores concurrently.

And send it off online, while rendering a different angle on a 3D scene I worked on earlier, watching TV on the same machine, while-I-wait :)

What a dweeb. Everything sucks because you suck. E...

2009-05-21T13:11:10.332-04:00

What a dweeb. Everything sucks because you suck. Everything rocks because I rock.

I find it odd that at this late point in Snow Leop...

2009-05-18T21:27:32.247-04:00

I find it odd that at this late point in Snow Leopard development, with builds in the hands of so many developers, there is not a single leak or benchmark related to Grand Central.

Good comment by Pete. What is all this obsession ...

2009-03-07T10:26:41.747-05:00

Good comment by Pete. What is all this obsession with the latest and greatest processors? There are only a handful of consumer related apps that actually need more CPU - gaming, video and audio (DAW). It's like people have been brainwashed by a combination of Intel and Microsoft. I'm not mentioning Apple because they really don't seem too bothered about anything more than minor incremental CPU upgrades in their consumer machines now.

Let's face it - any Core2Duo type chip from the past few years offers plenty of power for the majority of people - and I bet disk performance is the main bottleneck when people moan there computer is slow. On a Windows machine it's probably because your system is fragmented and loading a ton of cr*p on startup (anti-virus etc).

I think Apple are absolutely doing the right thing with SL in trimming it down and optimising it, as it will run better on any computer how ever many cores. Reducing the size of the executables and compressing them means everything will load quicker - and the computer will feel much snappier. Things like Grand Central are great, but loads of cores just aren't necessary for most people - they will be wasted!

Even Microsoft have finally realised people are questioning why they should have to keep on shelling out for new PCs when all they want to do is browse the web.

I am no expert in programing OS, but i think the O...

2009-02-24T22:03:03.729-05:00

I am no expert in programing OS, but i think the OS have been making a big mistake since a lot of time ago. Basically by trusting the fast development of newer and faster clock speed chips so have they wasted a lot of opportunities making their programs more efficients.

There is a lot of instructions unuesd and acts like a tail in the x86 instructions that make the hole structure heavier than it should be.

Am i right with this? Because can i still remember my old high school days when we compared the intel x86 based chips with the RISC based.

Please excuse my poor english.

Regards.

Interesting thoughts here. Perhaps we need to look...

2009-02-07T23:26:04.367-05:00

Interesting thoughts here. Perhaps we need to look at things from a different point of view. Take cars, for example. At what point does one have 'enough' horsepower and torque? For a couple of years, I drove a RAM SRT/10 that had over 500hp and 500 ft./lbs. of torque. It was fun to drive, but there were rarely occasions where I could open it up. The gas mileage was awfully low, and the speeding tickets cost me some bucks. Of course you can tell that I have long since traded that one in.

Now lets apply the same thoughts to computing. Lots of folks are buying inexpensive netbooks for web browsing and email. I guess that I'm rambling, but the there will be different fits for different applications.

I think that the real revolution will come around when we all learn to look at things in a new way to keep innovation alive.

Pete

in b4 somebody reverse-engineers Grand Central and...

2009-01-06T00:56:32.131-05:00

in b4 somebody reverse-engineers Grand Central and compiles it into the Linux kernel.

Interesting read...

2008-08-12T19:58:26.726-04:00

Interesting read...

Thanks Hank... Glad I make sense to someone period...

2008-07-14T13:52:36.358-04:00

Thanks Hank... Glad I make sense to someone periodically. Multi-core/parallelism has been a big personal area of interest for a long time. And I haven't found any silver bullets. I'd be interested in hearing from anyone who thinks we are evolving to a point here advances are getting closer.

Sorry Mr Multicore.Since I totally agree with ever...

2008-07-10T13:26:04.285-04:00

Sorry Mr Multicore.

Since I totally agree with everything you said, and you seemed to mirror/agree with much of what I said I didnt think to comment. You are absolutely right, and you have I think added substantively to the record with your comment.

Thank you very much.

No comments? :-)

2008-07-10T13:22:35.358-04:00

No comments? :-)

Having written a lot of multi-threaded application...

2008-07-08T16:36:38.318-04:00

Having written a lot of multi-threaded applications, it's clear to me that there is no free lunch when it comes to taking advantage of parallelization opportunities such as presented by multi-core chips. You need to use your brain as a programmer to think about what can run concurrently, and when you are done, your head hurts (at least mine did). Problems as simple as the need to serialize access to shared resources (certainly not an uncommon problem) can bring multicore to its knees. And I can't imagine a compiler smart enough to figure out how to parallelize an application without number of 'hints' from the programmer (who again, is forced to think).

In my opinion, Snow Leopard will take a different direction. There will be improvements to the core OS for sure. But, I predict that Apple will use multiple cores to improve areas such as UI and device support. For example, if they put a core against the UI, imagine what new kinds of animations could be done. If they put a core against DVD playback, there might finally be a reasonably priced machine that can 'boot' a DVD quickly, and not get choppy when something else is happening on the machine.

And, true to form, the scenarios enabled would have the 'WOW' factor with customers -- and not just be improvements that no-one can see, or deliver (say) a modest improvement in speed.

Some of the smartest CS minds in the world have worked on this problem for years and I just don't see a magical breakthrough just because it's Apple. (Do you really think Microsoft's Windows kernel doesn't already know how to do a lot (most?) of what Apple is likely to deliver?

Good discussion but do you really need GoB in here...

2008-06-23T22:00:59.337-04:00

Good discussion but do you really need GoB in here? He contaminates any discussion by spilling Kool-Aid over everybody.

How can you posibly say that multiple cores won't ...

2008-06-19T16:28:06.298-04:00

How can you posibly say that multiple cores won't rock with grand central???? I just about have an anurism every time I have to wait for Illustrator to finish a process on my quad machine, while I look at only one core full!!!

I don't care how you slice it, when you can do more and more things faster and at all at the same time, thanks to Grand Central, you can count me in!

As far as I'm concerned, that is doubling my computting power, hell, that's more like quadroopling processing!

Indeed dual and quad-core are not a waste of money...

2008-06-19T16:07:10.605-04:00

Indeed dual and quad-core are not a waste of money IMHO since with this small number of cores the operating system scales well at the level of process. I mean, it's highly possible that you're running two different applications doing something at the same time. Of course this starts to be false from 8 cores up.

Going back to the general question, I feel more optimistic: my point is that most applications needing power are usually more easily parallelizable; most applications that aren't easily parallelizable often don't need to be so fast. I mean, it's not a law, of course, it's just an observation.

Consider a word processor, for instance, which I believe it's a typical application not easy to parallelize. I don't believe that the basic tasks of a word processor are really CPU intensive: after all, you could write a document made by hundreds of page even in the '90s with a 680x0 microprocessor. You don't type faster than at that old time. What has changed is the complexity of the underlying windowing system (font accuracy, pixel count, effects, transparencies) but all of those things are managed by the operating system and well parallelizable.

Conversely, one could benefit for having more speed in a spreadsheet, or compressing a video or manipulating photos, and those tasks are all relatively easy to parallelize. Am I too optimistic?

Welcome back, Hank. :)I totally agree with you. I ...

2008-06-19T15:57:56.346-04:00

Welcome back, Hank. :)

I totally agree with you. I had this debate with someone a while back. Dual core/quad core processors are simply not worth it at the moment unless you only use the computer for the specific domains in which they actually benefit you (graphics, games, etc). I'd say that until Microsoft and Apple (and all the other big software companies) learn to leverage these multi-core processors effectively, they are just a waste of money (again, unless you specifically need them). "Dual core" is just another buzzword in my opinion.

Anonymous,I am not sure how one could characterize...

2008-06-19T15:19:41.462-04:00

Anonymous,

I am not sure how one could characterize any piece of software as being ethically correct or not. It doesnt seem to me ethics has anything to do with this.

But again, you are off the point which has nothing to do with whether it is good or not to do Grand Central. Of course it is. The only question is what the resulting value will be. My point is that when we go for example to chips that have 64 or 128 cores, most computer programs will *not* run anywhere near 64 or 128 times faster, and so we should not over estimate what Grand Central will facilitate.

Well, Knuth wrote the books; I've owned them for t...

2008-06-19T15:13:32.575-04:00

Well, Knuth wrote the books; I've owned them for thirty years and now they're going cheaply on Ebay.

Processors don't know a damned thing about algorithms. We started out by writing branch prediction into the compilers, later, after lengthy heuristics, put it on-chip, and finally started throwing newly found processing power at the computation itself, ignoring the edge conditions until necessary. The gains through parallelization more than made up for the latency of flushing and refilling the pipeline and invalidating the cache.

Moreover, our view of "power" is much more task-oriented today; threading, load-balancing and asynchronicity all make for a "faster" computing experience.

Grand Central might not be the philosopher's stone, but it is responsible and ethically correct approach to today's windfall in processor power.

Not everything sucks!

Anonymous,Indeed "who knows" is always a valid ans...

2008-06-19T14:30:55.624-04:00

Anonymous,

Indeed "who knows" is always a valid answer, though not something to depend on. This is particularly true when one of the greatest computer scientists and algorithm experts Donald Knuth (see comment above) doesn't think parallelism is much good for most algorithmic problems.

Unless Apple has figured out some way to travel ac...

2008-06-19T14:27:02.039-04:00

Unless Apple has figured out some way to travel across the space/time continuum, this structurally inaccurate. Still I am not saying there is no value to grand central. I am simply saying that it will not allow us to map more cores directly to more performance as clock speed did.

Clock speed is important, but so is chip architecture: Instruction pre-fetch and decoding, look-ahead buffers and caches, speculative execution, where both sides of a branch are executed before the test; all these contributed greatly to processor performance, beyond raw clock speed. The question is whether innovations of this type can be promoted to a cross-processor architecture. Who knows? There may be innovative memes floating around out there waiting for some designer's brilliant insights.

So far, I haven't found anything detailed about Gr...

2008-06-19T11:55:27.136-04:00

So far, I haven't found anything detailed about Grand Central - only the generic description of the technology on Apple's press releases that to me sounds just as a system API for a Master / Worker pattern. Being a system level, it can probably do something better than implementing it at application level, but I can't find anything exceptional with that. Does somebody have more information (non NDAed?)

Multicore is definitely over-promised. I agree wi...

2008-06-19T11:19:18.912-04:00

Multicore is definitely over-promised. I agree with what you wrote and recommend what Donald Knuth had to say on this topic:

"I might as well flame a bit about my personal unhappiness with the current trend toward multicore architecture. To me, it looks more or less like the hardware designers have run out of ideas, and that they’re trying to pass the blame for the future demise of Moore’s Law to the software writers by giving us machines that work faster only on a few key benchmarks!"