Subject: Re: MP MAC Support
To: Chris Tribo <t1345@hopi.dtcc.edu>
From: David A. Gatwood <dgatwood@deepspace.mklinux.org>
List: port-macppc
Date: 03/01/2000 11:25:53
On Wed, 1 Mar 2000, Chris Tribo wrote:

> 	As I was telling him privatly, BeOS is reputed to be the most 
> efficient MP OS currently. I remember watching something on TV 
> (think it was at MacWorld expo) of a BeBox (Dual 604 @ 200MHz?) playing
> four 320x240 30fps movies simultaneously and still being able to 
> interact with menu's/etc without dropping a single frame.

Note: that was with a BeBox.  Four 320x240 movies, assuming 8-bit color,
is about 9 megs/second.  No SCSI-based Apple hardware could possibly
achieve that throughput, regardless of the OS, unless it had additional
hardware (like a fast SCSI controller or gigabit ethernet).  Even with
added hardware, it is unlikely that the PCI bus could handle that
throughput and still leave enough bandwidth to display the streams.


> 	If Apple would have worked with Be instead of NeXt, we probably
> would have had something similar to OS X two years ago. Anyone who has
> used Be can tell you how it makes any (non G3/G4) box SCREAM.

If they had gone with Be, they would have reinherited poorly written
MkLinux drivers.  They would still have ended up rewriting most of it from
scratch in order to get something that meets the same standards as OS X. 
Plus, they already had developers that knew Mach. If anything, choosing Be
would have taken longer, in all likelihood.

As for how well the SMP will work in OS X... we'll have to wait and see,
but given the original source base (Mach 3's SMP support is considered to
be among the most efficient as well), it is likely that it will be quite
good.


Later,
David