Apple splutters after man says AMD first to 64-bit desktop

The Inquirer ^ | Friday 18 July 2003, 08:02 | Adamson Rust

[razorbak]

Re-defining the desktop paradigm

By Adamson Rust: Friday 18 July 2003, 08:02

THERE'S A FUN interview with the Apple hierarchy over at Digital Video Editing. After telling interviewee Charlie White all about Mac OSX and the G5, they're challenged about the statement that Apple has released the "first 64-bit desktop".

Charlie makes the Apple marketeers splutter when he mentions that BOXX shipped a dual processor 64-bit desktop on June 4th.

At first they try and tough it out, but then try and redefine the meaning of desktop.

Nor do the Apple folk seem aware that the Opteron is a 64-bit processor.

[razorbak]

Tech bump!

[Threepwood]

Ok. What does this mean? Will I be more or less likely to see those little computers that look lamps?

[razorbak]

Tech bump!

[Michael Barnes]

64bit desktop's are whole-heartedly UNEEDED right now. Sure the games might benefit, but other than that, desktop users are not going to gain much. They might actually lose some in the long run.

[razorbak]

Tech bump!

[eno_]

Memory-mapped file systems rock.

[razorbak]

Tech bump!

[BlazingArizona]

64bit desktop's are whole-heartedly UNEEDED right now. Sure the games might benefit, but other than that, desktop users are not going to gain much. They might actually lose some in the long run.

[Rising from walker, shaking cane]: "640K of RAM? Two floppy disks? Who on Earth is gonna need that much memory?

[dalereed]

"640K of RAM? Two floppy disks? Who on Earth is gonna need that much memory?"

Apparently you have too much memory, you remembered that!

[mr.pink]

64bit desktop's are whole-heartedly UNEEDED right now. Sure the games might benefit, but other than that, desktop users are not going to gain much. They might actually lose some in the long run.

I agree.

I'm running an older G4 for mostly graphics and it serves my needs just fine. I can however, see the use for this box for real high end graphics/multi-media folks.

In `97 I took a Digital 64 bit Alpha "Creation Studio" for a month long test drive....quite a machine. My partner was running Digital 64s as web servers.

[FreeManWhoCan]

Yes systems are getting faster and faster. We should never stop. I'm glad to hear that Apple is at the forefront and not Sony. I still miss my old systems:

ATARI 1200XL!
COMMODORE 64!

[Nick Danger]

Sure the games might benefit, but other than that, desktop users are not going to gain much. They might actually lose some in the long run.

That's too long. To get on the list, your quote has to be shorter than that. Like these:

• There is no reason for any individual to have a computer in his home -- Ken Olsen, founder, Digitial Equipment Corp.
• I think there is a world market for maybe five computers -- Thomas J. Watson, founder, IBM

[PokeyJoe]

Hmmmm.... is Flight Simulator 2004 written in 64 bit code? Hmmmm....

[BraveMan]

[mikegi]

Memory-mapped file systems rock.

Only if you have a smart page table manager and your processor can quickly change page descriptors. Otherwise, you'll sit around while the system juggles all those pages. This is a tough job for the paging code.

Another example, say I'm playing a large DV video file. I memory map the file so I can easily walk through it with a 64bit pointer. Well, the DV file is inevitably larger than my RAM so some pages of the system or other applications are going to be kicked out to disk as I walk through the video. I don't want this to happen since I really only needed a window on the DV file (ie. a few frames of the video). Of course, I could do this in my own app by manually tossing older pages as I walk along but now I've lost the supposed benefit of using a simple pointer to access the memory-mapped file. I'd have been just fine allocating a regular memory buffer and read in chunks of the file as I went along.

There's also the issue of read ahead for the MM file handler. If I need 100KB chunks of the file I don't want the page fault handler to only read a few 4 or 8KB pages at a time.

Otherwise, for smaller randomly accessed memory-mapped files, it's great.

[Jabba the Nutt]

Funny!!

[TheOtherOne]

I miss my TI-994A

[Timesink]

I miss my Timex Sinclair.

[TheOtherOne]

I remember loading games into the computer with an audio cassette - that just makes me laugh.