No more mysteries: Apple's G5 versus x86, Mac OS X versus Linux

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• seanp789 - Saturday, June 4, 2005 - link

  well thats great and all but yours news says apple is switchign to intel so i dont think much will be changing in the power pc lineup

• Brazilian Joe - Saturday, June 4, 2005 - link

  I would like to see this Article re-done, with more benches to give a clearer picture. I think MACOS X should be pitched against Darwin in the PPC platform, since there may be hidden differences. Darwin works on x86 too (and x86_64?), it would be very interesting to see the SAME OS under the Mac Platform running on different hardware. And having the software compiled with the same compiler present on Darwin, we should get a more consistent result. Linux and BSD should not be ditched, however. The perfornance difference Of linux/FreeBSD/OpenBSD in PPC vs PC is also a very interesting subject to investigate.
  I think this article, along with all the complaints of inconsistency in the results, sohuld fuel a new series of articles: One, Just comparing Darwin/MacOS X on Both platforms. Another For Linux, using a GCC version as close as possible to that used on Darwin. Another for FreeBSD, and yet another for OpenBSD. The last article Would get everything and summarize. I think this would be much more complete and satisfying/informative for the reader crowd.

• iljitsch - Saturday, June 4, 2005 - link

  There seems to be considerable confusion between threads and processes in the review. I have no trouble believing that MacOS doesn't do so well with process gymnastics, but considering the way Apple itself leverages threads, I would assume those perform much better.
  
  I don't understand why Apache 1.3 was used here, Apache 2.0 has much better multiprocessor capabilities and would have allowed to test the difference between the request-are-handled-in-processes and requests-are-handled-in-threads ways of doing things.

• Phil - Saturday, June 4, 2005 - link

  #79: Wow. I had no idea that they were actually going to do it, I had assumed that it was typical industry nonsense!
  If this is true, then IMHO Apple won't be in much of a better position (with regards to this article) as they'll still need to work on the OS, regardless.
  
  Can anyone speculate as to why they *really* want to switch to x86/Intel? I wonder if they'll consider AMD too...

• rorsten - Saturday, June 4, 2005 - link

  Uhm, the estimation for power consumption is completely wrong. The only significant CMOS power consumption - especially for an SOI chip - is the current required to charge or discharge the gates of the FETs, which only happens when a value changes (the clock accounts for most of the power consumption on a modern synchronous chip). Since we're talking about current only, this is purely resistive power, I^2R style, and since the current is related to the number of transitions per second, increasing the clock rate linearly increases the current which quadratically increases the power consumption.

• kamper - Saturday, June 4, 2005 - link

  Here's another story about Apple and Intel from cnet:
  http://news.com.com/Apple+to+ditch+IBM%2C+switch+t...
  
  Interesting in the context of this article but I won't believe it without much more substantial proof :)
  
  +1 on getting a db test using the same os on all architectures whether it be linux or bsd
  
  +1 on fixing the table so that it renders in firefox

• shanep - Saturday, June 4, 2005 - link

  Re: NetBSD.
  
  Sorry, I just noticed it is not supported yet by NetBSD.
  
  Forget I mentioned it.
  

• shanep - Saturday, June 4, 2005 - link

  "Wessonality: Our next project if we can keep the G5 long enough in the labs."
  
  How about testing these machines with NetBSD 2.0.2 to keep the hardware comparison on as close an equal footing as possible.
  
  This should mostly remove many red herrings associated with multiple differences in software across different hardware.
  

• michaelok - Saturday, June 4, 2005 - link

  "i've had for awhile about OS X server handling large numbers of thread. My OS X servers ALWAYS tank hard with lots of open sessions, so i keep them around only for emergencies. T"
  
  Moshe Bar (openMosix) has been an avid Mac follower for years, I see he has a few suggestions for OSX, including ditching the Mach so you can run FreeBSD natively, which has much better peformance. In fact, thread performance is one of FreeBSDs strong points, although Linux has largely caught up.
  
  Also research his Byte articles, you can see how a proper comparison can be done, although he does not claim to be a benchmarking expert.
  
  http://www.moshebar.com/tech/?q=node/5
  http://www.byte.com/documents/s=7865/byt1064782374...
  

• johannesrexx - Saturday, June 4, 2005 - link

  Everybody should use Firefox by default because it's far more secure. Use IE only when you must.