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Intel and NVIDIA Inside

September 17, 2011August 22, 2005 by Ismael Rosales

Apple is moving the Mac to an Intel chipset. Until that day in 2007, where all new Mac machines will be Intel inside, expect many surprises. The glue to any good chipset deployment is not only the underlying semiconductor design, but the application environment to write to the hardware, or application program interface (API). Apple Xcode is the technology that drives the software engine. When the multicore comes out with hyperthreading, then we’re talking a good move toward Intel. The chip will have at least two onboard processors, and two virtual processors. All eyes are watching the Intel Fall Developer Forum, to see the processor roadmap.

Along with advanced processors, comes 64-bit computing, which allows access to more than 4 GB of RAM (the 32-bit limit). Today’s Power Macs can hold 8 GB of RAM. I was told by Adobe, that Creative Suite 2 needs around 2 GB of RAM for all it’s applications, and Apple Motion definitely needs all it can get (4 GB at least). the future is always in flux.

At the end of spring and now into the summer, the GPU market has reached an inflection point. Unlike the 90 nm and 65 nm semiconductor barrier, both NVIDIA and ATI chug along with product announcements and advancements. ATI announced at Computex CrossFire, a method to bond multiple PCI/AGP video cards together for near double the performance. NVIDIA had already announced a similar solution they called SLI. NVIDIA stirred the pot again with the GeForce 7 series. if the GeForce 6 series did not scream enough, we have the latest and greatest with more transistors and higher performance.

NVIDIA spurs on interest in its product and introductions with unique characters, usually buxom women scantily clad to attract the gamers and young folk of the planet. if you recall NVIDIA creates these female persona to demonstrate the real time rendering of characters in cinematic motion. all in all we have luna, nalu, dusk, and dawn (summary below). Will these chipsets make it the Mac?

GPU NVIDIA history

G70
GeForce 7800
luna demo woman

NV40
GeForce 6800
nalu demo woman

NV35
GeForce FX 5900 series
dusk demo woman

NV30
GeForce FX 5800 series
dawn demo woman

Do you do Wintel?

May 3, 2009August 10, 2005 by Ismael Rosales

Cloak Media offers many services, and simple Windows XP integration (setting up a printer, networking, shared storage, etc.) into the Mac OS X environment is one of them. I know there are certain vertical applications that only run on Windows XP or Windows 98. On the Mac, Microsoft has VirtualPC, but it does not operate as fast as a true PC, since every service needs to be emulated. There is nothing like using an actual PC, but also expect the standard PC headaches, like viruses, spyware, malware, and regular instability.

I choose to concentrate on Apple Mac technologies. You can focus on what’s important, the applications and the workflow, not trying to get a square peg into a round whole, as is often the case on commodity hardware from the traditional Windows/Intel (Wintel) world (looking for drivers, registry fixes, scan disk, etc.). It’s worth a little more money upfront to get a system that works out of the box, without a lot of futzing, and that’s why Cloak Media works primarily with Mac OS X and Mac OS X Server.

Likewise, support costs are dramatically reduced on the Mac, since it does not break as often. In the history of Mac OS X, there has not been a single virus in the wild, but only theoretical attacks.

Apple Siggraph 2005 Booth

May 3, 2009August 8, 2005 by Ismael Rosales

Apple has historically used Siggraph to announce cool things. This year, on the opening day of the Siggraph trade show, Apple Computer announced its might mouse pointing device. This first ever Apple released multibutton mouse looks like the ordinary elongated apple single clicking device, but has a very small trackball and multiple clicking surfaces.

Also at the booth, Apple featured a fully functional studio workstation setup with full Xsan support and shared rendering and storage resources via Xserve RAID. The majority of Apple representatives work out of the Pro Applications Santa Monica Campus, and for all three days showed nothing but respect and loyalty towards their varied customers.

Important Mac Dates

May 3, 2009August 8, 2005 by Ismael Rosales

With the recent disclosure, that Apple Computer will slowly transition Mac OS X from PowerPC architecture to Intel architecture, new trade shows and events now become relevant. No longer can the Mac user rely that product announcements will come at Macworld San Francisco, NAB, WWDC, or Apple Expo Paris. Look over the upcoming dates and trade show links for the 2005 and 2006 seasons.

Linux on PowerPC

May 3, 2009August 4, 2005 by Ismael Rosales

It may seem odd, but in a high performance computing environments, it sometimes makes sense to run another UNIX variant on your stock PowerPC based Apple Mac. Over the course of several iterations, I will try to install Linux kernel 2.6.10 on a Power Mac G5, along with ancillary tools. I will report back on the results and performance testing as compared to the tried and true Mac OS X Tiger 10.4.2 release.

Apple Shake Siggraph User Group Meeting

May 3, 2009August 1, 2005 by Ismael Rosales

To a capacity crowd gathered at the Wilshire Grand Hotel in Los Angeles, CA Apple Computer extolled the benefits of Mac OS X in the field of animation, motion graphics, and advanced compositing. Showcasing the latest release of Shake, version 4, experts from South Park animation, Luma Pictures, and the Shake team walked us through the rich feature set.

Apple’s presentation was artfully orchestrated using a full high definition presentation system, which allowed the artists work to shine. Luma Pictures educated the crowd on the ease of deploying advanced PHP web applications to monitor and track visual effect shots for enterprise collaboration.

On 2 August 2005 Apple announced its first ever multibutton mouse, called the might mouse. Expect a full report later on this week on this singular product.

Apple and Autodesk

May 3, 2009August 1, 2005 by Ismael Rosales

Apple Computer and Autodesk showcased their latest offerings in compositing at Siggraph 2005. Apple hosted a Shake User Group Meeting, while Autodesk premiered 3ds Max version 8 along with other applications in their suite of visual effects applications. Apple Computer used the Siggraph event for major news on application development and hardware releases.