News for Wednesday, 25 October 2006

The new Xserves Xeon are not yet on sales on the Apple Store but Apple France has informed the retailers that it will be possible to give orders from tomorrow onwards. However they won't be delivered before November, which in a sense is a way for Apple people to keep their word about the Xserve's coming out in October while delaying it to November at the same time!
Some prices left me speechless...
A 300GB SAS hard disk module will cost over 1000 Euros, while a kit made of two 4GB FB-Dimm Ram will be over 6000 euros after tax.
So that's... 30,000 euros for a Xserve with 32GB RAM and three 300GB SAS hard drives! :)
...amazing ;)

About 2 months ago, we were discussing about the FB-DIMM memory in Mac Pro, and especially about the huge heatsink sitting on each modules.

Apple argues that such big heatsink can reduce the air flow required to cool them down, contributing to a more silent Mac Pro.
To try confirming this assumption, we have asked Dane-Elec to lend us 4 FB-DIMM RAM modules of 1GB RAM, featuring standard heatsink.

On the top is the Dane-Elec module (Samsung), and on the bottom is the Apple original FB-DIMM module with its larger heatsink.
We have installed them over one week in a Mac Pro 3.0GHz in addition to the 4x1GB original FD-DIMM modules from Apple.

We have installed the Dane-Elec modules in order to ensure their use during operations (8GB of RAM is a lot, and a Mac Pro does not really need them all in 100% of the time).
We have extensively used the machine during this week of testing, and we could not notice any increase of the fan rotation speed. We have used Hardware Monitor to confirm our evaluation, with or without the Dane-Elec modules fans #1 and #2 spins at 500rpm whereas fans #3 and #4 at 600rpm.
When assessing the temperature of the RAM module heatsinks, we could notice that it was slightly warmer for the Dane-Elec modules but nothing dramatical.
So, you do not really need to order your RAM modules from Apple USA.

Apple has released additional information regarding its new OSX version, Leopard, planned to be ready for Spring 2007. This rather long Leopard technology summary provides additional insights on the new features behind OSX 10.5. We have noticed the following interesting bits (despite Xcode 3.0 and Interface Builder 3.0):

Xray:
Xray is a brand-new, timeline-based performance visualization tool that gives you the ability to see how your application works like you’ve never been able to do before. It let’s you watch CPU, disk I/O, memory usage, garbage collection, events, and more in the form of graphs tied to time.
Resolution Independence:
The old assumption that displays are 72dpi has been rendered obsolete by advances in display technology. Macs now ship with displays that sport native resolutions of 100dpi or better. Furthermore, the number of pixels per inch will continue to increase dramatically over the next few years. This will make displays crisper and smoother, but it also means that interfaces that are pixel-based will shrink to the point of being unusable. The solution is to remove the 72dpi assumption that has been the norm. In Leopard, the system, including the Carbon and Cocoa frameworks, will be able to draw user interface elements using a scale factor. This will let the user interface maintain the same physical size while gaining resolution and crispness from high dpi displays.
OpenGL Improvements:
Leopard also provides a dramatic increase in OpenGL performance by offloading CPU-based processing onto another thread which can then run on a separate CPU core feeding the GPU. This can increase, or in some cases, even double the performance of OpenGL-based applications.
64-bit:
First implemented at the UNIX level in Tiger, Leopard brings complete 64-bit support to all of Mac OS X’s application frameworks. Using either the Carbon or Cocoa frameworks, you can create applications that can address extremely large data sets, up to 128TB using the current Intel-based CPUs. The 64-bit model used in Mac OS X is known as LP64 and is the same model used by other 64-bit UNIX systems from Sun and SGI as well as 64-bit Linux.
And there's more: the 64-bit support in Mac OS X maintains the ability to run current 32-bit applications. On Intel processors, 64-bit applications have an increased number of CPU registers available in 64-bit mode, and they may run faster than their 32-bit counterparts.

Hereafter at the first photos of the future flagship GPU from nVidia.

AS you might already know it, it is the GeForce 8800 GTX powered by a GPU clocked at 575MHz, fed with 768MB of RAM clocked at 900MHz.
As one could suspect it due to the dual PCI express power connectors, as well as the huge cooling system, this card will be a power-consuming device, probably setting new records.
It might be time for ATI and nVidia to follow AMD and Intel in their decisions to promote performance with low power consumption. With the new Core duo and Core 2 Duo, CPUs are not the most power-demanding components of a computer.

Philips R&D engineers have successfully burned a Blu-Ray media at 12x.
This is a real achievement and a record so far. To reach such burning speed, the rotation speed of the media must be 24,000 rpm. So far, media can not stand more than 11,000rpm, due to their physical limits defined by their current polycarbonate-based composition.
So to reach such high burning speed, one has to enhance physical resistance of the media, of course such media will cost much more, making such technology only valuable for Professional backup.
Burning speed for the blue laser-based burner customers market should top at 7x, already a quite amazing speed, as it requires feeding the burner with 32MB/s of data.
One way to go faster would be to have a second blue laser diode, but it will require enhanced burning management systems.

While looking at the new MacBook Pro, we missed a small update related to BTO. It is now possible via The AppleStore to chose a 750GB HD as a BTO when ordering a Mac Pro or an iMac.
Of course, Apple is not really promoting such HD, this BTO is expensive, replacing the standard 160GB HD by a 750GB HD will cost ... 400€, and buying it independently of a BTO will be even more expensive: 600€!
You will find such HD for around 400€ from online or physical computer shops. If you want to add 4 of them in your Mac Pro, you better but them afterwards and not as a BTO.