The Register: Mac OS X 10.3 Panther will not be a 64-bit OS

[arcwave]

I'd think Apple would update certain areas for 64bit.  Such as math libraries, graphic libraries,  amoung others.   A slow migration to 64bit is a good thing.

How many OS X owners out there will jump into a G5 boxen soon after the release?  Developers need time to take advantage of the G5 and such.

I want a G5 PowerMac.  Oh yeah!

[T_Bone]

...WinXP...

[vortexau]

> ...WinXP...

Sure, go to 8Gb of RAM with Win . . . .
and see it STILL use Virtial RAM!!

[CyberViking2000]

How bad is it when an amiga site not only posts rumors, but non-amiga rumors no less.

Very bad, when the site isn't even an Amiga site.   :-D

[mikeymike]

WinXP 64 is not available yet...

And another issue is - what makes an operating system 64-bit?  There are still 16-bit libraries in Win2k for example... an OS could be able to talk to 64-bit CPUs but still all their code is 32-bit (some 64-bit CPUs can handle that, the Opteron and Athlon 64 can I think, the IBM PPC 970 definitely can, don't know about the 64-bit SPARC CPUs).

[mikeymike]

@ vortexau

Sure, go to 8Gb of RAM with Win . . . .
and see it STILL use Virtial RAM!!

If you're going to slate Windows, granted it is an easy target, but you should know the facts first.  WinXP can run without a swapfile provided there is enough RAM available, and absolute oodles of RAM aren't required either (my friend is running XP without a swapfile, and his machine has less than 512MB RAM, can't remember how much exactly).

[Waccoon]

@bloodline:  Ah, that's what I thought.  I'm still just upset about the 16/32/64 bit hype of the old game consoles.  The 64-bit [graphics bus only] Jaguar comes to mind.   ;-)

@vortexau:  Exact memory usage is hard to gague, and the swap files isn't always the problem.  Background tasks can really mess up Windows good, too.

@MikeyMike:  You're right, although I've never gotten my Win2K system stable with 512M RAM and no swap file.  Weird things happen, like severe graphics glitches.  Win98 did the same when I only had 32M RAM in my system.  Strange, seeing how the two OS's use different cores.

My impression of virtual memory is that it's supposed to be used like a crutch:  only when needed.  If you enable the swap file, though, Windows constantly swaps out unused or infrequently used system parts out to disk, even parts of the kernel.  Sounds like overkill to me, but then, Windows was never known for memory management.  Remember "shaking" and those long, unexplained pauses while playing games under Win98 [first edition]?  God, that really sucked!

[mikeymike]

@ Waccoon

There isn't a recommended way of disabling the swapfile on Win2k and earlier MS OS's, although I don't know what hack-job you're using on win2k to disable the swapfile, what are you trying?  If it's just setting swapfile values to zero, then win2k (and previous versions of Windows) will create a temporary one in \WINNT.

Windows and memory management.  Don't go there.  :-)

A good memory tweak for Win98 (and possibly WinME too) under [386Enh], add a line:

ConservativeSwapFileUsage=1

Which would make it revert to Win95 style swapping, which was much less aggressive.

Re: Windows memory usage being hard to guage - Win2k as a rule lies about its swapfile usage in Task Manager, it's a documented unfeature.  Use WINMSD from NT4 to get a more accurate reading.

Re: consoles being 8/16/32/64 bit - again it is misleading, for one reason as you say, it could be just one bus that is 64-bit, but also take into account that internally most recent x86 CPUs are 64-bit, however they talk on every other bus in 32-bit or less.

[iamaboringperson]

Some of you fail to realise that this is only Mac OS ten that is still 32 bit

the apps can still be 64 bit

and who knows, mac os eleven might be the first 64 bit one

[PastAmigaOwner]

Actually it's not quite that simple.  If the OS is 32 bit, then the apps that run in it will be 32 bit as well, although because of the architecture of the PPC 970, the apps themselves can take advantage of some of the 64 bit features such as memory addressing.  The PPC 970 can only run in one of two modes - 32 bit or 64 bit - and it cannot do both at the same time, as stated in the IBM tech specs regarding the chip architecture.  So long as the OS is 32 bit, then the processor will be running in 32 bit mode, as will any applications therein.  The AMD Opteron 32/64 bit chip faces a similar delima.  Only when the OS goes fully 64-bit and the applications are ported as well can the processor run in true 64-bit mode as well.  When the OS becomes full 64-bit, there will truely have to be two separate versions of OS X to provide backwards support for older 32-bit hardware.  That's a big reason why Apple isn't moving that direction in earnest any time soon, but I do agree with you that subsequent versions of the OS will gain more 64-bit like features while Apple ports the full OS.

[iamaboringperson]

PastAmigaOwner

the ppc was designed from the beggining to be 64bit
both 32bit opcodes and 64bit opcodes may be run together...
unless you can give me reasons to prove otherwise...

there are really no such thing as 32 or 64 bit 'modes' for the ppc, except for addressing

and even then, 32 bit instructions will work on a 970 with >32bit internal addressing