OSX 64bit - when?

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Elliotjnewman

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I was wondering when the OS would be 64bit? I am interested in getting a G5 but dont see the point if all the applications are 32bit still... I've also heard that Windows will be 64bit very soon - surely Apple cant let that happen before them? I aslo suppose even after a 64bit OS becomes available to us, we will still have to wait for all the other software to supoort it? So Im expecting a true 64bit environment some time off still???
 
The point of buying a 64bit G5 now is to ensure a long living system. The 64bit OSX is coming. I don't know when it will be released and if Tiger will have any of such features. However, I am very confident 64bit macosx will be released before Windows 64bit. And yes, it will take even more time until most of the applications switch to 64bit.
But there is no reason for impatience. The increase in speed will be marginal for most of us. Check out our 64bit vs 32bit forums. Anyway, it's not like the only argument to go for a G5 is its 64bit compatibility. It's just a nice additional feature beside the great performance and stability.
Last but not least: there are some linux distributions that are based on 64bit. Both are available for x86 and mac systems.
 
I believe that the transition will be somewhat similar to when Apple moved from 68K processors to PowerPC processors. Although this time, I think (or at least hope) that Apple learned from any mistakes that it made from that first transition.
 
yeah, I suppose I could run a Linux 64bit OS, but I prefer OSX, Im a 3D graphics professional, and I use Maya and Photoshop and After Effects quite a bit so my programs are very needy. In all truth, at work is where I do all my Maya stuff running on a boxx workstation under Linux, by the time I get home all I really do is the odd bit of Pshop and some browsing, so I dont think I could justify the purchase of a G5 just yet (running a dual 1.25 G4) - which is still not bad at all. The main reason I want OSX to go 64bit is so VFX companies start using it rather than windows and linux, at the moment my workplace have Linux for 3D (Maya) Windows for Photoshop and a little Maya, and Mac OSX for video editing. It would make much more sense to do everything under OSX, but Im just waiting to see when (and if) they start making high end graphics cards like the quaddro and wildcat available...
 
Panther already has some 64bit extensions in it that allow you to address more than 4GB of RAM, which is the main benefit of 64bits. Photoshop has a G5 extension you can download to enable this function within Photoshop.

An average program won't see any boost in speed by running as a 64 bit application.

You can get a 64 bit version of Windows already to run on the Intel Itanium CPU, but the CPU is so expensive, and only works with 64 bit programs, that almost noone uses it.
 
Captain Code said:
You can get a 64 bit version of Windows already to run on the Intel Itanium CPU, but the CPU is so expensive, and only works with 64 bit programs, that almost noone uses it.
Click to expand...


Well, there is the option of using the Athlon64 processor. It's much cheaper than the Itanic ;). And if you do have the cash, there's always the Opteron.

At this point, I think that it's mainly a geek thing to be using 64-bit native applications. Most of the apps available now are either for coding or criticla mission applications. Nothing that you would use everyday, except for maybe gaming, but even that is a bit too far off to consider... :rolleyes:
 
Ineteresting, so you wouldnt really get any speed advantages through a 64bit OS? what benifits does 64bit actually have, apart from being able to run more ram?
 
You'd get some speed improvements if working with apps that do a lot of 64-bit calculations. Right now to work with 64-bit numbers many apps will actually split the 64-bit numbers into two 32-bit numbers, perform calculations, and recombine. Doing the 64-bit stuff natively saves a lot of time and cycles.

It's just that for most apps 64-bit variables are pretty rare, so there's not really much of a need. I know that in some cases, though, if 64-bit calculations were as fast as 32-bit, some app designers would use a lot more of them...
 
Also, we must note, that just because an OS is 64-bit doesn't mean that the applications that run on that OS automatically take advantage of 64-bits. They'd have to be recompiled for a 64-bit OS, so even once we DO have a 64-bit OS X, we're still gonna have to wait for native 64-bit apps to come out.
 
I doubt very much that there will be a 64-bit version of OS X before all Macs switch to the G5. Microsoft has been shooting itself in the foot for years with different 64-bit version of Windows for MIPS and SPARC. Now that x86 has finally gone 64-bit, it might just have a chance but its been an ugly road since NT.

Unfortunately, the Mac platform is too small for developers to support two OS's. Their costs would theoretically double. Adobe is yanking software at an alarming rate, do you really think they are going to support a 32 and 64-bit version of PS? Apple would probably do it, but do they really want to risk becoming a one-man-show?

Eventually though, every Mac that ships will be 64-bit. By then the G3 and G4 will have gone the way of the 603 and 604's. They will still be around, and people will still use them, but just like those old Macs that can only run up to 9.1, there will be a time that OS X.* will be the limit for the Macs we have now and a new OS and era will begin.
 
very ineteresting stuff. As I said in an earlier post, OSX 64bit will not mean much when its first released, as not many applications will support this new architecture. I think we will be looking atleast at anothert 2 years until we have 64bit norm. The thing that gets me is, whats the point in running 32bit OSX and apps with a g5? I mean, lets say the G5 was a 32bit chip, would that be slower than the 64bit chip? and if not, why did apple choose to go 64bit? I presume becuase they are planning ahead?

And also, a little off topic, but what do you all think about Steve Jobs, and his CEO of Pixar? - Why arent Pixar using Macs for their production work???
 
I was skeptical about 64-bit when it first came out. At the time, I found a great web link that talked about the benefits of 64-bit. Of course, I can't find that link now. I'm sure some Googling would find similar results.

Anyway, as I understood it, the top of the list of applications to benefit from 64-bit technology...games. That's right, games.

Other applications were those that needed to move around huge amounts of memory, like Photoshop, Final Cut, Motion, After Effects, etc.

Followed by niche applications that benefited from 64-bit in ways I don't understand.

In short, your day to day stuff (Safari, Word, Dreamweaver, InDesign, AddressBook, iTunes, etc.) will not benefit one single bit (no pun intended) from 64-bit.

I think it's important that Apple lead the way in compiling and promoting 64-bit advantages in their own apps. It seems that Motion/Final Cut would be likely beneficiaries of the technology, yet neither seem to take any advantage of it [64-bit]. If they were 64-bit aware/optimized, I'd have to imagine Apple would be promoting it loudly.

In some ways that's good. The G5 is already fast (REALLY fast for video. I ran some tests at the Apple store last week and compared them to my very capable Dual G4. Holy crap, it's not even close.) So if the G5 is already this fast, it's nice to imagine that the same machine will be even faster (in some areas) as 64-bit software/OS kicks in. Having said that, I think it's worth reminding ourselves that 64-bit does not mean twice as fast as 32-bit. It doesn't mean that at all. I think it mostly means (correct me if I'm wrong, cuz I'm just kind of guessing) an ability to address larger chunks of memory, which can indirectly mean greater speed depending on the application.

I am not well-versed in 64 vs 32 bit. I am only parroting what I found elsewhere.

But, to answer the main question, I'm going to speculate that Tiger will incorporate some 64-bitness, but nothing too exciting. Just enough to bother mentioning. I think we're still 2-3 years out from seeing 64-bittitude mean anything.

I can think of a few reasons why Apple went 64-bit.

1. Marketing advantage
2. Planning ahead
3. It already existed more or less in the derivative chip from IBM.
 
Unless I'm mistaken some of the "Pro" apps (Final Cut, etc) are listed as being "Optimized for G5". Surely this means that when installed on a G5, they have extensions installed to address the extra memory, etc.
 
ElDiabloConCaca - yeah I had read that link a while back, very cool, and it makes sense for Pixar to use OSX, but they said they dont use it for rendering or animation duties. which is basically the 3D bit. Thats what I want Apple to concentrate on, they have a lot of control over the 2D editors, Photoshop, Final Cut Pro etc, but they just dont seem bothered when it comes to 3D. Thats why I was wondering whether 64bit would mean the G5 would be a very attractive platform for VFX houses, and maybe software like Softimage, Houdini, 3D Studio Max etc would get ported over, at the moment there is only one high end application available - Maya. Although from that link ElDiabloConCaca, its great news that Renderman has been ported over, however, its just the renderer, not RAT - which is the software you use to create content for Renderman to render! But it really does sound like Pixar want to go fully OSX, which I cant wait for. However if they do become the 'new' SGI, lets hope they dont share the same destiny!
 
In a few days, we'll hear about Tiger. And I'm pretty sure we'll also hear about 64bit.

But ask anyone, you don't really _need_ a 64bit OS. Even most PC magazines out there are calling the Athlon 64 etc. 'really good 32bit processors', i.e. only a few freaks out there use them with linux 64bit (Windows is _not_ out in 64bit for those processors, only a beta that has quite a few driver issues). Right now, you buy a G5 because of its speed, expandability and longevity. And yes, 64bit _will_ come, now that the computers are out there...
 
The main advantage of a higher bit system over a lower one is being able to move around larger chunks of data at a given time, namely 64 bits rather than 32 bits. This does spped up operations that use large amounts of data, such as photoshop, since it can now move twice as much data with a single operation. The advantage of being able to address more memory is, in my opinion ALMOST just a side effect. It does, of course, help in the same way that adding more memory helps on any system, but it is not a fundemental change.

The advantages of moving to a higher bit system are especially hilighted if you try to program on an eight bit system. For example, try writing a program to add two sixteen bit number, such as 10 and 11, hex (16 and 17 decimal). On an eight bit system, this is somewhat complex. You have to input the two low order bytes (0 and 1) add them, store them somewhere, input the two high order bytes, add them with the cary from the low order bytes, then store them somewhere. That is five operations just to add two numbers. On a sixteen bit system, it would be three operations: load, add, store. All other things being equal, you have just gotten a processor that is 40% faster, at least on an add operation with numbers larger than 8 bits. On the other hand, for numbers smaller than 8 bits, there is no speed increase. Same number of operations on the same processor speed = same execution time, regardless of the bit size the processor can handle. When going from 8 bits to 16 or 32, pretty much everything benifits, because most chunks of data handled will be larger than 8 bits. going from 32 to 64 at the current time will not have nearly as much noticable impact as going from 8 to 16 or 16 to 32, becasue most calculations currently done deal with numbers smaller than 32 bits, however certain applications such as graphics and video applications that have to calculate HUGE numbers will benifit. It is also possible that other applications such as iTunes could be rewriten to take advantage of this, perhaps somehow combining two seperate operations into one, but that would take more work.
 
macavenger said:
such as photoshop
Click to expand...

Well, there is the rub. No matter how fast Apple moves to 64-bit, Adobe now takes it's que from the Windows world. There will not be a 64-bit Photoshop until there is a 64-bit version of Windows.

If Mac OS X was to go 64-bit now, Apple might make a 64-bit version of Final Cut Pro, Motion, Shake and some of their other professional quality apps, and you might also see developers like Alias porting the 64-bit version of Maya (which is 64-bit on SGIs) to Mac OS X.

So if you use those applications, yeah, I could see the benefit.

But developers which Apple had to bend over backwards for just to get them to write for Mac OS X to begin with? Don't hold your breath on them spending that much extra time on the Mac versions of their apps.
 
I hope "Tiger" will make the move to 64 bit. Remember, apple announced that OS updates will not occur as frequent as they use to be (once a year). So if it passes 10.4 (Tiger) this year, then the 64 bit OS won't be around for at least 2 years.
 
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