When will we hit 4.0 Ghz?

[NicP]

True, But before we can take advantage of the additional cores, the software developers are gonna have to rewrite their code. Most important apps still use a single core. So even though there are 24 total GHz of power available on the new 8-core macs, few apps can use it all. It comes down to what you need, a faster single proc. or multiple lower-clocked processors. I think it will be a combination of both (rewrite code, faster cores).

What software are you talking about specifically? All the cpu intensive apps i've used have been efficient at using multiple cores. I thought games were the only area multi-core support lagged?

 

[yg17]

True, But before we can take advantage of the additional cores, the software developers are gonna have to rewrite their code. Most important apps still use a single core. So even though there are 24 total GHz of power available on the new 8-core macs, few apps can use it all. It comes down to what you need, a faster single proc. or multiple lower-clocked processors. I think it will be a combination of both (rewrite code, faster cores).

Just a couple years ago, dual proc/core machines were reserved for specific, high end needs. Now that even the cheapest consumer machines are dual core, I hope that over the next few years, more and more apps will be written to take advantage of multiple cores.

I've always wondered why multi proc machines, say the Octo Mac Pro can't be setup so it's more like 1 24 GHz processor rather than 8 3 GHz processors. Kinda like how 2 500 GB disks in a RAID0 array acts like a single 1TB disk. Unless this stuff is more complicated than I thought, I should've payed attention in my computer internals class rather than play games on my phone.

 

[Mr. Amiga500]

Instead of upping the system speed...since thats bound to hit the limits anyway(more cores actually starts to cause slowdowns) Why not work on making the software faster and make it so it actually uses the hardware to its absolute top performance? And to be able to do that, you would have to only support one type of hardware.

Exactly. This will never happen though. It's far easier to pop in a faster chip than it is to optimize code for speed. Software has become far too complex and software companies would rather increase hardware requirements than spend expensive development time trying to optimize. Then there are the half-assed software companies who would rather hire cheap unskilled programmers to churn out half-assed inefficient code than to pay for the more skilled programmers.

It's sad. I remember the early 8-bit programming era where coders constantly optimized for speed. It was absolutely necessary back when the processor was 1Mhz or less. Super-efficient code was praised. When I tried optimizing my code for speed at a software company in the late 90's, I was told not to bother because "modern CPUs are fast and there's plenty of RAM". Looking at other programmers writing CPU-sucking, inefficient, RAM-hogging code almost drove me insane. Modern programming courses actually teach new programmers to code this way.

 

[Zwhaler]

I wanted to revive my old thread to say ... we did it!!!

 

[Anitramane]

I wanted to revive my old thread to say ... we did it!!!

Yeah, like two years ago
(amd 4170 and 8350 etc)

 

[Zwhaler]

Yeah, like two years ago
(amd 4170 and 8350 etc)

Yeah, I know, was pointing out for Apple bto computers.

 

[AdrianK]

Today's cellphones have chips with 2GHz clock speeds?

Dat 2007.

 

[MacsRgr8]

I wanted to revive my old thread to say ... we did it!!!

Pretty cool actually.

I remember having (next to my G5...) a Pentium 4, running at 3.8 GHz (no overlocking).
That was around 2004, IIRC.

Back then, we all assumed the GHz-race (which Intel was winning tremendously) would go on... 5 GHz, 6 GHz... etc.

Now, 2014, the first Mac actually reaches 4 GHz. Or course, now as an i7 and with 4 cores, it is soooo much faster than a 4 GHz Pentium 4.

So, "The Mhz Myth" is true!