[PD] IntelMacs & PD/GEM

[IOhannes m zmoelnig]

hi

Thomas Kronlachner wrote:
> Hi All,
> 
> This is my first post here on this list. So I've been working with 
> pd/gem for half a year now. I am very focused on gem in combination with 
> video/audio. I always had the restriction of my hardware, my computer 
> was not powerful enough. so I tend to get a new one. My intention is to 
> by one new IntelMacs. since I really want to get hold of an computer 
> that can handle this I intened to go for this plattform.  So I do have a 
> couple of questions:

you have probably noticed that just recently (yesterday!) a similar 
question popped up....people seem to be very excited about this

> 
> 1. do you think that there is a future for pd/gem on this plattform?

generally i don't think there is such a thing like future, but of course 
MacIntel will be supported by both pd/Gem
hey both pd and Gem where among the first applications that have been 
known to run on MacIntel (at least that is how i interprete the fact, 
that both pd and Gem have been successfully tested on last year's apple 
developer conference, when the MacIntel was first published)

> 
> 2. How was the overall performance of PD/GEM on a mac in general.

on current macs, Gem outperforms other platforms in 2 aspects:
+ a lot of pix_sh!t has been optimized for AltiVec (some pix-objects are 
MMX optimized (but fewer than for AltiVec), and none has yet been 
optimized for SSE2); due to the nature of this optimization you will 
gain nothing from it on MacIntel.
+ the video-path (for texturing a lot of changing images, like video or 
movies) to the gfx-card has been optimized. i guess you will persist on 
the MacIntel.

> 
> 3. What are your expectations or estimations on this issue?

personally, i wouldn't go for the very first MacIntels. I expect several 
problems (none of which i could name) which will surely get fixed within 
the next months.


mfg.asdr.
IOhannes