Mac Intel Core Duo & Intel Centerno Core Duo

DiveBomB

Hello all

Just Curious is the Apple Mac intel Core Duo in the MacBook Pro is that the same as the Centerno Core Duo in lets say a Dell Laptop ?

SixShot

I think they are alike how ever the intel core duo in a mac is a diffrent type comepared to Centerno there both Great Chips with very few diffrence's

rsynnott

They use exactly the same CPU. The Intel Macs, however, use an Intel EFI, while Centrino uses a more traditional BIOS.

Of course, only Macs can legally run MacOS.

Mizu_Ger

The chips are the same. Centrino is not an actual chip, but a bundle of cpu/chipset/wireless-chip together in one platform (Intel supplies the whole lot as a complete package to the PC manufacturers). The actual cpu is a core duo, same as the mac. The EFI feature is something Intel have been knocking around for ages to try to get rid of the BIOS in PCs, but never caught on until they got the deal with Apple.

My sister has a centrino VAIO and it works well, but the wirelss seems to loose communication a lot (don't know if its a faulty laptop or router or the platform itself)

sceptre

SixShot wrote:

I think they are alike how ever the intel core duo in a mac is a diffrent type comepared to Centerno there both Great Chips with very few diffrence's

I don't mean this to come across as unjustifiably offensive but there are times (not very often) when an answer comes across as so mis-informed that it manages to contradict itself competely in a small number of words and appreciably and noticably detracts from a thread started to seek actual information (read as "fact") and this is possibly the worst example I've ever seen.

Sorry SixShot, you may well know a lot about computers or chip architecture or crochet for all I know but the noise to signal ratio is reaching the edge of infinity above and I can only assume everyone else was thinking it.

Please don't let my comments dissuade you from posting whatever and wherever you normally do, just please not the rubbish above when someone is seeking an actual answer.

rOBeRt frETt

It's important to note that Apple desktops have always had 2 processors on board- is this the same for there laptops?

rsynnott

rOBeRt frETt wrote:

It's important to note that Apple desktops have always had 2 processors on board- is this the same for there laptops?

It's also important to note that this is nonsense. The G4 tower, released early in the decade, had an option of a second processor, as did the G5 released in 2003. By the end of 2005, all G5 towers had at least one dual-core processor. Before the G4 tower, Apple had never released a multi-processor system, though one of their authorised clone manufacturers had. The core duo laptops are Apple's first multiprocessor laptops.

rOBeRt frETt

Ok- I'm not going to pretend to know the early MAC architecture, I don't see why it's nonsense when you point out Two models that support 2 processors, the OS supports multi-threading though so I suppose something that resembles a beowolf cluster can be built for Parralell processing (Since the eighties I'm sure), my point is that there is a lot of fuss about these dual core processors- they are still RISC architecture 64 bit machines- it doesn't increase FLOPS any more than paralell processing- My Point is computers have been multi-tasking scince the eighties, how much multi tasking do you need, One of the big adverts for dual core is- burn a CD ,listen to music, surf the web and edit your photgraphs all at the same time- why not stick a broom up your ass and sweep the floor too!. MACs in the 80's had 2mb ram 16MHZ processor and a 10MB drive, with all the innovations in hardware MAC's still perform the same function in the market place as the did then -DTP. The generation gap between hardware and software is massive, Dual core is not neccasary for any of todays applications, a 3GHZ p4 is enough to map the stars but all modern OS'es are guilty of putting them into spin-lock with bad illogical code.

rsynnott

rOBeRt frETt wrote:

Ok- I'm not going to pretend to know the early MAC architecture, I don't see why it's nonsense when you point out Two models that support 2 processors,

Yes, two out of hundreds.

rOBeRt frETt wrote:

the OS supports multi-threading though so I suppose something that resembles a beowolf cluster can be built for Parralell processing (Since the eighties I'm sure), my point is that there is a lot of fuss about these dual core processors- they are still RISC architecture 64 bit machines- it doesn't increase FLOPS any more than paralell processing-

Core Duos are certainly NOT RISC. Nor are they 64bit.

rOBeRt frETt wrote:

My Point is computers have been multi-tasking scince the eighties, how much multi tasking do you need, One of the big adverts for dual core is- burn a CD ,listen to music, surf the web and edit your photgraphs all at the same time- why not stick a broom up your ass and sweep the floor too!.

No, no, that's quite useful. I don't know about you, I like to be able to do more than one thing at a time. And computers have had multitasking since rather further back than the 80s

rOBeRt frETt wrote:

MACs in the 80's had 2mb ram 16MHZ processor and a 10MB drive, with all the innovations in hardware MAC's still perform the same function in the market place as the did then -DTP.

You're aware that people use macs for other things than DTP, right?

rOBeRt frETt wrote:

The generation gap between hardware and software is massive, Dual core is not neccasary for any of todays applications, a 3GHZ p4 is enough to map the stars but all modern OS'es are guilty of putting them into spin-lock with bad illogical code.

I see. None of them. Hmm. I'm a programmer. When waiting a minute for something to compile, I'd quite like to be able to do it at twice the speed.

And what do you mean by "map the stars", precisely?

Tom Dunne

rsynnott wrote:

And what do you mean by "map the stars", precisely?

You see, him being from a different planet, he wants to find his way home.

dub45

Mizu_Ger wrote:

The chips are the same. Centrino is not an actual chip, but a bundle of cpu/chipset/wireless-chip together in one platform (Intel supplies the whole lot as a complete package to the PC manufacturers). The actual cpu is a core duo, same as the mac. The EFI feature is something Intel have been knocking around for ages to try to get rid of the BIOS in PCs, but never caught on until they got the deal with Apple.

My sister has a centrino VAIO and it works well, but the wirelss seems to loose communication a lot (don't know if its a faulty laptop or router or the platform itself)

Just as a slight distraction from the main topic there have been several posts on this issue recently and apparenctly it can be resolved by upping the power level setting in the wireless card properties.

Capt'n Midnight

rsynnott wrote:

Of course, only Macs can legally run MacOS.

And Microsoft OEM software can only run on PC.

And by that I don't mean PCs since the OEM license is non-transferrable.

IIRC balisik (SP) meant you could emulate a MAC BIOS on a PC , and that you could only use the BIOS if you owned a MAC with that BIOS. Or was that a just "psudo-legal"


Modders fitted DUO's in to MACs before they were officially released. However, Intel and AMD have too many physical forms for thier processors, so while a processor line might last for 45 months ( PI -PII - PIII - P4 ) it's well nigh impossible to retro fit new chips to old boards because there is one pin different or the chipset won't accept the FSB or something

rOBeRt frETt

rsynnott wrote:

Yes, two out of hundreds..

-So that's yes then

rsynnott wrote:

Core Duos are certainly NOT RISC. Nor are they 64bit.?

If the have 64 registers what are they?
Perhaps you'd like to expand on this and explain what architecture you think they are then?

rsynnott wrote:

No, no, that's quite useful. I don't know about you, I like to be able to do more than one thing at a time. And computers have had multitasking since rather further back than the 80s ?

True multi-tasking not disk trashing- not before 80's- 90's for some OS's

rsynnott wrote:

You're aware that people use macs for other things than DTP, right??

Duh!

rsynnott wrote:

I see. None of them. Hmm. I'm a programmer. When waiting a minute for something to compile, I'd quite like to be able to do it at twice the speed.?

This is my point entirely- With the power of modern processors why are you waiting any signifigant time for code to compile? are you sure the processor is the weak link here? is there nothing that can be improved within OUR LOGIC!!

rsynnott wrote:

And what do you mean by "map the stars", precisely?

I was trying to illistrate the mathematical capabilities of modern processors,
-also I was prepared to have a civilised converstaion up until this quote.

sceptre

rOBeRt frETt wrote:

If the have 64 registers what are they?

That'd be a 64-register machine. The registers would generally be measured or rated by the number of bits they hold. A machine that uses registers that can hold 64 bits could be a 64-bit machine and a processor with two 32-bit cores isn't a 64-bit processor.

Of course it's a little more complicated than that - the x87 instruction set uses 8 80-bit registers, SSE instructions use 16 128-bit registers and pretty much all Pentium(+) machines use a 64-bit bus (which even the marketing department didn't pretend was a "64-bit machine"). Hence for simplicity it comes down to the size of the integer registers and the Core Duo/Yonah has 32-bit integer registers. Twice as many but still 32-bits - Yonah very specifically does not support EM64T, in fact there's been quite a bit of grumbling in the jungle about that.

The answer to your second question is obviously CISC. They are made by Intel after all.

rsynnott

rOBeRt frETt wrote:

If the have 64 registers what are they?
Perhaps you'd like to expand on this and explain what architecture you think they are then?

Like every other 386, the Yonah Core Duos have 8 32bit general registers. The Conroe and Merom Core Duo 2s will be amd64s; they'll have 16 64bit registers. And they are CERTAINLY not RISC, although modern 386-y things do use some RISC-like techniques. They are CISC. (They're not load-store, they don't (at least from the user's point of view, I seem to remember seeing that Netburst at least does emulate it) do register windowing, and so on).

(Breakdown:
UltraSparc, PPC, Alpha, StrongARM: RISC-y
i386 and children, 68000: CISC-y
Itanium: Odd VLIW thing)

rOBeRt frETt wrote:

True multi-tasking not disk trashing- not before 80's- 90's for some OS's

Hmm, I suppose you're talking about pre-emptive? Some operating systems had it quite a long time ago, you know. Some operating systems didn't have it until the 80s or 90s, of course, but some operating systems STILL don't have it. Pre-emptive multitasking is nothing new.

rOBeRt frETt wrote:

This is my point entirely- With the power of modern processors why are you waiting any signifigant time for code to compile? are you sure the processor is the weak link here? is there nothing that can be improved within OUR LOGIC!!

Quite a bit of work goes into optimising GCC. Believe me, compilers used to be a lot slower. In the old days, compiling a Linux kernel took hours or days, nowadays any half-decent computer will do it in under 10 minutes. Why do you think software written now is so slow compared to software written in the 80s? I see no evidence for this at all.

rOBeRt frETt wrote:

I was trying to illistrate the mathematical capabilities of modern processors,
-also I was prepared to have a civilised converstaion up until this quote.

You were trying to do so using a sentence which didn't actually mean anything, though. What do you mean by "map the stars"?

CuLT

rsynnott wrote:

What do you mean by "map the stars"?

Maybe he was looking for "pointers"

This is a rather pointless little tiff.

Red Alert

The only consumer computers that had two different processors were the commodore amiga's that people upgraded. they had a 680x0 on-board and were PowerPC upgradable although very little software took advantage of it.

Capt'n Midnight

Red Alert wrote:

The only consumer computers that had two different processors were the commodore amiga's that people upgraded. they had a 680x0 on-board and were PowerPC upgradable although very little software took advantage of it.

what about the BBC micro ?
6502 processor, but you could get a Z80 expansion too
and they have very little in common unlike the 68000 / PowerPC's

rsynnott

Indeed, there were many computers which could take rather alien co-processors or second processors. Maths co-processors fell into this category for quite a while. What all this has to do with the original topic I'm not sure...

rOBeRt frETt

As it transpires Core Duo supports AMD64 and whatever Intel called the same set- it is however disabled on ship (Why Intel??), there is a rather vague rumor on hexus.net about it- If they're not 64bit compatible, it makes no sense to me. I'm still not going to buy one.
do compilers execute in parallel???

Orionetheus

The macbook pro is currently the fastest windows machine on the planet that is dual core laptop....(if you use bootcamp to use windows)