Apple has previewed OS X 10.6 at this year's Worldwide Developers Conference in San Francisco, code-named Snow Leopard.
A 64-bit operating system, Snow Leopard has theoretical support of up to 16TB of RAM, is optimised for multi-core CPUs, and according to Apple, it is expected to hit the market in "about a year".
Snow Leopard's extended multi-core support comes from a technology named Grand Central, a framework expected to make multi-core coding easier for developers. Apple's increased multi-core support parallels Intel's latest chip developments, which are quickly heading into six- and eight-core territory with its Dunnington and Nehalem processors, due in the next seven months.
Apple is also extending developer support for the graphics processing unit (GPU) through a language called Open Computing Language (OpenCL). Based on C, OpenCL has been "proposed as an open standard" according to Apple, and "lets any application tap into ... GPU computing power previously only available to graphics applications", which means that General Purpose GPU (GPGPU) coding could become a lot more accessible under Snow Leopard.
Other updates include native support for Microsoft Exchange 2007 through the Mail, iCal and Address Book applications, QuickTime X and a Javascript update. Apple claims the improved JavaScript implementation will increase performance in its Safari browser by 53 per cent.
While Apple has confirmed OS X 10.6 will be 64-bit, it has not confirmed whether it will drop the 32-bit backwards compatibility present in OS X 10.5, or whether the PowerPC architecture or the Blu-ray DVD standard will be supported.
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Anon.
10/06/2008 07:03 PM
16 Terabytes of RAM? How is that possible when the largest hard drives don't reach that much? Are you sure you don't mean 16GB?
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tc
10/06/2008 08:36 PM
nope 16TB, you can already put 16GB in a Mac Pro at the moment Now that is future proofing!!
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negmut
11/06/2008 04:50 PM
You can actually get 32GB on Mac Pros.
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kristo
18/06/2008 11:00 PM
the next decade will see memory and storage being used interchangeably, with high speed solid state memory being used for both, and sizes will increase to around 1 Petabyte (1000 Terabytes) in mid-2017, basing on historical records. What you would do with that amount of space is anyone's guess, but we felt exactly the same way about today's disk sizes a decade ago -- maybe link it to the life recorder implanted in their heads??
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jahrends
26/06/2008 12:00 AM
I don't know why people keep repeating trash. Computers are binary not decimal. Memory and storage is not base 10. Kilobyte = 1024 Bytes Megobyte = 1024 KBytes Gigabyte = 1024 MBytes Terabyte = 1024 GBytes Petabyte = 1024 TBytes Many people parroting bad info does not make it true.
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reubz
04/07/2008 04:37 PM
Hey Jahrends.....does it really matter if people (kristo) round 1 Betabyte from 1024 to 1000 thats like 2.4% difference...
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reubz
04/07/2008 04:54 PM
Hey Jahrends.....does it really matter if people (kristo) round 1 Betabyte from 1024 to 1000 thats like 2.4% difference...
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Shane
01/09/2008 09:15 PM
Once we all get high definitions video recorders and screens and all that were gonna be using a lot more space
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