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Re: Re: 64-bit pentium

   I apologize ahead for the length of this response, but there are 
several technical details that require explanation.

   Starting with Mathematica 5.1, the EMT64 system is supported as with 
all other x86 (64-bit) processors including the Opteron and Athlon64. 
The EMT64 is Intel's name for their line of x86 (64-bit) processors. 
 From Mathematica's point of view, there is no difference in these 
processors.

   Due to all of the variants of the x86 (64-bit) processor line, it is 
easier to encapsulate the entire processor family under one name rather 
than listing explicitly every variant of the processor line.  For this 
reason x86 (64-bit) was chosen since it includes all of these processors.

The current version of Mathematica is already tuned for the G5 processor 
which means that it is capable of taking advantage of most of its 
capabilities while still maintaining compatability with older G3 and G4 
processors.  In fact, it runs much faster than the same version on 
either of those chips.  The speed of the G5 has little to do with the 
fact that it is a 64-bit chip, but do to the other architectural 
improvements surrounding it.  For this reason, you can still get the 
speed without requiring a 64-bit compiled version. 64-bit typically 
gives you the ability to address more memory than a 32-bit application, 
not speed, although some operations such as big number arithmetic can 
see some speedups from 64-bit optimizations.  This is true for all 
64-bit processors in general.

  It is not possible to take advantage of any 64-bit memory addressing 
for the G5 since the current version of Mac OS X does not support 64-bit 
memory addressing for applications.  Apple is working on a new version 
of the OS named Tiger that will hopefully introduce 64-bit memory 
addressing for user applications, but with the current version of the 
OS, there is no way to accomplish this.  Tiger OS is not yet shipping, 
so we will have to investigate Mathematica for Tiger for a future 
version.  No release date is available for a Tiger compatible Mathematica.

   Wolfram Research is working closely with Apple Computers to provide 
the best possible performance for Mathematica users on Mac OS X.  We 
currently address all the memory supported by Mac OS X version 10.3 
(Panther), currently 4GB per process.

Specific questions about platform support can be directed to Technical 
Support (support at wolfram.com).

---------------
Jeff Bryant
Wolfram Research, Inc.

Selwyn Hollis wrote:
> On Feb 10, 2005, at 2:46 AM, Alan wrote:
> 
> 
>>When can we expect a version of Mathematica optimized
>>for this?
>>
>>regards,
>>alan
>>
> 
> 
> 
> Ditto for Macintosh G5. I presume we'll have to wait for Mathematica 
> 6.0?
> 
> 
> -----
> Selwyn Hollis
> Applied Symbols
> http://www.appliedsymbols.com
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