Taoyuan Nights

Apple are now shipping a new 8 processor computer. It’s the new Mac Pro, and it’s based on two quad-core Xeon processors. It’s under $4000 US, including the O/S and a bunch of software in a server-class case ($4000 US = 130k TWD = 2000 quid in real money).

Now at a first glance, that might look expensive for a computer these days. But think: 24. That sure is a lot of gigahertz to be fooling around with. My first computer was an Amstrad CPC 464, running at 4Mhz (8 bit processor), back in 1984. This thing is moving 64 bits of data, 24 billion times per second. That’s about 40,000 times faster than my old CPC in terms of data throughput; and bear in mind also that modern processors tend to be far better at what they do ‘per cycle’ due to things like better pipelining, branch prediction, bigger/smarter caches and so on.

As ‘computers that members of the public could reasonably afford’ go, this machine is pretty damned incredible. Take a look here. If you’re feeling rich, you can order it fitted with 16GB of RAM….:)