[Openmcl-devel] OpenMCL for x86 OS X

[Gary Byers]

Just to add to the confusion a bit:

- every Mac that Apple's introduced since August 2006 has been 64-bit capable
   (either a Xeon - as used in the Mac Pro - or a Core 2 Duo as used in
   everything else.)
- The Mac Mini is the only current Mac that (last time I checked) was
   32-bit only.  Everything that Apple introduced in the first 8 months
   of 2006 was also based on 32-bit-only chips (usually "Core Duo", but
   there may have been some Core Solos in there as well.)
- In Tiger, about the only framework/library that's available in a
   64-bit version is "libSystem" (i.e., more-or-less the C runtime
   library).  Apple did make a big point of announcing that everything
   (including Carbon and Cocoa) would be available in both 32-bit and
   64-bit versions in Leopard.

There's almost certainly an easier way to tell, but one way of
determining whether or not a Mac CPU is 64-bit-capable is:

shell> sysctl hw.optional.x86_64

If that returns the key "hw.optional.x86_64" with the value "1",
then the OS believes that the machine it's running on can run in
64-bit ("x86_64") mode.

As funky as that test might be, it might be more reliable than trying
to guess from the brand name, which might be something like "Centrino II
Pair Couplet" before long.


On Fri, 11 May 2007, David Steuber wrote:

> On May 10, 2007, at 11:00 PM, Andrew Shalit wrote:
>
>> The Core 2 Duo is a 64-bit cpu.  The Core Duo in the original
>> MacBook Pro is a 32-bit machine.
>>
>> See http://www.intel.com/pressroom/archive/releases/20060727comp.htm
>>
>> I'm writing this to you on a 64-bit laptop, and apparently you're
>> reading it on one, too.  Congrats!
>>
>> (And yes, OpenMCL runs great on it.)
>
> OK, I put this to the ultimate test.  I really wasn't believing what
> I was reading because Apple was not going out of their way to scream,
> "64 bit!" like they did with the G5.  But...
>
> david at Jupiter.local:~
> $ openmcl64
> Welcome to OpenMCL Version 1.1-pre-070408 (DarwinX8664)!
> ? most-positive-fixnum
> 1152921504606846975
> ? (room)
> Approximately 33,292,288 bytes of memory can be allocated
> before the next full GC is triggered.
>
>                    Total Size             Free                 Used
> Lisp Heap:       47710208 (46592K)   33292288 (32512K)   14417920
> (14080K)
> Stacks:          11426144 (11158K)   11421976 (11154K)       4168 (4K)
> Static:           1511664 (1476K)           0 (0K)        1511664
> (1476K)
> 506834.500 MB reserved for heap expansion.
> NIL
> ?
>
> The proof is in the running.  WOW!
>
> Let's see how well this works with Emacs + SLIME.
>
> Good job, Gary & Co!
>
> _______________________________________________
> Openmcl-devel mailing list
> Openmcl-devel at clozure.com
> http://clozure.com/mailman/listinfo/openmcl-devel
>
>