[Openmcl-devel] OpenMCL for x86 OS X

[Gary Palter]

On May 11, 2007, at 5:35 PM, Rainer Joswig wrote:

> In article <20070511140603.D14953 at clozure.com>,
>  Gary Byers <gb at clozure.com> wrote:
>
>> 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.)
>
> The missing update of the Mac mini is a bit tragic. ;-)

Rumor has it that the mini will be updated soon.  (Of course, that's  
been the rumor for months now.)

> What about the Apple TV? I'm not sure if it is 64bit capable.
> Though it has some kind of Intel CPU and runs a version
> of Mac OS X 10.4.

It has a Pentium M in it, so it's 32-bit.

>> - 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!