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Full Discussion: comp hardware comparing
Operating Systems OS X (Apple) comp hardware comparing Post 48917 by ropers on Monday 22nd of March 2004 04:40:03 AM
Old 03-22-2004
I hope I'm understanding your question right.
Also, as it is a bit more difficult to give a "generalized" answer to this, I am going to assume that you have background knowledge in PC CPU history -- if that's not the case and if I'm not clear, please tell me so:

I understand you are asking about the "Megahertz gap" between the PowerPC family of CPUs and current x86 compatible CPU families.

First, this doesn't have anything to do with UNIX; it doesn't have anything to do with the question which OS you are using. The "Megahertz gap" is about differences in CPU architecture, and that's a hardware issue.

If you remember the 386/33 MHz and 486/33 MHz, nobody would have assumed these two processors to be equally powerful, even though both processors did indeed run at the same clockspeed (33 MHz).
This is just a very clear example showing that MHz is only ONE indicator of CPU speed.
It is true that a 386 at 33MHz was more powerful than a 386 at 25 MHz.
However, a 386/33MHz was LESS powerful than a 486/25MHz, even though it was running at a higher clockspeed.

To know the power/speed of a CPU, you have (at least) to know both the MHz AND what kind of processor it is. MHz alone does only tell you half the story (and is potentially very misleading). There are many more factors that affect CPU performance, but most would argue that for raw CPU speed, the CPU type and its clockspeed will be the most important info.
Note that this even true WITHIN the same architecture (386 and 486s belong to the same architecture, that of x86 compatible CPUs).
Between different architectures, the differences can be even greater.
A 68k architecture processor at 40MHz would perform very different from a x86 architecture CPU and a PowerPC architecture CPU would perform different still.

The problem is that very recently, there was a time when most recent Intel CPUs performed similar enough at any given MHz, so it was favourable for Intel to tout MHz as the "major" performance indicator. This led many to wrongly believe that MHz was the sole performance indicator, which it isn't.
It also drove Intel's competition crazy as it made e.g. PowerPC CPUs (which are generally, for reasons of hardware architecture, more powerful at a given clockspeed) look much more behind than they in fact were (for a while).

This misunderstanding about the relevance of MHz is however becoming unfavourable even for Intel now, so they're moving away from that, see http://arstechnica.com/news/posts/1079725353.html .

Again, though it can be difficult to make cross-architecture comparisons, PowerPC CPUs are currently faster at a given clockspeed than x86 CPUs. So if you had a x86 compatible CPU and a PowerPC CPU of about equal speed, the clockspeed (in MHz) of the x86 type CPU would be higher.

Coming back to UNIX:
Compared with the Windows family of Operating Systems, most UNIXarian Operating Systems make more efficient use of hardware resources, so the overall system speed would indeed be quicker when using a UNIX type OS, and that applies to whatever CPU you are running the OS on. (Windows nowadays mostly only runs on x86. RISC Alpha CPU support used to be a big thing, but it's pretty much gone the way of the dodo.) UNIX on x86 will likely be quicker than Windows on x86.
NB: You can run UNIX style Operating Systems on pretty much all CPU architectures in existance, see http://www.netbsd.org/ .
 

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ARCH(3) 						   BSD Library Functions Manual 						   ARCH(3)

NAME
NXGetAllArchInfos, NXGetLocalArchInfo, NXGetArchInfoFromName, NXGetArchInfoFromCpuType, NXFindBestFatArch, NXCombineCpuSubtypes -- get archi- tecture information SYNOPSIS
#include <mach-o/arch.h> extern const NXArchInfo * NXGetAllArchInfos(void); extern const NXArchInfo * NXGetLocalArchInfo(void); extern const NXArchInfo * NXGetArchInfoFromName(const char *name); extern const NXArchInfo * NXGetArchInfoFromCpuType(cpu_type_t cputype, cpu_subtype_t cpusubtype); extern struct fat_arch * NXFindBestFatArch(cpu_type_t cputype, cpu_subtype_t cpusubtype, struct fat_arch *fat_archs, unsigned long nfat_archs); extern cpu_subtype_t NXCombineCpuSubtypes(cpu_type_t cputype, cpu_subtype_t cpusubtype1, cpu_subtype_t cpusubtype2); DESCRIPTION
These functions are intended for use in programs that have to deal with universal files or programs that can target multiple architectures. Typically, a program will use a command-line argument that starts with ``-arch name'', where this specifies an architecture. These functions and data structures provide some help for processing architecture flags and then processing the contents of a universal file. The structure NXArchInfo is defined in <mach-o/arch.h>: typedef struct { const char *name; cpu_type_t cputype; cpu_subtype_t cpusubtype; enum NXByteOrder byteorder; const char *description; } NXArchInfo; It is used to hold the name of the architecture and the corresponding CPU type and CPU subtype, together with the architecture's byte order and a brief description string. The currently known architectures are: Name CPU Type CPU Subtype Description ppc CPU_TYPE_POWERPC CPU_SUBTYPE_POWERPC_ALL PowerPC ppc64 CPU_TYPE_POWERPC64 CPU_SUBTYPE_POWERPC64_ALL PowerPC 64-bit i386 CPU_TYPE_I386 CPU_SUBTYPE_I386_ALL Intel 80x86 x86_64 CPU_TYPE_X86_64 CPU_SUBTYPE_X86_64_ALL Intel x86-64 m68k CPU_TYPE_MC680x0 CPU_SUBTYPE_MC680x0_ALL Motorola 68K hppa CPU_TYPE_HPPA CPU_SUBTYPE_HPPA_ALL HP-PA i860 CPU_TYPE_I860 CPU_SUBTYPE_I860_ALL Intel 860 m88k CPU_TYPE_MC88000 CPU_SUBTYPE_MC88000_ALL Motorola 88K sparc CPU_TYPE_SPARC CPU_SUBTYPE_SPARC_ALL SPARC ppc601 CPU_TYPE_POWERPC CPU_SUBTYPE_POWERPC_601 PowerPC 601 ppc603 CPU_TYPE_POWERPC CPU_SUBTYPE_POWERPC_603 PowerPC 603 ppc604 CPU_TYPE_POWERPC CPU_SUBTYPE_POWERPC_604 PowerPC 604 ppc604e CPU_TYPE_POWERPC CPU_SUBTYPE_POWERPC_604e PowerPC 604e ppc750 CPU_TYPE_POWERPC CPU_SUBTYPE_POWERPC_750 PowerPC 750 ppc7400 CPU_TYPE_POWERPC CPU_SUBTYPE_POWERPC_7400 PowerPC 7400 ppc7450 CPU_TYPE_POWERPC CPU_SUBTYPE_POWERPC_7450 PowerPC 7450 ppc970 CPU_TYPE_POWERPC CPU_SUBTYPE_POWERPC_970 PowerPC 970 i486 CPU_TYPE_I386 CPU_SUBTYPE_486 Intel 486 i486SX CPU_TYPE_I386 CPU_SUBTYPE_486SX Intel 486SX pentium CPU_TYPE_I386 CPU_SUBTYPE_PENT Intel Pentium i586 CPU_TYPE_I386 CPU_SUBTYPE_586 Intel 586 pentpro CPU_TYPE_I386 CPU_SUBTYPE_PENTPRO Intel Pentium Pro i686 CPU_TYPE_I386 CPU_SUBTYPE_PENTPRO Intel Pentium Pro pentIIm3 CPU_TYPE_I386 CPU_SUBTYPE_PENTII_M3 Intel Pentium II Model 3 pentIIm5 CPU_TYPE_I386 CPU_SUBTYPE_PENTII_M5 Intel Pentium II Model 5 pentium4 CPU_TYPE_I386 CPU_SUBTYPE_PENTIUM_4 Intel Pentium 4 m68030 CPU_TYPE_MC680x0 CPU_SUBTYPE_MC68030_ONLY Motorola 68030 m68040 CPU_TYPE_MC680x0 CPU_SUBTYPE_MC68040 Motorola 68040 hppa7100LC CPU_TYPE_HPPA CPU_SUBTYPE_HPPA_7100LC HP-PA 7100LC The first set of entries are used for the architecture family. The second set of entries are used for a specific architecture, when more than one specific architecture is supported in a family of architectures. NXGetAllArchInfos() returns a pointer to an array of all known NXArchInfo structures. The last NXArchInfo is marked by a NULL name. NXGetLocalArchInfo() returns the NXArchInfo for the local host, or NULL if none is known. NXGetArchInfoFromName() and NXGetArchInfoFromCpuType() return the NXArchInfo from the architecture's name or CPU type/CPU subtype combina- tion. A CPU subtype of CPU_SUBTYPE_MULTIPLE can be used to request the most general NXArchInfo known for the given CPU type. NULL is returned if no matching NXArchInfo can be found. NXFindBestFatArch() is passed a CPU type and CPU subtype and a set of fat_arch structs. It selects the best one that matches (if any), and returns a pointer to that fat_arch struct (or NULL). The fat_arch structs must be in the host byte order and correct such that fat_archs really points to enough memory for nfat_archs structs. It is possible that this routine could fail if new CPU types or CPU subtypes are added and an old version of this routine is used. But if there is an exact match between the CPU type and CPU subtype and one of the fat_arch structs, this routine will always succeed. NXCombineCpuSubtypes() returns the resulting CPU subtype when combining two different CPU subtypes for the specified CPU type. If the two CPU subtypes can't be combined (the specific subtypes are mutually exclusive), -1 is returned, indicating it is an error to combine them. This can also fail and return -1 if new CPU types or CPU subtypes are added and an old version of this routine is used. But if the CPU sub- types are the same, they can always be combined and this routine will return the CPU subtype passed in. SEE ALSO
arch(1) July 28, 2005
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