Gcc isn't designed for speed unfortuanatly.. It's designed to be portable a produce reliable speedy code. Plus it is Free and free.
It's cool how this computer works.
Each cpu has it's own 500mhz pathway to the chipset. At the typical overblown ddr rating it is suppose to be 1000mhz, but we all know that 1000mhz ddr speed is not = to 1000mhz real speed. The best fastest bus for the x86 is Intel's "quad-pumped" 800mhz bus. It is realy a 200mhz bus that is suppose to be able to transfer information 4 times for every clock, which seems doubtful. But I am not in a position to disput this.
(In dual cpu mode does the intel have to share this single bus? or does each cpu have its own?)
And look at it this way. PowerPC's typically can do 30-40% more work per cpu cycle then the Intel cpu can.
So if you look at it in terms of real bus speeds, the bus for the newest Pentium4 is able to supply information for 1 out of every 16 cpu clock cycles, in quad pump mhz they can get information for 1 out of every 4. In a G5 this translates into 1 in 4 for real-world mhz and 1 in 2 for ddr mhz.
Plus you have one isolated channel for each cpu, so there is no bandwidth sharing.
So for s***s and giggles I think I'll try some math out. (I know this probably, well definately, not accurate)
I'll try to translate the Apple cpu over intel cpu in terms of percentages of power were per cpu cycle
so Apple starts off with a 130% advantage per mhz and the much larger bandwith aviable to it per cpu cycle. I am tempted to put that at 260% per cpu cycle because of the dual proccessors, but I know that dual proccessors typically are only 130-150% as effective as a single proccessor, but since the architecture is speficly designed for dual proccessors and has seperate channels for each proccessor and has 128bit pathway to the RAM I will peg the effectiveness at 160% dual cpu bonus.... I also throw in a 140% for the 64bit, but I will have to take away 30% since most of the programs will be half 64 and 32 bits since they were originally designed for 32bits.
(remember I am talking about PER CPU CYCLE right now)
So 110% bonus for the 64bit into 130% bonus for efficiancy, gets you 143% per cycle.
143% percent combined with the 160% dual cpu bonus gets you a grand total of
228.8% effeciveness...
But I will have to take away 10% becuase the world is not what it should be. So that's 218% effectiveness clock to clock.
So the dual G5 scores a intel pentium4 rating of 4360mhz relative effectiveness. Thats 136% the umph of the single intel 3.2 ghz or 145% compared to a 3ghz intel cpu.
SO if AMD was the ruler of the G5 world the cpu name would be the PowerPC 4500+.
Of course if you look at the Apple benchmarks and average out the 194% for the fp rating and 166% for the other spec benchmark you get 184% effectiveness, which is a much more aggressive rating then the Drag-o-Meter benchmark. I think that mine is more accurate at 145%.
And if you listen to the Mac rumor land, Apple should be getting a 3ghz g5 by next year so by the time intel gets around releasing the pentium5 at 4/45/5Ghz Mac users should have a PowerPC 6700+ aviable at 163/145/130% effectiveness... and still Intel won't have a 32 proccesor home market and right now there Itanium is flopping in terms of sales...
It will be nice when AMD gets AMD64 out. Then the G5 will have some real competition!
(And yes I know this is a very bad way to compare proccessors and computers, but I just thought it was funny, so don't bother flaming me.)