Apple claims Snow Leopard will be a "breakthrough" in parallel processing tech

Re:Apple claims Snow Leopard will be a "breakthrough" in par... by ajross on Tuesday June 10, 2008 @05:56PM (#214337)

This is mostly a fallacy. The FreeBSD code is limited almost exclusively to userspace stuff. The Darwin kernel descends much more directly from NeXT's mach-based product. It grew SMP support only very recently, and via a very different path from that taken in the monolithic BSD community.

Honestly, I don't understand why Apple continues to work on their own kernel. It has near zero competitive advantage relative to FreeBSD or Linux, and much cost a fortune to maintain. The real value of their product has always been above the kernel anyway: I have to believe that switching the kernel out for a more robust Unix variant can only be a good thing for the Mac.

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Re:Apple claims Snow Leopard will be a "breakthrough" in par... by wmf on Tuesday June 10, 2008 @08:20PM (#214461)

Switching to the FreeBSD kernel seems like it would have been a good idea back in the Rhapsody days, but Tevanian probably wouldn't allow it. By now Apple has added so many OS X-specific features like IOKit and DRM that it would be a lot of work to switch. Costs a fortune to maintain, costs a fortune to switch.

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Re:Apple claims Snow Leopard will be a "breakthrough" in par... by j2d2 on Wednesday June 11, 2008 @02:06PM (#215095)

Interesting. Thanks for the correction.

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