Possibly as soon as the first quarter of this year we’ll see the release of Mac OS X 10.6 (Snow Leopard). Apple says there won’t be a lot of new features in their latest release, but that reliability and speed will be the main qualities of Snow Leopard.
One of the ways Apple will do this is by implementing OpenCL, a recently approved programming standard which makes the power of graphics processors available in a completely new way, and should transform ordinary computers into “veritable supercomputers” according to Computerworld.
Apple is taking advantage of OpenCL first, as it developed the OpenCL programming language, based on the C language used by so many programmers. It allows applications offload a good deal of the work from the CPU(s) to the GPU, or graphics chip.
ATI and NVIDIA are producing graphics chips as powerful as regular CPUs… at least. The latest Radeon HD 4870 from ATI has almost a billion transistors, nearly double what AMD (ATI’s parent company) uses in it’s most powerful Quad-Core Phenom CPU.
These GPUs aren’t even fully utilized by the most advanced games. They are underutilized in the best of conditions, and they are incredibly fast. OpenCL will allow the GPU to accelerate many apps, particularly when the app’s work can be broken down into smaller, parallel calculations.
Graphics and high definition video could see increases from 40 to 100 times, when they are compiled with OpenCL.
I’m hoping for details at Macworld, but Apple promised Snow Leopard no later than mid-2009, and it could come earlier. I can’t wait!
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