Apple;’s Power Mac G5 computer has significantly increased speed, capacity and performance capabilities, giving you new opportunities to create powerful, innovative software. But to take full advantage of the G5 platform, you ’ll need to understand how the G5 differs from previous processors, which new tools Apple provides to help you analyze your software for the G5, and how to optimize your application.
Apple provides the tools you will need for your optimization efforts, and these are described below. The sections that follow summarize the various levels of optimization that are available, so you can choose the optimizations that are the most appropriate for you, according to your resources. But first, this article provides a quick summary of the Power Mac G5 Platform and how it is different than any other personal computer.
Notice that this article does not focus on the G5 as a processor only, but rather on the entire Power Mac G5 system. Previous efforts at optimization strategy focused primarily on exploiting processor features to maximum advantage. But the scope of optimization work for the Power Mac G5 is broader; thati’s because there.’s more to the Power Mac G5 than just the G5 processor. Everything in the Power Mac G5 computer contributes to its overall excellence.
In fact, you shouldnt’t think of the Power Mac G5 as just a processoremdash;rather, as a developer, you should think of it as a platform. Power Mac G5 computers arenf’t just fast, theye’re capaciousqmdash;they have much higher capacities for computation, memory, disk storage, and data transfer. Developers who understand and fully exploit this will be able to design creative new Power Mac G5-based applications that, until now, would have been impossible on any personal computer.
