let me comment on this ... without getting *religious* regarding the old (and somehow childish) PC vs. MAC discussion ...
a (long) while ago it seemed that a G5 would be neccessary to provide the performance needed for the MIR. the reason is not at last to be found in the design of PPC processors (you might remember several apple presentations glorifying the short processor pipeline in comparision to x86 processors - which of course _was_ true and such a design fits by definition better to audio). an uncomfortable detail was, that such machines are not the cheapest and a good G5 with more or less *nothing* inside (especially RAM) still starts at USD 3.000.- ... well, a heavy starting condition for a convolution engine (and clearly you'd have to get a dedicated machine for such a job)
later considerations about GHz vs. lenght of pipeline took place as well as thoughts about additional DSPs or VGA cards to be used as *number crunchers* for the convolution engine and finally: the price and ability to cluster processor power.
meanwhile it turned up, that apple is changing their hardware platform alsop to x86, where meanwhile new processor cores came out providing almost as short pipelines as the PPC and x86 multi-core processors (which IBM obviously could or would not provide for apple computers in the PPC world, although they produce them for their own servers and latliest also for the X-box ...)
so currently it looks like a good decision to stay in the PC-world in a first run. imagine all the development had to be done again for a second platform - a severe waste of ressources for a tiny company like VSL ...
finally it's only a question of *bang for the buck* - i for myself would take any platform if it fits the needs. if it has a yellow or a red ribbon ... who cares, it's all just 0 and 1
christian
a (long) while ago it seemed that a G5 would be neccessary to provide the performance needed for the MIR. the reason is not at last to be found in the design of PPC processors (you might remember several apple presentations glorifying the short processor pipeline in comparision to x86 processors - which of course _was_ true and such a design fits by definition better to audio). an uncomfortable detail was, that such machines are not the cheapest and a good G5 with more or less *nothing* inside (especially RAM) still starts at USD 3.000.- ... well, a heavy starting condition for a convolution engine (and clearly you'd have to get a dedicated machine for such a job)
later considerations about GHz vs. lenght of pipeline took place as well as thoughts about additional DSPs or VGA cards to be used as *number crunchers* for the convolution engine and finally: the price and ability to cluster processor power.
meanwhile it turned up, that apple is changing their hardware platform alsop to x86, where meanwhile new processor cores came out providing almost as short pipelines as the PPC and x86 multi-core processors (which IBM obviously could or would not provide for apple computers in the PPC world, although they produce them for their own servers and latliest also for the X-box ...)
so currently it looks like a good decision to stay in the PC-world in a first run. imagine all the development had to be done again for a second platform - a severe waste of ressources for a tiny company like VSL ...
finally it's only a question of *bang for the buck* - i for myself would take any platform if it fits the needs. if it has a yellow or a red ribbon ... who cares, it's all just 0 and 1
christian
and remember: only a CRAY can run an endless loop in just three seconds.