"J. Paul Robinson" wrote: > So Mario, when are you going to talk about software that runs on computers that > the other 90% plus that people have.......in terms of world computer > sales, Apple is right up there at .....4%!! > Paul > So if FlowJo was a PC-only application I would have to buy a Wintel machine on top of my Mac, but that wouldn't matter because we're a minority anyway? The 4% your talking about are indeed an estimate of worldwide Apple hardware sales, but we're talking education/academic sector here, where the Mac market share rises to 20% (and much higher in the flow cytometry area as we all know). I' ve worked on both platforms and believe me I wouldn't even think about doing my FACS work (or any other daily lab tasks) on an NT machine. This may not be very obvious for someone with an engineering background, but I just like the fact that I can easily do maintenance and troubleshooting on our Mac network without any expert IT support. So all things taken into consideration I think the choice of developing software such as FlowJo on Macs is a very pragmatic one. But the real shocking news now is this report by Keith Bahjat stating that Cellquest is not only non-optimized for the G4's vector processing, but was never optimized for the PowerPC architecture as well! What a shame and a waste of power: a 68k-application on a G4!! I hope someone from BD is reading this and can comment on this shortcoming in development. Karim Vermaelen Pulmonary Immunobiology Ghent University Hospital Ghent, Belgium > Date sent: Tue, 26 Sep 2000 16:16:30 -0400 > To: cyto-inbox > From: Mario Roederer <Roederer@drmr.com> > Subject: Re: G4 for FACSCalibur > > > > > I tested FlowJo for a number of different tasks (e.g.,generating > > complex graphical layouts; generating large tabular outputs; even > > analyzing 13-parameter, million-event data files) on G4's vs. G3. > > The G4 was significantly faster (taking into account the clock > > speed), even when the program was not G4-optimized. I also tested a > > G4-optimized version of FlowJo that takes advantage of the AltiVec > > instructions (no, not yet commercially available!), and it's another > > large step up. > > > > As more and more applications come out to be AltiVec-aware (and they > > are!), everyone will realize the enormous speed benefit from this > > technology. > > > > Note that the multi-processing nature of Altivec should not be > > confused with the multi-processing capability of dual-processor > > machines (like the new G4 cube). There's a completely different set > > of optimizations that programs need to fully take advantage of > > multi-processor machines (and I'm sure that will be forthcoming in > > the next year or two as well). > > > > Bottom line--G4's are faster, but G3's are a lot cheaper (right now). But > > as more and more applications are Altivec-aware, then there won't be a > > comparison. > > > > mr > > > > (PS--Intel-based machines, even the gigaherz processors, don't come > > close to the G4 capabilities.) > > J.Paul Robinson, Ph.D., > Professor of Immunopharmacology > Professor of Biomedical Engineering > Director, Purdue University Cytometry Laboratories > Hansen Hall, Roon B050 > Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN 47907-1515 > (Ph) (765) 494-0757 Fax (765) 494-0517 > jpr@flowcyt.cyto.purdue.edu > > http://www.cyto.purdue.edu > > http://www.bioscope.org
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