Apple Inc (AAPL)

[KCMW]

re Macs in business - Pixar?

Step into the way-back machine, around the time that the big G5 supercomputer installs were going on. I recall that there was some thoughts that Pixar would start switching their Intel rendering farms over to G5. But that didn't happen - perhaps a foreshadowing of Macs moving away from PPC?

But, I haven't heard that Pixar has switched to OSX (did I miss it? *). Maybe there is no advantage for apps like that, but if OSX includes better core management in the future, maybe we will see this?

It's gonna get very interesting if this multi-core advantage is substantial - can Microsoft come up with something similar, or are they just too bloated to turn fast enough? With rising energy costs, this *could* be big (if we are talking *big* improvements in performance/watt).

-KCMW

* Apparently I did -

http://renderman.pixar.com/products/techspecs/index.htm

RenderMan® Pro Server™ 13.5 is supported on the following hardware and operating systems:

* Apple® Mac® OS X 10.4.1 (or higher)
* Linux® 32-bit (glibc 2.2, 2.3)
* Linux® 64-bit (glibc 2.3)
* Windows® XP Pro (SP2+)