Uncovered: Evidence that Mac OS X could run Windows apps soon

Once Intel chips landed inside Macs and Boot Camp made its debut, it got a lot harder to blame rumor mongers for making a certain leap: Mac OS X could one day run Windows apps sans-Windows. Indeed, projects like the open source Wine have facilitated some of this functionality, albeit in a limited fashion, for some time now. But a new discussion on a Wine mailing list could refresh hope for those looking to get their Frankenstein on with Mac OS X and Windows computing.

The discussion begins with a mailing list message called Interesting Behavior of OS X, in which Steven Edwards describes the discovery that Leopard apparently contains an undocumented loader for Portable Executables, a type of file used in 32-bit and 64-bit versions of Windows. More poking around revealed that Leopard's own loader tries to find Windows DLL files when attempting to load a Windows binary.

Yes, that last bit is the juicy one. According to the fledgling investigation in this as-yet short message thread, folks are suspecting that Leopard contains at least the building blocks for Apple to one day add a compatibility layer to Mac OS X for running Windows apps right alongside Mac OS X apps. "Just add Windows" and Boot Camp itself could fall off the list of ingredients for bridging these two computing worlds.

Of course, this could also be nothing; perhaps leftover from some behind-the-scenes project, spare code from adopting EFI (though this reply notes that PE files are flat-out rejected in Tiger on Intel Macs), or who knows what else. Still, if your conspiracy theory wells have run dry during Macworld's pre-season, this should be more than enough to keep you busy for at least a week or so.

By David Chartier.

AMD Stream Processor First to Break 1 Teraflop Barrier

—Next-generation AMD FireStream™ 9250 processor accelerates scientific and engineering calculations, efficiently delivering supercomputer performance at up to eight gigaflops-per-watt —

DRESDEN, Germany -- June 16, 2008 --At the International Supercomputing Conference, AMD (NYSE:AMD) today introduced its next-generation stream processor, the AMD FireStream™ 9250, specifically designed to accelerate critical algorithms in high-performance computing (HPC), mainstream and consumer applications. Leveraging the GPU design expertise of AMD’s Graphics Product Group, AMD FireStream 9250 breaks the one teraflop barrier for single precision performance. It occupies a single PCI slot, for unmatched density and with power consumption of less than 150 watts, the AMD FireStream 9250 delivers an unprecedented rate of performance per watt efficiency with up to eight gigaflops per watt.

Customers can leverage AMD’s latest FireStream offering to run critical workloads such as financial analysis or seismic processing dramatically faster than with CPU alone, helping them to address more complex problems and achieve faster results. For example, developers are reporting up to a 55x performance increase on financial analysis codes as compared to processing on the CPU alone, which supports their efforts to make better and faster decisions. Additionally, the use of flexible GPU technology rather than custom accelerators assists those creating application-specific systems to enhance and maintain their solutions easily.

From: AMD News