Help me decide

[ashishtx]

I am thinking of buying either Imac or Thinkcentre m55 in order to use multi OS which include FreeBsd, windows Xp, windows vista , Linux etc

1)Imac- Imac will allow me to run both Mac os x and windows using Parallels or Bootcamp. (I don't play games) but i am not sure about how well linux runs on Imac.
2)Thinkcentre- Thinkcentre will definately allow me to run Linux as well as windows but i will not be able to Mac os.


Please state your opinion 1 or 2, and explain why?
Any advice is appreciated.

[Mrkvonic]

Hello,
First, the question is what so you need?
Second, you can install Mac on modern PCs without much trouble. You just need cpu with ss2 or ss3 enabled - most modern ones have.
Mrk

[ashishtx]

I want to have a computer that will allow me to run windows, linux and mac os x. Can someone clarify what SS2 or SS3 means?

[Genady Prishnikov]

-{ Quote: "Hello,
First, the question is what so you need?
Second, you can install Mac on modern PCs without much trouble. You just need cpu with ss2 or ss3 enabled - most modern ones have.
Mrk" }-

Though it's pretty darn tricky and certainly not for the novice user. However, with a Mac, running XP is painless with Boot Camp or Parallels.

[Ice_Czar]

-{ Quote: " what SS2 or SS3 means?" }-

Scalar \ SuperScalar Processor Development (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superscalar)


-{ Quote: "A superscalar CPU architecture implements a form of parallelism called Instruction-level parallelism within a single processor. It thereby allows faster CPU throughput than would otherwise be possible at the same clock rate. A superscalar architecture executes more than one instruction during a single pipeline stage by pre-fetching multiple instructions and simultaneously dispatching them to redundant functional units on the processor.

From scalar to superscalar

The simplest processors are scalar processors. Each instruction executed by a scalar processor typically manipulates one or two data items at a time. By contrast, each instruction executed by a vector processor operates simultaneously on many data items. An analogy is the difference between scalar and vector arithmetic. A superscalar processor is sort of a mixture of the two. Each instruction processes one data item, but there are multiple redundant functional units within each CPU so that multiple instructions can be processing separate data items concurrently.

Superscalar CPU design emphasizes improving the instruction dispatcher accuracy, and allowing it to keep the multiple functional units in use at all times. This has become increasingly important as the number of units has increased. While early superscalar CPUs would have two ALUs and a single FPU, a modern design like the PowerPC 970 includes four ALUs and two FPUs, as well as two SIMD units. If the dispatcher is ineffective at keeping all of these units fed with instructions, the performance of the system as a whole will suffer.

A superscalar processor usually sustains an execution rate in excess of one instruction per machine cycle. But merely processing multiple instructions concurrently does not make an architecture superscalar, as both pipelined CPUs and Multicore CPUs also achieve that, but via different methods.

In a superscalar CPU the dispatcher reads instructions from memory and decides which ones can be run in parallel, dispatching them to redundant functional units contained inside a single CPU. Therefore a superscalar processor can be envisioned as having multiple parallel pipelines, each of which is processing instructions simultaneously from a single instruction thread." }-
SS0 SS1 SS2 SS3

Understanding Pipelining and Superscalar Execution (http://arstechnica.com/paedia/c/cpu/part-2/cpu2-1.html) arstechnica

and then there is SSE
Streaming SIMD Extensions (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streaming_SIMD_Extensions) SSE2 SSE3

as to which was being referred to and why
I dont know :P