[Beowulf] [craig.hunter at nasa.gov: Re: Intel?]

[Jim Lux]

----- Original Message -----
From: <Franz.Marini at mi.infn.it>
To: "Michael T. Prinkey" <mprinkey at aeolusresearch.com>
Cc: <beowulf at beowulf.org>; "Robert G. Brown" <rgb at phy.duke.edu>
Sent: Wednesday, June 08, 2005 10:56 AM
Subject: Re: [Beowulf] [craig.hunter at nasa.gov: Re: Intel?]


> On Wed, 8 Jun 2005, Michael T. Prinkey wrote:
> > It seems that they are "daft."  One Apple's VPs has emphatically
declared
> > that they will not allow MAC OSX to run on anything but Apply hardware.
>
> And they have declared that WinXP will run on their new Intel Macs, too.
> So I think that there won't be any drastic change in the architecture from
> a "standard" x86 pc...

WinXP and Win2K aren't all that hardware dependent at the lower levels.
There's a Hardware Abstraction Layer (HAL) in the OS that separates all the
icky interface details. Assuming your source code compiles for x86 with the
API and libraries, it will run just fine, regardless.

>
> My guess is that they'll put some kind of hardware signature on their
> mobos, completely ignored by WinXP (or linux, for that matter), but looked
> for by OS/X on boot.
>
> And if my guess is right, I give hackers around the globe no more than 3-4
> days from the availability of the first OS/X for Intel to find a way
> around the protection, thus enabling any x86 pc to run it ;)
>
> But, time will tell...