[emark]

ok 2 pts,

1) contacted mac soft re: whether or not Halo could take advantage of dual processors, as this wasn't addressed in requirements, the original, their reply, and my reply to theirs (in reverse order) follows:

Greg:

Hello and thank you for your message.

I don't mean to nitpick, and certainly, perhaps we are talking of two different things, but, OS X does indeed support symmetric multi-processing. OS 9 and before didn't. Programs could use dual processors, and, parts of the finder were re-written to take advantage of it, but, I 110% assusre you that the BSD unix kernel-based OS X does since 10.0 support SMP.

Here is the press release in 3/01 for apple's release of X.

http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2001...1osxstore.html

I hope the programmers consider adding this support, or addapting the existing support in Halo to work here. Think of the possibilities of going back and having machines with dual 450, dual 533, etc and all the newer duals having a great game experience...with n appropriate video card??

Further, I still beleive it would be good to clarify that Halo, doesn't recognize both processors, which, for whatever technical reasons, other applications and the Finder do see and take advantage of (or I don't think they'd keep making them and consistently being the better sellers in the desktop line).

Thanks for your consideration, and regardless, I look forward to playing.

Sincerely
-mark


On Dec 17, 2003, at 8:29 PM, MacSoft Technical Support wrote:

Hi Mark,

Thanks for your message. Halo uses dual processors, but because OS X doesn't
support symmetric multi-processing, the increases in performance won't be
that great. Certain games will be able to balance processes more evenly
across the processors and others cannot because of an imbalance in the
amount of threading that various processes do.

A G4 with 800 MHz processor, whether that is a dual or single processor, is
the minimum required.

Sincerely,

Greg G.
MacSoft Technical Support

Greetings:

please clarify on system requirements the ability to recognize a dual
processor mac. It may help to say, doesn't recognize dual processors
in requirements if that is so, since looking at the history of macs
sold...dual is where it is at, at least 1/3, sometimes 2/3 depending on
product cycle, have been dual for last several years starting w/ AGP
generation...If you were to have it enabled, you would vastly increase
the # of macs that could handle.





Does anyone know anything else they can add to this - AND NO, THIS ISN'T A CALL TO ARMS TO FLOOD THEM W/ NONSENSE, JUST TRYING TO CLARIFY (for me and them) what's happening.



2) on another note, I have tried w/ 3 different addresses to register for MacGamer forums. Each time with 3 different addresses it tells me the address has been banned. When I clidk on the "contact us" link, i get a 404 server error? Any thoughts? are these guys out to lunch?

[TimmyDee51]

That doesn't make any sense. Mac OS X supports SMP on the lowest levels. What are they talking about?

http://www.apple.com/macosx/features/darwin/

[Brad Oliver]

2) on another note, I have tried w/ 3 different addresses to register for MacGamer forums. Each time with 3 different addresses it tells me the address has been banned. When I clidk on the "contact us" link, i get a 404 server error? Any thoughts? are these guys out to lunch? [/B]

I believe they no longer allow registration from hotmail/yahoo accounts and the like due to past abuses.

[mac freak]

Whoa, those are some intensely ill-informed developers

[a2daj]

You mean tech support, right? Please don't confuse tech support with developers.

Halo isn't a CPU limited game, so adding dual proc support most likely won't help, particularly if the engine doesn't play nicely with SMP support.

SMP machines are still in the minority of the customer base. Publishers should never have to add anything about not taking advantage of SMP on game requirements. You never want to advertise a disadvantage like that. You should only want to list advantages. The only type of disadvantage you might need to know is cross platform networking support.

[emark]

Here's the reply to my latest inquiry, in which I (perhaps mistakenly) assert that OSX IS smp capable:


Hi Mark,

Maybe we are disagreeing on something that is purely semantic. In my mind,
symmetric multiprocessing requires an "executive" in the kernel to allocate
threads evenly to both processors. I can almost assure you that OS X does
not do this. While the kernel might support such a feature, it is not
balancing threads across both processors. Rather, it utilizes one processor
until filled and then uses the second. The onlu situation where this is not
true is when an application has specifically been written to use a second
processor. But in this case, the application merely "offloads" certain
processes to the other processor. The fact that an application currently has
to be written to support multiple processors essentially proves that SMP,
while very likely supported in the kernel, is still not implemented in the
operating system.

When SMP support truly exists in OS X, the only considerations that a
developer has to make are strategic ones; when and where to use threads
versus other processes. The threading and multiprocessing is handled
completely at the OS layer.

That's my understanding of the issue. If you know differently, I'd
appreciate knowing about it as well. Maybe I'm including threading in my SMP
definition and you aren't? The reason I include thread management is that
multiprocessing can't be very symmetric without it.

Thanks,

Greg

[emark]

Please note a couple things

First and foremost, the tone of the messages are very plesant, and not condescending...this thread isn't about "they suck", it's about i'd like to understand what the tech challenges are, and encourage where possible full use of mac capabilities.

After reading interviews from folks from Omni who were assisting in ports, it sounded like it was less dificult than perhaps some might have thought....(and I am a layperson, w/ nothing constructive to add here)....


To address the post prior to the repsonse, TRUE, marketing shmaltz typically doesn't address or DISADVANTAGES/FAILURES.

However, when I click through to the SPECIFICATIONS AND REQUIREMENTS, I expect to know how something will fair....Trust for games that use dual processors, there is a huge difference in playability, and I'm not going to buy a game that is a dog (on my machine), and I can't afford a new machine at this moment....(quit job to go back to school).

[Hydra]

Wow, I hope that guy doesn't get to actually touch the code for Halo. I think HE thinks he has a little knowledge about SMP but what he describes as SMP is not and when he says that OSX does not have SMP functionality he is wrong. With SMP, it is the threads that are balanced among all available cpu's and if an application is not multi-threaded this will not occur an you get a thread hoging one cpu and get little impact in performance overall. The more threads an application has running the more the OS can balance them among the available processors. I could be wrong but there is no way I know of for a OS/processor to split an active thread up as he describes. If this could be done I think it would be revolutionary as simply adding more cpu's would give an almost linear improvement in performance for all aplications. Neeless to say this is not the case of current computing technology.


The Beauty of OSX's SMP support is that even if an application isn't multi-threaded the OS still is and your computer remains much more responive under heavy load. Sound is one area that any game, multi-threaded or not, can get a boost from a dual processor Mac. The sound will go to core audio deep in the OS and can be run in it's own thread and give a modest boost in game speed.


-Jerry C.

[Jupeman]

I'm no expert in SMP, but I thought OS X was SMP, too. If a company like MacSoft isn't recognizing this (and it SOUNDS like the tech support guy is rather knowledgeable) then all Mac gamers are in trouble. Who has the knowledge to politely educate MacSoft and is this an issue we as a community need to bring to Apple's attention? Apple can't let folks run around ill informed like this! (if in fact they are ill informed, maybe I am...)

[ambush]

nvm

[emark]

As was pointed out by someone above, this is the nice guy in Tech Support who's job is likely to talki people through installation, he is not a developer....and this doesn't mean he isn't doing what he's trained to do...

It's nice he took the time to respond, even if he's wrong, which I hope, but, if he's right, can anyone here please elaborate a bit? I'm at a loss.

Regardless of whethere or not the mac supports "true" smp, if this program/port does not, it certainly was just a business decision on costs and returns and timing, not some jihad against the mac....and who knows, maybe they will patch it to better utilize the platform as other major games have done?

Either way, I'm looking forward to seeing it.

[King Bob On The Cob]

Well, Why do you care if it supports SMP?
Your processor will almost never be the bottleneck in a game. It is more likely to be the Front-Side Bus (Which in turn is limited by the processor), your graphics card, or your RAM read/write.

[a2daj]

I'm having a hard time how you, someone who hasn't seen the code, can make a claim that not adding SMP support was purely a business decision. Not all engines can benefit from SMP support. If the Halo engine could be modified to be multithreaded and it would have been beneficial, then Westlake Interactive (the company who did the actual port, MacSoft just published it) would have added it. However, according to the developers, adding multithread support to Halo was not possible (not including sound processing). The engine is designed to be single threaded. And as we've been telling you, Halo is GPU limited, not CPU limited, so SMP support wouldn't help.

There are a few games I have that support SMP that actually slow down (Alice, MoH, and JKII). On slower machines, the SMP support seems to help, but there seems to be a threshold where once that's passed, SMP is actually more of a burden. In MoH, I've seen my framerates drop 20 fps in the same seen because of turning on SMP support.

[Macnerd]

Interesting thread. I was wondering if I could improve performance (as in MOHAA) by enabling the second processor but it appears not and maybe that it wouldn't help much anyway. With most of the visual settings on high but sound on medium Halo runs well on my G5 Dual 2GHz (1.5GB RAM, 10.3.2, Radeon 9800) except for when there's a lot of bodies - It seems that it really works the GPU. FSAA is the biggest performance hit so I set it very low. Having a 22" display makes a higher resolution pretty necessary to my eyes.

Not being that knowledgable about the pro's and cons of some of the more obscure settings, I'd be interested if anyone here has arrived at a group of settings which provide a good balance between speed and eye candy without sacrificing playability?

[Vash]

Macnerd, look down a couple threads. Someone did find optimal settings for a Dual G5 running Halo. It makes no sense that Halo is so GPU intensive yet ran with no lag at all on XBox unless doing cooperative in large high action areas. There is no way the Xbox graphics capabilities are even above a Geforce 4 Ti. Yea,T.V.s are about 640x480, but to not be able to run on the latest PCs and Macs with everything maxed out, that just doesn't seem right.

[emark]

Originally posted by a2daj:
I'm having a hard time how you, someone who hasn't seen the code, can make a claim that not adding SMP support was purely a business decision.

And I'm having a hard time with your BAD ATTITUDE.

The tech said that it runs in SMP on Windows, most things do run faster when they support SMP, sure, there's overhead, BUT, if the overhead is less than what the second processor could add, then it would result in a gain....which gets to how it's executed...OBVIOUSLY they wouldn't ship it (at least w/ default settings) enabling dual processors if they couldn't work it out to be better than single....great work.

Further, READ the posts. I'm not down on the developers, just trying to sort out the tech's assertions.....looking for people with technical background to shed some light.

Since someone died and made you Elvis, step up to the plate, and answer the questions since you're such a wiz:

do the tech's assertions make sense, are there SMP features of "OSX" that are lacking vs. Win or others????

now's your chance to contribute something to the actual thread, else take your whiney judgemental sh*t elsewhere.

[DBvader]

vash, comparing the XBOX version to the mac or PC version is pointless, imo. you nailed it with the 640 x 480 bit, but also you should remember that on the XBOX version, there is only one set of specs, so im sure Bungie did tons (or at least as much as they could in their time frame) of optimization for that platform. I know that the XBOX runs on some version of windows, but im sure it has a lot less to deal with than macs or PCs.

also remember it isnt that exact same game, and that the grahics were written to take advantage of newer technologies. All this, im sure, affects performance comapred to the XBOX version.

[Angus_D]

Originally posted by emark:
Maybe we are disagreeing on something that is purely semantic. In my mind,
symmetric multiprocessing requires an "executive" in the kernel to allocate
threads evenly to both processors.

It's called the scheduler.

I can almost assure you that OS X does
not do this. While the kernel might support such a feature, it is not
balancing threads across both processors.

This is false. OS X does that and it does balance threads across both processors.

Rather, it utilizes one processor
until filled and then uses the second.

I'm not sure what algorithm the scheduler uses (it's probably pretty complicated), but I can't see how it's relevant really.

The onlu situation where this is not true is when an application has specifically been written to use a second
processor. But in this case, the application merely "offloads" certain processes to the other processor. The fact that an application currently has to be written to support multiple processors essentially proves that SMP, while very likely supported in the kernel, is still not implemented in the operating system.

This entire passage is a bit incoherent and nonsensical, it's not really clear what he thinks the difference between "kernel" and "operating system" is.

Here are a few links, anyway:
http://developer.apple.com/documenta...section_1.html
http://developer.apple.com/documenta...section_1.html

[emark]

Many thanks, good points, and thanks for the links...

found this from BSDcon '02, so seems to be, like so many things, a work in progress:

Advanced Synchronization in Mac OS X: Extending Unix to SMP and Real-Time
Louis G. Gerbarg
Apple Computer, Inc.


BSDcon Pub

[a2daj]

Originally posted by emark:
And I'm having a hard time with your BAD ATTITUDE.

The tech said that it runs in SMP on Windows, most things do run faster when they support SMP, sure, there's overhead, BUT, if the overhead is less than what the second processor could add, then it would result in a gain....which gets to how it's executed...OBVIOUSLY they wouldn't ship it (at least w/ default settings) enabling dual processors if they couldn't work it out to be better than single....great work.

Further, READ the posts. I'm not down on the developers, just trying to sort out the tech's assertions.....looking for people with technical background to shed some light.

Since someone died and made you Elvis, step up to the plate, and answer the questions since you're such a wiz:

do the tech's assertions make sense, are there SMP features of "OSX" that are lacking vs. Win or others????

now's your chance to contribute something to the actual thread, else take your whiney judgemental sh*t elsewhere.

Whoa, whoa, whoa! You're reading WAY too much into my post than I intended. I have no problems with you. I just saw no justification in your claims that not including SMP support in the Halo engine was a business decision. I didn't comment on OS X and SMP because Hydra already covered most of what I would have talked about. If you want to ignore the technical information I provided before, go ahead. I have no problems with that but my information regarding Halo and SMP came straight from the Mac developers who worked on Halo.

Mac Halo was developed early on by Brad Oliver, then later Duane Johnson, Ken Cobb and Phil Sulak after Brad was pulled off to work on EQ. Duane has said in the IMG forums a number of times (I know, many don't visit that site) that PC Halo doesn't have SMP support (the tech is wrong) and they couldn't add it to the Mac version (as I said before). And since the engine is highly GPU dependant then Halo SMP support wouldn't be worth it even if it were possible.

No where did I assume you were "down on the developers." I was just posting information based on primary sources.

[Macnerd]

Originally posted by Vash:
Macnerd, look down a couple threads. Someone did find optimal settings for a Dual G5 running Halo. It makes no sense that Halo is so GPU intensive yet ran with no lag at all on XBox unless doing cooperative in large high action areas. There is no way the Xbox graphics capabilities are even above a Geforce 4 Ti. Yea,T.V.s are about 640x480, but to not be able to run on the latest PCs and Macs with everything maxed out, that just doesn't seem right.

Thanks Vash - That's sort of what I was thinking but looking at the Minimum requirements (800+ G4) I assumed that maybe there would be a point at which the Mac would start to stutter. I was a bit disappointed, if truth be known, that I couldn't max it out and still have it play well but I guess that is unreasonable. The X-Box t hing did have me wondering too!

Like I said I think it is to do with balancing a few different settings (i.e. less complex textures but FSAA on at 2x). Disconnecting my second monitor was a must, since it is (I assume?) using resources from the GPU even when it's sitting there being apparently unused during the game. I saw a definite improvement.

[emark]

Originally posted by a2daj:
Whoa, whoa, whoa! You're reading WAY too much into my post than I intended. I have no problems with you.

MY APOLOGIES - and thanks for the earlier input.