Specifications

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Technology Overview
Xserve
Members of your workgroup can access their own personalized desktop, application,
and files from any computer on the network, thanks to network-based home directo-
ries. Powerful file and print services, with features like quotas and access control lists,
provide fine-grained management while delivering outstanding network performance.
Providing centralized storage enables workgroup members to back up their work to
a single location and allows mobile users to synchronize versions of home directory
folders locally and on the network. It’s a fast, easy, and reliable way to protect
your data.
64-Bit Software Development with Xcode
The Apple Xcode development toolset makes it easy to optimize applications for
the dual execution cores of the Intel Xeon processor. Based on version 4 of the
GCC (GNU Compiler Collection) development toolchain, Xcode is optimized for the
latest Intel processors, taking full advantage of the Core microarchitecture features
and capabilities, including the SSE3 extensions and the extra processor registers
available in EM64T 64-bit modes.
Xcode and GCC are even multicore-aware themselves, automatically running in parallel
for superfast compilation times. By recompiling with Xcode and the GCC 4 compiler,
developers get improved code generation that keeps the processor’s integer and
floating-point units constantly fed with instructions.
Because Xcode supports the development of universal binaries, developers can build
and qualify a single version of their applications for PowerPC- and Intel-based systems.
In addition, GCC 4 includes auto-vectorization capabilities. Previously, developers had
to create code for the vector processing unit by hand. Now the compiler can generate
vector-based code automatically, delivering superior application performance while
easing the developer’s work.
For advanced performance optimization, Xcode includes Shark, a key component of the
Computer Hardware Understanding Development (CHUD) tools. These powerful tools
measure and evaluate performance, identifying specific areas of an application that can
benefit significantly from the capabilities of the Dual-Core Intel Xeon processor. Shark
enables you to very quickly identify where your application’s performance problems
lie, down to the specific functions on which you should concentrate your optimization
efforts. You can then focus on the fixes that will yield the maximum benefits.
Shark supports performance analysis locally on the same system, remotely from
another system over the network, and through a command-line interface, making it
ideal both for local performance tuning on a single machine and for use on clusters.
New to Shark is the “Windowed Time” facility, which allows Shark to analyze perfor-
mance events that just happened by recording the past few seconds of the system
execution. Since Shark and the gdb debugger can utilize symbol files in the DWARF
format, you can optimize and debug production binary code without needing to
recompile a specific debug version.
For more information about development resources for the Dual-Core Intel Xeon
processor, visit developer.apple.com.
Integrated development for Mac OS X
and Mac OS X Server
Apple’s robust Xcode tools make it easy
to build high-performance applications
for the Dual-Core Intel Xeon processor.
Intel compilers for Mac OS X
Intel provides C/C++ and Fortran
compilers (icc, ifort), Math Kernel Library
(MKL), Integrated Performance Primitives
(IPP), and the new Intel Threading
Building Blocks library for Mac OS X.
Delivering outstanding performance
for Intel multicore processors, these
compilers and tools can be run from
the command line or as plug-ins to
Xcode. See www.intel.com/software
for more information.