Section A.1. Hardware Differences

A.1. Hardware Differences

Besides the difference in processors, x86-based and PowerPC-based Macintosh computers have several other architectural differences. Programs such as ioreg, hwprefs,^[1] sysctl, hostinfo, machine, and system_profiler can be used to glean hardware-related information under Mac OS X. It is beyond the scope of this appendix to go into the details of hardware differences.

^[1] hwprefs is a part of the CHUD Tools package.

$ hostinfo # x86 ... Kernel configured for up to 2 processors. ... Processor type: i486 (Intel 80486) Processors active: 0 1 ... Primary memory available: 1.00 gigabytes ... Load average: 0.02, Mach factor 1.97 $ hostinfo # PowerPC ... Kernel configured for up to 2 processors. ... Processor type: ppc970 (PowerPC 970) Processors active: 0 1 ... Primary memory available: 4.00 gigabytes ... Load average: 0.02, Mach factor 1.96

Table A1 shows the results of running hwprefs with various arguments on the two platforms. (The x86 machine is a Mac mini Core Duo, whereas the PowerPC machine is a dual 2.5GHz Power Mac G5.) hwprefs also has processor-specific options, such as ht on the x86 and cpu_hwprefetch on the PowerPC.

There also now exist several machine-dependent sysctl nodes.

$ sysctl machdep machdep.cpu.vendor: GenuineIntel machdep.cpu.brand_string: Genuine Intel(R) CPU    1300  @ 1.66GHz machdep.cpu.model_string: Unknown Intel P6 family ...

Table A1. Running hwprefs on the x86 and PowerPC Versions of Mac OS X

Command	Sample Output on x86	Sample Output on PowerPC
hwprefs machine_type	Macmini1,1	PowerMac7,1
hwprefs cpu_type	Intel Core Duo	970FX v3.0
hwprefs memctl_type	Intel 945 v0	U3 Heavy 1.1 v5
hwprefs ioctl_type	ICH7-M v0	K2 v96
hwprefs os_type	Mac OS X 10.4.6 (8I1119)	Mac OS X 10.4.6 (8I127)