Apple's Tiger builds on HPC support

Apple Computer last week used its annual developers conference in San Francisco to announced an update to the Mac OS X operating system. The new release, dubbed Tiger, will be available next year and it includes native support for 64-bit applications and a built-in advanced file searching capability.

From a high performance computing (HPC) perspective, Tiger builds on the current version of the operating system (more commonly known as Panther).

"With Tiger, we've expanded our 64-bit support," says Ken Bereskin, senior director Mac OS X product marketing. "Panther broke through the 4 GigaByte (GB) memory barrier (common in 32-bit systems)." But the processes remained largely 32-bit.

Tiger offers native 64-bit support in both its server and client versions. "For scientific computing applications in bio-IT, the practical benefit of 64-bit support is that very large data sets can be supported," says Bereskin.

Additionally, Tiger includes Xgrid 1.0, which is Apple's clustering software. With Xgrid, researchers can quickly create a distributed cluster of up to 128 systems, running up to 10,000 queued jobs.

Help for the knowledge worker

Apple says there are more than 150 and 200 new features, respectively, in the Tiger client and server products.

Two of these new features are designed to help make work easier for researchers, scientists, or any person dealing with information (so-called knowledge workers).

First, there is a new built-in search tool -- called Spotlight -- that helps a person find any file, document, or piece of information that was created by any application on a Mac. For instance, using Spotlight a person can find an email, image file, any Microsoft Office file, or a calendar appointment.

Spotlight goes beyond the normal capabilities of common file searching tools in that it can also use file metadata to perform more refined searches based on things like the author's name, keywords, or a file's creation date.

A second feature that has the potential to help knowledge workers manage information more efficiently is support for Really Simple Syndication (RSS). Many Web sites now offer RSS-based feeds that provide users of that Web site with constant information or data updates. Typically, people use third-party software that allows them to designate which RSS feeds to survey on a regular basis.

Tiger includes Safari RSS, a new version of Apple's Web browser that helps simplify the use of RSS. Specifically, Safari RSS auto-detects RSS Web sites and displays a special icon when such sites are found. Pressing the icon transforms Safari into an RSS reader so the content can be displayed immediately. Researchers can use Safari to build a news clipping service that aggregates multiple RSS feeds into one place.

Tiger, which is officially Mac OS X version 10.4, will be available in the first half of 2005. The suggested retail price for the client version of Tiger is US$129. Pricing for the Tiger server is US$499 for a 10-client edition and US$999 for an unlimited-client edition. Current Mac OS X users who subscribe to the Apple Maintenance Program will get Tiger server as part of their service agreement.