Today at Apple, fast on the heels of the announcement of a vastly improved 3G iPhone came a preview of the new Apple operating system Snow Leopard (OS X 10.6). Apple hopes that Snow Leopard “builds on the incredible success” of its Leopard predecessor.
Apple touts that improvements coming in Snow Leopard will include better support for multiple processors, better GPU support, better use of large amounts of RAM, and support for Apple’s new QuickTime® X platform. The OS will ship in about a year and will come packaged with support for Microsoft Exchange 2007.
Bertrand Serlet, Apple’s senior vice president of Software Engineering describes the new OS stating, “We have delivered more than a thousand new features to OS X in just seven years and Snow Leopard lays the foundation for thousands more. In our continued effort to deliver the best user experience, we hit the pause button on new features to focus on perfecting the world’s most advanced operating system.”
Apple says that integral to its plans is the new technology “Grand Central”, which will help developers design more efficient multi-core programs for Macs. The new OS will also allow use of Open Computing Language (OpenCL) to use GPUs for non-graphics applications. And the sky’s the limit for memory with 16TB of RAM, theoretically, at the new operating system’s disposal (of course such levels are impossible with current chipsets and DIMM densities).
Source: DailyTech