Apple Power Mac G5 (Late 2005) - Manual (Page 24)

24 Technology Overview
Power Mac G5
Science and Technical Computing
The Power Mac G5 gives scientifi c researchers the ability to achieve fast results.
Whether you’re doing molecular modeling with PyMOL, searching for DNA alignments
with BLAST, analyzing statistics with SPSS, or modeling equations with Mathematica,
you’ll make discoveries in record time.
• With four 64-bit G5 processor cores, four Velocity Engine units, and eight double-
precision fl oating-point units, you’ll see dramatic acceleration of vectorized and
fl oating-point-intensive applications such as HMMER and BLAST.
• The optional NVIDIA Quadro FX 4500 graphics card supports stereo 3D visualization
in a window for complex data analysis. 6
• Up to 16GB of main memory with an ECC option makes light work of enormous tasks,
while PCI Express expansion supports Fibre Channel interconnects, the latest data
collection devices, and multiple graphics cards for an array of up to eight Apple
Cinema Displays.
5
• UNIX-based Mac OS X allows you to run complex scientifi c applications and command-
line tools alongside essential productivity applications, such as Microsoft Excel and
Adobe Photoshop—all on the same computer and operating system.
Scientifi c visualization and stereo 3D
In fi elds such as molecular modeling, X-ray crystallography, computational chemistry,
aerial mapping, or medical imaging, users need to visualize more information than can
be represented in a conventional planar display. With the help of an added dimension
and stereoscopic technologies, researchers can comprehend extremely large data sets,
such as the construct of molecules in a drug or a virus, or extremely complex data, such
as a detailed aerial photograph.
The optional NVIDIA Quadro FX 4500 graphics card features a stereo 3D graphics port,
enabling you to use stereo 3D goggles, such as those from Stereo Graphics Corporation,
to view an added dimension on your CRT. Stereo-in-a-window support in Mac OS X
further enhances visualization, allowing you to designate a quadrant of the display for
stereo visualization, while using the other areas of the display concurrently to control
the model, edit data, or make notations.
6
Thanks to PCI Express expansion, which supports industry-standard PCI Express
graphics cards in all four slots, you can connect the new Power Mac G5 to an array
of large dis plays. Each graphics card has two DVI ports, which means a single system
can control up to eight Apple Cinema Displays,
5 providing an impressive view of
geological or meteorological data.
Xcode development tools
Mac OS X comes with Xcode, a suite of
integrated technologies that support
custom development of 64-bit applications
and autovectorization of your code.