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Linus: Praying for Hammer to Win
An anonymous reader writes "The boys at Intel can't be happy with the latest opposition to the IA-64 instruction set. According to this Inquirer scoop, Linus himself has weighed in, and it appears he's putting his eggs in the x86-64 basket. In the original usenet post, he goes so far as to say that 'We're ... praying that AMD's x86-64 succeeds in the market, forcing Intel to make Yamhill their standard platform.'"
It would be nice if good hardware was actually adopted into the mainstream, but Mac and Sun are living proof that people want CHEAP hardware. Let's all pray this is a good median.
Now if AMD can get the endorsement of "The Carmack", they will really be happy.
To me this is an impressive endorsement. Given the overall support that AMD has given Linux over the years, it is great to see a little bit of that given back.
Cool. x86 through 2086!
is the same as the problem with OS/2. People dont want to re-write their applications for native support. I expect very few apps to be codeed for Hammer because its 32bit compatiblity is so good. An application devloper can write for old 32bit x86 and target Hammer and x86 at the same time. Just like devloeprs could once write applications for Windows 3.1 and have them run on Windows and OS/2. Not that the CPU wont do well, but I dont expect it to ever get the kind of support it wants.
"Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"
it's an internet tabloid creating a mountain ("Linus himself is praying that AMD wins!") from a molehill (half a sentence in an unrelated USENET post).
crap story.
Cretin - a powerful and flexible CD reencoder
Not surprising... he works for Transmeta, and they licensed x86-64... So what else should he say?
Beside that, who cares for the CPU's instruction set? Nobody, except compiler designers and very few assembler programmers. And they already know x86 and the tools exist. So the only argument for Itanium can be performance/price. And ATM it looks like Opterons will be cheaper.
I see only Linus daydreaming about keeping x86 (the well-known and optimized standard bytecode at Transmeta, remember?), so that the 64 bit extensions get more widespread, thus "rest of us" can afford to get 64 bit architectures on this very same architecture we grown up with... On the other hand, it's a good goal :)
"Ten years from now, they could do it in a few seconds." -- The Racketeer of the Hellfire Club, 1993, Phrack 42
Considering that Linus is almost fanatical about needing to "break" backwards compatibility in the Linux kernel in order to develop it as fast as possible.
Now he's supporting a CPU scheme that, well, doesn't break anything and may even sacrifice performance for that compatibility.
Moderation: Put your hand inside the puppet head!
You might want to change the title of this story to "Hoping for Hammer to Win." Who's praying? Ever heard of the separation of church and state? Jesus.
Atheists are the last group of people who are still acceptable to oppress.
but isn't that WHY it's better than ia64?
It's amazing that somebody could make such a relatively long article from what amounts to one sentence in Linus's email!
Reading the Linus's email it seems that he wasn't endorsing one way or the other. He was just hoping x86-64 became dominant since it would stave off some issues related to how pages were handled.
Apparently, if things go the Itanium route then some page related things get more complicated but that's it.
Nothing to see here. Move along.
--
"I'm too old to use Emacs." -- Rod MacDonald
Now I lay me down to sleep.... I pray Intel the IA-64 Instruction set to keep. But if Intel folds before I wake, I pray AMD picks up their stake (of the market).
....)
(OK so the last part sucks, but still
Well as far as many people run a P2/P3 on their boxes , when AMD Hammer comes out it would be nice for linux people ( us ) to embrace AMD Hammer and buy it. I mean what did Intel give back to Linux ? They didnt even mention it on supported processors. Whereas AMD shows its processor on 64 bit Linux. So I think AMD deserves more respect on the linux scene.
Never learn by your mistakes, if you do you may never dare to try again
please hammer, don't hurt 'em!
Maybe I misinterpreted the original post, but I thought that this had more to do 64-bit vs. 32-bit (and the limitations of a 32-bit platform) than it has to do with AMD vs. Intel.
The kernel compiles on so many different architectures, but with most of them being 64-bit (PPC, sparc, MIPS...). However, i386 is the dominant architecture by sheer numbers. To maintain crosss-architecture compatibility, the code has to support the lowest quality architeture (i386). By pushing towards a 64-bit architecture, the limitations of 32-bit can be left behind (oh yeah, but the nasty issue of backwards compatibility).
Unless I just misinterpreted the post.
The significant problems we face cannot be solved by the same level of thinking that created them. -Einstein
That's all well and good for litle Endian OS's, but since you are dealing with a static offset you have one extra instruction lookup for all big endian machines. Thus if you port Linux to Sparc or Alpha you not only see a performance degredation of O(logN) but you loose one register spot on the level II chache for the offest lookup. In other words it will be slower, much much slower.
Warmest regards,
-Jack
Wagner LLC Consulting Co. - Getting it right the first time
How ironic...the architecture of Dorian Gray, with endless bags on the side added over the past two decades (a long time in computer years)--only made to run reasonably by internally interpreting it on the fly into something decent and executing the result...and technically knowledgeable people are praying that the latest flogging of the dead horse is successful? I know, I'm guilty of it, too, because I want Intel to lose, but how strange that Intel's doing something right, namely starting over, is so universally deprecated (vide the "Itanic" nickname common on websites like The Register).
To show its a myth that linux is a good choice if you want to run on X86 processors.
Hey Linus,
What should I drink?
Thank alot,
Wizri,
AMD has 32-bit backward compatability and intel's does not, I believe AMD is the better choice anyways. Who would not want to have that option?
...considering the alternative. Itanium is certainly a decent high end processor, but really, what advantage does it have on the high end not offered by Power, Sparc, PA-Risc, etc? Also, in x86 compatibilty mode, it suffers a rather significant performance hit, so as a drop in replacement for x86 it's value is limited. And the complexity of writing decent VLSI compiliers calls into question whether software will ever be able to take advantage of the performance the processor is theoretically capable of. Where as x86-64 can run current software with equal or better performance, and new applications written to the 64 bit instruction set can be phased in non-disruptively. Itanium may be nice, but for the kinds of applications where it could be used to advantage, I don't see where it has any advantage over other common RISC processors.
First, this was not a USENET post. It's a message from the linux kernel mailing list that google is pumping into their groups.google.com database. Second, Linus is not saying he thinks Hammer is a better architecture. What he said in this message was that the current Linux page table implementation is not ideal for use with IA64 and therefore, for the sake of Linux servers everywhere, it would be better for Hammer to provail in the near to medium term future. I don't know his real position, but I would be very surprised if Linus though Hammer was a "better" architecture. X86 is an awkward instruction set that has been perpetuated by software designed to run on it. The core of these chips like Pentiums are really RISC chips with hardware wrappers to implement the X86 instructions. So it's just a waste if die space. IA64 is purer and a much better long term choice. Don't over analize a simple e-mail message from someone on lkml. These are not markedroid approved public service announcements.
For anyone who has an hour and a half to spare... AMD (along with a few people from SuSE) made a great presentation on the X86-64 technology at the Linux kernel summit in Ottawa a little while back; the MP3 and OGG files are available at the sourceforge kernel foundry.
Linus seems to be more concerned with the wide-range functionality of the specific hardware than the "brand" of it. Making Linux work with x86-64 looks to be easier than making it work "properly" (eg with fully 64-bit page sizes, addresses, etc) with IA64. Then again, IA64 is so broken and slow, it really doesn't matter much in the grand scheme of things if they can make a little go a long way with the Hammer. These small deficiencies the counterpoint poster to Linus makes reference to don't seem to be necessary to make things work..
Regardless of who's winning the CPU war, it's nice to see that Linux is running on all the competitors.
Hmm, after reading the actual usenet post again, he's not really making a bold statement. I still think it's a little ironic, but not in a hypocritical way. Just want that "on record" :)
Moderation: Put your hand inside the puppet head!
I thought we supported this stuff for the other 64 bit processors? Aren't we fully 64-bit yet?
Stop the brainwash
It sounds to me like he's praying for standardization of the 64 bit architecture, not the success of the AMD Hammer.
http://www.mapquest.com/maps/map.adp?location=QFCR C4IYYzhLR2APK0ytgKcvM0MY7awwMofoL7B68YS9bkG7%2fwdm z%2fo%2fnb29cjUR7Ic1Rkrgfu%2bXPuVYoHLzP2BjEn0eNyWT MFeyzTb5i0E%3d&address=yamhill&city=portland&state =or&zipcode=&country=US&addtohistory=
it's funny how people ripped and ripped and ripped on Intel all through the 90s about keeping all their backward compatibility from 286 on through the P4. how people said they should cut the dead weight, etc.
well, now AMD is creating the kruftiest, heaviest, nastiest instruction set of backwards-compatible crud in the history of processor-dom. Intel comes out with a new, no-legacy 64-bit instruction set, and all of a sudden it is, "god, we hope AMD wins so all our old crap still works".
well anyway, here's at least one programmer who is looking forward to getting his mitts on a 64-bit chip which doesn't have layer upon layer of backwards compatibility, wrapped in an overpowered muscle-car of silicon. you'd think we would have learned our lesson with the Alpha, a much, much better chip than the x86 but no one adopted it. people scream and bitch and moan about supporting all the ancient krufty x86 bloat, but when it comes time, they stick with what is comfortable.
more than likely, Intel's 64-bit offering will follow the road of Alpha into technical superiority and market disaster. and we'll be stuck still supporting 286 instructions. way to go.
MORTAR COMBAT!
With my current love of OS X I could care less what's happening in the "WIntel" world. I'm the only one at my work that uses Linux on the desktop because we only have x86 based destop systems. I'd be more than happy to dump this system for a G4 dual 1GHz. I'm not knocking Linux at all, in fact I still love it for a server environment, but with all the "hoopla" over the GUI it needs to grow up a bit. I've been happily using Linux on my desktop for almost 10 years straight at work while everyone else has gone through the headache of upgrading Windows, and the ugliness that is XP...Hell, my 6mo old daughter could design a better looking interface. Anyway, I'm just not excited about anything on the x86 front anymore. How far off is the ia-64 from it's original release date? Wasn't it scheduled for release in 2000? Bah...
Does this mean that Lintel (jargon file reference) is out?
This sig no verb.
The IA64 instruction set is much more innovative than the old x86. Linux in particular benefits from smart compilers that achieve benefits many times what is expected from clock speed. AMD's version deserves to wither on the vine.
We're a lot more likely to make PAGE_SIZE bigger, and generally praying that AMD's x86-64 succeeds in the market, forcing Intel to make Yamhill their standard platform. At which point we _could_ make things truly 64 bits
He wants hammer to succeed only so Intel will have to go 64 bit and they can go all out 64 bit, this is not Linus picking the AMD camp.
usernet post here
Saying Java is nice because it works on all OS's is like saying that anal sex is nice because it works on all genders.
mod this up!! article is wrong, please update.
The OS problems for IA-64 are minor, but the compiler problems are very tough.
Perhaps because he works for transmeta. And intel's stiff competition is forcing trasmeta to lay off a chunk of workers? Perhaps also because the x86-64 port effort is dedicated to opensource, and intel is still tight fisted about everything. (Correct me if I'm wrong, but intel has released 0 lines of open source code so far, right? Hell, even Microsoft released the source to their .NET rotor, albeit under a shitty license.)
Ryan Fenton
The truth shall set you free.
RTFA , where does Linus say he want hammer to win. He only says he wants it to succeed so Intel will adopt 64 bit too.
Johnny Quest has two Daddies.
Don't you see it comming.....all the way down to hardware...on one side the DRM and such products and the other the open systems
Sun and Mac make great hardware - why do people shy away from it? They don't want to make the financial commitment to it, they feel as though they get more for their buck with Intel. I hope x86-64 is huge, but if it's too expensive, I bet you'll see it fall by the wayside, or worse, into the hands of that loud arrogant Linux minority who extoll the benefits of what they think is better, but is only truly better by their crazy standards.
I mistook "can't be happy" for "couldn't be happier"....
I'm not some prodigal kernel developer, but I do think the AMD architecture looks like a piece of shit. You're really telling me that we want to have an architecture that operates in a 16, 32 AND 64 bit mode, that has tons of crufts and kinks from the 80's still in it and a paltry handful of registers that are all overlaid... A(H|L) -> AX -> EAX -> 64-bit AX? Why? what the hell would that be good for? just bloats the die by another order of magnitude I'm sure.
Intel's got a sound solution and they at least have the balls to finally give the cruddy old x86 architecture the heave-ho; ok they can't do it now but IA64's architecture does not require 8086 or IA32 to bootstrap it so both can be thrown out sooner or later. Regardless of what the actual metal might be, the actual platform is beautifully elegant next to x86 and will ultimately be a real asset in the future as 64 bit architectures become the norm, much more so than some short term gain that might be had by virtue of a superior implementation from AMD.
Maybe I'm missing something here (OK I'm not on the design teams for both processors so I certainly AM missing something here) but from this standpoint, it looks like this would be the one time when I want to cheer for Intel as opposed to AMD. Pity they had to botch the development cycle like they did. *sigh*
If anyone actually read the lkml context, the remark was entirely in relation to the flood of recent patches making everything on 32 bit platforms support 64 bit sizes. Once upon a time it was just files over 2GB, then it was block devices over 2TB, now it is all sorts of shit because vendors are selling 32 bit machines that support 64GB of RAM.
Now Intel of course just reckons that people should buy Itaniums if they want this (and apparently they did actually ship 250 of the Itanium 1...) but someone is buying these. Even though you have to use 32 processes in order to use the memory.
Clearly these machines should be 64 bit, thats what Linus was commenting on. Then we could leave at least some of the limits for 32 bit machines without complaints.
The other problem is non-atomic 64 bit ops on 32 bit machines, incrementing counters and such. This has caused quite a few problems recently.
thus preventing IA64 clones and competition?
In shocking testimony uncovered by The Inquirer, Linus Torvalds has publicly stated that the size pressure on "struct page" is largely due to HIGHMEM! This ground-breaking statement was a crushing blow for HIGHMEM fans, but received applause from struct page supporters. More information on this ground-breaking revelation as it unfolds...
that appears to be where my arguement is somewhat flakey.
However, we do not know what the future plans for backward compatibility in the kernel are. When does support for 32-bit architectures end? 5 years from now? 10? Soon there will be a time when maintaining support for 32-bit architectures is going to impede progress and development of new possibilities on 64-bit architectures. At what point does the kernel fork into 32-bit and 64-bit versions? Or does support for one of the just get dropped? When is that going to happen?
But, as seemingly one ambiguous line in a Linus post is being debated in a Slashdot article, and the article was introduced in a rather sensationalistic manner via a less-than-reputable news source, maybe we are making a mountain out of a molehill.
The significant problems we face cannot be solved by the same level of thinking that created them. -Einstein
I know his words are a little out of context, but that's already covered enough here, so I won't go into that part of things...moving on...
I am the first to admit I don't totally understand the different 64 bit chipsets, that being said it comes as not suprise to me AMD has some advantages over the i64 offering. AMD has been blowing Intel away recently on many different performance levels. Intel has lost their quality advantage. Remember when people were taking a big chance buying an AMD machine back in the 486 days, or at least everyone thought so. You never hear about that now. A lot of the articles today tout the per megehertz speed advantage AMD holds over Intel. The gap has been so large lately AMD does the fake mghz labeling thing so comsumers can compare on a more apples to apples basis.
Maybe Intel's time has come and the monopoly is on the verge of being broken. I for one would welcome it.
-Pete
Soccer Goal Plans
> I hope x86-64 is huge, but if it's too expensive
More expensive than Itanium? Get real. Last week's eWeek had a good editorial on this. AMD has traditionally catered towards the consumer end of the market, and even if they go more upmarket they're likely to be consideraby cheaper than Intel's high-end offerings.
However, herin lies the fundamental difference between IA-64 (Itanium) and x86-64 (Opteron). The Itanium is a 64-bit chip, and is fundamentally different from x86. But it has an emulation layer that allows it to run x86 code if the need arises. The x86 code won't run as fast, since the chip isn't designed to run it.
x86-64, on the other hand, is like the 32-bit extentions to the 16-bit x86, which came with the 386. The chip is still a 32-bit x86 (or actually a 16-bit (8 maybe?), which is capable, but not optimized, to run 32 bit code, and now capable, but still not optimized, to run 64-bit code.
People constantly complain about the fact that x86 sucks - here's finally a chance to do something about it (ala the mac powerpc change) and everyone starts whining.
If you haven't guessed already, I vote for Itanium. If Intel, Microsoft, and the Linux people do it well, it *can* be a transparent transition, again like the mac powerpc switch. Joe-blow gets a shiny new Itanium dell, which lets him run the latest and greatest software, but he can still run dos 1.0 programs, albeit not quite a quickly as he did on his Pentium 7 (ITanium isn't quite on the desktop yet), but still plenty fast enough.
The only smart reason I see to go to 64 bit is when you need more then 4 GB of memory. The technology is not far enough yet outside the server/high end workstation market to require all that memory.
Maybe next generation windows will waste more of my memory so I will need a 64 bit CPU.
Troll me if you dare moderators, I have the karma :P
Lately i've been building a machine in 3D for a neighbor down the street. I've been using truespace 5.2 and a plugin called vctek.
Well, the scene got to a point where it just became impossible to work in due to the high poly count. My p4 1.4 just could not handle it. The vctek chains were taking up a helluva lotta time to render.
I asked the neighbor if he could buy me a fast computer to do redering on. From my years of being a sysadmin i've always been able to count on intel for both reliability and speed. So I speced out a dual p4 xeon 2ghz system.
The peices came, I put them together and I started rendering my scene. What normally took me 48 hours to render was now going to take 14 hours. Yipee I told myself, time saved! Wait a minute though...
scene on a single 1.4 takes 48hours
scene on a dual 2.0 takes 14 hours
That's only a 3 fold increase!!!
So what the fuck? I thought the xeons were SUPPOSED to be faster. I thought I should have seen an increase in speed on a magnitide of 4 or 5.
Well another sysadmin buddy of mine has been buyin AMD stuff for years. We get into the same rivalry over our systems as 2 grease monkeys might do with their cars. For kicks he wanted to benchmark the scene on his single 2200MP. I went ahead and e-mailed the scene off to him and waited for the results.
The Results?
A single AMD 2200MP will match a dual xeon.
I'm sorry to say it folks, but from what i've seen this last week intel is slipping. Hyperthreading is a pretty useless technology, basically just a software CPU. It didn't do anything for my render times. Intel has lost yet another loyal follower.
My next system will be AMD for sure. For pure price/performance they are blowing intel out of the water. Yes AMD, you have another convert.
--toq
These companies are both broken. What needs to be done is for a sacrificial lamb in the form of a dual chip release. First you create a broken kludge upgrade 64 bit chip that is backwards compatable with X86 (the sacrificial lamb), while at the same time (on another design) stripping all the old outdated stuff and sticking LOADS of cache and other optimizations on the new chip, but with 100% compatable with the 64 bit extensions of the sacrificial lamb. This would enable THOSE with brains to move right to the new 64 bit chips while those W/O brains could remain backwards (compatable).
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
segfault -- can't touch this
If AMD is successful in forcing Intel to adopt x86-64, great harm will be inflicted upon:
While recent interviews with HP execs (on The Register) indicate that HP is taking some steps to "roll with the x86-64 punch," I sincerely doubt if HP can be convinced to port VMS to Opteron should it become necessary.
What is even more troubling for the Itanium is the fact that HP's compilers are faster than Intel's, but the HP compilers have not been released outside of HP-UX. The standoffish attitude of other ISVs (Dell, IBM, etc.) is not hard to understand given these circumstances.
You will also have noticed Microsoft's (now infamous) "leaked" memo on Windows-64 running on Opteron. Such a leak I believe has been carefully crafted to throw FUD upon all things Itanium. Furthermore, it is in Microsoft's best interests for Opteron to prevail, as such a victory will destroy not only DEC/Compaq's high end, but also HP (as much as HP-UX deserves to die, it should not fall to Microsoft).
If Intel and HP truly want Itanium to flourish, Intel must reduce the price immediately (to at least a SPEC-to-SPEC match with Athlon/Opteron, and possibly lower), and HP must release fast compilers under an open license.
If the Itanium market remains fragmented, AMD wins, and Microsoft's interests are advanced.
Setting aside all the Linux kernel issues, Linus has a decidedly vested interest in the AMD part as Transmeta has already taped it out. So when he speaks of the kernel issues, keep in mind that his Transmeta stock options may speak loudly in his mind.
oh and microsoft will support 4 64bit archs (-;
AMD -> x86-64
Intel -> IA64
?
?
to quote http://www
so what would it be surley not Alha as thats end of life and not PA-RISC
that leaves MIPS PowerPC and ?
regards
john jones
One more crippling bombshell hit the already beleaguered HIGHMEM community when IDC confirmed that HIGHMEM market share has dropped yet again, now down to less than a fraction of 1 percent of all header files. Coming on the heels of a recent Netcraft survey which plainly states that HIGHMEM has lost more market share, this news serves to reinforce what we've known all along. HIGHMEM is collapsing in complete disarray, as fittingly exemplified by failing dead last in the recent Iron Coder comprehensive memory management test.
You don't need to be a RMS to predict HIGHMEM's future. The hand writing is on the wall: HIGHMEM faces a bleak future. In fact there won't be any future at all for HIGHMEM because HIGHMEM is dying. Things are looking very bad for HIGHMEM. As many of us are already aware, HIGHMEM continues to lose market share. Red ink flows like a river of blood.
Let's keep to the facts and look at the numbers.
Fact: HIGHMEM is dying
long live "struct page"
I don't particularly like the x86 instruction set, but unless we all switch to Alpha or SPARC, x86-64 makes the most sense to me.
Doesn't all this sort of point out the advantages of selling computers AND operating systems the way Apple does? Apple decides they want to go to a Berkeley version of Unix, they just do it, and build the machines to run it. They decide they want to use a different chip architecture, they buy different chips and incorporate them in their machines. I realise this strategy has tanked for other manufacturers, but the presence of various non-Windows operating systems on embedded devices seems to support this contention. As soon as you get away from the computer as a general purpose modular machine a la IBM compatible, all the Intel-Microsoft-joined-at-the-hip nonsense seems to evaporate, or at least sink to the level of a chronic pain in the butt. In this light, I'm thinking the new IBM-Gnulix machines bode well for the future of non-M$Intel machines. Am I offbase here? Are not Microsoft and Intel still one product companies and destined to fade away?
Hic iacet Arthurus, rex quondam rexque futurus.
Linus passed gas yesterday.
Droves of geeks were seen wafting in his wake, hoping to get a whiff.
Must be a slow day for news.
Please help find my missing daughter: FindSabrina.org
VLSI compilers? Comparisons against PowerPC and PA-Risc? Not having an advantage against other RISC processors? Where have you been?
/ 20 020529comp.htm
For starters, it's "VLIW", not VLSI.
Next, PPC isn't even remotely close to Itanium2 in performance.
Then, there's PA-Risc -- HP has completely abandoned that architecture, so how can PA-Risc even compete?
And if you had been staying on top of things, you would know that the Itanium2 blows the pants off all competitors, including UltraSparc III. Check out the press releases. Even if they aren't dead-on accurate, the scores are quire impressive.
http://www.intel.com/pressroom/archive/releases
Our Linus which art in Santa Clara, Hallowed be thy name.
Thy kernal come.
Thy will be done in desktops, as it is in servers.
Give us this day our daily rpm.
And forgive us our crons jobs, as we forgive our cron jobers.
And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from Microsoft:
For thine is the kernal, and the power, and the glory, for ever. Amen.
You say things that offend me and I can deal with it. Can you?
I don't see why. Instruction sets don't generally seem to be protected by any law. Otherwise, AMD would have had to license the x86 instruction set, which I doubt they did (and if they did, Intel would be in a great negotiating position). Or the various IBM, PDP, and VAX clones would have had to license the respective instruction sets, which, again, doesn't seem to have been the case.
In fact, in their own article on the Transmeta use of x86-64, which they reference, they wrote:
Seems to me that the "Inquirer" agrees that x86-64 doesn't require a formal license.
The IA 64 will require too much rewriting of code for Linus' child (Linux etc.), so of course he wants a transitional implementation to 64 bit processing.
Even if desktop PC's migrate to 64 bit in the next couple of years, you still have all the other embedded devices out there running on 32bit CPUs. There is no need for these devices to use a 64bit CPU - for these applications 8megs of memory is plenty, 4gigs is just crazy!! This is why 8bit CPUs (and even some 4bit) are still in production today and in much greater quantity then those 32bit CPUs found in desktop computers.
If linux is to be used in such devices, it'll have to support 32bit architectures.
PS, PPC chips are 32bits. IBM Power chips are 64bits but they are actually different from PPC chips. Code written for one doesn't run on the other - something the Mac rumor mongers simply don't understand with their "Apple is going to use a IBM Power CPU" bs.
Easy. Just update the LIM spec.
Same thing applies to Alan Cox, Richard Stallman and Bill Gates. See here
time for Itanic.
Why does Torvalds care about some rap crap 'singer'?
Oh my, the man was just trying to show to his fellow co-woker that changing some things in the kernel isn't just a matter of one mans whishes, that there are many things to be considered, including which 64-bit implementation will prevail.
From this to people saying he says that because he works at transmeta, or because he has no gratitude towards Intel which sponsored Linux and himself its a clear demosntration on how much a reputation can become a burden and makes me think how strong a man has to be to keep moving on, like he does.
I wouldn't take this particular quote to be his definitive statement of preference for x86-64 over IA-64.
Patrick Doyle
I mod down every jackass who puts his moderation policy in his sig. Oh, wait a sec....
*sigh*
Itanium is not competing with Hammer or any other chip from AMD. It would make no sense for Intel to reduce the price of Itanium to less than an unrelated product.
"The defense of freedom requires the advance of freedom" - George W Bush
Please port OSX to Hammer and stick AMD chips in your Macs. You can save face by pretending it's not x86 (even though it will make customers happy when they can run WINE and VMWare on OSX). Your programmers will enjoy the relatively clean 64-bit mode. You won't face the risk of being the sole customer of your CPU vendor. Best of all, you will be able to make cheap Macs with competitive performance. I promise to buy one if you do it.
Sincerely,
Robert O'Callahan
No, Motorola 8XXX chips are eBook compliant chips. The eBook specs support both 64bit and 32bit cores.
The is absolutely no reason to go with a 64bit CPU unless you have to do a lot of work with 64bit integers (unlikely) or you need greater then 4gigs of memory space (more likely). The eBook spec supports future CPUs for Macintosh computers that require lots of RAM (64bit) and future CPUs for the embedded market that require very little memory (32bit). Those CPUs that are currently available are 32bit CPUs.
And yes, there was the failed PPC 620 CPU but that never really made it out into any products so there haven't been any real 64bit PPC CPUs to date (although I'm sure they're coming.)
As far as Power chips running PPC code - I don't think so, although I could be wrong. From what I understand, the PPC601 was a transition chip to the PPC architecture. It was designed by IBM and able to run much of the Power instruction set - thus making Power applications easy to port. Then came the 603 and 604 CPUs designed by Motorola. They were much different from the original 601. This is all when IBM had great plans of the PPC architecture being able to do everything and taking over 8x86 - it didn't happen. From there, the architectures diverged with PPC going towards efficiency and Power going for, well, power.
To make a long story short, PPC can _almost_ run the Power instruction set of 1990 - or at least code is easy to port. However, the Power architecture was never designed to run the PPC instruction set. A Power CPU of today won't run a program compiled for PPC.
HP don't actually have much of a problem, because Itanium is basically HPPA 3.0 with a bunch of x86 emulation stuff tacked on. HP have, in effect, gotten Intel to underwrite the development of their next-gen RISC architecture and hype it as the next big thing.
In a scenario where Itanic is a failure (ie ends up in a niche as a midrange only CPU), HP-UX and VMS are in much the same position they were before - running on an expensive niche CPU.
AIX still has POWER 4/5, so IBM don't care.
The people who are screwed are the people porting their OS to what could become an HP-only chip.
What is this world, and more importantly, our own community coming to? Linus makes an offhand remark and it's jumped all over like divine words from a deity? Don't get me wrong, Linus is a great man who's done great things, but really; this much fuss over a sentence posted to Usenet? It's pretty dissapointing when kernel developers have to practise self-censorship to avoid a media flurry.
BD Phone Home!
Shameless plug. Like you weren't expecting it.
Sorry, but atheist-authored operating systems are not going to be running my hardware. I'd rather cripple my hardware with Windows than run an atheist OS on it. Particularly post-9/11, these things ought to be a lot more important to us.
First, Itanium is the marketing name for the processor. The architecture is IPF, or IA64.
Second, it's anything but pure. It also has an IA32 (i386) compatibility mode, that kills any die size benefits of a new architecture, at least for the next few generations until IA32 really dies.
Third, even when it gets rid of IA32 compatibility, IPF may still be a pig: many people who know more about this issue than me consider it to be too complex and full of bad trade-offs, essentially stretching a good idea (VLIW) too far (EPIC).
There is the argument that RISC architectures are essentially better. Too bad IBM can't find its way to the general market, Motorola has only proprietary Apples as its venue, Sun falters in execution and forfeited popularisation, and Digital was killed by elitism.
Leandro Guimarães Faria Corcete DUTRA
DA, DBA, SysAdmin, Data Modeller
GNU Project, Debian GNU/Lin
confusion
What Linus says is not as important as the fact that his words are spread and discussed all over the internet. That's proof that we don't have a one- or two-player game any longer (Microsoft plus Intel).
It's an important power-shift, which took place. Now four players decide the further development: two OS- and two CPU- manufacturers. And to avoid deadly risks they need to be compatible to each other.
Woopy! The market is getting back it's power!
Everything I've seen is that while the Hammer will be targeted (and priced) for the desktop, IA-64 is so big and expensive that it will be marketed only as competition to IBM and Sun processors for years to come. If this is true, IA-64 is hardly more interesting than some new expensive, incompatible processor from Hitachi or anybody else.
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Yeah. For some reason server vendors are insisting on going with the more expensive, slower, hotter, non-x86-compatible CPU.
PPC G5 was purported to contain 64bit adressing but I believe newest info no longer contains that claim so afaik it is anyones guess as to which way it will go.
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
True, but everyone knows itanium here, but not so much IPF.
And anyone who claimed that Itanium is "pure" was not too terribly well informed. Actually, what defines pure for a processor anyhow? I agree with your second statement.
As for three, I think the jury is still out. Wait for open source competent compilers to be released (say 5 releases of EPIC GCC from now) before anyone really makes a claim as to good v. bad here.
And finally, remember, desktop CPU's make up a very small percentage of total CPU's shipped. Motorola's biggest CPU customer is not Apple, but rather Motorola's Cell infrastructure and networking businesses. Then, they have other companies (Force, et al) reselling their embedded PPC chips as well. Intel makes a ton of embedded CPU's. These are the high volume chips that make their way into your cars, dsl routers, phones, cell switches, telephone networking equipment, and handheld comps that most take for granted. A huge chunk of processors shipped aren't even 32 bit (don't need more than 8 for many embedded apps!) so you're argument that RISC is bad doesn't really hold water unless the only CPU's used are desktop/server (less than 10% by some accounts of the total CPU market).
Bah
He's just punting having to support another archetecture. Better? Worse? Doesn't matter. It's more work and he doesn't want to to deal with. Plain and Simple.
Course this attitude has help keep Linux down for so long now. This will keep Linux off of a large number of med/large sized 64 bit machines in the future. Just Linux cutting off another of it's own toes...
Intel is fully behind Linux while AMD straddles the fence. and now this.
I read the article, but I think Linus is wrong on this. The IA-64 architecture is kick ass. Compilers will take 10 years to reach the maturity level required to compile for it optimally. Intel is going to have to hire some real code warriors and contribute to IA-64 linux, then we'll have an awesome linux for it.
.. so Linus is obviously going to be leaning towards it.
Also, Linus didnt outright say that Itanium sucked. In fact he was talking about an ease of programming issue not a processor performance issue.
Note, Linus' employer transmeta has already licensed x86-64 from AMD
Itanium 2 has awesome performance and beats anything with equivalent MHz on just about every benchmark including specint and specfp.
he said he wishes the x86-64 architecture suceeds and that Intel adopts it so it gets popular. Note, Linus' employer transmeta has a vested interest in x86-64 (they licensed it from AMD).
... AMD is set.
You are right about Carmack though, if he endorses x86-64
PA-RISC binaries must run under an emulator on Itanium, at some performance loss over native binaries. This is a whole new platform, which HP is attempting to conceal from us.
Any business considering a move from PA-RISC to Itanium should also consider Sparc and Power since both of these established architectures have support, reliability, and scalability - points which are lacking or unproven on Itanium.
I haven't looked at the specs for today's crop of 64-bit processors. Since I started programming in C back in 1982, I've gradually weened myself off assembly language. By 1992 that was mostly complete (did a little Sparc assembly late last year). So I don't really have much motivation to invest time in understanding a new machine architecture from the CPU instruction perspective. Thus, I don't really know what today's 64-bit CPUs can, or cannot do in this regard ... but ...
What a good 64-bit CPU needs to be able to do includes:
- Have a complete 32-bit operational mode where everything can be done.
- Have access to 64-bit (and 128-bit if applicable) data operations while in 32-bit mode.
- Make it possible and easy for a kernel in 64-bit mode to handle virtual processes in either 32-bit mode or 64-bit mode selectable invidually by process (e.g. would not force them all to be running the same mode).
- Supporting 64-bit processes from a 32-bit kernel would be a nice touch, too, but not really essential.
- Be available in varying physical bus sizes for different scales of needs in different markets, such as 32-bit for embedded to small desktop, and 64-bit to high end workstation to server to number cruncher.
- Architecturally support even larger physical bus of 128-bit when times comes for that performance level to be market worthy.
- Support data fetch/store operations of all sizes 8-bit, 16-bit, 32-bit, and 64-bit. A size of 128-bit would be a plus.
- Fast byte order reversal instructions for all sizes.
- Statefully interruptable CPU instructions to support fast MD5, RSA, AES, and other crypto needs (the world is going to be doing more and more crypto, so get used to it).
- Statefully interruptable CPU instructions for codecs, including Ogg Vorbis.
Huh, where am I? Where's the light. Oh crap, it's 6:00 already. Where has the night gone. Damn, and I was having a good dream, too. Oh well, another dull day at work.now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
That won't stop Mandrake, Red Hat, Debian, etc... from modifying there Kernal to be better on an Intel.
Ave Molech Setting
Stompstomqstomr ...... hush dweezle, hush ...
I know, but I do not care about the embedded market. The general computing market is the one who has a direct impact on the culture and the technology trends, since it subsidizes development of chips that, when miniaturized and their investment amortized, become the next generation embedded processors blueprints.
I never uttered that argument, because I believe RISC is the past and the foreseeable future. I did say that EPIC is bad, and I did imply VLIW is good only in a limited scope, but then VLIW and EPIC are not RISC.
Leandro Guimarães Faria Corcete DUTRA
DA, DBA, SysAdmin, Data Modeller
GNU Project, Debian GNU/Lin
They had a great hard drive unit going once. And what happened to their printers? They may get into it and they may seem to do well for a year or two but then it'll fubar big as always and they'll sell off or shut down killing anyone that was relying on them for the long term.
He has nothing against the Itanium (in fact, Linux runs on the Itanium perfectly well). What he's hoping for is that Hammer takes off so the non-Hammer x86 market dries up and Intel goes to an Itanium/Hammer product line instead of Itanium/Pentium. What he's worried about is 32-bit machines with large memory and disk.
Honestly, I doubt x86 decoding seriously bloats the die that much - jeez, on a 0.13u process, how big would the original 8086 core be? Take a look at the die for a Hammer processor - x86 decoding doesn't take that much space.
The real problem is that it adds extra stages to the pipeline, which does things like make branch mispredict penalties worse.
He wants hammer to succeed only so Intel will have to go 64 bit
This is kind of too bad, because from what I've seen AMD's Hammer has more x86 cruft than IA-64. Now I'll grant that Intel would love nothing more than to keep 64 bit architectures for servers for a nice long time and get a juicy enterprise business going (sticking consumers with a 32 bit architecture for years to come), but I don't know if I want AMD to end up on top, given their technology.
BTW, why the heck can't either AMD or Intel make a processor that doesn't give off enough heat to melt the ice caps? The Pentium III was a pretty good chip for a while, and then both camps decided to start dissapating huge amounts of heat again. I'd like to get a new processor, but I'm not going to get something that sucks down 70 watts, either, and takes a noisy fan and gets the whole case hot.
I always used to love the fact that Windows wasted so much memory and so many CPU cycles that by the time I had to get a piece of hardware for my Linux box, it was terribly cheap, driven down by commotitazation. However, it's now reached the point where people are trying to get CPU cycles even at the cost of a quiet, cool computing environment, which is not good.
May we never see th
HP having good compilers? These are the same people with the *abysmal* C++ compiler, the one years behind everyone else?
May we never see th
Brasileiro?
The language is sufficiently vauge such that either your interpretation, or the interpretation that Linus prefers x86-64 to IA-64 could be the correct interpretation. My guess is it's the latter. Too bad English isn't as precise as c++.
Vote for Pedro
This was off topic, but i'll answer anyhow. The reason chips keep getting hotter is that heat dissipation increases exponentially with clock speed. Even though die size has been shrinking by half every 18 months, heat is growing as a problem. Intel even says that without changing manufacturing processes they would theoretically dissipate nuclear reaction temps in the next 10 years. Fortunately though starting with the AMD Hammer architectures they will be moving to SOI (silicon on insulator) which will help solve the problem for now.
Jeremy
Does Linux take advantage of such a chip? My next computer will either be a mac laptop or a sun workstation.
Either way, I'll be running Linux. Which system is recommended??
Would Solaris or Mac OS X provide <gasp>superior</gasp> performance on their native platforms or Linux? Are Sun's kernel modifications for "Sun Linux" being reintegrated into Debian GNU/Linux's Sun version?
Feel free to send me an email (SHEENmaster at flame.dnsart.com) if you know a lot on the subject.
I guess this was a bit off-topic, but I hope it spawns an interesting discussion just the same.
You can't judge a book by the way it wears its hair.
It's sad to see how close minded some of the people are here. "Itanium is slow slow slow" and "X86-64 is the future."
First off the IA-64 archietecture is completely new unlike X86-64. True, Itanium sucked in performance, but just because it doesn't work too well the first time means we give up on it? True innovations require great leaps rather than mere small increments. Itanium is a whole new design that will eventually take full advantage of the new technology, whereas X86-64 is an increment with some improvement. If IA-64 is continually developed it will surpass X86-64 for sure. BTW its funny how some people complain of Itanium II's slow clock speeds when they were supportive of AMD's adoption of a misleading system that tried to mislead consumers about the clockspeed of their processors.
Furthermore look at Intel's roadmap. The ultra-high end segment is meant for Itanium, while Xeon will exist for lower end segments. I don't understand why everyone is comparing Itanium to Opteron in the first place. Opteron will most likely be competing against faster Xeon Processors with larger caches and perhaps Hyperthreading technology once it matures a bit more. Its extremely unlikely that any well-managed company will use Opteron in a 64 bit oriented environment. It would most likely be used as a 32bit replacement with its chief competitor being again, Xeon.
Also the idea that Microsoft is conspiring with AMD against Intel is lunacy. Microsoft is not going to surrender any market to Linux whether it be IA-64 or X86-64. It will make the best OS it can possibly make for IA-64 because corporate software has a higher profit margin than consumer software, and they certainly will not let Linux dominate the IA-64 market, where linux already has a sizable share of the server OS market. Furthermore, Linus's support of AMD is completely irrelevant to the situation. IA-64 linux is already in development, and many corporations are behind because they hedged a lot on IA-64 and it will survive because Intel wills it, HP wills it, and many other companies do as well. And the fact that Intel and HP has a good overall execution record, how else did they get where they are today without one?
I'm also surprised that I haven't seen too many questions about a weakness in the entire Hammer line of processors, the built in memory controller. Is AMD going to have to revise the Hammer core each time a new type of memory is on the horizon? If they do, it'll be costly constant R&D and if they don't, then they lose out on memory bandwidth advantage as Intel chipsets can just get a new chipset. Also more importantly, what about backward compatiblity? Is AMD going to have to manufacture many different variants of the same processor for different memory types? If they don't, then they cut off the upgrade path for their userbase which would have to buy a new motherboard each time. And as we know, much of AMD's support comes from hardware enthusiasts on a budget. Also many large companies will build systems with older memory types cause it makes economica sense. If AMD does manufacture several versions of the same processor it will be extremely costly since not all inventory will be sold. AMD cannot afford to screw up like Intel initially did with Itanium. If AMD screws up its execution, which there is a large chance of it happening, then we lose AMD as a competitor, and as bad as having to put up with AMD fanatics, it would be worse to have intel be able to jack the prices up at will.
Anyways, I may have been divergent a little, but if you have nothing better to say then "X86-64 is the future," "Itanium sucks" and especially "Itanium ownz j00" please don't post.
No, the G4 is a 32 bit processor.
...it crawls
----merely from the fact of the names "hammer" and "yamhill", my loot would be on "hammer" Think of the stickers on the outside of new machines. This is not an insignificant deal, advertising/propoganda works. "Hammer" sounds bad, "Yamhill" sounds like a dirt farm in ohio.
many people who know more about this issue than me consider it to be too complex and full of bad trade-offs
And those people that know more than you know more than the highly-paid, best of the best cabal of chip engineers at Intel?
May we never see th
A good reason to keep 32 bit is that its faster than 64 bit in real world computing. 64bit is only warranted in big numbercrunching wich ordinarily doesnt take place on a desktop or a fileserver etc. 64bit also makes the applications bigger and more bloated. Surely it sounds faster because its a bigger number but it isnt.
HTTP/1.1 400
Not even "slower". (I take you meant reliability as your reason why..) Power4 @ 1GHz does -- with two cores with two FPU's each, each FPU cabale of one FMAC per cycle -- 4 billion FMAC's a second (peak). Beat that with any Pentium IV or Athlon, or Itanium or Opteron for that matter.
Of course, furthermore, try go 32-way and see if you got there in the first place. But that's another matter altogether... (But go SGI! Chili Con Graphics 4 evar!1!)
Actually I tried to be supportive of the parent comment here.
You know, if English was as precise as C++, we wouldn't be talking at all. :-)
Natural languages tend to have a life...
What does being highly-paid tells, except that the employee happen to make his employer feel his indispensable?
"Chip engineers at Intel" were never "best of the best cabal". This were Digital Alpha, HP PA-RISC - most of them left already in the DEC and HP organizational culture debacle to join, among others, AMD -, IBM Power and assorted others.
Leandro Guimarães Faria Corcete DUTRA
DA, DBA, SysAdmin, Data Modeller
GNU Project, Debian GNU/Lin
The IA64 is a pig. It has so much internal state that context switching will bring it to a dead halt. Since interrupts and OS calls from user space both cause a context switch, it will run very poorly on the desktop, and may not run well on servers. It might be good for long compute bound apps, but that is a very tiny fragment of the market place. It will not scale down to the desk top, and without the desk top how will they get the price down. Time to sell Intel short???
I was referring specifically to Itanium.
This is a funny.
-- askien
In Linux and Windows, is the kernel limited to 4Gb of real memory, or are there higher limtis and the process can only address 4Gb. I remember in WinNT the kernel addresses 2GB of virtual, and a process 2Gb of virtual, and WinNT advance Server, the kernel addresses 1gb and 3Gb process. Have these changed?
Of course, furthermore, try go 32-way and see if you got there in the first place.
No problem. NEC has a 32-way ccNUMA system with Itanium2 (McKinley) processors. It's called Tx7i.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Ultra SPARC IIe 64 bit in Sun Blade 100,
or if you're real cheap get a 333-440
Ultra IIi off of eBay
You'll pay 500-1000 for a decent system.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
I looked at the title of the article and I thought, "God, Linus, is a guy in parachute pants that important to you?"
The neutrality of this sig is disputed.
Let me get this off my chest first: The fact you posted this here made my head spin at first. Now that lets address your problem.
>>Has anyone else been in a situation like this?
Yes, more then you know.
I've been elected the local relationship councilor in my area for some God-awful reason...
(Maybe penance...but let's stay on topic.)
[Here's some Validation]
And let me assure you this. You're not alone in this type of situation. In fact when it comes to the technically minded (geeks) it's almost a normal reaction especially if this is your first real girl friend you've had deep feelings for.
>>What did you do to resolve it?
My personal experience with this type of situation changed my life....and if it hadn't been for some very special people it would have destroyed it. I survived and came out stronger, but that was a very unique and dark situation that most people wouldn't so listen up and save yourself before you lose everything.
>>It's about a girl - the only girl I've ever loved. We'd been together for about two years. >>And as far as I knew, we loved each other.
Love follows the rules of entropy and can never be predicted and explained with one definition. There are a million different ways I could describe love and not one could do it justice.
>>About four months ago we broke up. She was cheating on me with a complete bastard >>who was cheating on his girlfriend too. It really messed my head up - I've been >>depressed for months and to add insult to injury, she won't even talk to me anymore.
I don't know your girl-friend so I'm not going to try to get in her head and explain her actions to you, besides that part isn't really the issue right now. She has to live with those the rest of her life and that is price that is paid with all actions. Remember that later.
----Disclaimer---
I'm going to warn you now that I'm going to be very forthright and blunt...
--------------------
>>It's like I've been cast as the bad guy whereas the complete bastard gets all the glory.
1st You need to separate your self from this good guy / bad guy crap. Your relationship is over. You didn't cheat on her she cheated on you. How it looks to anyone else is unimportant because you know that you aren't at fault.
>> I knew her password, so I forwarded all her emails to an anonymous Lycos account, >> and periodically I'll log in to her mail server and grab her Outbox for reading.
2nd This is a common thing...it gives you some power control of over her. Its false power though. It violates communication rules that relationships need to be maintained. (Now my methods can be somewhat strange but I promise to explain myself)
- You need to open a new window now and login into (the account you created) and delete the emails.
- Then send her an email (without including your name use "Wyatt Trips" if you feel you need a name) in the email tell her that her email password has been compromised and is being used in illegal activities and that she must change it immediately. DO-NOT include any information that could lead her to suspect it was you!!! This message is not a lie (other then the name) and in the fact somewhat truthful.
- After sending the message proceeds in deleting the account you created. You've started to do the right thing but don't leave any chance to be tempted. You're actions are most likely being driven highly by emotion and a need for some control of the situation.
Once you've done this you will all in all stopped the offence but that's not good enough.
You can't just treat the symptoms you have to fix the problem. That problem is internal and is really with your self. continue reading and I'll explain
>>Every time I read the emails I get really really upset. But I can't tell anyone why, >>because then I'd have to admit to stalking her.
>>It's addictive. I can't seem to stop doing it.
You want to do the right thing but consequences suck. So the method I've given above sidesteps the consequences and leaves the rest in your hands. You have to deal with the break up itself. So here is my own geek howto on the matter.
HowTo deal with a bad breakup...
1.Accept that like it or not it's over.
2.If she/he comes crawling back saying their sorry DON'T take them back...yet. No matter the circumstances. If you two are ever going to work again and I mean really work you need to rebuild a little bit.
3.Circumstances of the break up are inconsequential...what's done is done and can't be undone. In fact the more you try the farther away you will push them. (Experience and even more observation speaking)
4.You need to let your self grieve a little while; don't just get a new someone. You just lost someone close. (No they're not dead but it is still a loss that feels just as bad) Write, eat ice cream, watch movies, Listen to Nine Inch Nails or talk to friend but try to deal with the fact that even if they walked through that door you can't take them back (no matter how much you want to)
5. There is a mentality you must force yourself to adopt. Take control of your life again. (If your still grieving and it's been over a month you're a little behind and need to get your life back) Everything happens for a reason (even the catastrophically insane) and now you need to take a negative and make it a positive. It happened and you cans sit here forever wishing it hadn't or move on and give yourself a chance to find someone even better (This will seam impossible for awhile, but given time you'll see that it's true.)
6. How to take back ones life? (Start making a list about you)
-What do you want to be when you grow up (no matter what age you are now)
-What do you want: Dreams and Goals
-What are your interests?
-What do you do alone that inspires your mind?
-What makes you proud?
-What makes you happy?
-What are 10 things you wish to do before you die?
-Favorite color:
-Favorite food:
-If you could have any Automobile what would you want?
-If you know everything there is about one subject what would it be?
-What are 10 mistakes you've made in your life?
-Which ones would you do again?
-Who is important to you
-Who are your friends
-Who do you trust
-Who do you mistrust
-What is your favorite movie?
-What other places have you visited to visit?
-How well do you know your town/city/state/or community?
-What do you believe politically?
-What do you believe spiritually?
-Are you the person you thought you would grow up to be?
-Do you want to be?
-Am I depressed?
-What are you afraid of?
-What shouldn't you be afraid of?
-What in life could you do better?
-What do you want to do better?
-Am I happy with my life?
-(your questions here)
You're probably going, huh? What the hell does this have to do with anything? You have to understand who you are before you can change yourself for anything greater. The greatest untapped resource available to you is you. The most important question on that list is the last one 'Am I happy with my life?' The answer with everyone is almost always No. So let's change it and make it better. Note: Hang-on to the list you've made so that you can compare and evaluate things later.
7.It is said that times heals all wounds and that "What doesn't kill you, makes you stronger." Each holds a little truth/with deceit. Nothing is ever certain, but your will can make things happen. An initial reaction after a bad break up is to never take a chance again. In short never take another risk. A life without risk is a life without again. If you risk nothing you gain nothing. Life is about risk and that very fact can make life exciting and worth living. In every game there are winners and losers. The losers will give up and stop but the winners won't stop (they may want and take a break but they keep going to see it through to the end.) It's your life and you have to decide if you want to Live, die or simply exist. For those that simply want to exist...well your going to miss out on so much I can't even begin to tell you how much. On the other hand many religions (Tao-ism or Buddhism may be good religions to look into).
8.Should I turn to religion to find the answers to this problem? No. You may find comfort or inspiration but all your answers are in you. The trick is finding them, and that is an adventure that has not happened yet and thus cannot be written about.
9.Ok I've found myself I know what I want I'm on the right track now, but I still feel weak around others. Normal, you've found purpose but not assertiveness. You see you need to realize that your feelings are just as important as everyone-else's. When someone starts to step-on you, belittle or simply, write you off you have to stand up for yourself Without attacking them. Everyone is entitled to a free voice, and your voice is as free as theirs. You also have one more thing going for you they probably don't you know who you are what you want and are trying to get it. That's power.
10.When can I date again? In my opinion if your willing to take a stand and fight for your life then your ready, I would wait until after the grieving process AND I wouldn't date the one who broke your heart at first. Assure them you'll see them but after you've been on a date or two with someone else (you decide whenever that is - giving you control over your emotions, and a little bit of the past relationship) Also if you do decide to date the one that hurt you then you need to play hard get a little bit, so they have to work to get you back.
11. It's your life you're going to make mistakes but life Is about Learning from the mistakes we've made and doing better. You're life is in your hands and is what you make it.
I've been to hell, danced with the devil, even tried to run the place. I held the remnants of my soul in my hands and was about to smash the remaining into the abyss. An angel then appeared and saved me, before the last of my humanity was gone forever. The soul is a beautiful thing and capable of restoring and transforming ones heart.
__I'm not sure why you posted when you did or why I was reading these comments on this particular day, but remember everything happens for reason. I understand why you continue to do this and I know what will happen if you continue, but you now have a choice, Between Life and Death (Emotional or Physical)
Choose wisely.
-DenialX
Just wanted you to know that 'pression' is a draft beer in France - good to work some alcohol in there somehow :-)
Thay have Compaq's compiler people too (or had actually). A lot of the folks who used to write the backend code for Alphas have gone to Intel to do the equivalent on the Itanium.
Why do you think H1B visas are such a big deal?
Next, context switching from user-level to kernel-level seems to be way more inexpensive on an Itanium system compared to a Pentium 4 system. Basically, if one uses the Enter Privilege Code (EPC) instruction for doing system calls (no, Linux doesn't do this yet), there's no need to do anything exception/interruption like for entering/exiting kernel mode. This basically means that we avoid any pipeline stalls and flushes---the processor simply continues running with kernel priviliges.
If one enter the kernel due to an exception or interruption there will, however, be a bit more state which needs to be saved and restored. The large registers sets of the architecture pose almost no additional overhead here, though. The floating point registers need in general not be saved and restored on exceptions, and the register stack engine (RSE) ensures that most general purpose registers can be saved and restored lazily if needed.
In short, you seem to have no idea of what you're talking about, something which is clearly proved by your claim that running desktop environments incur a high number of context switches.
> I had the pleasure of working with Itanium one,
> and boy - compiling Linux kernel on it was
> SLOWER then one of my AMD's machine (700Mhz)
> with the same amount of RAM.
That is because Itanium has *much* more registers to allocate than AMD/x86, it will sure bog down the compiler. Try rerunning your test cross compiling the Linux kernel for x86 on the Itanium instead of Linux kernel for Itanium on Itanium.
...it seems "praying" is a pretty common thing in the Linux community these days.
>64bit on 32bit sucks, 32bit on 16bit sucks, etc
Trivialities.
Now, 18-22 bit address spaces for 8080's and 6502's, *that* was impressive :)
hawk
hawk
Interesting, thanks for the info! Do you have any idea about how this aspect of IPF compares to typical RISC systems, like Sun SPARC III and IBM POWER64?
Leandro Guimarães Faria Corcete DUTRA
DA, DBA, SysAdmin, Data Modeller
GNU Project, Debian GNU/Lin
Some Intel processors use 36-bit physical addresses. Virtual addresses remain 32-bit, of course, so each process is still limited to something under 4 GB. The kernel has to fiddle with its own page table to address the whole of physical memory. This is the HIGHMEM kluge that Linus was talking about.
I think he meant go 32-way with a system that uses x86 processors, and is fully x86 compatible.
I know there are systems that are more than 32-way using x86 processors -- but they aren't x86 compatible at all.
-- Sometimes you have to turn the lights off in order to see.
It is bejond me how anybody who studied what AMD's 64 bit extensions actually do (the "nice" prefix trick) and has observed some of the tricky coding issues on pre-386 MS-DOS can want AMD's extension ton win over IA-64. You people are crazy. Well, no probably most of you don't even know how AMD's extension works.
IA-64 is about as much as a bitch when it comes to compilers as it gets, but it is truly the right thing to do (and I part-time work on a compiler).
Perhaps if ia64 succeeds, "developers" will actually learn what a cross-compiler is, and then maybe, just maybe, will figure out that it's not so hard to cross compile to other CPU architectures as well.
The blinders might come off and it might even spark some competition in the marketplace.
We can thusly be assured that x86-64 is the way of the future.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
Right on!
Ever since the Athalon was released AMD is the poor mans powerhouse. Intel manages to under sell AMD once or twice a quarter at best. AMD gives the best price when comparing performance equivalent processors.
AMD has managed to bring the giant down to the battlefield by taking a huge part of the OEM and Enthusiast Market. They follow the same strategy that ATI (video cards not NIC's) did for so long.
Would you rather sell 100,000 chips for 10$ a piece or sell 1,000,000 chips for $1 a piece.
Market saturation is valuable community and can be acquired by the ambitious, but only the ambitious willing to continually deliver quality performance at such a large quantities can keep it.
- DenialX
I confirm I heard this rumor too.
Andrew
Itanium has cache on separate die. Its own die is small and is consuming only 25 Watts. But all together it is huge. And never sold separately.
Andrew
No, sorry. I haven't worked with these systems, so I can not really tell how well/bad they perform in this context.
As you said, it worked like a charm. There were only three major limitations:
- You couldn't translate "system"[2] images, because they were linked against the system symbol table (SYS.STB).
- You couldn't translate an image which was compiled on VMS version 3.0 or earlier (well, there has to be a cut-off point for backwards compatibility somewhere!). So, programs compiled before 1984 were untranslatable [including VAX Space Invaders unfortunately (compiled 1981; never found any sources)]
- You couldn't translate images which used self-modifying code.
Shareable images [=shared libraries] could also be translated, and images could then be pointed at the translated shareable image. So, even to this day, on an Alpha you have two Fortran sharable images: FORRTL (Alpha native) and FORRTL_TV (VESTed image for VAX support).Object libraries could not be translated, but the compilers still generated (and maybe still do?) VAX object code and the linker could create a VAX executable, which could then be translated.
IIRC, it used recompilation rather than interpretation: the recompilation was not dynamic, but the image activator would generate .HIF files when it came across a piece of code that could be re-organised; these .HIF files could then be used to re-optimise the executable by VESTing the VAX executable and telling VEST to look at the .HIF file.
VEST is no longer available with new Alphas, but you can still get it, if you ask, from Digital...errm, sorry, Compaq...errm, sorry, "the new hp" ;)
A similar binary translator is planned to translate Alpha binaries to IA64 binaries for the IA64 port of VMS.
-M.
[1] Officially I believe the name stood for "VAX Executable Symbol Translator" or some such.
[2] Because it could be very bad for system stability, as kernel data structures were radically different.
Sen vord is thrall and thocht is fre,
Keip veill thy tonge I conseill the.