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Slashback: Vaidhyanathan, Oregon, Opteron
'It would become impossible to have Open Source implementations of key pieces of the infrastructure. This would be harmful, perhaps fatal, to the grand plans of those who want to deploy Web services everywhere,' Bray is reported as saying, in XML Industry Newsletter ."
Waiting for the low-power version. Jethro writes "Ace's hardware Opteron review was a very interesting read which shows some real Java webserver benchmarks on SUSE and Debian Linux, and real world database performance in MySQL and MS SQL server 2000. A lot better than those synthetic mysql benchmarks that Tom's hardware served up."
And Distinguished Hero writes "[H]ardocp.com ([H]ardNews 1oth Edition) is reporting that the Opteron processor does not actually have an integrated dual channel controller. This explains why all the Opteron reviews only used a single channel configuration. While the integrated memory controlled is not dual channel, it can be bypassed by an external (Northbridge) memory controller connected to the processor via the HyperTransport bus."
One more: EconolineCrush writes "Yesterday's Opteron launch gave us all glimpse at AMD's new 64-bit platform, but the Opteron is a server and workstation chip that will be out of reach for the majority of consumers. AMD's upcoming Athlon 64, however, will bring 64-bit computing to the desktop. Drawing heavily from what we've seen of the Opteron's performance thus far, Tech-Report has posted its thoughts on what it will take for the Athlon 64 to succeed. It's an interesting read for anyone salivating at the thought of an affordable 64-bit desktop platform."
Ma'am, can you please ask those anarchists in the carrels to pipe down a bit? BrianWCarver writes "Readers may recall a Slashdot interview with Siva Vaidhyanathan, Professor at NYU, and author of Copyrights and Copywrongs. Vaidhyanathan is working on a new book, The Anarchist in the Library, and was interviewed on the blog, Eyeteeth. This is a brilliant and amazing interview where Vaidhyanathan discusses how creative communities share, the DMCA, the American industrial production of culture, the USA Patriot Act, the importance of libraries and librarians, and the policies of the FCC. It is a must-read for those who care about the future of creative and democratic culture."
Technically, Oregon is not Washington. Daniel Phillips is among the many folks who have been following the progress of a bill in Oregon (HB 2892) to encourage open source software, and he points out this Register story (picked up from NewsForge, actually), writing "Apparently, moving Oregon's open source bill forward comes down to convincing the house speaker."
Reader PotatoHead fleshes that out just a bit: " Despite reports detailing the demise of HB 2982, this bill continues to be a topic at the Oregon Legislature. We have broad support for HB 2892, but need everyone to continue showing support in the form of your phone calls, e-mails, faxes and snail-mail to your Oregon Representatives. We have the attention of the Oregon Legislature in a pretty big way and need to keep up the good work if HB 2892 is to move forward against the constant efforts of the usual industry lobbyists. If you don't already know, here is how you contact your representative. Please take a moment --right now-- and show your support for HB 2982. Every contact matters as we continue to move forward with HB 2892!"
Sir, can you direct me to the nearest buggy whip store so I can beat this dead horse? If $98 billion seems to you a bit much for the music cartel to charge students for even the most indiscriminant file swapping, you may be interested in following the chilling effects that it generates, too: PL_2003 writes "A follow up on a previous slashdot article. It really seems like the recording industry is determined to continue its fight.Check this NYTimes article (free reg. required). My Take: Couldn't they use their brains for a better business model?"
OK, here are the rules ... Grub (mentioned previously) is apparently causing consternation among many webmasters. Though they claim the client honors robots.txt , it seems that only the central servers check it (and don't honor it properly) and that grub clients don't don't check it at all. Ooops.
Time to round up and segregate the arrogant. jtheory writes "There's an AP story today here on Yahoo news) that the Justice department has dropped its probe into the recommendation policy of a Texas Tech bio professor. It's encouraging that all he had to do to stop the investigation was make some very minor changes in his policy, but it's still horrifying to me that he got into trouble in the first place. Is it even safe to encourage strict Creationists (or others with strong anti-scientific beliefs) to become doctors? Would they ignore animal research results, etc?"
The announced Opteron parts do not have dual DDR memory channels. They would need even more pins on the package, and it already has 940!
Thats not really true. For one...not all pins on the die are in use. Some of the dead ones could be relocated over to pick up the slack. And if I remember reading correctly Opteron is initially being released this way but in late 2003 or early 2004 they are completely switching memory to DDR2, but since DDR2 is as hard to come by as Jesus in a Bottle, it kinda doesn't make sense to release the chip supporting that standard.
Honesty may be the best policy, but apparently by elimination, dishonesty is the second best policy.
Well, from the correct Indian pronunciation:
Shiv-uh (Siv-uh is fine too)
VYE-Duh-NAT-hun
Vaidya means 'physician' in Sanskrit, FWIW.
Go somewhere random
Lode
and Tompkins(MTU President) and Texas Congressman spar over copyrightsLode
The RIAA is just kicking itself in the butt. So sad..So a useful additional memory controller will NOT fit the same package.
My experience in contacting my local representative. I'm impressed doesn't appear to be a form letter!
---
I am fully supportive of the bill, and as a member of the committee
(General Government) assigned the bill, I am working with the proponents
and a few other legislators to move this bill.
We had a very successful hearing on it that attracted a great deal of
opposition from some of the big high-tech lobbyists. They turned out in
force and are now trying to prevent those of us on the committee who
support it from bringing it up for a work session. Unfortunately on
their side, the lobbyists have the committee chair, most committee
members of the majority party (Republicans), and a few influential
members of the House leadership. The fact that the bill has so much
muscle against it means we are giving them a fight they did not expect
to face!
Thanks for contacting me about this. If you have not already, please
feel free to send your email to other legislators as well.
Sincerely,
Kelley Wirth
State Representative
District 16
Melissa P. White
Legislative Assistant
Representative Kelley Wirth
District 16
900 Court Street NE
Salem, Oregon 97301
503-986-1416
-----Original Message-----
From: Adam XXXXX [mailto:XXXXXXXX@attbi.com]
Sent: Friday, April 18, 2003 10:47 PM
To: REP Wirth
Subject: Internet email for Legislative Member, TO: Kelley Wirth
Dear Representative Kelley Wirth:
I'm very disappointed to hear that House Bill 2892 is being stalled
because large corporations fear it's implications. Open Source software
should be consider equally along with other costly software! If the
Open Source software is more cost effective and achieves the same
purpose it should be used in Oregon government applications. This would
be a perfect oppurtunity for Oregon lawmakers to show their commitment
to maximize taxpayers money! Thanks and please consider my thoughts.
Sincerely,
Adam XXXXXX
XXX NW 5th #XXX
Corvallis, Oregon 97330
XXXXXXXX@attbi.com
Where the Music Matters
The announced Opteron parts do not have dual DDR memory channels
I don't know where this crap is coming from. Certainly not from the document referenced in the parent post.
A DIMM is 64-bits wide. The Opteron has a 128-bit wide memory bus, which means you need to use pairs of DIMMS much like the older P4's with Rambus memory.
There are plenty of pins for this in the 940 package. The block diagram on page 11 of the the data sheet even shows the 128 MEMDATA pins.
The memory controller is configurable to support a 64-bit memory bus (probably for desktop or mobile versions of the part), but in all the systems I've used you can't even boot with an odd number of DIMMS.
Now you can decide for yourself if a 128-bit wide DDR bus is "dual channel" or not. I'm not going to argue semantics. I am, however, going to do the math and tell you that the Opteron paired with DDR333 provides 128*333/8 = 5328 MB/s of some seriously low-latency bandwidth. Oh yea and it scales with the number of processors too.
DISCLAIMER: I work at AMD but I am not speaking on behalf of the company.
Yes, that does give you a lot of memory bandwidth. No, that doesn't make it "dual channel".
It appears that the Opteron can report the actual address of any detected errors. Plus, it can report details of ECC errors in its caches.
But the coolest feature is that it supports memory scrubbing, a feature I'd previously not seen in a microprocessor or chipset since the iAPX 432 memory controller back in 1983.
When a SEU causes a single-bit error in a word of memory, the ECC is capable of correcting it when the word is read. But if that word doesn't get read again for a long time, it's possible that a second SEU might happen in the same word, which would then be an uncorrectable error. With memory scrubbing, the memory controller uses a small portion of the memory bandwidth to scan the entire memory, correcting any single-bit errors that are found, so that the probability of a two-bit (or more) uncorrectable error is greatly reduced.
My last several computers (including a dual Athlon using the 760MPX chip set, and a DEC Alpha) had ECC, but not scrubbing. I considered writing a Linux program to scrub the memory by direct access to /dev/mem, but this has the disadvantage of thrashing the processor's caches. By implementing scrubbing in hardware, the Opteron avoids that problem.
The Opteron has a Scrub Control Register that is used to enable or disable scrubbing and control the rate. There are independent scrubbing controls for the L1 data cache, L2 cache, and main memory.
Those of us that want high reliability really welcome this feature. Well done, AMD!
By the way, it should be noted that it is typical for a PC with 128 megabytes of memory to get a single bit error several times a week. On my Alpha, I routinely saw corrected error log messages in the syslog, which gave me much more confidence in the system than the way that most PCs simply fail to even detect memory errors, let alone correct them. The log messages are also useful in that you can determine whether you have some memory that is getting marginal. For instance, at one point I started getting a much higher rate of corrected errors on one particular SIMM. There may have been a slight amount of oxidation or corrosion on the contacts, or they may have just worked themselves loose a bit. Cleaning the contacts and reseating the SIMM solved the problem with only a few minutes of down time, instead of what probably would have been hours of down time had the errors gone unnoticed.
The results of an undetected error vary considerably; it may be in memory that is not in use at the time, or it could be in the midst of the operating system, an application, or user data.
1) Dr Dini did not change his requirement in any appreciable way:
m
Original:
"How do you think the human species originated?
If you cannot truthfully and forthrightly affirm a scientific answer to this question, then you should not seek my recommendation for admittance to further education in the biomedical sciences"
New:
"How do you account for the scientific origin of the human species? If you will not give a scientific answer to this question, then you should not seek my recommendation."
Read the statement: http://www2.tltc.ttu.edu/dini/Personal/letters.ht
He explains his requirement and *still* says that he will not recommend people who reject evolution.
2) Professors have the right to choose who they will and will not write a recommendation for. Should they be required to put their recommendation behind anyone who asks them?
3) The student in question never asked Dr Dini for a recommendation at all.
4) Dini also requires the student to have earned and "A" in one of his classes. Spradling had not done this.
5) Dini requires that "I should know you fairly well." Dini says he had no idea who Spradling was.
Basically the whole situation is a publicity stunt dreamed up by a creationists. The Spradling didn't meet *any* of Dini's criteria for recommendation.
All else being equal, I would rather have the doctor that understood that the argument from design is an logical fallacy, and that the human body includes inefficiencies and complications due to its historical evolution. Or, in other words, how do you explain bad backs and appendicitis, without resorting to non-explanatory statements like "God works in mysterious ways?"
If you think the argument from design is some sort of proof, you need to read Richard Dawkins, Stephen Jay Gould, and Daniel Dennett. I don't expect them to convince you that you are wrong, but they should convince you that the argument from design doesn't stand by itself.