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More on the PowerPC 970
functor writes "Ars Technica's Jon Stokes has a treatise up covering the microarchitecture of the high-performance 64-bit PowerPC 970 microprocessor, due to be released by the end of the year, that goes over in detail how this chip is put together, and how we can expect it to perform. This is the follow-up to Stokes' article detailing the PPC 970's design philosophy. 'It appears to hold quite a bit of promise in bolstering Apple's currently almost obsolescent product line, and it appears to have been designed explictly to fulfil Apple's requirements. To say the least, the second half of this year looks to be pretty interesting as Apple's product line promises to become competitive performance-wise with IA-32 and x86-64-based PCs again.''
Gentlemen,
Computing is a fast-paced field. What was cutting edge yesterday is as
outdated as a pet rock today. Newer, more efficient technologies are
always being developed. The 8" floppy gave way to the 3.5" floppy
which was later replaced by the CD-R. The acoustic modem eventually
yielded to the DSL/Cable modem. Unix was overtaken by Windows XP. And
so on.
The same technology also applies to programming languages. C yielded
to C++ which gave way to C#. However, the time has come for a complete
paradigm shift in programming. I propose a de facto migration towards
a relatively new, but promising language known as assembly.
Most of you are probably unfamiliar with this langauge. I know I was
until I chanced upon it in my community college while completing my
MCSE. So allow me to give you a little background on this language:
C++ and Java do not allow the programmer to directly access the
hardware. Instead they compile into a "bytecode" which is then
interpretted by a virtual machine. While very portable, this limits
the speed of Java and C++ programs.
Assembly, however, was designed to allow the programmer *direct
access* to the hardware! This makes for *much* faster programs.
Furthermore, assembly is the same language "spoken" by computers.
Because of this, you may sometimes see assembly referred to as
"machine code".
I fear that without the support of a large corporation (the way MS has
pushed Java, or Sun supported C#) assembly will fall by the wayside
like many other interesting languages (Python, I'm looking at you!)
Thus I hope to start a "grass-roots" movement to support assembly. I
would like to see the FSF release a GNU-based assembly compiler
(although they can keep the bugs that have plagued the 3.0 release of
gcc which caused people to switch to Visual Studio for their Linux
programming.)
I would love to expound on the superiority of assembly over C++/Java
but I'm late for my "Intro to TCP/IP" class. Those of you familiar
with assembly, please feel free to educate the many ignorant
C/C++/Java users on the glory of this superior language.
Thank you and God bless!
I'm not Seth.
1st!
Please try the new MacSlash site here
Ben is wanting to test the submission filter, so fire away!
What the hell does this have to do with this topic?
...but as long as Apple doesn't build-in Microsofts DRM technology as a feature i refuse to buy :)
Are you saying that Gentoo sucks, since if it is ported to every machine that has a sucky OS, that Gentoo might BE that sucky OS?
Or did you just insult Mac OSX.
p.s. OS X doesn't suck, [ insert long winded flame ]
--
"I'm not bright. Big words confuse me. But Wanda loves me and that should be enough for you." - Cosmo
You are a complete moron, and the parent poster is right to mock you and your Gentoo using buddies.
How is Gentoo going to help you "recompile for a new platform"? Will Gentoo magically detect the 64bit PPC and write the GCC backend for it itself? Does Gentoo have the ability to be magically recompiled for any target, even if the kernel or Glibc may not support it?
Oh, but you're a Gentoo user. I shouldn't expect you to understand the concept of hardware platforms, kernels or porting. Silly me; you're probably far to busy recompiling KDE for the seventh time this month. No wonder you don't have the time to learn simple concepts like this.
How come the parent post, which is totally correct and very informative is modded 1, while the mongoloid grandparent has a 5? Come on...
September 24th, 2002:
Bought $500 at $61 a share
May 14th, 2003:
It just hit $90!!!! SWEET!!
I thought this was news for nerds!
America's Army gets an upgrade
Discusses America's Army servers now using AMD Opterons, very nice, also of note UT2k3 and CS are going to be running on this type of server as well.
Good quotes on getting people to port to Linux so that they can easily take advantage of 64bits or just recompiling what they already have.
-- taking over the world, we are.