LSB to Provide Standards as Optional Modules

An anonymous reader writes "The LSB will begin providing certain standards as optional modules to the core LSB standard that will enable standards flexibility and allow for a wider variety of standards, eWeek is reporing Free Standards Group officials said at the OSDL Enterprise Linux Summit today. The article goes on to say that the FSG is also looking at possibly franchising out the application certification component of the LSB to the distribution providers themselves."

Comments

woot

[Shardin]

yay for more standards MS can ignore!

Re:Wait just a second...

[aeakett]

My favorite part was "wider variety of standards". You know what they say... "The nice thing about standards is that there are so many to choose from."

Want More Standards? We've got'em

[Colonel Panic]

will enable standards flexibility and allow for a wider variety of standards

Bummed that there is only one LSB standard?
Wish you could make your own standard?

Don't worry, more LSB standards are on the way!

Don't like the LSB?
You can choose from:
* The Mandrake LSB standard
* The RedHat LSB standard
* The Gentoo LSB standard
* The Debian LSB standard ...and the list goes on...

What does LSB stand for?

[Riddlefox]

Why do we need more standards defining the Least Significant Bit?

Back when I was a youngin', we had us our big endian and little endian computers, and that's the way we liked it!

Seriously, why can't articles explain what all of the acronyms mean?

Re:What does LSB stand for?

[Linker3000]

According to the article:

"To make for easier processing and power saving, the LSB can now be fixed as a one OR a zero (according to which standard you use) for ALL operations.

1) Fixing this bit means one less digit to process (or shift) because its state is now globally known - for 16-bit computations, this will save a nominal 1/16th of the effective processing time, thus speeding up programs with only a marginal loss of numerical accuracy.

2) Because the bit no longer needs to be toggled between logic states, that saves the energy wastage of 4-6 transistors per flip-flop or gate per processor cycle (or 1 FET/CMOS gate for DRAM-type memory) - considering that modern CPUs operate at millions of cycles per second, the energy saving, although fundamentally measured in picowatts, soon adds up to a siginficant amount. Future developments on this power saving feature may see the 'recovered' energy recycled onto the national grid as a chargeback to the consumer or used to charge domestic appliances, portable devices such as cell phones and MP3 players etc."

whoops...

[grub]

when I read "Standards as Optional" I thought this was a story about Microsoft.

Congratulations

[iwrigley]

It's not often you see the word 'standards' five times in one sentence. Now if only that sentence had actually made sense...