Slashdot Mirror
Japan eyes Linux
NEC, the world's second largest semiconductor manufacturer,
believes that the sucess of
Linux would allow another microprocessor architecture
to be established in the PC market. If Linux becomes mainstream,
the basis for microprocessor competition would be cost/performance and
not architecture. Although NEC might design its own processor
architecture for Linux, it's more likely that they use the
existing MIPS architecture. In related news,
Justsystem will port its Ichitaro word processing program
to Linux, and offer in July ATOK, a program for
Japanese-language input.
The only problem is for vendors who don't give out source with their software. They will have to have a pre-compiled binary for each platform out there, to say nothing of standard directory trees. I can still see this happening, though. Turning hardware into a commodity can only drive performance up and prices down.
I think StrongARM has better price/performance than x86. The point seems to be that you can't sell a SA system running Windows, because you don't have the source to Windows. But you can sell Linux systems using whatever kind of CPU you want, because you have the source.
I don't think we are quite there yet, but linux is certainly coming closer than any other OS I can name. NT/Alpha is a joke because MS isn't really behind it. Since MS won't support it like they should, the other vendors sure as hell won't.
--
Jason Eric Pierce
In their statement, "architecture" actually refers to the instruction-set of the processor, so AMD and Cyrix are considered to be the same architecture as the x86-based stuff that Intel puts out. What NEC sees is an opportunity where instruction-set really doesn't matter anymore because the CPU vendor doesn't need to wait for Microsoft to port.
This makes me wonder if it's about time for the linux community to rally around a good fat-binary format (and an associated lipposuction tool to save disk space) to make shipping binaries for multiple architectures easy. I remember this working really well on NeXTstep back in the days where they supported 040,x86,HP-PA, and SPARC...
Ack, no! Think of all the platforms linux is on. This list is just going to grow. It would just be too much of a big fat hassle. Fat binaries are fine if you only plan on support two or three architectures.
The only way you could get away with this is to only make fat binaries for, say, i386 + alpha + sparc. But if you make a fat binary that leaves supported architectures out, what's the point?
Besides, how is shipping a fat binary + lipo tool any easier/better than packaging your binaries with an install script that installs the binary for the appropriate architecture?
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Jason Eric Pierce
ELF binaries have a field specifying the architecture the binary will run on. But there is no multiplatform support in ELF. (That doesn't mean multiplatform support can't be kludged in... e.g. ".init.x86", ".init.sa110" sections... etc...)
Ichitaro will be ported to firstly Java, eventually Linux through Java2 for Linux.
ATOK will be Linux native.
In the Mac world, the advantage of fat binaries is that you can take one binary and sneakernet or email it to a friend running a different-architecture Mac and have it work. Obese binaries are a bad idea for the linux world, because relatively nobody does that.
Ichitaro learned, the hard way, the North American Word Perfect lesson. It's a hard fall to go from being #1 to less than 20% market share (in less than 18 months, no less). Welcome to country of Microsoft, baby (where Japan is just another immigrant farm worker)! If you wanted to succede, you should have taken Microsoft up on the acqusition offer a while back. If you just wanted to survive, you're on the right bus, Ichitaro.
...and as much as the Japanese like to think that their market is Unique (tm) and will always be better served by Japanese companies (almost as insolent an attitude as those annoying Indian programmers always whinning about why Mocrosoft doesn't have a campus in India), Microsoft has clearly demonstraited that the ability to buy companies is not limited to North American and/or Europe. I'm sure Softbank is quite comfortable being the Microsoft placeholder in the Japanese square on the grand chess board of life.
Linux? Well, that might be a light at the end of a tunnel or it could be a train. I guess it depends on how much you contribute to the belief that it actually is "light" and not "train".
forgive my stupidity.
Let say if there is a port to a certain platform.
Does it mean that any program written for Linux
can be run on that platform.
These foreigners must not be allowed to steal Linux from the American People who invented and refined it. If foreigners are capable of making any technology why are we the leaders of the free world? They are all parasites. It's time for the U.S. to stop being the candy-story of the world and start asserting our sovereignty over all these mendicant nations.
Turning Japan into a death-haunted, radioactive post-apocalyptic wasteland would certainly be a strong first step towards a more rational management of world affairs.
Nec is probably the most "in bed" with Microsoft. After all, how many hardware manufactures have actually been able to bend Microsoft's PC98 standards to their own architecture? That's why there are actually 2 seperate versions of win9x in Japan.
Has anybody done a one-on-one comparison of ATOK and the Wnn4 or 6 servers running with an input methood like Kinput2?
How does Wnn4/6 measure up to ATOK in terms of henkan speed, accuracy, dictionary completeness and -- most of all -- AI?
(I can't do a comparison on my own; Kinput2 complains with a "ccWnn object: can't connect to jserver" message when I launch it.)
Comments welcomed.
Good analysis of the situation - Linux
does what Java could not - reduce the
dependancy on a particular architecture
Linus is Finnish... Alan Cox is a Brit...
What, and that makes Linux owned by the japanese? Your logic is pathetic. *We* created computers, and so *we* own them. If other countries want the benefits of our natural Christian genius, they have to pay and it's our privilege to bomb their sorry asses if that's what we feel like doing. This is God's country and it's no accident that we have all the power. If other countries get out of line, then we will be failing in our sacred duty if we let them get away with it unpunished. If we fail in our sacred duties to God, we will be punished. I fear for this nation. We have lost our sense of obligation to the world. God has destroyed many nations for far less.
If the Finns behave themselves and don't go against God, there's no need to bomb them.
dude, get a clue.
the original poster was using a literary device known as sarcasm.
That arch field is in the first 16 bytes of an elf file, so a `multi arch' arch type would be needed with additional segments (? my spec's at home) for holding the arch dependent info and pointing to the arch specific sections). Could be done, but is it worth it?
Bill - aka taniwha
--
Leave others their otherness. -- Aratak
Posted by The ULTIMATE Crippler:
If there is a shift towards diversity in hardware, this may help put pressure on companies like my own employer to release the source. After all, NT is for all intents and purposes supported on two platforms but just how much NT software is available on non-Intel? Almost nada.
But if there were a large number of people buying MIPS, Alpha, Sun, etc. hardware for workstations, it is suddenly not as attractive anymore to ship binary-only software.
The trick is for us to take the initiative by buying into alternative hardware. Most non-techies won't touch a non-intel machine because the software they use is not available on other architectures.
I hate Ichitaro but ATOK is an excellent piece of software. It beats the pasnts of kinput2. This is one geek very happy to hear the news!
e.
TedC
And it's 32-bit--how surprising. Anyone reminded of how Microsoft sold 16-bit DOS to run on 32-bit Pentiums, and marketed it as the greatest new technology one could purchase? Hahahaha.
Also note that an NT / Linux capable Alpha box will run your $2000 these days. Something to think about the next time Intel chips seem rather slow...
BTW - read up on FX!32. It's an emulator / translator that converts x86 to Alpha and runs at about 70% of Alpha-native performance on average, placing the Alpha as the fastest x86 system.
First transmeta, then StrongARM, now finally a real tangible entity proposes using Linux to eliminate the need for a standard chip architecture. Suddenly recent mass layoffs in the Fl*rida semiconductor industry turn into mass hires and we are able to restart the chip industry.
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Check out PolyGlot Emacs. It is outlined in the March and April Linux Journal.
:(
It looked pretty cool.
Part of the trouble is the font issue with X.
you *can* get NT for Alpha but that's it...
:)
x86 dominates due to it being what DOS/doze runs on - cheapness through volume - not because it is architecturally superior (or even good)
Linux's excellent cross platform portability means that there is no tie to a single family of chips
Alpha, ARM and MIPS can already compete with x86 on price, this is a GOOD THING[tm]
>>>>truth; beauty; unix.<<<<
Could someone please do something about the dreadful state of Japanese/Chinese/Korean input systems under Linux? Building it right into X would be ideal. I hate to say it, but Microsoft's IME is comparatively a pretty swank product.
--
As long as each individual is facing the TV tube alone, formal freedom poses no threat to privilege.
"Reactionaries must be deprived of the right to voice their opinions; only the people have that right." - Mao
A new architecture would be cool, especially if it's MIPS based. But remember, processor price/performance isn't necessarily what matters. Get decent-quality standard motherboards which take your processors in the shops at less that $150 and you're probably onto a winner.
God has many deep and meaningful messages for you which will explain everything, but you have to see him personally.
Bon voyage!
**>>BELCH
Linus is Finnish... Alan Cox is a Brit... shut yer cakehole, moron...
j--------
----- when the going gets weird, the weird turn pro -- Hunter S. Thompson
like those h-p jornadas, or that neet-o clio thingie, would be cool... at least, it's give winCE a run for it's money... how 'bout it, hardware hackers?
j--------
----- when the going gets weird, the weird turn pro -- Hunter S. Thompson
Linux is not an American born product... Oh well, I guess it's time to bomb Helsinki..
If you're going through hell, keep going. -- Winston Churchill
If the programmer observes some basic rules of portability it should compile on any architecture... Even sloppy code is usually trivial to port unless it's really huge ( or REALLY sloppy ;)
.
One argument is that Windows is primarily available only for Intel-compatible chips. But you have clone makers like AMD and Cyrix building chips with more efficient architectures that Windows can run on already, and you can get NT for the Alpha or the Sparc or whatever else you want.
The only other argument that I can think of is that Linux is able to handle multi-processor and multi-box systems more gracefully than Windows, allowing you to use multiple cheap processors, but network and bus bandwidth limit the performance of these systems more than processor power does (n chips do not perform n times as fast as one chip in most cases).
As far as I can tell, the market already _is_ dominated by cost/performance. x86 chips and clones aren't wonderful for speed, but compared to the alternatives they are cheap, and so are bought.
Right. Go ask NEC how many Windows NT MIPS systems were sold.
(Just so no one forgets, in the USA, NEC is just another word for Packard Bell. There stuff is complete crapo.)
--
Business. Numbers. Money. People. Computer World.
NT for Sparc ? I hope you're joking !!!!
... part of the argument here is that
The closest thing is WABI, which last time I
checked was an old Windows version running
on emulation - gack
As for the "Alpha" port. Does MS still support
that ? And what apps have been ported to it besides minesweeper ???
Your last line;
> x86 chips and clones aren't wonderful for speed,
> but compared
> to the alternatives they are cheap,
> and so are bought.
... Soooo
x86 chips are cheap because of Windows, whereas
other and better architectures are expensive
because they don't run on Windows. Maybe running
Linux will be a big selling point and they can
sell lots of systems and drive the price down.
What are you trying to say ???
- sigs are for wimps.
Yes ! This is exactly what I'm waiting for ! I've been telling this for ages:
- We have open-source compilers
- We have an open-source OS
- A lot of interesting programs are open-source
- The OS is portable to different architectures
All you need to support a new architecture is typeing "make". Okay, almost, but if the developers cared about endian or sizeof(int) problems, it will just be a compile.
This is a reason, why I bought a PowerMac. Would it be only the closed-source MacOS I wouldn't have done it, but the Linux/PPC port and the PPC architecture lead to the decision to buy a PPC.
I'd be surprised if this isn't specified in ELF...
Small point, but NT is most definitely not available for Sparc (thank GOD). There is the Alpha port, but that's as non-x86 as any M$ operating system gets.
The only OS that'll run on anything you want is NetBSD. (but Linux is catching up fast!)
iSKUNK!
Mike
--
Mike
--
"Wi nøt trei a høliday in Sweden this yër?"
Why doesn't Nec Just include the Java Instruction set in their new Chips. Let face it, no other single hardware/OS combination is going to have the commercial support windows has in the near future. Not even Linux unfortunately.
Are you sure? I remember reading somewhere that parts of the kernel are 64-bit... might be wrong, old noggin not what it used to be :)
In Japan NEC is called 60% of the market.
But now that iMacs make up 70% of new machine purchases in the last year....
If you don't want to repeat the past, stop living in it.