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.
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
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.