Does it really matter? Do we need to know every time it's someone's first accepted story?
From now on, I guess we do. Otherwise the subsequent first-posters will feel neglected. _MY_ first and only accepted submission was never put on a pedestal like this, for FSM's sake!
Actually, it's not quite a master's thesis in the sense of most universities. This was simply a "4th year project" that accounts for 30% of our grade for that year, and the rest is mostly exams. Then again, between 10 and 20 pages is not uncommon with purely theoretical final projects.
I did my master's thesis on the theoretical basis of hoverboards. The conclusion is that they are not feasible in practice, unless you have insane amouts of electric power to carry around, and don't mind hovering over a ball lightning.
BTW, I probably wouldn't be developing FPGA accelerators for certain algorithms, if I thought they were being emulated on CPUs. I certainly wouldn't be getting the donations I now get for this project. I appreciate your feedback on emulators, which is not one of my specialities, but seeing such broad assumptions about other things was a bit annoying.
Emulation goes beyond just wrapping instructions for use by the kernel, it typically has to create virtual devices or emulate instructions which are not available on the host machine, rather than just wrapping them up in the preferred format.
Thanks, this is probably the most compact explanation I've heard so far:)
Thanks for the elaborate reply, the explanation on push vs. pull systems was particularly enlightening. I guess my problem is, in part, the way words like emulate/simulate are used in computing, as opposed to the general meanings.
I also wanted to clarify what I said about FPGAs. I'm a relative newbie to them, but I have a wide experience in electronics, and I think in terms of circuit diagrams (often using them to check how my Verilog turns out). I think I know the basic idea how they work, this is what I was trying to say with "actual parallel circuits". To be pedantic, I wouldn't call programming one "building real silicon" because the actual silicon is not altered, although you do end up with new designs at the circuit level.
I said that the FPGA NES "emulates" a NES, because it works like one, but is not actually one. It is probably not the same even at the circuit level, as some bits are probably reverse engineered, or improved/simplified otherwise. In general language, this can be called emulation, even though it is not performed by running something on a different kind of CPU.
Did you forget what Wine stands for? "Wine is not an emulator.
I've never understood why Wine is singled out as the non-emulator. For example, Dosemu is not really an emulator, it simply implements the particular programming interface.
At some point, code will run natively on the machine. IMHO, the more layers of abstraction and/or translation you need to traverse, the more it makes sense to say "emulation", but there is no clearly defined line. Abstractions are used with "native" applications all the time.
Sometimes I'm told that emulation involves translation between machine architectures. Well, there is hardware for running Java, so why don't we call Java runtime an emulator? Even architectures like x86 are not strictly hardware or software. Current CPUs have some funky RISC at heart, and they merely provide an x86 programming interface. Or do they emulate it? Same difference.
This has been my pet peeve for years, but recently I have given it a little more thought, since starting FPGA development. FPGA hackers like to say that they do not emulate old hardware, they actually implement the real thing. But it is still emulation in the strictest non-computing sense. Of course, having actual parallel circuits instead of running it on one CPU is much closer to the real thing.
What? I was speccing a work laptop almost 3 years ago, and I asked if I could get a total of 8 GB. I was told 4 GB SODIMMS are bloody expensive, but they were available anyway.
Yeah, it sucks that you need to learn two ways to type, but whatcha gonna do?
Since learning to touch type, I know my way around QWERTY. Because of this, thumb typing on smaller portable gadgets has been fast and easy for me, right from the beginning. So these are not really such different skills.
People often mention the time and assume you know whether they mean AM or PM. Most countries use a 24 hour clock so ditch the 2*12 one. And also ditch the imperial system.
Here in Finland (and most other countries I've been to, excluding the US) we officially have a 24-hour clock, but still talk in terms of a 12-hour one. Nobody says AM or PM, so it is generally assumed which one you mean, but we often specify them as in "morning 8".
I wonder if this has something to do with analogue clocks; a 24-hour analogue clockface is a rare thing to see, though they do exist. I recall reading that some hundreds of years ago, there were 12 hours of daytime and 12 of nighttime, and the actual length of the hours was adjusted according to sunrise and sunset.
I did play 720p video on ATI rage pro and ATI radeon 7000 successfully.
Sounds plausible to me. In my experience, a Pentium M or a dual core Atom can decode 720p x264 in software, and the graphics card does not really matter. There are some limitations with really old cards, though.
It's far better that X work the way that it does, and we use it that way. X's client-server model contributes very positively to system stability, portability, and maintainability; and when the client and server are on the same machine, as is the case with the OP, the "overhead" really isn't there at all. Any objection to X on this basis is pure and ignorant FUD.
Oh, and by the way, since X is client-server, we can move the two onto different machines. And add more machines into the mix.
This. I thought the merits of modular coding would be widely acknowledged already. We use higher level languages with object orientation, even though assembler might be a little faster.
Just today, I've been discussing how to make a cluster of FPGAs for a certain parallel job. I then realized that the same ideas of modularization would help my code even on a single chip. (Partly because the async links would help with some clocking issues, making each module independent clock-wise).
Maybe RD doesn't have a lot of use for the average desktop user, but it is used in the corporate world and it is used by power users. Just because *you* don't use it doesn't mean nobody does.
Here are some of the use cases where remote X has been important to me:
Compiling and running student projects on the university's Solaris machine
Computational fluid dynamics on a supercomputer, situated in another city
Just today: running Firefox on my x86-64 machine to access a Flash site, displayed on my Powerbook (no flash for PPC Linux)
You could summarize these in the way that, for power use(r)s, the number of users is very different from the number of computers. For starters, I'm not going to buy extra monitors, keyboards and mice for all my machines, just because some desktop user thinks remote X is obsolete. In the case of supercomputers and similar specialist machines, it is physically impossible for all users to sit by the same computer. Plus it would be expensive (money, time, environment) for everyone to get there.
Many people argue that remote X can be replaced by more platform-independent systems like VNC. In some cases that is true; in fact, there are cases where remote X does not work, for example when the OpenGL/CL code need to run on the same machine as the rest of the program. On the other hand, VNC is often much heavier on the network, as it needs to transfer the entire bitmapped screen. For example, my fluid mechanics work involved relatively simple 3D modelling, and it worked fine over a 1-megabit ADSL and cable, but VNC is often sluggish even on a LAN.
Slashdot Mirror
all the viruses, worms and other malware?
Does it really matter? Do we need to know every time it's someone's first accepted story?
From now on, I guess we do. Otherwise the subsequent first-posters will feel neglected. _MY_ first and only accepted submission was never put on a pedestal like this, for FSM's sake!
Actually, it's not quite a master's thesis in the sense of most universities. This was simply a "4th year project" that accounts for 30% of our grade for that year, and the rest is mostly exams. Then again, between 10 and 20 pages is not uncommon with purely theoretical final projects.
I did my master's thesis on the theoretical basis of hoverboards. The conclusion is that they are not feasible in practice, unless you have insane amouts of electric power to carry around, and don't mind hovering over a ball lightning.
BTW, I probably wouldn't be developing FPGA accelerators for certain algorithms, if I thought they were being emulated on CPUs. I certainly wouldn't be getting the donations I now get for this project. I appreciate your feedback on emulators, which is not one of my specialities, but seeing such broad assumptions about other things was a bit annoying.
Emulation goes beyond just wrapping instructions for use by the kernel, it typically has to create virtual devices or emulate instructions which are not available on the host machine, rather than just wrapping them up in the preferred format.
Thanks, this is probably the most compact explanation I've heard so far :)
Thanks for the elaborate reply, the explanation on push vs. pull systems was particularly enlightening. I guess my problem is, in part, the way words like emulate/simulate are used in computing, as opposed to the general meanings.
I also wanted to clarify what I said about FPGAs. I'm a relative newbie to them, but I have a wide experience in electronics, and I think in terms of circuit diagrams (often using them to check how my Verilog turns out). I think I know the basic idea how they work, this is what I was trying to say with "actual parallel circuits". To be pedantic, I wouldn't call programming one "building real silicon" because the actual silicon is not altered, although you do end up with new designs at the circuit level.
I said that the FPGA NES "emulates" a NES, because it works like one, but is not actually one. It is probably not the same even at the circuit level, as some bits are probably reverse engineered, or improved/simplified otherwise. In general language, this can be called emulation, even though it is not performed by running something on a different kind of CPU.
Did you forget what Wine stands for? "Wine is not an emulator.
I've never understood why Wine is singled out as the non-emulator. For example, Dosemu is not really an emulator, it simply implements the particular programming interface.
At some point, code will run natively on the machine. IMHO, the more layers of abstraction and/or translation you need to traverse, the more it makes sense to say "emulation", but there is no clearly defined line. Abstractions are used with "native" applications all the time.
Sometimes I'm told that emulation involves translation between machine architectures. Well, there is hardware for running Java, so why don't we call Java runtime an emulator? Even architectures like x86 are not strictly hardware or software. Current CPUs have some funky RISC at heart, and they merely provide an x86 programming interface. Or do they emulate it? Same difference.
This has been my pet peeve for years, but recently I have given it a little more thought, since starting FPGA development. FPGA hackers like to say that they do not emulate old hardware, they actually implement the real thing. But it is still emulation in the strictest non-computing sense. Of course, having actual parallel circuits instead of running it on one CPU is much closer to the real thing.
Perhaps the submitter meant Major as in computer science officer training corps...
What? I was speccing a work laptop almost 3 years ago, and I asked if I could get a total of 8 GB. I was told 4 GB SODIMMS are bloody expensive, but they were available anyway.
So only a few of them are becoming Apple CEOs?
I wonder if Mensch is even human.
Yeah, it sucks that you need to learn two ways to type, but whatcha gonna do?
Since learning to touch type, I know my way around QWERTY. Because of this, thumb typing on smaller portable gadgets has been fast and easy for me, right from the beginning. So these are not really such different skills.
People often mention the time and assume you know whether they mean AM or PM. Most countries use a 24 hour clock so ditch the 2*12 one. And also ditch the imperial system.
Here in Finland (and most other countries I've been to, excluding the US) we officially have a 24-hour clock, but still talk in terms of a 12-hour one. Nobody says AM or PM, so it is generally assumed which one you mean, but we often specify them as in "morning 8".
I wonder if this has something to do with analogue clocks; a 24-hour analogue clockface is a rare thing to see, though they do exist. I recall reading that some hundreds of years ago, there were 12 hours of daytime and 12 of nighttime, and the actual length of the hours was adjusted according to sunrise and sunset.
I did play 720p video on ATI rage pro and ATI radeon 7000 successfully.
Sounds plausible to me. In my experience, a Pentium M or a dual core Atom can decode 720p x264 in software, and the graphics card does not really matter. There are some limitations with really old cards, though.
The Voodoo 2 was exclusively for 3D acceleration and had to be used in conjunction with a separate 2D graphics card.
Yes, this is how it was designed and used, but Linux does have a framebuffer driver for simple 2D output on it.
If you think about it, 2D is only a subset of 3D. Modern GPUs don't have any special hardware for 2D.
-You're flying!
-How?
-Gentoo!
It's far better that X work the way that it does, and we use it that way. X's client-server model contributes very positively to system stability, portability, and maintainability; and when the client and server are on the same machine, as is the case with the OP, the "overhead" really isn't there at all. Any objection to X on this basis is pure and ignorant FUD.
Oh, and by the way, since X is client-server, we can move the two onto different machines. And add more machines into the mix.
This. I thought the merits of modular coding would be widely acknowledged already. We use higher level languages with object orientation, even though assembler might be a little faster.
Just today, I've been discussing how to make a cluster of FPGAs for a certain parallel job. I then realized that the same ideas of modularization would help my code even on a single chip. (Partly because the async links would help with some clocking issues, making each module independent clock-wise).
Maybe RD doesn't have a lot of use for the average desktop user, but it is used in the corporate world and it is used by power users. Just because *you* don't use it doesn't mean nobody does.
Here are some of the use cases where remote X has been important to me:
You could summarize these in the way that, for power use(r)s, the number of users is very different from the number of computers. For starters, I'm not going to buy extra monitors, keyboards and mice for all my machines, just because some desktop user thinks remote X is obsolete. In the case of supercomputers and similar specialist machines, it is physically impossible for all users to sit by the same computer. Plus it would be expensive (money, time, environment) for everyone to get there.
Many people argue that remote X can be replaced by more platform-independent systems like VNC. In some cases that is true; in fact, there are cases where remote X does not work, for example when the OpenGL/CL code need to run on the same machine as the rest of the program. On the other hand, VNC is often much heavier on the network, as it needs to transfer the entire bitmapped screen. For example, my fluid mechanics work involved relatively simple 3D modelling, and it worked fine over a 1-megabit ADSL and cable, but VNC is often sluggish even on a LAN.
To be pendantic, you'd need to hang this device on your neck.
2010: Odyssey Two, written in the early 1980s, featured Jupiter having a diamond core.
Linux is an AI construct who really, really wants to read his Usenet. Linus was just a puppet, a bootloader if you like.
He's resting. Pining for the fjords.
It may be hard to hear with my thick Finnish accent, but I think I know how to pronounce GNU, with the initial hard G.
I have no idea what Nickelback is, but check my sig or journal for the finished song.