You're not just suffering from the known SIG11 problems with AMD K6s are you? (I'm one).
Also, which video card do you have? For I know people who complain about ATIs. (I'm one).
Oh my goodness - my Advansys SCSI card craps out too - why does all hardware begining with an 'A' not work for me!
The +1 was an accident, the default should be off in my book.
If it was karma-whoring, how come it gained no karma?
I was just trying to get things in perspective - there's a _hell_ of a lot of CPU power out there, the only thing that's special about this is that it's all under one roof.
I never suggested that it could practically happen there (and was deliberately ignoring MC, as I never understood quite who owned and ran it), I was merely trying to think of a town with a enough large universities.
If just throwing more CPUs at the problem doesn't ever help, how come DESCrack, RC5, GIMPS, PiHex etc. work?
(Yeah, I know the answer, it's because they are 'embarrasingly parallelisable', with an Ahmdahl coefficient of nearly 1)
Flying Null, a breakaway company from Scientific Generics, and engineering consultancy in Cambridge, UK, developed a system like this 5 years ago.
The name of the company, Flying Null, was due to the technique used. By setting up a region where competing EM forces were exactly balanced (a null), when tiny objects (the tags) with particular properties were brought into the null they'd disrupt the balance, and would be detectable. How do you scan a broader region of space? Simple - set up the balance differently, and get the null to fly around the place...
And the cost of the tags? In bulk, pennies, and that was 5 years ago.
(SG was 150 employees, about 50 engineers at the time, and only 5-10 were involved in Flying Null.)
It's all about the coupling.
20000 ordinary PCs could out-compute it.
However, taking into account Ahmdahl coefficients (how efficiently a multi-processor or multi-computer parallelises for a particular problem), and the fact that inter-computer connections would be both slow _and_ very high latency. I reckon:
This thing has about the combined computing power of all the Universities in Manchester[*] combined.
Doh? That ain't that great. It's simply the fact that they've got them under the same roof that's the 'impressive' bit, and I'm not that impressed.
This is a 'problem' that can be pretty much solved simply by throwing money at it. That ain't rocket science...
FatPhil
(In cynic mode, as there are no Axp processors involved)
That's what I thought. I saw the headline and had to rack my brain to work out _how old_ the story was.
Congratulations, anyway.
/. is not a perfect medium.
There is no such "SET". Set theory creates sets by applying axiomatised procedures to known sets (the axioms include a starting point too). You cannot describe the above class of numbers using set theory. Therefore all bets are off when it comes to applying traditional set operations to that class. (such as taking the least element)
Search for "Zermalo Frankel Set Theory" for more info.
Noone's calculated a quadrillion bits of pi[1].
He's (organised a distributed computation of) the quadrillionth bit of pi. Without calculating the previous bits. That's why the algorithm is so clever. You can look for any digit and don't need to work out the previous ones.
FatPhil
[1] I have, actually. They're all 1s. I'm not telling you which bit positions they are in, however.
Blimey - I've not seen telly for over 2 weeks...
Thanks for reminding me about that room in my flat, I'd forgotten it was there, it's probably due for a sweep!
Isreal as a whole is more two-sided, but Jerusalem (Or somethinging like Uts as the Arabs would have it (I was taught to write it in Arabic but don't know how to transliterate it!)) is the focus of three religeons: Judaeism, Christianity, and Islam.
So what are the _3_ sides in this metaphorical new battle?
Sure, the guys who got there first may have been great thinkers with their idealistic morals. And as the thing grew a new 'society' of sharing and cooperation sprung up. And then e- happened. Ignore the drugs warnings about 'E', the thing that's a bigger problem is 'e-'. Every advert on television has a www (stands for wank wank wank amongst the group of hackers I hang around with).com address, and if you go there all you see is marketing material.
It's turning into another way for big corporation to shove adverts down our throats.
That's an entirely different thing from the new society some previously (naively) hoped for.
FatPhil
I wonder if in 20 years time there'll be web pages dedicated to "classic old web pages", like oldies' radio???
You say that the manufacturers have chosen to not develop these inventions or novel applications of previously known technology?
In a field where patents are used.
And they are making their choice because patents are making a difference?
So the existance of the concept of patents is causing the companies to not innovate?
Does that not seem to be the reverse of your argument, even though it's premises are entirely from your argument.
I in no way am trying to diminish your engineering feats, if anything this is aimed solely at the companies which through their greed chose to make your inventions household items.
I for one would love an anti-static comb, being a bloke with >50cm of hair on my head (each grown strand, that is). My solution to the problem was to use those lovely shiny nickel plated cat/dog combs! (honest - they're great, give your scalp a good massage too, and are sooo easy to keep clean) (Hey - couldn't I patent that?:-))
I'm a Brit (a member of CamRA, the campaign for real ale), and I currently live in a pissy-lager country. The -sucks beer was one of the few things available with any taste. That's irrelevant, now. Man I love boycotting things - you get to try out a more interesting variety of products and services. This one will require some thought though...
(Note - I didn't ever think -sucks was any good, just better than the pissy lagers)
This sounds like a "volatile" datum. It shouldn't be in the cache at all. DSP architectures I know have the "Direct RAM Load/Store" operations to bypass the cache, which solves this problem.
FatPhil
Yeah sorry, I worded it badly. It was a combo thing. It's just that for me and the mate who persuaded me to get one it was the paper feel that was more important, and that part had been completely left out originally.
FatPhil
The 3M tape wasn't really to protect the screen, it was to provide a _paper-like_ feel to it. I.e. you got some friction and some audio feedback which would make using the stylus more pencil-like.
I'm thinking more of the Emperors..., basically 2 or 3 chapters from the end he makes a huge quantum leap and says "none of that nice stuff we've just played with can explain the following, so I propose the following..." and introduces some completely off-the wall _physics_.
He's a _mathematician_ you see. I remember I first read the book when I was reading mathematics at the same university where Penrose was, and one of my flatmates was a physicist there. He'd heard of Penrose, but insisted that he was firmly in the "mathematicians mucking around in fields they don't understand" camp when it came to the fundamentals of physics.
It's not a problem of understanding. It's a problem of me _refusing_ to jump to the same conclusion given the same facts.
Penrose isn't the only one who meets my critical side.
The astute reader will note that there's a flaw in chapter 7 of Hawking's A Brief History of Time. In this case, however, it's probably a simplification to permit the book to still be popular science, but nonetheless it is a flaw.
Slashdot Mirror
You're not just suffering from the known SIG11 problems with AMD K6s are you? (I'm one).
Also, which video card do you have? For I know people who complain about ATIs. (I'm one).
Oh my goodness - my Advansys SCSI card craps out too - why does all hardware begining with an 'A' not work for me!
FatPhil
The +1 was an accident, the default should be off in my book.
If it was karma-whoring, how come it gained no karma?
I was just trying to get things in perspective - there's a _hell_ of a lot of CPU power out there, the only thing that's special about this is that it's all under one roof.
FatPhil
I never suggested that it could practically happen there (and was deliberately ignoring MC, as I never understood quite who owned and ran it), I was merely trying to think of a town with a enough large universities.
If just throwing more CPUs at the problem doesn't ever help, how come DESCrack, RC5, GIMPS, PiHex etc. work?
(Yeah, I know the answer, it's because they are 'embarrasingly parallelisable', with an Ahmdahl coefficient of nearly 1)
FatPhil
Phone Flying Null on +44(1223)875200, and they'll answer "Scientific Generics, can I help you"
Then again Harston Mill was such a lovely office (a converted mill, woo!) it makes no sense to move out until absolutely necessary.
Phil
Flying Null, a breakaway company from Scientific Generics, and engineering consultancy in Cambridge, UK, developed a system like this 5 years ago.
The name of the company, Flying Null, was due to the technique used. By setting up a region where competing EM forces were exactly balanced (a null), when tiny objects (the tags) with particular properties were brought into the null they'd disrupt the balance, and would be detectable. How do you scan a broader region of space? Simple - set up the balance differently, and get the null to fly around the place...
And the cost of the tags? In bulk, pennies, and that was 5 years ago.
(SG was 150 employees, about 50 engineers at the time, and only 5-10 were involved in Flying Null.)
FatPhil
Thank you.
I'll try to not forget it next time!
Out of respect, of course!
FatPhil
It's all about the coupling.
20000 ordinary PCs could out-compute it.
However, taking into account Ahmdahl coefficients (how efficiently a multi-processor or multi-computer parallelises for a particular problem), and the fact that inter-computer connections would be both slow _and_ very high latency. I reckon:
This thing has about the combined computing power of all the Universities in Manchester[*] combined.
Doh? That ain't that great. It's simply the fact that they've got them under the same roof that's the 'impressive' bit, and I'm not that impressed.
This is a 'problem' that can be pretty much solved simply by throwing money at it. That ain't rocket science...
FatPhil
(In cynic mode, as there are no Axp processors involved)
[*] Manchester, UMIST, Salford, MMU.
That's what I thought. I saw the headline and had to rack my brain to work out _how old_ the story was.
Congratulations, anyway.
/. is not a perfect medium.
FatPhil
There is no such "SET". Set theory creates sets by applying axiomatised procedures to known sets (the axioms include a starting point too). You cannot describe the above class of numbers using set theory. Therefore all bets are off when it comes to applying traditional set operations to that class. (such as taking the least element)
Search for "Zermalo Frankel Set Theory" for more info.
FatPhil
Noone's calculated a quadrillion bits of pi[1].
He's (organised a distributed computation of) the quadrillionth bit of pi. Without calculating the previous bits. That's why the algorithm is so clever. You can look for any digit and don't need to work out the previous ones.
FatPhil
[1] I have, actually. They're all 1s. I'm not telling you which bit positions they are in, however.
Blimey - I've not seen telly for over 2 weeks...
Thanks for reminding me about that room in my flat, I'd forgotten it was there, it's probably due for a sweep!
FatPhil
Jerusalem is a three-sided problem
Isreal as a whole is more two-sided, but Jerusalem (Or somethinging like Uts as the Arabs would have it (I was taught to write it in Arabic but don't know how to transliterate it!)) is the focus of three religeons: Judaeism, Christianity, and Islam.
So what are the _3_ sides in this metaphorical new battle?
FatPhil
I suck.
grammatical
Can I blame it on a bloody foreign keyboard?
Thought not!
FatPhil
"
people who spend more than 20 hours a week online comit less crimes
"
Do they commit _fewer_ gramattical errors?
FatPhil
Shatting?
Shattering? or Shitting on?
It's all the same in context..
FatPhil
New revolution, year right.
.com address, and if you go there all you see is marketing material.
Sure, the guys who got there first may have been great thinkers with their idealistic morals. And as the thing grew a new 'society' of sharing and cooperation sprung up. And then e- happened. Ignore the drugs warnings about 'E', the thing that's a bigger problem is 'e-'. Every advert on television has a www (stands for wank wank wank amongst the group of hackers I hang around with)
It's turning into another way for big corporation to shove adverts down our throats.
That's an entirely different thing from the new society some previously (naively) hoped for.
FatPhil
I wonder if in 20 years time there'll be web pages dedicated to "classic old web pages", like oldies' radio???
The _respect_ in my subject line was to Bill Hicks!
One of the funniest men to come out of America.
I just wish I could have remembered the quote more closely.
FatPhil
(mashing his spectacles against his face as he types...)
I have to play devil's advocate here.
:-))
You say that the manufacturers have chosen to not develop these inventions or novel applications of previously known technology?
In a field where patents are used.
And they are making their choice because patents are making a difference?
So the existance of the concept of patents is causing the companies to not innovate?
Does that not seem to be the reverse of your argument, even though it's premises are entirely from your argument.
I in no way am trying to diminish your engineering feats, if anything this is aimed solely at the companies which through their greed chose to make your inventions household items.
I for one would love an anti-static comb, being a bloke with >50cm of hair on my head (each grown strand, that is). My solution to the problem was to use those lovely shiny nickel plated cat/dog combs! (honest - they're great, give your scalp a good massage too, and are sooo easy to keep clean) (Hey - couldn't I patent that?
FatPhil
We're losing the War On Drugs? To a bunch of junkies?
FatPhil
I'm a Brit (a member of CamRA, the campaign for real ale), and I currently live in a pissy-lager country. The -sucks beer was one of the few things available with any taste. That's irrelevant, now. Man I love boycotting things - you get to try out a more interesting variety of products and services. This one will require some thought though...
(Note - I didn't ever think -sucks was any good, just better than the pissy lagers)
FatPhil
It's NIMP (not implies) or RNIMP (reverse of the above)
NIMP
00 1
01 1
10 0
11 1
This sounds like a "volatile" datum. It shouldn't be in the cache at all. DSP architectures I know have the "Direct RAM Load/Store" operations to bypass the cache, which solves this problem. FatPhil
Yeah sorry, I worded it badly. It was a combo thing. It's just that for me and the mate who persuaded me to get one it was the paper feel that was more important, and that part had been completely left out originally. FatPhil
The 3M tape wasn't really to protect the screen, it was to provide a _paper-like_ feel to it. I.e. you got some friction and some audio feedback which would make using the stylus more pencil-like.
FatPhil
Why AC?
I'm thinking more of the Emperors..., basically 2 or 3 chapters from the end he makes a huge quantum leap and says "none of that nice stuff we've just played with can explain the following, so I propose the following..." and introduces some completely off-the wall _physics_.
He's a _mathematician_ you see. I remember I first read the book when I was reading mathematics at the same university where Penrose was, and one of my flatmates was a physicist there. He'd heard of Penrose, but insisted that he was firmly in the "mathematicians mucking around in fields they don't understand" camp when it came to the fundamentals of physics.
It's not a problem of understanding. It's a problem of me _refusing_ to jump to the same conclusion given the same facts.
Penrose isn't the only one who meets my critical side.
The astute reader will note that there's a flaw in chapter 7 of Hawking's A Brief History of Time. In this case, however, it's probably a simplification to permit the book to still be popular science, but nonetheless it is a flaw.
FatPhil