This is a matter of market preference. The market prefers a single processor (right now). I remember seeing supporting statistics but I can't find those at the moment. It was better than 90%. R&D is currently focusing on making single processors more efficient (Intel's hyperthreading is a good example). All these improvements will eventually trickle down to the small SMP sector Intel supports.
Multicore chips avoid many of the problems involved in trying to increase raw, single-processor MHz. Simply put, a good dual-core system will whip the pants of a single-processor system, even if the MHz is the same between the two systems. However...
...the dual proc system only wins if software is written to take advanatage of parallelism. And therein lies the rub; parallel programming is still something of a dark art, and few programmers really grasp the issue involved. FOSS compilers lack support for simplified parallel programming (OpenMP), posing another barrier to full utilization of multiple cores.
The potential of multicore and SMP systems is largely predicated on training programmers in parallelism, the availability of tools, and the willingness of software companies to invest in parallel software development.
...ever since I saw the first specs for the chip. As compared to the Pentium 4, the Pentium M runs cooler, and is well-suited to multicore chips. I'm looking forward to comparing multicore Opterons against multicore Pentium-Ms.
Oh, and to suggest that the U.S. is being a "bully" is simply silly. Again, your comment lacks historical perspective. Go read a good history book on what the British did in Ireland and India, or the Dutch did in Indonesia, or the French did in North Africa, or the Germans did in East Africa/Tanzania before you bash the U.S. The U.S., for a great power, has proven remarkably restrained and generous by historical standards.
The crimes of others are no justification for the attrocities meted out by the U.S.
The U.S. has a long history (as do most nation-states) or murder and plunder in the name of "protection" and self-preservation. The Conquest of Mexico, the Spanish-American War, the genocide of Native Americans (I'm married to a descendent of the survivors), the support of brutal dictators -- hell, we created Saddam Hussein, Pinochet, and dozens of other murderous thugs, all in the name of "national security."
I don't give a damn how "few" people were involved. We should be better than this, as a nation, and as human beings.
...your elitist attude is EXACTLY why the NASCAR and God crowd has taken over the American political system.
I'm a Deist by inclination (i.e., I'm not Christian), and an avid NASCAR fan (Tony Stewart, Bobby Labonte, and Dale Jarrett being my favorites.) I like rally and off-road racing, though I have lobbied against the use of snowmobiles and ATVs on public lands.
I don't drink beer, and don't wear a mullet (I do have a bushy beard, though). I own a big ugly 4x4 truck, but have been taking the bus recently to reduce traffic and save some bucks on gas. I have a mixed race marriage, support rational gun rights, and am strongly against what the U.S. is doing in Iraq.
I have voted in every major election (local, state, and national) since 1980. While I'm busy with other things at the moment, I have been politically active on environmental and social justice issues.
Upon occasion, I hold my nose when selecting a candidate, especially in the Presidential races. I suspect I will be doing so again this coming November.
American culture does not value intellect. In a country dominated by dogmatic religion and banal entertainment, anyone with half a brain is looked down upon for wasting tax dollars or being too "nerdy." Image is what matters, not content.
U.S. schools focus on passing limited tests that show nothing about creativity; teaching real problem solving skills is much less important than shoveling students through an impersonal and over-wrought system.
When was the last time you saw the President lauding a group of scientists at the White House? Unless your research is focused on new and creative ways of killing people, you're pretty much ignored; religious ideology replaces the scientific method, and society devolves into polarized camps that react rather than think.
Perhaps I'm too blunt, but I'm tired of watching my once-great nation devolve into an international bully, abandoning its legacy of achievement.
I have pointed out OGG to the BBC, and it was discussed many months ago. Such a choice is not my decision, and, for the moment, our concerns lie elsewhere.
Considering my own forays into evolutionary software, I should be more careful with my terms.;)
No, Dirac does no have any genetic algorithms in it. I don't know if anyone has applied evolutionary algorithms to codecs. I'd love to try it, though...
Has the Dirac bitstream been locked down, or is that still in development?
It's still in development.
How parallelizable are the encoders and/or decoders?
In the end, they will be parallelised; I'm doing the analysis and design work right now. I'm a big believer in parallel code; just this week, AMD annouced that their dual-core Opterons will be drop-in replacements for current single-core Opterons. Parallel is the future.
Is it implementable entirely via integer math like AVC, or are there floating point operations required like in MPEG-2?
Some of both. We're doing some profiling with different implementations to find out what works best. This is one joy of working on a research projects -- we can do research!
Is there support for lossless encoding? 10-bit per channel?
I don't know. The entropy encoding is lossless, but that's after quantisation which is lossy, I believe. Motion estimation/compensation is also lossy.
Does it have per-block interlace mode switching like MPEG-2?
Not at this time.
Anything else about it you could share with a codec nerd?
I've done a lot of past work with data compression and wavelet analysis of photos, and Dirac has been a fascinating experience for me. My expertise is more on the optimisation/parallelisation/UI side of the coin; the theoretical work and algorithm design is the province of some very bright mathematicians and DSP experts at BBC.
Real-time encoding is one goal, but probably not our first target. I believe it will be possible, especially with parallelisation for multi-processor workstations.
As for patents: I am not a lawyer, nor do I play one on Slashdot. I do not speak for BBC in any way; I'm just answering questions because everyone in Britain is home eating dinner at the moment.
It's a very tricky world out there right now. Arithmetic coding can be implemented without hitting patents, I believe -- and the modular design of Dirac should allow a different coding scheme -- say, Huffman -- to be implemented if patents become an issue.
In my opinion, the code can be further clarified, simplified, and documented; however, I'm just one small part of the team, so I can't speak for others.
I wouldn't worry. Making Dirac understandable is one of the team's goals.
And as a resident of Florida (Clearwater), I'm aware of your university's library of the same name. I doubt there'll be much confusion. Did you know that Dirac is buried in Florida? I just found that out...!
I didn't name Dirac, but I know how hard it is to name a new project these days; when I create a new project, I spend an awful lot of time in Roget's Thesaurus and Google, and often resort to invented words (e.g., acovea, evocosm). Such are the times we live in!
Were any of the development concerns the ease or simplicity of implementing the codec in hardware? Not being anything more than a video codec user, I don't know if this is ever a consideration.
I'm not a hardware engineer. At this point, the focus has been on implementation in software; however, I don't really know enough about the issues to respond more fully.
It should, but not having tested it on an OS X system leaves me hesitant to make an absolute promises. I don't know of anything in the codec that precludes it's working on OS X.
The code compiles with GCC, and the current encoder and decoder are command-line applications. As time goes on, I suspect Dirac will gain user interfaces and connections to most popular operating systems and video applications -- including OS X.
The framework is changing as we profile and analyze the code.
Speaking for myself (independent of Dirac), the best C++ code is the simplest code. Just because a feature exists doesn't mean it must be used -- and conversely, just because a feature can be used poorly doesn't mean it should never be used. The goal is to use the right C++ features for the job, and avoid become lost in a nest of complex classes and templates.
There's nothing about Dirac, BTW, that requires C++, or even object-oriented programming.
A matter of disclaimer: I've done some work on Dirac, for BBC, over the last several months. Here's a bit of background on Dirac:
By nature, Dirac has many similarities to existing algorithms such and MPEG-2 and H.264/AVC -- however, Dirac is an original invention that uses wavelet transforms, arithmetic encoding, rate-distortion optimization, variable block-size motion compensation, and hierarchical motion estimation in some new and unique ways. Again, this is a research project, so there's much experimentation to be done!
As a research project, Dirac continues to be analyzed, optimized, and documented. What you're seeing now is very preliminary code; I suspect it will improve and evolve dramatically in the coming months, both in terms of clarity and functionality. The goal is to produce a universal codec, which is one reason behind the open source move.
The codec source code is licensed under dual MPL/GPL licenses.
Dirac is modular, and thus well-suited to implementation with an object-oriented programming language. The reference engine is written in ISO Standard C++, and has been tested under various forms of 32- and 64-bit Linux, as well as under Windows 2000/XP.
I'll try to answer questions here, to the best of my ability.
However, there are many interesting languages. Over the years, I've explored Prolog, Modula-2/3, Oberon, Haskell, Ocaml, and others. All of those embody some very interesting concepts; in some cases. they may be "better" than mainstream languages.
But the fact remains that no one has ever paid me (or anyone else I know) to write code in Ocaml, Haskel, Oberon, Prolog, or D. For the most part, it is C, C++, and Java that feed my family; upon occasion, clients need Python and Fortran 95. I'd love to be paid for a project in D or Ocaml; I'm not going to bet the farm on that happening.
I wish the world of languages (both human and computer) was more diverse -- but reality suggests a hard road to popularity for original concepts like D. I respect and appreciate Walter Bright's abilities; his Zortech compiler paved the way for C++, and provided excellent optimization. I wish him luck in promoting his vision.
My 13yo duaghter has "computer classes" at her Middle School. Are they teaching her programming? No. Are they teaching her basic principles of technology? No.
They're teaching her Microsoft PowerPoint and FrontPage.
I'm not anti-Microsoft; in fact, their software often offers features not found in FOSS applications. PowerPoint is not evil; what's evil is how PowerPoint is used to turn complex ideas into empty summaries.
Yet I find it disquieting that the schools are teaching kids with proprietary software (probably donated) to make business presentations. Most kids don't have a resource at home who can etach them about programming and alternative software. It's not my kids I worry about so much as the corporate monoculture that they're going to live in, populated by ignorant cogs created by an assembly-line school system.
It looks like my middle daughter will follow her 15yo sister into the world of homeschooling. But what about other people's kids? In my mind, Microsoft is no better than a drug peddler, creating a dependancy in youth that leads to addiction in adulthood.
Cringley is right about one thing -- for the most part, the people who care about FOSS are those who know how to use a compiler. And the advocates of FOSS still lack the attention to users -- non-compilers -- that is required to create a valid alternative to Microsoft.
One thing I've learned from being on the frontlines of social activism -- being "right" means nothing. The success of any revolution depends on the ability to engage the passions of the common folk who do not understand (or care to understand) the issues. Geeks can look down their noses at the unwashed masses, but unless you can attract the interest of common folk, your revolution is doomed, and Microsoft wins.
I'm brushing up on my horseback-riding skills. While they're certainly not a perfect solution, horse have a certain charm and simplicity. Plus, they don't need fossil fuels, and they do produce something that would keep my methane-powered generator going...;)
An impractical solution for many locales, horses are still an option to consider if your live in the right place.
Why does everyone have to rush around so much? Does it really matter if I'm in London by 2PM as opposed to 4PM? Must we bounce around like mad blips in a vdieo game? Give me a quieter, more evenly-paced life, less frantic and more thoughtful...
Why must it always be a binary, black-or-white choice? Gnome or KDE, source or package distribution, AMD or Intel... it's as bad as religion sometimes!
A smart person learns the advanatages and disadvantages of different tools; it really doesn't take that much effort, especially for anyone who calls themselves a "professional."
I just bought a dual Opteron workstation, and it had Gentoo-amd64 installed, built from source. Why? I wanted a pure 64-bit environment, and I wanted the machine tightly tuned.
Would I recommend this to a non-expert? No.
What does my wife's laptop run? Windows 2000, because she needs to be compatible with co-workers.
What do I use on my Pentium 4 workstation? Debian 'sid', installed from packages.
My dual P3 server? Debian stable, from packages.
Only proselytizers, trolls, and pundits think that one size fits all.
Probably true. The Bureau of Indian Affairs is an embarassment in Big Brother experimentation; the Indians get screwed by the Bureau, by the casino mafia, and by lawyers. I spent a lot of time on reservations and in Indian country; hell, I married an Apache. It is truly a sad, sad tale.
DOI maintains private financial and health records for Native Americans. For those people who think Big Brother is a myth, I suggest seeing what a wonderful job the Bureau of Indian Affairs (DOI) has done in "tracking"M the lives of Indians. A sad tale...
Slashdot Mirror
Multicore chips avoid many of the problems involved in trying to increase raw, single-processor MHz. Simply put, a good dual-core system will whip the pants of a single-processor system, even if the MHz is the same between the two systems. However...
The potential of multicore and SMP systems is largely predicated on training programmers in parallelism, the availability of tools, and the willingness of software companies to invest in parallel software development.
The crimes of others are no justification for the attrocities meted out by the U.S.
The U.S. has a long history (as do most nation-states) or murder and plunder in the name of "protection" and self-preservation. The Conquest of Mexico, the Spanish-American War, the genocide of Native Americans (I'm married to a descendent of the survivors), the support of brutal dictators -- hell, we created Saddam Hussein, Pinochet, and dozens of other murderous thugs, all in the name of "national security."
I don't give a damn how "few" people were involved. We should be better than this, as a nation, and as human beings.
I'm a Deist by inclination (i.e., I'm not Christian), and an avid NASCAR fan (Tony Stewart, Bobby Labonte, and Dale Jarrett being my favorites.) I like rally and off-road racing, though I have lobbied against the use of snowmobiles and ATVs on public lands.
I don't drink beer, and don't wear a mullet (I do have a bushy beard, though). I own a big ugly 4x4 truck, but have been taking the bus recently to reduce traffic and save some bucks on gas. I have a mixed race marriage, support rational gun rights, and am strongly against what the U.S. is doing in Iraq.
Care to find a pigeon hole for me? :)
I have voted in every major election (local, state, and national) since 1980. While I'm busy with other things at the moment, I have been politically active on environmental and social justice issues.
Upon occasion, I hold my nose when selecting a candidate, especially in the Presidential races. I suspect I will be doing so again this coming November.
American culture does not value intellect. In a country dominated by dogmatic religion and banal entertainment, anyone with half a brain is looked down upon for wasting tax dollars or being too "nerdy." Image is what matters, not content.
U.S. schools focus on passing limited tests that show nothing about creativity; teaching real problem solving skills is much less important than shoveling students through an impersonal and over-wrought system.
When was the last time you saw the President lauding a group of scientists at the White House? Unless your research is focused on new and creative ways of killing people, you're pretty much ignored; religious ideology replaces the scientific method, and society devolves into polarized camps that react rather than think.
Perhaps I'm too blunt, but I'm tired of watching my once-great nation devolve into an international bully, abandoning its legacy of achievement.
I have pointed out OGG to the BBC, and it was discussed many months ago. Such a choice is not my decision, and, for the moment, our concerns lie elsewhere.
You are correct; I forgot the LGPL.
Considering my own forays into evolutionary software, I should be more careful with my terms. ;)
No, Dirac does no have any genetic algorithms in it. I don't know if anyone has applied evolutionary algorithms to codecs. I'd love to try it, though...
It's still in development.
In the end, they will be parallelised; I'm doing the analysis and design work right now. I'm a big believer in parallel code; just this week, AMD annouced that their dual-core Opterons will be drop-in replacements for current single-core Opterons. Parallel is the future.
Some of both. We're doing some profiling with different implementations to find out what works best. This is one joy of working on a research projects -- we can do research!
I don't know. The entropy encoding is lossless, but that's after quantisation which is lossy, I believe. Motion estimation/compensation is also lossy.
Not at this time.
I've done a lot of past work with data compression and wavelet analysis of photos, and Dirac has been a fascinating experience for me. My expertise is more on the optimisation/parallelisation/UI side of the coin; the theoretical work and algorithm design is the province of some very bright mathematicians and DSP experts at BBC.
Xparam is likely to be replaced in the forseeable future.
Real-time encoding is one goal, but probably not our first target. I believe it will be possible, especially with parallelisation for multi-processor workstations.
As for patents: I am not a lawyer, nor do I play one on Slashdot. I do not speak for BBC in any way; I'm just answering questions because everyone in Britain is home eating dinner at the moment.
It's a very tricky world out there right now. Arithmetic coding can be implemented without hitting patents, I believe -- and the modular design of Dirac should allow a different coding scheme -- say, Huffman -- to be implemented if patents become an issue.
In my opinion, the code can be further clarified, simplified, and documented; however, I'm just one small part of the team, so I can't speak for others.
I wouldn't worry. Making Dirac understandable is one of the team's goals.
Yes, the "Dirac" codec is named after Paul Dirac.
And as a resident of Florida (Clearwater), I'm aware of your university's library of the same name. I doubt there'll be much confusion. Did you know that Dirac is buried in Florida? I just found that out...!
I didn't name Dirac, but I know how hard it is to name a new project these days; when I create a new project, I spend an awful lot of time in Roget's Thesaurus and Google, and often resort to invented words (e.g., acovea, evocosm). Such are the times we live in!
Those very issues are currently under consideration. I'd be interested in hearing opinions on the matter.
I'm not a hardware engineer. At this point, the focus has been on implementation in software; however, I don't really know enough about the issues to respond more fully.
Will Dirac run under OS X?
It should, but not having tested it on an OS X system leaves me hesitant to make an absolute promises. I don't know of anything in the codec that precludes it's working on OS X.
The code compiles with GCC, and the current encoder and decoder are command-line applications. As time goes on, I suspect Dirac will gain user interfaces and connections to most popular operating systems and video applications -- including OS X.
The framework is changing as we profile and analyze the code.
Speaking for myself (independent of Dirac), the best C++ code is the simplest code. Just because a feature exists doesn't mean it must be used -- and conversely, just because a feature can be used poorly doesn't mean it should never be used. The goal is to use the right C++ features for the job, and avoid become lost in a nest of complex classes and templates.
There's nothing about Dirac, BTW, that requires C++, or even object-oriented programming.
A matter of disclaimer: I've done some work on Dirac, for BBC, over the last several months. Here's a bit of background on Dirac:
By nature, Dirac has many similarities to existing algorithms such and MPEG-2 and H.264/AVC -- however, Dirac is an original invention that uses wavelet transforms, arithmetic encoding, rate-distortion optimization, variable block-size motion compensation, and hierarchical motion estimation in some new and unique ways. Again, this is a research project, so there's much experimentation to be done!
As a research project, Dirac continues to be analyzed, optimized, and documented. What you're seeing now is very preliminary code; I suspect it will improve and evolve dramatically in the coming months, both in terms of clarity and functionality. The goal is to produce a universal codec, which is one reason behind the open source move.
The codec source code is licensed under dual MPL/GPL licenses.
Dirac is modular, and thus well-suited to implementation with an object-oriented programming language. The reference engine is written in ISO Standard C++, and has been tested under various forms of 32- and 64-bit Linux, as well as under Windows 2000/XP.
I'll try to answer questions here, to the best of my ability.
D is certainly a very interesting language;
However, there are many interesting languages. Over the years, I've explored Prolog, Modula-2/3, Oberon, Haskell, Ocaml, and others. All of those embody some very interesting concepts; in some cases. they may be "better" than mainstream languages.
But the fact remains that no one has ever paid me (or anyone else I know) to write code in Ocaml, Haskel, Oberon, Prolog, or D. For the most part, it is C, C++, and Java that feed my family; upon occasion, clients need Python and Fortran 95. I'd love to be paid for a project in D or Ocaml; I'm not going to bet the farm on that happening.
I wish the world of languages (both human and computer) was more diverse -- but reality suggests a hard road to popularity for original concepts like D. I respect and appreciate Walter Bright's abilities; his Zortech compiler paved the way for C++, and provided excellent optimization. I wish him luck in promoting his vision.
My 13yo duaghter has "computer classes" at her Middle School. Are they teaching her programming? No. Are they teaching her basic principles of technology? No.
They're teaching her Microsoft PowerPoint and FrontPage.
I'm not anti-Microsoft; in fact, their software often offers features not found in FOSS applications. PowerPoint is not evil; what's evil is how PowerPoint is used to turn complex ideas into empty summaries.
Yet I find it disquieting that the schools are teaching kids with proprietary software (probably donated) to make business presentations. Most kids don't have a resource at home who can etach them about programming and alternative software. It's not my kids I worry about so much as the corporate monoculture that they're going to live in, populated by ignorant cogs created by an assembly-line school system.
It looks like my middle daughter will follow her 15yo sister into the world of homeschooling. But what about other people's kids? In my mind, Microsoft is no better than a drug peddler, creating a dependancy in youth that leads to addiction in adulthood.
Cringley is right about one thing -- for the most part, the people who care about FOSS are those who know how to use a compiler. And the advocates of FOSS still lack the attention to users -- non-compilers -- that is required to create a valid alternative to Microsoft.
One thing I've learned from being on the frontlines of social activism -- being "right" means nothing. The success of any revolution depends on the ability to engage the passions of the common folk who do not understand (or care to understand) the issues. Geeks can look down their noses at the unwashed masses, but unless you can attract the interest of common folk, your revolution is doomed, and Microsoft wins.
I'm brushing up on my horseback-riding skills. While they're certainly not a perfect solution, horse have a certain charm and simplicity. Plus, they don't need fossil fuels, and they do produce something that would keep my methane-powered generator going... ;)
An impractical solution for many locales, horses are still an option to consider if your live in the right place.
Why does everyone have to rush around so much? Does it really matter if I'm in London by 2PM as opposed to 4PM? Must we bounce around like mad blips in a vdieo game? Give me a quieter, more evenly-paced life, less frantic and more thoughtful...
Why must it always be a binary, black-or-white choice? Gnome or KDE, source or package distribution, AMD or Intel ... it's as bad as religion sometimes!
A smart person learns the advanatages and disadvantages of different tools; it really doesn't take that much effort, especially for anyone who calls themselves a "professional."
I just bought a dual Opteron workstation, and it had Gentoo-amd64 installed, built from source. Why? I wanted a pure 64-bit environment, and I wanted the machine tightly tuned.
Would I recommend this to a non-expert? No.
What does my wife's laptop run? Windows 2000, because she needs to be compatible with co-workers.
What do I use on my Pentium 4 workstation? Debian 'sid', installed from packages.
My dual P3 server? Debian stable, from packages.
Only proselytizers, trolls, and pundits think that one size fits all.
Probably true. The Bureau of Indian Affairs is an embarassment in Big Brother experimentation; the Indians get screwed by the Bureau, by the casino mafia, and by lawyers. I spent a lot of time on reservations and in Indian country; hell, I married an Apache. It is truly a sad, sad tale.
DOI maintains private financial and health records for Native Americans. For those people who think Big Brother is a myth, I suggest seeing what a wonderful job the Bureau of Indian Affairs (DOI) has done in "tracking"M the lives of Indians. A sad tale...