Well, Mill 1 doesn't do impressive 3D acceleration. I can say that MetroX DOES support multiple Matrox video cards at the same time, especially if they are the same. Otherwise, MX needs to have every video card to be of a different chipset (I think). I have 2 Mill 1 8MB cards and 1 8MB Permedia 2 video card on my Alpha right now. NT doesn't support the extra P2 at the same time as the Mill 1's, but Metro X can run them all at the same time.
The radiation that you could get from little lcd displays like that is probably less than what you get from a normal CRT at 1/2 meter. I imagine that they would be statistically insignificant on rad output.
Do it. Show me a link to a reputable, third party organization that makes a case. Even better, something written by a reputable member of the judicial community. Listing yourself as 'Anonymous Coward' doesn't help me in getting convinced.
As floppies are unreliable, and CD-ROMs are sensitive to damage, hard drives are built to fail. I cannot allow items that I install to die without having a backup. And because I have the installation materials of saftware, that doesn't mean I am going to put up with starting from scratch.
Don't forget that companies that sell tape backup materials suggest three tapes in a weekly backup cycle.
Even if you can make a reasonable case that the consumer doesn't have a right to make personal backups, it will be ignored because things fail.
I'm sorry to take you out of context, but it seems true, but I anticipate that the Alpha has a few years to prove itself. Too bad the 'low-end' or cheap high performance Alphas haven't made it out of the labs yet.
I really hope that the DS-10 'Web Brick' takes off. It looks like a Xeon/Sparc/PPC creamer on price and performance. Dual 100bTX chips on board is awesome. I'm anticipating the workstation version.
The following discussion is for open source programs only.
There is no way that a product comparable to Pro/Engineer, SDRC or even the lowly AutoCAD will be available for some time to come. Good 3D hardware support is extremely rare, if at all, and the software products I have mentioned are EXTREMELY COMPLEX. Far more complex than say PhotoShop and Gimp. There are halfway viable 2D CAD options, but they tend to have very different (even confusing) UIs as they look, feel and operate quite differently than I would expect. And don't get me started on the horrid DXF support (of which I made an open source library for, to be released soon), which don't support 3D in any manner.
Right now wine only works on x86. The Wine concept CAN theoretically run on Alphas for Alpha NT binaries, but that could be a lot of work patching stuff over. I don't know if anyone's going to do that until Wine stabilizes.
I have more interesting fish to fry.
I suppose someone could improve Bochs' performance. That might be a better option for non-x86 (except possibly Alphas, but see above).
Wrong order of magnitude. Theoretically, 32 bit, 33 MHz PCI _could_ do it, but it won't happen at max. This is why new systems are comming out with multiple PCI busses, and a case for Alpha (even Apple) systems, a 64 bit PCI bus, so that eth traffic doesn't kill your drive or graphics bandwidth. You'll need expensive switches to get the max out of the pipe.
I can program in multiple languages, configure routers and do hardware maintainance, yet I still cannot program the da*m VCR. Anyone else feel the same way?
Usually a manual is included with a new VCR. Read yours. VCRs can be as convoluted as PCs but they are still far simpler.
I have had nothing but trouble with any mouse that isn't Logitech. They make good solid quality parts that don't gum up with crap as much as the competition.
The only exceptions are the stupid cordless mice. The seem subject to too much RFI and the balls are too small for a stable pointing device. Of course, I have never liked a track ball in my life. My thumb is too unstable and it requires too much thumb motion to operate at lower acceleration, making me weary.
I never liked their hand-scanners though, a flatbed is a far better proposition.
Matrox recently released 3D specs for the G200; I assume G400 specs will be released as well.
Well, I have downloaded the G200 graphics specs, not looked at them, but other people that checked them found no 3D chip level programming information, and calls to Matrox only gave a run-around. If you can submit a link showing their intention to do this, please do, otherwise, please don't propagate 'grapevine' misinformation (like I have done too).
If you think AutoCAD is good software, you haven't used it much. After R12, they removed the IGES import/export (to put it into a more expensive package), screwed up their DXF output so it was incompatible with older software (like AutoDesk's own 3D Studio R3 at the time). Properly designed code can handle the changes, but not always.
Then with R14, the AutoLisp was modified such that I had to change every routine I wrote - to make it imcompatible with R13. The plot-to-file option outputs 'correct' code, but such a way that Win/DOS can't shove it through the comm port properly. I had to reboot to Linux to get that file to work - 'cat filename/dev/ttyS1'.
I which I could help with a free 3D CAD program, but I am working on related projects.
I never was totally impressed with Motorola. I bought a voice modem, the modem part broke, sent it in, they took off the external 'voice' jacks, put in the wrong firmware. when a lightning broke it a second time, I asked them to put the jacks back in, to no avail.
The 68xx chips weren't all that wonderful, but the included dev environment was nice.
The comparison you make is bad... The Cray test was done about 15 months ago AND used older software (POVRAY 2.2 vs 3.02), older compilers, older generation CPU, and no one uses 450MHz Alpha CPUs anymore. Cost wise, a new DS20 dual Alpha computer is less expensive than a new quad Xeon-450 AND outperforms it.
If Microway makes a new cluster, its memory performance/bandwidth will probably multiply by 10 given the new chipset.
---Check the pricing for Alpha vs. PII. Crap or not, the Intel chips are cheaper. It's just a matter of how the cards are configured.---
Oooh graphics cards are expensive aren't they?
You have not covered the performance aspect. Alphas systems have twice the FPU power of any intel system at the same price, new (per MHz is a little different, but cost-performance is more important than CPI. For clustering, that is very good. Remember that all new Alphas currently have 64 bit PCI slots, like such used for gigabit or four port duplex 100bTX cards, reducing memory system bottleneck and increasing raw comm throughtput for parallel cluster/node computing like this. Communication is the key for parallel.
Remember Motorola's AltaVEC? KNI? both are 128 bit that I remember. The wider data bus usually does improve throughput - it helps on Alphas at least. The intense 3D is very parallel capable in nature.
I'll give them the benefit of the doubt for now. Besides, have you seen the MPEG movies? They claim they were made in real time.
Well, for a cause to be a good one, it must become greater than the person or group that started the cause. If he is still the forefront of free software, then either he is too powerful or the cause is weak.
I don't believe that he should be ignored, but don't let him control the whole thing. They way he dissed Mr O'Reilly pissed me off though. He was acting a little counter to his own philosophy. If you can't sell books (or services) on free software, then you put a death hold on ever making money on GPL stuff.
DEC had (has?) a system called Galaxy that is capable of running WinNT, Digital Unix and OpenVMS on a 6 CPU system, and CPUs can be exchanged between operating systems.
I really just want an 8400: 144 PCI slots (who knows how many independent busses this is?), to 28GB RAM and 14 - 600MHz CPUs. Fun....
The memory bandwidth of the DS20 is 5.6GB/sec, it has two independent 64-bit PCI busses (think gigabit ethernet and the multichannel 64-bit RAID cards) one or two 256 bit wide memory busses, 2MB of L2 cashe per CPU, double the spec-int and 4x SpecFP of a high end Xeon or PII system (400-500MHz)
This DS20 is a server. Don't do this at home.
Happy? I don't like it when insulting language is used either.
JRDM
Microwave Ovens - correct you loony.
on
Mega Heat Sinks
·
· Score: 1
A chip operating at a certain frequency radiates at such frequency, plus every odd multiple of the base frequency. Of course the radiation is low, but it is there. Usually shielding will block most of it, although no method of shielding is perfect.
At least they wouldn't be paying homage to Microsoft!
Besides, this is european research being discussed here. European companies seem to be a bit more sensitive to environmental concerns and more driven to consider anything that isn't the bottom line (Geld nicht über alles).
With Linux having more true international character than most other OS's (in design, development, distribution and usage), this would be better for countries that are NOT the US.
Duh. To those that believe that one dollar isn't much, reading the article, it states that companies change suppliers over one dollar per unit prices.
To those with no design (for) manufacturing experience, one dollar in cost to produce an item roughly equates to a ten dollar price in the store. Think taxes, profits, insurance, retailers all take a BIG cut.
I sure hope efficient high-res support comes out. I can play Descent in 640x480 but it is a bit slow and that mode does not allow the console to be scaled down. Plus I guess the code should be optimized better for non assembly for other archs.
Slashdot Mirror
Well, Mill 1 doesn't do impressive 3D acceleration. I can say that MetroX DOES support multiple Matrox video cards at the same time, especially if they are the same. Otherwise, MX needs to have every video card to be of a different chipset (I think). I have 2 Mill 1 8MB cards and 1 8MB Permedia 2 video card on my Alpha right now. NT doesn't support the extra P2 at the same time as the Mill 1's, but Metro X can run them all at the same time.
The radiation that you could get from little lcd displays like that is probably less than what you get from a normal CRT at 1/2 meter. I imagine that they would be statistically insignificant on rad output.
Do it. Show me a link to a reputable, third party organization that makes a case. Even better, something written by a reputable member of the judicial community. Listing yourself as 'Anonymous Coward' doesn't help me in getting convinced.
As floppies are unreliable, and CD-ROMs are sensitive to damage, hard drives are built to fail. I cannot allow items that I install to die without having a backup. And because I have the installation materials of saftware, that doesn't mean I am going to put up with starting from scratch.
Don't forget that companies that sell tape backup materials suggest three tapes in a weekly backup cycle.
Even if you can make a reasonable case that the consumer doesn't have a right to make personal backups, it will be ignored because things fail.
I'm sorry to take you out of context, but it seems true, but I anticipate that the Alpha has a few years to prove itself. Too bad the 'low-end' or cheap high performance Alphas haven't made it out of the labs yet.
I really hope that the DS-10 'Web Brick' takes off. It looks like a Xeon/Sparc/PPC creamer on price and performance. Dual 100bTX chips on board is awesome. I'm anticipating the workstation version.
The following discussion is for open source programs only.
There is no way that a product comparable to Pro/Engineer, SDRC or even the lowly AutoCAD will be available for some time to come. Good 3D hardware support is extremely rare, if at all, and the software products I have mentioned are EXTREMELY COMPLEX. Far more complex than say PhotoShop and Gimp. There are halfway viable 2D CAD options, but they tend to have very different (even confusing) UIs as they look, feel and operate quite differently than I would expect. And don't get me started on the horrid DXF support (of which I made an open source library for, to be released soon), which don't support 3D in any manner.
Right now wine only works on x86. The Wine concept CAN theoretically run on Alphas for Alpha NT binaries, but that could be a lot of work patching stuff over. I don't know if anyone's going to do that until Wine stabilizes.
I have more interesting fish to fry.
I suppose someone could improve Bochs' performance. That might be a better option for non-x86 (except possibly Alphas, but see above).
Looks like something/someone slaped this to the wrong thread.
Wrong order of magnitude. Theoretically, 32 bit, 33 MHz PCI _could_ do it, but it won't happen at max. This is why new systems are comming out with multiple PCI busses, and a case for Alpha (even Apple) systems, a 64 bit PCI bus, so that eth traffic doesn't kill your drive or graphics bandwidth. You'll need expensive switches to get the max out of the pipe.
Usually a manual is included with a new VCR. Read yours. VCRs can be as convoluted as PCs but they are still far simpler.
I have had nothing but trouble with any mouse that isn't Logitech. They make good solid quality parts that don't gum up with crap as much as the competition.
The only exceptions are the stupid cordless mice.
The seem subject to too much RFI and the balls are
too small for a stable pointing device. Of course, I have never liked a track ball in my life. My thumb is too unstable and it requires too much thumb motion to operate at lower acceleration, making me weary.
I never liked their hand-scanners though, a flatbed is a far better proposition.
Well, I have downloaded the G200 graphics specs, not looked at them, but other people that checked them found no 3D chip level programming information, and calls to Matrox only gave a run-around. If you can submit a link showing their intention to do this, please do, otherwise, please don't propagate 'grapevine' misinformation (like I have done too).
If you think AutoCAD is good software, you haven't used it much. After R12, they removed the IGES import/export (to put it into a more expensive package), screwed up their DXF output so it was incompatible with older software (like AutoDesk's own 3D Studio R3 at the time). Properly designed code can handle the changes, but not always.
/dev/ttyS1'.
Then with R14, the AutoLisp was modified such that I had to change every routine I wrote - to make it imcompatible with R13. The plot-to-file option outputs 'correct' code, but such a way that Win/DOS can't shove it through the comm port properly. I had to reboot to Linux to get that file to work - 'cat filename
I which I could help with a free 3D CAD program, but I am working on related projects.
I never was totally impressed with Motorola. I bought a voice modem, the modem part broke, sent it in, they took off the external 'voice' jacks, put in the wrong firmware. when a lightning broke it a second time, I asked them to put the jacks back in, to no avail.
The 68xx chips weren't all that wonderful, but the included dev environment was nice.
I have never owned a Mot cpu or uc.
The comparison you make is bad... The Cray test was done about 15 months ago AND used older software (POVRAY 2.2 vs 3.02), older compilers, older generation CPU, and no one uses 450MHz Alpha CPUs anymore. Cost wise, a new DS20 dual Alpha computer is less expensive than a new quad Xeon-450 AND outperforms it.
If Microway makes a new cluster, its memory performance/bandwidth will probably multiply by 10 given the new chipset.
---Check the pricing for Alpha vs. PII. Crap or not, the Intel chips are cheaper. It's just a matter of how the cards are configured.---
Oooh graphics cards are expensive aren't they?
You have not covered the performance aspect. Alphas systems have twice the FPU power of any intel system at the same price, new (per MHz is a little different, but cost-performance is more important than CPI. For clustering, that is very good. Remember that all new Alphas currently have 64 bit PCI slots, like such used for gigabit or four port duplex 100bTX cards, reducing memory system bottleneck and increasing raw comm throughtput for parallel cluster/node computing like this. Communication is the key for parallel.
JRDM
Remember Motorola's AltaVEC? KNI? both are 128 bit that I remember. The wider data bus usually does improve throughput - it helps on Alphas at least. The intense 3D is very parallel capable in nature.
I'll give them the benefit of the doubt for now. Besides, have you seen the MPEG movies? They claim they were made in real time.
Well, for a cause to be a good one, it must become greater than the person or group that started the cause. If he is still the forefront of free software, then either he is too powerful or the cause is weak.
I don't believe that he should be ignored, but don't let him control the whole thing. They way he dissed Mr O'Reilly pissed me off though. He was acting a little counter to his own philosophy. If you can't sell books (or services) on free software, then you put a death hold on ever making money on GPL stuff.
DEC had (has?) a system called Galaxy that is capable of running WinNT, Digital Unix and OpenVMS on a 6 CPU system, and CPUs can be exchanged between operating systems.
I really just want an 8400: 144 PCI slots (who knows how many independent busses this is?), to 28GB RAM and 14 - 600MHz CPUs. Fun....
Dang! pressed enter!
www.spec.org, other sources.
The memory bandwidth of the DS20 is 5.6GB/sec, it has two independent 64-bit PCI busses (think gigabit ethernet and the multichannel 64-bit RAID cards) one or two 256 bit wide memory busses, 2MB of L2 cashe per CPU, double the spec-int and 4x SpecFP of a high end Xeon or PII system (400-500MHz)
This DS20 is a server. Don't do this at home.
Happy? I don't like it when insulting language is used either.
JRDM
A chip operating at a certain frequency radiates at such frequency, plus every odd multiple of the base frequency. Of course the radiation is low, but it is there. Usually shielding will block most of it, although no method of shielding is perfect.
At least they wouldn't be paying homage to Microsoft!
Besides, this is european research being discussed here. European companies seem to be a bit more sensitive to environmental concerns and more driven to consider anything that isn't the bottom line (Geld nicht über alles).
With Linux having more true international character than most other OS's (in design, development, distribution and usage), this would be better for countries that are NOT the US.
A disloyal American signs off...
Duh. To those that believe that one dollar isn't much, reading the article, it states that companies change suppliers over one dollar per unit prices.
To those with no design (for) manufacturing experience, one dollar in cost to produce an item roughly equates to a ten dollar price in the store. Think taxes, profits, insurance, retailers all take a BIG cut.
he he he!
I sure hope efficient high-res support comes out. I can play Descent in 640x480 but it is a bit slow and that mode does not allow the console to be scaled down. Plus I guess the code should be optimized better for non assembly for other archs.