The most significant issue with this board is that it is based on the slightly older V series boards, rather than the new M series. The V series suffer from not being able to display MPEG2 and process AC3 sound simultaneously - making it sub-optimal for movie playback.
Another review can be found on the this website (bear in mind that they sell the Hush though). A comparison of the M and V series boards, including comparative benchmarks for video playback, can be found here.
Personally I intend to wait until Hush produce a new model based on the M series.
Your comment is fine for people in the US. However here in New Zealand the options are considerably more limited as I expect they are in the vast majority of countries, large and small alike.
We have seen this exact behaviour when benchmarking our heap management product. Although our software is targetted at multithreaded software and multiprocessor machines, we've been surprised to see it improve performance of non-multithreaded programs by so much on XP. We've seen it speed up single threaded applications on Windows 2000 too, but not by so much.
And please, before somebody gets started with a flame war, WinHeap is not open source (although there is a source code license available), but it is free for non-profit use.
Five years ago I was part of a very large project replacing a substantial COBOL development on mainframes with an n-tier C++ system. There were about 15 COBOL staff and plenty of ribbing between us and them. We ended up getting one of those huge Jurassic Park banners from the local cinema and hanging it over their work area:-) Of course management made us take it down...
Your comment is not quite correct. You might think that libraries are used to implement threads, but the reality is that non-user-mode threading (i.e. anything approaching a sensible implementation for processors that support page protection) requires access to special instructions on the processor. So, the libraries you talk of are actually kernel mode, and they will certainly be using hand crafted assembler to execute the priveleged instructions required to perform processor level context switching. Any user mode libraries, such as pthreads, are completely reliant upon kernel support to implement their functionality.
My point was that functionality offered by chip manufacturers usually requires support from compiler manufacturers. However I accept that this argument does not *appear* to hold for this new multithreading technology. However, I would not be the least bit surprised to learn that there are certain "optimisations" (i.e. instructions) that while not strictly required, would enhance performance if used. Which requires compiler support (or possibly kernel support).
Perhaps another question is how long the Sparc line will really last. Is Sun's recent foray into the Intel/Linux forum placing the writing on the wall for their server hardware ?
Oh, and FYI this has absolutely nothing whatever to do with Windows, Unix or any other specific operating system.
The key to a processor like this making a genuine difference in real world applications may well come down to compiler support. By far the most prolific compiler on the most prolific OS (Windows) is Microsoft Visual C++. Years on from the introduction of P3/P4/MMX etc. and there is still virtually no support for these technologies in Visual C++. Microsoft, like most (all ?) compiler vendors stick to almost-the-lowest-common-denominator when it comes to instructions sets, which means in this case means bland-ish Intel.
I appreciate that this article is discussing Sun technology. Even if Sun produce an UltraSparc 4 processor (or whatever) with this technology built in, my guess is that it will be literally years before the popular Solaris compilers catch up (those being Sun Workshop and gcc).
The one versus three year warranty is an interesting one. The trend of IDE manufacturers like Maxtor and Western Digital is to offer one year for "normal" IDE drives and three years for "Special Edition" (read: 8MB cache) drives. I'm not sure how this stacks up with SATA drives though.
Didn't drives used to come with a five year warranty ? Did I just make that up, or am I showing my age ?
Of course if, like me, you live in New Zealand, none of this makes any difference anyway. Under the consumer protection legislation here the seller of the drive must warrant it for the expected "useful life" of the drive, which is certainly longer than one year.
A couple of simple rules have always helped me with the morale of my team. If morale is poor, I nearly always point at one of these things and realise that I/my company is not doing it:
1. Clear, achievable deadlines
2. The best tools and equipment for the job (within reason obviously)
3. Insulation from the most insideous company politics and hopeless project managers.
4. Wages in the upper bracket of the industry for each role
No 'fred' ? I remember a survey years ago when one of the most common passwords was 'fred'. Don't know why ? Look at your keyboard... perhaps it's more popular in the UK ? Is 'fred' even a name in the US ?
I had a look at the slideshow in the link and was amused by this page where it has some word definitions, one of which is Ownship. Now I thought that this is what happens when crackerz take control of the simulator and take the driver on the wildest ride of their life. Then I realised it probably should have read own ship. Much less interesting...
Actually I take this back. Having read other people's comments, I can see exactly why they have done it. No, I don't want to see "Google - by Microsoft" thanks very much.
What I don't understand is how "To Google" can possibly hurt Google. If anything I would have thought that it simply increases brand awareness.
Now if I had created my own search site, and said "works like Google" or "Google compatible" or some such nonsense so that I was benefitting from the 'association' with Google, I could understand getting a 'cease and desist' order.
As a complete side note, am I the only one who feels a little personally offended by the action of Google's lawyers ? Rightly or wrongly, Google in my mind has a reputation for being internet-community friendly. This action by their lawyers has, in my mind, blighted this reputation. Please don't say Google is going the corporate way and becoming just another big-named company with big-named lawayers. Or is this just inevitable ? Victims of their own (finiancial) success ?
What kills me is how much money they (Microquill/SmartHeap) try and charge. I guess they're getting away with it because they're still in business.
If you want an open source solution by the way, you should look at Hoard. It's a bit crap under Windows (actually it's diabolical) but I think it works pretty well under *nix. Not as convenient to use as WinHeap because you have to modify/relink all your projects, but hey, it works:-)
/me waits for the "stupidly off-topic" moderation...
Make the money from using the tools, rather than from the tools themselves.
Hey, sensible comment, thanks:-)
The problem is that we're a small company and we're based in New Zealand, which in turn is a small market. There's certainly some consultancy work that can be done (and we do), but most of the large projects are off-shore and literally half a world away.
There's no independent benchmarks yet (although we've got some beta testers doing their own performance testing at the moment).The benchmark application and source code is available in the (free!) download though.
As with all applications, your mileage may vary, that's why we've got a version up there for download for people to try out. No point in paying for it if it won't make any difference to your software, right ? If your application is not heap intensive, then probably you'll see minimal improvement. On the other hand, if for example you've got a server app that dynamically creates/destroys lots of objects in response to client requests or database accesses, it can make quite a difference. An application server I worked on for Unisys had a 50% throughput improvement. But that's not an independent benchmark of course.
Anyways, now I really *am* in danger of spamming/. ! LOL
Well now let's see. It's free for personal, educational or non-profit use. And the source code is available, you just have to pay for it. Hey, I got a wife, family and bills to pay - get over it buddy. And as for being a "shit" product - why not try it and see if it works ? Then compare it to SmartHeap (www.microquill.com) who charge tens of thousands of dollars for an inferior product.
Sure, I'd love to be working on open source projects during the day and spending my evenings with my family. I've just not figured out how to do that and make a living out of it.
Slashdot Mirror
It's interesting to imagine Doom with a kind of covert-mission aspect to it, instead of a mindless bloodbath
Isn't that like imagining a date with Cindy Crawford but without the sex ?
is that no matter how hard the authors try, its never going to be as good as the first...
Err, Doom II, Doom III ?
Oops, you're right :-) LOL, getting my machine reviews confused :-)
Another review can be found on the this website (bear in mind that they sell the Hush though). A comparison of the M and V series boards, including comparative benchmarks for video playback, can be found here.
Personally I intend to wait until Hush produce a new model based on the M series.
Your comment is fine for people in the US. However here in New Zealand the options are considerably more limited as I expect they are in the vast majority of countries, large and small alike.
And please, before somebody gets started with a flame war, WinHeap is not open source (although there is a source code license available), but it is free for non-profit use.
Five years ago I was part of a very large project replacing a substantial COBOL development on mainframes with an n-tier C++ system. There were about 15 COBOL staff and plenty of ribbing between us and them. We ended up getting one of those huge Jurassic Park banners from the local cinema and hanging it over their work area :-) Of course management made us take it down...
My point was that functionality offered by chip manufacturers usually requires support from compiler manufacturers. However I accept that this argument does not *appear* to hold for this new multithreading technology. However, I would not be the least bit surprised to learn that there are certain "optimisations" (i.e. instructions) that while not strictly required, would enhance performance if used. Which requires compiler support (or possibly kernel support).
Perhaps another question is how long the Sparc line will really last. Is Sun's recent foray into the Intel/Linux forum placing the writing on the wall for their server hardware ?
Oh, and FYI this has absolutely nothing whatever to do with Windows, Unix or any other specific operating system.
I appreciate that this article is discussing Sun technology. Even if Sun produce an UltraSparc 4 processor (or whatever) with this technology built in, my guess is that it will be literally years before the popular Solaris compilers catch up (those being Sun Workshop and gcc).
The one versus three year warranty is an interesting one. The trend of IDE manufacturers like Maxtor and Western Digital is to offer one year for "normal" IDE drives and three years for "Special Edition" (read: 8MB cache) drives. I'm not sure how this stacks up with SATA drives though.
Didn't drives used to come with a five year warranty ? Did I just make that up, or am I showing my age ?
Of course if, like me, you live in New Zealand, none of this makes any difference anyway. Under the consumer protection legislation here the seller of the drive must warrant it for the expected "useful life" of the drive, which is certainly longer than one year.
A couple of simple rules have always helped me with the morale of my team. If morale is poor, I nearly always point at one of these things and realise that I/my company is not doing it: 1. Clear, achievable deadlines
2. The best tools and equipment for the job (within reason obviously)
3. Insulation from the most insideous company politics and hopeless project managers.
4. Wages in the upper bracket of the industry for each role
Examples of Python in action: 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7"
And for those Visual Basic programmers confused by that sentence, here is a translation just for you:
Examples of Python in action: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8
No 'fred' ? I remember a survey years ago when one of the most common passwords was 'fred'. Don't know why ? Look at your keyboard... perhaps it's more popular in the UK ? Is 'fred' even a name in the US ?
Excellent article on URL obfuscation.
I had a look at the slideshow in the link and was amused by this page where it has some word definitions, one of which is Ownship. Now I thought that this is what happens when crackerz take control of the simulator and take the driver on the wildest ride of their life.
Then I realised it probably should have read own ship. Much less interesting...
This is my week.
1. Found out wife is pregnant.
2. Our rental has been sold and we have 42 days find a new place/move out.
3. Starting a new job on Monday
4. New version of nethack released
Oh, the inhumanity of it all...
Appreciated, thanks.
Actually I take this back. Having read other people's comments, I can see exactly why they have done it. No, I don't want to see "Google - by Microsoft" thanks very much.
What I don't understand is how "To Google" can possibly hurt Google. If anything I would have thought that it simply increases brand awareness.
Now if I had created my own search site, and said "works like Google" or "Google compatible" or some such nonsense so that I was benefitting from the 'association' with Google, I could understand getting a 'cease and desist' order.
As a complete side note, am I the only one who feels a little personally offended by the action of Google's lawyers ? Rightly or wrongly, Google in my mind has a reputation for being internet-community friendly. This action by their lawyers has, in my mind, blighted this reputation. Please don't say Google is going the corporate way and becoming just another big-named company with big-named lawayers. Or is this just inevitable ? Victims of their own (finiancial) success ?
Basketball: Hello Kitty!
Kitty: Hello Basketball!
or
Basketball: Hello Kitty!
Kitty: Holy crap, a talking basketball!
What kills me is how much money they (Microquill/SmartHeap) try and charge. I guess they're getting away with it because they're still in business.
If you want an open source solution by the way, you should look at Hoard. It's a bit crap under Windows (actually it's diabolical) but I think it works pretty well under *nix. Not as convenient to use as WinHeap because you have to modify/relink all your projects, but hey, it works :-)
/me waits for the "stupidly off-topic" moderation...
Make the money from using the tools, rather than from the tools themselves.
Hey, sensible comment, thanks :-)
The problem is that we're a small company and we're based in New Zealand, which in turn is a small market. There's certainly some consultancy work that can be done (and we do), but most of the large projects are off-shore and literally half a world away.
There's no independent benchmarks yet (although we've got some beta testers doing their own performance testing at the moment).The benchmark application and source code is available in the (free!) download though.
As with all applications, your mileage may vary, that's why we've got a version up there for download for people to try out. No point in paying for it if it won't make any difference to your software, right ? If your application is not heap intensive, then probably you'll see minimal improvement. On the other hand, if for example you've got a server app that dynamically creates/destroys lots of objects in response to client requests or database accesses, it can make quite a difference. An application server I worked on for Unisys had a 50% throughput improvement. But that's not an independent benchmark of course.
Anyways, now I really *am* in danger of spamming /. ! LOL
Well now let's see. It's free for personal, educational or non-profit use. And the source code is available, you just have to pay for it. Hey, I got a wife, family and bills to pay - get over it buddy. And as for being a "shit" product - why not try it and see if it works ? Then compare it to SmartHeap (www.microquill.com) who charge tens of thousands of dollars for an inferior product.
Sure, I'd love to be working on open source projects during the day and spending my evenings with my family. I've just not figured out how to do that and make a living out of it.
But hey, thanks for your balanced view point.
I can just see a whole new line of new age books in the self-help section of the local bookstore...
From RAID to Radiant - How a broken striped array needn't end your life"LMAO
and the .Net CF vaporware...
Actually, it's included in Microsoft Visual Studio.NET 2003 due for release in April IIRC.