They sacrificed portability by performing some TLB caching hacks. It's a good idea but comparing it to Linux as a whole is a bad idea as Linux runs on more than the ARM they're testing on. If you look at all of the results most are comparable and exec/fork favour Linux.
Why do you people troll as AC? Penis not big enough?
RAID is the best first step anyone can do. 99% of the time specially I've seen systems die because the single HD they store their entire CVS tree on dies. Not because the lab blows up or a virus infects the OS.
So getting a RAID-1 or RAID-5 is the best first thing to do. Yes, after that you get into nightly tapes and offsite storage.
But without the first step it's meaningless. You can't afford to have to force a full restore or even wait for partial restores [possibly corrupting existing files] to get back up. In RAID-1 if one HD dies you turn it off [if using typical retail gear without hotswap], replace the drive and boot back up. You can be back up and running fairly fast.
Getting two or even three drives in RAID is a hell of a lot cheaper than a DLT library.
RAID-5 [or 6]. If you're running something where you have 750GB of information chances are you can justify spending 2-3K on reliable storage.
3x750 in RAID-5 would net you about 1.3TiB of storage and would allow upto one drive to completely die without losing data. If you're more paranoid you could use 4x750 and have upto two drives die.
The RAID access will be automatic so effectively you're always backing data up.
Though my experience with K7 stuff was fine too, only significant problem was overheating.
I seriously think your impressions are just out of date. If you are buying brand name K8 components today and they're not working you're either
a) setting it up wrong
b) buying non-brandname parts
c) buying it at a place you shouldn't trust
d) Lying.
I've bought several 754, 939 and 940 motherboards from ASUS and Tyan and they all work just fine. The fact that you seem to be having consistent "problems" with them suggests that your process requires updating.
hmm... when I got my Dell my homepage was a Gentoo live cd:-)
I never used the copy of windows this came with but I did use the license key to a fresh install.
Using the pre-installed windows from Dell is just stupid. It's loaded down with trialware, adware, spyware, annoyanceware and a few others I dare not mention. The only sane thing to do is scratch it and start over.
No, take that back. Clearcase is the bane of all existence. Slowest POS ever...
Sure virtual file systems "views" sounds great on paper, the reality of it, specially over the 100Mbit at my work, is it's slow as fuck. You can take any 2 hour build and turn it into a 4, 6, 8 and I've even seen 10 hours on a dedicated box [e.g. only sharing the network not the CPU].
Give me CVS any day:-) At least when I check out 10GB of source [once] I can build it locally as much as I fucking want!
Um the power to run a system with enough ram + HD + network + screen + decent processor + inefficiencies is probably near 200W.
A human biking as hard as they can generate 100W or so tops.
Sure you can run a 20Mhz ARM processor off of AAA, but that same processor won't compile something the size of the Linux kernel in 15 minutes. Try more like 75 minutes. An Opteron processor takes even at idle over 30W of juice.
Now multiply that by a couple dozen employees. Then factor in the time and salaries for that time period, etc.
Figure out how much energy it takes to compile something like the Linux kernel in a competitive amount of time [say 10 minutes]. Now figure out how hard you have to work to generate that power in half the time [5 minutes].
You're a fucking tool. You can't compete in todays industry with hand-crank computers.
Let's see... building 100K of source code probably takes thousands of Joules of energy. How much does say 50RPM on a hand crank generate?
So you can't develop software on this [let alone store the software, I might add these have 512MB of storage].
Ok, what about EE work? Let's try to run Synopsis on it. Ok that's dozens of thousands of Joules...
Art? No.
Media? No.
Press? No.
etc...
You need AC current that has five nines of up time to be competitive. Not some toy that while effective in the class is TOTALLY FUCKING USELESS otherwise.
Oh great, you learned to use a computer [the money I may add, could have bought another clean well or food for a year]. Now you finish school and... what? use a hand crank computer in industry?
The infrastructure is not in place then what's the fucking point? We had roads, sewers, power, etc, long before we had computers [in the schools/homes] in North America.
And I disagree. If you can't read you can't use a computer. And you need formal education otherwise you end up with generation of functionally incompetent people.
Do you want Engrish, Babu [Indian] and now whatever you call African Enlishese?
I want kids of the world to have a fighting chance at life. I want them to be educated. And yes, access to technology will expedite and facilitate the process. But that means access to technology that is stable, performs enough to be realistic and is available responsibly today.
Sure [for instance] my initial education with computers was informal hacking, I still went to college and got a solid foundation. So when I talk about a compiler, I know more than "you hit F9 and turbo pascal makes an EXE".
I'm a person, an individual. It's not up to me to ensure that entire continents of people have access to technology. If these countries just stopped the wholesale genocide and other wars going on they could collect their thoughts, educate their people and grow the fuck up.
For my school to get those Apple ][ I was talking about they had likely to raise taxes. The *COMMUNITY* paid for it so that the generation growing up would have access to technology.
Face it, we're not going to make the world a better place tomorrow. It'll take generations before technology and a stable economy develop.
Dropping cheap, defective $100 laptops on a 3rd nation where the most schooling the average person has goes to GRADE THREE won't make their lives better.
I bet Vista has CMIPCI drivers [as well as many others such as AC'97 codecs from Intel/AMD/Via/NF].
Maybe the Lenovo hardware just sucks ass. Much like us Linux/BSD users have hardware problems...
Maybe if Lenovo used standard chips for things as trivial as A SOUNDBLASTER 16, they wouldn't have these problems [yes, I miss the days where SBDSP was the "standard" for soundcards and everyone tried to clone them].
No, I'm a realist. As much as I value access to information and technology I think this is nothing more than wishful thinking. The fact that they are planning on taking money yet is just inappropriate.
Until they can make 100K units and deliver them for $100 each they should be charging more. At least if you paid 150$ for your "$100 laptop" but actually got it on time you could say "I'm supporting the cause". When they rely on your goodwill [to put up with "shipping delays" a/k/a/ future orders] to pay for it, it's just a scam.
Besides, I'd rather see computers in the class that can be more than a pretty looking fisher price toy.
I grew up with 1 Apple ][ in the classroom. We had assigned "computer time". Then we moved to the MacSE, MacII, etc, etc. We never had one laptop per student. Yet we grew up just fine and are doing wonderful things with technology.
Why not just plomp down an AMD PIC or two per classroom and use the same time sharing process? That'd not only be cheaper, but it could ACTUALLY BE DONE TODAY!!!
"I believe that a Windows driver fix was made available, which did something silly like disable the +5V line."
Um... you can't disable the +5V line. That's where things get their power from. Your mouse, usb sticks, keyboard, etc wouldn't work.
My bet [other than you're making this up to troll] is that you bought returned items which were damaged. EVERY SINGLE computer I've bought that was AMD used the nvidia series of chipset. They all worked properly and never had a "plug usb in and die" problem.
I've seen some MSI boards [using VIA chipsets] have random SATA problems and what not. But generally ASUS and Gigabyte are good to go with. My 2P Tyan board is running two high end Opterons and everything on it, even the audio codec, is working perfectly [using nvidia nF4 Pro chipset].
The point is why spend time learning and investing in their tools if at the end of this thought experiment you'll just have to throw away what you learned.
At least if the contest used a proper compiler [e.g. GCC] and development suite at the end of the contest you're still a-go for more development.
As many other posters said this is just MSFTs little "me too". Their marketdroids just don't get it. The appeal of OSS isn't just that it's free (as in cost) but accessible and distributable. If their "shared source" agreement amounts to basically an NDA and a free partnership then it doesn't even come close to addressing the goals of OSS.
DDR2 and DDR1 are NOT electrically compatible. That means you plug DDR2 into a DDR1 processor and it goes boom.
And as for making some form of DDR1+DDR2 processor that's really expensive given the protocols aren't the same, etc. You'd be wasting a lot of die space that will be effectively off all the time.
DDR1+939 chips will be out for a while I imagine. If you're really paranoid you should wait till they get past AM2.
Slashdot Mirror
They sacrificed portability by performing some TLB caching hacks. It's a good idea but comparing it to Linux as a whole is a bad idea as Linux runs on more than the ARM they're testing on. If you look at all of the results most are comparable and exec/fork favour Linux.
Tom
Why do you people troll as AC? Penis not big enough?
RAID is the best first step anyone can do. 99% of the time specially I've seen systems die because the single HD they store their entire CVS tree on dies. Not because the lab blows up or a virus infects the OS.
So getting a RAID-1 or RAID-5 is the best first thing to do. Yes, after that you get into nightly tapes and offsite storage.
But without the first step it's meaningless. You can't afford to have to force a full restore or even wait for partial restores [possibly corrupting existing files] to get back up. In RAID-1 if one HD dies you turn it off [if using typical retail gear without hotswap], replace the drive and boot back up. You can be back up and running fairly fast.
Getting two or even three drives in RAID is a hell of a lot cheaper than a DLT library.
Tom
Yes, I know that. I'm saying though that you get immediate reliability.
:-)
Also, anyone who puts a 3000 dollar raid setup in a Windows box deserves what they get.
Yes, you still need daily backups, off-site, etc. But you still need that first line of backup which is what RAID gives you.
Tom
RAID-5 [or 6]. If you're running something where you have 750GB of information chances are you can justify spending 2-3K on reliable storage.
3x750 in RAID-5 would net you about 1.3TiB of storage and would allow upto one drive to completely die without losing data. If you're more paranoid you could use 4x750 and have upto two drives die.
The RAID access will be automatic so effectively you're always backing data up.
Tom
Athlon != K8/Opteron.
Though my experience with K7 stuff was fine too, only significant problem was overheating.
I seriously think your impressions are just out of date. If you are buying brand name K8 components today and they're not working you're either
a) setting it up wrong
b) buying non-brandname parts
c) buying it at a place you shouldn't trust
d) Lying.
I've bought several 754, 939 and 940 motherboards from ASUS and Tyan and they all work just fine. The fact that you seem to be having consistent "problems" with them suggests that your process requires updating.
Tom
hmm... when I got my Dell my homepage was a Gentoo live cd :-)
I never used the copy of windows this came with but I did use the license key to a fresh install.
Using the pre-installed windows from Dell is just stupid. It's loaded down with trialware, adware, spyware, annoyanceware and a few others I dare not mention. The only sane thing to do is scratch it and start over.
Tom
WTF is a drive letter? /mnt/usb
... ooooh fancy...
Much better. And I can even share it over NFS
Tom
No, take that back. Clearcase is the bane of all existence. Slowest POS ever...
:-) At least when I check out 10GB of source [once] I can build it locally as much as I fucking want!
Sure virtual file systems "views" sounds great on paper, the reality of it, specially over the 100Mbit at my work, is it's slow as fuck. You can take any 2 hour build and turn it into a 4, 6, 8 and I've even seen 10 hours on a dedicated box [e.g. only sharing the network not the CPU].
Give me CVS any day
Tom
But but but free markets and all that jazz. Monopolies aren't bad. That's what the folk here keep saying about MSFT. :-)
Tom
Gentoo.
Ahhh, much better.
At nearly four grand the laptop is only for yuppy idiots who want a chi chi laptop with total diregard to function.
As long as it has MS IE and Office it's probably all the dolts want.
Tom
Um the power to run a system with enough ram + HD + network + screen + decent processor + inefficiencies is probably near 200W.
A human biking as hard as they can generate 100W or so tops.
Sure you can run a 20Mhz ARM processor off of AAA, but that same processor won't compile something the size of the Linux kernel in 15 minutes. Try more like 75 minutes. An Opteron processor takes even at idle over 30W of juice.
Now multiply that by a couple dozen employees. Then factor in the time and salaries for that time period, etc.
Tom
My scale may be off [re: thousands of joules] but I won't pretend to actually know how much power it takes... hehehehe.
Point is, it's not trivial.
Tom
Figure out how much energy it takes to compile something like the Linux kernel in a competitive amount of time [say 10 minutes]. Now figure out how hard you have to work to generate that power in half the time [5 minutes].
Enjoy.
Tom
You're a fucking tool. You can't compete in todays industry with hand-crank computers.
Let's see... building 100K of source code probably takes thousands of Joules of energy. How much does say 50RPM on a hand crank generate?
So you can't develop software on this [let alone store the software, I might add these have 512MB of storage].
Ok, what about EE work? Let's try to run Synopsis on it. Ok that's dozens of thousands of Joules...
Art? No.
Media? No.
Press? No.
etc...
You need AC current that has five nines of up time to be competitive. Not some toy that while effective in the class is TOTALLY FUCKING USELESS otherwise.
Tom
That's my point.
... what? use a hand crank computer in industry?
Oh great, you learned to use a computer [the money I may add, could have bought another clean well or food for a year]. Now you finish school and
The infrastructure is not in place then what's the fucking point? We had roads, sewers, power, etc, long before we had computers [in the schools/homes] in North America.
Tom
And I disagree. If you can't read you can't use a computer. And you need formal education otherwise you end up with generation of functionally incompetent people.
Do you want Engrish, Babu [Indian] and now whatever you call African Enlishese?
I want kids of the world to have a fighting chance at life. I want them to be educated. And yes, access to technology will expedite and facilitate the process. But that means access to technology that is stable, performs enough to be realistic and is available responsibly today.
Sure [for instance] my initial education with computers was informal hacking, I still went to college and got a solid foundation. So when I talk about a compiler, I know more than "you hit F9 and turbo pascal makes an EXE".
Tom
"Is there someone stopping you from doing this? "
I hate that line of thinking.
I'm a person, an individual. It's not up to me to ensure that entire continents of people have access to technology. If these countries just stopped the wholesale genocide and other wars going on they could collect their thoughts, educate their people and grow the fuck up.
For my school to get those Apple ][ I was talking about they had likely to raise taxes. The *COMMUNITY* paid for it so that the generation growing up would have access to technology.
Face it, we're not going to make the world a better place tomorrow. It'll take generations before technology and a stable economy develop.
Dropping cheap, defective $100 laptops on a 3rd nation where the most schooling the average person has goes to GRADE THREE won't make their lives better.
Tom
I bet Vista has CMIPCI drivers [as well as many others such as AC'97 codecs from Intel/AMD/Via/NF].
Maybe the Lenovo hardware just sucks ass. Much like us Linux/BSD users have hardware problems...
Maybe if Lenovo used standard chips for things as trivial as A SOUNDBLASTER 16, they wouldn't have these problems [yes, I miss the days where SBDSP was the "standard" for soundcards and everyone tried to clone them].
Tom
No, I'm a realist. As much as I value access to information and technology I think this is nothing more than wishful thinking. The fact that they are planning on taking money yet is just inappropriate.
Until they can make 100K units and deliver them for $100 each they should be charging more. At least if you paid 150$ for your "$100 laptop" but actually got it on time you could say "I'm supporting the cause". When they rely on your goodwill [to put up with "shipping delays" a/k/a/ future orders] to pay for it, it's just a scam.
Besides, I'd rather see computers in the class that can be more than a pretty looking fisher price toy.
I grew up with 1 Apple ][ in the classroom. We had assigned "computer time". Then we moved to the MacSE, MacII, etc, etc. We never had one laptop per student. Yet we grew up just fine and are doing wonderful things with technology.
Why not just plomp down an AMD PIC or two per classroom and use the same time sharing process? That'd not only be cheaper, but it could ACTUALLY BE DONE TODAY!!!
Tom
It's called a Ponzi scheme. 100K people sign up and 10K get the laptops that 100K of people paid for.
Then another 100K sign up and the next 10K get theirs.
Until they can turn over 1-1 order to deliveries it's nothing more than a scam.
Tom
"I believe that a Windows driver fix was made available, which did something silly like disable the +5V line."
... you can't disable the +5V line. That's where things get their power from. Your mouse, usb sticks, keyboard, etc wouldn't work.
Um
My bet [other than you're making this up to troll] is that you bought returned items which were damaged. EVERY SINGLE computer I've bought that was AMD used the nvidia series of chipset. They all worked properly and never had a "plug usb in and die" problem.
I've seen some MSI boards [using VIA chipsets] have random SATA problems and what not. But generally ASUS and Gigabyte are good to go with. My 2P Tyan board is running two high end Opterons and everything on it, even the audio codec, is working perfectly [using nvidia nF4 Pro chipset].
Tom
The point is why spend time learning and investing in their tools if at the end of this thought experiment you'll just have to throw away what you learned.
At least if the contest used a proper compiler [e.g. GCC] and development suite at the end of the contest you're still a-go for more development.
As many other posters said this is just MSFTs little "me too". Their marketdroids just don't get it. The appeal of OSS isn't just that it's free (as in cost) but accessible and distributable. If their "shared source" agreement amounts to basically an NDA and a free partnership then it doesn't even come close to addressing the goals of OSS.
Tom
Tool.
I've had nothing but success using nForce4 and nForce4 Pro based motherboards.
On the other hand my i915G motherboard for my 775 pin Prescott can't access the CDROM in Linux [reliably anyways]. My Gigabyte i945 was fine though.
Stop buying crap ECS boards or low end KT or nF series. Spend the $100 and get a nF4 ASUS or Gigabyte and get over it.
Tom
Wow, where did you get your EE?
DDR2 and DDR1 are NOT electrically compatible. That means you plug DDR2 into a DDR1 processor and it goes boom.
And as for making some form of DDR1+DDR2 processor that's really expensive given the protocols aren't the same, etc. You'd be wasting a lot of die space that will be effectively off all the time.
DDR1+939 chips will be out for a while I imagine. If you're really paranoid you should wait till they get past AM2.
Tom