IBM has _one_ Opteron system, despite Opteron being available for over a year. I checked yesterday. I was highly disappointed, as it was only a 1U server, not a workstation.
IBM does have something of a positioning problem with Opteron, since it is at least highly competitive with it's PowerPC architecture.
It speaks volumes that IBM is selling an Opteron system at all.
AMD chips run super hot. My Athlon box sounds like a buzzsaw with all of the fans it needs to keep from melting down into a puddle of silicon goo...
This is nonsense. The Prescott will dissipate over 100 Watts. The current crop of P4s are up around 90 W. Those high clockspeeds directly translate into high power consumption.
There is no real-world thermal issue with AMD CPUs. They even have Intel-like thermal protection these days...
Note the 3.2 GHz. P4 at the bottom. I doubt seriously that RDRAM will make up for the 53%, 41% and 46% performance deficits the P4 demonstrated on the three benchmarks that took long enough to be a valid test (Quicktime, 50 MB Image, and 150 MB Image). You'll also note that the P4 won exactly zero of the benchmarks.
Now you know the reason for the P4 Emergency Edition.;-)
IMO, stability outweighs all other concerns. I've been putting together my own systems since the days of the 386, and in that time I've used x86 chips from AMD, NextGen, Cyrix, IBM and Intel. The one thing I've leared is that nothing beats the combination of an Intel CPU on an Intel Motherboard. Sure I might pay an extra $200 above a similiarly performing AMD system, but I know the thing will work and NEVER crash.
I think that concern has been answered by the nForce series of MB chipsets. I've built several nForce2 based systems, and they are rock solid. There is a single unified driver from NVIDIA for sound, network, I/O and so on. If you use an NVIDIA graphics card (my preferred brand for various reasons) one vendor is supplying all your drivers. That is a very nice level of accountability, and better than almost all Intel systems.
There was an article not too long ago about how happy a major corp. was with HP nForce based business systems. The unified driver architecture was a big win for them.
From what I hear, Opteron is also extremely stable. I hope to find out for myself before too long... =)
Touche. I'm actually a G5 fan myself, and will own one as soon as I can afford it.
Let's face it though, a lot of people (especially Linux people!) are committed to x86. Opteron/Athlon64 looks like the most future-proof route there, by far.
I've also seen some performance comparisons where AMD64 trounces the G5. Not that there aren't examples in the other direction, but clock-for-clock Opteron seems a bit faster. It'll be worth keeping an eye on things as compilers improve and applications are updated. We'll also see if new G5 speed grades up to 2.6 GHz. really appear this spring...if G5 can get ahead on the clockspeed front it could prevail in real-world performance.
According to some of those benchmarks, though, it has a lot of ground to make up...
Opteron should also do really well in the workstation and high-end PC markets.
This is all great for AMD, since Opteron is a high-margin part that kills Intel's high-margin x86 parts. The design wins with major OEMs just keep on coming...
it's not cost effetive when fighting against a first world nation; sure, an F22 can take on 5 f16's and win...but you can buy about 10-15 (if not more) f16's for the price of one f22.
I doubt your figures. I suspect it's (at most, but I'm not motivated enough to track down actual figures) about 3-4 F-16's per F-22 on a cost basis. However, that's not even a fair comparison, because an F-16 isn't a true air superiority fighter.
The F-22 has several advanced capabilities that no other fighter in the world can match, including supercruise, stealth, IRST and a performance envelope that is something like 40% beyond the F-15's. I'm pretty sure the F-22 could fly against the F-15, and compile a perfect record just like the F-15 has against every other plane in the world. The F-16 would be hopelessly outmatched. The F-22 is worth every penny, IMO.
OK, I did do some nosing around. According to this article the per-plane cost for the F-22 is now at $83 million, given current production rates. This article claims that new F-15s cost Israel $86 million, whereas new F-16s will cost about $30 million. Looks like the 3-1 figure was about right.
BTW, the Eurofighter (a much inferior plane) is slated to cost over $150 million per plane. So much for European efficiency...;-)
Ever see that episode of the Sopranos, where the gambling addict owes money to the mob and can't pay? So they take over his business and run it into the ground, borrowing money they have no intention of repaying, so they can recoup the loss and leave him in the hole. That's what this is like. The deficit has reached a record level and they keep charging more and more extravagant purchases. They even started a war as a corporate welfare project. We have the mob answering the phone.
Given the fact that the economy could possibly have slid into deflation, deficit spending is not the evil you make it out to be.
Even many fiscal hawks admit that we can afford current spending levels given the GDP, and when the tax cuts are successful at reviving the economy, the resulting prosperity will more than pay for the current spending strategy.
Lunar regolith isn't weathered like the surface debris on Earth. Consequently, it's got sharp edges. It's less like play-sand and more like crushed glass.
The astronauts reported that the stuff got into their suits between the hermetic joints, grinding into their skin. It also chewed up the lunar rovers.
Of course, what's on the surface of the moon is much less interesting than what's underneath, since thats where humans will spend 95%+ of their time. It will take at least a few meters of lunar surface to protect them from radiation. Also, thermal issues are much easier a ways underground.
I'm pretty sure "regolith resistant" spacesuits aren't a big problem, regardless.
No, I'm afraid your assessment is incorrect. The HD1000 is a HD Media Player. We couldn't (or at least shouldn't) call it HD without supporting at least 720p or 1080i. Of course, we support both, in addition to 480p and 480i. Of course, the HD1000 doesn't record anything, but can display your photos in 1080i and playback HD ATSC trasport streams in 1080i or 720p (or 480p or 480i if you really want to)
- Patrick
- Sr Software Engineer, Roku
Thank you for the response! I am a little confused though...I thought your device at least facilitated video recording. However, what you're telling me, if I understand correctly, is that if I manage to get the 1080i data bits on my disk I can play it back? What are the copy protection issues?
At any rate, it sounds a very interesting device, I will keep an eye on it!
Thanks for the link, I was lazy.;-) So, it will successfully pass-thru 1080i...great. I wonder if it's processor is even powerful enough to decode a 1080i digital stream...?
Perhaps someone will successfully hack some interesting functionality. That is the big allure of this thing, after all.
Many embedded developers are used to hard real time schedulers and this business of process priorities with nice values seems a bit odd. I don't want my scheduler to be fair, I want it to be strict. On the other hand, I want to leverage open source that may rely on the behavior of the scheduler.
This issue is solved with the 2.6 kernel. Current userland code will run fine on top of the hard real time underpinnings.
At any rate, I never claimed that the U.S. was perfect...it's simply the best alternative that actually exists.
As opposed to say, any communist country, which have consistently failed to produce a decent living standard or rapid technological progress...
Did you hear who despite that continued selling arms to the 'moderate' saddam to keep the evil Iranians at bay.
The U.S. played off two regional powers to limit both of them. That is called "international politics", and like sausage manufacture, it isn't a pretty process.;-)
Would you care to discuss France and Germany's sale of nuclear technology to both Iran and Iraq? I didn't think so...
Yes, actually I do remember this incident. It was AAA, no? Did any details ever emerge regarding the shootdown? Some possibilities that don't invalidate stealth in any way are:
It may have been fire guided by the Mark 1 eyeball, which the F-117 wasn't designed to defeat regardless (except at night).
It may have been a "lucky hit", i.e. the plane flew into a flak trap and got hit by a "statistical bullet" (otherwise known as a "golden BB").
It is also worth noting that the F-117 is first generation stealth technology, essentially designed in the 60's and 70's.
The B2 is second generation tech, and the F22 is third.
Now, please point to another country that possesses even the equivalent to our first generation technology...
-stealth sucks and is demonstrably over rated...all you have to do is change your radar from high frequency to low and all stealth aircraft in existence stand out...all that held for example Iraq back from doing just this was export restrictions and cost.
You are laughably ignorant. Let me know when someone actually shoots a stealth aircraft down. Furthermore, given the F-15's perfect combat record I'm not sure the F-22 would have anything to worry about regardless. (For those who didn't follow the link, the F-15 has 101 shootdowns with 0 F-15's lost.)
If by some sad mischance your country goes up against the U.S., good luck to you. You'll definitely need it.;-)
-modern 'precision munitions' are still piss poor accuracy wise; 90% missed in the first gulf war, 75-60% did same in the second.
First of all, I don't think your statistics are remotely correct for the current war. Where did you get them? I don't think the U.S. has published too much BDA information publically (hint: it is all classified).
Secondly, I don't understand how you can characterize them as "piss poor" when it is widely recognized that they are the best weapons in the world, bar none. Please trot out some actual facts proving otherwise.
Not only that, but the only way americans could really set foot on EU soil is if they have a friendly port to use as a staging area.
Well, we do have Britain.;-)
-the US is just as unsafe as any other place in the world...didn't 911 teach you anything?
Yes, it has taught me that the U.S. can successfully stop terrorist activity on it's soil for over two years, without a single incident. What did it teach you? Your statement is, once again, absurd.
-the US? Ethical? Have you even been following the news since the 1950's? As for that 'emprie'...wtf are you guys still doing in Iraq, a year after hostilities have supposedly (according to your own gov'ment) stopped?
We are in Iraq building a democracy. These things take time. BTW, it was never said that "hostilities stopped". It was "major hostilities", meaning a shooting war against another government.
As to our ethics, if it was like historical England, France or Germany, we'd now have an American Empire on which the sun never sets...
Fact is, the US could probably occupy the EU...at massive cost. And they wouldn't hold it for long; guerilla warfare would make the cost of a cross-atlantic occupation too high.
Perhaps. If we just conquered France, we'd probably end up with the modern equivalent of the Vichy government, and a nice stable colony. =)
But then, according to the Americans, Iraq had weapons of mass destruction.
Er, genius, according the U.N. Saddam had WMD. Did you see the information from the first round of weapons inspectors? Did you hear of him gassing thousands of Kurds?
If he really did dispose of them properly, he damn well should have documented it. He'd still be sitting around watching his son rape schoolgirls if he had.
American hardware would eventually prevail, but with significant cost.
Really? How would a significant cost be incurred?
The European powers have no answer to stealth (F117/B2/F22), and with modern precision guided munitions (very well tested at this point;) their entire ground force would be hamburger before an American soldier set foot on European soil.
I hadn't thought about it until now, but America has become effectively invincible, except to ICBM attack - and we're working on that.
Very scary stuff. I hope it turns out that America can keep up her excellent track record of ethical conduct. If we were like most European nations historically, we'd be working on an American Empire right now (no, we're really not...get over it).
What's to keep them from just trashing the whole system? The alternative to jamming is destruction.
Exactly. That ASAT missile isn't even the most lethal anti-satellite threat these days. The Airborne Laser 747 will have a quite lethal ASAT capability as well. It could probably shoot down LEO satellites at the rate of a couple a minute, as long as they're above the horizon. IIRC it gets about 10 one-minute shots during a single flight.
The website doesn't appear to have been updated lately, I guess the government decided to turn down the publicity on one of it's most impressive new weapons. (It should also be hell against planes, BTW.) It was originally scheduled for live firing in 2004, I'm curious where the program is now. They are building seven ABLs if things are going according to plan.
Here is the most recent article I could find about the program.
Competitive with MIPS, on a per-CPU basis. What metric did you have in mind?
Have you seen any 64 or 128 cpu Itanium machines running around lately?
Yeah, on SGI's website (first paragraph I linked in a parent post):
"SGI Altix 3000 servers and superclusters are the most scalable Linux(R) systems on the planet, running a single Linux OS image with 64 Intel(R) Itanium(R) 2 processors and up to 4TB of memory."
Take a look at this which talks about the future MIPS machines, which will still run Irix.
Right, but SGI has been trying to kill off the MIPS/Irix line for years. Now that Itanium is (finally) competitive, I personally wouldn't be investing much in MIPS systems...
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Andy Grove, is that you? ;-)
The relevance of my .sig has never been clearer...
IBM does have something of a positioning problem with Opteron, since it is at least highly competitive with it's PowerPC architecture.
It speaks volumes that IBM is selling an Opteron system at all.
We'll have to see if Dell eventually blinks. ;-)
Exactly. Which is why the world needs an alternative to Intel! :-)
This is nonsense. The Prescott will dissipate over 100 Watts. The current crop of P4s are up around 90 W. Those high clockspeeds directly translate into high power consumption.
There is no real-world thermal issue with AMD CPUs. They even have Intel-like thermal protection these days...
Note the 3.2 GHz. P4 at the bottom. I doubt seriously that RDRAM will make up for the 53%, 41% and 46% performance deficits the P4 demonstrated on the three benchmarks that took long enough to be a valid test (Quicktime, 50 MB Image, and 150 MB Image). You'll also note that the P4 won exactly zero of the benchmarks.
Now you know the reason for the P4 Emergency Edition. ;-)
I think that concern has been answered by the nForce series of MB chipsets. I've built several nForce2 based systems, and they are rock solid. There is a single unified driver from NVIDIA for sound, network, I/O and so on. If you use an NVIDIA graphics card (my preferred brand for various reasons) one vendor is supplying all your drivers. That is a very nice level of accountability, and better than almost all Intel systems.
There was an article not too long ago about how happy a major corp. was with HP nForce based business systems. The unified driver architecture was a big win for them.
From what I hear, Opteron is also extremely stable. I hope to find out for myself before too long... =)
Cheers, Ian
Touche. I'm actually a G5 fan myself, and will own one as soon as I can afford it.
Let's face it though, a lot of people (especially Linux people!) are committed to x86. Opteron/Athlon64 looks like the most future-proof route there, by far.
I've also seen some performance comparisons where AMD64 trounces the G5. Not that there aren't examples in the other direction, but clock-for-clock Opteron seems a bit faster. It'll be worth keeping an eye on things as compilers improve and applications are updated. We'll also see if new G5 speed grades up to 2.6 GHz. really appear this spring...if G5 can get ahead on the clockspeed front it could prevail in real-world performance.
According to some of those benchmarks, though, it has a lot of ground to make up...
Athlon MP wasn't tremendously successful penetrating the server market, but Opteron appears to be making serious headway!
IBM has the e325, and Sun is about to introduce Opteron servers in a big way. Opteron thorougly rips Intel's x86 server offerings, especially in 2P and 4P configurations, and is extremely competitive with Itanium at a lower price (and with no software recompiles required).
Opteron should also do really well in the workstation and high-end PC markets.
This is all great for AMD, since Opteron is a high-margin part that kills Intel's high-margin x86 parts. The design wins with major OEMs just keep on coming...
It's time for people to stop rewarding the Intel marketing machine, and start buying the best tech - AMD!
At the high end, 64-bit addressing is just icing on the cake! :-)
I doubt your figures. I suspect it's (at most, but I'm not motivated enough to track down actual figures) about 3-4 F-16's per F-22 on a cost basis. However, that's not even a fair comparison, because an F-16 isn't a true air superiority fighter.
The F-22 has several advanced capabilities that no other fighter in the world can match, including supercruise, stealth, IRST and a performance envelope that is something like 40% beyond the F-15's. I'm pretty sure the F-22 could fly against the F-15, and compile a perfect record just like the F-15 has against every other plane in the world. The F-16 would be hopelessly outmatched. The F-22 is worth every penny, IMO.
OK, I did do some nosing around. According to this article the per-plane cost for the F-22 is now at $83 million, given current production rates. This article claims that new F-15s cost Israel $86 million, whereas new F-16s will cost about $30 million. Looks like the 3-1 figure was about right.
BTW, the Eurofighter (a much inferior plane) is slated to cost over $150 million per plane. So much for European efficiency... ;-)
I hope you found it of interest!
Given the fact that the economy could possibly have slid into deflation, deficit spending is not the evil you make it out to be.
Even many fiscal hawks admit that we can afford current spending levels given the GDP, and when the tax cuts are successful at reviving the economy, the resulting prosperity will more than pay for the current spending strategy.
It worked for Reagan, after all....
Lunar regolith isn't weathered like the surface debris on Earth. Consequently, it's got sharp edges. It's less like play-sand and more like crushed glass.
The astronauts reported that the stuff got into their suits between the hermetic joints, grinding into their skin. It also chewed up the lunar rovers.
Of course, what's on the surface of the moon is much less interesting than what's underneath, since thats where humans will spend 95%+ of their time. It will take at least a few meters of lunar surface to protect them from radiation. Also, thermal issues are much easier a ways underground.
I'm pretty sure "regolith resistant" spacesuits aren't a big problem, regardless.
- Patrick - Sr Software Engineer, Roku
Thank you for the response! I am a little confused though...I thought your device at least facilitated video recording. However, what you're telling me, if I understand correctly, is that if I manage to get the 1080i data bits on my disk I can play it back? What are the copy protection issues?
At any rate, it sounds a very interesting device, I will keep an eye on it!
Video Output
Component Y/Pr/Pb: 1080i, 720p, 480p, 480i VGA: 1080i, 720p, 480p
No recording though.
Thanks for the link, I was lazy. ;-) So, it will successfully pass-thru 1080i...great. I wonder if it's processor is even powerful enough to decode a 1080i digital stream...?
Perhaps someone will successfully hack some interesting functionality. That is the big allure of this thing, after all.
DAMN the DMCA. Sorry, I had to get that off my chest.
Lobby for Fair Use. It's our only hope.
This issue is solved with the 2.6 kernel. Current userland code will run fine on top of the hard real time underpinnings.
Great stuff!
Iraqi factories.
Did you hear who refused to condemn it?
The U.N.? The French?
At any rate, I never claimed that the U.S. was perfect...it's simply the best alternative that actually exists.
As opposed to say, any communist country, which have consistently failed to produce a decent living standard or rapid technological progress...
Did you hear who despite that continued selling arms to the 'moderate' saddam to keep the evil Iranians at bay.
The U.S. played off two regional powers to limit both of them. That is called "international politics", and like sausage manufacture, it isn't a pretty process. ;-)
Would you care to discuss France and Germany's sale of nuclear technology to both Iran and Iraq? I didn't think so...
http://www.cnn.com/WORLD/europe/9903/27/nato.strik e.03/
Yes, actually I do remember this incident. It was AAA, no? Did any details ever emerge regarding the shootdown? Some possibilities that don't invalidate stealth in any way are:
- It may have been fire guided by the Mark 1 eyeball, which the F-117 wasn't designed to defeat regardless (except at night).
- It may have been a "lucky hit", i.e. the plane flew into a flak trap and got hit by a "statistical bullet" (otherwise known as a "golden BB").
It is also worth noting that the F-117 is first generation stealth technology, essentially designed in the 60's and 70's.The B2 is second generation tech, and the F22 is third.
Now, please point to another country that possesses even the equivalent to our first generation technology...
Thanks, and have a nice day. :-)
You are laughably ignorant. Let me know when someone actually shoots a stealth aircraft down. Furthermore, given the F-15's perfect combat record I'm not sure the F-22 would have anything to worry about regardless. (For those who didn't follow the link, the F-15 has 101 shootdowns with 0 F-15's lost.)
If by some sad mischance your country goes up against the U.S., good luck to you. You'll definitely need it. ;-)
-modern 'precision munitions' are still piss poor accuracy wise; 90% missed in the first gulf war, 75-60% did same in the second.
First of all, I don't think your statistics are remotely correct for the current war. Where did you get them? I don't think the U.S. has published too much BDA information publically (hint: it is all classified).
Secondly, I don't understand how you can characterize them as "piss poor" when it is widely recognized that they are the best weapons in the world, bar none. Please trot out some actual facts proving otherwise.
Not only that, but the only way americans could really set foot on EU soil is if they have a friendly port to use as a staging area.
Well, we do have Britain. ;-)
-the US is just as unsafe as any other place in the world...didn't 911 teach you anything?
Yes, it has taught me that the U.S. can successfully stop terrorist activity on it's soil for over two years, without a single incident. What did it teach you? Your statement is, once again, absurd.
-the US? Ethical? Have you even been following the news since the 1950's? As for that 'emprie'...wtf are you guys still doing in Iraq, a year after hostilities have supposedly (according to your own gov'ment) stopped?
We are in Iraq building a democracy. These things take time. BTW, it was never said that "hostilities stopped". It was "major hostilities", meaning a shooting war against another government.
As to our ethics, if it was like historical England, France or Germany, we'd now have an American Empire on which the sun never sets...
Fact is, the US could probably occupy the EU...at massive cost. And they wouldn't hold it for long; guerilla warfare would make the cost of a cross-atlantic occupation too high.
Perhaps. If we just conquered France, we'd probably end up with the modern equivalent of the Vichy government, and a nice stable colony. =)
Er, genius, according the U.N. Saddam had WMD. Did you see the information from the first round of weapons inspectors? Did you hear of him gassing thousands of Kurds?
If he really did dispose of them properly, he damn well should have documented it. He'd still be sitting around watching his son rape schoolgirls if he had.
Personally, I'm rather happy he didn't. ;-)
Really? How would a significant cost be incurred?
The European powers have no answer to stealth (F117/B2/F22), and with modern precision guided munitions (very well tested at this point;) their entire ground force would be hamburger before an American soldier set foot on European soil.
I hadn't thought about it until now, but America has become effectively invincible, except to ICBM attack - and we're working on that.
Very scary stuff. I hope it turns out that America can keep up her excellent track record of ethical conduct. If we were like most European nations historically, we'd be working on an American Empire right now (no, we're really not...get over it).
Here's another recent article with some details about the adaptive optics system used to focus the laser.
Exactly. That ASAT missile isn't even the most lethal anti-satellite threat these days. The Airborne Laser 747 will have a quite lethal ASAT capability as well. It could probably shoot down LEO satellites at the rate of a couple a minute, as long as they're above the horizon. IIRC it gets about 10 one-minute shots during a single flight.
The website doesn't appear to have been updated lately, I guess the government decided to turn down the publicity on one of it's most impressive new weapons. (It should also be hell against planes, BTW.) It was originally scheduled for live firing in 2004, I'm curious where the program is now. They are building seven ABLs if things are going according to plan. Here is the most recent article I could find about the program.
Competitive with what??
Competitive with MIPS, on a per-CPU basis. What metric did you have in mind?
Have you seen any 64 or 128 cpu Itanium machines running around lately?
Yeah, on SGI's website (first paragraph I linked in a parent post):
"SGI Altix 3000 servers and superclusters are the most scalable Linux(R) systems on the planet, running a single Linux OS image with 64 Intel(R) Itanium(R) 2 processors and up to 4TB of memory."
I hope that helped... :-)
Right, but SGI has been trying to kill off the MIPS/Irix line for years. Now that Itanium is (finally) competitive, I personally wouldn't be investing much in MIPS systems...