What about if someone wants to challange things like the law? Not as if that's ever happened before, even on/. Not all laws are to prevent harm to other people.
If someone wants to "challenge the law", he or she can simply pick up a perfectly legal firearm and carry it out the door and do so. Now. Then they're called "criminals", "terrorists", "revolutionaries", or "founding fathers" depending on the level of success achieved.;-)
Or did I misunderstand your point?
It would also cause most people to conform to the majority. No one would want to be considered strange, or radical, or an revolutionary etc. You could be a target, or a good person to frame.
I don't understand this point at all. Please elaborate.
I would think more people would feel free to express themselves, given that no one will choose violence unnecessarily (at least after a short break-in period). Since they themselves might well be shot. This should lead to an enhanced sense of personal freedom and security.
It would certainly increase the onus on society to turn out good citizens.
There is also the fact that humans are not always calm and rational. It would certinaly make breaking up with your partner more risky if you know what I mean;)
I don't agree at all. My partner currently has easy access to firearms. My risk doesn't change at all.
And lest you feel more secure, reflect on the fact that everyone's flame has easy access to scissors.;-)
The point is, that access to weaponry does not equate to violence. Willingness to commit violence equates to violence. Good citizens (as mentioned above) know that the only ethical resort to violence is to prevent greater harm. If it is used only in those circumstances (just as the police are supposed to use it) the net effect will be for the greater good, even if some mistakes are made.
It would make everybody equal/the same. There is a big difference between equality and equal opportunities.
I don't understand this point, please amplify.
BTW. This would still not stop most terrorist acts. Only people who feared loosing their life.
There have been several suicide bombers killed either by police or armed civilians in Israel before they were able to act. I'd argue that many dozens of maimings and/or deaths averted was a worthwhile result.
That isn't what I meant. Hitler and other fascist dictators rule by fear. Making everyone carry a gun means that everyone will still be ruled by fear, just not by one person (or group).
Sorry it took so long to respond, I didn't notice this epistle to ignorance until now.
What is so wrongheaded about your remark is that only criminals would "live in fear". Regular citizens would have less fear, since they would be armed and able to defend themselves if need be - even women. Have you ever heard the quote: "God created men, Sam Colt made them equal."? Think about it.
In our society, it is only the criminals who can carry a weapon with impunity. Arming the general populace would simply even the odds.
I posted a longish reply to this, but Slashdot ate it. So, I'll shorten it considerably.
Your thesis that H1-B visa holders aren't paid less in general is simply not correct. Cost savings are the primary reason employers are interested in these workers. Switching jobs is also very difficult in the current economy.
I did want to say that I'm happy for you that you're in America now and have better opportunities than in your homeland. Congratulations!:-)
Finally, on the "contradiction" issue - there is no contradiction. My main point was that there is little incentive for college students to choose IT or engineering fields when they see the government bringing in hundreds of thousands of foreigners to compete for their future jobs. It is also unfair to older technology workers who do great work but expect to be compensated for their experience, rather than undercut by cheaper foreign labor.
I'd like to see the faces of CEOs across America if a similar bill were enacted, targetted at their jobs.
First in the "Hall of Shame" is the H1-B Visa bill that is importing mass quantities of foreign workers to compete for US jobs:
"Moving at Internet speed, the House and the Senate approved legislation Tuesday to increase non-immigrant H-1B specialty occupation visas to 195,000 for FY 2000 through 2002." Full article here.
That was courtesy of the Clinton administration. THIS YEAR we are importing 100,000 foreign technology workers to compete for your jobs, due to the incredible shortage of workers we have in the current technology bubble. What, the bubble's over? Too bad...
These workers must keep their jobs, or they are deported. "You don't mind working 80 hour weeks do you? I thought not...". Plus 40K a year is a fortune to many of these folk!
Second is the abysmal rate at which we're turning out math, science and engineering graduates in the US. The US (if memory serves correctly) will turn out about 50,000 EE grads this year, of which 2/3 are foreign citizens likely to leave with their new expertise at some point. Mainland China alone will graduate over 600,000 EE grads this year, of which the vast majority are Chinese citizens. Also, in 2001 Mainland China opened ten shiny brand new software engineering universities. India is another large counry with a vast potential tech workforce.
I think there are legitimate worries regarding America's technological future.
Sure. I simply have a contrarian opinion. I'd be willing to place a bet that the trend will shift towards PCs within a year though.
The trend is moving toward consoles because you don't have to pay out the nose to get a well-enough-looking system to play games on.
And that's fine as long as it's really "well-enough-looking". Once the PC games look WAY better (and have better AI, playability, expandability and so on) there will be a shift in the PC direction. Don't forget that on that $1,200 PC you can ALSO do real work like create documents, web publishing, video and image editing, programming and so on. The value proposition of PCs is compelling.
If you can get all of that garbage you mentioned for under $200, then I stand corrected.
When Geforce FX and Radeon 9700 are fully supported, the PC will once again be clearly ahead of the consoles. None of the consoles are due to refresh until 2004/2005 timeframe.
A Hammer (for instance;) plus GeForce FX plus AGP 8x plus ~1 GB RAM plus fully digital display is a quantum leap beyond any current console. Once the hardware is delivered, and software arrives to exploit it (don't expect much delay) gamers will once again flock to the best platform.
It also helps that PC stability and ease of use is increasing. Now all we need are mass ports of these games to Linux!:-)
These issues are vastly more complex than Heinlein's little one-shot sound bites would lead one to believe
That is not at all clear to me.
(as much as I thoroughly enjoyed Time Enough for Love and yearned to live in that world as I was growing up, entire chapters are little more than clever sound bites with nothing to support their veracity. It is science fiction, and good science fiction at that, but the key word here is "fiction.")
Whether or not his works were fiction is an orthogonal issue to whether or not his ideas were correct.
Further, the novel you need to read to understand his take on this issue is: "Beyond This Horizon", 1942. He obviously gave the matter considerable thought.
Yes, I would like to see people be more polite, but there are other means than threat of death by firearms to encourage politeness in a society.
Great, so what do you recommend in modern America?
Furthermore, armed societies such as Israel, Palestine, Kosovo, Serbia, Chechnia, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Afghanistan, etc. are hardly models of polite society, so I think we can dismiss the veracity of Heinlein's little quipp simply by taking a look around our own, contemporary, and very real world.
You are quite incorrect here. Those cultures are examples where military and paramilitary groups have lots of weapons - not the common citizen. Further, the one country you mention that does somewhat follow the "armed society" model, Israel, has quite a good gun safety record, and is in fact quite a polite, civil society. Coincidence?
At any rate, my view is that anything that increases personal freedom and responsibility is a good thing.
I really should look into the local concealed carry requirements here...nothing like practicing what you preach.:-)
Of course, the idea of giving a person today's concealable automatic ceramic-barreled teflon-round armed killing machines would have been complete anathema even to Patrick Henry
Really? When did you speak to him last?
Regardless, being a capitalist, Patrick would expect you to buy them instead.
You are, however, very confused if you think the revolutionaries that founded this country did not intend the populace to possess state of the art weaponry. Their intent was to prevent the central government from becoming too complacent and/or overbearing.
and it is likely that the Supreme Court will get around to upholding a ban on everything but black powder smoothbore
I wonder how many of the justices that ratified that decision would survive the ensuing wave of assasinations...?;-)
, but until then we'll have to tolerate the nutjobs.
Or am I not seeing the point and you aren't talking about instruction set?
The way fast x86 chips have worked for awhile is to have a front end decode the x86 instructions into "micro-ops", then feed those micro-ops to many functional units on the back end. The back end is RISC-like, and amenable to RISC techniques. Many CPU engineers working on AMD products have come from the Alpha team, and AMD's CPUs have definitely benefited. Look at the floating point performance.
BTW, on the subject of floating point performance, I'd like more information on the Itanium SPEC results. Specifically, did Intel use the same optimization that boosted Sun's UltraSparc 3 scores? That was pretty close to cheating, if it didn't actually cross the line...
This is true, but hyperthreading seems to have great potential for fixing the weaknesses inherent in having such a long pipeline.
If I want SMP, I'll buy a multiway Hammer, thank you.;-) Most likely I'll be able to get two Hammers for the cost of a high-end P4.
Few apps have specifically been optimized for it yet, but even so it provides a small to large increase in productivity depending on how many threads you have going at once and how much each app is optimized for hyperthreading or dual processors. The benchmarks posted at places like Anandtech and Tom's Hardware demonstrate this, even at this early stage.
The actual benefits of HT have yet to be realized in any actual application as far as I'm aware. We'll see how things sort out. One thing that isn't so great about HT is that applications that charge for multiple CPUs see multiple CPUs when it's enabled. Once again, I'd prefer to simply have a second "real" CPU.
I think AMD has a better approach. Keep the individual processors simpler (Hammer die size is smaller than P4 at 130 nm.), and enable up to 8-way SMP at a nominal cost. 64-bit memory addressing is a killer addition as well.
On a side note, is Intel inventing a new dialect of C++ on it's own? I've seen some pretty bizarre code samples in Intel ads lately...
But as many EE or even ECE people know, most programmers don't give a rats ass about what the hardware is doing. those that do have this understanding ( OS people, real-time people, embedded people, well a lot of people!) have it because they need it.
Plenty of OS, real time and embedded people have no need for anything beyond instruction timings, if that. C is a wonderful thing.
Don't get me wrong, you should read the article just to appreciate the technology. But to imply that reading the article is necessary for a programmer (even an assembly level one), much less an end user, is a big overreach. That was my original point...along with the fact that Hammer will rock!:-)
BTW, whoever moderated my original post a "troll"...get a life.:-)
As someone else's tagline reminds us: "To moderate is human, to reply divine.";-)
Moderation Totals: Troll=1, Insightful=4, Overrated=3, Total=8. Heh. I guess I have some anti-fans. Most likely Intel employees or fans I guess...diversify those portfolios guys!;-)
Disclaimer: I don't currently hold AMD or INTC stock. That will change soon though. =)
great enthusiasm, but a little mis-informed. As far as spec2k results go, Itanium2 is faster in floating point. And in the real world, "fastest" can vary by individual application, or even the particular inputs you give those applications.
Oh really? (seems to be my phrase for the day) Please point me to the SPEC numbers for Hammer...
We'll see what the best compilers available at the time of release can do. Also, there will be PR 4000+ Opterons (according to leaked information) in the first half of '03. Those should beat the Itaniums shipping at that time, even in FP. Don't forget, the highest end Opterons have two memory controllers, and double the memory bandwidth of the baseline Hammers.
Regardless of whether or not Hammer is behind by a minscule amount in FP performance, I expect it will cost less than 1/2 what Itanium costs, even in its best Opteron incarnation. Finally, AMD will really be able to put the hurt on Intel.:-)
Myself, I just want one of these babies coupled to a GeForce FX card. I'm thinking about June of next year... =)
Except for us who have to make informed decisions about future upgrade paths and which processors are going to provide the best cost and performance for our specific applications. Sometimes you need to know the specifics of how a processor operates and what it's specific strengths and benefits are before you recommend changing a companies whole server base etc...
No one with a clue would ever do this any other way than by buying/borrowing a system for evaluation and running the specific application as a benchmark.
The beauty of Hammer is that doing so will be quite inexpensive compared to other comparable options.:-)
I stand by my original post.
(BTW, my vote for most innovative Hammer feature is the integrated memory controller(s) - memory bandwidth scales with processor count in SMP systems.)
And as the author notes, this kind of information is really crucial to get a grip on before Hammer arrives.
The only information you'll need to know once Hammer has arrived is that it's the fastest thing on the planet, and the only mass-market 64-bit processor.
It comes with the cost of stepping back from the hardware.
I read "benefit" where you say "cost".
It bears mentioning that its quite trivial to call C/C++/whatever routines from Java. In the vast majority of cases, the overhead is acceptable. You lose portability, but that is the price of being tied to the hardware that closely (or of using that legacy code). You still get all the benefits of Java elsewhere in your application.
The gcj compiler also shows some promise. Its interesting because its a traditional ahead-of-time compiler, and it provides a very thin calling interface for C++. It is being targeted (as I understand it) primarily at embedded applications.
My opinion, slightly opposing, is that Visual Basic has been a revolutionary tool in helping a wide range of people write simple GUIfied programs (about 90% of real-world business tasks) exceedingly quickly.
The revolutionary tool was Turbo Pascal, which Microsoft ruthlessly imitated to create Visual Basic. The only reason 'a wide range of people' use VB is because Microsoft pushed it. IMO.
One of the main problems with VB is, of course, that non-programmers write "simple GUIfied programs" which later turn out to be not so simple, not so extensible, and not so defect-free. I much prefer maintaining systems written by professionals. Again, IMO.:-)
Native binaries are several orders of magnitude faster than Java's interpreted bytecode. It's a pure fact. Anything else is FUD.
Heh. Non-intuitive, ain't it?
The fact is that C++, in particular, has 'features' that prevent certain optimizations. Java, due to stricter specification, has some advantages. Whether or not Java will ever be faster than optimized FORTRAN is a different question, but largely moot since very little non-scientific software is developed in FORTRAN (or hand optimized assembly, the other performance poster boy).
Anyway, I'm working on a magazine article regarding my benchmarks so I can't release them yet. However, for a much earlier article that shows great results with last generation VMs, check out Binaries vs. Bytecodes. The 1.4 VMs are substantially faster than the 1.3 versions he used in that article, while the C++ compilers have made little or no progress in the same time period. Cool, eh?;-)
Source is provided with that article, so you can test it with current compilers and VMs.
So, anyhow, before you do any more spouting about "several orders of magnitude faster than Java" you'd better run your own benchmarks. You're in for a surprise.
I've been programming on a full-time basis for over 20 years. I suspect that's a bit longer than the average Slashdotter.;-)
I've often thought over the last few years that we've made too little progress in making programmers more productive. I largely blame that on Microsoft, simply because it drives more software development with it's tools than any other entity. One language I've categorically made a decision to avoid is Visual Basic. I have always felt it was basically (sorry) a waste of brain cells. It has certainly done nothing to advance the state of the art.
In my opinion, one of the best things to come along in a long time is Java. The gentle reader may recall earlier posts along those lines. I enjoy C, and have spent the majority of my career doing C and C++. However, I have also spent _way_ too much time tracking down memory-related bugs. Often, they were in third party code. That is no way to run a railroad.
Java addresses almost all of the glaring deficiencies of C++, both in language design and in runtime safety. In my opinion, the best programming tools will be those that enable single programmers to tackle larger and larger projects.
Compared with C++, Java enables me to tackle much more ambitious projects with confidence. A team approach can never attain the efficiency of a single programmer approach. The "sweet spot" of software engineering efficiency is the largest project one person can tackle. Extreme programming is a useful hybrid that attempts to turn two programmers into one programmer.;-) (Also teams can be nearly as efficient as single programmers if the system is properly decomposed into subsystems separated by simple interfaces. This rarely happens smoothly, in my experience. It takes a top notch group of people.)
One last note on Java - performance is now almost completely on par with C++. On my most recent round of benchmarks, Java (JDK 1.4.1_01) on both Linux and Windows outperformed C++ (gcc 3 and VC 6) on most tests. Dynamic compilation and aggressive inlining are that effective. The VM also soundly spanked the gcj ahead of time compiler in gcc 3. It thoroughly rocks to have truly cross-platform code that runs faster than native! Think how many religous wars would be avoided if 99%+ of software was available on all OS platforms...and think how much it would help Linux!:-)
If you want to see what's out there for Java, download either the NetBeans IDE project, or the Eclipse IDE. Both are free and each has its strong points. NetBeans is a Swing app and includes a Swing GUI designer. Eclipse uses a new open source "native widget wrapper" library from IBM called SWT which has it's interesting points. You'll also need a Java VM (there are also others available from IBM etc.).
One last thought - wouldn't it be cool if web browsers had support for something like Java? I mean, you could deploy apps just by putting them on a web page! It wouldn't matter what the target platform was! What a great idea! (This paragraph was sarcasm in case you were wondering.)
I wouldn't normally consider Forbes an authority on technology issues - and this article doesn't convince me in the slightest.
AMD has a very effective roadmap ahead for Athlon, where it basically goes head to head with Celeron. Athlon is smaller and faster there. Hammer is expected to debut at 3400+ ratings and Opteron is expect to hit 4000+ and higher in 2003. Besides being faster, these chips will have native 64 bit capability which P4 lacks. They will smoke P4 across the board, and have a smaller die size to boot.
If AMD can execute (every sign is they can) they should take off during any tech recovery. Believe me, when Hammer starts selling like hot cakes, the CEO will sing a whole different tune!:-)
Perhaps a P4 will run about as fast as an Athlon of the same clock speed (if you could get Athlons clocked at 3GHz).
Hyperthreading has produced spotty (and to my mind underwhelming) results so far.
The second revision of P4 chips has already shown, once again, that raw clock speed means nothing. The Alpha chips have made that clear for years. Itanium is now Intel's poster boy for the same issue. That is a conundrum Intel can't escape.
Opteron is very exciting. It is claimed that it will debut at around PR 3400+. AMD also recently released lab SPEC2000 scores for the 2 GHz. Opteron, at around 1200/1200 int/fp respectively. That should still beat a 3 GHz P4/Xeon nicely even with a boost from HT. We'll see how the Opteron does on things like SMP and SSE2, but so far so good...especially after the Cray contract to supply 10,000 for a supercomputer!
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If someone wants to "challenge the law", he or she can simply pick up a perfectly legal firearm and carry it out the door and do so. Now. Then they're called "criminals", "terrorists", "revolutionaries", or "founding fathers" depending on the level of success achieved. ;-)
Or did I misunderstand your point?
It would also cause most people to conform to the majority. No one would want to be considered strange, or radical, or an revolutionary etc. You could be a target, or a good person to frame.
I don't understand this point at all. Please elaborate.
I would think more people would feel free to express themselves, given that no one will choose violence unnecessarily (at least after a short break-in period). Since they themselves might well be shot. This should lead to an enhanced sense of personal freedom and security.
It would certainly increase the onus on society to turn out good citizens.
There is also the fact that humans are not always calm and rational. It would certinaly make breaking up with your partner more risky if you know what I mean ;)
I don't agree at all. My partner currently has easy access to firearms. My risk doesn't change at all.
And lest you feel more secure, reflect on the fact that everyone's flame has easy access to scissors. ;-)
The point is, that access to weaponry does not equate to violence. Willingness to commit violence equates to violence. Good citizens (as mentioned above) know that the only ethical resort to violence is to prevent greater harm. If it is used only in those circumstances (just as the police are supposed to use it) the net effect will be for the greater good, even if some mistakes are made.
It would make everybody equal/the same. There is a big difference between equality and equal opportunities.
I don't understand this point, please amplify.
BTW. This would still not stop most terrorist acts. Only people who feared loosing their life.
There have been several suicide bombers killed either by police or armed civilians in Israel before they were able to act. I'd argue that many dozens of maimings and/or deaths averted was a worthwhile result.
Sorry it took so long to respond, I didn't notice this epistle to ignorance until now.
What is so wrongheaded about your remark is that only criminals would "live in fear". Regular citizens would have less fear, since they would be armed and able to defend themselves if need be - even women. Have you ever heard the quote: "God created men, Sam Colt made them equal."? Think about it.
In our society, it is only the criminals who can carry a weapon with impunity. Arming the general populace would simply even the odds.
Your thesis that H1-B visa holders aren't paid less in general is simply not correct. Cost savings are the primary reason employers are interested in these workers. Switching jobs is also very difficult in the current economy.
I did want to say that I'm happy for you that you're in America now and have better opportunities than in your homeland. Congratulations! :-)
Finally, on the "contradiction" issue - there is no contradiction. My main point was that there is little incentive for college students to choose IT or engineering fields when they see the government bringing in hundreds of thousands of foreigners to compete for their future jobs. It is also unfair to older technology workers who do great work but expect to be compensated for their experience, rather than undercut by cheaper foreign labor.
I'd like to see the faces of CEOs across America if a similar bill were enacted, targetted at their jobs.
Here's a timely article from Cnet today:
Sun faces renewed visa complaint
"Moving at Internet speed, the House and the Senate approved legislation Tuesday to increase non-immigrant H-1B specialty occupation visas to 195,000 for FY 2000 through 2002." Full article here.
That was courtesy of the Clinton administration. THIS YEAR we are importing 100,000 foreign technology workers to compete for your jobs, due to the incredible shortage of workers we have in the current technology bubble. What, the bubble's over? Too bad...
These workers must keep their jobs, or they are deported. "You don't mind working 80 hour weeks do you? I thought not...". Plus 40K a year is a fortune to many of these folk!
Second is the abysmal rate at which we're turning out math, science and engineering graduates in the US. The US (if memory serves correctly) will turn out about 50,000 EE grads this year, of which 2/3 are foreign citizens likely to leave with their new expertise at some point. Mainland China alone will graduate over 600,000 EE grads this year, of which the vast majority are Chinese citizens. Also, in 2001 Mainland China opened ten shiny brand new software engineering universities. India is another large counry with a vast potential tech workforce.
I think there are legitimate worries regarding America's technological future.
Sure. I simply have a contrarian opinion. I'd be willing to place a bet that the trend will shift towards PCs within a year though.
The trend is moving toward consoles because you don't have to pay out the nose to get a well-enough-looking system to play games on.
And that's fine as long as it's really "well-enough-looking". Once the PC games look WAY better (and have better AI, playability, expandability and so on) there will be a shift in the PC direction. Don't forget that on that $1,200 PC you can ALSO do real work like create documents, web publishing, video and image editing, programming and so on. The value proposition of PCs is compelling.
If you can get all of that garbage you mentioned for under $200, then I stand corrected.
You stand corrected regardless. :-)
That is why efforts like garagegames.com are worthwhile.
A Hammer (for instance;) plus GeForce FX plus AGP 8x plus ~1 GB RAM plus fully digital display is a quantum leap beyond any current console. Once the hardware is delivered, and software arrives to exploit it (don't expect much delay) gamers will once again flock to the best platform.
It also helps that PC stability and ease of use is increasing. Now all we need are mass ports of these games to Linux! :-)
You think he was joking? I don't.
and you're suggesting that assassinating Supreme Court Justices who agree with his joking opinion would be a good idea.
No. I'm simply suggesting that such assasinations would likely happen if the 2nd Amendment were so grossly violated. Learn to think critically.
And you think HE's the nutjob?
Yes.
Your "satire" didn't follow from what I actually said, so I won't respond.
That is not at all clear to me.
(as much as I thoroughly enjoyed Time Enough for Love and yearned to live in that world as I was growing up, entire chapters are little more than clever sound bites with nothing to support their veracity. It is science fiction, and good science fiction at that, but the key word here is "fiction.")
Whether or not his works were fiction is an orthogonal issue to whether or not his ideas were correct.
Further, the novel you need to read to understand his take on this issue is: "Beyond This Horizon", 1942. He obviously gave the matter considerable thought.
Yes, I would like to see people be more polite, but there are other means than threat of death by firearms to encourage politeness in a society.
Great, so what do you recommend in modern America?
Furthermore, armed societies such as Israel, Palestine, Kosovo, Serbia, Chechnia, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Afghanistan, etc. are hardly models of polite society, so I think we can dismiss the veracity of Heinlein's little quipp simply by taking a look around our own, contemporary, and very real world.
You are quite incorrect here. Those cultures are examples where military and paramilitary groups have lots of weapons - not the common citizen. Further, the one country you mention that does somewhat follow the "armed society" model, Israel, has quite a good gun safety record, and is in fact quite a polite, civil society. Coincidence?
At any rate, my view is that anything that increases personal freedom and responsibility is a good thing.
I really should look into the local concealed carry requirements here...nothing like practicing what you preach. :-)
Really? When did you speak to him last?
Regardless, being a capitalist, Patrick would expect you to buy them instead.
You are, however, very confused if you think the revolutionaries that founded this country did not intend the populace to possess state of the art weaponry. Their intent was to prevent the central government from becoming too complacent and/or overbearing.
and it is likely that the Supreme Court will get around to upholding a ban on everything but black powder smoothbore
I wonder how many of the justices that ratified that decision would survive the ensuing wave of assasinations...? ;-)
, but until then we'll have to tolerate the nutjobs.
From my perspective, you're the nutjob.
I agree with Robert Heinlein:
"An armed society is a polite society."
It would be nice if more people were polite, wouldn't it?
Plus, isn't an armed citizenry quite a deterrent for casual crime...? ;-)
Yah, like electromagnetic catapults. Heinlein was on the right track there.
The way fast x86 chips have worked for awhile is to have a front end decode the x86 instructions into "micro-ops", then feed those micro-ops to many functional units on the back end. The back end is RISC-like, and amenable to RISC techniques. Many CPU engineers working on AMD products have come from the Alpha team, and AMD's CPUs have definitely benefited. Look at the floating point performance.
BTW, on the subject of floating point performance, I'd like more information on the Itanium SPEC results. Specifically, did Intel use the same optimization that boosted Sun's UltraSparc 3 scores? That was pretty close to cheating, if it didn't actually cross the line...
If I want SMP, I'll buy a multiway Hammer, thank you. ;-) Most likely I'll be able to get two Hammers for the cost of a high-end P4.
Few apps have specifically been optimized for it yet, but even so it provides a small to large increase in productivity depending on how many threads you have going at once and how much each app is optimized for hyperthreading or dual processors. The benchmarks posted at places like Anandtech and Tom's Hardware demonstrate this, even at this early stage.
The actual benefits of HT have yet to be realized in any actual application as far as I'm aware. We'll see how things sort out. One thing that isn't so great about HT is that applications that charge for multiple CPUs see multiple CPUs when it's enabled. Once again, I'd prefer to simply have a second "real" CPU.
I think AMD has a better approach. Keep the individual processors simpler (Hammer die size is smaller than P4 at 130 nm.), and enable up to 8-way SMP at a nominal cost. 64-bit memory addressing is a killer addition as well.
On a side note, is Intel inventing a new dialect of C++ on it's own? I've seen some pretty bizarre code samples in Intel ads lately...
Plenty of OS, real time and embedded people have no need for anything beyond instruction timings, if that. C is a wonderful thing.
Don't get me wrong, you should read the article just to appreciate the technology. But to imply that reading the article is necessary for a programmer (even an assembly level one), much less an end user, is a big overreach. That was my original point...along with the fact that Hammer will rock! :-)
BTW, whoever moderated my original post a "troll"...get a life. :-)
As someone else's tagline reminds us: "To moderate is human, to reply divine." ;-)
Moderation Totals: Troll=1, Insightful=4, Overrated=3, Total=8. Heh. I guess I have some anti-fans. Most likely Intel employees or fans I guess...diversify those portfolios guys! ;-)
Disclaimer: I don't currently hold AMD or INTC stock. That will change soon though. =)
Oh really? (seems to be my phrase for the day) Please point me to the SPEC numbers for Hammer...
We'll see what the best compilers available at the time of release can do. Also, there will be PR 4000+ Opterons (according to leaked information) in the first half of '03. Those should beat the Itaniums shipping at that time, even in FP. Don't forget, the highest end Opterons have two memory controllers, and double the memory bandwidth of the baseline Hammers.
Regardless of whether or not Hammer is behind by a minscule amount in FP performance, I expect it will cost less than 1/2 what Itanium costs, even in its best Opteron incarnation. Finally, AMD will really be able to put the hurt on Intel. :-)
Myself, I just want one of these babies coupled to a GeForce FX card. I'm thinking about June of next year... =)
No one with a clue would ever do this any other way than by buying/borrowing a system for evaluation and running the specific application as a benchmark.
The beauty of Hammer is that doing so will be quite inexpensive compared to other comparable options. :-)
I stand by my original post.
(BTW, my vote for most innovative Hammer feature is the integrated memory controller(s) - memory bandwidth scales with processor count in SMP systems.)
The only information you'll need to know once Hammer has arrived is that it's the fastest thing on the planet, and the only mass-market 64-bit processor.
Oh yeah, and where to buy one. :-)
I read "benefit" where you say "cost".
It bears mentioning that its quite trivial to call C/C++/whatever routines from Java. In the vast majority of cases, the overhead is acceptable. You lose portability, but that is the price of being tied to the hardware that closely (or of using that legacy code). You still get all the benefits of Java elsewhere in your application.
The gcj compiler also shows some promise. Its interesting because its a traditional ahead-of-time compiler, and it provides a very thin calling interface for C++. It is being targeted (as I understand it) primarily at embedded applications.
The revolutionary tool was Turbo Pascal, which Microsoft ruthlessly imitated to create Visual Basic. The only reason 'a wide range of people' use VB is because Microsoft pushed it. IMO.
One of the main problems with VB is, of course, that non-programmers write "simple GUIfied programs" which later turn out to be not so simple, not so extensible, and not so defect-free. I much prefer maintaining systems written by professionals. Again, IMO. :-)
Heh. Non-intuitive, ain't it?
The fact is that C++, in particular, has 'features' that prevent certain optimizations. Java, due to stricter specification, has some advantages. Whether or not Java will ever be faster than optimized FORTRAN is a different question, but largely moot since very little non-scientific software is developed in FORTRAN (or hand optimized assembly, the other performance poster boy).
Anyway, I'm working on a magazine article regarding my benchmarks so I can't release them yet. However, for a much earlier article that shows great results with last generation VMs, check out Binaries vs. Bytecodes. The 1.4 VMs are substantially faster than the 1.3 versions he used in that article, while the C++ compilers have made little or no progress in the same time period. Cool, eh? ;-)
Source is provided with that article, so you can test it with current compilers and VMs.
So, anyhow, before you do any more spouting about "several orders of magnitude faster than Java" you'd better run your own benchmarks. You're in for a surprise.
I've often thought over the last few years that we've made too little progress in making programmers more productive. I largely blame that on Microsoft, simply because it drives more software development with it's tools than any other entity. One language I've categorically made a decision to avoid is Visual Basic. I have always felt it was basically (sorry) a waste of brain cells. It has certainly done nothing to advance the state of the art.
In my opinion, one of the best things to come along in a long time is Java. The gentle reader may recall earlier posts along those lines. I enjoy C, and have spent the majority of my career doing C and C++. However, I have also spent _way_ too much time tracking down memory-related bugs. Often, they were in third party code. That is no way to run a railroad.
Java addresses almost all of the glaring deficiencies of C++, both in language design and in runtime safety. In my opinion, the best programming tools will be those that enable single programmers to tackle larger and larger projects.
Compared with C++, Java enables me to tackle much more ambitious projects with confidence. A team approach can never attain the efficiency of a single programmer approach. The "sweet spot" of software engineering efficiency is the largest project one person can tackle. Extreme programming is a useful hybrid that attempts to turn two programmers into one programmer. ;-) (Also teams can be nearly as efficient as single programmers if the system is properly decomposed into subsystems separated by simple interfaces. This rarely happens smoothly, in my experience. It takes a top notch group of people.)
One last note on Java - performance is now almost completely on par with C++. On my most recent round of benchmarks, Java (JDK 1.4.1_01) on both Linux and Windows outperformed C++ (gcc 3 and VC 6) on most tests. Dynamic compilation and aggressive inlining are that effective. The VM also soundly spanked the gcj ahead of time compiler in gcc 3. It thoroughly rocks to have truly cross-platform code that runs faster than native! Think how many religous wars would be avoided if 99%+ of software was available on all OS platforms...and think how much it would help Linux! :-)
If you want to see what's out there for Java, download either the NetBeans IDE project, or the Eclipse IDE. Both are free and each has its strong points. NetBeans is a Swing app and includes a Swing GUI designer. Eclipse uses a new open source "native widget wrapper" library from IBM called SWT which has it's interesting points. You'll also need a Java VM (there are also others available from IBM etc.).
One last thought - wouldn't it be cool if web browsers had support for something like Java? I mean, you could deploy apps just by putting them on a web page! It wouldn't matter what the target platform was! What a great idea! (This paragraph was sarcasm in case you were wondering.)
AMD has a very effective roadmap ahead for Athlon, where it basically goes head to head with Celeron. Athlon is smaller and faster there. Hammer is expected to debut at 3400+ ratings and Opteron is expect to hit 4000+ and higher in 2003. Besides being faster, these chips will have native 64 bit capability which P4 lacks. They will smoke P4 across the board, and have a smaller die size to boot.
If AMD can execute (every sign is they can) they should take off during any tech recovery. Believe me, when Hammer starts selling like hot cakes, the CEO will sing a whole different tune! :-)
JBuilder (like most Java things) runs fine on Linux. Borland even supports it on Linux. :-)
Hyperthreading has produced spotty (and to my mind underwhelming) results so far.
The second revision of P4 chips has already shown, once again, that raw clock speed means nothing. The Alpha chips have made that clear for years. Itanium is now Intel's poster boy for the same issue. That is a conundrum Intel can't escape.
Opteron is very exciting. It is claimed that it will debut at around PR 3400+. AMD also recently released lab SPEC2000 scores for the 2 GHz. Opteron, at around 1200/1200 int/fp respectively. That should still beat a 3 GHz P4/Xeon nicely even with a boost from HT. We'll see how the Opteron does on things like SMP and SSE2, but so far so good...especially after the Cray contract to supply 10,000 for a supercomputer!