Okay, that's fine with me. I admit I don't know so much about chip hardware, especially on the business server side and R&D. But even if you are correct that 64 bit chips have been around for a decade (I know the Itanium was intially projected for 1997 according to that Times article) and IBM and Sun have chips out, news about them hasn't reached the general public. My use of emergence refers to the transition from speciality markets to the general consciousness.
Perhaps the only reason this has reached the public is because so much of Intel's future (public chips) rides on this, the general public as market savvy investors (roll with me on this one) is interested in this stuff. It isn't clear to me if/when the desktop is going 64bit. Geeks might want a 64bit chip in their gaming boxes early on, but 32 will rule the desktop for quite some time. The whole Apple-on-IBM-GPuL is also on the horizon, but even if they make the leap first, their consumer machines will all be 32bit G4s for a while.
Flexibility? Speciality?
on
Itanium Problems
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
The emergence of the 64bit chip market is pretty exciting, even to an ignoramus like me, but this article got me thinking about some things. The whole power consumption issue is really undervalued I think. We've gotten to the point that most chips are fast and powerful (strength) enough to do tasks efficiently. But I've heard that specialized chips are more efficient at lower clock speeds and power consumption but suffer from their rigor and restriction to a certain type of processing. Maybe its time to give specialized chips their due and move flexibility off the chip itself and into multi-proc (using different specialized chips) or even multi-machine situations.
Of course faster is always better in database mining and protein folding and nuclear explosion modeling, but I wonder if the field isn't ripe for a move away from generalized powerhouse chips to more specialized chips that run at lower clock speeds (perhaps) and have lower power consumption (a must). Personal computing made advances due to cheap general use chips, but as our computers become specialized appliances, a move towards specializing the insides makes sense to me.
Itanium seems to me to be too late to the party. Its an old school chip and probably/ perhaps a badassed one at that. But computer users, from desktop to database, are likely to appreciate specialized chips in multiprocessor or multimachine configurations that express the flexibility. I don't know if its possible, but on the desktop side, rather than have a 3 Ghz general chip, maybe two cheaper and less power hungry 2 Ghz chips each with a unique specialization for certain types of tasks might perform better. One chip to rule them all is so last century.
Regardless of the feasibility of what I've said, lower power consumption is really cool (no pun intended, honestly). Just because it doesn't have an exhaust pipe port doesn't mean that the computer doesn't pollute.
While comparisons with other shooter/ strategy games is inevitable, we've got to remember that there have been some amazing variations on this theme (Deus Ex, Max Payne) and others that really took advantage of the canvas (Rune). Even if this game was just UT shoot-em-up, i think that the screen shots attest that it will be incredible fun to go against the races in this format.
Given Blizzard's success with the plot of the PC predecessors, I trust that this game will have a compelling story and incredible game play. And the treats that they mention in the release....
I think this may be enough to drive me to buy a console. Considering that I could get a console and the game for less than the price of a GPU upgrade, I think I could justify it.
Bon Jovi isn't the headliner in the US that he was in the 80's but his band has been going strong and making a living from their work for the last decade. They have a big following in Japan (my current locale) and perhaps in other countries as well. Remember, just because someone isn't as big as Britney and eminimem doesn't mean that they aren't popular in their own right.
I'd say that its a pretty good article. I'm not an extremely savvy computer user, especially compared to the typical/. reader. I do know more than my parents and wife, undoubtedly, and think that the article is a fine synopsis of the two sides. It also seemed to give a bit more column space to the critics and talked more about control of your computer and restriction of fair use than the 'advantages' of virus control. It would have been nice to see a link to the Palladium FAQ and perhaps a comment from a critic pointing out that Microsoft's inherent software inadequacies are the root of the problem.
All in all a good article for the masses. Just needs more followup for those interested.
I've met a George a couple times and concur on the opinion that he's a real down to earth guy. Willing to endure talking to me from time to time as well; his generosity knows no bounds!
Egde.org has a presentation made by George about the book Darwin among the machines here:
http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/dyson/dyson_p1.h tm l
All 4 books mentioned here (Project Orion, Baidarka, Starship and Canoe, and DatM) are enjoyable and thought provoking.
The beliefs cited in the CNN article fall in line with the tripe flooding tv. People belief in global warming (good science) and psychics (bad science). But both sciences are talked about on TV, hence people belief it.
The problems outlined here run deeper than just science education.
Considering all the untapped cycles out there and the exhibited utility of distributed projects already out there, this might turn out to be a really good thing.
Hopefully this works, and then someone develops a scheme that re-imburses users for their cycles. These types of skimming attempts will then crash as people migrate to the payback systems. Payback systems are also more likely to recruit even more people for a larger base. Once it goes economic, there hopefully will be more oversight and thus privacy protection and wotnot.
The math doesn't add up. Even if a 20 year projected supply gets consumed in 5 years, and even if you have to start "9-18 months in advance" for establishing new networks, there is still plenty of time in there for companies to beginning hooking things up once it is apparent that we need more bandwidth sooner rather than later.
Slashdot Mirror
I, Cringley(pbs.org) talked about home networks and WiFi and meshes and wotnot in August. Sounds really cool to me.
Okay, that's fine with me. I admit I don't know so much about chip hardware, especially on the business server side and R&D. But even if you are correct that 64 bit chips have been around for a decade (I know the Itanium was intially projected for 1997 according to that Times article) and IBM and Sun have chips out, news about them hasn't reached the general public. My use of emergence refers to the transition from speciality markets to the general consciousness.
Perhaps the only reason this has reached the public is because so much of Intel's future (public chips) rides on this, the general public as market savvy investors (roll with me on this one) is interested in this stuff. It isn't clear to me if/when the desktop is going 64bit. Geeks might want a 64bit chip in their gaming boxes early on, but 32 will rule the desktop for quite some time. The whole Apple-on-IBM-GPuL is also on the horizon, but even if they make the leap first, their consumer machines will all be 32bit G4s for a while.
The emergence of the 64bit chip market is pretty exciting, even to an ignoramus like me, but this article got me thinking about some things. The whole power consumption issue is really undervalued I think. We've gotten to the point that most chips are fast and powerful (strength) enough to do tasks efficiently. But I've heard that specialized chips are more efficient at lower clock speeds and power consumption but suffer from their rigor and restriction to a certain type of processing. Maybe its time to give specialized chips their due and move flexibility off the chip itself and into multi-proc (using different specialized chips) or even multi-machine situations.
Of course faster is always better in database mining and protein folding and nuclear explosion modeling, but I wonder if the field isn't ripe for a move away from generalized powerhouse chips to more specialized chips that run at lower clock speeds (perhaps) and have lower power consumption (a must). Personal computing made advances due to cheap general use chips, but as our computers become specialized appliances, a move towards specializing the insides makes sense to me.
Itanium seems to me to be too late to the party. Its an old school chip and probably/ perhaps a badassed one at that. But computer users, from desktop to database, are likely to appreciate specialized chips in multiprocessor or multimachine configurations that express the flexibility. I don't know if its possible, but on the desktop side, rather than have a 3 Ghz general chip, maybe two cheaper and less power hungry 2 Ghz chips each with a unique specialization for certain types of tasks might perform better. One chip to rule them all is so last century.
Regardless of the feasibility of what I've said, lower power consumption is really cool (no pun intended, honestly). Just because it doesn't have an exhaust pipe port doesn't mean that the computer doesn't pollute.
Starcraft Ghost: *Did somebody call for an exterminator?*
I should have known better than to try to fire off a witty comment. There's no way I'd ever be able to execute.
*Someone call for a doctor?* just doesn't match her height and build...
While comparisons with other shooter/ strategy games is inevitable, we've got to remember that there have been some amazing variations on this theme (Deus Ex, Max Payne) and others that really took advantage of the canvas (Rune). Even if this game was just UT shoot-em-up, i think that the screen shots attest that it will be incredible fun to go against the races in this format.
Given Blizzard's success with the plot of the PC predecessors, I trust that this game will have a compelling story and incredible game play. And the treats that they mention in the release....
I think this may be enough to drive me to buy a console. Considering that I could get a console and the game for less than the price of a GPU upgrade, I think I could justify it.
Bon Jovi isn't the headliner in the US that he was in the 80's but his band has been going strong and making a living from their work for the last decade. They have a big following in Japan (my current locale) and perhaps in other countries as well. Remember, just because someone isn't as big as Britney and eminimem doesn't mean that they aren't popular in their own right.
I'd say that its a pretty good article. I'm not an extremely savvy computer user, especially compared to the typical /. reader. I do know more than my parents and wife, undoubtedly, and think that the article is a fine synopsis of the two sides. It also seemed to give a bit more column space to the critics and talked more about control of your computer and restriction of fair use than the 'advantages' of virus control. It would have been nice to see a link to the Palladium FAQ and perhaps a comment from a critic pointing out that Microsoft's inherent software inadequacies are the root of the problem.
All in all a good article for the masses. Just needs more followup for those interested.
I've met a George a couple times and concur on the opinion that he's a real down to earth guy. Willing to endure talking to me from time to time as well; his generosity knows no bounds!
h tm l
Egde.org has a presentation made by George about the book Darwin among the machines here:
http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/dyson/dyson_p1.
All 4 books mentioned here (Project Orion, Baidarka, Starship and Canoe, and DatM) are enjoyable and thought provoking.
The beliefs cited in the CNN article fall in line with the tripe flooding tv. People belief in global warming (good science) and psychics (bad science). But both sciences are talked about on TV, hence people belief it.
The problems outlined here run deeper than just science education.
Considering all the untapped cycles out there and the exhibited utility of distributed projects already out there, this might turn out to be a really good thing.
Hopefully this works, and then someone develops a scheme that re-imburses users for their cycles. These types of skimming attempts will then crash as people migrate to the payback systems. Payback systems are also more likely to recruit even more people for a larger base. Once it goes economic, there hopefully will be more oversight and thus privacy protection and wotnot.
The math doesn't add up. Even if a 20 year projected supply gets consumed in 5 years, and even if you have to start "9-18 months in advance" for establishing new networks, there is still plenty of time in there for companies to beginning hooking things up once it is apparent that we need more bandwidth sooner rather than later.
"Components are different!?!?! American components! Russian components! All made in Taiwan!!!" -the only good quote from "Armageddon"