"Martin Black" has been available for years
on
Blacker Than Black
·
· Score: 3, Informative
Martin Marietta (now Lockheed Martin) has produced a proprietary "super black" coating for years now. I've seen it, and it is _very_ non-reflective. The coating mentioned in the article sounds similar.
"Martin Black" is proprietary though, so if you want a part coated you have to send it to Lockheed.
There is an archive of radar images of the debris field. Someone else posted a link to NOAA's live radar images, but this loop starts at the time of the accident.
This doesn't have unparalleled performance, since Sun sells systems that can smoke this thing.
Which systems exactly?
Oh, a Sun Fire 15k should outperform this guy, unless you're counting FPS in [name here]. Nowhere near the $6k pricepoint though.
Seriously, a Sun Blade 2000 is probably price comparable, but I doubt that its performance is comparable (on CFD anyhow). What'd your benchmarks show?
Re:sharp 16" black lcd from dell
on
DVI Flat Panels?
·
· Score: 2
I too have this monitor after reading a review in MaximumPC (not online?) of the 18" model.
Amazing for a 16" 1280x1024. monitor. Sharp also just released a 20" model. Supports 1600x1200 with _dual_ DVI -- no analog without (included) adapter.
Sure, there are cheaper monitors, but these Sharp LCD's are quite amazing. Too bad they are so hard to find.
Anyone else notice that? Power4 is the current generation, and holds the 9th spot on the top-500 list with only 1280 processors!
I'm sure IBM is working hard on a new interconnect for this beast. Anyone know about the next-generation SP switch?
The press release also mentions that Purple will consist of "196 seperate computers" -- which works out to 64-processors per computer. Way to go IBM: the current Power4 systems are only to 32-way!
As mentioned in another post, the USGS webpage itself is unusable unless you're running Netscape 4 (windows or linux only) or IE for Windows.
I think it would be a good idea for as many people as possible to emailthe maintainer of the web page.
Unsurprising for the gov't to so thouroughly screw-up like this, especially with Interior Secretary Gale Norton at the helm. FWIW, she is facing contempt of court charges for lying in Federal court during a trial of gross mismanagement of the Native American Trust fund. Mismanagement by completely failing to secure a computer system...
The picture at the top right shows the Power4 multichip module as used in the p690. Yes, it is the 5" square thing in the guys hand.
There are better pictures of the MCM itself, but I couldn't find the close-up showing just the MCM in someone's hand.
The large size (along with everything it entails: it uses 125W power, and supposedly costs about $3500 to manufacture) is one indication that IBM designed the Power4 for its big-iron. Nevermind that IBM does offer the Power4 (sans MCM) in some of their smaller servers.
The PowerPC970 is the equivalent processor tweaked for the desktop/low-end servers.
They used to have a movie of this screen being flexed while an animation played on it. Really awesome. Clicking on the link now leads to a much less impressive movie...
The original Blue Gene (not "L") is for protein folding.
Once the national labs got wind of the idea they decided to build a smaller "test" version called Blue Gene/L that will be used by the labs for their own purposes.
I've been reading up on this as there is work at Caltech on BG/L.
... a version of Linux optimized for 65 thousand processors... a 65 thousand thread program...
Uh, NO!
The linux distro will be an extremely stripped-down version of the kernel that will only contain the bare necessities.
Blue Gene is NOT a shared-memory computer -- with a single kernel running all 64k processors -- but rather a cluster of 32k seperate computers (with two processors), each on one chip.
The best info can be found in this large NERSC report, and at the blue gene website.
By the way, Blue Gene itself will probably not be used for nuclear weapons research. That is what "Blue Gene L" is for.
I imagine that it will be running some form of MPI.
Let's say that they use 2000 8-way Opteron boxes. Thus each kernel will run over 8 processors, with MPI performing message passing between boxes. That's how it works on ASCI White etc anyhow (except they run AIX on POWER3 processors).
It would be quite an acomplishment to implement a NUMA architecture over 16000 processors. SGI can get decent performance with 128 processors (supposedly 512 but I have not used this), and I think Cray's T3E-1350 supports NUMA on up to 2176 processors. Cray is known for great interconnects though -- they can do it if anyone can.
Seems pretty cool, but I'm waiting for some company to expend the resources to implement a more current processor (such as the PowerPC 970 perhaps) in this fashion.
Slashdot Mirror
Martin Marietta (now Lockheed Martin) has produced a proprietary "super black" coating for years now. I've seen it, and it is _very_ non-reflective. The coating mentioned in the article sounds similar.
"Martin Black" is proprietary though, so if you want a part coated you have to send it to Lockheed.
There is an archive of radar images of the debris field. Someone else posted a link to NOAA's live radar images, but this loop starts at the time of the accident.
Works great so far!
Caveats:
1) Installer doesn't deal with ~/.xinitrc, so remove this or you'll get your old window manager.
2) Window minimize button doesn't work, but CMD-M "properly" minimizes windows in Dock.
This doesn't have unparalleled performance, since Sun sells systems that can smoke this thing.
Which systems exactly?
Oh, a Sun Fire 15k should outperform this guy, unless you're counting FPS in [name here]. Nowhere near the $6k pricepoint though.
Seriously, a Sun Blade 2000 is probably price comparable, but I doubt that its performance is comparable (on CFD anyhow). What'd your benchmarks show?
I too have this monitor after reading a review in MaximumPC (not online?) of the 18" model.
Amazing for a 16" 1280x1024. monitor. Sharp also just released a 20" model. Supports 1600x1200 with _dual_ DVI -- no analog without (included) adapter.
Sure, there are cheaper monitors, but these Sharp LCD's are quite amazing. Too bad they are so hard to find.
Yup. Apple sells them for $150.
I got as much toilet paper and office supplies as I could carry!
There _is_ no "wierding module."
May David Lynch be cursed forever for adding such a stupid concept to an otherwise awesome movie. That, and the damn rain at the end.
There _still_ is a permissions bug. Hasn't been fixed (for me anyhow) in 1.2.1.
Should be simple to fix?! Why isn't it?
that one should forward to one's spouse...
Anyone else notice that? Power4 is the current generation, and holds the 9th spot on the top-500 list with only 1280 processors!
I'm sure IBM is working hard on a new interconnect for this beast. Anyone know about the next-generation SP switch?
The press release also mentions that Purple will consist of "196 seperate computers" -- which works out to 64-processors per computer. Way to go IBM: the current Power4 systems are only to 32-way!
As mentioned in another post, the USGS webpage itself is unusable unless you're running Netscape 4 (windows or linux only) or IE for Windows.
I think it would be a good idea for as many people as possible to emailthe maintainer of the web page.
Unsurprising for the gov't to so thouroughly screw-up like this, especially with Interior Secretary Gale Norton at the helm. FWIW, she is facing contempt of court charges for lying in Federal court during a trial of gross mismanagement of the Native American Trust fund. Mismanagement by completely failing to secure a computer system...
Hell, why don't we all email Gale herself?!
Yea, what the fuck?!
Good to see our tax dollars hard at work.
the Power4 is not binary-compatable with 32-bit PPC
As long as you don't compile with -arch=pwr4 (etc), xlc (IBM's C compiler) will compile the code to run on any Power or PowerPC.
The reason that Apple won't use the Power4:
It is HUGE.
The picture at the top right shows the Power4 multichip module as used in the p690. Yes, it is the 5" square thing in the guys hand.
There are better pictures of the MCM itself, but I couldn't find the close-up showing just the MCM in someone's hand.
The large size (along with everything it entails: it uses 125W power, and supposedly costs about $3500 to manufacture) is one indication that IBM designed the Power4 for its big-iron. Nevermind that IBM does offer the Power4 (sans MCM) in some of their smaller servers.
The PowerPC970 is the equivalent processor tweaked for the desktop/low-end servers.
the PowerPC 970 sacrifices some execution units -- including the Power4's second processor core -- for 64-bit compatibility and the SIMD unit.
This implies that the Power4 is not 64 bit -- which is of course wrong.
I would say that the PowerPC 970 trades the second core and fancier interconnects of the Power4 for lower power, cost, and the SIMD unit.
Except you can tell that its really not *that* flexible... the person was being very careful with that thing.
Yea, the older movie (with the car) showed them really flexing the dickens out of the screen, all while the screen played the animation.
The newer movie is much less impressive, not just because of the dorky logo, but because they don't really flex the screen very much.
Anyone have an old copy of the "car" animation?!
Check out the image at the lower left.
They used to have a movie of this screen being flexed while an animation played on it. Really awesome. Clicking on the link now leads to a much less impressive movie...
I'm running an athlon 2GHz (2400+) as we speak.
The original Blue Gene (not "L") is for protein folding.
Once the national labs got wind of the idea they decided to build a smaller "test" version called Blue Gene/L that will be used by the labs for their own purposes.
I've been reading up on this as there is work at Caltech on BG/L.
Current plans are for embedded Power 4 CPUs at around 1GHz
No, it will use low-power PowerPC 440 processors. Read the reports linked in other posts.
Uh, NO!
The linux distro will be an extremely stripped-down version of the kernel that will only contain the bare necessities.
Blue Gene is NOT a shared-memory computer -- with a single kernel running all 64k processors -- but rather a cluster of 32k seperate computers (with two processors), each on one chip.
The best info can be found in this large NERSC report, and at the blue gene website.
By the way, Blue Gene itself will probably not be used for nuclear weapons research. That is what "Blue Gene L" is for.
I imagine that it will be running some form of MPI.
Let's say that they use 2000 8-way Opteron boxes. Thus each kernel will run over 8 processors, with MPI performing message passing between boxes. That's how it works on ASCI White etc anyhow (except they run AIX on POWER3 processors).
It would be quite an acomplishment to implement a NUMA architecture over 16000 processors. SGI can get decent performance with 128 processors (supposedly 512 but I have not used this), and I think Cray's T3E-1350 supports NUMA on up to 2176 processors. Cray is known for great interconnects though -- they can do it if anyone can.
Here at Caltech the CS department is into this kind of thing.
They've even built a nearly complete MIPS 3000 compatible processor using async logic.
Seems pretty cool, but I'm waiting for some company to expend the resources to implement a more current processor (such as the PowerPC 970 perhaps) in this fashion.