I hope your patient, AGP spec throughput and the bandwith limitations on the PCI bridge will make that one tough. I'm not even sure if it's possible. If it's IO throughput your looking for you'll have to wait until Hypertransport, 3GIO and PCI-X make their way to you. Or look at Unix workstations from Sun, HP, IBM, etc.
There are probably folks out there that will sell you an Opteron based box. Of course, OS X is still 32-bit. Linux and Windows XP are already 64-bit. When Mac finally goes 64-bit in the OS and takes full advantage of the PPC970 hardare (and not just memory address space) then I would consider a Unix based, 64-bit, firmware based computer to be as far removed from a PC as a Sun Blade. I've built a 21164 based Alpha that runs 64-bit Windows 2000. ATX motherboard, VGA card, the whole 9 yards. That was over a year ago (Windows 2000 for Alpha Beta released over 3 years ago). Windows NT for alpha was released as far back as 95 IIRC, but that was 32-bit too so you really can't count that. 21064 alpha based AT style computers were popping up as far back as 91-92 I believe. 64-bit is old hat at this point. It's just too bad AMD doesn't have the Intel/IBM kind of cash to dump into this and Intel can't get their act together. (Wow, Jerry Sanders' talk about K8/Hypertransport in 1998 seems like a lifetime ago.) I have to hand it to Apple though, they come really far and are almost there. They really stuck it to the giants on 64-bit (I guess everyone still has work to do). People should really get all those CAD/EDA Unix/NT apps over to OS X.
Why does this question come up every time a new calculator is announced?! You can't use PDA's or Pocket PC's or anything of that ilk on professional exams or class exams?
"Operating system that can now give you the same buzz it gives IT."
That's what I'm talkin' about. No more wasted money and trips to the weed spot. I can just pull down the latest patch! Just in case, anyone got Linus' pager number..?
This has come up before. First, don't be fooled by MHz. The chips may not run as fast but these new calculators can hold their own against PDA's in applications like linear algebra. Also don't forget most professional exams and college classes strictly prohibit the use of general purpose type computers. Casio, TI, HP and similar are really just taking a PDA type embedded system and stripping them down to make them useable for academic purposes while maintaining the features that scientific applications demand. Back in high school, my first PDA was a TI-85! The price of the new HP won't be as low as a cheap PDA because of the economies of scale.
First, somehow this article gives me the impression that you're saying it's OK to break the law because the chances of getting caught are slim. Next it's me telling that they're buying into the RIAA's "sue everyone" philosophy. Studio heads and big labels didn't get rich by dreaming up preposterous solutions to non-problems which sound like they shot right out of the MTV mind of your average file sharer. Are P2P networks going to put anyone out of business right now. No. Does digital freedom have the potential to undermine part of the established business flow? Yes. That's why the Industry is taking steps to stop pervasive freedom. Copyright litigation grabs headlines. It's also a red herring. The RIAA is making deals with computer hardware manufacturers, software vendors and tech industry standardizing bodies. They will simply have everyone implement DRM. Do you really think Dell is going to sell computers that will keep the Justice Department at their door? So, you can sit around and read peoples fantasies about how they think P2P's days of reckoning will play out in court, or you can do something only slightly more productive like contact your representative. One a different note, not all agendas pushed by the RIAA are this bad, DVD-Audio sounds pretty damn good.
Why doesn't someone just create a fork of the kernel at the point right before "tainted" code was added. SCO's code is not critical to the operation of the kernel. And IIRC the code added mainly benifits enterprise users. The rest of the Linux user base should start using forked code as it would affect them the least. Is corporate contribute to OSS code going to continue to be a problem. How come no one saw this coming? The mixing of GPL and proprietary code, open source or not is bound to cause problems. Looks as if people like Red Hat and Debian had it right all along in trying to keep all non-GPL or LGPL code out of the main distribution.
I'm not doubting your experience and insight, and I don't have any figures to back myself up but there are some trends here. About 5 or 6 years ago a cutting edge design shop with all their tools deployed on NT was unheard of. Now, it's not only heard of, one can imagine it getting worse with the proliferation of Itanium2 based 64-bit Windows XP workstations, the consolidation of Unix vendors, and the migration to a single OS vendor for the entire enterprise (sounds silly, but impossible to deny). You're last two sentences are really the point I'm trying to drive home though. OS X on these machines (with the easy addition of SCSI HDD storage they are bonifide workstations) seems like a good fit for OS X. But it's not being done. Which means somehow, somewhere someone is dropping the ball. Since the EDA vendors were so quick to jump on the Linux bandwagon sans the kind industry partnership you get with the traditional Unix vendors, thereâ(TM)s really only one logical culprit.
I admit it sounds bitchy. But doing design work on 2000 can be characterised by sluggish performance, segmented toolset, a decode old UI (I guess even its worse for CDE/Motif but thats for another day), and slipshod "porting" jobs done by these EDA vendors. Now imagine coming home to OS X then reading these new Mac headlines. And then realizing that Apple and big EDA vendors don't want to have anything to do with each other. I think I know why;
Apple: "Not our market"
Vendors: "Macs?!"
No one can argue that OS X would make a great EDA platform.
The machine is fast and the OS is advanced. But what irks me to no end is that Apple seems hell-bent on keeping the Mac in its little niche market. It doesn't make much sense but Apple refused to capitalize on people's migration from traditional Unix to the more "user friendly" NT. As an example I'll use the situation I am most familiar with but keep in mind this sort of thing is probably similar across dozens of industries. Computer hardware and electronics design. The most popular tools today are probably those from Cadence and Synopsys. Both have powerful software suits available for 32-bit and 64-bit versions Solaris, Linux, HP-UX, and NT(32)/XP. For some reason people started migrating from Unix to NT. So now I'm stuck using design and verification tools on 2000. When I use Mentor Graphics ModelSim and Cadence's Layout and PSpice I have to install all this extra stuff like Cygwin, and Perl just to try to imitate the functionality avaialable in Unix. I'm sure many other people do this. Plus, these third party tools are so poorly integrated into the rest of the OS. With Mac OS X, it's all there. The complete Unix toolset and environment comes standard, the Macs are good for graphics as it is (which is what all these new design tools focus on anyway), and the UI is a dream to use. It's simply a better platform in a lot of different ways. Check out Sun and SGI's third party applications pages, then look at Apples. There are whole industries missing. Here's where Apple needs to come in and sell these people on their product. Users want better software, software companies want a larger use base and better product and Apple wants to ship more units. Why is this not being done? The funny thing is that in-house ASIC design at Apple is probably done on Solairs, HP, or NT. I'm sending e-mail Cadence and gang. Everyone who doesn't want to see this whole industry to be swallowed by NT and wants to move to OS X should do the same.
I have heard of people talking about a PCI card with a few FPGA's on it; so dedicated programs could download their own accellerator programs to them. It's just an idea at the moment, AFAIK, but hey.
Compaines like Tarari have already been doing this. Their card does network filtering. I've also seen cryptography as another application.
I'm confused about the difference between Multics and Unix. Unix as all the features described on this Multics page. Unix is multiuser; so there goes the "Uni" vs. "Multi" difference from the names. Unix scales well to big boxes like the Sun E10K. The only things I can think of are that Multics has more robust job control out of the box and Unix has a more portable foundation.
I don't know where you got your figure (around $3200). When I hear "high-end desktop" I assume you mean a desktop that offers VERY high performance. A 3Dlabs Wildcat III 6110 is over $2000 alone. And it pretty much depends on your task. Let's say your task modeling the sheer and stress on high speed aircraft in CATIA. If it takes two days on the IBM box and two weeks on your cluster of 4 PC "workstations" then which costs less? These machines aren't for everyone. Ask the people that use them, they'll tell you why.
Red Hat may be the "Microsoft of "free" software" with respect to popularity, but that's where the similarities end. Red Hat works with in the parameters that define fair business practice. Microsoft does not.
Creative and Loki started one; it's called OpenAL. The site hasn't been updated in a while. People still work on the code and I even think some more vendors signed up. However, so far it hasn't had much media exposure. I guess not as many people care as you think..
That's the story. IBM is bungling their Linux effort. I'm not suprised, look at their recent track record; AIX/386, PowerPC, OS/2, their hardisk divison..
Slashdot Mirror
I hope your patient, AGP spec throughput and the bandwith limitations on the PCI bridge will make that one tough. I'm not even sure if it's possible. If it's IO throughput your looking for you'll have to wait until Hypertransport, 3GIO and PCI-X make their way to you. Or look at Unix workstations from Sun, HP, IBM, etc.
There are probably folks out there that will sell you an Opteron based box. Of course, OS X is still 32-bit. Linux and Windows XP are already 64-bit. When Mac finally goes 64-bit in the OS and takes full advantage of the PPC970 hardare (and not just memory address space) then I would consider a Unix based, 64-bit, firmware based computer to be as far removed from a PC as a Sun Blade. I've built a 21164 based Alpha that runs 64-bit Windows 2000. ATX motherboard, VGA card, the whole 9 yards. That was over a year ago (Windows 2000 for Alpha Beta released over 3 years ago). Windows NT for alpha was released as far back as 95 IIRC, but that was 32-bit too so you really can't count that. 21064 alpha based AT style computers were popping up as far back as 91-92 I believe. 64-bit is old hat at this point. It's just too bad AMD doesn't have the Intel/IBM kind of cash to dump into this and Intel can't get their act together. (Wow, Jerry Sanders' talk about K8/Hypertransport in 1998 seems like a lifetime ago.) I have to hand it to Apple though, they come really far and are almost there. They really stuck it to the giants on 64-bit (I guess everyone still has work to do). People should really get all those CAD/EDA Unix/NT apps over to OS X.
Why does this question come up every time a new calculator is announced?! You can't use PDA's or Pocket PC's or anything of that ilk on professional exams or class exams?
That's what I'm talkin' about. No more wasted money and trips to the weed spot. I can just pull down the latest patch! Just in case, anyone got Linus' pager number..?
This has come up before. First, don't be fooled by MHz. The chips may not run as fast but these new calculators can hold their own against PDA's in applications like linear algebra. Also don't forget most professional exams and college classes strictly prohibit the use of general purpose type computers. Casio, TI, HP and similar are really just taking a PDA type embedded system and stripping them down to make them useable for academic purposes while maintaining the features that scientific applications demand. Back in high school, my first PDA was a TI-85! The price of the new HP won't be as low as a cheap PDA because of the economies of scale.
No word on how this will be powered..
First, somehow this article gives me the impression that you're saying it's OK to break the law because the chances of getting caught are slim. Next it's me telling that they're buying into the RIAA's "sue everyone" philosophy. Studio heads and big labels didn't get rich by dreaming up preposterous solutions to non-problems which sound like they shot right out of the MTV mind of your average file sharer. Are P2P networks going to put anyone out of business right now. No. Does digital freedom have the potential to undermine part of the established business flow? Yes. That's why the Industry is taking steps to stop pervasive freedom. Copyright litigation grabs headlines. It's also a red herring. The RIAA is making deals with computer hardware manufacturers, software vendors and tech industry standardizing bodies. They will simply have everyone implement DRM. Do you really think Dell is going to sell computers that will keep the Justice Department at their door? So, you can sit around and read peoples fantasies about how they think P2P's days of reckoning will play out in court, or you can do something only slightly more productive like contact your representative.
One a different note, not all agendas pushed by the RIAA are this bad, DVD-Audio sounds pretty damn good.
Why doesn't someone just create a fork of the kernel at the point right before "tainted" code was added. SCO's code is not critical to the operation of the kernel. And IIRC the code added mainly benifits enterprise users. The rest of the Linux user base should start using forked code as it would affect them the least. Is corporate contribute to OSS code going to continue to be a problem. How come no one saw this coming? The mixing of GPL and proprietary code, open source or not is bound to cause problems. Looks as if people like Red Hat and Debian had it right all along in trying to keep all non-GPL or LGPL code out of the main distribution.
Interesting. Can you IRC from their servers?
seems like a good fit for OS X.
seem like a good fit for EDA.
I'm not doubting your experience and insight, and I don't have any figures to back myself up but there are some trends here. About 5 or 6 years ago a cutting edge design shop with all their tools deployed on NT was unheard of. Now, it's not only heard of, one can imagine it getting worse with the proliferation of Itanium2 based 64-bit Windows XP workstations, the consolidation of Unix vendors, and the migration to a single OS vendor for the entire enterprise (sounds silly, but impossible to deny).
You're last two sentences are really the point I'm trying to drive home though. OS X on these machines (with the easy addition of SCSI HDD storage they are bonifide workstations) seems like a good fit for OS X. But it's not being done. Which means somehow, somewhere someone is dropping the ball. Since the EDA vendors were so quick to jump on the Linux bandwagon sans the kind industry partnership you get with the traditional Unix vendors, thereâ(TM)s really only one logical culprit.
I admit it sounds bitchy. But doing design work on 2000 can be characterised by sluggish performance, segmented toolset, a decode old UI (I guess even its worse for CDE/Motif but thats for another day), and slipshod "porting" jobs done by these EDA vendors. Now imagine coming home to OS X then reading these new Mac headlines. And then realizing that Apple and big EDA vendors don't want to have anything to do with each other. I think I know why;
Apple: "Not our market"
Vendors: "Macs?!"
No one can argue that OS X would make a great EDA platform.
The machine is fast and the OS is advanced. But what irks me to no end is that Apple seems hell-bent on keeping the Mac in its little niche market. It doesn't make much sense but Apple refused to capitalize on people's migration from traditional Unix to the more "user friendly" NT. As an example I'll use the situation I am most familiar with but keep in mind this sort of thing is probably similar across dozens of industries. Computer hardware and electronics design. The most popular tools today are probably those from Cadence and Synopsys. Both have powerful software suits available for 32-bit and 64-bit versions Solaris, Linux, HP-UX, and NT(32)/XP. For some reason people started migrating from Unix to NT. So now I'm stuck using design and verification tools on 2000. When I use Mentor Graphics ModelSim and Cadence's Layout and PSpice I have to install all this extra stuff like Cygwin, and Perl just to try to imitate the functionality avaialable in Unix. I'm sure many other people do this. Plus, these third party tools are so poorly integrated into the rest of the OS.
With Mac OS X, it's all there. The complete Unix toolset and environment comes standard, the Macs are good for graphics as it is (which is what all these new design tools focus on anyway), and the UI is a dream to use. It's simply a better platform in a lot of different ways. Check out Sun and SGI's third party applications pages, then look at Apples. There are whole industries missing.
Here's where Apple needs to come in and sell these people on their product. Users want better software, software companies want a larger use base and better product and Apple wants to ship more units. Why is this not being done?
The funny thing is that in-house ASIC design at Apple is probably done on Solairs, HP, or NT. I'm sending e-mail Cadence and gang. Everyone who doesn't want to see this whole industry to be swallowed by NT and wants to move to OS X should do the same.
Compaines like Tarari have already been doing this. Their card does network filtering. I've also seen cryptography as another application.
Why is it so much more difficult to design a system that crushes people in Go? Shouldn't that be considered a more interesting endeavour?
I'm confused about the difference between Multics and Unix. Unix as all the features described on this Multics page. Unix is multiuser; so there goes the "Uni" vs. "Multi" difference from the names. Unix scales well to big boxes like the Sun E10K. The only things I can think of are that Multics has more robust job control out of the box and Unix has a more portable foundation.
ASIC design seems to be growing. I'd learn Verilog and VHDL. If you know C and synchronous hardware design then the jump to Verilog is trivial.
The SGI 1600SW. It's getting old, but it's still the king.
I don't know where you got your figure (around $3200). When I hear "high-end desktop" I assume you mean a desktop that offers VERY high performance. A 3Dlabs Wildcat III 6110 is over $2000 alone. And it pretty much depends on your task. Let's say your task modeling the sheer and stress on high speed aircraft in CATIA. If it takes two days on the IBM box and two weeks on your cluster of 4 PC "workstations" then which costs less? These machines aren't for everyone. Ask the people that use them, they'll tell you why.
If you want performance you've got to know where to look.
Unless you're playing games, real workstations blow away the fastest desktops.
Sun won't be competing with Microsoft, they'll be competing with Dell. Ah well, some of us have to learn the hard way I guess..
Red Hat may be the "Microsoft of "free" software" with respect to popularity, but that's where the similarities end. Red Hat works with in the parameters that define fair business practice. Microsoft does not.
Creative and Loki started one; it's called OpenAL. The site hasn't been updated in a while. People still work on the code and I even think some more vendors signed up. However, so far it hasn't had much media exposure. I guess not as many people care as you think..
That's the story. IBM is bungling their Linux effort. I'm not suprised, look at their recent track record; AIX/386, PowerPC, OS/2, their hardisk divison..
They already tried that. Years ago (1994-5?). Back when IBM was evangelizing how the PowerPC would Change the World As We Know It(tm).