Sony was hyping up the Cell so much it was almost guarenteed to suck.
It's almost like the Cell architecture was designed to score the highest possible score on trivial benchmarks (like the ones that give you FLOPS) without worrying about real world performance. Where have we seen this before? Oh yeah, the Emotion Engine (PS2)!
Wasn't Sony saying that we'd be sticking Cell processers in everything because they were going to be so great? I seem to recall talk about personal computers switching over to Cell because it was going to blow regular processors away. In a way, it does (FLOPS), but in practice it's way slower than even processers from last year.
How does it come that the Cell processor has been presented at various supercomputer conferences and will take a major slot at the Hotchips Symposium for High-Performance Chips.
The first benchmark proved, that it is about 100 times faster in large FFTs than a Xeon processor: PDF
I can't remember any presentations of the Emotion Engine at a supercomputer conference.
I've heard about doing GPU calculations (as per the implementation being non-IEEE)? Doubly, would someone in the know help explain what the aforementioned "weirdness" means?
There are just some functions missing, like different roundings and the missing double precision. GPUs are simply not optimized for scientific calculations, but that doesn't mean that they can't be programmed to be useful for those workloads.
The GPU has lots of separate processing elements that operate independently. It also supports floating-point vector operations. Quite a different animal from yer-average-x86.
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You're not from the US? I'm from Germany, but for me it was quite shocking when I was working in our US branch office and realized, that noone turned off the desktop computer at the end of the day. It was even harder to understand that nobody turned off the monitor (CRTs and LCDs) when they went home. Just a few computers were configured to put the monitor into power save mode. I visited some of my colleagues and friends and when we arrived, their computer and monitor were turned on - the whole day.
So I can really imagine that their Playstation or XBox are never turned off as well.
The Cell processor (PS3) is made for those applications. At the Power.org convention in Barcelona, IBM presented a programming example of large FFTs on Cell. It turned out, that large FFT calculations are about 100 times faster than on a Xeon 3.2 GHz processor.
Keep in mind, that this presentation was held in front of super computer professionals and its not that easy to trick them.
Please read the patent, before you post anything like "that would affect webservers as well" or "they patented the internet". It has nothing to do with it.
I'll make it easier for you:
"[...]a magazine containing a very large number of disks, disk players, a controller for transfer of the disks between the magazine and the disk players, a central computer, a memory for storing information relating to the locations of the disks, and a multiplexer. Each of the subscriber stations includes a communication interface connected to the network, a computing terminal, a demultiplexer, a data rate expansion circuit, a digital-to-analog converter, and a transducer for converting analog signals into humanly perceptible signals. In one example, the invention provides for the delivery to a subscriber of a personalized sound program selected from a large directory of available selections."
RTFP! It's about a music server, that plays disks to subscribers. Just read the abstract and you'll see that it is not that vague and it has nothing to do with webservers.
On the other hand, it doesn't sound very innovative to me.
So Intel buys Apple and works with their OEMs to get products out in the market. The OEMs would love to be able to offer a higher margin product with better reliability than Microsoft. Intel/Apple enters the market just as Microsoft announces yet another delay in their next generation OS. By the way, the new Apple OS for the Intel Architecture has a compatibility mode with Windows (I'm just guessing on this one).
The best "Leatherman" ever made:
SwissTool Plus made by Victorinox. Look for the "3.0337.L". Made of Inox Steel, more durable than a Leatherman and every function you need.
Server guys - try to think beyond your damn file services.
I hear you. I am a server guy, but I also know, that file, mail and web servers are doing much more than only delivering files, mails and static web pages. See my previous post. Those guys, not realizing, that the Cell will improve even traditional server applications, are not really up-to-date or well informed.
PHP is the best example. Maybe PHP itself doesn't benefit from SIMD (SSE or Cells SPU), but all its dependencies (see your phpinfo [random example]): xml, ssl, gd, zlib, mcrypt,...
The same is true for a mail server. Sure, its main purpose is to receive mails and store them into mailboxes. But what about ssl encryption? What about the virus scanner, that has to decompress attachments?
But, they are going to be at a strict disadvantage in data retrieval and pushing operations-- which is, incidentally, exactly what most servers, such as a file, web or database server, need to be best at!
What kind of servers *ARE* these??
Servers you can find in the render farms of ILM. One of the demonstrations was a realtime ray tracing of a landscape. The resulting jpegs were streamed to an Apple G5, because the Cell-based blade server had no high end graphic board.
There are thousands of other applications for such a kind of server. The Earth Simulator is also not a file, web or database server.
On the other hand, even a web server can profit from a Cell server. Look at all the computations a PHP server is doing nowadays. A content management system like relies heavily on ImageMagick to generate the images on-the-fly. Look at all the content servers, like video and audio (mp3) download sites. Some of them are rendering thumbnails or converting uploaded content on the webserver itself.
Database servers are not only looking up entries in an index, they are also doing heavy calculations.
SIMD (like SSE) helps a lot in different areas. A file server could do real-time encryption...
It depends on what you wanna do with a load balanced webserver. If it is servering heavily dynamic content (like PHP), you need good processing power in your webservers. All the webservers should have two gigabit network ports. One should be connected to the switch that is also connected to the load balancer and the other port should be connected to the backend switch, where you can find the database and NFS server. Put some more RAM into the backend servers. Tweak the NFS server settings (rsize, wsize). Try different MaxClient settings in your apache configuration, but don't overdo it, because the limitation is not the CPU, but the I/O.
Most important: Use mmcache, if your site is based on PHP! If I'd turn off the mmcache, our site would be unusable. The performance increase is awsome.
Take Pound, a few web server machines, a database server and a NFS server (no Coda, AFS or GFS needed in most cases) and you should be set.
This is a setup that I installed for a high traffic website and it is very stable.
I guess Suunto would put a note in the feature list if the transfer protocol would be based on a standard like NMEA or TAIP. I found a MacOSX GPS program called GPSy, but googling for GPSy Suunto returns ten useless results.
Here is a list of communication protocols (real-time and data-transfer).
I just bought the Suunto X9. The device itself is perfect and it comes with serial docking station. The provided software called "TrekManager" is only available for Windows and I had no luck to get it working with Wine, so I asked Suunto to give me some informations about the communication protocol. The answer:
Of course you are free to write your own software at your own risk but we can't unfortunately give you the information you requested as it isn't made public.
I don't wanna force other companies to produce MacOSX/Linux software. Its a decision, that should be respected, but they should make it possible for Open Source developers to write their own software. Suunto makes Hardware and thats all - the software is itself is just an add-on.
Now I have to find a windows box, install the software, connect the GPS watch and sniff the serial line to figure out the communication protocl. Sooner or later I'll (or someone else) find out how it works and then we can publish the informations.
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But if the BIOS problem prevents you from running Windows, it makes sense.
Makes sense.
It is funny to see posts like this: How does it come that the Cell processor has been presented at various supercomputer conferences and will take a major slot at the Hotchips Symposium for High-Performance Chips.
The first benchmark proved, that it is about 100 times faster in large FFTs than a Xeon processor: PDF
I can't remember any presentations of the Emotion Engine at a supercomputer conference.
It is Ralf "Ficken" Hildebrandt!
Don't mod me down, that is his official name - at least for those who know him.
I've heard about doing GPU calculations (as per the implementation being non-IEEE)? Doubly, would someone in the know help explain what the aforementioned "weirdness" means?
There are just some functions missing, like different roundings and the missing double precision. GPUs are simply not optimized for scientific calculations, but that doesn't mean that they can't be programmed to be useful for those workloads.
The GPU has lots of separate processing elements that operate independently. It also supports floating-point vector operations. Quite a different animal from yer-average-x86.
Just like the Cell processor...
April 2
By the way, I've never seen that message before:
In larger setups it is always a good idea to have a centralized firewall management system.
Check out FWBuilder!
A computer programmer was driving his Porsche down the road.
Good one. (Score:5, Funny)
You're not from the US? I'm from Germany, but for me it was quite shocking when I was working in our US branch office and realized, that noone turned off the desktop computer at the end of the day. It was even harder to understand that nobody turned off the monitor (CRTs and LCDs) when they went home. Just a few computers were configured to put the monitor into power save mode. I visited some of my colleagues and friends and when we arrived, their computer and monitor were turned on - the whole day. So I can really imagine that their Playstation or XBox are never turned off as well.
The Cell processor (PS3) is made for those applications. At the Power.org convention in Barcelona, IBM presented a programming example of large FFTs on Cell. It turned out, that large FFT calculations are about 100 times faster than on a Xeon 3.2 GHz processor.
Keep in mind, that this presentation was held in front of super computer professionals and its not that easy to trick them.
Because Apple and Google is used by journalists.
What you need is a CMS! Mambo is very easy to install, easy to learn and does all you need.
Gentoo
Please read the patent, before you post anything like "that would affect webservers as well" or "they patented the internet". It has nothing to do with it. I'll make it easier for you:
"[...]a magazine containing a very large number of disks, disk players, a controller for transfer of the disks between the magazine and the disk players, a central computer, a memory for storing information relating to the locations of the disks, and a multiplexer. Each of the subscriber stations includes a communication interface connected to the network, a computing terminal, a demultiplexer, a data rate expansion circuit, a digital-to-analog converter, and a transducer for converting analog signals into humanly perceptible signals. In one example, the invention provides for the delivery to a subscriber of a personalized sound program selected from a large directory of available selections."
It is a music box server or something like that.
RTFP! It's about a music server, that plays disks to subscribers. Just read the abstract and you'll see that it is not that vague and it has nothing to do with webservers.
On the other hand, it doesn't sound very innovative to me.
The best "Leatherman" ever made:
SwissTool Plus made by Victorinox. Look for the "3.0337.L". Made of Inox Steel, more durable than a Leatherman and every function you need.
I hear you. I am a server guy, but I also know, that file, mail and web servers are doing much more than only delivering files, mails and static web pages. See my previous post. Those guys, not realizing, that the Cell will improve even traditional server applications, are not really up-to-date or well informed.
PHP is the best example. Maybe PHP itself doesn't benefit from SIMD (SSE or Cells SPU), but all its dependencies (see your phpinfo [random example]): xml, ssl, gd, zlib, mcrypt, ...
The same is true for a mail server. Sure, its main purpose is to receive mails and store them into mailboxes. But what about ssl encryption? What about the virus scanner, that has to decompress attachments?
SIMD can help a lot in those areas.
Servers you can find in the render farms of ILM. One of the demonstrations was a realtime ray tracing of a landscape. The resulting jpegs were streamed to an Apple G5, because the Cell-based blade server had no high end graphic board.
There are thousands of other applications for such a kind of server. The Earth Simulator is also not a file, web or database server.
On the other hand, even a web server can profit from a Cell server. Look at all the computations a PHP server is doing nowadays. A content management system like relies heavily on ImageMagick to generate the images on-the-fly. Look at all the content servers, like video and audio (mp3) download sites. Some of them are rendering thumbnails or converting uploaded content on the webserver itself.
Database servers are not only looking up entries in an index, they are also doing heavy calculations.
SIMD (like SSE) helps a lot in different areas. A file server could do real-time encryption...
It depends on what you wanna do with a load balanced webserver. If it is servering heavily dynamic content (like PHP), you need good processing power in your webservers. All the webservers should have two gigabit network ports. One should be connected to the switch that is also connected to the load balancer and the other port should be connected to the backend switch, where you can find the database and NFS server. Put some more RAM into the backend servers. Tweak the NFS server settings (rsize, wsize). Try different MaxClient settings in your apache configuration, but don't overdo it, because the limitation is not the CPU, but the I/O.
Most important: Use mmcache, if your site is based on PHP! If I'd turn off the mmcache, our site would be unusable. The performance increase is awsome.
Take Pound, a few web server machines, a database server and a NFS server (no Coda, AFS or GFS needed in most cases) and you should be set. This is a setup that I installed for a high traffic website and it is very stable.
I guess Suunto would put a note in the feature list if the transfer protocol would be based on a standard like NMEA or TAIP. I found a MacOSX GPS program called GPSy, but googling for GPSy Suunto returns ten useless results.
Here is a list of communication protocols (real-time and data-transfer).
I just bought the Suunto X9. The device itself is perfect and it comes with serial docking station. The provided software called "TrekManager" is only available for Windows and I had no luck to get it working with Wine, so I asked Suunto to give me some informations about the communication protocol. The answer:
I don't wanna force other companies to produce MacOSX/Linux software. Its a decision, that should be respected, but they should make it possible for Open Source developers to write their own software. Suunto makes Hardware and thats all - the software is itself is just an add-on.
Now I have to find a windows box, install the software, connect the GPS watch and sniff the serial line to figure out the communication protocl. Sooner or later I'll (or someone else) find out how it works and then we can publish the informations.
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