That depends a lot on the RAID level being used as well. Clearly, RAID 0/1 don't place near the processor load on a controller that RAID 4/5 do. I also suspect that the SCSI and SATA RAID products you are comparing aren't in the same class from a connectivity and expense POV. Frankly, SATA is better for RAID than SCSI is, though SAS basically negates that advantage. There is nothing in SCSI that makes it a better interface for RAID than ATA. It's all in the class of drive.
If I could understand a single point you were trying to make then I could point out where you've gone hopelessly misguided. Unfortunately, all you are is bluff and bluster with a bunch of insults thrown in. This discussion has degenerated into a bunch of incomprehensable nonsense.
"As for the number of disks, this appears in the Terabyte range. Especially for PCI and Intel systems, and even for AMD/Hypertransport systems, though it is higher there."
WTF does any of that mean? Was that your sorry attempt to characterize disk performance as I requested? If it was, "Terabytes" aren't a measure of performance nor are they a measure of "the number of disks". Furthermore, PCI and Hypertransport are not equivalent technologies from Intel and AMD and the differences between the two have no impact on the number of disks needed in the system. Thanks for the effort, Curly.
"Storage companies have had to explicitly address this issue."
What issue?
"Take a look at what NetApp, Sun and Agami do to deal with it. While their approaches are on the cutting edge, this type of scale is now starting to come into play at the home PC market..."
What type of "scale"? What the hell are you talking about? Are you saying the home user now needs an enterprise NAS because his desktop processor is getting more cores? Are you crazy? You do realize that modest NAS boxes traditionally offer poor performance relative to direct attach storage, right? Do you think that anything ethernet attached will ever perform like SATA or SAS? What makes you think that the typical PC customer wants anything more than a single hard drive? Hell, mac owners are seemingly satisfied with a lowly 2.5" drive judging by the popularity of the (now dual core) mini.
Yes, we now see small NAS appliances for the home. They typically have one or two drives, are inexpensive, and are designed to be easily used. Performance isn't their strong suit. You want to throttle down your multicore PC of the future then force all of it's disk IO to run through an ethernet NAS. Good luck.
"IO bus saturation has always been a problem to contend with."
Of course it has been. That's why PC I/O busses have steadily improved over the years. Curiously, it is Intel that drives those improvements. Nevertheless, I/O performance is not effected by how many cores your CPU has. The original claim was that 80-core CPUs were a design mistake because somehow having that many cores will kill IO performance. That is, of course, bullshit.
"To proclaim that it isn't an issue is an even greater display of your cluelessness."
Good thing I didn't say that.
To paraphrase the thread, you contrasted an IBM mainframe architecture with the PC by saying that IBM could support 65535 devices where the PC would be lucky to support 65. I said device addressability meant nothing as PCs could hold as many IO devices as anyone wanted to put in them. You then changed the subject to IO bandwidth and I argued that CPU core count did nothing to discourage IO bandwidth. The rest has been groundless attacks on my qualifications (and all from an AC who can't even demonstrate that he understands the technology at all).
Desktop PCs have basic requirements. They typically have some kind of network connection whether it's ethernet or modem, they have some low speed peripherals like printers, card readers and HID, they have typically one hard drive and an optical drive, and they have a range of video capabilities from basic on up to workstation-class 3D. No amount of CPU development alone is going to change that formula and no psuedo-architect AC from the peanut gallery can formulate any argument for why a PC suddenly needs mainframe-class IO just because it's CPU gained more cores.
That's not the HTPC, that's a giant, floorstanding game machine. This was what was said:
"Even now, when everyone is jumping in to the HTPC field, Voodoo is already one step ahead of the curve. Their HTPC [voodoopc.com] has top of the line parts and no fans."
It does, in fact, have fans both in the chassis and in the power supply.
There have been fanless computers before. If you'd like to pay nearly four grand for a Turion processor and an 80GB drive go right ahead.
"Even now, when everyone is jumping in to the HTPC field, Voodoo is already one step ahead of the curve. Their HTPC has top of the line parts and no fans."
No fans? The system has both chassis fans and power supply fans. Nothing unique here except the really high price and the custom paint jobs.
The 320 MB/sec rating is simply the burst rate for the SCSI interface. All it says is that the device actually supports the interface. It means nothing other than it's not broken. This device does 40 MB/sec sustained regardless of the IO profile---pretty slow by large block and sequential standards but very fast for random, small block applications. This device is not intended, and is not appropriate, for desktop systems. It's targetted at accelerating server apps such as databases.
Maybe you should provide that feedback to the manufacturer. No drive should be consistently failing. The number one enemy of any drive is heat, so if one type of drive is failing then either there's a design defect or and implementation error. SCSI or SATA shouldn't be involved.
That said, the proper response is to stop buying the products that fail as you've done. That doesn't mean that SATA is not worth owning however.
1. These are your priorities. In such a case SATA and RAID 5 make sense.
2. That's an observation based on current product offerings. It is not inherent in the interfaces.
3. Assuming the drives are from the same family, the larger the drive the faster it performs. If you are comparing different drives then no general statement can be made.
By posing this question, are you asking others to do your research for you or are you asking them to do your lab work for you. It seems to me you should be doing this work.
"The SCSI array can be faster assuming it is set up correctly."
Same could be said for SATA. As you said, the standard isn't going to make a difference.
"The premium on the SCSI hard drives themselves is justfied."
Depends on your priorities. Drive manufacturers want the high margins on enterprise drives so they deliberately differentiate between SCSI and ATA. It's mostly a marketing ploy.
"Adding more disks doesn't increase I/O. You can add 1 billion disks, and your IO isn't going to increase. You'll hit a wall and be bus-bound. That's the WHOLE POINT, which you just don't seem to comprehend."
Talk about silly clueless statements. It's clear that I don't comprehend your WHOLE POINT because you don't have one.
Since you know so much about disk drives, please explain to me how many of today's disk drives it takes to saturate one of today's IO busses. You pick the drive and the bus. You won't be able to do it since you have no understanding of the subject. You're nothing but a poser.
"80 CPU's are either going to be mostly idle, or be bus bound with the current IO busses. In either former case, Intel's wasting money with their current approach."
First off, no matter how many CPUs you have and how busy they are, they will NEVER be IO bus bound because they don't sit on an IO bus. CPUs sit on a memory bus. With all your impressive experience, one would think you'd be able to get such simple terminology right.
Assuming you meant memory bus (which is a bog assumption considering your consistent demonstration of ignorance), you can't possibly know that because you have no idea what the memory bus throughput is. It's a safe assumption that such a CPU would be bus-bound using today's memory subsystems, but it's also a safe assumption that future systems will have much faster memory. It's an obvious requirement and one even Intel's janitor knows.
"blah blah blah"
Apparently you're main skill is to toss out meaningless, unsubstantiated insults as an AC. I noticed you haven't offered up any reason for us to believe anything you say. Maybe after another decade of education and experience you might aspire to be a second rate technologist yourself.
Why don't you tell us how "mainframe IO architecture" is going to solve this imaginary problem you know nothing about. Is it that Intel doesn't have enough device IDs? Perhaps if we only had 65535 channel IDs we'd all be in computing heaven.
You may have said it but it's wrong. x86 processors are defined by the code they run just like all other processors are. No x86 processor EVER executed every x86 instruction directly and that includes the original 8088/8086. All modern processors work internally like x86 processors today, but the internal design of the execution engines have to be tailored to the instruction sets that are being executed.
"It's been talked about how do we identify cpus. You would go with the external interface."
Of course I would. So would any other sane person. The instruction set defines what the processor does.
"If an external instruction set is deconstructed to lower level op codes is the cpu still an x86."
Yes it is, provided it's the CPU doing the deconstruction. Instruction decode is the first step of execution in any processor. Doing so doesn't somehow make the processor "not x86".
"Take a look at the P4 design docs, they talk about micro op codes as do most cpus that try to maintain backward compatability for their instruction set."
Yeah, so? Are you arguing that NetBurst is really a different processor masquerading as x86? It isn't. It was specifically designed to run x86 and nothing else.
Let's look at this another way. If a processor runs x86 code without emulation then it's x86. There are two processors that don't directly run x86 that are worth considering. Transmeta is the first (and they made more than one). Transmeta had emulation software that was loaded to run x86 and could theoretically run other instruction sets or even it's own internal one. Thing is that never happened. The other is Itanium. Itanium ran x86 only partially in hardware and required software emulation assistance. All other x86 processors execute x86 code natively starting with the first instruction coming out of reset. If that isn't x86 then I can't imagine what would satisfy you.
"...you might stop being so rude when you have a perceived cloak of anonimity to protect you."
I have no more a cloak than you do. I'm not posting as an AC and I'm not the only one hurling insults. Let's just say "I've now got my fingers crossed your not some big name CompuSci guy:-)" Smiley indeed.
"...since you started off by stating something completely false..."
I thought that was you.
"...claiming the number of channel id's was totally meaningless..."
actually that was someone else. you have yet to prove that the current pc architecture is starved for device IDs.
"And then there's your claim that making memory faster and adding more of it will solve everything."
Didn't say that. I said the trend would be faster and more.
"Do you really think RAM is going to replace permanent storage anytime soon?"
Nope.
"Intel is going to have to deal with I/O. This very simple fact seems to have completely escaped you."
Yep, I fully realize that, but just made that up in order to argue with a ridiculous position.
"If Intel had an IO solution here, they'd be crowing about that too. But the lack of their statements means their plans aren't far enough along; and the lack of it is glaring."
No, it's not. If users wanted more disk I/O they'd put more disk in their machines. Intel doesn't control that, but Intel does sit on industry groups, such as SATA, that define future I/O interfaces. That group, BTW, is one that I personally worked on at one time.
"Just because you can type "make" doesn't mean you're either a kernel or a systems expert."
Same to you. I've written device drivers for multiple OSes, been release manager for multiple Unix products, been lead achitect for two RAID controller products, and been a senior member of technical staff for a Fortune 100 computer manufacturer (where I was the companies lead patent holder for several years). That WOULD make me a systems expert to some. What are your qualifications?
"What you seem to have failed to realize is that you've made no technical statements to distinguish yourself positively in a technical light."
Perhaps not to a moron like you, but at least I don't show myself to be a know-nothing.
"So it's extremely clear what type of person I'm talking to."
If you want to argue against Intel being the most dominant processor manufacturer, go right ahead. You are welcome to look stupid but I won't play.
"Why do you believe that given their past history that they will not go for marketing flash over true performance?"
Intel's designs were always intended for true performance. Netburst was simply a failure in that respect. Intel believed at the time that it would scale.
"The Pentium D and the Quad Core are both clear cases of trying to have bigger numbers instead of true innovation."
Bullshit. What is "true innovation"?
"The Core line is interesting and offers a real improvement but may also dead end like Netburst if they do not follow AMDs lead."
"It's pretty clear you don't have the slightest clue what you're talking about. Nor has that stopped you from forming an opinion, and posting it too.:)"
Plenty of that going around.
"Do you have any idea of the setup time for DMA, and then interrupt overhead involved for each tranaction? For one disk, it's not a lot. Start driving "a lot" of disks so that you saturate the bus, it adds up. These are cycles that steal away from your CPUs main processing capability. Now add 80 CPUs, all starved for IO. It's a total waste of resources."
Yeah, I do. What makes you think you know who you're talking to? This imaginary 80-core processor doesn't even exist yet, yet you claim to know that it is I/O bound. You are the idiot here.
"There's only so much that you can do in memory."
Yes, you can make it faster and add more of it.
"If Intel doesn't do something which can feed those CPU's constantly, you're going to end up with 79 space heaters, and 1 CPU. Given the crunch to conserve power, this clearly isn't feasible."
Perhaps you can lend your infinite expertise to Intel since you already know the achilles heal of their design. Processor cores that aren't doing anything aren't creating heat.
"Let me put it simply for you. Without a major redesign, Intel is simply wasting its money. That's why IO bandwidth is a serious issue here. Without it, they are just talking out their butts."
Thank you for talking so simply out your butt. It's a good thing we have real engineers in change of development.
"IBM mainframes have the same modern interfaces like any other platform."
So there's no difference outside the size. Computers such as those are differentiated by RAS more than they are by I/O capability. PCs *could* be built with lots of bus and memory bandwidth.
"The 64k devices that the grandparent quoted aren't necessarily physical devices."
So that number is totally meaningless. It's nothing more than a 16 bit index.
I never said that GPU's would get replaced, although dumb frame buffers are totally adequate for some applications. Not all computers need GPU's either so it would be stupid to integrate them as one of the cores in the main processor. Physics isn't something that many people need either.
"If a general-purpose CPU can handle your task, it will come out much cheaper. But there are still tasks where general-purpose CPUs just can't cut it."
Absolutely, and as time goes on fewer and fewer tasks can't be met.
"The only place that specialized hardware loses is in cost."
"Why is it that you never hear of software graphics acceleration anymore?"
Actually I never heard of them. Software is what you have when you don't have hardware acceleration.
"And why not just use a second Celeron CPU instead of a graphics card?"
You could if you didn't want 3D.
"Think about all they had to add to x86? Heard of MMX, SSE, SSE2 etc?"
Yeah, I've heard of them. Better to add SIMD instructions to the CPU than to add a dedicated DSP. That would be the general purpose approach rather than the specific function approach. Thanks for proving my point.
"you're telling me that I'm going to need all 80 for desktop use?"
No, I never said that. Thanks for totally failing to understand. Enjoy your 80 specialized cores, no two of which are the same.
"Want to run an OS primarily designed for uniprocessing on a multi way architecture? Look at the issues Win&Lin have with SMP, limited to 16 processors I believe."
Neither Windows (NT+) nor Linux were "primarily designed for uniprocessing". Both platforms run on much larger than 16-way systems. Licensing issues are a different matter.
"So what will we have on these massive SMP architectures?"
Applications that won't use them for a while?
"Programming, at last we might be getting out from under VonNuman."
What does that mean? Are you saying you've "been under" "VonNuman"? I hope he's hot.
"Hell we might even get to run on stack based cpus with energy reclamation automated:-) Of course a nice message passing symbolic language might score big."
If history teaches us anything, we should expect to continue running x86.
"But given then history of software we'll have a bunch of ignorant, loud mouth idiots running around telling everybody the one true way is Java with mutex and semaphores. PHBs will grab at the first thing that has enterpise written on it and is 'guaranteed'. Most programmers will code how they have always coded head down, ass up. The number of processors will double every two years and the speed of software will continue to halve in the same period."
Some of us have been around long enough to consider that new-fangled. Java is a lot newer that Unix is yet Linux is our saviour.
"Of course nobody will suggest that a staged conversion should take place. There will be all these reasons to throw everything away and start over. Because this time we'll get it right!"
Enjoy going bankrupt while getting it right. Those with the money set the rules.
My guess is that Intel understands this seeing how they are already planning integrated memory controllers in future products. Funny how people here think they understand processor design better than the most dominant processor design company in the world. Memory bandwidth is something they've been dealing with for some time now.
By today's standards those interfaces were slow. Today's machines don't have need for 64K different I/O devices, but if they did they would have them. I/O interface addressability is the LEAST of the problem with the architecture of today's PCs.
How many hard drives can be attached to a single disk controller in a PC? A whole lot. Do you need more than that? If so, how many disk drives do you need? How many ethernet ports? What other high bandwidth I/O is there? None of this is the issue.
Adding dedicated hardware for common tasks is not unusual, but in the long run it's commonly replaced with software. General purpose computing expands to consume all tasks as it gets faster. The best use of available die size is another blazingly fast CPU core, not specialized logic for specialized tasks that most people will not use.
There's a reason for the "S" in "SMP". The job of programming them is much easier.
You've probably reached a point where your time is more valuable than the cost of a modest external hard drive. Backups are pretty cheap these days. A lot of my physical media is long since gone and my mp3 collection is all I worry about.
Certainly DRM exists for the interests of the content publishers/distributors and no end user benefits for it (at least directly). So far, no device imposes DRM on your unprotected content and I'd be surprised if that changed. I'd think any manufacturer who attempts that should be prepared for lawsuits.
That's a pretty disrespectful analogy even if you find it accurate. There were estimated 62 million lives lost in WWII. No need to trivialize that by comparing it to a technology competition.
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That depends a lot on the RAID level being used as well. Clearly, RAID 0/1 don't place near the processor load on a controller that RAID 4/5 do. I also suspect that the SCSI and SATA RAID products you are comparing aren't in the same class from a connectivity and expense POV. Frankly, SATA is better for RAID than SCSI is, though SAS basically negates that advantage. There is nothing in SCSI that makes it a better interface for RAID than ATA. It's all in the class of drive.
If I could understand a single point you were trying to make then I could point out where you've gone hopelessly misguided. Unfortunately, all you are is bluff and bluster with a bunch of insults thrown in. This discussion has degenerated into a bunch of incomprehensable nonsense.
"As for the number of disks, this appears in the Terabyte range. Especially for PCI and Intel systems, and even for AMD/Hypertransport systems, though it is higher there."
WTF does any of that mean? Was that your sorry attempt to characterize disk performance as I requested? If it was, "Terabytes" aren't a measure of performance nor are they a measure of "the number of disks". Furthermore, PCI and Hypertransport are not equivalent technologies from Intel and AMD and the differences between the two have no impact on the number of disks needed in the system. Thanks for the effort, Curly.
"Storage companies have had to explicitly address this issue."
What issue?
"Take a look at what NetApp, Sun and Agami do to deal with it. While their approaches are on the cutting edge, this type of scale is now starting to come into play at the home PC market..."
What type of "scale"? What the hell are you talking about? Are you saying the home user now needs an enterprise NAS because his desktop processor is getting more cores? Are you crazy? You do realize that modest NAS boxes traditionally offer poor performance relative to direct attach storage, right? Do you think that anything ethernet attached will ever perform like SATA or SAS? What makes you think that the typical PC customer wants anything more than a single hard drive? Hell, mac owners are seemingly satisfied with a lowly 2.5" drive judging by the popularity of the (now dual core) mini.
Yes, we now see small NAS appliances for the home. They typically have one or two drives, are inexpensive, and are designed to be easily used. Performance isn't their strong suit. You want to throttle down your multicore PC of the future then force all of it's disk IO to run through an ethernet NAS. Good luck.
"IO bus saturation has always been a problem to contend with."
Of course it has been. That's why PC I/O busses have steadily improved over the years. Curiously, it is Intel that drives those improvements. Nevertheless, I/O performance is not effected by how many cores your CPU has. The original claim was that 80-core CPUs were a design mistake because somehow having that many cores will kill IO performance. That is, of course, bullshit.
"To proclaim that it isn't an issue is an even greater display of your cluelessness."
Good thing I didn't say that.
To paraphrase the thread, you contrasted an IBM mainframe architecture with the PC by saying that IBM could support 65535 devices where the PC would be lucky to support 65. I said device addressability meant nothing as PCs could hold as many IO devices as anyone wanted to put in them. You then changed the subject to IO bandwidth and I argued that CPU core count did nothing to discourage IO bandwidth. The rest has been groundless attacks on my qualifications (and all from an AC who can't even demonstrate that he understands the technology at all).
Desktop PCs have basic requirements. They typically have some kind of network connection whether it's ethernet or modem, they have some low speed peripherals like printers, card readers and HID, they have typically one hard drive and an optical drive, and they have a range of video capabilities from basic on up to workstation-class 3D. No amount of CPU development alone is going to change that formula and no psuedo-architect AC from the peanut gallery can formulate any argument for why a PC suddenly needs mainframe-class IO just because it's CPU gained more cores.
That's not the HTPC, that's a giant, floorstanding game machine. This was what was said:
"Even now, when everyone is jumping in to the HTPC field, Voodoo is already one step ahead of the curve. Their HTPC [voodoopc.com] has top of the line parts and no fans."
It does, in fact, have fans both in the chassis and in the power supply.
There have been fanless computers before. If you'd like to pay nearly four grand for a Turion processor and an 80GB drive go right ahead.
"Even now, when everyone is jumping in to the HTPC field, Voodoo is already one step ahead of the curve. Their HTPC has top of the line parts and no fans."
No fans? The system has both chassis fans and power supply fans. Nothing unique here except the really high price and the custom paint jobs.
The 320 MB/sec rating is simply the burst rate for the SCSI interface. All it says is that the device actually supports the interface. It means nothing other than it's not broken. This device does 40 MB/sec sustained regardless of the IO profile---pretty slow by large block and sequential standards but very fast for random, small block applications. This device is not intended, and is not appropriate, for desktop systems. It's targetted at accelerating server apps such as databases.
You realize that SATA *is* IDE, right? Just what part of the connector type do you think is responsible for all these new hard drive issues?
Maybe you should provide that feedback to the manufacturer. No drive should be consistently failing. The number one enemy of any drive is heat, so if one type of drive is failing then either there's a design defect or and implementation error. SCSI or SATA shouldn't be involved.
That said, the proper response is to stop buying the products that fail as you've done. That doesn't mean that SATA is not worth owning however.
1. These are your priorities. In such a case SATA and RAID 5 make sense.
2. That's an observation based on current product offerings. It is not inherent in the interfaces.
3. Assuming the drives are from the same family, the larger the drive the faster it performs. If you are comparing different drives then no general statement can be made.
By posing this question, are you asking others to do your research for you or are you asking them to do your lab work for you. It seems to me you should be doing this work.
"The SCSI array can be faster assuming it is set up correctly."
Same could be said for SATA. As you said, the standard isn't going to make a difference.
"The premium on the SCSI hard drives themselves is justfied."
Depends on your priorities. Drive manufacturers want the high margins on enterprise drives so they deliberately differentiate between SCSI and ATA. It's mostly a marketing ploy.
"Adding more disks doesn't increase I/O. You can add 1 billion disks, and your IO
isn't going to increase. You'll hit a wall and be bus-bound. That's the
WHOLE POINT, which you just don't seem to comprehend."
Talk about silly clueless statements. It's clear that I don't comprehend your WHOLE POINT because you don't have one.
Since you know so much about disk drives, please explain to me how many of today's disk drives it takes to saturate one of today's IO busses. You pick the drive and the bus. You won't be able to do it since you have no understanding of the subject. You're nothing but a poser.
"80 CPU's are either going to be mostly idle, or be bus bound with the
current IO busses. In either former case, Intel's wasting money with their
current approach."
First off, no matter how many CPUs you have and how busy they are, they will NEVER be IO bus bound because they don't sit on an IO bus. CPUs sit on a memory bus. With all your impressive experience, one would think you'd be able to get such simple terminology right.
Assuming you meant memory bus (which is a bog assumption considering your consistent demonstration of ignorance), you can't possibly know that because you have no idea what the memory bus throughput is. It's a safe assumption that such a CPU would be bus-bound using today's memory subsystems, but it's also a safe assumption that future systems will have much faster memory. It's an obvious requirement and one even Intel's janitor knows.
"blah blah blah"
Apparently you're main skill is to toss out meaningless, unsubstantiated insults as an AC. I noticed you haven't offered up any reason for us to believe anything you say. Maybe after another decade of education and experience you might aspire to be a second rate technologist yourself.
Why don't you tell us how "mainframe IO architecture" is going to solve this imaginary problem you know nothing about. Is it that Intel doesn't have enough device IDs? Perhaps if we only had 65535 channel IDs we'd all be in computing heaven.
You may have said it but it's wrong. x86 processors are defined by the code they run just like all other processors are. No x86 processor EVER executed every x86 instruction directly and that includes the original 8088/8086. All modern processors work internally like x86 processors today, but the internal design of the execution engines have to be tailored to the instruction sets that are being executed.
"No I'm not kidding, give me one example of a Linux or Windows running on a 16 way SMP box."
t ion/sysreqs/default.mspx
:-)" Smiley indeed.
I don't need to. An example was already posted by another before you even posted this question. http://www.sgi.com/products/servers/altix/4000/
Why did you ignore this example?
Here's the Windows 2003 spec. Up to 64-way: http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserver2003/evalua
Windows NT was SMP from the very beginning.
"It's been talked about how do we identify cpus. You would go with the external interface."
Of course I would. So would any other sane person. The instruction set defines what the processor does.
"If an external instruction set is deconstructed to lower level op codes is the cpu still an x86."
Yes it is, provided it's the CPU doing the deconstruction. Instruction decode is the first step of execution in any processor. Doing so doesn't somehow make the processor "not x86".
"Take a look at the P4 design docs, they talk about micro op codes as do most cpus that try to maintain backward compatability for their instruction set."
Yeah, so? Are you arguing that NetBurst is really a different processor masquerading as x86? It isn't. It was specifically designed to run x86 and nothing else.
Let's look at this another way. If a processor runs x86 code without emulation then it's x86. There are two processors that don't directly run x86 that are worth considering. Transmeta is the first (and they made more than one). Transmeta had emulation software that was loaded to run x86 and could theoretically run other instruction sets or even it's own internal one. Thing is that never happened. The other is Itanium. Itanium ran x86 only partially in hardware and required software emulation assistance. All other x86 processors execute x86 code natively starting with the first instruction coming out of reset. If that isn't x86 then I can't imagine what would satisfy you.
"...you might stop being so rude when you have a perceived cloak of anonimity to protect you."
I have no more a cloak than you do. I'm not posting as an AC and I'm not the only one hurling insults. Let's just say "I've now got my fingers crossed your not some big name CompuSci guy
"...since you started off by stating something completely false..."
I thought that was you.
"...claiming the number of channel id's was totally meaningless..."
actually that was someone else. you have yet to prove that the current pc architecture is starved for device IDs.
"And then there's your claim that making memory faster and adding more of it will solve everything."
Didn't say that. I said the trend would be faster and more.
"Do you really think RAM is going to replace permanent storage anytime soon?"
Nope.
"Intel is going to have to deal with I/O. This very simple fact seems to have completely escaped you."
Yep, I fully realize that, but just made that up in order to argue with a ridiculous position.
"If Intel had an IO solution here, they'd be crowing about that too. But the lack of their statements means their plans aren't far enough along; and the lack of it is glaring."
No, it's not. If users wanted more disk I/O they'd put more disk in their machines. Intel doesn't control that, but Intel does sit on industry groups, such as SATA, that define future I/O interfaces. That group, BTW, is one that I personally worked on at one time.
"Just because you can type "make" doesn't mean you're either a kernel or a systems expert."
Same to you. I've written device drivers for multiple OSes, been release manager for multiple Unix products, been lead achitect for two RAID controller products, and been a senior member of technical staff for a Fortune 100 computer manufacturer (where I was the companies lead patent holder for several years). That WOULD make me a systems expert to some. What are your qualifications?
"What you seem to have failed to realize is that you've made no technical statements to distinguish yourself positively in a technical light."
Perhaps not to a moron like you, but at least I don't show myself to be a know-nothing.
"So it's extremely clear what type of person I'm talking to."
We're talking?
"Which large scale SMP system does Linux & Win run on?"
:-)"
What? Are you kidding?
"...the current x86 chips are just x86 on the surface."
Bullshit. x86 is defined by its instruction set. In that respect, the G5 is only "PowerPC" on the surface, too.
"I'm not sure tenure counts for anything in computing..."
Then you are a fool.
"...but if it does you're pretty dumb claiming it anonymously..."
what?
"...I've now got my fingers crossed your not some big name CompuSci guy
what? You'd hate to argue with one of those?
"Those with money set the laws and only fools are ruled by any of those three."
Apparently you're still in school. Hopefully you'll understand computers when you grow up.
If you want to argue against Intel being the most dominant processor manufacturer, go right ahead. You are welcome to look stupid but I won't play.
"Why do you believe that given their past history that they will not go for marketing flash over true performance?"
Intel's designs were always intended for true performance. Netburst was simply a failure in that respect. Intel believed at the time that it would scale.
"The Pentium D and the Quad Core are both clear cases of trying to have bigger numbers instead of true innovation."
Bullshit. What is "true innovation"?
"The Core line is interesting and offers a real improvement but may also dead end like Netburst if they do not follow AMDs lead."
Yeah. You can bet Intel is following AMD's lead.
"It's pretty clear you don't have the slightest clue what you're talking about. Nor has that stopped you from forming an opinion, and posting it too. :)"
Plenty of that going around.
"Do you have any idea of the setup time for DMA, and then interrupt overhead involved for each tranaction? For one disk, it's not a lot. Start driving "a lot" of disks so that you saturate the bus, it adds up. These are cycles that steal away from your CPUs main processing capability. Now add 80 CPUs, all starved for IO. It's a total waste of resources."
Yeah, I do. What makes you think you know who you're talking to? This imaginary 80-core processor doesn't even exist yet, yet you claim to know that it is I/O bound. You are the idiot here.
"There's only so much that you can do in memory."
Yes, you can make it faster and add more of it.
"If Intel doesn't do something which can feed those CPU's constantly, you're going to end up with 79 space heaters, and 1 CPU. Given the crunch to conserve power, this clearly isn't feasible."
Perhaps you can lend your infinite expertise to Intel since you already know the achilles heal of their design. Processor cores that aren't doing anything aren't creating heat.
"Let me put it simply for you. Without a major redesign, Intel is simply wasting its money. That's why IO bandwidth is a serious issue here. Without it, they are just talking out their butts."
Thank you for talking so simply out your butt. It's a good thing we have real engineers in change of development.
"IBM mainframes have the same modern interfaces like any other platform."
So there's no difference outside the size. Computers such as those are differentiated by RAS more than they are by I/O capability. PCs *could* be built with lots of bus and memory bandwidth.
"The 64k devices that the grandparent quoted aren't necessarily physical devices."
So that number is totally meaningless. It's nothing more than a 16 bit index.
I never said that GPU's would get replaced, although dumb frame buffers are totally adequate for some applications. Not all computers need GPU's either so it would be stupid to integrate them as one of the cores in the main processor. Physics isn't something that many people need either.
"If a general-purpose CPU can handle your task, it will come out much cheaper. But there are still tasks where general-purpose CPUs just can't cut it."
Absolutely, and as time goes on fewer and fewer tasks can't be met.
"The only place that specialized hardware loses is in cost."
Let's see you run Word on specialized hardware.
"Why is it that you never hear of software graphics acceleration anymore?"
Actually I never heard of them. Software is what you have when you don't have hardware acceleration.
"And why not just use a second Celeron CPU instead of a graphics card?"
You could if you didn't want 3D.
"Think about all they had to add to x86? Heard of MMX, SSE, SSE2 etc?"
Yeah, I've heard of them. Better to add SIMD instructions to the CPU than to add a dedicated DSP. That would be the general purpose approach rather than the specific function approach. Thanks for proving my point.
"you're telling me that I'm going to need all 80 for desktop use?"
No, I never said that. Thanks for totally failing to understand. Enjoy your 80 specialized cores, no two of which are the same.
"Want to run an OS primarily designed for uniprocessing on a multi way architecture? Look at the issues Win&Lin have with SMP, limited to 16 processors I believe."
:-) Of course a nice message passing symbolic language might score big."
Neither Windows (NT+) nor Linux were "primarily designed for uniprocessing". Both platforms run on much larger than 16-way systems. Licensing issues are a different matter.
"So what will we have on these massive SMP architectures?"
Applications that won't use them for a while?
"Programming, at last we might be getting out from under VonNuman."
What does that mean? Are you saying you've "been under" "VonNuman"? I hope he's hot.
"Hell we might even get to run on stack based cpus with energy reclamation automated
If history teaches us anything, we should expect to continue running x86.
"But given then history of software we'll have a bunch of ignorant, loud mouth idiots running around telling everybody the one true way is Java with mutex and semaphores. PHBs will grab at the first thing that has enterpise written on it and is 'guaranteed'. Most programmers will code how they have always coded head down, ass up. The number of processors will double every two years and the speed of software will continue to halve in the same period."
Some of us have been around long enough to consider that new-fangled. Java is a lot newer that Unix is yet Linux is our saviour.
"Of course nobody will suggest that a staged conversion should take place. There will be all these reasons to throw everything away and start over. Because this time we'll get it right!"
Enjoy going bankrupt while getting it right. Those with the money set the rules.
My guess is that Intel understands this seeing how they are already planning integrated memory controllers in future products. Funny how people here think they understand processor design better than the most dominant processor design company in the world. Memory bandwidth is something they've been dealing with for some time now.
By today's standards those interfaces were slow. Today's machines don't have need for 64K different I/O devices, but if they did they would have them. I/O interface addressability is the LEAST of the problem with the architecture of today's PCs.
How many hard drives can be attached to a single disk controller in a PC? A whole lot. Do you need more than that? If so, how many disk drives do you need? How many ethernet ports? What other high bandwidth I/O is there? None of this is the issue.
Funny, I'd say specialized hardware always loses.
Adding dedicated hardware for common tasks is not unusual, but in the long run it's commonly replaced with software. General purpose computing expands to consume all tasks as it gets faster. The best use of available die size is another blazingly fast CPU core, not specialized logic for specialized tasks that most people will not use.
There's a reason for the "S" in "SMP". The job of programming them is much easier.
You've probably reached a point where your time is more valuable than the cost of a modest external hard drive. Backups are pretty cheap these days. A lot of my physical media is long since gone and my mp3 collection is all I worry about.
Certainly DRM exists for the interests of the content publishers/distributors and no end user benefits for it (at least directly). So far, no device imposes DRM on your unprotected content and I'd be surprised if that changed. I'd think any manufacturer who attempts that should be prepared for lawsuits.
That's a pretty disrespectful analogy even if you find it accurate. There were estimated 62 million lives lost in WWII. No need to trivialize that by comparing it to a technology competition.