"India has 14 official languages. Hindi is widely used but is not the native language of many Indians and is not even related to the languages spoken in South India.
14?? Last I checked India had 18 official languages.
All the comments so far have mentioned that Java for games will never take off because Java is slow. Yes Java is slow because it is interpreted by a JVM that runs on top of the native platform. But what if Sun could convince console makers to embed a MAJC-like chip in their boxes? Sun already has the technology -- check out the specifications of the MAJC architecture embedded into their latest framebuffers (XVR-100).
"Itanium has a 10-stage pipeline, which is respectable but not impressive by today's standards. "
Does this guy have any idea of what he's talking about? Since when did having a 20 stage pipeline become more impressive than somthing with 10? Hell, I can design a processor with a 100 stage pipeline that does nothing. Yes, thats right nothing -- just wire delays (the Pentium4 has 2 pipe stages devoted to wire delays just to get it clocked at 2+ GHz). Ultimately what matters is the performance of the CPU (and memory subsystem), clock speed, pipe depth etc. don't matter very much. In fact, if you can deliver higher performance with a smaller pipeline depth, its a much better design.
I have been in the academia for quite some time, and in my experience whether a project is based on public vs. private funds is not always clear. Most of the projects I have been invloved with fall in the grey area in between.
For example, a particular project was based on funds from both the NSF (public) and a private company (approx. equal contributions from both). So what happens here -- do I release half of my work?
While I'm all for open source, free IP etc. the principle that public funds => open source cannot be easily applied. In my opinion, the scientific principles / protocols / algorithms should be made public, but IMHO implementation should not be covered by this.
C'mon.. I am sure student work is involved (code or
otherwise). Seriously, how many parofessors/staff do you think actually "write" code? More often than not, it some over-worked, under-paid grad student who does the work (though increasingly undergrads are also making serious contributions).
BTW, what difference does it make if student code is invloved or not? At most universities the I.P. belongs to the university, not to the student/professor.
I worked at a lab where we used GPIB boards (from National Instruments) to do instrumentation/control type of work. NI cards tend to be a little pricey, I am sure you can find cheaper alternatives. You can use a GPIB board with Labview or some such software that gives you an oscilloscope-like display.
In fact, there was an
article in Linux Journal about using these cards with Linux.
Fortune 100 companies and big megaliths with thousands of employees. It is fairly safe to label these employees as technically illiterate.
What do you mean by "technically illiterate"? . How many people do you think really need to know what OS they run as long as they can get their job done easily? As has often been said - "Its all in the applications baby!"
I work at a large company just outside the Fortune 100 list - every single person in my company has a Unix desktop. From the security guy, to the HR admin, to the sales guy, to the engineer, upto the CEO - everyone! With a little training, one need not have to go "Help! I can't find the "Start" button on my desktop!" People are perfectly happy opening an xterm and typing "soffice&" or "netscape&".
I don't see how buying Alpha technology would have helped - Alpha's were never aimed at low power markets. In fact, Alpha's high performance designs made them power hungry monsters - not exactly what you want on your laptop. Not unless you can't find anything else to make an omelet on:)
Absolutely correct. I was looking at the code in question a few days ago, and as far as I can tell, the verilog description is just a little more than an instruction set simulator.
Even if you can synthesize the design on an FPGA, you will probably not be able to match commercial ARM designs in terms of performance and power consumption (which is what ultimately matters in embedded designs).
14?? Last I checked India had 18 official languages.
And asked for his opinion on the new Japanese supercomputer, Bill Gates replied "640 nodes ought to be enough for everybody".
All the comments so far have mentioned that Java for games will never take off because Java is slow. Yes Java is slow because it is interpreted by a JVM that runs on top of the native platform. But what if Sun could convince console makers to embed a MAJC-like chip in their boxes? Sun already has the technology -- check out the specifications of the MAJC architecture embedded into their latest framebuffers (XVR-100).
>> Now, I know I may be speaking to the wrong crowd here (who in slashdot actually COOKS stuff???)
Ask the guy who `cooked` his Palm Pilot!
For example, a particular project was based on funds from both the NSF (public) and a private company (approx. equal contributions from both). So what happens here -- do I release half of my work?
While I'm all for open source, free IP etc. the principle that public funds => open source cannot be easily applied. In my opinion, the scientific principles / protocols / algorithms should be made public, but IMHO implementation should not be covered by this.
Just my $0.02 worth.
BTW, what difference does it make if student code is invloved or not? At most universities the I.P. belongs to the university, not to the student/professor.
Will it be backwards compatible with all existing MS code? And what about compatibility with Nimda, Sircam and other code in that genre?
In fact, there was an article in Linux Journal about using these cards with Linux.
Fortune 100 companies and big megaliths with thousands of employees. It is fairly safe to label these employees as technically illiterate.
What do you mean by "technically illiterate"? . How many people do you think really need to know what OS they run as long as they can get their job done easily? As has often been said - "Its all in the applications baby!"
I work at a large company just outside the Fortune 100 list - every single person in my company has a Unix desktop. From the security guy, to the HR admin, to the sales guy, to the engineer, upto the CEO - everyone! With a little training, one need not have to go "Help! I can't find the "Start" button on my desktop!" People are perfectly happy opening an xterm and typing "soffice&" or "netscape&".
I don't see how buying Alpha technology would have helped - Alpha's were never aimed at low power markets. In fact, Alpha's high performance designs made them power hungry monsters - not exactly what you want on your laptop. Not unless you can't find anything else to make an omelet on :)
Absolutely correct. I was looking at the code in question a few days ago, and as far as I can tell, the verilog description is just a little more than an instruction set simulator.
:)
Even if you can synthesize the design on an FPGA, you will probably not be able to match commercial ARM designs in terms of performance and power consumption (which is what ultimately matters in embedded designs).
Yes I am a hardware engineer