IT may be alittle too far-fetched but the cell processor or it's successor can be a real GPU-killer.
May be we will live without 3D videocard in the near future and return of the software rendering.
The GPU have performance more then two order of magnitude of contemporary CPU, all due to highly vectorized and paralellized architecture. But if you look at the cell processor architecture you will see it's very similar to GPU. What cell is in fact is some kinde of generalization of GPU architectuire so it could run any kinde of code, not only "per-pixel/vertex", with both read and write dependancy (modern GPU can run only read-dependant shader code). More than that, cell architecture is very well suited for voxel-based rendering. So, not only we could possible be get rid of 3d cards, but voxel rendereds could outperform polygon-based rendereds again (he, he, good buy DirectX)
Striking military targets is not terrorist action.
That is not entirly correct. Striking military target is legitimate only if combatants wear uniform.
One question which was not addressed fully in the article was how do you compile/test programs for this thing.
The answer is OpenMP. OpenMP is mulithreading API wich can hide parallelization from the user almoste completly. It's embarassingly easy to use - only one line of code is enouth to parallelize a loop. All threads creation/synchronisation remain hidden from user. It's extremly efficient too - I was never able to achime the same level of performance if duing multithreading myself.
Article mentioning the core running at 4.6 GHz.
I don't belive it. The Intel using every trick in the book to push up frequency, even compromising overall performance, but unable to push above 4 Ghz. Cell seems have as complex architecture as P and multiple cores on the chip and claim 4.7 Ghz ?
Well, being Isreali I can tell you that not only amount of weapon on hands of the population is huge, but a lot of weapon is carried on the streets. While handguns are common, a lot of assult rifles carried by soldiers returning home for weekend/vacations, some of them in civilian clothes You can usually see at least couple of rifles in near vicinty at any moment on the busy street. It's funny to see a short girl with whos M-16 so long for her that it scratching the ground. And announcment on the bus station - "The person who forgot his rifle in the bus please return for it now !" However this amount of weapon causing also some harm - murders in rage and suicids.
Considering that the Windows platform has never had the ability to parallel compute in the past, it leaves great potential to the company's operating system development.
That is not entirely correct. An MPI is working for windows and allow to build really working windows cluster. Me and another person made such a cluster several years ago, it was more difficalt then Linux cluster, but it was working. (Why we did it - we were building cluster for 3d rendering and had to use DirectX API)
2004 MN4 upgraded again , now to Torino 1, years of danger 2030-2103
nasa risk page
And there is two other of Torino 1, but not in my lifetime:
2004 VD17 impact 2062-2104
1997 XR2 impact 2101
The same processor powering cell phone, PDA, gaming handhel device, gaming console and general porpose workstation can be a way out of porting-emulators hell which is handheld development is for now. However there will be different OS for handhelds still probably - for examle Nokia unlikely drop Symbian in favor of Linux...
I have read that Nokia considering to port mozilla browser to Symbian, as possible alternative to Opera. However no major Symbian players (Nokia, SE, Symbian etc) would do anything for synching with Thunderbird or Sunbird - user segment too small for them, and they probaly lack competence for it. Nokia can't even produce a good PC suit as it is - existing is unstable and have very limited functionality. May be some 3d party developer would make a sync client for thunderbird, but it will not be free/open sourced probably - there is no strong open source movment in Symbian for now...
Cell Processor-Based Workstation Prototype
The companies expect that a one rack Cell processor-based workstation will reach a performance of 16 teraflops or trillions of floating point calculations per second.
Cell Processor Unveiled
IBM, Sony Corporation, and Toshiba Corporation today unveiled for the first time some of the key concepts of the highly-anticipated advanced microprocessor, code-named Cell, they are jointly developing for next-generation computing applications, as well as digital consumer electronics.
Specifically, the companies confirmed that Cell is a multicore chip comprising a 64-bit Power processor core and multiple synergistic processor cores capable of massive floating point processing. Cell is optimized for compute-intensive workloads and broadband rich media applications, including computer entertainment, movies and other forms of digital content.
Other highlights of the Cell processor design include:
-- Multi-thread, multicore architecture.
-- Supports multiple operating systems at the same time.
-- Substantial bus bandwidth to/from main memory, as well as companion chips.
-- Flexible on-chip I/O (input/output) interface.
-- Real-time resource management system for real-time applications.
-- On-chip hardware in support of security system for intellectual property protection.
-- Implemented in 90 nanometer (nm) silicon-on-insulator (SOI) technology.
Additionally, Cell uses custom circuit design to increase overall performance, while supporting precise processor clock control to enable power savings.
IBM, Sony Group and Toshiba will disclose more details about Cell in four technical papers scheduled for presentation at the International Solid State Circuits Conference.
"Less than four years ago, we embarked on an ambitious collaborative effort with Sony Group and Toshiba to create a highly-integrated microprocessor designed to overcome imminent transistor scaling, power and performance limitations in conventional technologies," said Dr. John E. Kelly III, senior vice president, IBM. "Today, we're revealing just a sampling of what we believe makes the innovative Cell processor a premiere open platform for next-generation computing and entertainment products."
"Massive and rich content, like multi-channel HD broadcasting programs as well as mega-pixel digital still/movie images captured by high-resolution CCD/CMOS imagers, require huge amount of media processing in real-time. In the future, all forms of digital content will be converged and fused onto the broadband network, and will start to explode," said Ken Kutaragi, executive deputy president and COO, Sony Corporation, and president and Group CEO, Sony Computer Entertainment Inc. "To access and/or browse sea of content freely in real-time, more sophisticated GUI within the 3D world will become the 'key' in the future. Current PC architecture is nearing its limits, in both processing power and bus bandwidth, for handling such rich applications."
"The progressive breakdown of barriers between personal computers and digital consumer electronics requires dramatic enhancements in the capabilities and performance of consumer electronics. The Cell processor meets these requirements with a multi-processor architecture/design and a structure able to support high-level media processing. Development of this unsurpassed, high-performance processor is well under way, carried forward by dedicated teamwork and state-of-the-art expertise from Toshiba, Sony Group and IBM," said Mr. Masashi Muromachi, Corporate Vice President of Toshiba Corporation and President & CEO of Toshiba's Semiconductor Company. "Today's announcement shows the substantial progress that has been made in this joint program. Cell will substantially enhance the performance of broadband-empowered consumer applications, raise the user-friendliness of services realized through these applications, and facilitate the use of information-rich media and comm
She better learn her history
on
A New Elena Story
·
· Score: 3, Informative
About Makhno army:
"The anarchists on the photo, they kept in terror all this region" (Makhno in the center)
It was other way around. Makhno anarhist army was composed of local peasants and small core of anarchists. Makhno was hugely pouplar among the locals, mostly because he defended them again devastating communists "food tax". Later soviet propaganda tried to make a common bandit out of Mahno, but havn't succeded much.
I've found Google Scholar disappointing. It shows articles headers disregarding if they are available for free or not. Free articles are lost among payed content like portal.acm.org. If I have time and money to pay for article I don't need google. For free articles available on the web common Google is of more use then Google Scholar.
It looks like they use technique commonly used in the modern 3D videocards - full-screen antialiasing based on the multisampling (callsed also supersampling). The idea is that the picture produced in the render buffer with higher resolution , and after that each screen pixel produced as an averege of the several render buffer pixels.
Here is auther argument why programmers will mostly extinct:
# he advent of the Codeless Development (Sun Java(TM) Studio Creator etc)
Well thouse tools will not work without the human. Call it "codeless" but it is still the human who manufacture end product. I don't see any reason why he shoudn't be called programmer.
# The emergence of the software factory (Microsoft)
And who works on those factories ?
# Fewer students enrolled in computer science courses
SO there was some overproduction of programmers during high-tech bubble. So what ? Engineers are hardly extinct after the Great Depression.
Genetic algorithm, genetic programming
To work with genetic algorithms is a lot of fun. They really produce some non-trivial solutions sometime. But for now it's more area for scientific research the for industrial application. And the genetic programming is an oreder of magnitude more difficalt then other genetic algorithm.
It will take dozens of years before GA/GP will make noticable competition to human programmer.
Because they are using China proxies. To cut China from the internet just is not realistic. It's the biggest potential market for the rest of the world. And to force China to cut North Korea is not realistic either.
David Wheeler estimated only development cost. But for end-user products the brand itself usually worth more than development cost. How much Linux brand worth ? If we suppose that Linux account for 5% desktop (not sure how to add desktops, servers and smartphones) that mean Linux brand worth at least 5% of windows. So I'd say Linux brand is worth several billions (below 10 billions).
Well, the blogs don't differ much from other web content. For example hardware review sites. There are trustworthy ones, there are not, and there are some in between. So the same with blogs. Just another format. Trustworthy/informative gane acceptance (with some luck) other (hopefully) wither away. Nothing new here really.
Just my opinion.
I think its safe to say now that its the only cheap way to space.
Not exactly. There is an alternative solution, somehow similar to elevator - space tethers - rotovators, sky hooks - basically a huge rotating sling on the orbit, whose rotation syncronized with earth rotation, so it can pick low velocity spacecraft in the atmosphere and throw it into ornit. It seems more attainable then elevator...
I mean blurb telling that you can only download specific file formats, which obviously don't include exe. If it would be possile to run third party applications on it it would be a solid gaming platform...
Slashdot Mirror
Well, now Microsoft have something to think about in reagrd it's pushing for EU software patent law....
I'd prefer produce bug-free code unconsciously. Or at least compile to assembler.
IT may be alittle too far-fetched but the cell processor or it's successor can be a real GPU-killer. May be we will live without 3D videocard in the near future and return of the software rendering. The GPU have performance more then two order of magnitude of contemporary CPU, all due to highly vectorized and paralellized architecture. But if you look at the cell processor architecture you will see it's very similar to GPU. What cell is in fact is some kinde of generalization of GPU architectuire so it could run any kinde of code, not only "per-pixel/vertex", with both read and write dependancy (modern GPU can run only read-dependant shader code). More than that, cell architecture is very well suited for voxel-based rendering. So, not only we could possible be get rid of 3d cards, but voxel rendereds could outperform polygon-based rendereds again (he, he, good buy DirectX)
Striking military targets is not terrorist action. That is not entirly correct. Striking military target is legitimate only if combatants wear uniform.
One question which was not addressed fully in the article was how do you compile/test programs for this thing. The answer is OpenMP. OpenMP is mulithreading API wich can hide parallelization from the user almoste completly. It's embarassingly easy to use - only one line of code is enouth to parallelize a loop. All threads creation/synchronisation remain hidden from user. It's extremly efficient too - I was never able to achime the same level of performance if duing multithreading myself.
Article mentioning the core running at 4.6 GHz. I don't belive it. The Intel using every trick in the book to push up frequency, even compromising overall performance, but unable to push above 4 Ghz. Cell seems have as complex architecture as P and multiple cores on the chip and claim 4.7 Ghz ?
Well, being Isreali I can tell you that not only amount of weapon on hands of the population is huge, but a lot of weapon is carried on the streets. While handguns are common, a lot of assult rifles carried by soldiers returning home for weekend/vacations, some of them in civilian clothes You can usually see at least couple of rifles in near vicinty at any moment on the busy street. It's funny to see a short girl with whos M-16 so long for her that it scratching the ground. And announcment on the bus station - "The person who forgot his rifle in the bus please return for it now !" However this amount of weapon causing also some harm - murders in rage and suicids.
Considering that the Windows platform has never had the ability to parallel compute in the past, it leaves great potential to the company's operating system development. That is not entirely correct. An MPI is working for windows and allow to build really working windows cluster. Me and another person made such a cluster several years ago, it was more difficalt then Linux cluster, but it was working. (Why we did it - we were building cluster for 3d rendering and had to use DirectX API)
2004 MN4 upgraded again , now to Torino 1, years of danger 2030-2103
nasa risk page And there is two other of Torino 1, but not in my lifetime:
2004 VD17 impact 2062-2104
1997 XR2 impact 2101
It seems the updated measerments striked it out from the list. Torino 0, cumulative probability 1.8e-5
The same processor powering cell phone, PDA, gaming handhel device, gaming console and general porpose workstation can be a way out of porting-emulators hell which is handheld development is for now. However there will be different OS for handhelds still probably - for examle Nokia unlikely drop Symbian in favor of Linux...
I have read that Nokia considering to port mozilla browser to Symbian, as possible alternative to Opera. However no major Symbian players (Nokia, SE, Symbian etc) would do anything for synching with Thunderbird or Sunbird - user segment too small for them, and they probaly lack competence for it. Nokia can't even produce a good PC suit as it is - existing is unstable and have very limited functionality. May be some 3d party developer would make a sync client for thunderbird, but it will not be free/open sourced probably - there is no strong open source movment in Symbian for now...
Cell Processor-Based Workstation Prototype
The companies expect that a one rack Cell processor-based workstation will reach a performance of 16 teraflops or trillions of floating point calculations per second.
Cell Processor Unveiled
IBM, Sony Corporation, and Toshiba Corporation today unveiled for the first time some of the key concepts of the highly-anticipated advanced microprocessor, code-named Cell, they are jointly developing for next-generation computing applications, as well as digital consumer electronics.
Specifically, the companies confirmed that Cell is a multicore chip comprising a 64-bit Power processor core and multiple synergistic processor cores capable of massive floating point processing. Cell is optimized for compute-intensive workloads and broadband rich media applications, including computer entertainment, movies and other forms of digital content.
Other highlights of the Cell processor design include: -- Multi-thread, multicore architecture. -- Supports multiple operating systems at the same time. -- Substantial bus bandwidth to/from main memory, as well as companion chips. -- Flexible on-chip I/O (input/output) interface. -- Real-time resource management system for real-time applications. -- On-chip hardware in support of security system for intellectual property protection. -- Implemented in 90 nanometer (nm) silicon-on-insulator (SOI) technology. Additionally, Cell uses custom circuit design to increase overall performance, while supporting precise processor clock control to enable power savings.
IBM, Sony Group and Toshiba will disclose more details about Cell in four technical papers scheduled for presentation at the International Solid State Circuits Conference. "Less than four years ago, we embarked on an ambitious collaborative effort with Sony Group and Toshiba to create a highly-integrated microprocessor designed to overcome imminent transistor scaling, power and performance limitations in conventional technologies," said Dr. John E. Kelly III, senior vice president, IBM. "Today, we're revealing just a sampling of what we believe makes the innovative Cell processor a premiere open platform for next-generation computing and entertainment products." "Massive and rich content, like multi-channel HD broadcasting programs as well as mega-pixel digital still/movie images captured by high-resolution CCD/CMOS imagers, require huge amount of media processing in real-time. In the future, all forms of digital content will be converged and fused onto the broadband network, and will start to explode," said Ken Kutaragi, executive deputy president and COO, Sony Corporation, and president and Group CEO, Sony Computer Entertainment Inc. "To access and/or browse sea of content freely in real-time, more sophisticated GUI within the 3D world will become the 'key' in the future. Current PC architecture is nearing its limits, in both processing power and bus bandwidth, for handling such rich applications." "The progressive breakdown of barriers between personal computers and digital consumer electronics requires dramatic enhancements in the capabilities and performance of consumer electronics. The Cell processor meets these requirements with a multi-processor architecture/design and a structure able to support high-level media processing. Development of this unsurpassed, high-performance processor is well under way, carried forward by dedicated teamwork and state-of-the-art expertise from Toshiba, Sony Group and IBM," said Mr. Masashi Muromachi, Corporate Vice President of Toshiba Corporation and President & CEO of Toshiba's Semiconductor Company. "Today's announcement shows the substantial progress that has been made in this joint program. Cell will substantially enhance the performance of broadband-empowered consumer applications, raise the user-friendliness of services realized through these applications, and facilitate the use of information-rich media and comm
May be with his help Nokia will be able to break a line of ugly smartphones and N-Gage 2 will have sane design from start...
Perhaps if we convinced there was oil on the moon there would be more intrest
While there is no oil on the Moon there is some Helium-3 in the Moon regolith, which can make Moon a stepping stone for other, more helium-3 reach sources (gas giants)
About Makhno army:
"The anarchists on the photo, they kept in terror all this region" (Makhno in the center) It was other way around. Makhno anarhist army was composed of local peasants and small core of anarchists. Makhno was hugely pouplar among the locals, mostly because he defended them again devastating communists "food tax". Later soviet propaganda tried to make a common bandit out of Mahno, but havn't succeded much.
I've found Google Scholar disappointing. It shows articles headers disregarding if they are available for free or not. Free articles are lost among payed content like portal.acm.org. If I have time and money to pay for article I don't need google. For free articles available on the web common Google is of more use then Google Scholar.
It looks like they use technique commonly used in the modern 3D videocards - full-screen antialiasing based on the multisampling (callsed also supersampling). The idea is that the picture produced in the render buffer with higher resolution , and after that each screen pixel produced as an averege of the several render buffer pixels.
Here is auther argument why programmers will mostly extinct:
# he advent of the Codeless Development (Sun Java(TM) Studio Creator etc) Well thouse tools will not work without the human. Call it "codeless" but it is still the human who manufacture end product. I don't see any reason why he shoudn't be called programmer.
# The emergence of the software factory (Microsoft) And who works on those factories ?
# Fewer students enrolled in computer science courses SO there was some overproduction of programmers during high-tech bubble. So what ? Engineers are hardly extinct after the Great Depression.
Genetic algorithm, genetic programming To work with genetic algorithms is a lot of fun. They really produce some non-trivial solutions sometime. But for now it's more area for scientific research the for industrial application. And the genetic programming is an oreder of magnitude more difficalt then other genetic algorithm. It will take dozens of years before GA/GP will make noticable competition to human programmer.
Because they are using China proxies. To cut China from the internet just is not realistic. It's the biggest potential market for the rest of the world. And to force China to cut North Korea is not realistic either.
David Wheeler estimated only development cost. But for end-user products the brand itself usually worth more than development cost. How much Linux brand worth ? If we suppose that Linux account for 5% desktop (not sure how to add desktops, servers and smartphones) that mean Linux brand worth at least 5% of windows. So I'd say Linux brand is worth several billions (below 10 billions).
Well, the blogs don't differ much from other web content. For example hardware review sites. There are trustworthy ones, there are not, and there are some in between. So the same with blogs. Just another format. Trustworthy/informative gane acceptance (with some luck) other (hopefully) wither away. Nothing new here really. Just my opinion.
Just to remind that every small progress in the carbon nanotubes helpful for Space Elevator or Tether
I think its safe to say now that its the only cheap way to space. Not exactly. There is an alternative solution, somehow similar to elevator - space tethers - rotovators, sky hooks - basically a huge rotating sling on the orbit, whose rotation syncronized with earth rotation, so it can pick low velocity spacecraft in the atmosphere and throw it into ornit. It seems more attainable then elevator...
I mean blurb telling that you can only download specific file formats, which obviously don't include exe. If it would be possile to run third party applications on it it would be a solid gaming platform...