What you've said is very true. However, there are a lot of Slashdotters who knows about Microsoft's business tactics and how they are detrimental to innovation, but they turn around and buy an XBox and Halo. They then go on to proclaim Microsoft's entry into the console market is a good thing.
When Halo 1 and Halo 2 was released, and a story was posted on Slashdot, I was amazed at how many readers came out to provide their support for a company they usually dislike.
its very rare for a system to be able to be completely parallelised.
Not really. Current gaming computers are usually bogged down while trying to display a graphical-intense game. Home electronics are composed of video and audio. Much of 2D and 3D visualization and audio are "embarrassing parallel problems". Take the video encoding/decoding example from the article, you don't need to parallelize a video frame in terms of each pixel elements, instead, one opts to parallelize each video encoding process that doesn't have "critical sections". Not only can types of procedures be parallelized, a lot of for loops can also be unwound so that they, too, can be split up onto multiple processors.
There is a _lot_ of revolutionary ideas behind the Cell processor. As shown in the write-up, the Cell takes a drastic change from the conventional arithmetic-unit/cache setup. Additionally, the way the Cell can pipeline parallelizable problems amongst the 8 processing units within itself is a revolution of chip design already. Take, for example, the video encoding/decoding example shown in the write-up, whereas an an Intel chip will require processing of each procedure in sequence, the Cell can separate each procedure, pipeline the process, and produce results in a fraction of the time it takes an Intel chip. Since much of our processing power in home electronics goes into Video, Audio and 3D Visualization (all of which are highly parallelizable), being able to separate tasks onto separate processing units dramatically increases the speed of computation.
Add to the fact that you can also pipeline processes amongst Cells within one piece of electronic, or spread the problems to multitude of other home electronics, makes the design a much different type of processor than the everyday Intel and AMD. The way to "upgrade" the Cell is also revolutionary, as buying another piece of electronics will increase the processing power of your household.
You can tell what the real-world performance of an unreleased chip is going to be, just by looking at a simple top-level diagram?
So, instead of providing reasons why my claims are false, you go on to question valid points with sarcasm without providing a single bit of evidence to support your claim? I am not the one not talking out of my mouth.
The write-up is not PR. It is written by someone who figured out the architecture from a patent. Tell me, what processor on the market today has a main processor and 8 arithmetic units attached in a parallel fahsion. In a home system, most computing power goes into audio, and 2D and 3D visualization, much of which are parallelizable. Tell me which current Intel and AMD processor has the capability of pipelining a video encoding/decoding the same way that Cell does. Tell me which Intel and AMD processor today can produce results for as many vector problems as the Cell can.
was the ps2 the supercomputer it was said to be...?
I don't remember Sony making any big statements about the Emotion Engine being a supercomputer. What I do remember, is that when they released the clock speed of their processor, people knew the relative power of the PS2. From what I see of the Cell architecture, I can guarantee that the Cell is much more powerful than any AMD and Intel processors.
It seems like you didn't read much into the technical aspect of the Cell architecture presented in the long write-up. From just looking at a simple top-level diagram of the Cell architecture, it is clearly shown that the Cell is much more powerful than any other processors currently available. A Cell contains a Processor Unit with 8 additional Processor Units, each with its own registers. The architecture is also a distributed computing network capable of splitting tasks and computations over a wide variety of home electronics. Each Cell product you buy, you are increasing your processing power of your household. In conclusion, yes, it would smoke a x86 counterpart.
But that is like saying if a shoddy farm estate seller is selling a farm that also grows corn, you would purchase that farm. What you didn't take into consideration, is that even though that farm can indeed grow corn, it is still full of gopher holes and other infestations.
Korea is not the country with the mecha-craze. It is Japan.
The building of a giant robot is not new. Many years ago, this giant robot was already being developed in Japan. Although there is no actual functionality with this Gundam, but I doubt that NMX04-1A can be made to be autonomous any time soon.
Now either Microsoft attempts to get their act together or everyone (myself included) will just go for Firefox.
Everyone did. My site is as far from a tech-oriented site, and from the past few months of observation, Firefox has increase from ~9% of total visitor browser usage to the current 25+%.
Perhaps what is really needed is for south east asia to develop an OS based on their written and syntactic paradigms, rather that a latin based left to right, 26 letters, scheme.
I don't think this idea is feasible. There are a few problems associated with your suggestion and I doubt it would improve the situation of Open Source. Firstly, programming in an Asian language would be a pain. Secondly, you can't escape Latin characters in a program. Think of a For loop. You will need to replace a single letter 'i' with an Asian character, which usually takes more than one keystroke. Finally, many people in Asian countries has learned how to program using Latin character sets, there is no reason to change that now. I doubt programmers there will be happy when the standards change, and their efficiency at programming drop as they need to learn the new syntacs.
It is a good step forward in the light bulb industry. The cost might be high right now, but the prices should fall as the technology becomes more mature. Hopefully, other companies will see the market in LED lights and start providing competition to drive the prices down.
4. One to climb the ladder and runs out of breath after the first step. Another to climb the ladder and runs out of breath half way. Another to climb to the top and have an asthma attack and can no longer function. And finally one that can climb to the top and change the light bulb.
An anime series called Full Metal Alchemist (Alternate) deals with Alchemists trying to revive humans. Although the Chimeras presented in the anime seems far-fetched, I think it raises a lot of ethical issues that might pertain to the real scientific research into playing God.
Slashdot Mirror
So, where was the appropriate starting tag for your ending /smartass tag, Markup Nazi?
"Certainly you can never underestimate children out there who can easily take advantage of the big flaws in our code."
The difference is, _everyone_ wants their browser to be integrated with the OS!
What you've said is very true. However, there are a lot of Slashdotters who knows about Microsoft's business tactics and how they are detrimental to innovation, but they turn around and buy an XBox and Halo. They then go on to proclaim Microsoft's entry into the console market is a good thing.
When Halo 1 and Halo 2 was released, and a story was posted on Slashdot, I was amazed at how many readers came out to provide their support for a company they usually dislike.
its very rare for a system to be able to be completely parallelised.
Not really. Current gaming computers are usually bogged down while trying to display a graphical-intense game. Home electronics are composed of video and audio. Much of 2D and 3D visualization and audio are "embarrassing parallel problems". Take the video encoding/decoding example from the article, you don't need to parallelize a video frame in terms of each pixel elements, instead, one opts to parallelize each video encoding process that doesn't have "critical sections". Not only can types of procedures be parallelized, a lot of for loops can also be unwound so that they, too, can be split up onto multiple processors.
There's nothing revolutionary here
There is a _lot_ of revolutionary ideas behind the Cell processor. As shown in the write-up, the Cell takes a drastic change from the conventional arithmetic-unit/cache setup. Additionally, the way the Cell can pipeline parallelizable problems amongst the 8 processing units within itself is a revolution of chip design already. Take, for example, the video encoding/decoding example shown in the write-up, whereas an an Intel chip will require processing of each procedure in sequence, the Cell can separate each procedure, pipeline the process, and produce results in a fraction of the time it takes an Intel chip. Since much of our processing power in home electronics goes into Video, Audio and 3D Visualization (all of which are highly parallelizable), being able to separate tasks onto separate processing units dramatically increases the speed of computation.
Add to the fact that you can also pipeline processes amongst Cells within one piece of electronic, or spread the problems to multitude of other home electronics, makes the design a much different type of processor than the everyday Intel and AMD. The way to "upgrade" the Cell is also revolutionary, as buying another piece of electronics will increase the processing power of your household.
You can tell what the real-world performance of an unreleased chip is going to be, just by looking at a simple top-level diagram?
So, instead of providing reasons why my claims are false, you go on to question valid points with sarcasm without providing a single bit of evidence to support your claim? I am not the one not talking out of my mouth.
The write-up is not PR. It is written by someone who figured out the architecture from a patent. Tell me, what processor on the market today has a main processor and 8 arithmetic units attached in a parallel fahsion. In a home system, most computing power goes into audio, and 2D and 3D visualization, much of which are parallelizable. Tell me which current Intel and AMD processor has the capability of pipelining a video encoding/decoding the same way that Cell does. Tell me which Intel and AMD processor today can produce results for as many vector problems as the Cell can.
was the ps2 the supercomputer it was said to be...?
I don't remember Sony making any big statements about the Emotion Engine being a supercomputer. What I do remember, is that when they released the clock speed of their processor, people knew the relative power of the PS2. From what I see of the Cell architecture, I can guarantee that the Cell is much more powerful than any AMD and Intel processors.
It seems like you didn't read much into the technical aspect of the Cell architecture presented in the long write-up. From just looking at a simple top-level diagram of the Cell architecture, it is clearly shown that the Cell is much more powerful than any other processors currently available. A Cell contains a Processor Unit with 8 additional Processor Units, each with its own registers. The architecture is also a distributed computing network capable of splitting tasks and computations over a wide variety of home electronics. Each Cell product you buy, you are increasing your processing power of your household. In conclusion, yes, it would smoke a x86 counterpart.
And it seems that a large portion owns XBoxes and cuddle with the box of Halo at night.
But that is like saying if a shoddy farm estate seller is selling a farm that also grows corn, you would purchase that farm. What you didn't take into consideration, is that even though that farm can indeed grow corn, it is still full of gopher holes and other infestations.
Korea is not the country with the mecha-craze. It is Japan. The building of a giant robot is not new. Many years ago, this giant robot was already being developed in Japan. Although there is no actual functionality with this Gundam, but I doubt that NMX04-1A can be made to be autonomous any time soon.
I, for one, welcome the robot overlords whom can be taken apart by babies and children.
Now either Microsoft attempts to get their act together or everyone (myself included) will just go for Firefox.
Everyone did. My site is as far from a tech-oriented site, and from the past few months of observation, Firefox has increase from ~9% of total visitor browser usage to the current 25+%.
Jet Li and I fought a battle in our minds. I won.
Yes, you can get that in Korea along with your StarCraft degree. You can become a professional gamer -- an e-athelete.
Perhaps what is really needed is for south east asia to develop an OS based on their written and syntactic paradigms, rather that a latin based left to right, 26 letters, scheme. I don't think this idea is feasible. There are a few problems associated with your suggestion and I doubt it would improve the situation of Open Source. Firstly, programming in an Asian language would be a pain. Secondly, you can't escape Latin characters in a program. Think of a For loop. You will need to replace a single letter 'i' with an Asian character, which usually takes more than one keystroke. Finally, many people in Asian countries has learned how to program using Latin character sets, there is no reason to change that now. I doubt programmers there will be happy when the standards change, and their efficiency at programming drop as they need to learn the new syntacs.
Ask Darl.
Someone post a +5 Informative on the website's password, plz. kthx
It is a good step forward in the light bulb industry. The cost might be high right now, but the prices should fall as the technology becomes more mature. Hopefully, other companies will see the market in LED lights and start providing competition to drive the prices down.
4. One to climb the ladder and runs out of breath after the first step. Another to climb the ladder and runs out of breath half way. Another to climb to the top and have an asthma attack and can no longer function. And finally one that can climb to the top and change the light bulb.
Because GIMP is used for developing graphics?
An anime series called Full Metal Alchemist (Alternate) deals with Alchemists trying to revive humans. Although the Chimeras presented in the anime seems far-fetched, I think it raises a lot of ethical issues that might pertain to the real scientific research into playing God.
That is a good idea. Except 99.9% of the Slashdot population cannot walk 5 steps without running out of breath, let alone go through basic training.
All your nerd-culture reference are belong to us.
I think he is naked, too.