Godson's use in PCs has been held back by the fact that it is based on a MIPS core, as opposed to the x86 design used by Intel and AMD. To run Windows it has to use translation software to achieve x86-compatibility, and the Godson loses a lot of its native MIPS power in the process.
The Godson 3 adds new instructions that speed the x86-to-MIPS translation by a factor of 10, Xu said. "Our goal is to eventually reach 80 percent of the native MIPS performance," he said. "Right now we are at 40 percent, so we have a long way to go."
So it's not going to be quick, a 1Ghz Godson running x86 code through software translation will currently perform like a say P3 at 400-800Mhz.
I think they've got a MIPS64 core and plan to use Transmeta style translation to translate x86 to MIPS64 code, the extra instructions are there to make the mapping simple. The code actually executed in the pipeline will still be MIPS.
Both the four- and eight-core versions of the Godson-3 are implemented at 65 nm, with clock speed of 1GHz. The design features a distributed, scalable architecture with reconfigurable CPU core and L2 cache. The devices are designed for low power consumption - the four-core draws 10w while the eight -core draws 20w, according to Xu's presentation. The designs utilize MIPS64 cores with more than 200 additional instructions for X86 binary translation and media acceleration.
Problem is it's unlicensed, so they would most likely be sued for patent infringement if they sell it outside China.
In December 2003, Advanced Micro Devices and BLX IC Design announced a relationship and opened the AMD/BLX Computing Client Development Center in Beijing. BLX IC Design is creating reference designs for thin clients and other computing products using AMD and BLX IC Design processors. The first two products are thin clients powered by AMDâ(TM)s MIPS32 - compatible Alchemy Au1500 processor and BLX IC Design's Godson-1. The creators of the Godson-1 say its architecture is "MIPS-like" - a description that annoys MIPS Technologies, which doesnâ(TM)t authorize the Godson architecture or license any intellectual property to ICT or BLX IC Design. AMD, which is a MIPS licensee, says it encourages BLX IC Design and MIPS to resolve their licensing issues.
Lexra tried to sell unlicensed MIPS clones and was effectively shutdown by lawsuits. As this Lexra guy puts it -
It has been interesting to watch as the Chinese company, BLX, has made and sold powerful processors in China that execute MIPS-based instruction sets. BLX is legally and morally clear of violating MIPS Technologies' patents. BLX has chosen not to pay anything to MIPS Technologies while a host of American companies with their own powerful MIPS instruction set processors pay large sums of money to MIPS Technologies for the privilege of not being hassled by lawsuits. After its experience with Lexra MIPS Technologies changed all of its 32-bit cores to ue its new MIPS32 instruction set which extends the MIPS-I instruction set to include other features patented by MIPS Technologies. This is similar to Intel's addition of the MMX instruction set extensions to Pentium III in order to prevent AMD from building compatible processors.
Trotskyists stand for the unconditional military defense of the Chinese deformed workers state against imperialist counterrevolution! For workers political revolution and soviet democracy in China, for new October socialist revolutions worldwide! Defeat the imperialist war drive against China!
Thank you for giving us the benefit of your views.
You're not reading what I said. I think "there's something wrong with your PC" was just something they said rather than interupting their web surfing to investigate.
They didn't know what was wrong with her internet connection / computer from what I can tell. "There's something wrong with your computer" was just a way to make her go away.
It's sad really all real geeks should love solving problems, but I've worked with loads of people who'll spout some excuse like that even before the customer has explained what's happening. What's even worse is that they do it in a such an obvious way that even non technical people can tell it's bullshit. And it's not like they do anything else instead of work, they just spend a bit more time in idle mode than people who actually try to fix stuff.
Actually, it's kind of both. We (Shaw customers anyways) go through about 3-4 menu options (English/French, phone/internet, sales/inquiries/support), then get put on hold for anywhere between 5 and 30 minutes. After that it's a real person, every time!
Do they play Rick Astley looped when you're on hold? Because that would be a genius touch.
I don't know why everyone whines about Steam and DRM, neither of which were a problem to me but no one seems at all bothered by Microsoft buying exclusives for the XBox.
It's outrageous - Halo would have been a PC/Mac game until Bungie got paid a load of money to make it an XBox exclusive. So millions of people buy a console they wouldn't otherwise have bought to play a game that should have been available on the hardware they already owned.
Yeah, they need to be able to learn an abstract concept and apply it to the conditions around them rather than learning a fixed sequence of actions and repeating blindly. In slashdot terms rather than posting "I for one welcome our robot overlords" to every article and get modded "-1 Die in Fire", they learn to make a slightly original joke tailored to the article and get modded up.
The GPL limits distribution, not usage. As Tivo is the distributor, the "version 2 or later" clause means tivo, not their users, get to pick if is distributed to the users under "version 2" or under "later."
Then why did Linus remove the "This version or later" clause from the license of Linux? Clearly he was concerned that people might opt for a future version of the license which contained clauses he didn't agree with, like GPLv3.
He described the GPLv3 as a "convert the infidels" license and GPLv2 as one that forced a "quid pro quo" -
Also how could the anti Tivoisation GPLv3 clause work if Tivo got to decide which license people used? They could just opt to license code under GPLv2. It only makes sense if the users get to decide to use GPLv3 and thus get the power to compel Tivo to do something it doesn't want to do?
It seems that both the FSF and Linus believe that "version 2 or later at your option" is something which, it it had been applied to the kernel, users could use to force Tivo to do things that version 3 demands of them but version 2 did not. What's interesting is that Linus doesn't agree with GPLv3. He said that Tivoisation was something that he "expressly considered to be ok".
Now if he'd left in the "or later" clause then both he the author and Tivo would have been forced to do something they didn't agree with once users decided to opt for GPLv3. It would have been much worse than that actually, companies like IBM would have been forced to grant royalty free patent licenses to all Linux users, even though when they contributed code that wasn't part of the GPL.
I've always wondered if it's worth having a Microwriter like mouse. From what I've read the Microwriter was a very natural input device. Then again it never took off, so maybe it was only natural to a small number of zealots.
License changes are retroactive for packages that have the "version 2 or later" clause. Once version 3 comes out users can decide whether they want to use it, not Tivo.
Tivo's supplier is the kernel team and they have done nothing of the sort.
No, Tivo's supplier is "Linux", not just kernel. Some of the user level stuff they rely on will change license terms. In fact most GPL code is licensed under "version 2 or later", so if they use that their users can just treat it as if it were GPLv3 licensed. or GPLv4 when it comes out, which might have additional anti Tivo clauses.
Anyway, if they are unhappy with the licensing terms they can always write their own code.
Like I said, I'm sure they're really happy they chose Linux under one set of license terms only to find the terms changed without them agreeing and specifically to put them out of the business. The worst thing is they don't know yet what the impact will be yet - if some crucial user mode piece of code changes to GPLv3 they might need to rewrite it. If they complain they get told to "write their own code".
Uncertainty like this makes businesses anxious. That's why they mentioned it in their SEC filing. And why I suspect they're better off migrating away from Linux to reduce the risk of people adding clauses to the GPL designed to destroy them.
Face it the FSF and most of the community don't want them to use Linux in the way they do.
In addition, the GNU Public License is subject to occasional revision. A proposal for changing the license from its current form (GPLv2) into a newer, more restrictive version called GPLv3 has been proposed and is currently undergoing community review. If the currently proposed version of GPLv3 is widely adopted, we may be unable to incorporate future enhancements to the GNU/Linux operating system into our software, which could adversely affect our business.
in fact they regard GPL3 as a threat to Linux on the same level as SCO's lawsuit.
Our TiVo software includes parts of the Linux kernel and the GNU/Linux operating system. The Linux kernel and the GNU/Linux operating system have been developed and licensed under the GNU General Public License, version 2 and similar open source licenses. These licenses state that any program licensed under them may be liberally copied, modified, and distributed. The GNU General Public license is a subject of litigation in the case of The SCO Group, Inc. v. International Business Machines Corp., pending in the United States District Court for the District of Utah. SCO Group, Inc., or SCO, has publicly alleged that certain versions of the Linux kernel contain unauthorized UNIX code or derivative works of UNIX code. Uncertainty concerning SCO's allegations, regardless of their merit, could adversely affect our manufacturing and other customer and supplier relationships. It is possible that a court would hold these open source licenses to be unenforceable in that litigation or that someone could assert a claim for proprietary rights in our TiVo software that runs on a GNU/Linux-based operating system. Any ruling by a court that these licenses are not enforceable, or that GNU/Linux-based operating systems, or significant portions of them, may not be liberally copied, modified or distributed, would have the effect of preventing us from selling or developing our TiVo software and would adversely affect our business.
I bet they have a Tivo in the works based on an alternate OS just to cover themselves.
Slashdot Mirror
Actually this seems to confirm it
http://news.idg.no/cw/art.cfm?id=01923563-17A4-0F78-313A27C7A88124BA
Godson's use in PCs has been held back by the fact that it is based on a MIPS core, as opposed to the x86 design used by Intel and AMD. To run Windows it has to use translation software to achieve x86-compatibility, and the Godson loses a lot of its native MIPS power in the process.
The Godson 3 adds new instructions that speed the x86-to-MIPS translation by a factor of 10, Xu said. "Our goal is to eventually reach 80 percent of the native MIPS performance," he said. "Right now we are at 40 percent, so we have a long way to go."
So it's not going to be quick, a 1Ghz Godson running x86 code through software translation will currently perform like a say P3 at 400-800Mhz.
I think they've got a MIPS64 core and plan to use Transmeta style translation to translate x86 to MIPS64 code, the extra instructions are there to make the mapping simple. The code actually executed in the pipeline will still be MIPS.
It's not x86 compatible. It's a MIPS64 clone. According to this, they'll use binary translation and extra instructions to run x86 binaries.
http://www.pldesignline.com/news/210201111
Both the four- and eight-core versions of the Godson-3 are implemented at 65 nm, with clock speed of 1GHz. The design features a distributed, scalable architecture with reconfigurable CPU core and L2 cache. The devices are designed for low power consumption - the four-core draws 10w while the eight -core draws 20w, according to Xu's presentation. The designs utilize MIPS64 cores with more than 200 additional instructions for X86 binary translation and media acceleration.
Problem is it's unlicensed, so they would most likely be sued for patent infringement if they sell it outside China.
http://www.mdronline.com/watch/watch_Issue.asp?Volname=Issue+%23072505&on=1
In December 2003, Advanced Micro Devices and BLX IC Design announced a relationship and opened the AMD/BLX Computing Client Development Center in Beijing. BLX IC Design is creating reference designs for thin clients and other computing products using AMD and BLX IC Design processors. The first two products are thin clients powered by AMDâ(TM)s MIPS32 - compatible Alchemy Au1500 processor and BLX IC Design's Godson-1. The creators of the Godson-1 say its architecture is "MIPS-like" - a description that annoys MIPS Technologies, which doesnâ(TM)t authorize the Godson architecture or license any intellectual property to ICT or BLX IC Design. AMD, which is a MIPS licensee, says it encourages BLX IC Design and MIPS to resolve their licensing issues.
Lexra tried to sell unlicensed MIPS clones and was effectively shutdown by lawsuits. As this Lexra guy puts it -
http://jonahprobell.com/lexra.html
It has been interesting to watch as the Chinese company, BLX, has made and sold powerful processors in China that execute MIPS-based instruction sets. BLX is legally and morally clear of violating MIPS Technologies' patents. BLX has chosen not to pay anything to MIPS Technologies while a host of American companies with their own powerful MIPS instruction set processors pay large sums of money to MIPS Technologies for the privilege of not being hassled by lawsuits. After its experience with Lexra MIPS Technologies changed all of its 32-bit cores to ue its new MIPS32 instruction set which extends the MIPS-I instruction set to include other features patented by MIPS Technologies. This is similar to Intel's addition of the MMX instruction set extensions to Pentium III in order to prevent AMD from building compatible processors.
Trotskyists stand for the unconditional military defense of the Chinese deformed workers state against imperialist counterrevolution! For workers political revolution and soviet democracy in China, for new October socialist revolutions worldwide! Defeat the imperialist war drive against China!
Thank you for giving us the benefit of your views.
Wow, you're a textbook example of the sort of passive aggressive behaviour I was talking about.
You're not reading what I said. I think "there's something wrong with your PC" was just something they said rather than interupting their web surfing to investigate.
They didn't know what was wrong with her internet connection / computer from what I can tell. "There's something wrong with your computer" was just a way to make her go away.
It's sad really all real geeks should love solving problems, but I've worked with loads of people who'll spout some excuse like that even before the customer has explained what's happening. What's even worse is that they do it in a such an obvious way that even non technical people can tell it's bullshit. And it's not like they do anything else instead of work, they just spend a bit more time in idle mode than people who actually try to fix stuff.
Maybe she was rehearsing for a role as a female mob boss.
Do they play Rick Astley looped when you're on hold? Because that would be a genius touch.
Have you ever accused anyone of violating the GPL and then found out that they didn't?
I think you misunderstand the processes of The Internet Court.
You need to give the monkeys proper motivation to type works of brilliance
Well you give them raises if they fix bugs that the customer is threatening to withold payment for and fire them if they don't.
What you get when you see Joe Biden on the ticket of a candidate that's supposed to represent change.
Joe Biden - who's been in DC since Nixon was there.
Though to be fair to Biden he was more a Jack Valenti lackey than a Nixon one.
I don't know why everyone whines about Steam and DRM, neither of which were a problem to me but no one seems at all bothered by Microsoft buying exclusives for the XBox.
It's outrageous - Halo would have been a PC/Mac game until Bungie got paid a load of money to make it an XBox exclusive. So millions of people buy a console they wouldn't otherwise have bought to play a game that should have been available on the hardware they already owned.
Yeah, they need to be able to learn an abstract concept and apply it to the conditions around them rather than learning a fixed sequence of actions and repeating blindly. In slashdot terms rather than posting "I for one welcome our robot overlords" to every article and get modded "-1 Die in Fire", they learn to make a slightly original joke tailored to the article and get modded up.
Oh God, what have I become.
If you watch any porn films, you consent to taking part in all future films.
And Stallman is in every film.
The proper name is Gnu/Tube since it is using Gnu content.
The GPL limits distribution, not usage.
As Tivo is the distributor, the "version 2 or later" clause means tivo, not their users, get to pick if is distributed to the users under "version 2" or under "later."
Then why did Linus remove the "This version or later" clause from the license of Linux? Clearly he was concerned that people might opt for a future version of the license which contained clauses he didn't agree with, like GPLv3.
He described the GPLv3 as a "convert the infidels" license and GPLv2 as one that forced a "quid pro quo" -
http://www.linuxjournal.com/article/8876
Also how could the anti Tivoisation GPLv3 clause work if Tivo got to decide which license people used? They could just opt to license code under GPLv2. It only makes sense if the users get to decide to use GPLv3 and thus get the power to compel Tivo to do something it doesn't want to do?
It seems that both the FSF and Linus believe that "version 2 or later at your option" is something which, it it had been applied to the kernel, users could use to force Tivo to do things that version 3 demands of them but version 2 did not. What's interesting is that Linus doesn't agree with GPLv3. He said that Tivoisation was something that he "expressly considered to be ok".
Now if he'd left in the "or later" clause then both he the author and Tivo would have been forced to do something they didn't agree with once users decided to opt for GPLv3. It would have been much worse than that actually, companies like IBM would have been forced to grant royalty free patent licenses to all Linux users, even though when they contributed code that wasn't part of the GPL.
There's a fine line between healthy skepticism and paranoid schizophrenia it seems.
I've always wondered if it's worth having a Microwriter like mouse. From what I've read the Microwriter was a very natural input device. Then again it never took off, so maybe it was only natural to a small number of zealots.
License changes are retroactive for packages that have the "version 2 or later" clause. Once version 3 comes out users can decide whether they want to use it, not Tivo.
Tivo's supplier is the kernel team and they have done nothing of the sort.
No, Tivo's supplier is "Linux", not just kernel. Some of the user level stuff they rely on will change license terms. In fact most GPL code is licensed under "version 2 or later", so if they use that their users can just treat it as if it were GPLv3 licensed. or GPLv4 when it comes out, which might have additional anti Tivo clauses.
Anyway, if they are unhappy with the licensing terms they can always write their own code.
Like I said, I'm sure they're really happy they chose Linux under one set of license terms only to find the terms changed without them agreeing and specifically to put them out of the business. The worst thing is they don't know yet what the impact will be yet - if some crucial user mode piece of code changes to GPLv3 they might need to rewrite it. If they complain they get told to "write their own code".
Uncertainty like this makes businesses anxious. That's why they mentioned it in their SEC filing. And why I suspect they're better off migrating away from Linux to reduce the risk of people adding clauses to the GPL designed to destroy them.
Face it the FSF and most of the community don't want them to use Linux in the way they do.
Their 'supplier' has changed its licensing terms specifically to put them out of business. Companies get antsy about that.
They mentioned GPL3 in their annual report to the SEC
http://www.linuxdevices.com/news/NS5304340445.html
In addition, the GNU Public License is subject to occasional revision. A proposal for changing the license from its current form (GPLv2) into a newer, more restrictive version called GPLv3 has been proposed and is currently undergoing community review. If the currently proposed version of GPLv3 is widely adopted, we may be unable to incorporate future enhancements to the GNU/Linux operating system into our software, which could adversely affect our business.
in fact they regard GPL3 as a threat to Linux on the same level as SCO's lawsuit.
Our TiVo software includes parts of the Linux kernel and the GNU/Linux operating system. The Linux kernel and the GNU/Linux operating system have been developed and licensed under the GNU General Public License, version 2 and similar open source licenses. These licenses state that any program licensed under them may be liberally copied, modified, and distributed. The GNU General Public license is a subject of litigation in the case of The SCO Group, Inc. v. International Business Machines Corp., pending in the United States District Court for the District of Utah. SCO Group, Inc., or SCO, has publicly alleged that certain versions of the Linux kernel contain unauthorized UNIX code or derivative works of UNIX code. Uncertainty concerning SCO's allegations, regardless of their merit, could adversely affect our manufacturing and other customer and supplier relationships. It is possible that a court would hold these open source licenses to be unenforceable in that litigation or that someone could assert a claim for proprietary rights in our TiVo software that runs on a GNU/Linux-based operating system. Any ruling by a court that these licenses are not enforceable, or that GNU/Linux-based operating systems, or significant portions of them, may not be liberally copied, modified or distributed, would have the effect of preventing us from selling or developing our TiVo software and would adversely affect our business.
I bet they have a Tivo in the works based on an alternate OS just to cover themselves.
Yeah, I bet Tivo are really glad they picked Linux given the reaction to them from the Linux community.
(We weren't in costume, of course, but the character actors at Quark's seemed to appreciate having trained improvisationalists to riff off of.)
This is the geek equivalent of "I think that stripper likes me"
How can it be overpriced and "well worth it" at the same time?
To a crack addict crack is overpriced and well worth it at the same time.
That's how Franklin Mint could sell US Enterprise models for $999 for 30 years.