SGI put their future on Itanic, and look what happened to them? they are in the doorway of chapther11.
Itanium has become a small nische market. There are just a few HPC apps available except for institutions running their own code.
I've programmed the itanic, and it provides excellent float performance but poor integers, but lack of 3rd party software is killing it. Most people need integer performance more than float. Another issue is the unified 2nd level cache (both data and instruction into one table). If you can work around it and tune for the cache, then nothing in the world beats itanic on floats. The intel compilers also come with a shipload of performance flags. I have a doc called
'Itanium black belt compiler options' written by someone at SGI. It takes years to tune the code optimally.
I've tested opteron, power5, power4, xeon and nothing beats it. Unfortunately one HP with a 1.6GHz itanium costs the same as a 2x dual core latest opteron from tyan with twice the mem, and the opterons have much faster memory latency.
We will probably test the new SGI montecito low end blade server when it comes out, but it must be dead cheap to compete with opterons. But only as long as both RedHat and Suse keep their ia64 distributions, otherwise we do not have anything to run the distros on. In the end it is the customers that decides.
This is also the case of Fortran77 which is probably newer than cobol, leftovers from the punchcards.
Even with the latest fortran compilers from intel works best with old fortan77 code compared to porting it to fortran90 or fortran95. maybe because it lack most of the features in modern languages. Not even a function stack (recursion impossible).
*
C Hello World in Fortran 77
C (lines must be 6 characters indented)
*
PROGRAM HELLO
WRITE(UNIT=*, FMT=*) 'Hello World'
END
Hi
I think this text shed some lights:
http://blog.180solutions.com/PermaLink,guid,5795b8 5d-feea-4656-93e1-d788a01f760a.aspx
Poor people @180solutions that suddenly found their spy-ware being detected by Zone-lab's Zonealarm. Zonealarm is obviously a great piece of software. So when 180Solutions became aware of this, they saw their business-model go the way of the dinosaurs.
And WhoTF uses X11 on a mac? Its there as a "add-on" at best. When you can Quartz render stuff I don't see the point. X11 is crap on anyway.
That's not the point. I've been using OOo for years and if I switch back to MS I need to alter all my templates, which works by the way on all versions of OOo. with the correct template and window configs OOo is highly productive.
OOo is not available in a quartz native version.
I've no problems with hardware on the powerbook, but the OS on it makes me unproductive.
in apple's mail program there is no option to postfiler the messages into various folders of various BCC, CC,etc, you can only cc yourself.
So I had to set up a sendmailserver on localhost to filter it.
I installed Debian on it and it works excellent. some problems with audio and wfi setup, but it is fixed now. care shit about hw-accelerated graphics.
And whoo it is fast, it loads in 15sec.
Haven't booted OSX in an week:-)
And I've had to restart mozilla once either.
I've been a linux user for 12 years now since slackware 0.91, and I've finally managed to get everything the way I like on a linux desktop. (server side has been great for years).
But in June I bought a Powerbook G4 12".
it looks great and the hardware is great, but the OS stink! Even windows is better.
Linux is now way ahead. latest kde or gnome have all the features I need, maybe not all the fancy bells and whizzles in OsX, but it is configurable and productive.
I'm not able to work anywhere near the same speed on a powerbook compared to a 2 year old linux laptop.
wlan, usb, printers, audio, video is now working fine in linux, and then it is no point in buying an apple, unless you like the strange program they enclose (iLife) I hate iTunes (a properitary mp3 player tied to a online service for ripping money out of you.)
Its better to just use xmms and add all the various decoder plugins.
Mozilla, Firebird and Thunderbird all have a bug that frequently makes it unable to close or use those requester windows that pops up and tell you you're accessing a https site, what program to use, printout options etc. This happens at least 5 times a day.
I even tried to pay for firebird support to get this fixed (support request #98!!) but they were unable to help me said it was a bug, so I just had to wait for next release.
The X11 term window is not scrollable with the mouse, how do you set the windowbuffer. it is way to small.
Openoffice must be used through the X11 windowmanager.
Fonts look terrible (poor antialiasing) in the X11 windowmanager.
only the protege can access subwindows. the alt+tab feature only access the main windows for each application. this mean that you cant tab directly to a mail you are writing in mozilla.
The enclosed mail program is crap, deadslow and not option for postfiltering.
The enclosed PDF viewing-program called preview is fast, but I've never got search working. this work fine in ggv and xpdf in linux.
I'm seriously considering wiping out the mac OsX and install latest Debian for PPC on it instead.
Slashdot Mirror
I've programmed the itanic, and it provides excellent float performance but poor integers, but lack of 3rd party software is killing it. Most people need integer performance more than float. Another issue is the unified 2nd level cache (both data and instruction into one table). If you can work around it and tune for the cache, then nothing in the world beats itanic on floats. The intel compilers also come with a shipload of performance flags. I have a doc called 'Itanium black belt compiler options' written by someone at SGI. It takes years to tune the code optimally. I've tested opteron, power5, power4, xeon and nothing beats it. Unfortunately one HP with a 1.6GHz itanium costs the same as a 2x dual core latest opteron from tyan with twice the mem, and the opterons have much faster memory latency.
We will probably test the new SGI montecito low end blade server when it comes out, but it must be dead cheap to compete with opterons. But only as long as both RedHat and Suse keep their ia64 distributions, otherwise we do not have anything to run the distros on. In the end it is the customers that decides.
This is also the case of Fortran77 which is probably newer than cobol, leftovers from the punchcards. Even with the latest fortran compilers from intel works best with old fortan77 code compared to porting it to fortran90 or fortran95. maybe because it lack most of the features in modern languages. Not even a function stack (recursion impossible). * C Hello World in Fortran 77 C (lines must be 6 characters indented) * PROGRAM HELLO WRITE(UNIT=*, FMT=*) 'Hello World' END
Not much about Itanic. Is it finally dead then, or was it out of topic?
Hi I think this text shed some lights: http://blog.180solutions.com/PermaLink,guid,5795b8 5d-feea-4656-93e1-d788a01f760a.aspx
Poor people @180solutions that suddenly found their spy-ware being detected by Zone-lab's Zonealarm. Zonealarm is obviously a great piece of software. So when 180Solutions became aware of this, they saw their business-model go the way of the dinosaurs.
That's not the point. I've been using OOo for years and if I switch back to MS I need to alter all my templates, which works by the way on all versions of OOo. with the correct template and window configs OOo is highly productive. OOo is not available in a quartz native version.
I've no problems with hardware on the powerbook, but the OS on it makes me unproductive.
in apple's mail program there is no option to postfiler the messages into various folders of various BCC, CC,etc, you can only cc yourself.
So I had to set up a sendmailserver on localhost to filter it.
I installed Debian on it and it works excellent. some problems with audio and wfi setup, but it is fixed now. care shit about hw-accelerated graphics.
And whoo it is fast, it loads in 15sec.
Haven't booted OSX in an week :-)
And I've had to restart mozilla once either.
But in June I bought a Powerbook G4 12". it looks great and the hardware is great, but the OS stink! Even windows is better. Linux is now way ahead. latest kde or gnome have all the features I need, maybe not all the fancy bells and whizzles in OsX, but it is configurable and productive.
I'm not able to work anywhere near the same speed on a powerbook compared to a 2 year old linux laptop.
wlan, usb, printers, audio, video is now working fine in linux, and then it is no point in buying an apple, unless you like the strange program they enclose (iLife) I hate iTunes (a properitary mp3 player tied to a online service for ripping money out of you.)
Its better to just use xmms and add all the various decoder plugins.
Mozilla, Firebird and Thunderbird all have a bug that frequently makes it unable to close or use those requester windows that pops up and tell you you're accessing a https site, what program to use, printout options etc. This happens at least 5 times a day. I even tried to pay for firebird support to get this fixed (support request #98!!) but they were unable to help me said it was a bug, so I just had to wait for next release.
The X11 term window is not scrollable with the mouse, how do you set the windowbuffer. it is way to small.
Openoffice must be used through the X11 windowmanager.
Fonts look terrible (poor antialiasing) in the X11 windowmanager.
only the protege can access subwindows. the alt+tab feature only access the main windows for each application. this mean that you cant tab directly to a mail you are writing in mozilla.
The enclosed mail program is crap, deadslow and not option for postfiltering.
The enclosed PDF viewing-program called preview is fast, but I've never got search working. this work fine in ggv and xpdf in linux.
I'm seriously considering wiping out the mac OsX and install latest Debian for PPC on it instead.