Well, you are allowed to despise the statement, but I think your initial reaction to it isn't really the reason you despise it. Yeah, in an ideal world, I'd love to see John get a new Tommy Kaira (although, I would have suggested a ZZII), and all that other stuff with my money. The fact is though, that this is not an ideal world.
You had the right to guess at what my mindset was when I wrote what I did, and you were wrong, and now I'd like to guess what's in your heart. You are truely disgusted by this statement because you know that I am right. How do we really know whether our beloved GPL would stand up in a court room? And don't say "because it's the law as per the lisence agreement" because we all know how much we would like to win the battle over the MPA eventhough what they are doing is made legal by a crappy law. We would like to think that if we fight hard enough, the law will change. So isn't it concievable that someone could fight the GPL if it ever got into a courtroom? And is it conceivable that they could even win? someone else posted something about the difference between UCITA vs. the GPL, and how they are basically the same as far as giving rights to the creators of software, but that they differ in how they effect the user. Are we digging our own grave here?
So what I think is that you realize just how disgusting it is to know that you live in a world where things have to be "proven" to the rest of society. Well, I don't like it much either. I completely agree that we don't need corporations and government and all that crap to tell us what is right; we can truly figure that out for ourselves. But what we do need is the knowledge that the beliefs we have, the beliefs we know are right, will be upheld by the society in which we live. This is an important thing. If we are confirmed in our belief, we can rest easy, and if we aren't, we will fight hard to have the "truth" be heard. And we need to know what we are doing in our everyday lives. Are we going about our business, or are we fighting for our existance.
And you are pissed off because the world you live in "isn't fair," and isn't ideal, and isn't what it could be if everyone just knew all the things that are in your heart. The world shouldn't (and can't) be affected by your mindset. We need a way to find a medium, to moderate between what is needed by the world, by ourselves, and by others. This is the most difficult task at the forfront of human reality. It is common (and understandable) for people to be afraid to admit this, and, in the open source community, it is common for individuals to believe (mistakenly) that it is their own view that should be adopted, at all costs, completely and unwaveringly by everyone else.
How do you balance individualism with society? Realize that the two are separate, but must coexist. I am an individual with my beliefs, which I hold very close and dear to my heart. I do what I will, of my own free will. I am an individual beacause I shape who I am. And I also live in a society in which I realize that I cannot rule simply because I believe with all my heart that I am correct. All I can have sometimes is that knowledge, and exist knowing that I have held on to it despite what the rest of the world thinks or does. And that's it.
You know what I hope? I hope that the guy releasing the binaries keeps it up. That way, we can see what the GPL is legally made of if John takes him to court. That'd be cool, especially if the GPL prevailed... I've always been a little skeptical about the power of the GPL, and I think a good litmus test would do it wonders.
You know, I know someone out there has probably already thought of this, but the profundity with which it struck me pushes me to post a comment.
There are all kinds of discussions about fragmenting linux and the dangers and pitfalls thereof. The main point of comparison extends from the fragmenting of UNIX back in the day. Anyway, my point is that maybe fragmenting IS desireable for linux. The enticement of being able to bring out a distro of Linux for your hardware is very strong. For many, it is a show of support to the linux community. If you are a capitolist you kinda have to like the idea because it could gain you a larger, more solid user base, and you could do stuff like charge for service with a smile and maybe even the box. But you want to know why I think fragmenting is good? It will (as we see with ABIT) cause hardware developers to get a little more involved and start puting out some solid optimized code with their flavor. It will give the user more choices and more options. Since the big boys in Linux and open source go hand in hand, all the drivers and optimizations and stuff that is generated by the attractiveness to create your own distro can be mixed together. It's pretty much all compatible. You write a driver for this, a driver for that, and any distro of Linux can use it. And whats more, is that if the average user isn't apt to "manually upgrade" things, distributors could maintain a database to hold all the extraineous neat stuff that all the other distros have. Adding a feature similar to Mandrake-Update would then become a wonderful thing. All a user would need to do would be find their particular piece of desired software (whether driver or what) and update!
What I really mean is that the fragmenting of Linux will last a good little while, but the more fragmenting you get, the more unique innovations you get. And all of them can be thrown together. After a while the tens of thousands of distos will fall by the wayside as a few companies prevail with theirs and all the support lended them by the "loosers" along the way.
And so, in conclusion, where I don't think it will be long term profietable to jump on the distro bandwagon, I do think that the more people who do the better chance linux has at becomming the operating system of the next millennium.
I like stuff
Well actually they do....
on
Muppets Sold
·
· Score: 1
The Muppet Show is on every night on the Oddessey channel
Reading something like this makes me want to jump out in front of a large vehicle. I am completely discusted and disturbed by this outrage. The more things change the more they stay the same right?
It was my impression that the United States of America was formed in order to promote freedom and liberty and justice, not to take it away at the whim of Big Money. Have we lost all we thought we had gained? Are we, as a nation, so blinded by the money and the rapid advancement of technology that we will allow industry and corporations to take advantage of us thusly? Here is what I am thinking:
Encrypting the digital signal to my monitor serves me no purpose. It, in fact, inhibits my ability to use my video output the way I see fit. Intel, or anyone else, has no right to inhibit my ability to access my information without my consent. Soemthing like this allows the engineers of the encryption too much control over the market for video cards and monitors. The cost of both will increase, and nothing for the citizen has been gained. We have only lost money. So why are they doing this? Here is why:
Intel: Let's see, if we can keep people from being able to intercept the digital signal to the monitor, there is no way they can illegally copy copyrighted material, so we are doing good. Joe Niceguy: Now I can't make any legal copys of any material from my computer, and all my rights and freedoms are being taken away.
No, I'm sorry, that is my dream world, where everyone is idealistic and their motives behind doing something are because they believe it will benefit the world. Intel just wants to put a little coin in it's pocket like the MPAA. Let's all do a happy dance now that Intel realizes that it can make lots of money if they retain complete control over the users ACCESS to anything and everything. ANYTHING! Not just copyrighted stuff, but EVERYTHING you see, you are ALLOWED to see only by Intel (or whatever board they put together to make it look better to the general, unsuspecting, trusting public who all still believe in the ideals on which this country was founded. What happened to the good ole days where efficiency was the absolute concern of the computer world? Now we are adding in encryption which cost money resources and bandwidth so we can squeeze a little more coin out of the pocket of the average everyday citizen. Because that is where the money is. Let's face it here, the only justification anyone should have for controlling access to media is to prevent the mass pirating of copyrighted material. Well, the bigboys can still crack open any LCD Monitor they want, and catch the data right after the decrypt and send it wherever they want. Then they can make thousands of copys and do whatever they want with it. The point is that things can still be copied relatively easily (if you want it). This type of measure is ineffective and only serves to unnessicerily complicate things for law abiding citizens. I say it is not a nessecity because it doesn't and cannot serve it's supposed purpose. I'll grant, though, that it serves its real and intended purpose: to make Intel money and give them power over the digital display market.
I was especially impressed with one posters comments on how, if we could generate a completely secure data path from Joe Industry on the internet all the way to our physical eyes and ears, many more possibilies would open up for the sale of things like movies. And I laughed when I read someone else who envisioned a world where we had bio-tech implants and were upgraded with encryption keys that controlled what we could see and hear based on age, and possibly money. But then I realized that this later situation is probably not so laughable, and would more than likely be seriously desired by the MPAA and the like. Or better yet, use the Human Genome project to encode it in our DNA. And so now I'm really pissed off.
Is there no way we can effectivley fight such stupidity? Are we doomed to suffer the indecencies of mistreatment that pushed our founding fathers to fight for their freedom? Because this time, we have no where else to go, and we have no effective way to wage war. The time for those options is gone, but I am afraid that reason cannot conqure greed. I am afraid that a handful of companies who each desire a little more power than they should be afforded will take there inches in different areas of our lives until we are left with nothing but the blood in our veins... Or will we even have that?
We simply cannot afford to loose the battle against access restriction. But I don't think any of us know where to begin to fight...
The point was that apples (drivers) were being compared to oranges (instruction sets) and the connection was non-existant. And aside from that, they have chosen to make it closed source. That's their right, and in my opinion, the right thing to do. End of story.
Metcalf's comments on the VLIW morphing code seem to be spot-on, if you take our history of hardware vendors with proprietary drivers into account.
Ok, well, who said anything about drivers here? The code morphing software isn't anything like a driver, becuase, in essence, it IS the heart of the processor.
Here, allow me to give you a bit of a litmus test. Something is a driver when it tells the operating system how to access the hardware. Code Morphing technology is at a lower level than this, and the operating system is blind to it completely. Drivers are operating system specific, and this is instruction set specific.
Creative and Nvdia would like to open source dirvers so that people can port them to other operating systms (like Linux), because they really don't want to take the time themselves. Transmeta stated that it would all but be a simple matter to add support for other instruction sets like UltraSPARC or PowerPC or whatever. And if they wanted to, without putting their technology in danger, release the "real" instruction set of the Crusoe, people could help translate it to whatever, and Transmeta could take the "cut and paste" time to implement it in Code Morphing tech. But this isn't really helpful, because Transmeta could do it much faster and easier than anyone I know who is involved in Open Source (no offense intended).
So yes, if Metcalf had a clue, he would have been right, but he didn't, so he wasn't. The chip will not be able to do less, and will not be less reliable in the same sense of hardware and closed source drivers. It will, if anything, EXPAND the ability of a piece of hardware to adapt and grow and do more, and fix itself. Instead of releasing a new piece of hardware to fix a bug, all they need do is release a software update. Almost like flashing your BIOS but better. So it is definitely a step above current hardware tech. But it's definitely NOT anything that needs to be Open Sourced. Not at this stage in the game anyway. And that all goes back to what I have said, plus what everyone else has said regarding cost coverage of developing hardware (This applies in that, if you open source the code morphing, it would be relatively simple to design a chip to match the specs of the Crusoe and undercut Transmeta's costs, thereby putting them out of business).
Alpha is a superscalar RISC processor. IA-64 is an EPIC processor. EPIC is not VLIW. The difference between the two is simple yet subtle. VLIW is an architechture where instructions are taken and placed into Very Long Instruction Words (hence the acronym). This long instructions called a multiop is what is executed. A Multi-op is made up of usually something like 4 regular instructions that use different resources. The main focus of VLIW is reasource allocation. EPIC, however, is different in that, instead of sending a multi-op to the processor for execution, a block of instructions which are garaunteed to be independant are sent to the processor. It is up to the processor to decide what gets executed when because it doesn't matter, as the block of instructions is garuanteed to be independant. EPIC focuses on instruction indepedance (and therefore instruction level parallelism is of utmost import). Alpha, since it is a superscalar RISC processor, makes use of dynamic analysis of the entirety of it's executing code. It must since the complier doen't have the ability to communicate to the processor like it does in EPIC and in VLIW. So, in summary, VLIW can be done using "dumb" processors which focus on executing what it is recieves from the instruction cache VERY quickly; Alpha uses a very complicated piece of hardware that can discover the most efficient way to execute code, but is restricted in speed by size, heat, and complexity; EPIC defines a midpoint between the two, in that it optimizes the architecture to make close to maximum use of current complier technology, and it employs many of the dynamic aspects of a straigh superscalar processor to iron out what the complier couldn't predict.
Unfortunatly, Intel are stupid, and began doing things like adding tons of cycletime shortening hardware to actually predict results of calculations and other unnecessary garbage. They are idiots, and don't know what to do with themselves once they have finally found an efficient way of doing something. In truth, HP came up with most of the good stuff anyway... In my (qualified) opinion, Alpha can be a better processor than Intel will produce, simply because the designers are more practical. But they need to find a new tech writer who actually understands that about which he or she is speaking. (NO FOCI processors exist, and alpha is a FOCO processor) (FOCI: fire out-of-order complete in-order, and you figure out the second one)
OK, I'm almost certain no one will either read this or care because I'm so late in posting, but you know what? Compaq's writers really don't know what they are talking about. It had to be some marketing guy sitting up there taking bits of things he read and pasting them together and then filling in the holes with what he or she understood to be correct... The biggest problem I had with the article is that they kept saying that the Alpha could do this: Fire out-of-order and Complete (or retire) in-order... This is completely impossible. OK, well you could do it, but it would be a waste of time, money, and speed. Alphas DO NOT complete instructions in program order. The Fire and Complete OUT-OF-ORDER. How does that work you ask? Well instructions that are independant in the same block of code really don't care when the instructions around them are executed, so Alpha fires them whenever is most convinient. But they can't just go back and say: "Well, this one should complete later to maintain program order" because that defeats the entire purpose of superscalar architecture. Program order is only maintained for dependant blocks of instructions (idealy).
Hey, I can't make it work on me puter! Don't think it likes having non-dos stuff... Or maybe it's the SCSI and multiprocessor setup... But then again, maybe it just didn't work. Anyone else have any problems?
Hey, comeon people! Like they always say on the X-Files, "the source is out there!"... They can't stop development on decss, there are too many people who have either the key or the code! We shall prevail, and the tyranny that is shass crumble beneath the power of the nerds!
That is an extrodinarily good point, but when you consider that Linux performed better on this system than any other OS, does it mean that Linux scales well, or that it's just better on all levels?:o)
Ha Ha! I have an SMP system and Linux is the ONLY OS that sees significant performance gains! I knew the day would come when the world would begin to see the light!
Slashdot Mirror
Well, you are allowed to despise the statement, but I think your initial reaction to it isn't really the reason you despise it. Yeah, in an ideal world, I'd love to see John get a new Tommy Kaira (although, I would have suggested a ZZII), and all that other stuff with my money. The fact is though, that this is not an ideal world.
You had the right to guess at what my mindset was when I wrote what I did, and you were wrong, and now I'd like to guess what's in your heart. You are truely disgusted by this statement because you know that I am right. How do we really know whether our beloved GPL would stand up in a court room? And don't say "because it's the law as per the lisence agreement" because we all know how much we would like to win the battle over the MPA eventhough what they are doing is made legal by a crappy law. We would like to think that if we fight hard enough, the law will change. So isn't it concievable that someone could fight the GPL if it ever got into a courtroom? And is it conceivable that they could even win? someone else posted something about the difference between UCITA vs. the GPL, and how they are basically the same as far as giving rights to the creators of software, but that they differ in how they effect the user. Are we digging our own grave here?
So what I think is that you realize just how disgusting it is to know that you live in a world where things have to be "proven" to the rest of society. Well, I don't like it much either. I completely agree that we don't need corporations and government and all that crap to tell us what is right; we can truly figure that out for ourselves. But what we do need is the knowledge that the beliefs we have, the beliefs we know are right, will be upheld by the society in which we live. This is an important thing. If we are confirmed in our belief, we can rest easy, and if we aren't, we will fight hard to have the "truth" be heard. And we need to know what we are doing in our everyday lives. Are we going about our business, or are we fighting for our existance.
And you are pissed off because the world you live in "isn't fair," and isn't ideal, and isn't what it could be if everyone just knew all the things that are in your heart. The world shouldn't (and can't) be affected by your mindset. We need a way to find a medium, to moderate between what is needed by the world, by ourselves, and by others. This is the most difficult task at the forfront of human reality. It is common (and understandable) for people to be afraid to admit this, and, in the open source community, it is common for individuals to believe (mistakenly) that it is their own view that should be adopted, at all costs, completely and unwaveringly by everyone else.
How do you balance individualism with society? Realize that the two are separate, but must coexist. I am an individual with my beliefs, which I hold very close and dear to my heart. I do what I will, of my own free will. I am an individual beacause I shape who I am. And I also live in a society in which I realize that I cannot rule simply because I believe with all my heart that I am correct. All I can have sometimes is that knowledge, and exist knowing that I have held on to it despite what the rest of the world thinks or does. And that's it.
You know what I hope? I hope that the guy releasing the binaries keeps it up. That way, we can see what the GPL is legally made of if John takes him to court. That'd be cool, especially if the GPL prevailed... I've always been a little skeptical about the power of the GPL, and I think a good litmus test would do it wonders.
You know, I know someone out there has probably already thought of this, but the profundity with which it struck me pushes me to post a comment.
There are all kinds of discussions about fragmenting linux and the dangers and pitfalls thereof. The main point of comparison extends from the fragmenting of UNIX back in the day. Anyway, my point is that maybe fragmenting IS desireable for linux. The enticement of being able to bring out a distro of Linux for your hardware is very strong. For many, it is a show of support to the linux community. If you are a capitolist you kinda have to like the idea because it could gain you a larger, more solid user base, and you could do stuff like charge for service with a smile and maybe even the box. But you want to know why I think fragmenting is good? It will (as we see with ABIT) cause hardware developers to get a little more involved and start puting out some solid optimized code with their flavor. It will give the user more choices and more options. Since the big boys in Linux and open source go hand in hand, all the drivers and optimizations and stuff that is generated by the attractiveness to create your own distro can be mixed together. It's pretty much all compatible. You write a driver for this, a driver for that, and any distro of Linux can use it. And whats more, is that if the average user isn't apt to "manually upgrade" things, distributors could maintain a database to hold all the extraineous neat stuff that all the other distros have. Adding a feature similar to Mandrake-Update would then become a wonderful thing. All a user would need to do would be find their particular piece of desired software (whether driver or what) and update!
What I really mean is that the fragmenting of Linux will last a good little while, but the more fragmenting you get, the more unique innovations you get. And all of them can be thrown together. After a while the tens of thousands of distos will fall by the wayside as a few companies prevail with theirs and all the support lended them by the "loosers" along the way.
And so, in conclusion, where I don't think it will be long term profietable to jump on the distro bandwagon, I do think that the more people who do the better chance linux has at becomming the operating system of the next millennium.
I like stuff
The Muppet Show is on every night on the Oddessey channel
wow
... will never be over.
Reading something like this makes me want to jump out in front of a large vehicle. I am completely discusted and disturbed by this outrage. The more things change the more they stay the same right?
It was my impression that the United States of America was formed in order to promote freedom and liberty and justice, not to take it away at the whim of Big Money. Have we lost all we thought we had gained? Are we, as a nation, so blinded by the money and the rapid advancement of technology that we will allow industry and corporations to take advantage of us thusly? Here is what I am thinking:
Encrypting the digital signal to my monitor serves me no purpose. It, in fact, inhibits my ability to use my video output the way I see fit. Intel, or anyone else, has no right to inhibit my ability to access my information without my consent. Soemthing like this allows the engineers of the encryption too much control over the market for video cards and monitors. The cost of both will increase, and nothing for the citizen has been gained. We have only lost money. So why are they doing this? Here is why:
Intel: Let's see, if we can keep people from being able to intercept the digital signal to the monitor, there is no way they can illegally copy copyrighted material, so we are doing good.
Joe Niceguy: Now I can't make any legal copys of any material from my computer, and all my rights and freedoms are being taken away.
No, I'm sorry, that is my dream world, where everyone is idealistic and their motives behind doing something are because they believe it will benefit the world. Intel just wants to put a little coin in it's pocket like the MPAA. Let's all do a happy dance now that Intel realizes that it can make lots of money if they retain complete control over the users ACCESS to anything and everything. ANYTHING! Not just copyrighted stuff, but EVERYTHING you see, you are ALLOWED to see only by Intel (or whatever board they put together to make it look better to the general, unsuspecting, trusting public who all still believe in the ideals on which this country was founded. What happened to the good ole days where efficiency was the absolute concern of the computer world? Now we are adding in encryption which cost money resources and bandwidth so we can squeeze a little more coin out of the pocket of the average everyday citizen. Because that is where the money is. Let's face it here, the only justification anyone should have for controlling access to media is to prevent the mass pirating of copyrighted material. Well, the bigboys can still crack open any LCD Monitor they want, and catch the data right after the decrypt and send it wherever they want. Then they can make thousands of copys and do whatever they want with it. The point is that things can still be copied relatively easily (if you want it). This type of measure is ineffective and only serves to unnessicerily complicate things for law abiding citizens. I say it is not a nessecity because it doesn't and cannot serve it's supposed purpose. I'll grant, though, that it serves its real and intended purpose: to make Intel money and give them power over the digital display market.
I was especially impressed with one posters comments on how, if we could generate a completely secure data path from Joe Industry on the internet all the way to our physical eyes and ears, many more possibilies would open up for the sale of things like movies. And I laughed when I read someone else who envisioned a world where we had bio-tech implants and were upgraded with encryption keys that controlled what we could see and hear based on age, and possibly money. But then I realized that this later situation is probably not so laughable, and would more than likely be seriously desired by the MPAA and the like. Or better yet, use the Human Genome project to encode it in our DNA. And so now I'm really pissed off.
Is there no way we can effectivley fight such stupidity? Are we doomed to suffer the indecencies of mistreatment that pushed our founding fathers to fight for their freedom? Because this time, we have no where else to go, and we have no effective way to wage war. The time for those options is gone, but I am afraid that reason cannot conqure greed. I am afraid that a handful of companies who each desire a little more power than they should be afforded will take there inches in different areas of our lives until we are left with nothing but the blood in our veins... Or will we even have that?
We simply cannot afford to loose the battle against access restriction. But I don't think any of us know where to begin to fight...
May the Code be with you
jdwilso2
The point was that apples (drivers) were being compared to oranges (instruction sets) and the connection was non-existant. And aside from that, they have chosen to make it closed source. That's their right, and in my opinion, the right thing to do. End of story.
Metcalf's comments on the VLIW morphing code seem to be spot-on, if you take our history of hardware vendors with proprietary drivers into account.
Ok, well, who said anything about drivers here? The code morphing software isn't anything like a driver, becuase, in essence, it IS the heart of the processor.
Here, allow me to give you a bit of a litmus test. Something is a driver when it tells the operating system how to access the hardware. Code Morphing technology is at a lower level than this, and the operating system is blind to it completely. Drivers are operating system specific, and this is instruction set specific.
Creative and Nvdia would like to open source dirvers so that people can port them to other operating systms (like Linux), because they really don't want to take the time themselves. Transmeta stated that it would all but be a simple matter to add support for other instruction sets like UltraSPARC or PowerPC or whatever. And if they wanted to, without putting their technology in danger, release the "real" instruction set of the Crusoe, people could help translate it to whatever, and Transmeta could take the "cut and paste" time to implement it in Code Morphing tech. But this isn't really helpful, because Transmeta could do it much faster and easier than anyone I know who is involved in Open Source (no offense intended).
So yes, if Metcalf had a clue, he would have been right, but he didn't, so he wasn't. The chip will not be able to do less, and will not be less reliable in the same sense of hardware and closed source drivers. It will, if anything, EXPAND the ability of a piece of hardware to adapt and grow and do more, and fix itself. Instead of releasing a new piece of hardware to fix a bug, all they need do is release a software update. Almost like flashing your BIOS but better. So it is definitely a step above current hardware tech. But it's definitely NOT anything that needs to be Open Sourced. Not at this stage in the game anyway. And that all goes back to what I have said, plus what everyone else has said regarding cost coverage of developing hardware (This applies in that, if you open source the code morphing, it would be relatively simple to design a chip to match the specs of the Crusoe and undercut Transmeta's costs, thereby putting them out of business).
jdwilso2
Alpha is a superscalar RISC processor. IA-64 is an EPIC processor. EPIC is not VLIW. The difference between the two is simple yet subtle. VLIW is an architechture where instructions are taken and placed into Very Long Instruction Words (hence the acronym). This long instructions called a multiop is what is executed. A Multi-op is made up of usually something like 4 regular instructions that use different resources. The main focus of VLIW is reasource allocation.
EPIC, however, is different in that, instead of sending a multi-op to the processor for execution, a block of instructions which are garaunteed to be independant are sent to the processor. It is up to the processor to decide what gets executed when because it doesn't matter, as the block of instructions is garuanteed to be independant. EPIC focuses on instruction indepedance (and therefore instruction level parallelism is of utmost import).
Alpha, since it is a superscalar RISC processor, makes use of dynamic analysis of the entirety of it's executing code. It must since the complier doen't have the ability to communicate to the processor like it does in EPIC and in VLIW. So, in summary, VLIW can be done using "dumb" processors which focus on executing what it is recieves from the instruction cache VERY quickly; Alpha uses a very complicated piece of hardware that can discover the most efficient way to execute code, but is restricted in speed by size, heat, and complexity; EPIC defines a midpoint between the two, in that it optimizes the architecture to make close to maximum use of current complier technology, and it employs many of the dynamic aspects of a straigh superscalar processor to iron out what the complier couldn't predict.
Unfortunatly, Intel are stupid, and began doing things like adding tons of cycletime shortening hardware to actually predict results of calculations and other unnecessary garbage. They are idiots, and don't know what to do with themselves once they have finally found an efficient way of doing something. In truth, HP came up with most of the good stuff anyway... In my (qualified) opinion, Alpha can be a better processor than Intel will produce, simply because the designers are more practical. But they need to find a new tech writer who actually understands that about which he or she is speaking. (NO FOCI processors exist, and alpha is a FOCO processor) (FOCI: fire out-of-order complete in-order, and you figure out the second one)
OK, I'm almost certain no one will either read this or care because I'm so late in posting, but you know what? Compaq's writers really don't know what they are talking about. It had to be some marketing guy sitting up there taking bits of things he read and pasting them together and then filling in the holes with what he or she understood to be correct... The biggest problem I had with the article is that they kept saying that the Alpha could do this: Fire out-of-order and Complete (or retire) in-order... This is completely impossible. OK, well you could do it, but it would be a waste of time, money, and speed. Alphas DO NOT complete instructions in program order. The Fire and Complete OUT-OF-ORDER. How does that work you ask? Well instructions that are independant in the same block of code really don't care when the instructions around them are executed, so Alpha fires them whenever is most convinient. But they can't just go back and say: "Well, this one should complete later to maintain program order" because that defeats the entire purpose of superscalar architecture. Program order is only maintained for dependant blocks of instructions (idealy).
Hey, I can't make it work on me puter! Don't think it likes having non-dos stuff... Or maybe it's the SCSI and multiprocessor setup... But then again, maybe it just didn't work. Anyone else have any problems?
That's what I say! Make Slashdot into a paper publication, and you've got yourself the best computer mag on the face of the planet!!!
Hey, comeon people! Like they always say on the X-Files, "the source is out there!" ... They can't stop development on decss, there are too many people who have either the key or the code! We shall prevail, and the tyranny that is shass crumble beneath the power of the nerds!
That is an extrodinarily good point, but when you consider that Linux performed better on this system than any other OS, does it mean that Linux scales well, or that it's just better on all levels? :o)
Ha Ha! I have an SMP system and Linux is the ONLY OS that sees significant performance gains! I knew the day would come when the world would begin to see the light!