just beowulf 100 PS3s together, that should be able to pull it off
Humor aside, I'm afraid some jackass would actually try this. First off, the PS3 doesn't support high-speed networks such as Myrinet or InfiniBand. And secondly, Sony is unlikely to ever provide support for any institution that uses a video game console in this manner, unlike IBM or Cray. I have a blog post specifically about this.
You're absolutely right. All of the IT workers who are bitching about globalization right now were pretty smug when they replaced paper shufflers a decade ago.
But I'm not an economist, so maybe I'm missing something important.
You're right, you aren't an economist. Otherwise you'd be familiar with comparative advantage, which states that a country should produce an item when has the least opportunity cost. For example, if the US concentrates on making t-shirts and bananas, then it has given up on making innovative technology. So, the US leaves the clothing and agriculture to other countries and instead works on designing the latest processors and software. Neat, huh?
Really? All of their computer processors are made in Italy? All of their oil is dug from Italian grounds? All of the movies they watch are filmed entirely on Italian locations? I agree that Italy has a lot of protectionism, but I disagree that such a move is positive.
Trade restrictions are arbitrary constraints that prevent people from getting everything that is available in the world. When's the last time you bought coffee whose beans were grown in America?
Your post reeks of xenophobia. What if every country only bought items that had been produced within its borders? We could all feel a smug satisfaction in destroying the global economy (both ours and theirs) in at least having something "Made in America."
As a/. reader, I don't know how I'm supposed to feel about all of this. I mean, it's Wal-Mart vs. the movie studios. That's like taking sides in a battle between Microsoft and SCO.
Why do companies ever bother with pensions? Or options, bonuses, commissions, etc? The only benefits that should exist beyond salary are insurance and possibly education reimbursement. If we want to motivate an employee, then we can give him a raise when he does well. If he does poorly, then we can fire him. It's pretty simple, really.
I caught a plagiarizing grad student too once. I was grading a homework assignment that involved free-response answers. I came upon one where all of the student's answers matched the sample solutions from the book's publisher word-for-word. When I confronted him on it (and gave him a zero), he said that he had been searching the web for some ideas and then used those ideas as his own.
I got the feeling he didn't seem to think anything was wrong with it. I believe he did it because he felt it was the easy way to get the job done.
I compare plagiarizing and other forms of cheating as a symptom of laziness. I can imagine that if these students did indeed grow-up to be researchers or designers or whatever else, they wouldn't put the effort into investigating all of the issues, etc. In other words, they don't really care about the task at hand; they just want a pat on the back.
There are plenty of other sites just like this. There's popurls, which lists feeds from user-contributed sites like Slashdot along with more formalized sites like Google and Yahoo News. There's Diggdot.us, for Digg, Slashdot, and del.icio.us. There is Xtreme News, which includes Fark and the BBC. And then there is DiggLicious, which has live views of updates from a couple of obvious sites.
Too many cores on the same bus will cause a lot of contention for memory access. There will always be a place for NUMA architectures, including clusters. That place is for the ultra-high end though, not for scientists who merely want a few processors for a Gaussian computation.
I have root access to your computer, but all I've done *so far* is give you some free software.
That's like saying, "I have a driver's license, but I *so far* haven't run anyone over." You seem to believe that I should have my privileges revoked for the potential to cause harm. Sorry buddy, but in most countries these days, a man must be proved guilty before he's thrown in the slammer.
And besides, most boards aren't particularly independent to begin with. Back to my original analogy, Microsoft's stock flat-lined once Bill Gates gave the CEO title to best mate Steve Ballmer. Not much independence or financial success in that one.
Bill Gates was both chairman and CEO back when Microsoft's stock was rising unfathomable amounts every year in the '90s. Was that bad for the shareholders?
This is not a surprise. That is simply another example of nature's laws on the web. This is not much different from the now well known fact that most stories on Digg are submitted by a handful of people
That's the exact opposite of what TFA states. It states that most actual content is submitted by tons of individuals. The usual editors, according to TFA, submit little to no content, and instead rely on experts in the field.
For example, I have been considering releasing the background material from my dissertation on Wikipedia. Thus, I can contribute the vast factual stuff I've accumulated onto the web for people who'll search for it. I would then publish the original results from my thesis in a journal, as nobody would care about my research save the most detailed experts in my field (all ten of them).
This of course means that I'll create or substantially enhance maybe two dozen entries, and not bother with anything else. That's exactly what TFA states, and is comparable to an actual encyclopedia. The notion that most content is contributed by only a few hundred elite is laughable; those editors most make formatting changes.
Given that the Cell's programming paradigm is so vastly different from traditional CPUs, it is highly unlikely that there will be broad software development for IBM's chip. Think Itanium, but even more dramatic. Even John Carmack (of id Software fame) has publicly lamented the programmability of the Cell.
I do think it's great that Sony is willing to support the platform outside gaming, but I do believe that they are being a bit over-optimisitc. Given that the PS3 only supports Ethernet, and not Myrinet or InfiniBand, it would appear that the PS3 is quite inadequate for latency-bound technical computing tasks (the ones that require numerous small messages, etc).
I think Microsoft's reason for pushing into HPC is to provide better software development tools for clusters. Can you imagine being able to program in VB.net instead of C99? After all, physicists are there to do science, not write code. Plus, MATLAB (Distributed Computing Toolbox) and Mathematica (gridMathematica) will both be available for Windows CCS, and I imagine Star-P may be out before too long. All in all, I'm cautiously optimistic about getting better development environments available for supercomputing. Of course there is still the concern about license costs and the resource-hogging GUI.
I blogged about these topics a while back, both MS in HPC and better programming tools for supercomputing:
Mod parent up! The presence of independent filmmaking (that is, not funded by a studio or guaranteed distribution at the time of production) allows for a greater variety of output while at the same time providing a means for artists to break into an ultra-competitive industry.
Add to that the fact that Hollywood has guilds who prevent the studios from causing too much abuse to above-the-line talent and I'd say the gaming industry could actually learn a lot more from movies, not the other way around.
According to the article, XM's device does not allow on-demand downloading, nor does it allow content transfers. Sony, a member of RIAA, should remember the results of the Betamax case.
It's like making a "better" car where the turn signal lever is mounted on the right by default.
Welcome to Britain. Hell, these guys drive on the wrong side of the road just to be different. I'd like to see a Linux user claim that level of anti-establishment hipness!
There are already CCTV cameras everywhere in Britain. Hell, we even had them in my college quad (though that didn't stop me from making out with a chick one night there). I'm not too worried about it.
It's just like what Web 2.0 pundits like to talk about: user-generated content. Or like security and stability within the open source community, where many eyes make bugs shallow. All in all, I think it'll be pretty good.
Slashdot Mirror
Humor aside, I'm afraid some jackass would actually try this. First off, the PS3 doesn't support high-speed networks such as Myrinet or InfiniBand. And secondly, Sony is unlikely to ever provide support for any institution that uses a video game console in this manner, unlike IBM or Cray. I have a blog post specifically about this.
You're absolutely right. All of the IT workers who are bitching about globalization right now were pretty smug when they replaced paper shufflers a decade ago.
You're right, you aren't an economist. Otherwise you'd be familiar with comparative advantage, which states that a country should produce an item when has the least opportunity cost. For example, if the US concentrates on making t-shirts and bananas, then it has given up on making innovative technology. So, the US leaves the clothing and agriculture to other countries and instead works on designing the latest processors and software. Neat, huh?
Really? All of their computer processors are made in Italy? All of their oil is dug from Italian grounds? All of the movies they watch are filmed entirely on Italian locations? I agree that Italy has a lot of protectionism, but I disagree that such a move is positive.
Trade restrictions are arbitrary constraints that prevent people from getting everything that is available in the world. When's the last time you bought coffee whose beans were grown in America?
Your post reeks of xenophobia. What if every country only bought items that had been produced within its borders? We could all feel a smug satisfaction in destroying the global economy (both ours and theirs) in at least having something "Made in America."
As a /. reader, I don't know how I'm supposed to feel about all of this. I mean, it's Wal-Mart vs. the movie studios. That's like taking sides in a battle between Microsoft and SCO.
Why do companies ever bother with pensions? Or options, bonuses, commissions, etc? The only benefits that should exist beyond salary are insurance and possibly education reimbursement. If we want to motivate an employee, then we can give him a raise when he does well. If he does poorly, then we can fire him. It's pretty simple, really.
I caught a plagiarizing grad student too once. I was grading a homework assignment that involved free-response answers. I came upon one where all of the student's answers matched the sample solutions from the book's publisher word-for-word. When I confronted him on it (and gave him a zero), he said that he had been searching the web for some ideas and then used those ideas as his own.
I got the feeling he didn't seem to think anything was wrong with it. I believe he did it because he felt it was the easy way to get the job done.
I compare plagiarizing and other forms of cheating as a symptom of laziness. I can imagine that if these students did indeed grow-up to be researchers or designers or whatever else, they wouldn't put the effort into investigating all of the issues, etc. In other words, they don't really care about the task at hand; they just want a pat on the back.
The Microsoft car will crash for no apparent reason.
There are plenty of other sites just like this. There's popurls, which lists feeds from user-contributed sites like Slashdot along with more formalized sites like Google and Yahoo News. There's Diggdot.us, for Digg, Slashdot, and del.icio.us. There is Xtreme News, which includes Fark and the BBC. And then there is DiggLicious, which has live views of updates from a couple of obvious sites.
Too many cores on the same bus will cause a lot of contention for memory access. There will always be a place for NUMA architectures, including clusters. That place is for the ultra-high end though, not for scientists who merely want a few processors for a Gaussian computation.
Sun is back to hiring!
That's like saying, "I have a driver's license, but I *so far* haven't run anyone over." You seem to believe that I should have my privileges revoked for the potential to cause harm. Sorry buddy, but in most countries these days, a man must be proved guilty before he's thrown in the slammer.
And besides, most boards aren't particularly independent to begin with. Back to my original analogy, Microsoft's stock flat-lined once Bill Gates gave the CEO title to best mate Steve Ballmer. Not much independence or financial success in that one.
Bill Gates was both chairman and CEO back when Microsoft's stock was rising unfathomable amounts every year in the '90s. Was that bad for the shareholders?
That's the exact opposite of what TFA states. It states that most actual content is submitted by tons of individuals. The usual editors, according to TFA, submit little to no content, and instead rely on experts in the field.
For example, I have been considering releasing the background material from my dissertation on Wikipedia. Thus, I can contribute the vast factual stuff I've accumulated onto the web for people who'll search for it. I would then publish the original results from my thesis in a journal, as nobody would care about my research save the most detailed experts in my field (all ten of them).
This of course means that I'll create or substantially enhance maybe two dozen entries, and not bother with anything else. That's exactly what TFA states, and is comparable to an actual encyclopedia. The notion that most content is contributed by only a few hundred elite is laughable; those editors most make formatting changes.
Given that the Cell's programming paradigm is so vastly different from traditional CPUs, it is highly unlikely that there will be broad software development for IBM's chip. Think Itanium, but even more dramatic. Even John Carmack (of id Software fame) has publicly lamented the programmability of the Cell.
I do think it's great that Sony is willing to support the platform outside gaming, but I do believe that they are being a bit over-optimisitc. Given that the PS3 only supports Ethernet, and not Myrinet or InfiniBand, it would appear that the PS3 is quite inadequate for latency-bound technical computing tasks (the ones that require numerous small messages, etc).
This is great news; my Facebook site is a combination resume, cover letter, and reference letters. Hey recruiters, this way!
I think Microsoft's reason for pushing into HPC is to provide better software development tools for clusters. Can you imagine being able to program in VB.net instead of C99? After all, physicists are there to do science, not write code. Plus, MATLAB (Distributed Computing Toolbox) and Mathematica (gridMathematica) will both be available for Windows CCS, and I imagine Star-P may be out before too long. All in all, I'm cautiously optimistic about getting better development environments available for supercomputing. Of course there is still the concern about license costs and the resource-hogging GUI.
l e&articleId=27&blogId=1l e&articleId=25&blogId=1
I blogged about these topics a while back, both MS in HPC and better programming tools for supercomputing:
http://hpcanswers.com/plog/index.php?op=ViewArtic
http://hpcanswers.com/plog/index.php?op=ViewArtic
That Congresswoman from Washington sounds pretty dishonest. Could we sell her to the Russians?
Mod parent up! The presence of independent filmmaking (that is, not funded by a studio or guaranteed distribution at the time of production) allows for a greater variety of output while at the same time providing a means for artists to break into an ultra-competitive industry.
Add to that the fact that Hollywood has guilds who prevent the studios from causing too much abuse to above-the-line talent and I'd say the gaming industry could actually learn a lot more from movies, not the other way around.
According to the article, XM's device does not allow on-demand downloading, nor does it allow content transfers. Sony, a member of RIAA, should remember the results of the Betamax case.
My, my, my... lots of anonymous coward responses today. I guess I should point out that I actually, you know, live in Australia. Fancy that.
I guess Google will have to promote "don't be evil" in a country founded by convicts.
Welcome to Britain. Hell, these guys drive on the wrong side of the road just to be different. I'd like to see a Linux user claim that level of anti-establishment hipness!
There are already CCTV cameras everywhere in Britain. Hell, we even had them in my college quad (though that didn't stop me from making out with a chick one night there). I'm not too worried about it.
It's just like what Web 2.0 pundits like to talk about: user-generated content. Or like security and stability within the open source community, where many eyes make bugs shallow. All in all, I think it'll be pretty good.