In fact, back at university I implemented the "nice" command for MINIX 2.0. The hard part was to pass the message from userland to the scheduler (which previosly I had modified so it sorts the process qeue according to the priority).
I haven't try anything similar for Linux, but having a monolitic architecture surely simplifies the message passing burden (which was a lot!), although it migth add other problems I haven't consider...
For a start, the simplest OS seems to be a monolitic approach, single-task, single-user, like DOS... taking to the extreme the KISS approach we would go back to pure assembly language...
In fact, back at university I implemented the "nice" command for MINIX 2.0 and it hard part was to pass the message from userland to the scleduler (which previosly I had modified so it sorts the process qeue according to the priority).
You can even try setting up a SSB Packet Radio station , with the other part in the closest location with broadband Internet access, and you won't have any fixed fee, except for the broadband acces.
Transfer rates have tipically been very low, but might be Ok for email and low-bandwith use.
As long as you have cell phone coverage, you can get (although slow and expensive) internet acces. EDGE nowadays gets really close to ADSL, and you can have two cell phone and split the net in two, to double speed.
Gas and GasOil alternatives
on
Out of Gas
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
Actually, Brazil prouduces alcohonafta (alcohol from "can~a de azucar") that can be used as a direct replacement for GAS (the mesures shows a 20% power drop from GAS).
For GasOil there's bio-diesel produced from any vegetal oil (simply choose the cheapest one) that works great for big diesel engines (I'm not so sure if it works on direct injection diesel engines).
Both options are far more clean that traditional petroleum based Gas.
Obviously there's no enough surface in the world to produce enough alcohonafta or bio-diesel to run every engine out there, but you can replace a lot of the consumed petrol, slowing down the burn out rate, giving time for the world to migrate to more eficient internal combustion engines (that can be drive with the world produced alcohonafta).
Fly-Weels are doesn't allow big shocks becouse of it giroscopic nature, and would require a hole new kind of machinery, while acohonafta won't change current technology.
As far as I remembered alcohonafta is profitable when petrol exceeds U$S40 the barrel (nowadays), I'm not so sure about bio-diesel but I think it's about U$S35 the barrel.
SunBlade 2500 with two users and two keyboards
on
Dual User Windows PC
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
Actually sun's SunBlade 2500 workstation can be used by two users simoultaneously, with two keyboards and two graphics boards sharing resources! (Solaris 9 and up only)
Just give it some though... For someone that never worked with computers before, it is more intuitive to think every object displayed is 3D (like "real" world) than a 2D representation...
Perhaps Looking Glass is not the best implementation, but a 3D desktop IS more intuitive than XP for a 100% computer newbie. I believe that computer users are far less than 50% of total world population....
KNOPPIX!!! Give me a bootable Windows CD and we will talk... In fact there are some devices that Knoppix recognzied rigth away on my computer, while XP requires me to install drivers for...
Trust me, my grand mother can use knoppix rigth away on a new computer (simple inserts the CD) but have no clue at all on how to install Windows!
Sorry, Solaris is free... go to www.sun.com/downloads/ and get it! You can download SPARC or Intel versions. Acording to my own experience, JBOS on Solaris Intel is 10% faster than on Linux, mainly becouse of the better thread management Solaris has (I haven't try kernel 2.6, thoug).
I believed that since 1995 or a little later there's no single os besides Solaris in Sun (except from some laptops that cames preloaded with Windows and doesn't run Solaris x86).
Actually you will hit Amdall law's very soon. With a code that is 95% parallel and 5% serial (100 minutes run), depending on the processor count, you've got: 1- processor: 100 minutes, 0 speed-up 2- processors: 52.5 minutes 1.9 speed-up 5- processors: 24 minutes 4.17 speed-up 15- processors: 11.4 minutes 8.77 speed-up 50- processors: 6.9 minutes 14.49 speed-up 100- processors: 5.95 minutes 16.8 speed-up 300- processors: 5.32 minutes 18.8 speed-up
You can see that if you have 5% of your code that can't be parallelized by any human, you won't gain almost nothing at all going 50 to 100 or even 300 processors (or independent, non-blocking threads, if you like).
Intel has it on its P4, IBM has it on its RS64III and POWER4, Sun will have it on its Niagara... everyone is going the same way.. now, none has find a way to transform serial code to parallel. There's a simple Touring machine that converts parallel graphs to serial, no one has ever came up with a Touring machine that takes serial code and makes it a "perfect" (every posible paralelism degree) parallel one. Thas the saint-grial that seems unrecheable... up to then, only some apps can scale with those CMT processors.
Re:Threat to Athlon64: Prescott (not Pentium 4)
on
Athlon 64 Debuts
·
· Score: 1
Disclaimer: I'm a Sun employee.
It depends on what kind of number crunching you are running... If your process need more than 4GB RAM (ideally around 16GB RAM), then there's no better price/performance machine than the new V440. http://store.sun.com/catalog/doc/BrowsePage .jhtml? catid=104994 As Seymour Cray said "I don't built fast computers, I only built big memory computer, for this is what limits the size of the problems you can deal with. What happens is that if I don't add fast processor nobody will buy them!" or something like that. Currently, AFAIK, Sun's 15K is the largest memory general pourpose computer (576GB RAM).
If your dataset needs huge memory sizes, then Sun is the way to go.
Actually Intel added 4 more bits, so you can address 36 bits... the problem is that you need to use extended processor instructions. Right now, only Windows kernel, Linux Kernel and SQL Server can use more than 4GB ram. Every other process run in those machines won't address more than 4GB, unles they rewrite it using the extended API
Being a 28 years old programmer, I can tell you that I'm not as fast, nor as witted minded as I was. GREAT young programmers (by great I mean top 1% programming class) are far more creative, though five years work will turn them into ME (revenge...).
The hability to create is affected by age, simply becouse you have more experience and previous code to choose from, meanwhile, new programers reinvent the whell every day, leave space to new ideas.
Prices are hiding data
on
Sun's Last Stand
·
· Score: 5, Informative
In fact, the V480 has a 3 year warranty, if you add AIX license, 3 year warranty, 8+ GB RAM, the p630 id far more expensive than the V480... it's always easy to cheat... No one runs Linux under Power4, since you loose functionality (dynamic LPARs) compared to AIX.
The Dell machine is far less powerfull (SPECrate comparison) and doesn't include 3 year warranty.
Those prices are plain wrong!
I always wander why Slashdot ops. hate Sun so much and loves IBM... will never get it.
In fact, Sun's is the single company that has donated more lines code in the world (OpenOffice, JXTA, GridEngine, NetBeans, etc.).
Basically there are only 3 ways of encoding wireless binary data, FDMA (wrongly called AMPS), TDMA (used by GSM) and CDMA (OFDM seems to be a variation of CDMA). Basically, as any spread-spectrum (CDMA, OFDM or time-hopping) modulation needs a lot of spectrum, they are too expensive (thanks to FCC). That's why 802.11x is gaining market, a cheap not license alternative.
Not fiction, but a must read to understand life
on
A Good Summer Read?
·
· Score: 1
Slashdot Mirror
In fact, back at university I implemented the "nice" command for MINIX 2.0. The hard part was to pass the message from userland to the scheduler (which previosly I had modified so it sorts the process qeue according to the priority).
I haven't try anything similar for Linux, but having a monolitic architecture surely simplifies the message passing burden (which was a lot!), although it migth add other problems I haven't consider...
For a start, the simplest OS seems to be a monolitic approach, single-task, single-user, like DOS... taking to the extreme the KISS approach we would go back to pure assembly language...
It has recently changed and now is GPL
In fact, back at university I implemented the "nice" command for MINIX 2.0 and it hard part was to pass the message from userland to the scleduler (which previosly I had modified so it sorts the process qeue according to the priority).
You can even try setting up a SSB Packet Radio station , with the other part in the closest location with broadband Internet access, and you won't have any fixed fee, except for the broadband acces.
Transfer rates have tipically been very low, but might be Ok for email and low-bandwith use.
As long as you have cell phone coverage, you can get (although slow and expensive) internet acces. EDGE nowadays gets really close to ADSL, and you can have two cell phone and split the net in two, to double speed.
Actually, Brazil prouduces alcohonafta (alcohol from "can~a de azucar") that can be used as a direct replacement for GAS (the mesures shows a 20% power drop from GAS).
For GasOil there's bio-diesel produced from any vegetal oil (simply choose the cheapest one) that works great for big diesel engines (I'm not so sure if it works on direct injection diesel engines).
Both options are far more clean that traditional petroleum based Gas.
Obviously there's no enough surface in the world to produce enough alcohonafta or bio-diesel to run every engine out there, but you can replace a lot of the consumed petrol, slowing down the burn out rate, giving time for the world to migrate to more eficient internal combustion engines (that can be drive with the world produced alcohonafta).
Fly-Weels are doesn't allow big shocks becouse of it giroscopic nature, and would require a hole new kind of machinery, while acohonafta won't change current technology.
As far as I remembered alcohonafta is profitable when petrol exceeds U$S40 the barrel (nowadays), I'm not so sure about bio-diesel but I think it's about U$S35 the barrel.
Actually sun's SunBlade 2500 workstation can be used by two users simoultaneously, with two keyboards and two graphics boards sharing resources! (Solaris 9 and up only)
Just give it some though... For someone that never worked with computers before, it is more intuitive to think every object displayed is 3D (like "real" world) than a 2D representation...
Perhaps Looking Glass is not the best implementation, but a 3D desktop IS more intuitive than XP for a 100% computer newbie. I believe that computer users are far less than 50% of total world population....
KNOPPIX!!! Give me a bootable Windows CD and we will talk... In fact there are some devices that Knoppix recognzied rigth away on my computer, while XP requires me to install drivers for...
Trust me, my grand mother can use knoppix rigth away on a new computer (simple inserts the CD) but have no clue at all on how to install Windows!
Actually this is Sun's implementation of BSD jails with their "Resource Manager" software for resoruce allocation.
You can get the demo from http://wwws.sun.com/software/looking_glass/demo.ht ml
Awsome...
http://sdc.sun.com/solaris_list/s9supported_pro
List of ORACLE releases supported on Solaris 9....
Sorry, Solaris is free... go to www.sun.com/downloads/ and get it! You can download SPARC or Intel versions.
Acording to my own experience, JBOS on Solaris Intel is 10% faster than on Linux, mainly becouse of the better thread management Solaris has (I haven't try kernel 2.6, thoug).
I believed that since 1995 or a little later there's no single os besides Solaris in Sun (except from some laptops that cames preloaded with Windows and doesn't run Solaris x86).
Actually you will hit Amdall law's very soon. With a code that is 95% parallel and 5% serial (100 minutes run), depending on the processor count, you've got:
1- processor: 100 minutes, 0 speed-up
2- processors: 52.5 minutes 1.9 speed-up
5- processors: 24 minutes 4.17 speed-up
15- processors: 11.4 minutes 8.77 speed-up
50- processors: 6.9 minutes 14.49 speed-up
100- processors: 5.95 minutes 16.8 speed-up
300- processors: 5.32 minutes 18.8 speed-up
You can see that if you have 5% of your code that can't be parallelized by any human, you won't gain almost nothing at all going 50 to 100 or even 300 processors (or independent, non-blocking threads, if you like).
Intel has it on its P4, IBM has it on its RS64III and POWER4, Sun will have it on its Niagara... everyone is going the same way.. now, none has find a way to transform serial code to parallel. There's a simple Touring machine that converts parallel graphs to serial, no one has ever came up with a Touring machine that takes serial code and makes it a "perfect" (every posible paralelism degree) parallel one. Thas the saint-grial that seems unrecheable... up to then, only some apps can scale with those CMT processors.
Disclaimer: I'm a Sun employee.e .jhtml? catid=104994
It depends on what kind of number crunching you are running... If your process need more than 4GB RAM (ideally around 16GB RAM), then there's no better price/performance machine than the new V440.
http://store.sun.com/catalog/doc/BrowsePag
As Seymour Cray said "I don't built fast computers, I only built big memory computer, for this is what limits the size of the problems you can deal with. What happens is that if I don't add fast processor nobody will buy them!" or something like that. Currently, AFAIK, Sun's 15K is the largest memory general pourpose computer (576GB RAM).
If your dataset needs huge memory sizes, then Sun is the way to go.
Actually Intel added 4 more bits, so you can address 36 bits... the problem is that you need to use extended processor instructions. Right now, only Windows kernel, Linux Kernel and SQL Server can use more than 4GB ram. Every other process run in those machines won't address more than 4GB, unles they rewrite it using the extended API
Well... actually the Software department has their biggest R+D headcount (even more than Solaris and SPARC conbined), something like 5000 souls...
I believe StarOffice opens Corel files. Since that's a propietary 3rd pary filter (not from Sun) it is only available in the paid StarOffice suite.
I'm almost sure that SGI was the first... not sure if Sun beat them to market, though
Being a 28 years old programmer, I can tell you that I'm not as fast, nor as witted minded as I was. GREAT young programmers (by great I mean top 1% programming class) are far more creative, though five years work will turn them into ME (revenge...).
The hability to create is affected by age, simply becouse you have more experience and previous code to choose from, meanwhile, new programers reinvent the whell every day, leave space to new ideas.
In fact, the V480 has a 3 year warranty, if you add AIX license, 3 year warranty, 8+ GB RAM, the p630 id far more expensive than the V480... it's always easy to cheat... No one runs Linux under Power4, since you loose functionality (dynamic LPARs) compared to AIX.
The Dell machine is far less powerfull (SPECrate comparison) and doesn't include 3 year warranty.
Those prices are plain wrong!
I always wander why Slashdot ops. hate Sun so much and loves IBM... will never get it.
In fact, Sun's is the single company that has donated more lines code in the world (OpenOffice, JXTA, GridEngine, NetBeans, etc.).
Basically there are only 3 ways of encoding wireless binary data, FDMA (wrongly called AMPS), TDMA (used by GSM) and CDMA (OFDM seems to be a variation of CDMA). Basically, as any spread-spectrum (CDMA, OFDM or time-hopping) modulation needs a lot of spectrum, they are too expensive (thanks to FCC). That's why 802.11x is gaining market, a cheap not license alternative.
Doglas Hofstadter's "Godel Escher Bach"