Linked by David Adams on Wed 24th Sep 2008 22:44 UTC, submitted by snydeq
Linux Foundation Executive Director Jim Zemlin has said it is time for Solaris to simply move out of the way and yield the future to Linux. 'The future is Linux and Microsoft Windows. It is not Unix or Solaris,' he claims, contending that Sun's strength in long-lifecycle apps is giving way to Linux, as evidenced by the rise of Web apps, where Linux holds a decided advantage, Zemlin claims. With capabilities such as ZFS and DTrace, Sun is trying to compete based on minor features, he says. 'That's literally like noticing the view from a third-story building as it burns to the ground.'
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Member since:2007-07-27
The new SPARC cpu Niagara T2 has 8 cores with 64 threads. At best, all of them can run at once! Not like x86, where a thread occupies the entire pipeline. The T2 can run several threads at the same time, in different stages in the pipeline. Each thread has the speed of a Pentium3 @ 1GHz. Not much. But for heavy multi thread, it shines.
The problem is people loads the T2 CPU up with small test data, like 1 GB data or so. Then dual x86 will win easily. But when you load the T2 up with MASSIVE data, where the x86 stalls, the T2 just continues. It degrades a magnitude slower than x86. The key is huge amounts of real production data. Then it will shine.
It will shine because the T2 never waits for stalled pipeline. Intel studies show that a typical x86 server CPU, waits 50-60% for data - under FULL load. The pipeline stalls. The T2 just switches thread to another in 1 clock cycle and continues to do other work while waiting for data. An x86 can not switch thread that quick, it has to wait. So an x86 will stall when workload is big enough. The T2 doesnt care, it continues to work. Try to load T2 up with huge amounts of data, and you will see that one of these will outperform a multi cpu x86 configuration.
Member since:2008-09-26
Some may find his comments offensive, but I agree with him, to some extent. My experience : SunOS 2.9; 2.10, T6300 blades && T2000 platform - extremely slow in disk operations, untar-ing 500 MB file takes ~1 minute - Linux - much more poor machine - 10 seconds for the same file. Solaris 10 - hard to maintain - you have to spend weeks and months tuning and understand the OS, no need - there's Linux already over there. Cost and maintenance - get me the same performance (whatever type of performance you'd like) from T2000 box and compare it, for example with Dell Power Edge with SLES or RHEL for the same price - no way. Flexible tools, human readable format, handy applications, larger community = Linux - can you tell the same about Solaris ? Not really, come on, don't twist the truth. Certainly, everyone out there is free to try and decide for himself.
DISCLAIMER -- I'm not a Sun employee but a very very satisfied customer.
This is a classic FUD-sample that misguides potential users. The Niagara line is known as the throughput-computing platform because of the multi-core architecture. Each core is not a metal-burning heat-generating monstrosity but moderately well performing (1 - 1.4Ghz). The advantage of running apps in this platform is those immensely multi-threaded ones, which can take advantage of the 4 or 8 threads that each core can handle (so instead of running 1 thread super-fast, you run 32 or 64 threads moderately fast). Sure, single-threaded performance is not comparable to the x86/x64 or other sparc procs, but end-result is more computing done faster.
It is very important to choose a right application to do the comparison (there are plenty of benchmarks out there that prove that the Niagara-based systems outperform comparable systems when the workload is appropriate. These are not "one size fits all" solutions, they are specific and highly effective solutions to specific problems.
News
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/18/13 21:06 UTC
"At the end of a week in which Electronic Arts confirmed it wasn't developing a thing for the Wii U, one of the software engineers in EA Sports' Canada studio, in a series of since-deleted tweets, disparaged the console as 'crap' and suggested Nintendo should give up on hardware altogether. 'The Wii U is crap. Less powerful than an Xbox 360. Poor online/store. Weird tablet', tweeted Bob Summerwill, listed as a senior software engineer at EA Canada, in a reply to a tweet posting a link about EA's no-Wii U news. 'Nintendo are walking dead at this point'." The Wii U is turning into the 21st century's Virtual Boy.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/18/13 7:37 UTC
"In NixOS, the entire operating system - the kernel, applications, system packages, configuration files, and so on - is built by the Nix package manager from a description in a purely functional build language. The fact that it's purely functional essentially means that building a new configuration cannot overwrite previous configurations. Most of the other features follow from this." Interesting approach. A Linux distribution, sure, but with some very refreshing ideas about system configuration.
Linked by fran on 05/18/13 1:38 UTC
Appfour added, among other features, C/C++ support to its new version of AIDE. From Android-IDE, "Now you can write parts of your app or your whole app in C/C++ on your device. AIDE supports the Standard Android NDK toolchain (GCC 4.6 + Bionic, STL, ...). No changes are necessary if you want to build an app developed on a PC with Eclipse. C/C++ development is fully integrated: Build errors appear in the error list and files can easily be navigated to with Go to file. The editor supports C/C++ syntax highlighting."
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/17/13 23:35 UTC, submitted by kragil
Ars nails it: "The answer is that Google did announce what amounts to a fairly substantial Android update yesterday. They simply did it without adding to the update fragmentation problems that continue to plague the platform. By focusing on these changes and not the apparently-waiting-in-the-wings update to the core software, Google is showing us one of the ways in which it's trying to fix the update problem."
Linked by MOS6510 on 05/17/13 22:22 UTC
"It is good for programmers to understand what goes on inside a processor. The CPU is at the heart of our career. What goes on inside the CPU? How long does it take for one instruction to run? What does it mean when a new CPU has a 12-stage pipeline, or 18-stage pipeline, or even a 'deep' 31-stage pipeline? Programs generally treat the CPU as a black box. Instructions go into the box in order, instructions come out of the box in order, and some processing magic happens inside. As a programmer, it is useful to learn what happens inside the box. This is especially true if you will be working on tasks like program optimization. If you don't know what is going on inside the CPU, how can you optimize for it? This article is about what goes on inside the x86 processor's deep pipeline."
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/17/13 22:15 UTC, submitted by Tom
"It was the only moment I heard regret slip into Otellini's voice during the several hours of conversations I had with him. 'The lesson I took away from that was, while we like to speak with data around here, so many times in my career I've ended up making decisions with my gut, and I should have followed my gut,' he said. 'My gut told me to say yes.'" The world would've been a much different place - Apple would have been less dependant on Samsung for its chips, which probably would've meant less money for Samsung to develop its Galaxy business.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/16/13 21:41 UTC
Glass is getting some love at Google I/O as well. New applications have been released - Facebook, Twitter, Evernote, Elle, Tumblr, and CNN. Perhaps more interesting: the newly announced Google Glass Developer Kit will allow offline applications and direct hardware access - great for hacking and expanding Glass' potential. This kit will really allow hackers to put Glass through its paces.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/16/13 17:04 UTC
"But Beck and Merrill decided that simply banning toxic players wasn't an acceptable solution for their game. Riot Games began experimenting with more constructive modes of player management through a formal player behavior initiative that actually conducts controlled experiments on its player base to see what helps reduce bad behavior. The results of that initiative have been shared at a lecture at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and on panels at the Penny Arcade Expo East and the Game Developers Conference." Absolutely fascinating stuff. I'm a League of Legends player, and to be honest, the community isn't nearly as bad as some make it out to be. I'm happy Riot games has the guts to employ science to address the issue.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/16/13 13:17 UTC
"Android and iOS, the number one and number two ranked smartphone operating systems worldwide, combined for 92.3% of all smartphone shipments during the first quarter of 2013 as Windows Phone crept past BlackBerry for 3rd place. According to the International Data Corporation Worldwide Quarterly Mobile Phone Tracker, Android smartphone vendors and Apple shipped a total of 199.5 million units worldwide during 1Q13, up 59.1% from the 125.4 million units shipped during 1Q12." Windows Phone doubles from a few to twice few, iOS loser market share as its growth is slower than that of the overall market. BlackBerry continues slide into irrelevance.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/16/13 12:06 UTC
"According to the latest research from our Wireless Smartphone Strategies service, global Android smartphone profits reached US$5 billion in total during the first quarter of 2013. Samsung dominated and captured an impressive 95 percent share of all Android smartphone profits." Wow.More News »
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Member since:
2008-06-16
Some may find his comments offensive, but I agree with him, to some extent. My experience : SunOS 2.9; 2.10, T6300 blades && T2000 platform - extremely slow in disk operations, untar-ing 500 MB file takes ~1 minute - Linux - much more poor machine - 10 seconds for the same file. Solaris 10 - hard to maintain - you have to spend weeks and months tuning and understand the OS, no need - there's Linux already over there. Cost and maintenance - get me the same performance (whatever type of performance you'd like) from T2000 box and compare it, for example with Dell Power Edge with SLES or RHEL for the same price - no way. Flexible tools, human readable format, handy applications, larger community = Linux - can you tell the same about Solaris ? Not really, come on, don't twist the truth. Certainly, everyone out there is free to try and decide for himself.