Larrabee delayed: anyone know what's happening?
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From: Ken Hagan on 8 Dec 2009 05:45 On Tue, 08 Dec 2009 08:45:09 -0000, Torben �gidius Mogensen <torbenm(a)diku.dk> wrote: > The main (only?) advantage of the x86 ISA is for running legacy software > (yes, I do consider Windows to be legacy software). And I don't see > this applying for Larrabee -- you can't exploit the parallelism when you > run dusty decks. But you can exploit the parallelism where you really needed it and carry on using the dusty decks for all the other stuff, without which you don't have a rounded product.
From: nmm1 on 8 Dec 2009 06:44 In article <op.u4l76qplss38k4(a)khagan.ttx>, Ken Hagan <K.Hagan(a)thermoteknix.com> wrote: >On Tue, 08 Dec 2009 08:45:09 -0000, Torben �gidius Mogensen ><torbenm(a)diku.dk> wrote: > >> The main (only?) advantage of the x86 ISA is for running legacy software >> (yes, I do consider Windows to be legacy software). And I don't see >> this applying for Larrabee -- you can't exploit the parallelism when you >> run dusty decks. > >But you can exploit the parallelism where you really needed it and carry >on using the dusty decks for all the other stuff, without which you don't >have a rounded product. That was the theory. We don't know how well it would have panned out, but it is clearly a sane objective. Regards, Nick Maclaren.
From: Andrew Reilly on 8 Dec 2009 07:14 On Tue, 08 Dec 2009 09:27:32 +0000, nmm1 wrote: > Larrabee's pitch implied that it would have been simple to add general > Internet access, probably including VoIP, and quite possibly online > ordering, Email etc. Why do you suggest that internet access, VoIP or online ordering are impossible or even hard on existing Cell? It's a full-service Unix engine, aside from all of the rendering business. Linux runs on it, which means that all of the interesting browsers run on it just fine. Sure, there's an advertising campaign (circa NetBurst) that says that intel makes the internet work better, but we're not buying that, are we? Cheers, -- Andrew
From: nmm1 on 8 Dec 2009 07:33 In article <7o6u8fF3o5fmeU1(a)mid.individual.net>, Andrew Reilly <areilly---(a)bigpond.net.au> wrote: > >> Larrabee's pitch implied that it would have been simple to add general >> Internet access, probably including VoIP, and quite possibly online >> ordering, Email etc. > >Why do you suggest that internet access, VoIP or online ordering are >impossible or even hard on existing Cell? It's a full-service Unix >engine, aside from all of the rendering business. Quite a lot of (indirect) feedback from people who have tried using it, as well as the not-wholly-unrelated Blue Gene. The killer is that it is conceptually different from 'mainstream' systems, and so each major version of each product is likely to require extensive work, possibly including reimplementation or the implementation of a new piece of infrastructure. That's a long-term sink of effort. As a trivial example of the sort of problem, a colleague of mine has some systems with NFS-mounted directories, but where file locking is disabled (for good reasons). Guess what broke at a system upgrade? > Linux runs on it, >which means that all of the interesting browsers run on it just fine. It means nothing of the sort - even if you mean a fully-fledged system environment by "Linux", and not just a kernel and surrounding features, there are vast areas of problematic facilities that most browsers use that are not needed for a reasonable version of Linux. >Sure, there's an advertising campaign (circa NetBurst) that says that >intel makes the internet work better, but we're not buying that, are we? Of course not. Regards, Nick Maclaren.
From: ChrisQ on 8 Dec 2009 08:07
nmm1(a)cam.ac.uk wrote: > >> Linux runs on it, >> which means that all of the interesting browsers run on it just fine. > > It means nothing of the sort - even if you mean a fully-fledged system > environment by "Linux", and not just a kernel and surrounding features, > there are vast areas of problematic facilities that most browsers use > that are not needed for a reasonable version of Linux. > For example ?. Once you have an os kernel and drivers on top of the hardware, the hw is essentially isolated and anything that can compile should run with few problems. Ok, it may mean that the code runs on one of the n available processors under the hood, but it should run... Regards, Chris |