Dualcore? Bah, get a real PC :-)

[Dan]

PC=Personal Cluster that is.
http://www.linuxdevices.com/news/NS4064513967.html8-)

But it only has a Mobility Radeon 9000 so I don´t think it will run Doom3 to good. :lol:

Up to four DS-96's can be combined into a single cluster, Orion says.

But you probably need a new desk to support the 600lbs. :-)

And where is the laptop version?

[adonay]

Thats POWER!!! give me that baby would solve my rendering times a bit come to think about it  :-D

adonay :-D

[bloodline]

Nice!!!

[Dan]

And it can run AROS! :-D

[asian1]

Perhaps in the future there will be mass produced Power Over Ethernet Plus CPU+RAM 10G (Gigabits) Chelsio Ethernet modules based on PowerPC CPUs.

The maximum power available on Power Over Ethernet Plus standard is 30 watts.

Possible CPUs: PowerPC 4XX SOC (AMCC), PowerPC MPC-8641D SOC (15 watts) etc

To connect the modules to ordinary PC, user can install PCI PoE+ 10G Ethernet board or external USB 2.0 /Firewire modules with 10G PoE+ Ethernet interface.

Perhaps in the future such modules can be used for Linux PowerPC, MorphOS, or AmigaOS.
Such module can also be used on stand alone PowerPC cluster inside ordinary PC case with ordinary power supply.

Is this idea possible?

[Piru]

Again!?

AAARGH. Lock me in a soft room, I can't take it anymore. :-)

[Effy]

Dan : Aros on a machine that offers 110 Gflops sustained and 230 Gflops peak performance and draws 1,500 watts  :-o

[odin]

Not that much power usage....my vacuum cleaner draws the same amount  :-P.

[Effy]

That may very well be so but I bet it can´t run Aros  :laughing:

[Dan]

it would run AROS-hosted just as well as any 1.2GHz Transmeta since it runs linux.

The DS-96 also includes a head node with a DVD/CD-RW, USB port, Gigabit Ethernet port, a single 2.5-inch hard drive, and an ATI Mobility Radeon 9000 with 64MB of integrated DDR video RAM.

I didn´t say it would make use of the cluster did I?

[Effy]

But if Linux supports the cluster and Aros is on top of Linux then you automaticly get the speed that the cluster provides, not ?? It´s like Amiga4Ever on top of Windows, the faster the pc, the faster Amiga4Ever runs  :lol:

[Dan]

It depends on threading and stuff. But you could run 90 UAE sessions simultaneous. :lol:

It´s like Amiga4Ever on top of Windows, the faster the pc, the faster Amiga4Ever runs  :lol:

UAE on dualcores will be interesting, one core to do all the linux/windows stuff and using the other just to run uae.
Maybe that could be used for future improved 68k-compability in AROS?

[Trev]

A dual-core box won't be much different from a dual processor box; however, the cores will share the same front-side bus.

UAE and other processes don't need to know anything about the underlying system. If UAE is written to support parallel processing--in the JIT compiler and other emulation bits--then the operating system will automatically use the first available execution unit. If UAE runs everything synchronously, then it won't see a speed improvement at all due to multiple cores.

Trev

[Dan]

Trev wrote:
A dual-core box won't be much different from a dual processor box; however, the cores will share the same front-side bus.

Except price(dual processor is only affordable with PIIIs)

UAE and other processes don't need to know anything about the underlying system.

Thats a job for the OS isn´t it?

If UAE is written to support parallel processing

Doubt it.

--in the JIT compiler and other emulation bits--then the operating system will automatically use the first available execution unit. If UAE runs everything synchronously, then it won't see a speed improvement at all due to multiple cores.
Trev

Isn´t there any OS where you can decide over the task/process scheduler and command it like "UAE and all it´s subprocesses runs on this cpu and everything else runs on that cpu" wouldn´t that improve speed? :-?

[Trev]

Isn´t there any OS where you can decide over the task/process scheduler and command it like "UAE and all it´s subprocesses runs on this cpu and everything else runs on that cpu" wouldn´t that improve speed?

Yes. It's called processor affinity. Windows NT 4.0 and later have an affinity mask for both processes and threads. Linux kernels 2.2 and 2.4 required a patch to support this. Don't know about 2.6.

Normally, there isn't really a reason to tie a particular process to any one processor. It's best to let the OS thread scheduler do all the work. EDIT: I'm curious to see how dual-core processors perform in practice compared to a "hyper-threading" processor, in which multiple threads of execution share the same L2 processor cache.

Now, I suppose you could reduce latency due to context switching (EDIT: and cache misses) by sticking certain processes on certain processors, but I don't know that it would make a huge difference for an application like UAE that is mostly event driven. But if you're doing something fancy like rendering in LightWave 3D. . . .

So, dual-core processors are exciting, but it's up to application developers to take advantage of the features. SMP systems have been available for years, and most applications are still written to be either single-threaded or run multiple threads synchronously. Hopefully, dual-core processors will sell well enough to change things. Parallel programming has been a popular topic in recent issues of Dr. Dobbs, C/C++ Users Journal, and other practical programming mags, so I think change is on its way.

Trev