[geeks] Second Life is not a game?

[Geoffrey S. Mendelson]

On Wed, Aug 01, 2007 at 11:34:49AM -0400, Joshua Boyd wrote:
> Because it can run some things faster.  Picture Altivec that never  
> has to wait for memory latency because it is working off of 256k of  
> SRAM running at the same speed as the processor.  And in addition,  
> this altivec implementation has 128 128-bit registers, instead of  
> only 16.  Now, picture 6-8 (PS3 has 6, the stuff from IBM and Mercury  
> 8) of this Altivec processors in one die, and that combined with  
> those Altivec processors, you also have a regular PPC code to feed  
> data into the various SRAM locations from main ram and/or other IO  
> devices.

It definitely sounds like a hot idea.

Is there a low power version?

> I would imagine that people buying YellowDog for Cell based systems  
> other than the PS3 would be a) charged more in general, b) buying  
> support contracts, and c) likely paying for every system.  Like  
> RedHat.  Sure, you can buy one copy and install it every where, but  
> how many large companies do that for their critical systems?

I must have missed that. I did not see anything on their website
where they asked for a per system fee. I'm not sure I would pay it,
because for a computational array instead of a desktop do everything
system, I would probably use a debian system and clone/netboot it.


 
> The Mercury Cell accellerator board starts at $17,000 the last I  
> heard.  The Mercury or IBM Cell blade clusters cost far more.  People  
> buying those aren't likely to skimp on software and support.

That's an interesting question, what exactly do they support? 
With Linux, I'm never sure. If there is a kernel bug, will they work
on a fix? A GCC bug? An Emacs bug?

As for skimping on software and support, a company like IBM won't, but
they have their own internal staff. A small start up will. If there is
no legal requirement to buy a copy of a package for each computer
they won't. 

As I said, if I were building a network of such computers I would out
of a sense of obligation buy a copy of YDL and if they sold support 
at a reasonable price buy a contract. On the other hand if it ran
a far less bloated distro, I'd probably use that instead.

Geoff.

-- 
Geoffrey S. Mendelson, Jerusalem, Israel gsm at mendelson.com  N3OWJ/4X1GM
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