Sun sure is doing some really interesting things these days. First they release a chip with 8 cores, each capable of running 4 threads simultaneously. Now they have released the design of the chip under the GPLv2.
OpenSPARC
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Category Archives: General
Speculations on the future of science
Speculations on the future of science by Kevin Kelly
Science will continue to surprise us with what it discovers and creates; then it will astound us by devising new methods to surprises us. At the core of science’s self-modification is technology. New tools enable new structures of knowledge and new ways of discovery. The achievement of science is to know new things; the evolution of science is to know them in new ways. What evolves is less the body of what we know and more the nature of our knowing
Linux Journal’s new editor
So my favourite magazine, Linux Journal, has a new editor. Nicholas Petreley.
I have been a Linux Journal subscriber for 8+ years and I proudly have every issue on my bookshelf. I even paid for a subscription for my favourite computer store to help them gain knowledge about Linux and FOSS.
It used to be that the final page of Linux Journal had good information; news from the community, law advice etc. Now that Petreley has joined, the last page of my favourite magazine has uninformed rants that at best belong in a Slashdot comment on a KDE vs GNOME story.
I can only imagine what people new to the community will think when they pick up their first issue of Linux Journal and see that the writing style typified by Slashdot comments also makes it into the community’s print publication.
I will reserve my judgement on the article content for a couple of more issues since the articles that have been published so far were quite likely in the pipeline before Petreley got involved. However, I seriously doubt that Petreley’s biases will not bleed into the rest of the magazine.
On the plus side, the new larger, more graphical layout is quite visually appealing. To whatever extent Petreley was involved in the graphic design changes I compliment him and the rest of the Linux Journal team. Too bad the new layout does not make up for the loss in editorial quality.
AIGLX and Xgl
Accelerated X flame wars!—Maybe not in Free Software Magazine gives some background on X graphics and explains the similarities between AIGLX and Xgl.
Convergence (Saving the Net)
Saving the Net and network neutrality in general have become big topics lately. I have made several posts on the topic over the last few months (1, 2, 3). See Michael Geist‘s The Search for Neutrality for a bit of Canadian perspective.
With the above in mind, it was with great interest that I read this month’s installment of Geoff Huston‘s The ISP Column. The article is entitled Convergence?. I have copied a couple of choice quotes below. There is lots more good information in the article. Last month’s column, IPv6 – Extinction, Evolution or Revolution?, also offers some interesting perspectives on the future of IP service providers.
One emerging body of opinion is that the issue here is not finding the right layer for virtualization of the network, nor is it an exercise in finding just the right form of value to add to these networks, but in recognising the futility in such exercises in the first place.
By any accounts peer-to-peer file sharing has taken over the Internet, with estimates of between 45% to 70% of total internet traffic volumes being attributable to music and video sharing. This has turned the Internet into one of the more prodigious music and video distribution systems ever conceived. This shift in user behaviour has significant implications for the entertainment industry’s chosen distribution methods, and it is likely that the industry will ultimately come to terms with peer sharing technologies such as BitTorrent. The loser in all this is likely to be real time video delivery systems, so one reasonable conclusion is that real time content delivery, or Triple Play time, is over, BitTorrent has won over the user!
The modernization of X
For those who don’t know, there is a lot of good work happening on X these days. Especially interesting is Xgl, AIGLX and the composite extension. Since Xgl and AIGLX are two different ways to bring GL-accelerated effects to the standard Linux desktop, there has been much arguing over which is the better approach.
NVidia appears to believe that the AIGLX approach is a better long-term solution but there is no denying that the combination of Xgl and compiz produce better results at present.
Despite reading extensively on both of these projects, I don’t know enough about deep graphics issues to really make a good decision as to which is better. I’ll leave that to the X people. For now, I’m just really happy to see these features coming to my Linux desktop soon!
Check out this video from Novell to see just how cool this stuff is.
Xgl demo (58MB, XVid).
Computer science growing into a basic science
Computer science growing into a basic science
The talks demonstrated that research in computer science is moving beyond the study of a set of computing machinery. Just as mathematics and physics have matured into fundamental sciences, computer science, too, is graduating into one.
Net channels: Where is the end in end-to-end?
The key design feature of the Internet is the end-to-end principle. In short, the end-to-end principle says that as much work as possible should be done at the ends of the network. This results in a very simple network core. The simplicity of the core allows it to scale. See World of Ends for more implications of the end-to-end principle.
If you ask most network people exactly where the “end” is they will probably say it is the device at the edge of the network. Some may even go as far as to say it is the operating system on the edge device. At present this is indeed the case. For example, the processing necessary to make TCP a reliable protocol happens within the operating system.
At LCA 2006, Van Jacobson recently weighed in on the network protocol processing overhead that is becoming a big problem as link data rates increase. Current operating systems are having a hard time keeping up with 10 gigabit links, especially when using TCP. In his presentation, Van Jacobson says that the placement of the TCP stack in the operating system kernel is a historical accident. This design was chosen because it was necessary to ensure Multics did not page out the TCP stack. Further, TCP in the kernel violates the end-to-end principle because the kernel is not the end, the application is. Van Jacobson offers Net channels as a possible solution to this problem. Net channels provide a simple, cache friendly way to manage network packets within a system.
The presentation discusses several ways that Net channels can improve TCP performance. The first is to use Net channels between the NIC and the current in-kernel TCP stack. The more interesting use of Net channels is to push all TCP processing into userspace. Essentially, each application would have their own TCP stack. This removes the bottleneck that the single, system-wide TCP stack creates. Amazingly, Van Jacobson presents statistics which show that this modification results in TCP processing overhead dropping by 80%. Other benefits would include a simpler kernel and the ability to have a TCP stack tuned for each application. Applying TCP bug fixes and adding new features would also become easier with TCP moved outside of the kernel.
For more information on this really amazing idea see the following resources.
- Net channel presentation slides
- Blog post by David S. Miller
- Article at LWN.net
- Thread on the Linux NetDev mailing list
How To Do What You Love
The most dangerous liars can be the kids’ own parents. If you take a boring job to give your family a high standard of living, as so many people do, you risk infecting your kids with the idea that work is boring.
Most people are doomed in childhood by accepting the axiom that work = pain.
All parents tend to be more conservative for their kids than they would for themselves, simply because, as parents, they share risks more than rewards. If your eight year old son decides to climb a tall tree, or your teenage daughter decides to date the local bad boy, you won’t get a share in the excitement, but if your son falls, or your daughter gets pregnant, you’ll have to deal with the consequences.
Webcaster’s right
The Problem with Webcasting provides a nice overview of the new webcaster’s (copy) right that is being pushed by the U.S. WIPO delegation.
There’s a new restriction on content waiting in the wings–a “webcaster’s right” that allows websites to control the dissemination of content they put up. With this new privilege, they’ll be able to prevent retransmission even if the copyright on that content is owned by somebody else–even, in fact, if that content was in the public domain.