[geeks] PS/3's, Linux, etc, was: Second Life is not a game?

[Mike Meredith]

On Wed, 1 Aug 2007 11:02:57 +0300, Geoffrey S. Mendelson wrote:
> I don't understand (yes I'm being exceptionally thick here), if it
> is just computational tasks, besides (not) being big endian what is
> the difference between a PC running 64 bit Linux and a PS/3?

Not a great deal; the PS3 will be slower for general purpose code of
course, but you wouldn't run that there ... except as necessary for
'glue' code. Where the PS3 (and Cell) shines is running code on the
funky extra cores which are very different to the x86 processor ...
purists would probably hate this, but imagine those extra cores are
vector processors. You may be using the PC for editing and
cross-compiling code, but run the code and debug it on the PS3.

Imagine you have a huge application that could do with a big increase
in speed. You could get a few PS3s not to run the application itself
but to give the developers something to test whether the application
*could* run better on a suitably equipped cluster of Cell blades.

Now imagine that some company has a big cluster consisting of dozens
(or more) of Cell blades. Do you let the developers have access to that
cluster when access to a PS3 would do almost as well ? You may need to
let the developers use the cluster for some things, but quite a bit can
be accomplished with a PS3.

I'm not talking about a developer being stuck in front of a wide screen
TV with a bluetooth keyboard hacking code on the PS3. Just attach a PS3
using a cross-over cable to the back of the developer's workstation.

As for a lone geek using a PS3 as a workstation and trying to make
code like _oggenc_ faster using the 'funky cores' *, well *I* wouldn't
do it but good luck to him. A PS3 (or a hypothetical PS4) isn't going
to replace my Ultra40 but peering into the future I don't see it as
impossible that my next workstation could have something like the Cell
in it ... perhaps AMD's vague plans to include non-x86_64 cores (as
well as x86_64 cores) in their multi-core processors will include a
number of Cell-like 'funky cores' to speed up certain operations like
MP3-encoding, etc.

*: This is a *real* bad comparison, but my PS3 seems to encode an album
to MP3 *much* faster than Ultra40 will. I should probably get some
timings!

> I may be wrong, but having been burned, I am never going to invest
> large amounts of my time or money in anything that is GPL'ed.
> 
> I don't think the money is there. Don't get me wrong, I am looking
> to include GPL'ed software in my next venture (if it ever happens),

I'd assume that to make money with GPLed software one would sell
support rather than software. For some markets this makes sense ...
where the initial license for the software is dwarfed by the ongoing
support costs (something like student records systems for
Universities ... where each University makes changes to the
'off-the-shelf application' and pays support from the vendor). 

> * I don't believe in a dual GPL/closed license. If someone contributes
>   fixes or enhancments to GPL'ed code, I believe they have the right

I'm not really much of a developer and excluding some minor patches for
ISC's dhcpd, haven't contributed much code anywhere. But yes I'd very
very wary of contributing code to a project like that.

-- 
Mike Meredith (http://zonky.org/)
 ... a software firewall is like bringing a knife to a gunfight.