AMD still is the winner, at least for now.
Wednesday, December 28, 2005
Sunday, December 25, 2005
Sunday, December 18, 2005
Fixes on FFTW for 64bit
I just downloaded FFTW library from http://www.fftw.org and tried to compile it with full optimizations and 64bit-enable flag. Many files were compiled OK, but when GCC tried to compile sse2.c, it failed with complaints:
Still need to test it rigorously whether the would inadvertent effect with all the optimizations. By the way, here is my optimization flags to GCC compiler:
CFLAGS="-mtune=athlon64 -msse2 -mfpmath=sse -ffast-math -m64 -O3"
Error: suffix or operands invalid for `push'When I digged into the code I saw that it was using 32bit register ebx. I then changed it to rbx (64bit version of BX) and recompile it, it works.
Error: suffix or operands invalid for `pop'
Still need to test it rigorously whether the would inadvertent effect with all the optimizations. By the way, here is my optimization flags to GCC compiler:
CFLAGS="-mtune=athlon64 -msse2 -mfpmath=sse -ffast-math -m64 -O3"
I am in 64bit Now!
A few days ago, I did installed SUSE ver 10.0 64-bit edition to my Compaq Presario R3000z laptop. After backing up all the data to my new SEAGATE external hard drive (its 200 GB, so has plenty of space), I resized the Linux (reiserfs) partition from 15 GB to 25 GB, plus I added an extra 5 GB FAT32 partition to share files between Linux and Windows XP (in case I use Windows :-).
The standard SUSE does not came with NVIDIA's binary-only enhanced driver, so the graphic was standard. I then downloaded the 64bit driver from nvidia.com, but had problem installing it. Somehow downloading the 64bit driver from YaST worked out. I don't know what was the problem, but anyway it work OK so I could change the resolution to 1680x1050 and the graphic was fine.
Another problem was the wireless device. Linux 64bit does not like 32bit driver, so the old Broadcom driver for WinXP did not work. After googling up, I found the driver for Win 64bit (somebody posted it at www.planetamd64.com. You must register to the site to be able to download it, but it is free registration). Yet, the ndiswrapper still could not load the driver. From dmesg result, I saw there was one error saying "ntoskernel.exe: RtlZeroMemory" was an undefined function. Hm...
One problem was that the *.conf under /etc/ndiswrapper/bcmwl5 had different devid. I checked again using lspci -n showed a different devid. I just created a symbolic link to the existing conf file, but the link file name is now has the correct devid. Still ndiswrapper failed to load the driver. Oh yeah, I forgot to mention that I always set the environment variable CFLAGS="-mtune=athlon64 -msse2 -mfpmath=sse -ffast-math -m64", as well as CPPFLAGS.
I googled again, and found one posted message with the same problem. The guy later on said that he then upgraded the ndiswrapper to the latest one and it worked. I then gave it a shot. You know what? It was working!
The next tasks for me is to recompile xine (the one that comes in SUSE Linux does not support reading DCSS-encryption to read commercial DVD movies), also I need to recompile some others to the 64-bit.
Thanks to Google, I had successfuly make my laptop wireless work! I am getting more in love into Linux now. I rarely boot my laptop to Windows anymore. Only when I need to run "Age of Empir
The standard SUSE does not came with NVIDIA's binary-only enhanced driver, so the graphic was standard. I then downloaded the 64bit driver from nvidia.com, but had problem installing it. Somehow downloading the 64bit driver from YaST worked out. I don't know what was the problem, but anyway it work OK so I could change the resolution to 1680x1050 and the graphic was fine.
Another problem was the wireless device. Linux 64bit does not like 32bit driver, so the old Broadcom driver for WinXP did not work. After googling up, I found the driver for Win 64bit (somebody posted it at www.planetamd64.com. You must register to the site to be able to download it, but it is free registration). Yet, the ndiswrapper still could not load the driver. From dmesg result, I saw there was one error saying "ntoskernel.exe: RtlZeroMemory" was an undefined function. Hm...
One problem was that the *.conf under /etc/ndiswrapper/bcmwl5 had different devid. I checked again using lspci -n showed a different devid. I just created a symbolic link to the existing conf file, but the link file name is now has the correct devid. Still ndiswrapper failed to load the driver. Oh yeah, I forgot to mention that I always set the environment variable CFLAGS="-mtune=athlon64 -msse2 -mfpmath=sse -ffast-math -m64", as well as CPPFLAGS.
I googled again, and found one posted message with the same problem. The guy later on said that he then upgraded the ndiswrapper to the latest one and it worked. I then gave it a shot. You know what? It was working!
The next tasks for me is to recompile xine (the one that comes in SUSE Linux does not support reading DCSS-encryption to read commercial DVD movies), also I need to recompile some others to the 64-bit.
Thanks to Google, I had successfuly make my laptop wireless work! I am getting more in love into Linux now. I rarely boot my laptop to Windows anymore. Only when I need to run "Age of Empir
Friday, December 2, 2005
It is now Era of Parallel Computing!
Everything is now done in parallel! AMD and Intel are pacing to get first to the market with their dual-core, quad-core or even octa-core processors, although I believe AMD won the 64bit and dual-core in the first cycle. Xbox360 which was released a few weeks ago (and still hard to find in the stores!) also use parallel processing capabilities. Sony's PS3 even will go farther by using 8 cores [well, it may not really like 8-cores in conventional processor. See http://www.ps3land.com/ps3specs.php].
The hardwares have come! Now it is turn for sofware developers to use this parallel computing power or not. That's the biggest concern now, especially on PC world. Many developers, many of them are making business sofwares, are still thinking parallel processing is overkill for most of softwares people use in the offices or homes. To edit documents, browsing or reading/sending emails, we do not need parallel computation. That may be true. But for power home users who do video editing, transcoding media files (e.g. from WAV to MP3 or MP3 to OGG format, or DVD to DivX/MPEG4 format), or doing 3D related processing (games, vector-based applications, CAD, raytracing etc.), parallel processing is a big deal.
Programming parallel computation is not an easy task. It is very complex and mindsqueezing task. First, we have to decompose computation process/function from serial to parallel into "grains" (the smallest part of computation that cannot be decomposed anymore) and maximize independences between each grains. Then, these grains have to be distributed to each processing unit. We need also to consider communication and processing time for each processing unit, especially if we want to load-balance the task. To make the story short, it is non-easy-at-all job for software developers.
A few weeks ago I read on some magazine (forgot, may be E-Weeks or InfoWeek), Microsoft now turning its eyes into parallel computation. In one conference, Bill Gates told the forum about it. This is a totally new world for Microsoft, as this is mostly dominated by UNIX-based Operating systems (including Linux). Even the fastest supercomputer, IBM's Bluegene, runs on a custom-tailored Linux O/S.
If you are a software developer, learn parallel programming now to grab this new job opportunity! Google, Microsoft, Intel, AMD, Sun, IBM, Nanotechnology companies, research labs, BioTech/pharmaceutical companies, game studios and many other companies are looking for the talents to start coding their parallel-processing computers/system. Remember Folding@HOME or SETI? these are a few of the parallel-programming tasks you need to master.
The hardwares have come! Now it is turn for sofware developers to use this parallel computing power or not. That's the biggest concern now, especially on PC world. Many developers, many of them are making business sofwares, are still thinking parallel processing is overkill for most of softwares people use in the offices or homes. To edit documents, browsing or reading/sending emails, we do not need parallel computation. That may be true. But for power home users who do video editing, transcoding media files (e.g. from WAV to MP3 or MP3 to OGG format, or DVD to DivX/MPEG4 format), or doing 3D related processing (games, vector-based applications, CAD, raytracing etc.), parallel processing is a big deal.
Programming parallel computation is not an easy task. It is very complex and mindsqueezing task. First, we have to decompose computation process/function from serial to parallel into "grains" (the smallest part of computation that cannot be decomposed anymore) and maximize independences between each grains. Then, these grains have to be distributed to each processing unit. We need also to consider communication and processing time for each processing unit, especially if we want to load-balance the task. To make the story short, it is non-easy-at-all job for software developers.
A few weeks ago I read on some magazine (forgot, may be E-Weeks or InfoWeek), Microsoft now turning its eyes into parallel computation. In one conference, Bill Gates told the forum about it. This is a totally new world for Microsoft, as this is mostly dominated by UNIX-based Operating systems (including Linux). Even the fastest supercomputer, IBM's Bluegene, runs on a custom-tailored Linux O/S.
If you are a software developer, learn parallel programming now to grab this new job opportunity! Google, Microsoft, Intel, AMD, Sun, IBM, Nanotechnology companies, research labs, BioTech/pharmaceutical companies, game studios and many other companies are looking for the talents to start coding their parallel-processing computers/system. Remember Folding@HOME or SETI? these are a few of the parallel-programming tasks you need to master.
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