My Vintage Dream PC

[jmfbahciv]

re:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009h.html#71 My Vintage Dream PC

besides the lines about "having no career" and Boyd's reference
regarding deciding to "be or do" ... a couple of the other
lines that they used were

"the best I could hope for was to not be fired and allowed to do it
again"

"they would have forgiven me for being wrong, but they were never
going to forgive me for being right".

old account about battling for a 30% raise so that I would be earning
the same as the offers to new hires that I was interviewing to work
under my direction.

<snip ref-list>

We had another problem. All those new hires, who couldn't code
their way in nor out of a DO loop were demanding that they be
paid JMF's salary. And they didn't do any productive work!

/BAH

 

[jmfbahciv]

No, the part he's right about is that it really is possible to
distribute a lot of the functionality of a conventional kernel (even if
he can't spell it) among several services, so the microkernel doesn't
have to be involved with the details of the IO. The slave does have to
ask the boss for the resources as you say, but only once at system
startup and never again.

Nuts. [that was said politely ] Consider a system that has an
uptime of years. Rebooting to acquire or redistribute resources is
not an option. think about replacing or adding gear without
having to reload the system. And what about cores who have a need
to cooperate with each other? Then think about updating software
such as those DLLs (I think that's what you call them). Are you
going to cause a system or CPU reboot? If you do need a CPU to
reboot, how do you go about it without having to take the rest
of the CPUs or the whole system down?

And this is just thinking about executables which are staid; I'm not
thinking at all about data, static nor variable. Good grief...the
static data would be a bitch...now that I am thinking about it.

The part he's missing is in thinking this is new, and thinking it'll
somehow work better for general computing now on a dozen cores or in ten
years on 1000 cores than it did in 1990 on one core.

And the 1990s were mostly small computer thinking. Some days, I wish
the distributed computing had stayed a pipe dream in the 80s.

/BAH

 

[jmfbahciv]

It is better to think of them as an OS that runs on hardware that
doesn't really exist.

I know but that's not how these kids are thinking. They are assuming
that the PC (program counter) of the real hard/software system is the
same as each PC of the virtual OSes that are running.

/BAH

 

[Anne & Lynn Wheeler]

We had another problem. All those new hires, who couldn't code
their way in nor out of a DO loop were demanding that they be
paid JMF's salary. And they didn't do any productive work!

re:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009h.html#71 My Vintage Dream PC
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009h.html#74 My Vintage Dream PC

at least he was making more than the new hires ... so that the new hires
have something to complain about ... as opposed to the new hires
starting out being offered 1/3rd more than JMF (what was the line from
one of stargate shows, something about the young having a lot to learn).

 

[jmfbahciv]

True. I had the head of a university CS department as a houseguest,
and at dinner I happened to ask about what sort of programming
techniques were being taught these days. She was highly offended,
along the lines of "we don't program."

Oh. Sorrrreee. Want some more salmon?

It's worse than that. They aren't teaching that computing cannot
break the laws of physics. c is slow.

/BAH

 

[jmfbahciv]

I'm a simple circuit designer.

Obviously .

And I think I see the way computer
chips are headed. I'm interested in how that might change OS design.
Apparently nobody else is. So whoever does design the next gen of
operating systems, they aren't here.

Sigh! I think I need to find my virtual baseball bat.

/BAH

 

[jmfbahciv]

The Boss program could be as simple as a state machine that runs every
millisecond.

That wasn't often enough in the auld days. What makes you think that
it will suffice now?

It would check to see if any of the worker CPUs has
crashed or violated any memory-management rules, or if, for example, a
file manager CPU wants to blow the whistle on an application that's
asking for something that's not allowed. It would also service
requests from one process to launch or kill another. Some of this
could be interrupt based, but certainly need not be.

I no longer know how to explain to you.

Most of this could be done through a simple shared-memory region with
suitable hardware protections. Just don't do stupid stuff like have
the Boss accept unchecked pointers from other cpu's; in other words,
write it all in ADA.

Man! You are way ahead of design.

/BAH

 

[jmfbahciv]

Right. The Boss may as well finish what it's doing - which never takes
long - before picking up any pending requests. Service interrupts
imply suspension/reentry, always messy in situations like this and
seldom necessary.

My RTOSs had reentrant schedulers (and damned near reentrant
everything) but, looking back, that was more for intellectual fun than
from necessity, and it did make the code riskier.

Huh? Separating the data from the code was riskier? How?

/BAH

 

[jmfbahciv]

John Larkin wrote:

John Larkin wrote:

Walter Bushell wrote:
Walter Bushell wrote:
On Mon, 25 May 2009 16:26:50 -0400, Peter Flass

John Larkin wrote:
The ultimate OS should maybe be hardware, fpga probably, or an
entirely separate processor that runs nothing but the os.

CDC-6600.
In a few years, when most any decent CPU has 64 or so cores, I suspect
we'll have one of them run just the OS. But Microsoft will f*** that
up, too.

John
Why only one? Surely the kernel will be multithreaded.
You meant to say reentrant.

/BAH
Well that too.
Not "too" but first.

/BAH
An os nanokernal needs to be neither.
Wrong; then you don't have an OS.


You are playing with words. An OS should be hierarchial, with the
top-most thing (what I call the kernal) being absolutely in charge of
the system.
But it cannot have that kind of control with more than [number picked
out of the air as a guesstimate] 8 threads or processes or services.

It could, in my opinion should, run on a dedicated CPU.
It is impossible to do this without allowing the other CPUs to be
able to make their own decisions about what they're processing.

It's times like this that I regret that "duh" has fallen into disuse.

But you are the one who insisted that the Boss CPU have control
of the whole system and what it does. You cannot have it
both ways.

Your boss controls what you do.
No.

I sure hope she doesn't have to
constantly help you do it.

If the boss had your implementation, it would.

With decent memory management and sensible request protocols,

DONE BY WHO?!!!! Some CPU has to do this.

an app
CPU can ask a file CPU for service, the file processor can check
permissions and quotas, and instruct a DMA device driver to move the
correct data. At the app level, it could look like a QIO or a
QIO-wait; simple mechanisms can handle that without interrupting The
Boss's putting practice. Just like it happens now, except that the
Boss need not be involved unless some rule is violated.

Thus, a system with heavy disk I/O will have all CPUs waiting
for the disk-I/O-CPU. A system runs as fast as its slowest
device.

the way you compensate is to allow any and all CPUs have the ability
to do any task.

You keep insisting that an OS can't be partitioned into various
levels, and the top level made simple and reliable. Why?

Performance, reliability, security and extensibility.

Is the sum of your original ideas "it was all done decades ago"?

Are you really suggesting that experience doesn't count?

[emoticon finds its virtual baseball bat /\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\]

/BAH

 

[jmfbahciv]

[snip...] [snip...] [snip...]

She said "really." She's being a timeshare snob just because I had a
PDP-11 and she had a VAX.

John

There is no reason to be insulting. You don't know what you're
talking about now.

/BAH

It should be spelled "VAXX", because we all *know* it is a "four letter
word". ;-)

nah. It was a 36-bit wannabe with 1/4 of its pecker chopped off.

/BAH

 

[jmfbahciv]

The systems have way more horsepower than the average (office apps &
web & email) single user needs. If you only drive short hops in town
and have a 400HP car, adding a second engine doesn't actually gain you
anything.

I maximize my CPU usage by running World Community Grid and file
sharing, but neither of those offers a direct benefit to me (and CPU
usage is still fairly low). A single core 1.8GHz CPU is way
overpowered for 95% of what I do.

You're personally running an OS that gives you the ability to do more
than one thing at a time, but I'll wager that your CPU is maxed out
less than 0.1% of the time.

Since the power is there, unused, there's an incentive for the
developer to max out on eye candy. How else do they justify their
existence and get you to buy a newer version?

Now think about having a system that can fetch tons of data just
before you need it...especially this GUI crap...or movies
or music or anything that has lots bytes.

/BAH

 

[jmfbahciv]

Hint: You do *not* have to train the people who will take your job. Just
refuse to do it. If they fire you, heck, you would be laid off anyway!!!

You train the people to take over all the work that is keeping you
from doing real work.

/BAH

 

[jmfbahciv]

[snip...] [snip...] [snip...]

And did you notice academia's decade (and more) long lack of much of
anything useful to show for it? A lot like AI. Computing academia's
darling products just don't seem to be able to find usefulness in the
real world.

I don't about that. Certainly the ones who keep touting trying to
emulate human thinking fail. I still don't understand why anybody
would want to build gear that emulated human-style thinking.

That reminds me of a story:

Once upon a time, scientists decided they would create a computer that
would think like a human. So they gathered to together thousands of
CPU's with local memory, and networked them into one giant machine. When
all of this was assembled and turned on, something immediately started
printing out on the printer. The operator ripped off the printout and read:

"That reminds me of a story."


;=)

<grin>

/BAH

 

[jmfbahciv]

Jeez... it was still ARPANET then.

It was?

Damn! You go girl(s)!

/BAH

 

[jmfbahciv]

Well, for one thing, whenever they have set a goal of doing some non-human-
style thinking, and reached the goal successfully, someone has moved the
goal posts and declared that it wasn't artificial intelligence.

For another thing, if you want to understand how something is done, try
teaching a machine to do it. Lots of people are interested in how thinking
is done.

If you want to understand how something is done, have a person who does
the work teach you. The problem with these "AI" snobs (and these are
not the people who are really doing AI work) is that they assume they
are the experts and have no time nor respect for the people who actually
can do the work well.

/BAH

 

[jmfbahciv]

I see.

Rule of thumb: Never form conclusions based on a conversation that begins
(or is seen, as the conversations progresses, to have ought to have begun)
with "What color is the sky where you are?".

Wet :-(((.

/BAH

 

[Richard Cranium]

You got another one wrong, as usual with you.

Why? Do you expect your ass to explode before your head?
Understandably, your ass could easily be mistaken for your head - and
vice versa.

 

[jmfbahciv]

re:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009h.html#71 My Vintage Dream PC
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009h.html#74 My Vintage Dream PC

at least he was making more than the new hires ... so that the new hires
have something to complain about ... as opposed to the new hires
starting out being offered 1/3rd more than JMF (what was the line from
one of stargate shows, something about the young having a lot to learn).

I was in that category but I didn't pay much attention.

/BAH

 

[Richard Cranium]

Buzz off, ya little punk. The discussion is about time management and
such. Knowing that, you comment becomes invalid. If you think it
remains valid, then you are the one that is buzzword happy.

Hey Archie:

Do you realize that over 95% of your posts are rude to the person
you're responding to? And, trust me, that 95% estimate is being
extremely generous to you. Even when you're on-topic, you still have
to make some kind of derogatory comment to the previous poster. Think
for a minute. Why do you suppose you do that so frequently? Could it
be that you are so lacking in self-esteem that you feel it's critical
to knock others down, ostensibly to move them below your own low
level? I'm sure that you do not realize that you're failing at that
task every single time. When you were growing up, didn't mommy and
daddy (if he stayed around at all) instruct you about using "please"
and "thank you"? I hope that you have not been programmed to think
that ethnicity is a guarantee for your right to claim things that you
do not work for. What is your position reagrding the 1965 Watts
riots? How did you react to the OJ criminal case verdict? Do you
watch reruns of the Amos 'n Andy show? We need to dig deep into your
past Archie to determine what is making you such a fucking moron
today.

 

[Jeff Strickland]

420 posts on Vintage Dream PC in 13 days. That averages out to 32 per day.

How many are actually about a Vintage Dream PC?



<JS>
I used my internet allowance just counting them, I don't have time to read
them too ...


</JS>