From: Eugene Leitl (eugene.leitl@lrz.uni-muenchen.de)
Date: Sat Nov 21 1998 - 18:07:00 MST
Eliezer S. Yudkowsky writes:
> If you need an OS to do something, rewrite Linux.
> And hasn't Beowolf done distributed supercomputing already?
Err, you weren't listening. I said there is no need to rewrite
anything for the original rationale, and singnificantly beyond
that bickering about quality of OSses becomes pointless. (And if
only because in advanced architectures the distinction between
code and data grows meaningless, and the art of programming
becomes first a lot like chip design, then is reduced to providing
a set of constraints and then goes extinct altogether, along with
the bipedal primate).
> There are only two real OSes. MacOS is the supreme OS for users, and Linux is
> the supreme OS for programmers. Everything else is the 90% of everything that
> is crap.
I won't discuss MacOS, but with a GUI a la KDE (Next version of
TrollTech's Qt will be GPL, and then there is Gnome) and a streamlined
installation even a typical housewife might find Linux attractive.
Beyond the marketing smoke and mirrors, even Microsoft is
very aware of that (see Halloween2).
As to Linux, it is far from being optimal. How are you supposed to
build an affordable parallel system if your kernel alone takes up
a MByte? You want fastest memory possible, you must use local on-die
memory with kBit wide bus and no parasitic capacitance/inductance.
Why having caches then? But die yield says your CPU must be way
simpler (no pipeline/MMU/FPU/BPU etc.), and your core grains must
be tiny. Linux/Unix is not scalable to a system of few 100 networked
CPUs with a few MBit of RAM each. If your core is very limited, and
sending an (asynchronous active) message is almost as fast as
acessing on-die core we are obviously concerned more with
hierarchical decomposition of objects so that their fragments
fit into memory grains than with page faults, swaps, process context
switches, threads, libraries, modules, and other vermin. I guess I'll
never understand it why people think that building computers or
programming them are rational enterprises, and not ad hoc bricolage
following market conservativism and vogues. What's so rational in a
Hollerith machine and punching cards or pushing abacus beads?
ciao,
'gene
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