Re: [osol-discuss] Planet OpenSolaris is now live!
Glynn Foster wrote: Hey, Planet OpenSolaris is now live and unleashed! http://grommit.com/pos You'll notice a couple of things from the outset. The current blogroll only includes a small selection of people right now. We obviously hope to expand this list in the future, but any additions will be according to a pretty strong editorial policy. Where possible, we want to keep Planet OpenSolaris to be as relevant and readable as its counterpart, Planet GNOME [1] and I'd personally like to thank Jeff Waugh for paving the way there, and his support in getting this running. Planet OpenSolaris will be predominantly *English speaking*, though I'd also like to encourage other communities to set up similar aggregations for their language or region, and I'd be happy to help people set those up. Excellent! What is the pretty strong policy for addition to Planet OpenSolaris? Or: does my blog qualify for inclusion? :-). My blog is here: http://blogs.sun.com/menno Cheers, Menno ___ opensolaris-discuss mailing list opensolaris-discuss@opensolaris.org
[osol-discuss] Re: [zfs-discuss] Thoughts on patching + zfs root
sorry, CCed to wrong list (should have been zfs-discuss). On 15/11/06, Dick Davies [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On 14/11/06, [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Actually, we have considered this. On both SPARC and x86, there will be a way to specify the root file system (i.e., the bootable dataset) to be booted, -- Rasputin :: Jack of All Trades - Master of Nuns http://number9.hellooperator.net/ ___ opensolaris-discuss mailing list opensolaris-discuss@opensolaris.org
[osol-discuss] Re: [zfs-discuss] Thoughts on patching + zfs root
I suppose it depends how 'catastrophic' the failture is, but if it's very low level, booting another root probabyl won't help, and if it's too high level, how will you detect it (i.e. you've booted the kernel, but it is buggy). If it panics (but not too early) or fails to come up properly? Casper ___ opensolaris-discuss mailing list opensolaris-discuss@opensolaris.org
[osol-discuss] Re: OpenSolaris/Schillix question...
You'd need to use newfs /dev/rdsk/c1d0s0. s0 refers to the first slice within the Solaris2 partition. The list you posted above is the list of slices inside the Solaris2 partition. ...p0 in Solaris refers to the entire physical disk. So if you dump 512 bytes from the start of ...p0 you can see the MBR contents. This is not where you'd want to create a filesystem! ...p1 - ...p4 refer to the first four primary partitions, similar to hda1 ... hda4 on Linux. Thank you. Having a new disk, I'm trying again. With fdisk /dev/rdsk/c1d1p0, I created an active Solaris2 partition, and exited. Then, Using format /dev/rdsk/c1d1p0, I created the root, swap, and home partition. Was this correct? Or should I have used format /dev/rdsk/c1d1p0 for root only? This seems not the case, since format /dev/rdsk/c1d1p1 gives no disk set. When I want to create the filesystem newfs /dev/rdsk/c1d1s6, it says it's out of diskspace. ___ opensolaris-discuss mailing list opensolaris-discuss@opensolaris.org
[osol-discuss] Password MAXWEEKS in Solaris 10
All;
To implement password expiry in Solaris 10, I modified the following
entry in /etc/default/passwd;
MAXWEEKS=13
The above works out to be 7 * 13 = 91 days.
However, my customer insist on a strict 90 day expiry. Is there a
syntax to use DAYS instead of WEEKS in /etc/default/passwd?
Strangely, the MAN page for passwd list the following statements;
min The minimum number of days required between
password changes for name. MINWEEKS is found
in /etc/default/passwd and is set to NULL.
max The maximum number of days the password is
valid for name. MAXWEEKS is found in
/etc/default/passwd and is set to NULL.
Note the syntax. It says " number of days"
But looking up the source code in open solaris, I get
5 void
176 turn_on_default_aging(struct spwd *spw)
177 {
178 int minweeks;
179 int maxweeks;
180 int warnweeks;
181
182 if (defopen(PWADMIN) != 0) {
183 minweeks = MINWEEKS;
184 maxweeks = MAXWEEKS;
185 warnweeks = WARNWEEKS;
186 } else {
187 minweeks = def_getuint("MINWEEKS=", MINWEEKS);
188 maxweeks = def_getuint("MAXWEEKS=", MAXWEEKS);
189 warnweeks = def_getuint("WARNWEEKS=", WARNWEEKS);
190 (void) defopen(NULL);
191 }
192
193 /*
194 * The values specified in /etc/default/passwd are interpreted
195 * in a specific way. Special cases are
196 * MINWEEKS==0 (results in sp_min = -1)
197 * MAXWEEKS==0 (results in sp_max = default)
198 */
199 spw-sp_min = 7 * minweeks;
200 if (spw-sp_min = 0)
201 spw-sp_min = -1;
202
203 spw-sp_max = 7 * maxweeks;
204 if (spw-sp_max == 0)
205 spw-sp_max = 7 * MAXWEEKS;
206 if (spw-sp_max 0)
207 spw-sp_max = -1;
208
209 spw-sp_warn = 7 * warnweeks;
210 if (spw-sp_warn = 0)
211 spw-sp_warn = -1;
212 }
Sure seems like we can only specify in terms of weeks? Is there a way
around
this?
Warmest Regards
Steven Sim
Fujitsu Asia Pte. Ltd.
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Re: [osol-discuss] Project Proposal: Caiman, Solaris install revisted
+1 -- Steven Stallion Project Leader OpenSolaris Ports Collection ___ opensolaris-discuss mailing list opensolaris-discuss@opensolaris.org
[osol-discuss] Re: About graphical desktops and Solaris future
rlhamil wrote: Sure would be good if that petition (to TOG) to open CDE got somewhere. Very little Sun could do unilaterally... For those that are interested the petition is here, please consider signing it if you agree with its sentiments. http://www.marutan.net/cde/ and here http://www.petitiononline.com/opencde/petition.html Peter This message posted from opensolaris.org ___ opensolaris-discuss mailing list opensolaris-discuss@opensolaris.org
[osol-discuss] mercurial repo?
Seems that the On mercurial repo is not responding: [EMAIL PROTECTED] onnv-clone]$ hg pull ssh://[EMAIL PROTECTED]/hg/onnv/onnv-gate abort: no response from remote hg! remote: abort: repository hg/onnv/onnv-gate not found! Has it been (re)moved? Paul -- Paul Durrant http://www.linkedin.com/in/pdurrant ___ opensolaris-discuss mailing list opensolaris-discuss@opensolaris.org
Re: [osol-discuss] Password MAXWEEKS in Solaris 10
Please post this question to security-discuss at opensolaris dot org. PLEASE do it without the trailer on your email that says it is confidential information, if you an not remove the trailer please put in the body information that says the trailer should be ignored for your message. Unless you do that I'm sorry but I can't answer your question - and I have an answer to give you. -- Darren J Moffat ___ opensolaris-discuss mailing list opensolaris-discuss@opensolaris.org
[osol-discuss] OpenSolaris for Sony Playstation 3
OpenSolaris for Sony Playstation 3 This makes for an interesting OpenSolaris project for several reasons: 1. Stable hardware platform 2. Simplied device driver support 3. Modern features (Blu-Ray, Cell processor, Nvidia GPU, HDMI/HDTV, Bluetooth, 20GB HD, Networking) 4. Global distribution 5. Very Large developer community 6. Large financial backing An OpenSolaris project built around Sony Playstation 3 allows use of the advanced sound and powerful graphics capabilties - and well as a portable multi-purpose platform. Something to think about, Ken Mays Earthlink, Inc. Sponsored Link Mortgage rates near 39yr lows. $310k for $999/mo. Calculate new payment! www.LowerMyBills.com/lre ___ opensolaris-discuss mailing list opensolaris-discuss@opensolaris.org
Re: [osol-discuss] OpenSolaris for Sony Playstation 3
On 11/16/06, ken mays [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: OpenSolaris for Sony Playstation 3 This makes for an interesting OpenSolaris project for several reasons: 1. Stable hardware platform 2. Simplied device driver support 3. Modern features (Blu-Ray, Cell processor, Nvidia GPU, HDMI/HDTV, Bluetooth, 20GB HD, Networking) 4. Global distribution 5. Very Large developer community 6. Large financial backing An OpenSolaris project built around Sony Playstation 3 allows use of the advanced sound and powerful graphics capabilties - and well as a portable multi-purpose platform. Hi Ken, (a) that's insane, and (b) yup, why the hell not! If the linux community can do it, so can we. I'm not volunteering though - I'm not into gaming (SimCity is more my style :) cheers, James C. McPherson -- Solaris kernel software engineer, system admin and troubleshooter http://www.jmcp.homeunix.com/blog Find me on LinkedIn @ http://www.linkedin.com/in/jamescmcpherson ___ opensolaris-discuss mailing list opensolaris-discuss@opensolaris.org
Re: [osol-discuss] OpenSolaris for Sony Playstation 3
If the Linux sources can be useful in any way we have them here along with the Gentoo overlay: http://www.powerdeveloper.org/playstation.php RB On Nov 15, 2006, at 8:09 AM, ken mays wrote: OpenSolaris for Sony Playstation 3 This makes for an interesting OpenSolaris project for several reasons: 1. Stable hardware platform 2. Simplied device driver support 3. Modern features (Blu-Ray, Cell processor, Nvidia GPU, HDMI/HDTV, Bluetooth, 20GB HD, Networking) 4. Global distribution 5. Very Large developer community 6. Large financial backing An OpenSolaris project built around Sony Playstation 3 allows use of the advanced sound and powerful graphics capabilties - and well as a portable multi-purpose platform. Something to think about, Ken Mays Earthlink, Inc. __ __ Sponsored Link Mortgage rates near 39yr lows. $310k for $999/mo. Calculate new payment! www.LowerMyBills.com/lre ___ opensolaris-discuss mailing list opensolaris-discuss@opensolaris.org ___ opensolaris-discuss mailing list opensolaris-discuss@opensolaris.org
Re: [osol-discuss] OpenSolaris for Sony Playstation 3
That was fast! :) +1 Venky. On Wed, Nov 15, 2006 at 06:09:24AM -0800, ken mays wrote: OpenSolaris for Sony Playstation 3 This makes for an interesting OpenSolaris project for several reasons: 1. Stable hardware platform 2. Simplied device driver support 3. Modern features (Blu-Ray, Cell processor, Nvidia GPU, HDMI/HDTV, Bluetooth, 20GB HD, Networking) 4. Global distribution 5. Very Large developer community 6. Large financial backing An OpenSolaris project built around Sony Playstation 3 allows use of the advanced sound and powerful graphics capabilties - and well as a portable multi-purpose platform. Something to think about, Ken Mays Earthlink, Inc. Sponsored Link Mortgage rates near 39yr lows. $310k for $999/mo. Calculate new payment! www.LowerMyBills.com/lre ___ opensolaris-discuss mailing list opensolaris-discuss@opensolaris.org ___ opensolaris-discuss mailing list opensolaris-discuss@opensolaris.org
Re: [osol-discuss] OpenSolaris for Sony Playstation 3
Ken, you're always out there on that bleeding edge. Gotta love ya man. :-) I have two things to say .. see below : OpenSolaris for Sony Playstation 3 This makes for an interesting OpenSolaris project for several reasons: 1. Stable hardware platform 2. Simplied device driver support 3. Modern features (Blu-Ray, Cell processor, Nvidia GPU, HDMI/HDTV, Bluetooth, 20GB HD, Networking) 4. Global distribution 5. Very Large developer community 6. Large financial backing An OpenSolaris project built around Sony Playstation 3 allows use of the advanced sound and powerful graphics capabilties - and well as a portable multi-purpose platform. Whats the processor ? and what the heck is this crud below ? Did the OpenSolaris project pick up a new sponsor that no one saw coming ? :-\ Sponsored Link Mortgage rates near 39yr lows. $310k for $999/mo. Calculate new payment! www.LowerMyBills.com/lre ___ opensolaris-discuss mailing list opensolaris-discuss@opensolaris.org ___ opensolaris-discuss mailing list opensolaris-discuss@opensolaris.org
Re: [osol-discuss] OpenSolaris for Sony Playstation 3
ken mays wrote: OpenSolaris for Sony Playstation 3 This makes for an interesting OpenSolaris project for several reasons: 1. Stable hardware platform 2. Simplied device driver support 3. Modern features (Blu-Ray, Cell processor, Nvidia GPU, HDMI/HDTV, Bluetooth, 20GB HD, Networking) 4. Global distribution 5. Very Large developer community 6. Large financial backing An OpenSolaris project built around Sony Playstation 3 allows use of the advanced sound and powerful graphics capabilties - and well as a portable multi-purpose platform. Something to think about, Is this actually a proposal to port to the PS3 hardware ? Are you intending to lead that project ? -- Darren J Moffat ___ opensolaris-discuss mailing list opensolaris-discuss@opensolaris.org
Re: [osol-discuss] OpenSolaris for Sony Playstation 3
That was fast! :) +1 It was. All enthusiasm aside, what is the specific processor model? Are there any changes to the instruction set ? What is the Memory Architecture? Cache levels and types ? Memory controller ? Bus is what? PCI ? Proprietary ? Serial IO ports ? How do we get a console IFF ( if and only if ) we can get past the initial boot process. Hard quetions need to be asked and anyone that has been involved in the PPC Port process knows that the enthusiasm is nice but the code is the issue. Sorry to be a kill joy. Dennis Clarke ___ opensolaris-discuss mailing list opensolaris-discuss@opensolaris.org
Re: [osol-discuss] OpenSolaris for Sony Playstation 3
ken mays wrote: OpenSolaris for Sony Playstation 3 This makes for an interesting OpenSolaris project for several reasons: 1. Stable hardware platform 2. Simplied device driver support 3. Modern features (Blu-Ray, Cell processor, Nvidia GPU, HDMI/HDTV, Bluetooth, 20GB HD, Networking) 4. Global distribution 5. Very Large developer community 6. Large financial backing An OpenSolaris project built around Sony Playstation 3 allows use of the advanced sound and powerful graphics capabilties - and well as a portable multi-purpose platform. Something to think about, Is this actually a proposal to port to the PS3 hardware ? Are you intending to lead that project ? I think it may just be enthusiasm run rampant. Which is perfectly cool. The cell processor has not even seen the light of day yet and I doubt that there is a pile of documentation available on it in any case. Yes it looks very fast and it is a very good thing that someone wakes up in the morning and looks at it and says we have to get OpenSolaris ported to that puppy!. Great enthusiasm. Just think what the other extreme could be eh ? -- Dennis Clarke ___ opensolaris-discuss mailing list opensolaris-discuss@opensolaris.org
Re: [osol-discuss] OpenSolaris for Sony Playstation 3
YDL has no more than what we posted the links for on this list... We have already sent an email off to Sony. We will keep you posted on the feedback. OKay, seems spooky that this cell processor is a PowerPC chip and runs at 4GHz. I think that it *has* to be something more. In any case .. if its a PPC then it falls under the PPC Port project as an also to be looked at type of thing. Dennis ___ opensolaris-discuss mailing list opensolaris-discuss@opensolaris.org
Re: [osol-discuss] OpenSolaris for Sony Playstation 3
On Wed, Nov 15, 2006 at 10:25:08AM -0500, Dennis Clarke wrote: YDL has no more than what we posted the links for on this list... We have already sent an email off to Sony. We will keep you posted on the feedback. OKay, seems spooky that this cell processor is a PowerPC chip and runs at 4GHz. I think that it *has* to be something more. In any case .. if its a PPC then it falls under the PPC Port project as an also to be looked at type of thing. Well, the Cell processor does have a PPC core, i think it might be slightly down-featured with regard to the PPC970, not sure though. But the interesting part of it are the 8 Cell units (SPEs), but this can be handled as an add-on unit, just like altivec too, i guess. Friendly, Sven Luther ___ opensolaris-discuss mailing list opensolaris-discuss@opensolaris.org
[osol-discuss] Launch event in Geneva will be located at Univ. of Geneva on Dec. 8th
Dear all, Just to inform you all that we re-located the Geneva CHOSUG launch event to the Univ. of Geneva. For details: http://www.opensolaris.org/os/community/os_user_groups/chosug/next_meetings/ Cheers, Karim This message posted from opensolaris.org ___ opensolaris-discuss mailing list opensolaris-discuss@opensolaris.org
Re: [osol-discuss] OpenSolaris for Sony Playstation 3
it is well known that Cell and XBox CPU are all powerpc ISA. Cell is gaining popularity in not only the gaming computing, but in others, such as the coming road-runner, a hybrid opteron-cell supercomputer; terra soft is building the first cell-based supercomputer, IBM is selling cell blade and workstation and mercury already has cell board about one year ago. also tons of documents available from IBM web, including both SDK and full-system cell simulator. it is suprising that here are left far behind what happens outside of solaris. it is not good sign. OS research is mostly driven by hardware architecture, Cell seems represents the trends of future microprocessor (CPU+GPU on a chip) architecutre, also see what AMD is doing in fusion and Torrenza. before a powerpc solaris port is available, it does not make sense doing cell port at all, which will start powerpc port anyway. Noah On 11/15/06, Dennis Clarke [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: ken mays wrote: OpenSolaris for Sony Playstation 3 This makes for an interesting OpenSolaris project for several reasons: 1. Stable hardware platform 2. Simplied device driver support 3. Modern features (Blu-Ray, Cell processor, Nvidia GPU, HDMI/HDTV, Bluetooth, 20GB HD, Networking) 4. Global distribution 5. Very Large developer community 6. Large financial backing An OpenSolaris project built around Sony Playstation 3 allows use of the advanced sound and powerful graphics capabilties - and well as a portable multi-purpose platform. Something to think about, Is this actually a proposal to port to the PS3 hardware ? Are you intending to lead that project ? I think it may just be enthusiasm run rampant. Which is perfectly cool. The cell processor has not even seen the light of day yet and I doubt that there is a pile of documentation available on it in any case. Yes it looks very fast and it is a very good thing that someone wakes up in the morning and looks at it and says we have to get OpenSolaris ported to that puppy!. Great enthusiasm. Just think what the other extreme could be eh ? -- Dennis Clarke ___ opensolaris-discuss mailing list opensolaris-discuss@opensolaris.org ___ opensolaris-discuss mailing list opensolaris-discuss@opensolaris.org
Re: [osol-discuss] OpenSolaris for Sony Playstation 3
OKay, seems spooky that this cell processor is a PowerPC chip and runs at 4GHz. I think that it *has* to be something more. It's a PowerPC + 8 Additional Processing Units (specifically for FPU as needed for games) and 2 memory controllers. In any case .. if its a PPC then it falls under the PPC Port project as an also to be looked at type of thing. I would think so Does it have openfirmware? Casper ___ opensolaris-discuss mailing list opensolaris-discuss@opensolaris.org
Re: [osol-discuss] mercurial repo?
* Paul Durrant [EMAIL PROTECTED] [2006-11-15 05:38]: Seems that the On mercurial repo is not responding: [EMAIL PROTECTED] onnv-clone]$ hg pull ssh://[EMAIL PROTECTED]/hg/onnv/onnv-gate abort: no response from remote hg! remote: abort: repository hg/onnv/onnv-gate not found! Has it been (re)moved? We're rebuilding it to clear out a couple of errors in the history--something that won't happen often, but will while we're still in Beta with Mercurial. I mentioned this in http://www.opensolaris.org/jive/thread.jspa?threadID=18348tstart=0 Anyway, Steve had the rebuild started yesterday afternoon, so I expect he'll announce resumption imminently... - Stephen -- Stephen Hahn, PhD Solaris Kernel Development, Sun Microsystems [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://blogs.sun.com/sch/ ___ opensolaris-discuss mailing list opensolaris-discuss@opensolaris.org
Re: [osol-discuss] OpenSolaris for Sony Playstation 3
Dennis Clarke wrote: and what the heck is this crud below ? Did the OpenSolaris project pick up a new sponsor that no one saw coming ? :-\ Sponsored Link Look at his from address - they're sponsoring his free e-mail account from yahoo. -- -Alan Coopersmith- [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sun Microsystems, Inc. - X Window System Engineering ___ opensolaris-discuss mailing list opensolaris-discuss@opensolaris.org
[osol-discuss] Re: [osol-announce] ON nightly 20061113
Cyril Plisko wrote: On 11/15/06, Stephen Lau [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: it's up at the usual place: http://dlc.sun.com/osol/on/downloads/current Did I miss it or there was never source drop for b52 ? Sorry, I've been trying to regenerate the Hg onnv-gate repository first, since I can't generate the Mercurial bundle without it. Once I have onnv-gate regenerated, I'll spin a source drop for b52. cheers, steve -- stephen lau // [EMAIL PROTECTED] | 650.786.0845 | http://whacked.net opensolaris // solaris kernel development ___ opensolaris-discuss mailing list opensolaris-discuss@opensolaris.org
Re: [osol-discuss] OpenSolaris for Sony Playstation 3
Dennis Clarke wrote: and what the heck is this crud below ? Did the OpenSolaris project pick up a new sponsor that no one saw coming ? :-\ Sponsored Link Look at his from address - they're sponsoring his free e-mail account from yahoo. I figured as much. I was merely hoping that such things could be kept out of the OpenSolaris project. before too long we will see embedded images in such emails as sponsored advertising foo. dc ___ opensolaris-discuss mailing list opensolaris-discuss@opensolaris.org
Re: [osol-discuss] OpenSolaris for Sony Playstation 3
All the use graphics cards as vector daughter boards (see Nvidia's latest announcements for the nv8800 as well) methods are very interesting for HPC, and in that aspect highly-parallel vector units (such as Cell, such as any multi-pipeline floating-point vector shader graphics card) create a revival of the floating point coprocessor. It's the HPC hype of the day. I'll believe it once such a box enters the top500. Xen on the PS3 would be nice; run Solaris and the PS3 OS at the same time :-) Joking aside, I am a bit warry of the graphics cards as vector processors; these are generally low precisions units and there was little incentive to make sure all the computations were absolutely correct; graphics doesn't really care *that* much. Certainly those errors would not attract attention nor would they propagate. The code running on those GPUs was always tightly controlled; so bugs in the hardware were readily worked around; will compilers which know how to avoid such errors be available for those situations? (This doesn't apply fully to Cell which has general purpose units rather than the embedded GPUs.) So it could all end in tears or Cell has it competition cut out from nVidia and AMD. But if the GPU moves to the CPU, will that not just mean we now do graphics in the CPU again because we now have the memory bandwidth we couldn't have before? Casper ___ opensolaris-discuss mailing list opensolaris-discuss@opensolaris.org
Re: [osol-discuss] X11 library information
Gary Gendel wrote: We still have X11 libraries in /usr/openwin/lib and /usr/openwin/share/lib. Then there are libs in /usr/sfw/lib. Since we're only using Xorg, are these the same now? Is there plans to consolidate this? It trapped me for a bit before I figured out that I was picking up some libraries (Xrender, etc.) because I had /usr/sfw/lib in the path. These are under a separate directory /usr/openwin/share/lib so they aren't in the normal system ld_library path. That should be /usr/openwin/sfw/lib - /usr/sfw/lib has symlinks to those. In Nevada Build 51, all the X libraries in /usr/openwin/sfw/lib were moved to /usr/X11/lib. Symlinks to them were added from /usr/lib to /usr/X11/lib. /usr/openwin/sfw/lib is now a symlink to /usr/X11/lib for people with old makefiles or binaries with RUN_PATHS that reference it. This was done under this bug id which has more details: http://bugs.opensolaris.org/bugdatabase/view_bug.do?bug_id=6475968 Over time more and more of the X libraries will move from /usr/openwin/lib to /usr/X11/lib as the old X11R6.x implementations are replaced with versions from the X11R7 modular releases. Eventually /usr/openwin/lib will simply be the place to find backwards compatibility libraries and symlinks. -- -Alan Coopersmith- [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sun Microsystems, Inc. - X Window System Engineering ___ opensolaris-discuss mailing list opensolaris-discuss@opensolaris.org
[osol-discuss] Re: Re: The site is down
Apologies - I was forgetting the web forums are just a mirror of the mailing list. Cheers Andrew. This message posted from opensolaris.org ___ opensolaris-discuss mailing list opensolaris-discuss@opensolaris.org
Re: [osol-discuss] OpenSolaris for Sony Playstation 3
Frank, thanks for your comments ... On 11/15/06, [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Wed, 15 Nov 2006, Noah yan wrote: it is well known that Cell and XBox CPU are all powerpc ISA. Cell is gaining popularity in not only the gaming computing, but in others, such as the coming road-runner, a hybrid opteron-cell supercomputer; terra soft is building the first cell-based supercomputer, IBM is selling cell blade and workstation and mercury already has cell board about one year ago. also tons of documents available from IBM web, including both SDK and full-system cell simulator. We've had a check this out thread on Cell, I actually think it was on opensolaris-discuss, about at the time when IBM released the first specs for Cell. More than a year ago ... But then, all the hype about Cell forgets one important thing: From the point of view of the operating system kernel, it's just a single-core PPC. The distinguishing feature of Cell, the vector unit, doesn't help an OS core at all (though you could speculate using it for such mundane tasks as block copy/clear or maybe even something elaborate as data compression and encryption). Within Sun Marketing terms, you might call the Cell and the Niagara both chips for throughput computing, but while Niagara focuses on integer parallelism Cell goes for FPU parallelism/vectorization. Complementary approaches, and a hybrid Niagara/Cell sounds technically fascinating; but as far as OS porting and running generic applications on it goes, the Cell is just a plain old PPC CPU. Its vector capabilities would benefit generic applications / OS kernels only in very few areas. that creates challenge to os (and compiler): how to make full power of this special hardware for the application instead of just considering it a plain PPC CPU (for cell, CPU+GPU multicore, and hybrid one). I believe there must some interesting work here in both the comiler and the os. The compiler knows the applications, but not the hardware; the os knows the hardware, but not the apps. the compiler could give the os more hints on how to schedule the app thread on hardware than just a a flat instruction sequence. just some immature thoughts and it is way out of the scope of this thread. Noah it is suprising that here are left far behind what happens outside of solaris. it is not good sign. OS research is mostly driven by hardware architecture, Cell seems represents the trends of future microprocessor (CPU+GPU on a chip) architecutre, also see what AMD is doing in fusion and Torrenza. All the use graphics cards as vector daughter boards (see Nvidia's latest announcements for the nv8800 as well) methods are very interesting for HPC, and in that aspect highly-parallel vector units (such as Cell, such as any multi-pipeline floating-point vector shader graphics card) create a revival of the floating point coprocessor. It's the HPC hype of the day. I'll believe it once such a box enters the top500. None of that reduces the coolness factor, though. Yes, I'd like a PS3 running Solaris, it'd be really cool - not its temperature, though :) FrankH. before a powerpc solaris port is available, it does not make sense doing cell port at all, which will start powerpc port anyway. Noah On 11/15/06, Dennis Clarke [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: ken mays wrote: OpenSolaris for Sony Playstation 3 This makes for an interesting OpenSolaris project for several reasons: 1. Stable hardware platform 2. Simplied device driver support 3. Modern features (Blu-Ray, Cell processor, Nvidia GPU, HDMI/HDTV, Bluetooth, 20GB HD, Networking) 4. Global distribution 5. Very Large developer community 6. Large financial backing An OpenSolaris project built around Sony Playstation 3 allows use of the advanced sound and powerful graphics capabilties - and well as a portable multi-purpose platform. Something to think about, Is this actually a proposal to port to the PS3 hardware ? Are you intending to lead that project ? I think it may just be enthusiasm run rampant. Which is perfectly cool. The cell processor has not even seen the light of day yet and I doubt that there is a pile of documentation available on it in any case. Yes it looks very fast and it is a very good thing that someone wakes up in the morning and looks at it and says we have to get OpenSolaris ported to that puppy!. Great enthusiasm. Just think what the other extreme could be eh ? -- Dennis Clarke ___ opensolaris-discuss mailing list opensolaris-discuss@opensolaris.org ___ opensolaris-discuss mailing list opensolaris-discuss@opensolaris.org -- If anything's worth doing, do it with all your heart. The Buddha Wheresoever you go, go with all your heart. Confucius Whatever you do, do it with all your heart.
