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2010

Emilio Moretti's Blog

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Leyendo un poco sobre el desarrollo del kernel encontré artículos interesantes en las que se mencionaban frases como la siguiente

 

"If there is any one big problem with kernel development and Linux it is
the complete disconnection of the development process from normal
users. You know, the ones who constitute 99.9% of the Linux user base. "

Fuente: http://apcmag.com/why_i_quit_kernel_developer_con_kolivas.htm

 

Por experiencia propia puedo decir que este hombre tenía razón. Pero particularmente se lo atribuí a hechos como el siguiente:

http://apcmag.com/linux-now-75-corporate.htm

Donde explican que gran parte del código de Linux lo escribe gente a la que le pagan para eso. Asi que el problema hasta el momento no me había causado demasiada molestia...

 

Muy tranquilamente continué mi lectura de otros artículos hasta que encontré uno sobre Linus:

http://apcmag.com/linus_torvalds_on_regression_laziness_and_having_his_code_rejected.htm

 

Pueden creer que (en una cita textual) el muy hijo de su madre dijo lo siguiente:

 

"Sometimes I write a patch but I don't want to test it myself — because
testing is for wimps — so I send it to the subsystem maintainers."

 

A alguien se le subió la fama a la cabeza!!!

OS News reports the recent antitrust settlement between AMD and Intel will solve the "cripple AMD" function in Intel's compiler:

Here's something you probably don't know, but really should - especially if you're a programmer, and especially especially if you're using Intel's compiler. It's a fact that's not widely known, but Intel's compiler deliberately and knowingly cripples performance for non-Intel (AMD/VIA) processors.

Agner Fog details this particularly nasty examples of Intel's anticompetitive practices quite well. Intel's compiler can produce different versions of pieces of code, with each version being optimised for a specific processor and/or instruction set (SSE2, SSE3, etc.). The system detects which CPU it's running on and chooses the optimal code path accordingly; the CPU dispatcher, as it's called.

"However, the Intel CPU dispatcher does not only check which instruction set is supported by the CPU, it also checks the vendor ID string," Fog details, "If the vendor string says 'GenuineIntel' then it uses the optimal code path. If the CPU is not from Intel then, in most cases, it will run the slowest possible version of the code, even if the CPU is fully compatible with a better version."