Tuesday, May 20, 2008

K10 is faster than Intel Quad even in integer performance

Tom Yager points out that if you use GCC compiler, then AMD's Barcelona is 9% faster than Intel in integer performance. Those high integer performance numbers Intel achieved was attained with Intel compilers. Notably, Intel is not a well known compiler vendor. Most developers use GCC or Microsoft compiler to ensure language compliance. It is doubtable that Intel compiler correctly implements those complex C++ grammar and semantics.

Monday, May 19, 2008

OLPC goes Windows XP

Linux loses a good chance. Now, OLPC has to go Windows XP. I think the reason is simple. The current interface is way too slow -- it's just a bunch of Python scripts. The OLPC does not have a high speed CPU and it must have compiled and highly optimized code. I am glad that world's children gets a more responsive system by running Windows.

Tuesday, May 13, 2008

AMD Quad slaughters Intel Quad in Web Performance

2.3GHZ AMD Opteron(scoring 30007) puts 2.66GHZ Intel Xeon Qaud to shame (scoring 23716).
Randy Allen was telling the truth. Here, a 2.3GHZ Barcelona is 30% faster than a 2.66GHZ Intel quad.

George Ou at CNET will pretend that he never saw the above numbers.

Thursday, May 08, 2008

VMWare is far inferior to Parellels

VMWare simply sucks, stay away from it.

Reasons? I was trying use my Windows machine to run Linux in a virtual machine. VMware is highly unreliable. The problem: after installation, whenever I start the VMware the first time, the whole PC almost freezes for almost 30 minutes, with a lot of disk activity. However, subsequent shutdown/startup of the VM is quick. Running speed is ok. Very repeatable behavior. Other people reported similar problems, but the solutions they suggest do not work. Installed Parallels, no such startup issues, and the VM is much faster when running.