Systems software technology and business
Suppose we have a state machine Q, that implements a common first in first out queue. The input alphabet of Q consists of “Deq” and “Enq x” where “x” ranges over a set of values, say, V. Let’s fix the max length of Q at some constant k. As usual, given a sequence of events [...]
There’s a correspondence between the notions of “combinational” and “sequential” in digital circuit engineering and some structure in state machines (and therefore monoids) that seems interesting.
In digital logic, a “combinational” circuit like a logic gate has can be associated with a time T so that the output depends only on input signals applied over the [...]
The goal of modern processor chip design has changed from optimizing various speed/price/heat tradeoffs for applications to finding excuses for dumping more transistors into the device. Heard an interesting talk from Krisztián Flautner of ARM at the ACISC conference and I have to admit that it’s not entirely the fault of the chip designers – [...]
Data on the overhead of virtualization is hard to come by. Rackable proposes an interesting alternative that they call physicalization. I wonder whether the CPU is the most important resource to multiplex and I remain totally puzzled by the motivation of Intel/AMD in this area.
Well, it seems our friends at Sun have decided that their Spicetm Enhanced brains are completely sufficient to create an entirely new – but far simpler, mind you – module system for the JDK. Mark “I’m just a simple Guild Navigator” Reinhold has spent a number of blog posts doing the electronic equivalent of the [...]
Threads were initially used for telephony systems where each request to connect could be given to a new thread to manage. The simplification was, in theory, dramatic. The programmer could just write the code for handling a single line, and the OS and network code would multiplex operation over 100,000 calls. The programmer does not [...]
[0018]For incoming network packets, the following is done during the logging mode. When a packet is received, an event-request is posted for the VMM, at Block 210. When the VMM processes the event, it stops the VM, synchronizes the guest [...]
software patent
See below.
This article from Ars Technica discusses a talk over the summer by Merrill Lynch’s chief technology architect, Jeffrey Birnbaum on “stateless cloud computing” – most concretely on distributed file systems.
Birnbaum believes that one of the key foundational elements of a stateless computing environment is a networked storage system that enables ubiquitous availability of software. The [...]