[ydl-gen] Building Firefox 4.0 under YDL 6.2 PPC

[Terence G Christopher]

Yes I realise that it is over before it even started. Clearly the Blade 
is an unusual machine though it has been extensively used outside of the 
PS3. I believe that IBM is collaborating with Intel..Does that mean the 
the blade has also come to the end of its development as an independent 
machine?
I do not know the architecture of the new Intel machines, do they 
provide multiple high speed memories or caches depending on how you look 
at them with a main control unit? Do they compete well with blade 
processors? I just don't know where the field is going... Everything I 
read speaks of greater and greater parallelism. Is that correct? Are the 
new hexacore machines developing in the direction of the blade? How do 
they offer architectural advantages. Any reference sources would be 
interesting.
If that is the case then YDL for that would be interesting too.  
Certainly anything out of Sony's reach
Thanks
Graham

On 7/28/2010 5:06 PM, Derick Centeno wrote:
> On Tue, 27 Jul 2010 08:15:47 -0700
> Terence G Christopher<t.g.christopher at ieee.org>  wrote:
>
>    
>> Having installed YDL on my play station 3m and then having tried and
>> failed to install my wireless keyboard, I have been following the
>> various messages that have developed  over the past 6 months.It is a
>> great pity that the incompleteness of YDL and lack of readily
>> accessible documentation together with the failure of Sony to permit
>> the machine to be readily used and switch between operating systems
>> should destroy what could have been a fascinating and enriching
>> engineering development, It is disheartening to see discussions that
>> are unchanged from 30 years ago which to me show that all of the talk
>> about object oriented code, and clean interfaces was just that talk.I
>> realise that the increasing complexity of machines and programmes
>> greatly increases the challenges, however Many people such as myself
>> do not want to spend our lives fiddling trying to get commonly used
>> software to work on a machine. It is to me a measure of the
>> inadequacy of the development and support operation. This discourages
>> me from even attempting to use the machine. So no my play station
>> is merely an expensive and clumsy blue ray player. What a pity.
>> sincerely
>> Terence Christopher
>>      
> Hi Terrance:
>
> It may be of some interest that if you are interested in continuing to
> run your PS3 with YDL and sacrificing the ability to participate with
> Sony's current vision for the PS3 you could refer to the YDL Board at
> http://yellowdog-board.com/
>
> Although I do believe that the YDL Board was focused on supporting the
> PS3, you may pick up some ideas with others regarding what solutions
> remain or exist.  Some members have taken action and pursued legal
> action against Sony; I'm not sure that would interest you but there are
> other threads and topics which may.  Two threads covering
> a variety of topics include:
>
> http://yellowdog-board.com/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=7266
>
> http://yellowdog-board.com/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=7545
>
> I really wish that I had something more positive to report in regards
> to the PS3 but I can say that the YDL Board is well administered by
> persons well versed in the PS3 and the admins there could be useful.
> It is possible you may find solutions which are difficult to find
> elsewhere which would allow you to continue your research effort.
>
> As for the incompleteness of YDL, surely you are aware that both Terra
> Soft Solutions and later Fixstars were always at a disadvantage as they
> were (and in the case of Fixstars still remain) comparatively tiny
> companies with finite resources.  Support for the PowerPC was always a
> very odd position for any company because the marketplace for
> everything supporting that CPU was always small; few know for instance
> that Linus Torvalds, the creator of Linux, really thought that Linux
> for the PowerPC was a losing proposition; his actual comment was
> actually much harsher. For TSS and later Fixstars to make something out
> of an essentially non-existent marketplace is an amazing accomplishment.
>
> Having expressed the above the discussion as I'm sure you are aware is
> academic.  IBM announced last year in an article published by Ars
> Technica that they were ceasing production on the Cell and moving
> onwards towards utilizing what they've learned from working with the
> Cell by applying techniques developed for it to be implemented with
> hybridized multicore chips developed by Intel which have begun to hit
> the marketplace already.  These new systems are not only multicore but
> a few systems developed by AMD for instance are CPU/GPU hybrids as well.
>
> I discussed the details and refered to the various articles within the
> YDL Board.  There is another technological issue which spelled the end
> of PowerPC development as it has existed in the past.  Fixstars
> formally announced that YDL 6.2 is the last version of YDL to be
> developed for PowerPC systems.  Fixstars has moved YDL and all other
> products to be supporting Intel compatibles only. Although
> Fixstars does continue to support PowerPC systems these services are
> all fee based contractual services.
>
> The only free current version of YDL which exists is YDL with CUDA
> which only runs on Intel compatibles.
>
> Now we can swim down memory lane or move forward with the scientific
> and market realities such as they are.  As you are already probably
> aware there exist hexacore hybridized CPU/GPU systems that are laptops
> -- the Cell never developed that far.  Depending on who you listen to
> either an interesting age of technical development is over or moving
> forward.
>
> All the best...
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