>> My God...
> 
> Yes, my child?

._.

>> Doesn't the UT3 editor use up nearly 100% CPU on its own?
> 
> 50%, so basically 100% of a single core.  I think it's a bug (and so do 
> several other people on the UT3 forum), since it never varies (even when 
> minimized).

M$ Access 97 has precisely the same bug:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/160819

"During idle time, Microsoft Access continuously polls its message queue 
to check for keyboard and mouse activity."

"Microsoft Access was originally designed to operate in the cooperative 
multitasking environment that Microsoft Windows 3.x provides."

In other words, a simple polling loop. A surprising amount of software 
still uses such brain-dead technology. (E.g., I frequently see it in 
printer and scanner drivers. Like my mum's HP printer, that connects 
over the parallel port. Printing to it causes 100% CPU usage until the 
print finishes. No reason for it...)

>> BTW, do you think we will ever reach a situation where controlling 8 
>> seperate PCs is as easy as controlling just one?
> 
> Not exactly, but I do think that distributed computing will become much 
> easier (spawn a task, and dozens (or hundreds) of computers will pitch 
> in to finish it).

I just wonder if one day it will be, like, you run a program and as many 
computers as you have switched on automatically start biting into it... 
but hey, that sounds *far* too easy! ;-) Even Apple haven't done it yet.

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*

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"Invisible" <voi### [at] devnull> wrote in message
news:47b06768$1@news.povray.org...
> A surprising amount of software
> still uses such brain-dead technology. (E.g., I frequently see it in
> printer and scanner drivers. Like my mum's HP printer, that connects
> over the parallel port. Printing to it causes 100% CPU usage until the
> print finishes. No reason for it...)

I've seen exactly the same thing on a piece of hardware I had to deal with.
Can't remember the name of it (Rakal or something similar)
Drove one CPU's kernal usage to 100% flat. Lovely thing to have on a
database server.

> I just wonder if one day it will be, like, you run a program and as many
> computers as you have switched on automatically start biting into it...
> but hey, that sounds *far* too easy! ;-) Even Apple haven't done it yet.

I don't think it's that farfetched. You could argue that Google's done
similar with their distributed search.
Distributed computing was a big research topic when I was at iuniversity. I
think it still is. I keep running across references when I'm reading
It's not easy though.

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Gail Shaw wrote:

>> A surprising amount of software
>> still uses such brain-dead technology. (E.g., I frequently see it in
>> printer and scanner drivers. Like my mum's HP printer, that connects
>> over the parallel port. Printing to it causes 100% CPU usage until the
>> print finishes. No reason for it...)
> 
> I've seen exactly the same thing on a piece of hardware I had to deal with.
> Can't remember the name of it (Rakal or something similar)
> Drove one CPU's kernal usage to 100% flat. Lovely thing to have on a
> database server.

Yes, truly wonderful, isn't it?

OOC, how many cores does your server have? (Mine has 2. And they're both 
Pentium-III...)

>> I just wonder if one day it will be, like, you run a program and as many
>> computers as you have switched on automatically start biting into it...
>> but hey, that sounds *far* too easy! ;-) Even Apple haven't done it yet.
> 
> I don't think it's that farfetched. You could argue that Google's done
> similar with their distributed search.

I'm not familiar with that.

> Distributed computing was a big research topic when I was at iuniversity. I
> think it still is. I keep running across references when I'm reading
> It's not easy though.

The Haskell guys keep telling us how parallel processing is the future 
and how Haskell is right there ready to step in... but it's not actually 
that easy. Haskell has far fewer problems than *cough* C. Emphasis fewER 
problems...

Anyway, things like PVM exist. But it's nowhere near as easy as opening 
Word and start typing... You've got to configure a whole heap of stuff 
to get it going, and then you can't just *run* your program, you must 
configure that also. And your program must be specially built to work 
with PVM, and... and...

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*

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"Orchid XP v7" <voi### [at] devnull> wrote in message
news:47b092dd$1@news.povray.org...

> OOC, how many cores does your server have? (Mine has 2. And they're both
> Pentium-III...)

Which one? I have somewhere around 50 database servers, and those are just
the ones that run production databases.

The one in question was a 2 proc server with hyperthreading, so windows
thought there were 4 processors. I can't remember what speed. We managed to
get that app transfered to another department. SEP now.

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Chambers wrote:
> Currently running:
> POV-Ray (5 instances, each rendering part of an animation)
> Firefox & Thunderbird
> Handbrake
> CloneDVD
> UT3 Editor
> 
> My poor dual core can't keep up :(
> 
> I think I'm one of the few home users who could get some real use out of 
> an 8 core machine :)

This another way of saying "I use POV-Ray."

Regards,
John

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Gail Shaw wrote:
> "Orchid XP v7" <voi### [at] devnull> wrote in message
> news:47b092dd$1@news.povray.org...
> 
>> OOC, how many cores does your server have? (Mine has 2. And they're both
>> Pentium-III...)
> 
> Which one? I have somewhere around 50 database servers, and those are just
> the ones that run production databases.

Woah. I have 4 servers. One of them is dedicated to Oracle.

But then, I have 30 users, so... you have more servers than I have 
users. ;-)

> The one in question was a 2 proc server with hyperthreading, so windows
> thought there were 4 processors. I can't remember what speed. We managed to
> get that app transfered to another department. SEP now.

Ah, SEP fields FTW!

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*

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"Invisible" <voi### [at] devnull> wrote in message
news:47b16275$1@news.povray.org...
> Gail Shaw wrote:
> > Which one? I have somewhere around 50 database servers, and those are
just
> > the ones that run production databases.
>
> Woah. I have 4 servers. One of them is dedicated to Oracle.
>
> But then, I have 30 users, so... you have more servers than I have
> users. ;-)

I work for an investment bank. Enough said.
We've got about 1200 staff. How many of them use what server, I don't know
offhand.

My servers range from single processor to 16 dual cores. Memory from 1 GB to
64 GB

> > The one in question was a 2 proc server with hyperthreading, so windows
> > thought there were 4 processors. I can't remember what speed. We managed
to
> > get that app transfered to another department. SEP now.
>
> Ah, SEP fields FTW!

???

SEP = Someone Else's Problem

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Gail Shaw wrote:

>> Woah. I have 4 servers. One of them is dedicated to Oracle.
>>
>> But then, I have 30 users, so... you have more servers than I have
>> users. ;-)
> 
> I work for an investment bank. Enough said.

;-)

> My servers range from single processor to 16 dual cores. Memory from 1 GB to
> 64 GB

OK, seriously. *Where* can you buy a machine that takes more than 2 
physical CPUs? I've tried, just for a laugh, but I cannot find anybody 
who sells them. The best I could come up with is a HP ProLiant with two 
4-core Xeons, giving a total of 8 cores. How on Earth do you get 32 
cores? [And what in the name of God does something like that cost??]

>> Ah, SEP fields FTW!
> 
> ???

In one of the Hitchhicker's Guide books, there's a spacecraft of some 
kind hidden inside a SEP field, thus rendering it effectively invisible...

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*

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Invisible wrote:
> OK, seriously. *Where* can you buy a machine that takes more than 2 
> physical CPUs? 

Back in 1994 or so, we bought a Sun server with 8 CPUs or 16 CPUs, I 
forget which. Sun makes such things, generally. They're expensive, of 
course, especially if you think $3K is expensive. :-)

-- 
   Darren New / San Diego, CA, USA (PST)
     On what day did God create the body thetans?

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Invisible wrote:
>
> OK, seriously. *Where* can you buy a machine that takes more than 2
> physical CPUs? I've tried, just for a laugh, but I cannot find anybody
> 

http://www.sgi.com/products/servers/altix/4000/configs.html

Notice the marketing sector for the left one - mid-range server. :)

>>> Ah, SEP fields FTW!

\o/

-- 
Eero "Aero" Ahonen
   http://www.zbxt.net
      aer### [at] removethiszbxtnetinvalid

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