The TILE-Gx block diagram

Tilera Corporation has released some details on its current project, a 100-core central processing unit.

This chip is not to be confused with current graphics processors, which are already pushing 512 cores per chip. The processor Tilera is building is capable of running (a homegrown flavor of) Linux. The Tile-Gx100 uses an array of 10×10 cores linked with a mesh interconnect system dubbed “iMesh” and 256kb of L2 cache per core for a 26MB virtual L3 cache. The Tile-Gx100 processor will purportedly offer performance exceeding Intel’s forthcoming 8-core 16-thread Nehalem CPU “by a factor of four running Linux infrastructure workloads”.

The Tile-Gx100 is a 64-bit processor which will sport 4 on-chip DDR3 controllers capable of accessing up to 1TB of system memory. The processor will be offered in frequencies between 1.25GHz and 1.5GHz, and will cost as much as $1000 per chip in low volumes. Tilera also plans to offer several lower-end iterations on the design, including a 36-core version and a 16-core version.

It is interesting to observe that the Tile-Gx chips do not have a floating-point processor included on the die. For workloads requiring intense mathematical calculations, these processors would not likely fit the bill. However, in operations where math is not generally involved, the Tile-Gx series should offer excellent performance. With a maximum power consumption of 55w at full load, the Tile-Gx line is also very energy efficient.

These properties will likely make the Tile-Gx processors excellent for use in high-traffic web servers, database servers, and other such applications.

The Eeebuntu Project is an attempt to provide an Ubuntu Linux environment that works well ‘out of the box’ specifically on the Asus EeePC (although it is known to work on other netbooks.) One of the Eeebuntu project’s core developers, Andrew Wyatt (better known as “fewt”) is the developer of the Eee PC Utils, a package that brings Windows-like hardware ACPI management to Ubuntu.

In a recent blog post entitled “I give up,” Andrew lambasted the Ubuntu movement, claiming that Ubuntu “sucks” and that “they have the uncanny ability to take Linux back in time by piling code that doesn’t work on top of more code that doesn’t work until they have turned their OS into a garbage salad.”

Normally, rants like this can be found all over the place–railing against one platform or another–but when a devoted developer raises these kinds of concerns after investing months of his time into a project, it makes one sit up and take notice.

The question is raised every so often: Will Linux ever be accepted as a “third” legitimate desktop operating system? Do consumers have a need for a competitor to Microsoft Windows and Apple Mac OS? Pundits say that the window of opportunity for mainstream Linux has closed; when Ubuntu was new, fresh, and exciting, and Windows Vista was being nearly universally vilified, there was an opportunity for real mass market acceptance. Is it too late?

According to Andrew and many of the supportive commenters on his post, the answer is yes. While not claiming Linux itself is doomed, he paints a grim picture for the development of Ubuntu. It was, after all, supposed to be “the one” that brought Linux to the mainstream consumer desktop.

Andrew closes his blog post with a telling sentiment: “Maybe I should buy a copy of Windows 7, I hear that it actually works. How can we expect non-technical users to use this pile of garbage that is ‘Linux’?”

This week, the Linux Foundation has begun offering discounts on new hardware from Lenovo, Dell, and HP for individuals who have joined the group’s membership program.

For the price of $99 per year, membership provides a discount of up to 40% on Lenovo devices, and employee purchase prices on Dell and HP products. The new incentive is designed to help Linux users purchase new systems without being hit by the extra costs they often face for not choosing Windows.

Jim Zemlin, executive director at the Linux Foundation, said that Linux users are central to the Foundation’s mission of promoting the open source OS.

“Our individual members are the heartbeat of the Linux Foundation and we will continue to find ways to extend special benefits to them,” he said. “Perks like the employee purchase discounts from Dell, HP and Lenovo and lifetime Linux.com email addresses are unique things we can offer to sustain support for Linux.”

“These benefits can translate into hundreds or thousands of dollars for those who purchase their devices as part of this program,” the Foundation said in a prepared statement. No doubt the group hopes that the promise of a good deal will garner new support for the Linux operating system.

//STORY UPDATE 10/16/2009:

Some users were complaining that they were unable to find out the discount information from Lenovo sales reps. A call to the Linux Foundation’s PR firm resolved the problem quickly; the particular Lenovo sales rep in question had been giving out bad information.

The user was contacted by Linux Foundation and directed to a website with discount information, which was valid. The happy ending? He saved $100 on a Lenovo laptop. -ed.

The Hulu Desktop app finally supports Linux through Fedora 11 and Ubuntu 9.04.

Developers of the enterprise-oriented CentOS Linux distro issued a plea last Thursday to lead developer Lance Davis who seemingly disappeared with sole control of the project’s funds, domain and IRC channels. But it’s cool, ’cause he’s totally back now the project confirmed yesterday afternoon.

“The CentOS Development team had a routine meeting today with Lance Davis in attendance,” said developer Donavan Nelson. “During the meeting a majority of issues were resolved immediately and a working agreement was reached with deadlines for remaining unresolved issues. There should be no impact to any CentOS users going forward.”

Lance Davis — the sole overseer of the CentOS project’s funds, IRC channels and domain — seems to have gone missing, much to the chagrin of fellow developers.

Developers close to the project have fallen in step with any sufficiently irritated group of nerds before them by publishing an open letter aimed at the AWOL admin.

This is an Open Letter to Lance Davis from fellow CentOS Developers
It is regrettable that we are forced to send this letter but we are left with no other options. For some time now we have been attempting to resolve these problems:

You seem to have crawled into a hole … and this is not acceptable.

You have long promised a statement of CentOS project funds; to this date this has not appeared.

You hold sole control of the centos.org domain with no deputy; this is not proper.

You have, it seems, sole ‘Founders’ rights in the IRC channels with no deputy ; this is not proper.

When I (Russ) try to call the phone numbers for UK Linux, and for you individually, I get a telco intercept ‘Lines are temporarily busy’ for the last two weeks. Finally yesterday, a voicemail in your voice picked up, and I left a message urgently requesting a reply. Karanbir also reports calling and leaving messages without your reply.

Please do not kill CentOS through your fear of shared management of the project.

Clearly the project dies if all the developers walk away.

Please contact me, or any other signer of this letter at once, to arrange for the required information to keep the project alive at the ‘centos.org’ domain.

Sincerely,

Russ Herrold
Ralph Angenendt
Karanbir Singh
Jim Perrin
Donavan Nelson
Tim Verhoeven
Tru Huynh
Johnny Hughes

We certainly hope that Davis’ fate is neither death nor injury, but this is a grim forecast for the respected enterprise distro.

The FOSS project known as ReactOS, devoted to making an open source distribution that’s compatible with Windows binaries, has introduced a new SATA driver and received a Verisign certificate.

The ReactOS Foundation which owns the rights and trademarks to the ReactOS project will now be able to certify its releases and digitally sign drivers for installation on x64 binaries:

The other development is the obtainment of a digital codesigning certificate from VeriSign, which will allow the Foundation to digitally sign releases that it makes, authoritatively identifying them as being from the ReactOS project. This should remove any ambiguities regarding official releases of binaries that the project makes and should prevent anyone from faking an official release.  Not only that, but as many people are aware, 64bit versions of Windows require that all drivers to be signed if you want to use them.

The new SATA driver dubbed UniATA still has outstanding performance issues, but it is faster than its predecessor and offers broader compatability.

In the future, we’ll of course want to actually fix this as not having DMA imposes a performance hit. In the mean time, the major blockers with UniATA are now gone and it has been switched over as the default ATA driver for ReactOS.

Correction, 2:37 PM 6/7/2009: The original run of this update indicated that ReactOS was a Linux project; this is obviously incorrect. We have since amended the article to read “FOSS.”

The Ubuntu team has moved Ubuntu 9.04, dubbed “Jaunty Jackalope,” into release candidacy. The curious and brave Linux users alike are encouraged to grab an ISO and give the newest version of Ubuntu a spin.

New features and fixes for Jaunty include:

• Drastically improved CD burning.
• Better multi-monitor support.
• Big improvements in performance for modern Radeons.
• Wacom tablet hotplugging.
• Improved boot times.
• And Ext4 file system support.

The release candidate arrives with GNOME 2.26, X.Org server 1.6 and kernel version 2.6.28.

If anyone is interested in giving the newest version of Linux’s finest a whirl, every civilized continent is carrying scads of mirrors right here.

Hexus examines the state of 3D graphics under Linux.

Research firm NPD is reporting that Microsoft’s stake in the netbook market has exploded from less than 10% in 1H08 to a commanding 96% in 1H09. Microsoft took the opportunity to kick Linux in the pisser with a mention that customers are returning Linux-based netbooks at a rate of up to 20% as is the case with the UK’s Car phone Warehouse.

Brandon LeBlanc, Microsoft’s in-house spinner blogger, ran the glory of Windows XP up the flagpole. “It’s hard to believe it’s been a year since we first started to see netbook PCs running Windows come to market,” he said. “The growth of Windows on netbook PCs over the last year has been phenomenal.” So as not to be remiss in his duties as a blogger, LeBlanc also touted Windows 7’s robustness on the netbook.

“Looking forward, we can confidently say that no matter how netbook PC hardware evolves, we’re gearing up to ensure that Windows 7 will run great on them.”

Speaking of Windows XP, Microsoft is axing free support for Windows this Tuesday. Break your stuff now, else Redmond will demand your checkbook for their time. Not that you would ever call Microsoft for XP support when you can use Icrontic for free, right? Yeah, we said it.

There has been a tizzy brewing this week over the fact that Microsoft will allow users to downgrade Windows 7 to Windows XP well into 2010. The Mac zealots are abusing the discovery to extol the superiority of OS X and the Linux users are seeing it as an indictment of Windows 7 and a herald for the rise of Linux.

Newsflash: It’s nothing new.

In fact, the OS downgrade right is a continuation of a long-standing Microsoft policy written into the agreement for volume license customers like OEMs and the enterprise. Anyone with the green to purchase a massive block of keys is given some latitude to match the installed OS to the standard design of their network.

(more…)

Ubuntu’s LPIA-based MID Edition can save you 10 percent more power than Netbook Remix.