cliffbean

6 ms·

1.
by cliffbean 11y ago
Why are we measuring performance in MIPS?
2.
by cliffbean 11y ago
Little-endian is generally better for compilers, to the extent that it matters. For example, with SIMD, it makes most sense to number the lanes in the same direction as addresses in memory, so that lane 0 is at offset 0 when doing a load or
3.
by cliffbean 12y ago
I take a pragmatic approach. I'm cool with BSD license for most of user-level application code, because if someone wants to make a binary-only application, I usually have options I can choose from. But in kernel space, a binary-only dr
4.
by cliffbean 12y ago
They appear to be doing "take, modify, distribute as a compiled binary blob that no one else can modify and pass around". It's hard to reconcile that with the word "share".
5.
by cliffbean 12y ago
Normal division by zero gives you Infinity. To get NaN, you have to do something as numerically confounding as divide zero by zero, which isn't any infinity, because the numerator is zero, and which isn't zero or any finite number
6.
by cliffbean 12y ago
I distinguish between proprietary apps and proprietary kernel. The open source world can build its own apps. Mostly. However, it can't build its own kernel if the hardware is undocumented and/or only supported by OS-specific binar
7.
by cliffbean 12y ago
While most people don't hack kernel code themselves, there is still value in promoting open source operating systems. A future in which Windows becomes popular on mobile/embedded devices is likely a future with more binary blobs,
8.
by cliffbean 12y ago
The current leaders of the LLVM project intend to keep it open. They have also traded away a way to encourage others to keep it open in return for wider adoption. Interpret that as you will.
9.
by cliffbean 12y ago
We don't need any networks. Self driving cars will always need to be able to share the road with normal cars. That mechanism will support the case of sharing the road with other self driving cars too. Networks can add fancy features, b
10.
by cliffbean 12y ago
The argument is that self-driving cars would reuse existing roads, fuel, service, and manufacturing infrastructures that have been developed for existing cars. And, adoption can be incremental. Start with cars which drive themselves highway
11.
by cliffbean 12y ago
SIGABRT (or similar) approach is similarly tempting. No checking for errors, no complicated control paths. If Unix systems let processes register (and unregister) files to be automatically deleted on abnormal exit, it'd be pretty conve
12.
by cliffbean 12y ago
They're coming. The initial code for them is written; it's just waiting for a few other things to get checked in first. Also, quite a lot of people use floats for every data value.
13.
by cliffbean 12y ago
One thing I struggle with: how does one calibrate one's spidey sense? Reading comments in online forums is likely to bias one towards the people talking the most, which is not a good bet as a representative sample. It's not just s
14.
by cliffbean 12y ago
I find perf a very useful tool, and use it frequently. At the same time, I don't see how your data supports your conclusion that perf is more effective than cachegrind here. The absolute cycle count is of limited interest. The most imp
15.
by cliffbean 12y ago
If you're going to argue against taxi licenses or anything else, please explain why you think the reasons why some people believe the good outweighs the bad are wrong, rather than just pointing out that there is bad.
16.
by cliffbean 12y ago
You're right that the first link I posted is a research paper, and that it should be interpreted accordingly. It is interesting though that in the paper, they compare NaCl to other systems, some of which include ISA virtualization, and
17.
by cliffbean 12y ago
Your history omits an earlier chapter, which was the period during which Google introduced NaCl to the world. http://research.google.com/pubs/archive/34913.pdf (2009) http://blog.chromium.org/2010&
18.
by cliffbean 12y ago
This article does have aspects that could be reasonably criticized. But we can have some fun trading rhetorical devices too. I see your Dismissive Tone and raise you a Gentle Mock. The article sites numerous non-XXX-droid sources too. Shal
19.
by cliffbean 12y ago
I don't understand this kind of sarcasm except as a way to insinuate an opinion without having to defend it. The article cites numerous sources.
20.
by cliffbean 12y ago
> [It's fine. And besides, everyone else is doing it.] Fact-checking posts that cite their sources and speak calmly about relevant topics are useful.
21.
by cliffbean 12y ago
There probably is close to zero overhead in a small benchmark. Hardware branch prediction is indeed good. However, it's a finite resource. In a large application, lots of needless branches everywhere translates into fewer branch predic
22.
by cliffbean 12y ago
Perhaps, but how important is DRM , with Chrome shipping it and even promoting it , to you, personally? Less important than having a nice startup time? Whatever floats your boat, but that seems to be a significant reason why we're he
23.
by cliffbean 12y ago
It is generic, but the graphs on arewefastyet.com suggest that it isn't actually making most regular benchmarks go faster, just some of the asm.js-style ones.
24.
by cliffbean 12y ago
It's unclear. Diversity helps innovation, but it also adds complexity to everyone who builds on top of it. If there's room for significant innovation, it can be worth the complexity. But if there isn't, and there are many sig
25.
by cliffbean 12y ago
This document lists some reasons [0] • Growing interest in running entire OS in little-endian mode – Ease porting of programs from other architectures – Ease porting of programs which access files containing LE binary data – Ease c
26.
by cliffbean 12y ago
Pretty much all of them do. Many of the big leaders in the C++ world, like Google, are pushing the idea that every last optimization technique is crucially vital. Google can bank on tenths-of-a-percent of performance, so why can't you?
27.
by cliffbean 13y ago
To add to this, transpiling is a kind of compiling where the source code and target code have roughly the same level of abstraction. asm.js does appear to be more "low-level" than quake bytecode, so this is compiling, and not tran
28.
by cliffbean 13y ago
It's worth noting that Git's hashes guard against accidental corruption; they aren't widely thought to be strong against attack by an intelligent adversary.
29.
by cliffbean 13y ago
Thanks for responding. Here's one additional suggestion: The benchmarks you posted are extremely microscopic and artificial. They are so small, it's possible that LLVM is able to optimize them in ways that are less likely to be po
30.
by cliffbean 13y ago
There is some support for interfacing LLVM with a GC, but LLVM itself does not include a GC.

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