Friday, July 1, 2011

Tilera 100-core Processor beats Intel Sandybridge

intel-vs-tilera-gxTilera wants to put a direct competition to Intel’s current generation processor, Sandybridge, in the server environment. Their desperate chips are based on 40nm fabrication technology based on 64-bit architecture. Tilera Gx family have between 36 and 100 cores.

The company believes that Intel’s x86 architecture is built to work for generic applications that are mostly limited to single cores and few threads, they cannot scale well beyond to levels where Intel cannot. Tilera Gx family targets high-throughput applications.

Tile Gx family has 3 flavors 36-core Gx3036, the 64-core GX3064 and the 100-core Gx3100. All of them target high performance multi-core computing designed for high-end web servers & applicatons including vast databases and heavy frameworks.

If the company Tilera is to be believed, the Gx family is at least 10 times power efficient, per-watt. With 100 cores on a single die, the processor consumes less than 48 watts, which is way lower than Sandybridge. Each core rated at less than 0.5 watt is the among the most efficeient processors ever designed for servers.

Tile Gx Family Specs:

An array of 16 to 100 general-purpose processor cores (tiles)64-bit VLIW processors with a 64-bit instruction bundleThree-way pipeline with up to three instructions per cycle32K L1i cache, 32K L1d cache, 256K L2 cache per tileUp to 750 billion operations per second (BOPS)Up to 200 Tbps of on-chip mesh interconnectOver 500 Gbps memory bandwidth with four 64-bit DDR3 controllers

Sandy bridge consumes upto 95W, and Xeon goes upto 130W.

tile-gx-tilera

Tilera goes further in criticizing Intel’s upcoming architecture “Knights Ferry n 2012”. They argue that

“an x86 is an x86, whether it’s Atom cores, Pentium cores — the overhead that you’re carrying is the same. You need to carry the overhead to be binary compatible,” Bishara said. “What [Intel] do, even with Atom, is lower the frequency to get lower power and to get more cores in the same chip.”

Tilera’s Gx3036 would become available around July, followed by Gx3064 and Gx3100 in Q1 2012 and stratton 28nm chip in 2012 going upto 200 cores. With the big plans on its line, its already in talks with big cloud players like Amazon, Google, Microsoft.

Tilera is non-x86, but Dev Toolchain would be available

Gx chips are compatible with 2.6.36 kernel release of Linux showing love for CentOS. The applications can be written in any of the popular languages: C and C++, Java, PHP, Perl and Python, which are implemented via a GCC compiler that has been ported to Tilera’s architecture.

Tilera’s Architecture – The secret recipe

The DNA of the multicore super-performance is the way it communicated among multiple-cores. Gx chips pass information between cores via a mesh network, which distributes the cache throughout the processor and allows for multiple connections between individual cores. Applications can access the on-chip network, and can fully use it to communicate between cores, the result is a superior throughput in the IO among the chips, and better cache management as compared to sandybridge.

We do believe that Tilera is bringing some breakthrough improvements in the CPU architecture especially on the server sides. The ultimate question that still remains unanswered is “Will the customers (big cloud players) port apps to a new architecture?, would it be easy enough?”

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Thursday, June 30, 2011

Windows 8 Tiles, Metro-Style UI on Windows 7

metro-ui-win7Windows 8 would ditch the Windows 7 Aero interface in favor of Metro UI,  which exists on Windows Phone today. If you love the MEtro style tiles and interface, you can get the Metro UI on windows 7 using Zetro UI.

Zetro UI is very simple to install and configure. Extract the zip after downloading the theme from the link below. When done, follow the below two simple steps:

Opening the Extras folder, running the Theme Patcher, and clicking on all three “patch” buttons contained within.Opening the Theme folder and copying both of the files inside it to C:\Windows\Resources\Themes.

When finished, Open the Control Panel and “Change the Theme” under Appearance and Personalization. The Zetro theme should be available in “Installed themes”.

metro-ui-windows7

The look and feel of the theme makes you windows 7 look simple with white all over the place, which might look a bit odd for the first few minutes. You can tweak it using the extra tweaks available in the readme file that comes along with the zip.

Extending the tweak further, feel free to blend it with something like the Metro-inspired Omnimo 4 theme for Rainmeter.

Source/Download: Zetro UI

We write latest and greatest in Tech Guides, Apple, iPhone, Tablets, Android,  Open Source, Latest in Tech, subscribe to us@geeknizeron Twitter OR on Facebook Fanpage:

Independent software Entrepreneur and software developer at premier Fortune 20 company. Full time Geek.

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Watch Free Movies, TV Shows on Android, iPhone, iPad

iphone-android-crackle-moviesYou can now watch free Full length Movies, TV Shows on your Android, iPhone, thanks to the latest app called Crackle.
Crackle is backed by Sony pictures and they are keeping the application and content free of cost by earning revenue from ads. Although you might few others on iPHone, Crackle is the Only app on android that does free movie & TV shows streaming.
Even if you are Netflix user there is a good reason why you might need Crackle, its free and compatible with almost all android devices. Crackle may not have all the latest movie title that you would find on Netflix, Blockbuster, etc. but all those that are available is pretty impressive for the price quote of “free”.
iphone-crackle
There are all the movies like Final Fantasy VII, Bad Boys, Quarantine, So I Married an Axe Murderer and classics like Ghostbusters.
android-crackle
The downside: The app plays a video ad before your movie/show starts, and you’ll get interrupted by more video ads in the middle of your movie from time to time. This is same case as on Youtube movies or Youtube blockbuster.
Both the apps are US only.

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Change Android Screen

Change Android Screen brightness with Tilt. Auto brightness may not be the optimal thing to do when you are switching your areas or when you need to switch to photo, video modes. What comes handy is an app called Brightness Motion that lets you adjust your phone’s brightness with a tilt no matter where you are, without having to touch anything.

Normally, users tend to keep brightness quiet low but when its time to show off, you pump up the brightness to showcase the power of the phone. With Brightness motion, you can turn your phone to increase or reduce the brightness.



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