Andrew Beresford's Blog

Ok, I’m a theme whore – so shoot me.

Election fever is hotting up… I think I’ve made my mind up about who to vote for, but just to make sure that my decision isn’t a totally emotional one… let’s use some metrics based upon the (X/)HTML and CSS validators and some other random stuff to make sure I get the results I want.

So, I guess the last thing I can do is attempt to interpret these results. My best interpretation comes as the Liberal Democrats have better things to be doing than making XHTML and CSS compliant websites and are concentrating more on their politics than technology. Twisted like only a politician could!

Today, not only have we had to open the (one, extremely small) window in our sauna^H^H^H^H^Hoffice, but we’ve also had to turn on the pedestal fan for the first time this year.

I think I’ll put forward my plans to work from home a little more. Summer must be here.

Yesterday I passed out. I’ve only passed out two and half times in my life. It’s a very weird feeling. Like falling into a dream, after which it seems like lots of time has passed, when it hasn’t.

The first time I only half passed out. Beezly will remember this well. We were riding down the hill from his house to my house, two people on a pedal bike, when we hit a pot-hole in the road. We swerved and both flew over the handlebars, at high speed. I landed on top of Beezly and kind of surfed on his face, leaving him a lot worse off than me injury-wise.

But for some reason the shock of the incident caused me to start seeing stars. I slumped over a nearby wall and felt myself start to lose conciousness. I dont think I actually passed out, but eventually the stars filled my vision completely, and I lost control of my limbs. My legs couldn’t take my own weight, as Beezly and the other guy carried me somewhere to sit down. Given that Beezly’s face was pooring with blood, I was being a bit of a wuss. …This must’ve been about ten years ago now.

The second time I had been lying on the sofa for hours watching a long episode of touch of frost. It came to a commercial break, and I stood up and ran upstairs to use the toilet. I quickly felt very dizzy, and sat down on the toilet. I put my head between my knees, but it was too late. I woke up sprawled all over the bathroom floor, with my trousers round my ankles and my ear pressed against the base of the sink. This left me with a painful bruise on the side of my head, I must’ve hit the sink quite hard. Luckily not too hard. I wouldn’t have wanted to be found dead in that position. …This was a couple of year ago.

The third time was yesterday! I went snowboarding with my housemates. I’d been out drinking the night before, and what with the early start, I was feeling a little ill. We went up in the gondala and did one run down. I was having fun, but starting to feel a little rough. Then in a crowded gondala on the way to the top of the mountain again, I started feeling very ill. I told my mates I was going to be sick, which prompted the usual joking discussions about seafood etc, but then strangely, rather than spewing all over their feet, I passed out. I woke up on the floor of the gondala, lying on my back, with a whole crowd of swiss skiers looking down at me. One of them was holding my legs above me, which I think helped the blood come back to my head. The hangover was a factor, but I had only become ill later on in the morning, and very suddenly. I decided that it was probably more to do with the undercooked egg I ate for breakfast yesterday morning.

With Intel and AMD announcing the release of their multi-core CPUs, this article at Slashdot (or rather the comments underneath) started me on a bit of an internal rant.

Why don’t people get that Intel’s x86 implementation SUCKS and that by implementing more cores on the CPU, Intel are pretty much guaranteed to make the performance of SMP configurations even worse than they are today. Maybe this is why they’ve only announced Desktop (ie, single CPU) chips so far.

Here’s how it works…

AMD Opteron’s CPUs have memory controller on the chip itself. As you increase the number of CPUs in the box, you are increasing total memory bandwidth by the same amount (assuming you are populating the CPUs with memory too, you’d be insane not to!). Therefore memory bandwidth per core scales O(1) (I shudder as my memories of an Analysis of Algorithms course come back).

Intel’s CPUs have the memory controller located on the Northbridge. There is one Northbridge per box (unless you have a very specialised NUMA box). As you add CPUs, the memory bandwidth stays the same, but the number of cores increases. Therefore memory bandwidth per core scales O(1/n) – not good.

Adding multicore CPUs has the following effect on Opteron. There is still only 1 memory controller per CPU, but multiple cores. Memory bandwith per CPU (ie both cores) scales (compared to the single-core model) O(1/2).

Adding multicore CPUs has the following effect on Intel multicore. There is one north bridge, but multiple cores. Memory bandwidth per CPU scales O(1/2n) – that’s just moved from not good to AWFUL.

If I hear another Intel fanboy harp on about how wonderful Intel’s multicore will be, I’m going to EXPLODE!

Well, I found a blog article about ‘Enterprise’ software. I’m pretty inclined to agree with him.

I’ve been up to visit Emma in Newcastle this weekend and now I’m worn out! Emma’s still a party animal, although I’m sure she’d deny it! Most people I know would consider two late nights, one until 4am, party animal behaviour though

Thanks Em

I’ve been a busy bee over the last few days and will be busy over the next few.

Monday night I had a HudLUG meeting – Paul and I gave presentations and the whole thing was well received. I think we also had the biggest turn out I had seen for quite a while, a massive TEN people altogether.

Tuesday night I had a gig at a restaurant in Leeds. It was ok, the place was a bit quiet and the guy running it was a bit worried about us playing too loud. Hopefully things will pick up as people find out a live band are playing there regularly.

Tonight is my night off this week – I’ll be mainly sorting out the washing and doing some tidying up. Maybe I’ll water my plant too (thanks Emma, I’m looking after it I promise!)

Thursday night I have a jam night at Vox. I really enjoy doing them, although this time, because of my schedule on Friday, I won’t be drinking, which means I will be driving, and getting home about 2:30am. Work on Friday is not going to be fun.

Friday evening I’m driving up to Newcastle to visit Emma (and probably Laura K and other people). I’m giving Clare a lift up to Durham on the way, which should give me some good company. I much prefer driving with other people with me to chat to!

Anyway, so, busybusy…