Re: AMD planning 45nm 12-Core 'Istanbul' Processor ?

Robert Myers wrote:
>> Who cares what some clueless newsgroup poster thinks.
>>
> In my years on this planet, and, more recently in dealing with usenet
> hotheads, I've learned not to rely on my own knowledge and experience
> when I don't have to.
> 
> Even so:
> 
> 1. I am not clueless.

You're probably not clueless about theory. You're apparently (as you
demonstrated many times here) clueless about real life practice. In theory
there is no difference between theory and practice, but in practice there
is :)

> 2. The people I talk to are even less clueless than I am.

No one here knows who you talk to. You only talked about Edsger Dijkstra,
who Requeiscat in Pace for about 6 years. I presume you don't talk to dead
people, otherwise we should move to another newsgroup (sci.parapsychology
or something)

>> 1. very expensive
>> 2. does not guarantee total correctenss -- it only reduces chances of
>> error
> 
> Given the choice between something with solid mathematical foundations
> and something that relies exclusively on someone like you, I'd choose
> the former every single time.  

Now put price tags to that choices. For example $100000 vs $1000. Then the
choice is to have anything or have nothing.

> As to the cost, when I said we'd be 
> better off with less software, I meant it, and I still mean it.

Yeah and there is no market for more than three computers.

If you're better off with that the throw your computer out. As there would
be no software to run in.

To have formal verification possible one has to have formal specification
to
begin with. And that formal specification must be right and error free
itself. Unfortunatly for you and others like you, for majority of stuff
out
there there is no formal specification and even worse there are no known
means to phrase it. The possibility to get something like more-or-less
formal specification is in aerospace industry and other guys dealing with
big dangerous stuff. And that specification is possible only for the core
process, not interface. Bad human interface has already cost hundreds or
even thousands of lives yet nobody knows how to define that.

> You don't have to rely on my "clueless" opinion.  I've posted on the
> subject of the costs of our current setup, with citations.  I've had
> public discussions with software development managers in critical
> applications who lamented exactly as I did.

Critical how? Life? Business? Mission? There is no just critical, one must
first quantize it. 

> Well he should have, a 
> software boner had just cost his high-profile publicly-traded company
> big bucks.

Oh, terrible. Maybe even better is to create software police and shoot all
of them off. Hey, it's capitalism out there. If those boners make big
money
with crap product go and make yours. Its going to be real good stuff not
crap, so it should sell and get all those idiots out of the market, right?

> As it is, with an internet, *everything* is a critical 
> application.

Absolute nonsense. 

> Know Edsger Dikstra?  Want to call him an idiot, too?  Just to be
> sure, I googled on your name to see if you, too, had won a Turing
> Award.  If so, google missed it.

Neither I have Nobel prize nor Fields medal. But what is has to do the
theme
at hand? The practical reality?
Prof Dijkstra quickly escaped from his brief industry adventure back to
academia right in 60ties. Later on he even didn't use computers for long
time *he finally used mac just for web and email). He is perfect example
of
great theoretician, like Enstein, Gauss and others. He is one of those
greats who create theoretical foundations but leave the practical stuff to
others.


>> No, I'm relying on cost of software production vs cost's of errors
times
>> times their expected probability of occurence during lifetime of the
>> software.
>> Making software immune to errors costing 1e+9$ with probability greater
>> that 1-1e-4 (that is four nines) during 10 years lifetime should not
cost
>> more than 1e+5$ (that's about 1 man-year spent on improving quality).
If
>> it costs more it's time to cut corners and increase error probability
>> reducing production cost.
>> And even then it's pointless to run that software on hardware with
fault
>> probability worse that that of software (i.e. not for home use, nor
small
>> company -- your standard PC will die with probability well above 0.5
not
>> below 0.0001 within the timeframe (even if you're doing regular
>> professional system maitenence and exchange all parts on planed
shedule).
>> Then all of that must be immune to operator errors -- also impossible
in
>> home or small and middle sized business environment.
>>
> You don't need to recite to me justification for the grubby economics
> of software development.  Everyone lives with it.  The part of the
> calculation you don't want to do is the risk that's pushed off onto
> someone else in the indefinite future.  If you were forced to buy
> insurance against that risk, you'd damn well do what I've proposed.

Nope. It so happens I develop software for those who certainly can count,
estimate risk, etc. (i.e. financial institutions). They do accept the risk
and are perfectly aware of that. And they certainly do not want formal
verification for vast majority of stuff. They don't want that for very
simple reason -- money, as they don't want to waste it.

> As it is, you can afford to let it slide, because the risk-taker is
> always the end user.

Nope. It's now clear that you have no clue about reality and only spread
urban legend type misconceptions.

> That's how this shameful business is set up, and 
> I wish you'd quit bragging about how good you are at it.  There are
> good loan sharks, too.

And now go, hide in your cave and live in your imaginations.

Sebastian Kaliszewski
-- 
"Never underestimate the power of human stupidity" -- L. Lang