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

On May 28, 5:47 am, Jan Panteltje <pNaonStpealm...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
On a sunny day (Tue, 27 May 2008 13:21:56 -0700 (PDT)) it happened Robert
Myers <rbmyers...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote in
<c7a3170b-c606-4484-b3d2-c279fd0b6...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>:


I am not sure about the point you want to make,
Sure, if I design an electronic digital instrument, like I have here,
I do _not_ take into account (and this thing is embedded full of software, in asm actually),
that in 2038 or so, a big comet may hit it!

Those kind of calamities cannot be taken into the design idea.

Sure, I agree (been reading this thread now a while) that in case of
for example NASA, the original mars lander, errors were made, NASA knows that,
12 or more design changes were made, Phoenix _works_, they learned, and also
had communications during landing to see what went wrong, if anything, this time,
prepared to learn..

In Europe there is a fault line south of Gibraltar, many hundreds of years ago
there was a big earth quake there that flattened houses up into the north of France.

Does that mean everything is now build to withstand a force 8 earthquake?
No, it is cheaper to rebuild.

You can't bring dead people back to life. California, where I lived
for about a decade, has frequent quakes and evolving building codes
that increasingly mitigate damage. California is still not ready for
the "big one," 8.0 on the Richter scale. Fifty percent chance of that
within the next thirty years according to seismologists (who are
burning up a lot of cycles studying the problem). Saying that it's
cheaper to rebuild would get you laughed out of the room in
California. I can only imagine that you've never been in a tall
building during a big quake or even been woken up by one. How many
dead from such a quake in China? Will we ever know? People may not
be able to afford to emulate California, but anyone at significant
risk pays attention.

There is the economic factor, and also the probability factor.
Software, and also financial software (I wrote some), is designed to do a specific job.
_How_ you use the tool, and the risks you want to take, is up to you.
Much of the financial world is simply gambling anyways,
The chances of winning are about 50%, bit more if you are good, a lot
better then 1 in 100 million for a big lotterie, so they take the risks,

In the case of US financial institutions, they are playing with other
people's monopoly money. I doubt if Europe is different. We have an
economic system that incentivizes recklessness. Am I supposed to
admire it?

http://blogs.trb.com/news/politics/blog/katrina-new-orleans-flooding3...

See?

Yea, part of the Netherlands once was flooded too, they build dikes,
and an elaborate protection system.
Still some comet plunging in the North Sea would wash away things.
Accepted risk.


Not everyone sees it that way. The energy going into tracking rogue
objects that might hit the earth has increased dramatically, and plans
for dealing with the supposedly unthinkable have been floated.

Building codes, tsunami warning networks, land use regulations,
nuclear safety controls, market circuit breakers and increased
regulation, and better risk analysis all happen the hardest possible
way: whatever it was, it *didn't* work well enough. NASA, I'm afraid,
is beyond hope.

NASA is absolutely great, it learned from its mistakes, what more can you want.

NASA has been learning from its mistakes, over and over and over again
for decades. To be fair about it, the real problem may be in
Washington with OMB and the Congress. The US is no longer really
prepared to fund its own ambitions.

Robert.
.

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