Solaris X86 client?

[ColinT]

Guru asked about a Solaris X86 client. Any hope of that?

[smh]

And what about the Linux client?

[Mystwalker]

Maybe a Java version could do the trick. With HotSpot, it might be fast enough, but I'm far away from being sure of that. But iff it was the case, it would speed up distribution over different hardware/OSes.

I've seen some other distributed computing projects using Java...

[smh]

Java is by far not fast enough. The SOB client uses (IIRC) the Woltman FFT implementation which is written in highly optimised assembler.

The older SOB client (version 0.90 or so) used the GMP library and was about 30 times slower!!

There is room for an optimisation on the P4 though if SSE2 is implemented.

[Mystwalker]

Ok, compared to assembler, Java is slow, right.

Hm, when the SSE2 optimizations are done in assembler, too, it would speed things up a lot. If you don't use tailored code, SSE is not that effective...

[jjjjL]

woah everyone... lets not get ahead of ourselves here

first off, the client will not be ported to non-x86 systems in the near future. its true that the GMP version of SB runs on OSX, HPUX and Solaris machines... but it also runs 30x slower. i do not have the time to port the x86 assembler... nor the experience required to do it correctly.

java is so out of the question...

people who suggest java in the future -->

also, remember when you say "just implement SSE2", someone actually has to do it! it's hard work. we'll see.

-L

[ColinT]

We've seen a Java powered DC client. It was not pretty.