ActiveDaily

New kind of computing on Open Data

2012-01-22T10:08:00.000-08:00

#OpenData just yet another buzzword like web 2.0, semantic web, etc. But behind the scenes we could see mach more potential and opportunities. What's difference between #OpenData and just familiar web blogs for instance? First of all it's representation & organization, #OpenData is representation agnostic computable thing from one side & perfectly human readable & "viewable" in many forms in other side. Semantic web? So semantic web is dead, #OpenData comes instead :). Twitter is one of the first shy steps to that direction of #OpenData concept, so is it hell or heaven? Both, depends on us. We should clearly understand & use it for good.
I'm thinking to support two options in registration form:
- human with captcha test (programs not yet able to pass);
- program with heavy calculation test (humans won't be able to pass);
Crazy? No, may be just some fun. Real reason is that #OpenData really nice opportunity to create new kind of computing engines on top of it.
To be continued...

cloud tech

2012-01-20T15:45:00.000-08:00

Cloud technologies very hot topic today, most buzzing is cloud non-relational databases. Pretty interesting ones are following

Database as a Service, some opensource databases are used by 3d parties for instance mongolab or proprietary like dynamodb is available recent time. Monsters like google offers cloud storage & databases also including cloudsql.

What business model, just like any other XaaS services different hosting plans with periodical payments.

multi language open data

2012-01-12T14:04:00.000-08:00

It's exciting time to participate in opendata research & developmet. Yes It is revolution, no turn back. The humans at last come close as never before to open data. So wikipedia, twitter, socrata, etc. & a great number of data dot gov resources!
Open data about everything, just little example with wikipedia style - many languages!
{
en : {
"message" : "opendata is cool",
"created_at" : "Fri Jan 13 2012 01:51:41 GMT+0400 (MSK)",
"tags" : ["open","data","cool"],
}
ru : {
"сообщение" : "открытые данные это круто",
"дата_создания" : "Пт Янв 13 2012 01:51:41 GMT+0400 (MSK)",
"тэги" : ["открытые","данные","круто"],
}

...

}

opendata+opencode=opendataobjects

2012-01-09T10:01:00.000-08:00

#opendata much spoken concept, but just data is not enough. Yes + the code, it's critically important!
The REST architectural style widely used today has no data format, as usual it's JSON or XML but no matter what it is. JSON is the best choose, easy for humans to use, easy for programms to manipulate.
Ok, just data is not enough, data + code. What code? Code what for?
Two things:
- open source code is not ready to use immediately, you have to build it as minimum, resolve dependencies, create config files, etc. But imagine what if any one can run open source software as a service (OSSaaS), no make files, no linux stuff, just put query in a browser address line, no programming skills required!
- just data is not enough, who put this data to open data cloud? Men in black, doubt it. Humans manually upload exel files there, omg. An idea to make opendataobjects live, just add code!
opendataobjects=opendata+opencode!
How it might looks like, no bicycle inventing, just in JSON:
{
field1 : "value1",
field2 : "value2",
...
field_method1: "script code",
field_method1_lang: "javascript",

...
field_method2: "script code",
field_method2_lang: "python",

...

}

Opendataobjects is a concept to represent opendata with open methods to play with this opendata. Yes we know all this OOP stuff, lets take what we need here!
You put in wikipedia just static text, let's imagine you put live opendataobjects here!

Who's responsible for execution of opendataobjects methods, both open data cloud providers and 3d party services, this code can do any http calls, send messages to other objects, etc.

Lets make cloud more open!

..to be probably continued :)

Open data

2012-01-04T09:57:00.000-08:00

Yes, what is open data? So, simple question but answer is not. Open data is information publicly available around us. No secrets, but what if publicly available info can be digitized, and will be available online. Enormous changes, this data sets can be analyzed and used for good or for evil.
This means some kind of data publicly available at local private area is not safe or convenient to share world wide online. Yes, privacy. For instance personal location, every person today can be tracked by location of his/her mobile device or street camera, friends twits and so on. What if I'm employee of one company and unofficially visiting another company to get better job? I'm doing this publicly no spider man tricks :) but this visit I don't want to explain to my current employer. And many other every day situations. Open data very critical to get forward, but keep in mind privacy.

Smart cities

2011-12-23T09:49:00.000-08:00

globalization/urbanization - no turn back, city is the place right for you kid.
// глобализация/урбанизация - безвозвратна, город это для тебя сынок.

Smart city is it prison or a nice place to be? No final answer right now, it depends on many things.
// Умный город это тюрьма или место для жизни? Пока нет окончательного ответа, зависит от..

Definitely the core human progress concentrated here in cities, but current city systems developed many generations ago, we can entirely redesign it to create more efficient smart systems.
// Однозначно человеческий прогресс сконцентророван в городах, но текущие городские системы создавались многие поколения назад, мы можем полностью выполнить их ре-дезайн и создать более эффективные системы.

First of all more open public data sources & APIs are necessary, a bunch of new data sources about everything, every public unit in a city must have a data source, publicly available by web API.
// Прежде всего нужны открытые источники данных, еще больше источников данных обо всем, каждая публичная сущность в городе должна иметь источник данных, публично доступный.

No public data available right now, no problem just ask users to post it in a twitter, facebook, etc.
// Нет публичных данных прямо сейчас, нет проблем просто просим пользователей постить инфу в твиттере, фейсбуке, и т.д.

#nocpu = not only cpu

2011-12-17T13:36:00.000-08:00

Traditionally most of software people thinking the cpu way, just a few play with signals & fsts in hardware projects.
Consider this whole hardware + software stack is enormous:
modern cpus extreamlly over-complicated devices: hierarchy caches, control blocks to process pipelined instruction flows with branch predictions and so on. Do not forget mutli cores & many cores. Modern general purpose cpu is a billions of transistors monster.
To ride on this monster we need an operation system, yes yet another monster to control another one. Oh yes, virtualization - hyper monster :)
And finally apps, apps on top of frameworks. Cross-platform apps: java, dot net, html5.
Let's consider how many things have to happen to execute just "hello world" program & how much energy will be eaten.
Is there another way? Yes we don't need cpu & software at all, just pure memory based computing, well known approach has already utilized in modern fpgas.

The work principle pretty simple, there are two modes of memory blocks grid:
- configuration (data are written to memory)
- function (data are read from memory)

The memory block runs as a LUT or MLUT, an example of LUT-based architecture presented here.
Just 2D grid of LUTs and RAMs connected to commutation system.

So nothing special and where is the real apps of this stuff? Right today it is fpga based ones, the leading companies are xilinx, altera and some interesting startups like achronix.

Unfortunately current fpga implementations so far from being perfect to make dream come true.

The biggest problem here is lack of efficient & productive development tools, methods & architectures. Most stupid thing was made by fpga developers to separate configuration & function mode, just function mode at run-time.

Energy efficiency competitors come here sooner or later to create new better devices. Consider smartphone build on such principles with html5 hardware browser :)

mskfx.js

2011-12-08T16:25:00.000-08:00

mskfx.js is an open effort to create next generation html5 framework. Responsive web/app design is a key technology to bring end user productivity to the next level.Very first demo is available here demo1

No m$ promotion, but responsive design pretty nice shown here
mskfx.js is being developed with similar principels in mind

Open standards driven business

2011-10-08T08:09:00.000-07:00

This post inspired by yet another long airport talk about IT business.

// Этот пост вдохновлен еще одним длинным разговором в аэропорту о ИТ-бизнесе.

Bubbles, money bubble is cool if your service is needed for people, no profit but popularity.
// Пузыри, денежые пузыри это круто если твой сервис нужен людям, нет прибыли но есть популярность
Open standards driven business, no classical vendor driven or customer driven business
// Бизнес на основе открытых стандартов, а не классический бизнес движемый вендорами или заказчиками
No fair play at markets
// Нет честной игры на рынках

Why HTML5 & many other open standards so important, because it gives independence to create applications without brend approval!
// Почему HTML5 и многие другии открытые стандарты так важны, да потому что это дает независимость создавать приложения без одобрения бренда.

Need for cloud data protection

2011-06-08T07:01:00.000-07:00

Cloud services so popular & trending. Google docs, Apple iCloud, M$ cloud office, and many others.

Is it cool?

iSteve told us iCloud is cool, but.

The problem you share sensitive data with cloud service provider. Moreover all work automatically, just open doc then it will be autosaved much hardier to encrypt/decrypt data on the fly. Another trouble, cloud service can be hacked itself. Recent sony hacked yet again is a good reminder.

What should you do, do not trust the cloud, clearly understand the risks.

OpenIL

2011-04-11T14:08:00.000-07:00

Open Intermediate Language is a key element between high level & low level code generation layers.

High level - any possible algorithm description, like C/C++, OpenCL, or your own language XL :)
Low level - any possible instruction set/hardware description: arm, ppc or your own core, or synthesizable core.

OpenIL - minimalistic core instruction set (OpenILIS), highly extensible/adoptable for different architectures.

OpenIL vs LLVM, there is not direct competition, LLVM can be used in Translation/Transformation/Optimization Layers. OpenIL more close to AMDIL, NVPTX.

OpenIL oriented for new architectures R&D, especially for synthesizable cores.

OpenIL should be discussed & may be standardized as a middleware.

OpenIL at khronos discussion.

Lacal social apps & services

2010-08-29T11:10:00.000-07:00

Thoughts after some talk about local navigation services. There is a bunch of opportunities for local social apps & services creation. Navigation is just one category among a lot of others.

OK, what we need for this? Three things:

Actual data feeds and APIs;
Apps & services created by 3d party developers;
Market place & access points for end users;

Social institutions should provide all necessary information in standardized public format.

Based on all this data feeds 3d party companies will be able to create dozens of applications & services. World trends are impressive, look at apple app store or google apps market place, etc.

Apps & services market places also should be provided by both private companies or public institutions.

Access points are just end user devices like PCs, mobile devices or public terminals.

Business model:
- Advertizing;
- End users payments;
- Grants;

Hmm, so what is the purpose of this stuff, just society improvements.

OpenCL next release suggestions

2010-06-29T11:11:00.000-07:00

The OpenCL standard is a very hot topic in HPC-world, since beginning! Today 1.1 version is ready, next release in discussion!

From application developer position I suggest:
- extend synchronization functionality, transactional memory is not worst idea to try!
- dynamic memory allocation, malloc/free is not right solution (slow), specially designed GC is better.
- extend input/output capabilities, i want printf in kernel function :)!

From system developer position I suggest:
- OpenCL Intermediate Language

There are no good vendor independent standard, well known AMDIL, PTXISA, etc.

FPGA SoC implementation minimalistic recommendations

2010-06-26T23:48:00.000-07:00

FPGA SoC implementation is a constraint driven process, every critical signal delay should be specified.
// Разработка систем на кристалле ПЛИС это процесс на основе ограничений, задержку каждого критичного сигнала следует задавать.
Any vendor has it's own guides & docs, for instance Xilinx constraints guide cgd.pdf
// У любого производителя есть собственная документация, например фирмы Xilinx.
For those guys, who do not want spent a time for docs just minimalistic recommendations:
// Для тех кто не очень хочет тратить время на доки минимальные рекомендации:
1. Define a clock period for every clock signal in a design by using timing constraint PERIOD.
// Для всех клоковых сигналов в дизайне определите период с помощью соответствующего ограничения.
UCF example:
NET "Clk" TNM_NET = "Clk";
TIMESPEC "TS_Clk" = PERIOD "Clk" 10 ns HIGH 50 %;

2. Define a maximal delay for every critical signal in a design by using MAXDELAY.
// Для всех критичных сигналов в дизайне определите максимальную задержку с помощью соответствующего ограничения.
UCF example:
NET "my_signal*" MAXDELAY 5 ns;

3. Define placement position for pins or range for some components by using placement constraint LOC.
// Определите позицию для размещения пинов или компонентов с помощью соответствующего ограничения.
UCF example, pin:
INST "my_pin" LOC=P15;

UCF example, component:
INST "my_ip_inst" LOC=SLICE_X3Y8:SLICE_X4Y10;

Actually there are a lot of constraints to apply, all possibilities specified in bored docs :)
// На самом деле существует довольно много ограничений, все возможности описаны в скучных доках.
Alternatively constraints may be defined in HDL sources.
// Алтернативно ограничения могут быть заданы в исходниках HDL

Thoughts after Nokia Developer Days

2010-05-22T02:40:00.000-07:00

Yeah, as usual thoughts & impressions after Nokia Developer Days at Moscow. 1st day was business oriented. It's very nice to listen mobile apps/content developers ABBYY, Paragon, SPB Software & others.

Gartner: "Consumers will spend $6.2 Billion in Mobile Application Stores in 2010, $29.4 - 2013"

What kind of apps? According same Gartner in "Top 10 Consumer Mobile Applications for 2012" review it's: mobile payments, LBS & NFC, mobile internet access, instant messaging, mobile search, multimedia, advertising, health care. In short a triple: money, communications & entertainment.

So trends, my favorite topic is an augmented reality apps including navigation, reality simulations & entertainment. An example Layar with slogan "..shows things you can't see".

Back to this event specific, there was a very nice opportunity to ask questions directly to Nokia top managers! Thanks.

2nd maemo conference in Russia

2010-03-28T02:47:00.000-07:00

Some forewords:
Maemo is a software platform for mobile devices based on Linux and open source software. AFAIK, originally this project was created or acquired by Nokia to diverse software platforms. It was absolutely right choice, Linux very suitable for this.
There are a lot of Linux based mobile software platforms like Android maintained by Google, Moblin by Intel, and many others.

It was a nice event, especially for beginners :)
The main question why I came: "Is maemo perspective platform for a future in comparison to others". The answer is Yes, 'cause this platform is making progress.

IMHO very necessary for maemo success to deverse hardware vendors. Today just a few devices on a market.

New name was announced, it's Meego. It's likely that Moblin and maemo are merging to compete Android.

Agile Russia meeting

2010-03-24T14:07:00.000-07:00

Today I was in a "free talk" meeting of Agile Russia community. There were a lot of people talking agile development methodologies. The first topic for discussion was about architecture in #agile development. In a second part a lot of xDD methodologies were reviewed & discussed. DD means Driven Development/Design, like Test Driven Development, Behavior Driven Development, Domain Driven Design, etc.

A little picture to show an atmosphere of this event (sorry for terrible quality).

In a parallel to speeches & discussions an assistant builds Mind Maps with Freemind software. As a rule a lot of information goes from different persons, not only from speaker.

Twitter is over capacity :(

2010-03-09T04:37:00.000-08:00

Twitter is over capacity now :(

2010-03-04T12:53:00.000-08:00

i-community2010, annual Moscow conference about social aspects of the cloud #icom. With new impressions about importance of social applications I've got better understanding what's important in in the cloud today.

It was in cool business center, located very close to yandex office :)

So, yet another disappointment about "ru-net", there is no innovations, nothing...

All valuable things just copies from "big brother" :(

Wish I be wrong.

i-Safety 2010

2010-02-04T04:56:00.000-08:00

Very important discussion were on today's i-Safety meeting . There are a lot of online threats, which originate in a real world & have hard influence on many important aspects of a real life. The Internet is absolutely real, it's not a virtual space or game, be careful here!

So a few technical recommendations for inexperienced Internet users to be more safer online:

be anonymous , do not show your real personal data, real name, mobile number, home address, etc.;
do not interact with dangerous content (spam, ads, etc.);
use open-source software, for instance Linux + Firefox;
encrypt sensitive data before sending it over network;
think before action, cancel if you do not understand what is going on.

Another very important aspect of using the Internet is an user activities. If you just consume content & not generate your own, you are in a dangerous state, when specially designed content can program (zombie) you for negative actions!

How to start? Easily, add comments to already generated content, for instance to this blog :). Just a few clicks to start micro-blogging on twitter, or share photos, etc.

Let's build Internet together more useful & safe!

Embedded web-server FPGA project

2010-01-28T04:32:00.000-08:00

Today I was asked some questions about FPGA development, then conversation goes to topic of possible education/training project, where students can learn technologies.

I suppose very nice one can be a embedded web-server on FPGA chip!

Funny speakin' number of web-servers on the planet significantly increases every year, (yes, like Moor's law for number of transistors).

HTTP-transport very common too, so there may be two levels of implementation:
-Basic, purely software implementation based on embedded processor (a lot of references you can find, just google);
-Advanced - when some parts or even whole web-server logic can be implemented as IP-Core.

Every web server can be tested & bench-marked, for instance by ab utility (apache benchmark):

# ab -c 1000 -n 1000000 http://192.168.0.1:8080

Most popular web-servers:

Apache - http://httpd.apache.org/
Lighttpd - http://www.lighttpd.net/
Userver - http://userver.uwaterloo.ca/index.php

In professional development very impressive results can be achieved in implementation of network applications, like load balancers, traffic filters, and so on...

technology trends 2010

2009-12-22T11:26:00.000-08:00

So this year is ending, let's talk about current & future technology trends .

First of all it's a real-time web mobility, mix of technologies: web apps (server side) + mobile apps (client side, native or web-browser based).

Some remarkable facts: number of tweets exceeded world population :), number of mobile devices accessing the Internet to exceed one billion by 2013.

Cloud services for web apps hosting:

Google Appengine Amazon web services

Mobile apps SDKs:

iPhone SDK Nokia Ovi SDK Android SDK

Intel Atom SDK Palm WebOS

Most exciting things on top of this technology mix it's an augmented reality applications

In a hardware world there is a global trend of heterogeneous accelerated computing. Some technology examples:

AMD Fusion Intel Larrabee

So, in continuation trend: close to real-time software engines based on high performance accelerated computing platforms.

Examples: NVidia RealityServer, Mental Ray rendering software.

High performance applications SDKs:

ATI Stream SDK NVidia Developer Tools

Cgevent inspired

2009-12-18T02:40:00.000-08:00

Still under cgevent conference impressions :)
// все еще под впечатлением конференции по компьютерной графике
Computer graphics is a driver of the whole computing industry
//Компьютерная графика "двигает" всю компьютерную индустрию
Most remarkable things from this event:
// Наиболее примечательные вещи с этого события:

- Twitter post: cgevent как вам заявка "Нанотехнологии и трехмерная компьютерная графика"? - судя по мейлу вроде не Чубайс
// How such topic for you? "Nanotechnologies & 3d computer graphics"

- Absolutely agree with this: The amount of new technical information doubled every two years!

- Yes it's reality: Ten most demanded specialties 2010 did not exists in 2004...

Moscow CG Event 2009 day 2

2009-12-13T12:00:00.000-08:00

Moscow CG Event 2009 second day
//второй день конференции по компьютерной графике

Main message of hardware presentations - multicore
//основной посыл презентаций по железу - многоядерность

Some slides from Intel
//некоторые слайды Intel

Project Larrabee was presented, very long waited but not realised yet, with foggy future
//проект Larrabee, очень долго ожидаем но все еще не реализован, с неясным будущим
Intel Core i7 most powerful processor on the planet, hmm.. it's a matter of argument
//самый мощный процессор на планете, хм.. спорный вопрос
Intel Ct, also is not available yet
//также еще недоступно

NewScientist advertised, do not remember what cool with it
//реклама, непоню что крутого
Interfaces, project Natal
//Интерфейсы, проект Natal
3d-mouse?
//трехмерная мышь?
Qt is a cross-platform application and UI framework.
//мультиплатформенная штука

FurryBall GPU realtime renderer
//реалтайм рендерер на GPU
CG event is very positive!!!
//очень позитивный CG-event!!!

Moscow Computer Graphics Event Winter 2009

2009-12-12T04:52:00.000-08:00

Today's 1st day of Moscow Winter Computer Graphics Event, interesting conference about many aspects of computer graphics industry, including design, art, education, and also software & hardware.

So less words more photos & links to get imagination about this event...

Design tools demos:
-2D

-3d, side 1
-3d, side 2

3D Web with "paper glasses"

X86-based multi-chip hardware designed by T-Platforms, for computer graphics may be used as rendering server, so it's a traditional way supported by many rendering engines,

but now becoming more popular GPU-based real-time rendering, especially when it's being used as web-service, an example RealityServer

Yeah, I like this event! Thanks all!

Google chromium OS custom build

2009-12-06T08:55:00.000-08:00

Entirely web browser based OS is not new concept, as usual it's a combination of Linux/Unix + Firefox , after Chrome come, it's also Linux + Chrome :)

New Google project chromium os is open source anyone can build an os image.
There were no problems when building & configuring under chroot in my ubuntu 9.10 installed.

Yeah, some impressions & screen-shots here.
Boot screen appears really fast, no magic just nice boot loader implementation.

After entering g00gle account credentials, got chrome.

Yes, concept is clean & time proven! It's good for web users, who can work without desktop apps. Also client side can be extended by chrome extensions...

Such browser based OS also can be used as virtual appliance, very nice security solution to browse in isolated environment!

New RSP517 & RSP523 system (host) interface upgrade complete!

2009-11-28T02:44:00.000-08:00

New Virtex-4 on RSP517 & Virtex-5 on RSP523 system (host) interface upgrade complete! So what new features have done:

added system lock/unlock, to prevent cores from unexpected resets & noise from I/O Bus
new cross clock pulser
new BRAM to NPI, NPI to BRAM cores (RSP517)
MVP to/from NPI update (RSP517)
new BRAM to MCH, MCH to BRAM cores (RSP523)
MVP to/from MCH update (RSP523)
Inner Bus support (between two Virtex 4/5 chips)
system software upgrade (API)
MITHAL upgrade

Short diagram of system design below...

...to be continued :)

Moscow Data Center Forum Impressions & photos

2009-11-27T02:06:00.000-08:00

Yeah, at last I'm on-line to share my impressions about Moscow Data Center Forum 2009, some photos & comments below.

"Unexpectedly" :) on this forum the most interesting presentation was made by Vladislav from Microsoft, he spoke about many buzz things like Green (cold) data center based on Intel Atom processors, new lightweight OS concepts and of course "clouds".
Main idea is in using lightweight processors with very low power consumption. So, it's no new one, but most unexpected thing for me here was talk about possibility (remember who is presenter!) to use non x86 processors (if i understand right, the first candidate is ARM Core)! And such words from Microsoft guy about new level of understanding of software development & OS architecture changes.
Yes, really..It's possible to significantly reduce processor core complexity by removing heavy mechanisms of memory protection, execution isolation & forget about virtualization. Also in some cases to handle web requests it's no always necessary hardware implementation of floating point operations (FPU)!
Illustration is here, Intel atom experimental servers in right bottom corner of a slide.

And also about future of cloud OS, right, absolutely agree with Vladislav, multi-core clouds or clouds of multi-cores, sorry about tautology but yes here it is modern OS concept: lightweight heterogeneous cores with very low power consumption, no centralization, redundancy, fault tolerance, scalability, etc...
Here link to midori linux port.

So what about hardware? Yeah in this forum a lot of presentations about real Data-centers!

Interesting moment on following photo, customers can rent additional office space right inside data center "dream office".

External Data-Center Blocks, or even mobile ones!

And finally - this forum was very positive ! Thank to all!

Google Developer Day in Moscow 2009

2009-11-11T12:00:00.000-08:00

This post about my impressions about Google Developer Day in Moscow. There were about 1,5K talent guys & girls. Some photos & comments below...

A lot of Code demos, HTML5 is a key technology!

And Waves

Also video

Really useful in this conference was an opportunity to talk with Googlers in a special corner.

Most interesting for me was business section. 3 rules I absolutely agree.

Survive
Create value, solve customer(s) problem(s)
Have a fun!

Final scene

New attempts to create distributed operation system for modern multi-chip multi-core machines

2009-10-11T10:27:00.000-07:00

Era of massively parallel systems definitely has come, even for mobile devices. New implementation of operation system is very desirable. The architecture of current OS originally was developed for single core CPU machines many years ago, then it's been being adopted for new hardware. May be time has come to create new OS from scratch?
One of the today's research & development activities in this field is barrelfish project. In the picture below illustration of distributed multi-kernel OS.

It's based on principles of asynchronous message passing between distributed processes. Distributed operation system controls the machine of independent heterogeneous cores.

The challenge is to build fault tolerant, scalable, heterogeneous system. Familiar isn't it? Yes, well known cloud computing concept.

Is it possible to use "reduced" Linux/FreeBSD kernels to handle hardware on each node, yes without a doubts!

Mobiweb applications

2009-09-10T03:11:00.000-07:00

Mobiweb applications transform into complex distributed cloud based mash-ups. Leading platforms are Nokia Ovi, Palm Webos, Google Webos. For a first sight entirely browser based applications significantly limited to use mobile device resources. This can be solved by using browser plugins & extensions with Javascript APIs. Also HTML 5 with canvas, local storage, background workers moves technology forward.
The very old problem, it's necessary to adopt apps to every platform.
Mobiweb app platform software stack diagram is shown below.

To write such mobiweb apps very easy, well known combination of web technologies like Javascript, Ajax, CSS, etc.

OpenCL for multicore CPUs

2009-08-15T12:54:00.000-07:00

Industry leaders take benefits from OpenCL implementations, now on multi-core CPUs too. OpenCL applications scales across many cores without making changes to the application code, moreover such apps should work on hardware from different vendors. Here AMD multi-core OpenCL demo.

Real time web

2009-08-12T08:39:00.000-07:00

Web become more real-time and more open, a bunch of new services based on twitter, digg, delicous, reddit etc. Funny picture of twitter connections you can see below.

The most important thing about real-time web that it's really real-time :). In the past i used google to search but now real-time search engines more productive in many cases.
First of all it's integrated searches of base services like search.twitter.com, and many 3d parties like Twazzup, OneRiot, Almost.at, FriendFeed, Scoopler, Tweetmeme, DailyRT, Topsy.
Unfortunately there no known attempts to create semantic search engines, just old fashion keyword indexers :(.

Appengine rocks!

2009-07-22T11:51:00.000-07:00

Analyzing job announces or reading forums & blogs a lot of messages about high scalability systems development has been found. Today world definitely already changed to cloud computing approach.

But do not re-invent the wheel! Monsters like Google or M$ has already done all dirty job for you, just follow them!

Yeah we are acting in cruel world, it's practically impossible to change it, all our solutions must be real!

So, Appengine rocks!

But we can use it for our special tasks! Just implement distributed back-end.

Cloud - platform for innovations

2009-07-04T05:07:00.000-07:00

Today internet is being served by thousands of servers. You can see below visual representation of internet structure, taken from awesome Opte project.

Every moment something happens, connections, requests, failures, etc. This system is alive and growing extensively. It's a biggest experiment, anyone can take a part!
A bunch of new opportunities for new business, start-ups & individuals.
Leading platforms to implement new projects are well known, it's Google Appengine, Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) and others.

More then 150 page impressions

2009-07-03T15:12:00.000-07:00

It's nice to know that this blog is being read. My previous posts primarily were about things from the past, so future posts definitely will be more exciting, I promise...

Myths about FPGA computing performance.

2009-06-28T02:48:00.000-07:00

As I promised, this post about performance myths of FPGA devices.

It's necessary to define what "performance" is talking about? As usual for modern computing systems performance means FLOPS or GFLOPS. In many articles and posts which can be found in internet about FPGA Floating point performance authors didn't mention about many times bigger price of FPGA devices in comparison to CPU/GPU ones. Also peak frequency was used to calculate "theoretical" GFLOPS, it's so far from real working designs.

So, the verdict is that FPGA is not suitable for end user applications with intensive floating point calculations 'cause it's many times expensive (>2K$ top silicons) & many times slower (~200MHz real designs). OK, what about drystones, may be here FPGA funs win?! No i don't think so... reasoning the same again, FPGA vs GPU no chances. FPGA is slower, FPGA is too expensive and significantly needs too much time for development.

And what about bit/byte operations. Just ordinary bits, no qubits! Yes in this case FPGAs show better results, but nevertheless today is very difficult to compete with modern CPU/GPU devices (~3GHz is real CPU frequency + SIMD instructions (SSE, 3Dnow, Altivec) + many MBytes cache). Do not forget to compare not just only performance and prices & development time too.

Another kind of applications is a real-time systems, but here FPGA vs DSP no chances again. FPGA is slower, FPGA is too expensive and needs too much time.

The number one application that FPGAs are suitable for is prototyping. FPGA technology good for R&D projects but not competitive for consumer products.

Why OpenCL so important for comming years!

2009-06-27T01:16:00.000-07:00

Digging into OpenCL details I understand much the importance of this framework for the computing industry. Based on OpenCL a lot of future devices and also code libraries will be developed.

First implementations of this framework were shown for GPUs by NVIDIA and AMD-ATI, so other classes of devices are coming. My personal interest & activity is in a field of reconfigurable and distributed systems (FPGAs & Cloud computing systems ).

Concept of OpenCL device architecture was shown in the picture below (taken from specification)
Hierarchical structure is good enough in many reasons, easy to implement, easy to understand, and most important thing thread-scaling approach. I call it "add more threads" 'cause if you need more performance just "add more threads", this means to use device with much more numbers of executable units. You don't need rewrite your code. What does it means for reconfigurable devices? All the same, concept of "add more threads" works fine, difference in implementation.

Other communication structures weren't explicitly mentioned in OpenCL description, but it's OK. For future multi-core CPUs, like from Intel "terascale project", see picture below, I think OpenCL also will be used.

The core of OpenCL framework implementation is a JIT compiler. For reconfigurable computing units (FPGAs) compilation process more complex, 'cause in a first step the kernel code is compiled/generated into HDL-form, then this code will be injected to system on chip design, and finally long time multi-stage synthesis process must be executed. So it's a problem, to wait from minutes to hours. Hopefully this process may be optimised.

Very important thing about FPGAs it's performance, many companies offer so-called application accelerators based on FPGA technology. Is it really so cool and where is the truth read my future posts...

Cloud to serve the Cloud :)

2009-06-22T15:32:00.000-07:00

Cloud means Internet first of all. I've collected a lot of info about key technology that serves Internet, it's cloud computing.

To serve the Cloud we need another cloud :) Yeah!

Key features of cloud engines well known. It's fault tolerance, scalability, high performance. All this to handle many user requests.

Certainly better choice is to take already working engines. Google Appengine, Amazon Elastic Compute Cl oud, and many others but in some cases it's necessary to design custom solutions.

Distributed storage system is the basis of every cloud engine. Known implementations are following Bigtable/GFS, HyperTable, HBase, etc. Distributed storage system provides main futures of cloud engine.

OpenCL for reconfigurable computing units (FPGAs)

2009-06-12T15:08:00.000-07:00

When i saw OpenCL at first time I thought it would be cool to use it in FPGA programming.
FPGAs have been so hard to program, you may spent months even years to develop applications. Now you can find a lot of different FPGA development tools & libraries on the market to speed up your design. For instance Mitrion-SDK, ImpulseC, and many others. But all of them so different, developers have to spent valuable time & money to learn such technologies.

Principles of modern computation models were created a long time ago now it's just better and better implementation. For instance you can see CUDA Thread Computing slide from NVIDIA presentation on the picture below.

So it's very simple but efficient model. When i was a student (more then 10 year ago) i saw something like this, but for old big machines. Now all inside one chip.

Is it possible to implement such computation model in FPGA? Yes without a doubts! Besides in the FPGA there are no such limitations to build more complicated pipelines.

I've started development of OpenCL support for FPGA programming, based on LLVM, GCC, CUDA & Xilinx Tools. Hope this efforts will be appreciated by community.

Mitrion Integration project design description

2009-06-11T15:00:00.000-07:00

As I promised this post about MVP system on chip design features. In this design MVP has following ports configuration:

External RAM 1
Read only BRAM 1
Write only BRAM 2
Stream Port
Scalar Ports 1-8

Block diagram of system on chip see in the picture below.

Since started integration project, I decided to use MPMC as a universal solution for external memory connection.
For the first step Xilinx EDK project with MPMC was created & tested. Then MPMC core ports 0-3 were reconfigured to NPI mode & used as pairs. One port in pair used as write only, another as read only. First pair wired to the glue logic cores which connected to I/O Bus. Second pair wired to the glue logic cores which connected to MVP port.

In this design two BRAMs were used, first one as read only memory for MVP, second as a write only. Why one of BRAMs "read only", second "write only"? Just for simplicity & efficiency.

Another MVP ports, one stream & several scalar ports connected to I/O bus by glue logic cores.

This approach may be used as universal recommendation for future integration projects.

MVP integration project design files

2009-06-10T07:34:00.000-07:00

At last Mitrion virtual processor integration project design files published at opencores, follow this link.

Title "mvp_starter_kit" was chosen 'cause this code may be useful for developers who will port new targets to Mitrion Platform.

Design features I'll describe a bit later.

Reload

2009-06-07T01:50:00.000-07:00

During this years I was involved in research & development activities in the field of high performance & reconfigurable computing.

Time has come to share collected knowledge, experience & ideas not only for individuals who asked me some technical questions but for everyone who actively interested in such fields.

The name "activedaily" is a real reflection of my everyday life, as usual i spent much time daily & nightly :) for research & development activities.

In near future I'm going to publish projects results, which i developed for Rosta, Mitrionics, Varisys and some other companies in 2008 - 2009.

Rosta is a hardware developer, located at Moscow, Russia, main product line includes Mezzanine Crads with Xilinx FPGA chips on the board.

Mitrionics is a software technologies developer, located at Lund, Sweden, this company created Mitrion Development Platform which enables rapid FPGA accelerated applications development.

The main aim of my development project was to support RSP-517 & RSP-523 Rosta's boards in Mitrion Platform as a target devices. It's called integration project. See my development environment on the picture below.

RSP-517 FPGA board was installed in first white PC, second black one used as a development workstation with JTAG cable connected to FPGA board. Picture of RSP-517 you can see below.

Picture of RSP-523 you can see below.
So i decided to publish results of this work after negotiation with Mitrionics.

Varisys is a hardware developer, located at United Kingdom, main product line includes processor boards in different form factors, i played with VSM31 PA Semi PA6T dual core CPU with Power PC architecture.

The main my activity of this project was to prepare Debian-based Linux Distro & execute high performance tests and code samples. PA6T really cool CPU, in 2008 it shows impressive benchmark results in comparison with market leaders, then PA Semi was squared by Apple. Picture of VSM31 you can see below.

Why "reload", we should think critically every time, i believe that new solutions can be created not only by big companies but by individuals too.

Currently I involved in research & development of cloud computing engine. Hope to publish results in near future.