Simple problem. You have two “vectors” of 32 bit signed integers, and you want to do the vector equivalent of vector_a = max_element_by_element(vector_a, vector_b); Can you do this with SSE2? We need this. Badly. You can always argue that you can use code like this for MAX (or MIN): MAX(a,b) = (a+b + abs(b-a)) » 1; MIN(a,b) = (a+b - abs(b-a)) » 1; Of course this is correct, it can be done.

First we have updated Wordpress. Took a while but it was worth it. Second we are getting far more spam than usual, so I have disabled pingback/trackback. I am sorry about this, please email me if this causes you problems. Update: We re-enabled pingback/trackback and implemented some anti-spam technology. Lets see if it works.

Is available if you would like some good reading from IEEE. For those who don’t know, we reworked the p7Viterbi function in the HMMer code, and created a faster version of HMMer in the process. Our measurements put it anywhere from 1.6-2.5x faster than the downloadable binaries from Professor Eddy’s site. Since HMMer is GPLed, our patch and binaries are available under that license from our download site. If you wish to distribute binaries that are not covered by GPL or are unwilling to use the GPL for your product and want to distribute this code, please contact us.

Dell it seems is about to enter the market with some Opteron units. I don’t see any high flying Porcine, and while it is cold today in Michigan, some town here has not frozen over. So what’s going on? Seems like the simple economics of the market are testing the loyalty principal of manufacturers. You stick with your suppliers as long as possible, as good relationships can often help smooth over rough patches.

Obviously SGI has existential challenges ahead. This means something quite simple. No cow is sacred. No ego’s can get in the way of doing the right thing by the shareholders. I will be frank. This is about 9 years too late. First, will SGI recover? Possibly, though I am not going to bet on it. The challenges are not just internal, their competitors have wasted no time in making use of their situation.

It appears that Microsoft is about ready to release CCS. This might be interesting, depending upon what was done, and how it all works. Some things to note. It includes a job scheduler. Built into the OS. This is either a really good thing, or a really bad thing. I can see arguments both ways. It includes bits that Linux has had for a while. Remotable/scriptable installation. Multiple security models. Some thoughts.

I note today that SGI has filed for Chapter 11 protection from its creditors. Whether or not they emerge from bankruptcy is an open question, and one we will surely learn over the next several months. One could talk about everything that led them to where they are now, and no doubt you will see such analyses in the press. Without reading them, I can’t tell you how close to the mark they are.

One of our development systems is a dual socket system with 2 dual core Opteron 275 chips. 4 GB ram, nice disk config, and a quadro fx/1400. This is a good machine t work on. I had set it up with SuSE 9.x, and had left it at 9.3 for quite a while. Recently we upgraded it to SuSE 10.0 Pro. More modern kernel, somewhat updated apps. I thought it would be nice to stay somewhat current.

Positive news: My company has been selected to present at the Michigan GCS. This is in line with what we submitted to the 21st century fund a few months ago. Also, we received notes that 2 of our applications had passed compliance screening for this. The end game of this is to ramp up an idea/project/product we have been thinking of and working on for the past several years. The market looks ready for it.

I have heard this argument come up again several times recently. Lots of folks out there from the enterprise storage realm still love their FC drives. The SCSI crowd like their units. Both handily disparage SATA as being inferior, poorly performing, or with higher failure rates. This is an interesting point. As far as I am aware, all the drives come physically off the same manufacturing production line. The only significant difference between the units that I am aware of (modulo newer motors on newer units) are the electronics that connect to the bus.