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Archives
Posts from David Stewart (Intel) 
 |
David Stewart is a software engineering manager at Intel Corporation. David currently manages the Open Source Product Engineering Team in the Software and Services Group. David's group charter is to deliver outstanding open source products. Prior to this role, David held a variety of management positions in Intel's Desktop Boards and Systems division and Server Products group. Prior to joining Intel in 1997, David held management and engineering positions in consumer software products and server products. David holds a BS in Computer Science and MS in Computer Science from Colorado State University in Fort Collins, which he received in 1983. You can catch Dave's non-work thoughts in his personal blog, http://davestewart.wordpress.com |
A Merlot, a Malbec and a Moblin
By David Stewart (Intel) (138 posts) on August 17, 2009 at 3:48 pm
Comments (1)
Last week, a few of us were talking about future Moblin OS releases, and we were just having fun and starting talking about our wish list for code name "themes". You know, this is when a series of products are given code names before their real names go on, and the code names follow a [...]
Category: Open Source
Surviving Hell Week
By David Stewart (Intel) (138 posts) on August 11, 2009 at 10:44 am
Comments (1)
Last week, most of my friends didn't hear much from me, both online and in reality. That's because I had one of those fun times when the big bosses come in and ask the team to deliver something special very quickly, above and beyond our usual commitments. These are pretty normal in our line of [...]
Category: Open Source, Software Engineering
Cloudy with a chance of Moblin
By David Stewart (Intel) (138 posts) on July 29, 2009 at 4:12 pm
Comments (1)
I noticed today in this blog post a reference to Moblin being a cloud-based OS. Primarily this is because Moblin 2.0 has services such as twitter, last.fm integrated into the OS, and these web services are considered "cloud computing" services. I guess if I were taking a more formalistic viewpoint, I might observe that social [...]
Category: Mobility, Open Source
Moblin - the Web2.0 OS - and on getting heckled
By David Stewart (Intel) (138 posts) on July 24, 2009 at 11:01 am
Comments (1)
I gave a chalk talk yesterday on Moblin at OSCON 2009, the Open Source Convention in San Jose. This was a no slides white-board chat about what's cool in Moblin, where is the future going, and what are the ways people can collaborate and participate. I touched on some of the high points of what makes [...]
Category: Open Source
You show me mine, I'll expo you yours, OSCON
By David Stewart (Intel) (138 posts) on July 23, 2009 at 1:50 pm
Comments (2)
Why do I love the show floor at conferences? It's almost impossible to have a reasonable conversation with the poor folks doing booth duty. Often this is because they might not be working in the area that you are interested in, or the noise level is just too high to have a good talk. Sadly, I [...]
Category: Open Source
Join me at OSCON 2009
By David Stewart (Intel) (138 posts) on July 23, 2009 at 12:59 pm
Comments (0)
I'm speaking in the OSCON 2009 show floor area at 3:00PM. I'll be in the Intel booth (about as obvious as can be). Come by and hear me talk about Moblin.
Category: Open Source
How to develop apps for Moblin
By David Stewart (Intel) (138 posts) on July 22, 2009 at 12:52 pm
Comments (2)
More OSCON 2009 observaations Rob Bradford gave an excellent talk right after the keynotes on develoment of applications for Moblin. I really like Rob's talks, because he is quite energetic and makes good use of photos in his slides, which don't look at all like most Intel presentation slides. The content seemed similar to a [...]
Category: Mobility, Open Source
Dirk Hohndel gives Intel keynote at OSCON 2009
By David Stewart (Intel) (138 posts) on July 22, 2009 at 9:08 am
Comments (1)
I just heard Dirk Hohndel give the OSCON 2009 Intel keynote for Imad Sousou. Dirk is the chief open source technologist at Intel and this is the third year he has stepped in for Imad at the last minute at OSCON. Here are some notes I took from the Dirk's talk: Intel has gone from being a [...]
Category: Mobility, Open Source
"Jane! Stop this crazy thing!" (... called Moblin)
By David Stewart (Intel) (138 posts) on July 21, 2009 at 2:59 pm
Comments (5)
Over the past month or so, I viewed all of the episodes of "The Jetsons on DVD." I grew up in the 1960s in the US, and this show formed the unconscious fabric of our thinking about how the future would look, feel and behave. The end credits of that series showed the same little scene [...]
Category: Mobility, Open Source
What's cool about Moblin?
By David Stewart (Intel) (138 posts) on June 14, 2009 at 8:10 pm
Comments (2)
My good friends at the Intel Software Network have launched a terrific new way to deliver technology videos to the community: ISN TV. For their launch this week, they invited me to give a brief interview on Moblin v2.0, which had its beta release last month. This was a fun way to show you the [...]
Category: Intel® Software Network 2.0, Open Source
Two Years Later: Why Linux people still lust after DTrace
By David Stewart (Intel) (138 posts) on June 4, 2009 at 5:36 pm
Comments (2)
Bill Pearson from the Intel Software Network posted a declaration of a party on the occasion of the 2000th blog post on ISN. One of the highlights he listed was the conversation which was engendered by a post I did about two years ago called "Why Linux people lust after DTrace." My intent was simply [...]
Category: Intel® Software Network 2.0, Open Source, Social Media & Virtual Worlds
Congrats to the OpenSolaris team for 2009.06
By David Stewart (Intel) (138 posts) on June 1, 2009 at 7:59 pm
Comments (3)
Although I'm not working actively on OpenSolaris any more, I was happy to see the launch today of OpenSolaris 2009.06. See Glenn's announcement email here. The download of the LiveCD distro went down without a hitch, and was surprisingly fast for the day of launch. Kudos to whomever set up the web infrastructure for day-of-launch. (I [...]
Category: Open Source
Moblin Beta and VirtualBox
By David Stewart (Intel) (138 posts) on May 20, 2009 at 4:47 pm
Comments (18)
Yesterday I installed Moblin version 2 Beta on my Asus eeePC 901, a netbook with a little Atom processor in it. It's been fun to walk it around with me yesterday and today showing people the future of our work here. I thought it would be kind of cool to try it out in a [...]
Category: Mobility, Open Source, Virtualization
The Dawn of the Age of Moblin!
By David Stewart (Intel) (138 posts) on May 19, 2009 at 8:43 pm
Comments (3)
The public beta of Moblin v2 is here! If you don't know about Moblin, read Imad's blog for a complete introduction to the operating system, including a lot of good links. In fact, I'm typing this from my Asus eeePC 901 running Moblin. Some of my favorite features: Social media integration - I think Moblin will [...]
Category: Mobility, Open Source, Social Media & Virtual Worlds
PowerTOP: Dave enters a video game
By David Stewart (Intel) (138 posts) on February 22, 2009 at 1:35 am
Comments (8)
Always wanted to see Dave Stewart fragged, as in "killed in a video game" ? Yes, I knew you did. Ah, yet another analogy goes haywire. This is another in a series of digital shorts about work Intel is doing in OpenSolaris. (Have I really done 15 of these things). This one is about PowerTOP, [...]
Category: Open Source
So... what's next for Intel in OpenSolaris?
By David Stewart (Intel) (138 posts) on January 25, 2009 at 4:01 pm
Comments (4)
Last week, I had a chance to present at Sun Tech Days in Singapore. It was originally going to be covered by Max Alt, my partner in crime from the field organization. But Max was asked to attend our annual sales and marketing conference that week, and asked if I could fill in for [...]
Category: Open Source, Virtualization
Sun + Intel + OpenSolaris + 2 Years = The Year of Core
By David Stewart (Intel) (138 posts) on January 22, 2009 at 11:02 pm
Comments (12)
Today is the second anniversary of the Sun and Intel joint agreement to optimize the Solaris operating system for Intel Xeon processors. Like last year, when I wrote this summary of our work, I decided to recap where we are to date. Like last year’s edition, this is pretty much off the top of my [...]
Category: Open Source, Threading Building Blocks, Virtualization
OpenSolaris and Nehalem - a digital short
By David Stewart (Intel) (138 posts) on January 14, 2009 at 1:17 pm
Comments (6)
Another in the series of 5-minute videos on OpenSolaris and Xeon Processors. This one is about the details in our work on the Intel Core i7 processor, previously known as the codename "Nehalem". The community has been busting hump all year with a laser focus on optimizing OpenSolaris and Solaris for Nehalem. And why not? [...]
Category: Open Source, Virtualization
How to get started reading blogs
By David Stewart (Intel) (138 posts) on January 3, 2009 at 5:00 pm
Comments (2)
On New Year's Day 2009, I was running with a group of friends in the driving rain of Portland, Oregon. On the drive back home after some hot coffee and cinnamon roles, I heard a discussion on the radio about blogging, and how some blogs have become the center for important discussion in global [...]
Category: Social Media & Virtual Worlds
Singapore Tech Days - OpenSolaris and Intel
By David Stewart (Intel) (138 posts) on December 25, 2008 at 7:27 pm
Comments (1)
Just a quick note if you are celebrating anything between now and the end of January (Christmas, New Years, Hanukkah, Kwanza, Winter Solstice, Chinese New Year - did I catch everybody?) I will be speaking about Intel's work with OpenSolaris at the Sun Tech Days event, January 20-22 in Singapore. So if you are in [...]
Category: Open Source
ATOM support now in OpenSolaris
By David Stewart (Intel) (138 posts) on December 22, 2008 at 7:08 pm
Comments (14)
I just got a heads up that two very interesting changes were just put back to the OpenSolaris code base, related to the Intel Atom Processor: Performance counters for Atom. Support for the MOVBE instruction. A technical note I read on Intel's website states: "The Intel Atom Processor supports the MOVBE instruction which allows swapping [...]
Category: Mobility, Open Source
Dave gets punked, eats crow
By David Stewart (Intel) (138 posts) on December 20, 2008 at 6:12 pm
Comments (4)
Just another day as the IT Manager of the Stewart Family. Youngest daughter, aged 17, runs up the stairs in anger and frustration - her computer won't work! Now to be fair, when my kids were younger, I used to get this kind of complaint fairly regularly. After about the second or [...]
Category: Manageability, Open Source, Social Media & Virtual Worlds
Does "popular" mean "better" in open source?
By David Stewart (Intel) (138 posts) on December 18, 2008 at 5:47 pm
Comments (1)
Here in the West, having a hit is considered the mark of success. If you do something that is really insanely great, it should become incredibly popular, no matter what the critics or the bloggers say. There are plenty of movies and books that are considered a "critical success" because the experts love the art. [...]
Category: Open Source
Tech experts - worldwide innovation
By David Stewart (Intel) (138 posts) on December 12, 2008 at 2:24 am
Comments (2)
I have just finished the week in China, and I am again astonished at the caliber of technology talent here. A work acquaintance from a US-based technology company told me that he is mentoring up-and-coming technologists in Beijing. The way he put it was like this: "The smartest 1% of Chinese people is a really [...]
Category: Open Source, Software Engineering
Fantastic demo of OpenSolaris2008.11
By David Stewart (Intel) (138 posts) on December 11, 2008 at 1:55 am
Comments (1)
Roman Strobl, an OpenSolaris evangelist and an all around nice guy, has done a really terrific screencast of the new features in the newly launched OpenSolaris 2008.11. The video link is here All I gotta say is ... dang! Many more features than I had stumbled across in my random walk. And Roman gives [...]
Category: Open Source
My favorite OpenSolaris 2008.11 features
By David Stewart (Intel) (138 posts) on December 7, 2008 at 9:56 pm
Comments (1)
The next OpenSolaris binary release is due to launch any time now. It's turning into a pretty slick and sexy desktop release. Here are some of my favorite features: As I previously wrote here, I am trying out one of the latest builds on my Intel Centrino 2 processor based laptop, a Sony VAIO VGN-Z540. ie, [...]
Category: Mobility, Open Source
Tech Days Tokyo
By David Stewart (Intel) (138 posts) on December 3, 2008 at 4:42 pm
Comments (2)
Tokyo Tech Days 2008, originally uploaded by jimgris. I am currently in sunny Tokyo, Japan, to give a talk about Intel's products and our work in Java and the OpenSolaris operating system. I talked about our processor roadmap, performance tuning, power management, virtualization, fault management, device drivers... well the whole tange of things we are [...]
Category: Open Source, Virtualization
OpenSolaris and Open Source Graphics
By David Stewart (Intel) (138 posts) on December 3, 2008 at 12:59 pm
Comments (6)
This is the latest installment of my series of 5-minute videos on OpenSolaris topics. Intel actually contributes a lot in the graphics area for both OpenSolaris as well as other operating systems. We have some of the amazing luminaries of the X community working with us, and some really smart people. In [...]
Category: Uncategorized
OpenSolaris and Centrino 2
By David Stewart (Intel) (138 posts) on November 27, 2008 at 3:38 pm
Comments (5)
Last summer, Intel launched our latest mobile computing platform, branded Intel Centrino 2 processor technology. For a long time as we were doing OpenSolaris development, I used to know this platform by its codename "Montevina", but that's all history now. Long live Centrino 2! This new mobile platform has some great features, like a [...]
Category: Mobility, Open Source, Parallel Programming
OpenSolaris at the Intel Developer Forum - Taipei
By David Stewart (Intel) (138 posts) on November 18, 2008 at 4:36 pm
Comments (0)
Intel Developer Forum or IDF is our annual "geek fest" dedicated to helping the ecosystem involved with Intel to learn about our new technologies and how to succeed with them. We hold the biggest one in the late summer / early fall in San Francisco, then smaller events in the fall in Taiwan and [...]
Category: Events, Open Source
OpenSolaris and Xeon Processors #10 - Turbo Mode
By David Stewart (Intel) (138 posts) on November 14, 2008 at 3:11 pm
Comments (4)
Here's the latest video in the series I am doing on OpenSolaris and Intel Xeon processors. This is about an exciting feature called "Turbo Mode" we have available in our new Intel Core Microarchitecture (aka "Nehalem"). I also give props to the community work on the "Power Aware Dispatcher" which should make use [...]
Category: Open Source, Parallel Programming
IDF 2008 Taiwan's mega venue - in HDR
By David Stewart (Intel) (138 posts) on November 5, 2008 at 7:02 pm
Comments (0)
I was totally blown away by the venue at the 2008 Intel Developer Forum (Taiwan). The keynote sessions were held in an auditorium that would seat 3000 easily. Surprises: Just to get into this massive room, you had to go up a floor or two. I just don't expect big spaces like this [...]
Category: Events, Visual Computing
Intel, Korea and OpenSolaris
By David Stewart (Intel) (138 posts) on November 4, 2008 at 11:31 am
Comments (0)
Last month, I had the privilege of spending a few days in Seoul, the capital of the Republic of Korea. I visited Seoul once before in 1990. That was two companies ago for me, my first management job, focusing on OS Internationalization. We were working with a division of the Ssangyong Group, which was [...]
Category: Events, Open Source
OpenSolaris Student Edition
By David Stewart (Intel) (138 posts) on November 3, 2008 at 4:41 pm
Comments (2)
If you are a student (or know a student), I have some good news for you. One of the nifty little things I got my hands on last month was the OpenSolaris Student Pack. It’s a very nice packaging of the OS to get your feet as wet as you like. Disc 1 – This is the [...]
Category: Academic, Open Source
OpenSolaris and Intel Video - Keeping Drivers under Control
By David Stewart (Intel) (138 posts) on October 31, 2008 at 2:57 pm
Comments (3)
One of the cool things we have added to OpenSolaris recently is a capability which strengthens the whole foundation of stability on which the OS and processor rests. It does this by addressing one of chronic weak links of any operating system. I'm very excited by this work, and hope you enjoy it! On [...]
Category: Open Source, Virtualization
Google love and OpenSource videos
By David Stewart (Intel) (138 posts) on October 30, 2008 at 2:36 pm
Comments (1)
Someone pointed out to me that I should google "xeon processors" and check out what pops up on the first page. Here is a screen shot of what happened when I did it this morning: Note towards the bottom the "video results for xeon processors" are the videos we have been doing for OpenSolaris work. I [...]
Category: Intel® Software Network 2.0, Open Source
Lightning chat from Darrin and Dave
By David Stewart (Intel) (138 posts) on September 21, 2008 at 8:40 pm
Comments (4)
arrin Johnson, senior manager at Sun in the Solaris Core Kernel group, in a super brief video on our collaboration on OpenSolaris and the new Intel Xeon 7400 Series processor. This vid was done as part of the launch of the 7400. This video is perfect for those with <b>extremely</b> limited attention spans. It's less than [...]
Category: Open Source, Virtualization
Good demos - all open source and OpenSolaris
By David Stewart (Intel) (138 posts) on September 16, 2008 at 2:05 am
Comments (0)
I'm a sucker for a good demo. Not the flashy, pretty things, but the things which reveal that fundamental core technology is working, and we're on a path to delivering code. I'm in China all this week, catching up with my team here and our OpenSolaris community partners. Today in Beijing I saw a couple of very cool [...]
Category: Gaming, Open Source, Visual Computing
Post number 100
By David Stewart (Intel) (138 posts) on September 12, 2008 at 9:50 am
Comments (4)
This is a day of blogging milestones for me! September 12 is the two year anniversary of my first blog post on the Intel Software Network. Back then, I was asked by an ISN guy named Krishna Subramanian to start an ISN blog and write about the upcoming 2006 Software Enabling Summit meeting. I felt like [...]
Category: Intel® Software Network 2.0, Open Source, Social Media & Virtual Worlds, Visual Computing
Setting your watch to the Tick-Tock clock
By David Stewart (Intel) (138 posts) on September 11, 2008 at 3:17 pm
Comments (1)
I make reference to Intel's Tick-Tock model a lot, particularly in talks I give at OpenSolaris events or Open Source conferences like OSCON. I never am quite satisfied with my explanation of it. I'm afraid that the software development oriented people I talk to will get lost in the line sizes and microarchitecture [...]
Category: Uncategorized
Why Wireless and OpenSolaris?
By David Stewart (Intel) (138 posts) on September 11, 2008 at 3:03 pm
Comments (14)
We have actually been putting considerable effort with the community to provide a suite of robust device drivers for Intel's wireless LAN products and the OpenSolaris operating system. Why do it? Why put this kind of effort into something which is clearly a feature for mobile devices into Solaris and OpenSolaris, which [...]
Category: Uncategorized
HDR - Wooden Bridge in Essex, Montana
By David Stewart (Intel) (138 posts) on September 11, 2008 at 2:42 pm
Comments (0)
Taken over labor day weekend in the back country around Essex, Montana. Processed with Photoshop CS3 on my dual core Intel Centrino Duo laptop. I like the ability to see the clouds and the wood grain while holding the shadow detail.
Category: Parallel Programming
Tech Rock Star to speak at Brazil Tech Days
By David Stewart (Intel) (138 posts) on September 10, 2008 at 11:35 am
Comments (2)
I just heard that Sean Maloney will be speaking at the next Sun Tech Days in Sao Paulo, Brazil on September 30! If you have not heard of Sean, here are some tidbits: Sean is one of the four executive VP’s that report to Intel’s CEO, Paul Ottelini, according to his Wikipedia page Sean was former [...]
Category: Events, Open Source
The Mighty Guys of Power
By David Stewart (Intel) (138 posts) on September 4, 2008 at 10:08 am
Comments (2)
More from Intel Developer Forum in San Francisco, Fall 2008 This photo makes me smile in a couple of ways: This is a booth at the Demo Showcase at the most recent IDF, from one of our fantastic corporate partners in the OpenSolaris project The purpose of the booth was to show the deep commitment these guys have [...]
Category: Open Source, Virtualization
The latest Xeon and OpenSolaris - in 5 minutes
By David Stewart (Intel) (138 posts) on August 23, 2008 at 1:37 pm
Comments (4)
In my most recent 5-minute OpenSolaris video, the cats are out of the bag, the gloves are off, and the latest Xeon is on its way. Codenamed "Dunnington", it will actually appear as the "Xeon 7400 Series" processor. (Sorry, we shot this before the name would be known for sure). Enjoy! As [...]
Category: Open Source, Parallel Programming, Virtualization
What are you, uh, Makering there?
By David Stewart (Intel) (138 posts) on August 22, 2008 at 2:48 pm
Comments (2)
Off topic warning... I just posted some photos over at my personal blog, Running in the Rain, about the Maker Faire Celebration held at the end of this year's Intel Developer Forum. Very fun stuff... check it out! (Not totally off topic I guess, since this stuff is also Open Source, right?)
Category: Open Source
Intel Software Network - a story of corporate transformation
By David Stewart (Intel) (138 posts) on August 22, 2008 at 2:40 pm
Comments (1)
So you understand the context here, I am not being paid by the Intel Software Network to write this. I am occasionally inspired by stories of how corporations or business units reinvent themselves. It's something I can learn from as I try to be a better leader and manager. The challenge - how do [...]
Category: Intel® Software Network 2.0, Social Media & Virtual Worlds
PowerTOP video from a member of the OpenSolaris community
By David Stewart (Intel) (138 posts) on August 20, 2008 at 10:50 am
Comments (1)
Rafael Vanoni, a software engineer in Ireland, and a contributor to Solaris PowerTOP, presents a nice 2 minute video on the advantages of PowerTOP. Good work, Rafael! Link to video source.
Category: Open Source
Sun Studio Chalk Talk
By David Stewart (Intel) (138 posts) on August 20, 2008 at 3:46 am
Comments (1)
I'm attending the Intel Developer Forum this week in San Francisco this week. I'll try to note comments on some of the talks I attend. Sun gave a chalk talk on their C/C++ tool chain called Studio. The talk was given by Vijay Tatkar, who has been with Sun for over 20 years doing compiler work. [...]
Category: Open Source, Software Engineering, Threading Building Blocks
Craig Barrett keynote at IDF
By David Stewart (Intel) (138 posts) on August 19, 2008 at 12:08 pm
Comments (0)
I'm attending the Intel Developer Forum this week in San Francisco this week. I'll try to note comments on some of the talks I attend. Craig Barrett's keynote wasn't so much about cool product eye candy, but it was about some of the key places he sees technology being used. Education: Johnny Chung Lee showed how [...]
Category: Uncategorized
Come, let's meet together in San Francisco at IDF
By David Stewart (Intel) (138 posts) on August 19, 2008 at 9:33 am
Comments (2)
A quick note: I'm attending the Intel Developer Forum (IDF) in San Francisco at Moskone West. If you are in the Bay Area, and attending IDF, I'd like to meet you. Of course, I love to talk about open source, OpenSolaris, operating systems, virtualization, optimization, databases, software development or whatever else you would [...]
Category: Open Source, Software Engineering, Virtualization
What Dave did on his summer vacation - talked about OpenSource
By David Stewart (Intel) (138 posts) on August 6, 2008 at 8:41 pm
Comments (1)
I was taking a few days last week to travel to Colorado. It was time for my high school reunion, so I flew out from Portland to visit with friends and family. While I was there, I connected up with a few of my friends in the OpenSolaris community who live in the Denver-Boulder area. [...]
Category: Open Source
Faster!!! I/O Acceleration Technology and OpenSolaris
By David Stewart (Intel) (138 posts) on July 29, 2008 at 12:17 pm
Comments (7)
People often wonder what might be the value of having an all-Intel system (ie, Intel CPU, chipset, network controller and software, the Intel "Platform"). After all, I am free to pick components from many suppliers, why not? Here's an example of why it's great to pick the Intel platform approach - [...]
Category: Open Source
Nice post on PowerTOP
By David Stewart (Intel) (138 posts) on July 25, 2008 at 2:05 pm
Comments (0)
There's a nice post about PowerTOP for Solaris by Brian Leonard, describing in a very user friendly way what all of the displays mean. I loved it - really shows the power of the app, and the various cool things it shows you on your OpenSolaris system. The only thing missing from the [...]
Category: Mobility, Open Source, Virtualization
I'm speaking tomorrow at OSCON
By David Stewart (Intel) (138 posts) on July 23, 2008 at 2:08 pm
Comments (1)
( I know it's a little late, but I took a little mental vacation here for a while, so sue me! ) If you happen to be at OSCON in Portland, OR this week, I would invite you to come by and introduce yourself at my talk. It's at 10:45 - 11:30 in room [...]
Category: Open Source, Parallel Programming, Virtualization
Virtualization and OpenSolaris
By David Stewart (Intel) (138 posts) on July 14, 2008 at 3:26 pm
Comments (3)
Here is the latest OpenSolaris video we did on the subject of virtualization. Here's also a chance to meet Ashok Raj, one of the Intel senior kernel guys working on OpenSolaris. Original video source
Category: Open Source, Virtualization
It ain't easy being agile
By David Stewart (Intel) (138 posts) on July 4, 2008 at 7:25 am
Comments (1)
(With apologies to Kermit the Frog, whose song "It Ain't Easy Being Green" is a much older meme). I love reading case studies of teams that shake up "business as usual" and reinvent their world. It inspires me to be open to the possibilities of such change. If you are involved at all in software engineering, check [...]
Category: Cool Software, Open Source, Software Engineering
Systemtap vs DTrace – Safety?
By David Stewart (Intel) (138 posts) on June 27, 2008 at 2:15 am
Comments (4)
(I'm attending the OpenSolaris Developer Conference, OSdevCon in Prague this week. Periodically I will try to live blog where I can about some of the talks I hear.) I gave my keynote this morning to kick off the last day of the conference. Now that I can relax a little, I'm listening to a couple [...]
Category: Open Source
MilaX: Can you get OpenSolaris as small as DSL?
By David Stewart (Intel) (138 posts) on June 26, 2008 at 7:34 am
Comments (2)
(I’m attending the OpenSolaris Developer Conference, OSdevCon in Prague this week. Periodically I will try to live blog where I can about some of the talks I hear.) I'm listening to Alexander Eremin, who is the originator of MilaX, a distro of OpenSolaris designed to be as small as possible. MilaX 0.1 was announced in February 2008, [...]
Category: Uncategorized
OS DevCon Keynote - Get Involved
By David Stewart (Intel) (138 posts) on June 26, 2008 at 1:09 am
Comments (2)
(I’m attending the OpenSolaris Developer Conference, OSdevCon in Prague this week. Periodically I will try to live blog where I can about some of the talks I hear.) The opening keynote at the conference is by Jim Grisanzio, who is a sr. program manager at Sun working on building the community. Jim's slides were 100% photos. [...]
Category: Open Source
The best place to develop code?
By David Stewart (Intel) (138 posts) on June 25, 2008 at 7:57 am
Comments (2)
(I'm attending the OpenSolaris Developer Conference, OSdevCon in Prague this week. Periodically I will try to live blog where I can about some of the talks I hear. What is the most ideal platform to use for development? I attended a "tutorial" on this subject, which really turned into a mini-conference really on C++ [...]
Category: Open Source
OpenSolaris: old and new packages
By David Stewart (Intel) (138 posts) on June 20, 2008 at 4:54 pm
Comments (3)
I finally got a little time to get the wired ethernet controller working on my Sony VAIO Centrino Pro laptop. It's a Marvell Yukon NIC, and I have gotten it to work before by downloading the old-style package driver. That's because this particular driver has never been integrated into a release of OpenSolaris, I think [...]
Category: Open Source
OpenSolaris 2008.05 - packaging update
By David Stewart (Intel) (138 posts) on June 12, 2008 at 8:15 pm
Comments (10)
One of the goals of the OpenSolaris 2008.05 release was to make it easier to keep your system up to date, by downloading updated packages over the web. That way, you could get updates only to what you have installed, rather than getting an update to the whole world. (On a side note, I just [...]
Category: Open Source
The three advantages of open source
By David Stewart (Intel) (138 posts) on June 10, 2008 at 11:35 am
Comments (4)
I'm working on a paper right now for a conference later in the month. Part of it is talking to the way the OpenSolaris community works and ways it can improve. I find myself writing prose that makes me sound smarter than I really am, and I get worried! Here is my simple analysis of the [...]
Category: Open Source, Software Engineering
Magically using Intel new instructions with no effort on your part
By David Stewart (Intel) (138 posts) on June 6, 2008 at 4:53 pm
Comments (7)
This is episode #3 of the series of 5 minute videos I am doing on OpenSolaris and our open source optimizations for Xeon. This one is on how we are actually helping you get better performance by taking advantage of new Intel processor instructions without any effort on your part as a developer or [...]
Category: Open Source
The OpenSolaris 2008.05 demo
By David Stewart (Intel) (138 posts) on May 21, 2008 at 8:14 am
Comments (2)
I was invited to do a demo of OpenSolaris 2008.05 for the Intel sales team focused on Sun. This was scheduled as a part of their face-to-face day yesterday, and it was a lot of fun seeing the whole team. I started out with some true risk taking - I asked for a volunteer willing [...]
Category: Open Source, Virtualization
Powertop 1.0 on Solaris!!
By David Stewart (Intel) (138 posts) on May 19, 2008 at 10:18 am
Comments (0)
I was delighted to learn that the powertop tool for Solaris and OpenSolaris has now been released in its 1.0 version. This represents some terrific community collaboration. First the kudos: Arjan Van De Ven, at Intel in the Open Source Technology Center , first came up with the idea as a way to figure out [...]
Category: Open Source
OpenSolaris Host - Virtual Box - Windows Guest
By David Stewart (Intel) (138 posts) on May 16, 2008 at 8:17 pm
Comments (1)
Having seen a great demo and presentation this week about the new VirtualBox 1.6 release, I have been enjoying trying out the various combinations to see which ones I like more. Today I tried out the Solaris version of VirtualBox on my OpenSolaris 2008.05 laptop. My laptop is a Sony VAIO, a Centrino Pro processor based system. [...]
Category: Open Source, Virtualization, Visual Computing
Fun with USB sticks - how to make one bootable with OpenSolaris 2008.05
By David Stewart (Intel) (138 posts) on May 15, 2008 at 3:00 pm
Comments (1)
One of the nice things about OpenSolaris 2008.05 is that it is delivered as a bootable LiveCD. This means that you can try out the OS easily on your computer and see if it will work without risking the OS you are running on it now. Once you decide that all of the [...]
Category: Open Source
VirtualBox v1.6 - Open Source desktop virtualization
By David Stewart (Intel) (138 posts) on May 14, 2008 at 2:12 pm
Comments (4)
VirtualBox is a great desktop virtualization solution. It's free for personal use / evaluation, runs on Mac, Windows, Linux, Solaris or OpenSolaris, and supports a huge number of guest OS's. The user interface is really well tuned for a simple desktop user, and as UI's go, I think it has some really good context-aware help. I [...]
Category: Open Source, Virtualization
Observations of OpenSolaris launch at CommunityOne
By David Stewart (Intel) (138 posts) on May 11, 2008 at 6:59 pm
Comments (0)
Cinco de Mayo (May 5, 2008) Sun launched their OpenSolaris 2008.05 distro of the OpenSolaris code. The venue for the launch was CommunityOne, a free one-day conference held on the Monday before JavaOne. Above is a snap of Rich Green who runs software at Sun, doing the launch. This is the second year [...]
Category: Open Source, Uncategorized
Dave finally gets it on the OpenSolaris logo
By David Stewart (Intel) (138 posts) on May 10, 2008 at 9:00 pm
Comments (3)
The infamous new bubbles logo, AKA the .com logo The original classic .org logo OK, I am a little slow in the uptake here. And I am not in any way shape or form an expert on trademarks and brand management. That said, I thought the orange and blue opensolaris.org logo would [...]
Category: Open Source
OpenSolaris on Xeon video, Episode 2 - Saving Power
By David Stewart (Intel) (138 posts) on May 9, 2008 at 2:00 pm
Comments (0)
Here is the second installment of my series of 5 minute videos on Intel's OpenSolaris project work. In this segment, I talk about what we're doing to try saving the planet for our grandchildren. It's a noble cause and I hope you will join us!
Category: Open Source
Intel Keynote at JavaOne
By David Stewart (Intel) (138 posts) on May 8, 2008 at 8:18 am
Comments (0)
This is the second JavaOne I have attended, and Intel has been a big sponsor. This year, the VP of my division is giving the Intel keynote. Doug got sick on Monday of this week, and being in San Francisco, he got a lot of home remedies and Chinese herbs to fix him up. He made [...]
Category: Uncategorized
OpenSolaris Developer Summit 2008, Day 2
By David Stewart (Intel) (138 posts) on May 7, 2008 at 10:53 am
Comments (1)
Day 2 of the Summit started with a panel discussion on Advocacy, which I was invited to help kick off. Advocacy is an interesting Community, because it includes the worldwide user group effort as well as evangelism for OpenSolaris. I praised the Advocacy efforts of Sun and others, relating how difficult it is to create [...]
Category: Open Source
Radio Free Software: Intel on OpenSolaris
By David Stewart (Intel) (138 posts) on May 6, 2008 at 3:30 pm
Comments (3)
Barton George and I talk on this 10 minute podcast about what Intel is doing on OpenSolaris. Download it and listen to some of the work we're doing. Pass it on to your friends. Here is the tagline from his podcast show, Radio Free Software: Intel on OpenSolaris - 08D01586.0 Title: Dave Stewart of Intel Description: An interview [...]
Category: Open Source
OpenSolaris OS 2008.05 First Impressions
By David Stewart (Intel) (138 posts) on May 5, 2008 at 3:44 pm
Comments (10)
I installed the final release of OpenSolaris OS 2008.05 on my Sony Vaio Centrino Pro laptop. OpenSolaris 2008.05 is the new product based on the OpenSolaris project. You can obtain yours by going to opensolaris.com. In fact I'm typing this blog post between sessions at CommunityOne on my new OpenSolaris 2008.05 installation! Some initial impressions: 1. The OS [...]
Category: Open Source, Visual Computing
OpenSolaris Developer Summit 2008, Day 1
By David Stewart (Intel) (138 posts) on May 4, 2008 at 11:23 am
Comments (0)
I'm sitting today at the OpenSolaris Developer Summit in Santa Cruz. Some thoughts about Day 1: > There was a changing in the guard from the Sun engineering side: Bill Franklin is delegating the role of executive sponsorship to Tim Cramer. Tim gave a very candid talk saying that they had not yet achieved [...]
Category: Open Source
Avoiding the annoying sendmail grumbles on OpenSolaris boot
By David Stewart (Intel) (138 posts) on May 1, 2008 at 8:11 am
Comments (7)
Disclaimer: I'm not sure this problem will happen on the true "opensolaris" or not, I don't have those final bits running yet. But I'm an avid fan of Solaris Express Developer Edition builds or SXDE. (I know, I'm weird. I actually like the infamous WOS[1]). Ever since I started running SXDE, I have been annoyed by the [...]
Category: Open Source
Dave, talking about OpenSolaris on Xeon
By David Stewart (Intel) (138 posts) on April 30, 2008 at 2:56 pm
Comments (0)
Thanks to my good friends in our SSG Marketing group, I did a 5 minute video on the work we're doing at Intel to enhance OpenSolaris for our processors. Here is the URL - http://softwarecommunity.intel.com/videos/home.aspx?fn=1490: Of course, none of this would be possible without the awesome work from very talented engineers. My thanks to [...]
Category: Open Source, Parallel Programming, Software Engineering, Virtualization, Visual Computing
OpenSolaris Developers Summit #2
By David Stewart (Intel) (138 posts) on April 30, 2008 at 2:30 pm
Comments (0)
The 2nd OpenSolaris Developers Summit is this weekend in Santa Cruz, CA. This is the bi-annual event to get the community together face-to-face and hash out issues and make decisions and educate ourselves. I went to the last Summit in October 2007. It was great to meet folks in person that I had been [...]
Category: Open Source
Solaris on Xeon - the Sun and Intel view
By David Stewart (Intel) (138 posts) on April 27, 2008 at 2:51 pm
Comments (0)
Recently I had the chance to sit with my colleagues from Sun and talk about the work we're doing on Solaris optimization on Intel's Xeon processors. The discussion is available online here: Sun and Intel webcast on Innovation This talk is MC'd by Julian Lukacs, from Sun's Market Development group which works with software developers to [...]
Category: Open Source, Virtualization
Reasonably reliable Suspend on OpenSolaris - today
By David Stewart (Intel) (138 posts) on April 25, 2008 at 11:02 am
Comments (0)
Last night, I decided to upgrade to the latest build of "Nevada", which is the project that OpenSolaris is based on. Build 87 (or SNV87 to the cognoscenti) has some cool features present, like improvements to memset(), memmove() and memcpy() to use the latest Intel processor instructions and some other good stuff. And [...]
Category: Mobility, Open Source, Virtualization
Challenges for the future of OpenSolaris
By David Stewart (Intel) (138 posts) on April 15, 2008 at 10:50 am
Comments (2)
I’m putting together a talk this week that I will be delivering at CommunityOne in San Francisco on May 5 on some of the work we’re doing to support Intel-based kit with OpenSolaris. It’s great to talk about the accomplishments of many people, and how developers can take advantage of them. For example, I’m [...]
Category: Events, Open Source
Why do we need another OS?
By David Stewart (Intel) (138 posts) on April 10, 2008 at 3:03 pm
Comments (4)
If you have Windows and Linux, why do you need anything else? Oh sure, there are always special-purpose OS's, which address a particular niche or usage. But in terms of general-purpose OS's, you have two basic models, one of them open source the other closed. Both have a broad and lively development community and broad [...]
Category: Open Source, Software Engineering
OpenSolaris / VirtualBox
By David Stewart (Intel) (138 posts) on April 10, 2008 at 2:00 pm
Comments (4)
I'm running OpenSolaris in a VirtualBox guest on WindowsXP. It works pretty well running most apps, particularly Firefox. Here is what I have working: Hardware is a Sony VAIO Centrino Duo laptop running with a 3945 wireless networking setup. Windows XP is the host OS, it’s the default that came with the laptop. Downloaded [...]
Category: Open Source, Virtualization
Why do I do this?
By David Stewart (Intel) (138 posts) on April 10, 2008 at 8:19 am
Comments (1)
Why do I work in the job I have? How did I get started? How does a new person get started? I got an email out of the blue from one of my readers, asking if I would consent to being interviewed about my career choices for a class she is taking in [...]
Category: Open Source, Software Engineering
Making access to memory faster in OpenSolaris (and Core2)
By David Stewart (Intel) (138 posts) on April 4, 2008 at 3:55 pm
Comments (3)
We have been working so hard over the last year plus on implementing new Intel technologies into OpenSolaris and supporting new processors and platforms, it's good to stop for a moment and consider how we are speeding up the product you have in your hands today. (Or, you really *ought* to have your hands on). [...]
Category: Open Source
OpenSolaris - I'm a sucker for a good demo
By David Stewart (Intel) (138 posts) on March 18, 2008 at 9:44 pm
Comments (6)
I have to admit it - I'm a real pushover for a sweet demo. Now by demo, I mean something "real" and not faked up, polished and hokey. We used to joke about demos from a certain company that they would show off in their keynotes, but underneath was just a Visual Basic prototype. No [...]
Category: Gaming, Open Source
OpenSolaris in China
By David Stewart (Intel) (138 posts) on March 16, 2008 at 5:24 pm
Comments (2)
Dave is in China this week for quarterly operations reviews with the Intel China OpenSolaris team. Last year we chose to grow a lot of our development team in Shanghai and Beijing for a couple of key reasons: First, Intel has been doing a lot of system software work in Shanghai for many years. We have a [...]
Category: Open Source
Open Source Music
By David Stewart (Intel) (138 posts) on March 10, 2008 at 11:03 am
Comments (8)
Pity the poor executives of the recording industry! It's a medium which owes its very existence to technology. But it's also a medium which has had its business model tortured beyond recognition by technology. Consider the recent release of the album "Ghosts I – IV" by Nine Inch Nails (NIN). It's available in a variety of [...]
Category: Gaming, Open Source
Laughing at OpenSolaris and clients
By David Stewart (Intel) (138 posts) on February 26, 2008 at 6:22 pm
Comments (6)
There is someone I know who will remain nameless on this blog, but suffice it to say that he is a very senior techie guy, very plugged into open source. During a casual chat, we were talking about some technology that was being developed in the Linux world that has to do with the client experience [...]
Category: Uncategorized
More HDR shots from Israel
By David Stewart (Intel) (138 posts) on February 23, 2008 at 6:27 pm
Comments (3)
Some additional HDR experimentation. (Again, thanks to Adobe Photoshop CS3 and my Core 2 Duo laptop, building these was a snap): HDR allowed me to capture the full range of picture detail from the deep shadows in the front of the nave to the colorful details in the stained glass windows at the front. [...]
Category: Uncategorized
More photoshop HDR photos
By David Stewart (Intel) (138 posts) on February 18, 2008 at 9:01 am
Comments (0)
Here are some more experiments I did with HDR images. Above is a scene at the beach in Tel Aviv, Israel. There is a storm coming in, thus the dramatic clouds. This is the southern edge of the Sea of Galilee. Note the Sea Level marker in the foreground The northern edge of the Sea of [...]
Category: Cool Software, Parallel Programming, Visual Computing
Recruiting in the web 2.0 era
By David Stewart (Intel) (138 posts) on February 8, 2008 at 11:55 am
Comments (5)
It's rather shocking but I'm actually coming up on about 20 years being a manager. You'd think I would have figured it out by now. Although I have been a "hiring manager" during most of that time, I have gone through waves of staffing up or replacing people. I'm going through that mode right now - I [...]
Category: Open Source, Parallel Programming
Intel + Sun + 1 Year = OpenSolaris++
By David Stewart (Intel) (138 posts) on January 22, 2008 at 3:35 pm
Comments (11)
Today marks the one year anniversary of Intel and Sun joining together in collaboration to improve the Solaris operating system, among other things. Here's the way I tell it to people: "We're working to make Xeon the best platform to run Solaris." One year into our collaboration marks a great time to review what we have [...]
Category: Manageability, Mobility, Open Source, Parallel Programming, Virtualization
Maybe good things *do* come from Indiana
By David Stewart (Intel) (138 posts) on November 27, 2007 at 7:42 pm
Comments (5)
I'm not talking about the state of Indiana per se. The few times I have been through the state of Indiana it was in the back seat of my parents' car in a cross-country drive. (Although I do have a friend who lives there, and don't they make popcorn?) No here I'm talking about a [...]
Category: Open Source
Attempts at HDR night shots
By David Stewart (Intel) (138 posts) on November 14, 2007 at 3:53 pm
Comments (0)
I'm still experimenting with HDR, which is a technique for rendering in a digital photo more of what the human eye sees. I gave a brief description previously in a post here. This week I am staying in high rise hotel rooms as I do a week in China (visiting Shanghai, Beijing and Shenyang). It's a [...]
Category: Visual Computing
Software support for Transactional Memory
By David Stewart (Intel) (138 posts) on November 7, 2007 at 8:00 pm
Comments (1)
Last week I attended Intel's annual Software Enabling Summit in Anaheim. This is a worldwide gathering of Intel's software engineers charged with ensuring that the world's software takes best advantage of Intel processor and platform features. (Sidebar: My wife thought it was really funny that we had a whole conference about "enabling", and suggested that I [...]
Category: Parallel Programming, What If Software
First experience with HDR
By David Stewart (Intel) (138 posts) on November 4, 2007 at 8:05 pm
Comments (10)
I'm a bit of a photo wonk. It probably started when I was about 12 or 13 with my first roll-film twin-lens reflex camera. You know, the kind that you look DOWN into the viewfinder. I remember a visit to Maryland with my little camera and hanging out with Marty Torre in his darkroom. The magic [...]
Category: Cool Software, Visual Computing
How Passion is good, how heat burns, how Free can S*ck
By David Stewart (Intel) (138 posts) on November 3, 2007 at 12:50 pm
Comments (4)
This week, an important thing happened in the open source world. A great step was taken to broaden the appeal of a major project. And yet, it's community treated it largely with utter contempt. Some in the OpenSolaris community took a big step by refactoring the OS into a single CD-sized image, bootable from that CD image, with Gnome 2.20, [...]
Category: Open Source
Cityware and the 30-processor i386
By David Stewart (Intel) (138 posts) on October 27, 2007 at 5:05 pm
Comments (1)
If you could strip away the buildings, streets, monuments and dirt, a city would resemble a twisted ganglia of pipes, wires, tubes and vents. This is the viscera on which all city life depends, without which people soon would decamp for another city. Businesses owners and homeowners depend on these services to run smoothly day in [...]
Category: Parallel Programming, Software Engineering
Share ... the ... *code*?
By David Stewart (Intel) (138 posts) on October 18, 2007 at 3:24 pm
Comments (7)
Sun is doing a great job providing the OpenSolaris community members with cool swag to promote OpenSolaris. A couple of the shirts show actual printouts of Solaris code, and superimposed are the words "<share> ... <the> ... <code>". (It's a little like the Heroes tag line: "Save the cheerleader... save the world".) This is of course [...]
Category: Open Source, Software Engineering
OpenSolaris: The Next Generation
By David Stewart (Intel) (138 posts) on October 16, 2007 at 4:49 pm
Comments (2)
I'm back from this past weekend's first ever OpenSolaris Developer Summit in Santa Cruz. A great opportunity to meet people who are the voices behind the work and talk about what's next. A big focus is the evolution of OpenSolaris into where it should be going in the future, under the banner of "Project Indiana", the [...]
Category: Open Source
Developing for OpenSolaris
By David Stewart (Intel) (138 posts) on October 13, 2007 at 6:52 am
Comments (2)
This weekend, I'm at the OpenSolaris Developers Summit in Santa Cruz, CA. This is a small gathering of developers (limited to 100) focused on getting the next major evolution of OpenSolaris ready and to spread news about work that has already happened. If anyone wants to meet up at the Summit, let me know!
Category: Open Source
Scheduling Success
By David Stewart (Intel) (138 posts) on October 11, 2007 at 12:26 pm
Comments (1)
Back when I was in school studying operating systems, one of my favorite topics was the scheduler. For some reason, this seemed like the very core of what you want an OS to do – do a good job of scheduling quickly, then get out of the way. At the graduate level, we studied how [...]
Category: Open Source, Parallel Programming, Threading Building Blocks, Virtualization
Patience – or lack thereof
By David Stewart (Intel) (138 posts) on October 1, 2007 at 8:14 am
Comments (0)
On my personal blog, I recently wrote on patience, or more properly, my lack of it! In my personal sphere, I am frustrated with the lack of progress I am making in getting over an injury that is sidelining my running. The progress in improvement is incredibly slow, and I want to be back to [...]
Category: Intel® Software Network 2.0, Open Source, Software Engineering
OpenSolaris at Fall IDF 2007
By David Stewart (Intel) (138 posts) on September 19, 2007 at 8:42 pm
Comments (1)
I'm headed back to Portland after attending the first two days of IDF in San Francisco. There were four talks which were specific to OpenSolaris at IDF. Here were some impressions. > Virtualization - presented by a tag team of Sun presenters. The first presenter is a visiting professor who has been working on the Solaris hypervisor, [...]
Category: Events, Open Source, Virtualization
Systems that lower our carbon footprint
By David Stewart (Intel) (138 posts) on September 15, 2007 at 5:49 pm
Comments (0)
I'm having a meeting on Monday with some Solaris experts on various power management topics. As advanced as Solaris is as an operating system, there is more work to be done on power management. The case for systems doing a good job managing power is strong -- after all, when systems consume more power than they [...]
Category: Open Source, Software Engineering
Open Source saves Dave's toucus
By David Stewart (Intel) (138 posts) on September 6, 2007 at 8:01 pm
Comments (1)
It's a good day when something I do casually in one area saves my bacon in another. My trusty two year old work laptop decided to start folding itself over and dying pretty miserably. Computer death - or "graceful degradation" as we called it in my first OS class - takes many forms, depending on the [...]
Category: Open Source
OpenSolaris at IDF
By David Stewart (Intel) (138 posts) on September 4, 2007 at 10:15 am
Comments (3)
Last week I spent some time going over some of the content at this month's Intel Developer's Forum in San Francisco that is related to Solaris. Here's a snapshot of the technical content: > Writing Device Drivers For Solaris -- this should be a good information session to get over the knowledge hurdle. I have been working [...]
Category: Events, Manageability, Open Source, Virtualization
Making Xeon the best platform for Solaris
By David Stewart (Intel) (138 posts) on August 30, 2007 at 11:47 am
Comments (0)
Well, we're getting there. Ever since the January 22, 2007 announcement of Intel's work to improve Solaris for Intel silicon, we have been busy building our development expertise in-house and basically trying to make sure Intel processors are the best choice for running Solaris. This includes a strong commitment to open source and the OpenSolaris community. At [...]
Category: Open Source
Who decides fairness?
By David Stewart (Intel) (138 posts) on June 21, 2007 at 8:55 am
Comments (3)
I had an experience just now that models one of the new problems with having so many cores to play with. I was walking down a hallway to a cafe to get a mod-morning drink. In front of me was a group of about five co-workers chatting away amiably, walking at a reasonable pace, but walking slower than I [...]
Category: Open Source, Parallel Programming, Software Engineering
Why Linux people lust after DTrace
By David Stewart (Intel) (138 posts) on May 15, 2007 at 12:25 pm
Comments (27)
Back in 2002, I was managing the team that worked with Oracle on the engineering side. This was when they were transitioning from developing the database on Solaris to Linux, and we were helping them with this transition. Of the various requests their devs made, one of the first was "when can we get DTrace [...]
Category: Open Source
Making Solaris a better Linux than Linux
By David Stewart (Intel) (138 posts) on May 10, 2007 at 3:37 pm
Comments (3)
Interesting to hear Ian Murdock this week at CommunityOne - he spoke about closing the "Familiarity Gap" between Linux and Solaris. Some key ideas: "Solaris is a better Linux than Linux" - Mark Andreeson. Certainly Solaris is arguably more reliable and scalable than Linux and has a lot of phenomenal capabilities, but it doesn't have the driver [...]
Category: Open Source
Web 2.Overload
By David Stewart (Intel) (138 posts) on April 26, 2007 at 10:14 am
Comments (4)
Normally I'm pretty enthusiastic about new technology ideas. This is because even a mediocre or boring idea might hold the seed for something insanely great. And since Web 2.0 holds the promise of cons-ing together new things from pieces of other things very easily, it's the natural place to look for the viral DNA of the [...]
Category: Open Source
How Open is Open Solaris?
By David Stewart (Intel) (138 posts) on April 22, 2007 at 5:26 pm
Comments (10)
The first time I tell people that Solaris is open source, I usually get a double-take. Next, they kind of snigger, and assume that "Open" Solaris is really a ploy for a proprietary vendor (Sun in this case) to act open, but in reality be closed. Then they think, "OK it's free, but it's not open [...]
Category: Open Source
What Solaris Means to Developers
By David Stewart (Intel) (138 posts) on January 22, 2007 at 7:47 pm
Comments (3)
I've been thinking a lot about how today's Sun-Intel announcement affects app developers. In particular, how does Solaris affect an ISV's chances for selling software in the enterprise? To figure this out, I cracked open a book on Solaris Internals to get caught up. Given that I earned my salary as a Unix internals guy from 1984 [...]
Category: Intel® Software Network 2.0
"What if my programming language did... THIS!!"
By David Stewart (Intel) (138 posts) on January 15, 2007 at 9:46 pm
Comments (0)
Sun recently kicked off the "Kitchen Sink Language" project, which is an opportunity provided by the open sourcing of Java. Now instead of waiting for your favorite language to add a new feature, or resorting to new technologies like Ruby, you can just grab yourself a copy of the Java Compiler (javac) source and add [...]
Category: Intel® Software Network 2.0
Five alternatives to threading
By David Stewart (Intel) (138 posts) on January 4, 2007 at 10:42 pm
Comments (4)
http://www.vmware.com/As I have posted before threading is not the only option you have in dealing with the onslaught of multi-core products. In fact, it may not be the best one. Here are five alternatives to threading to get the benefit of multi-core: 1. Fork separate processes, and connect them with pipes. Great advantage in sharing the [...]
Category: Intel® Software Network 2.0
Getting off the Hype Train
By David Stewart (Intel) (138 posts) on November 28, 2006 at 10:24 pm
Comments (0)
The other day, I was reading this blog entry by Joel on Software, which did a very good job describing the woes of being an app developer in a shifting technology world. Basically it sucks. If my app is based on DCOM for example, why in the world should I drop everything and port it over to [...]
Category: Intel® Software Network 2.0
Don't Thread! The End of the Free Ride
By David Stewart (Intel) (138 posts) on November 15, 2006 at 5:57 pm
Comments (5)
So multi-core is here, and here to stay. Dual core, quad core, it's a done deal and not just from Intel. What amazes me is that SW developers are not reacting a lot more than they are. Folks, the problem here is that we devs are accustomed to getting a free ride on the Moore's Law [...]
Category: Intel® Software Network 2.0
The Power Struggle
By David Stewart (Intel) (138 posts) on November 8, 2006 at 10:48 pm
Comments (0)
Not long ago, I got a chance to have some extremely valuable discussions with the IT staffs of a number of large American companies. The rationale for these visits was to explain our server technology roadmaps and to ask for their feedback. We wanted first-hand validation of some of the trends we were seeing in [...]
Category: Intel® Software Network 2.0
Another good idea for Outsourcers
By David Stewart (Intel) (138 posts) on November 1, 2006 at 10:52 pm
Comments (0)
Outsourcers are always looking for an "edge", a way to compete against other options. There is a competition against other outsourcers of course. There is also a competition against "in sourcing," where their corporate customers decide to turn inward for their coding needs. The most important asset that an outsourcer brings, besides lower costs and higher [...]
Category: Intel® Software Network 2.0
What is an Outsourcer to do?
By David Stewart (Intel) (138 posts) on October 27, 2006 at 10:46 pm
Comments (0)
It's undeniable " the Flat World has resulted in the rise of Outsourcing. I don't have the quote in front of me, but I believe it was Gates who was attributed with the comment that he used to think it would be better to be an average person in an average town in the US [...]
Category: Intel® Software Network 2.0
The hidden $5 bill in your pocket
By David Stewart (Intel) (138 posts) on October 24, 2006 at 6:48 pm
Comments (0)
There are a lot of opportunities to make money in software that are simply left on the table. Sometimes it's because even in a target-rich environment, the cost is too high to go after all of the opportunities. Other times, the risk is just too great. But some opportunities are too good to pass up, [...]
Category: Intel® Software Network 2.0
Profiting from a Core Software strategy
By David Stewart (Intel) (138 posts) on October 20, 2006 at 5:37 pm
Comments (0)
If you know about the Core Software Strategy, it's quite powerful, because you can take advantage of the considerable investment that Intel and others make with "engines", the core code which drives a large number of solutions in both Enterprise and Consumer space. (Read my other post to hear my thoughts on this strategy). One of [...]
Category: Intel® Software Network 2.0
Can traditional app designers take advantage of Web 2.0?
By David Stewart (Intel) (138 posts) on October 17, 2006 at 4:39 pm
Comments (0)
With all of the excitement around Web 2.0, one thing to keep in mind is that once the pure intensity and hype around the trend begins to mellow, we should begin to see the ideas become mainstream. For example, "Peer-to-Peer" (P2P) was a trend that popped up around the turn of the century. The hype was [...]
Category: Intel® Software Network 2.0
Where Moore meets Metcalfe - Part 2
By David Stewart (Intel) (138 posts) on October 13, 2006 at 7:14 pm
Comments (1)
This is a continuation of the post I did a few days ago showing the impact of Web 2.0. Here is the rest of my personal Web 2.0 Top 10 list, and how Moore's law could impact them: 6. Konfabulator - this one is now known as Yahoo! Widgets, after Yahoo! bought Konfabulator. This is totally [...]
Category: Intel® Software Network 2.0
Where Moore meets Metcalfe
By David Stewart (Intel) (138 posts) on October 11, 2006 at 4:12 am
Comments (1)
These days, everyone seems to have their own personal Web 2.0 "top 10" list. But how could Web 2.0 concepts help general work-a-day app developers do a better job? And, why in the world does Intel seem so interested in this topic? By the way, if you want a Web 2.0 description, go read O'Reilly's definition [...]
Category: Intel® Software Network 2.0
Parallel paths
By David Stewart (Intel) (138 posts) on October 4, 2006 at 10:58 pm
Comments (2)
A deep controversy in the emerging programming world isn't about Java vs C#. It's not about whether to adopt web 2.0 or to embrace open source. There is something more basic than any of this. The first key decision that a developer needs to make when adapting their architecture to parallelism is, how should I express [...]
Category: Intel® Software Network 2.0
Announcement: Other Voices
By David Stewart (Intel) (138 posts) on September 28, 2006 at 10:10 pm
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First of all, I want to thank all of you who have been reading the blog and leaving comments. I'm getting comments both from email and even in person. I appreciate the encouragement and the criticism - thanks! Secondly, you will soon start seeing more posts from other engineers on this blog. We're trying to live [...]
Category: Intel® Software Network 2.0
The Engineer-in-a-Box: Lucky You!
By David Stewart (Intel) (138 posts) on September 26, 2006 at 11:32 pm
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When I posted recently about the Core Software Strategy, I was advocating that when you are looking at implementing a project, you should spend at least some effort in identifying what is the "engine" which consumes most of the runtime of the application or system, and at least pick an engine that has been optimized [...]
Category: Intel® Software Network 2.0
Predicting the future (not!)
By David Stewart (Intel) (138 posts) on September 22, 2006 at 11:57 pm
Comments (1)
My first post to this blog was a commentary on Intel's Software Enabling Summit, and what I thought would be a great way for developers to contribute to their future employability by learning how to thread software. I seem to have struck a cord someplace " there were several comments from people who have been disappointed [...]
Category: Intel® Software Network 2.0
The Core Software strategy
By David Stewart (Intel) (138 posts) on September 20, 2006 at 10:16 pm
Comments (3)
I can safely predict that if you are a developer, you are looking for ways to get your job done faster. Get working code quicker, find bugs faster, take advantage of new technologies and get working performance as smoothly as possible. This is why the saying "steal with pride" comes up " it's well-worn technique [...]
Category: Intel® Software Network 2.0
Revolutions in small packages
By David Stewart (Intel) (138 posts) on September 18, 2006 at 7:33 pm
Comments (2)
Probably the toughest lesson to learn is not the one we get when we are seeking to learn. Rather it is the one which creeps under the door, rears its ugly head and smacks us soundly on the nose. As one saying goes, "In the school of hard knocks, the lesson comes after the test!" Last [...]
Category: Intel® Software Network 2.0
Becoming a Bullet-proof Developer
By David Stewart (Intel) (138 posts) on September 14, 2006 at 4:15 pm
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As I wrote in my previous post, developers need to think about their abilty to surf the technology waves if they plan to remain devs going forward in time. In my 20-something years of working in development, I don't claim to have picked the right waves always - some things which are high on today's [...]
Category: Intel® Software Network 2.0
What's next for SW Developers?
By David Stewart (Intel) (138 posts) on September 12, 2006 at 4:28 pm
Comments (4)
The question hangs at the back of every developer's mind. It takes various forms. It usually isn't a big issue to most of us, but sometimes it intrudes into our daily thinking. How do I ensure that I maintain my relevance and significance in the development world? Things change so rapidly in technology. Yet to master [...]