**** BEGIN LOGGING AT Tue Apr 12 02:59:57 2011
Apr 13 02:21:29 <mijk> anyone ever run VM's on plug computers?
Apr 13 02:22:03 <Tootoot222> yikes
Apr 13 02:22:08 <Tootoot222> never tried that before
Apr 13 02:22:15 <Tootoot222> qemu might probably work
Apr 13 02:22:20 <Tootoot222> performance wise though...
Apr 13 02:25:51 <mijk> lol
Apr 13 02:28:27 <Tootoot222> maybe if you could figure out how to get some sort of distributed-vm-computing something, where each plug could contribute its processor and memory to creating a virtual machine that only sees them as cores and a contigous block of memory, that'd be awesome
Apr 13 02:31:15 <mijk> epic
Apr 13 02:32:12 * mwester wonders what the point would be, as adding up the total power consumption and space would probably result in something that would exceed that of the equivalent physical machine...
Apr 13 02:34:36 <Tootoot222> well, at a high load of around 10 watts (improbably high, i might add), you could run around 30 plugs to match a low-end desktop computer; that means you'd have about 24GHz (800mhz (assuming some of the mhz is being used by the program itself) * 30), and 12GB of ram (400 * 30 (assume ~100 used by the OS/program))
Apr 13 02:36:24 <mwester> assuming (dubiously) that a "MHz" is a useful comparison between an embedded ARM and a desktop system
Apr 13 02:36:32 <Tootoot222> true
Apr 13 02:37:04 <Tootoot222> i suppose there really isn't an accurate comparison between the two, ARM beinc RISC
Apr 13 02:37:18 <mwester> and even more dubiously assuming that one can "simulate" the instruction set of a desktop system using 30 disparate systems.
Apr 13 02:37:37 <Tootoot222> well i wouldn't try to emulate an x86 arch on that, just leave it as arm
Apr 13 02:37:45 <Tootoot222> most everything can be compiled for arm anyway
Apr 13 02:39:29 <mwester> In which case it's not really a VM as much as a highly-parallel computer.
Apr 13 02:40:20 <mwester> And *that* we know how to do -- it's just that it's commonly only done with specialized goals in mind, such as cryptography (the breaking thereof), or creating the worlds fastest number-crunching floating-point supercomputer.
Apr 13 02:41:54 <mwester> Be cool if we could get some sort of general support for that running; not sure what's out there for Linux (I'd love to see something that could swap out a process and have another Plug pick it up and run it, for example -- that would be neat for distributed software bulds, etc.
Apr 13 02:42:06 <mwester> )
Apr 13 02:46:19 <mijk> meh, I'll give it a shot and hope for the best ;)
**** ENDING LOGGING AT Wed Apr 13 02:59:57 2011