Musings of a Product Manager
Kevin Schmidt's Blog
Archives
« July 2009
SunMonTueWedThuFriSat
   1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
 
       
Today
Click me to subscribe
Search

Links
 

Today's Page Hits: 406

Locations of visitors to this page
View My Stats
Main | Next page »
Wednesday Jul 01, 2009
links for 2009-7-1: Treo out iPhone in; iPhone vs Pre; RIM headed south?; XP forever
Posted at 07:45PM Jul 01, 2009 by Kevin Schmidt in Links  |  Comments[0]

Tuesday Jun 30, 2009
links for 2009-6-30: Windows 7, iPod Touch, New App Store
Posted at 02:38PM Jun 30, 2009 by Kevin Schmidt in Links  |  Comments[0]

Monday Jun 29, 2009
Benchmarking the iPhone, and lots of other devices too

Benchmarking has been around for years, and I started playing around with writing them back in college.  I recall an assembly language class were the assignment was to implement the Sieve of Eratosthenes in as few bytes as possible. I "won" the assignment by doing it in 24 (or was it 25, too many years ago!) bytes, but that got me started on benchmarking as I instrumented the code to time how long it took and then proceeded to run it on all the different machines I could to see which one was the fastest.

Clearly though, having a benchmark written in 8086 assembly language had limited usefulness, so in later years I rewrote it in C and added several other standard algorithms to the stable that were executed including calculating PI, a selection sort, and computing Ackermann's function to test recursive performance. I proceeded to run it on every machine I could from PCs running MS-DOS to workstations running Solaris to PPC machines running LynxOS and AIX. In later years, I ran the same benchmark on UltraSPARC, SGI MIPS, and DEC Alpha machines as well as today's dual-core Intel chips. Somewhere along the line I starting writing more in Java than C and I ported the benchmark to Java to see how it compared, and several years ago I began using BlackBerry's and wrote a Java ME version.

As you can imagine given the wide range of machines I've run it on in the past, having an iPhone was just begging to run it there too. While I have creating a proper iPhone app version on my list of things to do, thankfully a jailbroken iPhone makes it pretty easy to run the C and Java versions I already had. A sampling of results appears below, but the summary for the iPhone is that the native version is about 5 times faster than the Java one and ever so slightly faster than a 75 MHz Pentium 5 of yesteryear.

 Machine Language Math Array Sort Sieve Ackermann Total
Motorola L6 Java ME 0.11 0.19 0.23 0.13 0.19 0.17
BlackBerry Curve (OS 4.5) Java ME 0.95 2.21 2.96 1.72 2.96 1.81
iPhone 3G Java SE 12.4 4.79 4.64 3.28 5.01 4.95
Intel 486DX2-66 (Linux) C 10 10 10 10 10 10
SPARC-20 (Solaris) C 66.4 20.3 17.6 20.1 4.1 12.1
Pentium 5 75 MHz (Linux) C 21.3 19.6 28.6 23.2 33.4 24.2
iPhone 3G C 65.9 21 23.4 19.2 46.7 27.9
DEC Alpha 275 MHz (OSF/1) C 111.4 93.6 63.1 41.2 76.1 68.6
Pentium 600 MHz (Linux) Java SE 191.9 106.1 99.1 68.9 78.2 96.1
Pentium 600 MHz (Linux) C 216.4 319.3 219.8 171.5 131.2 194.1
MacBook Pro 2.33 GHz Java SE 655 1096 794 549 334 587
MacBook Pro 2.33 GHz C 1089 2413 664 800 1356 1037

You may also view the full list that I have maintained over the years.  You'll notice that I did my initial calibration on a 66 MHz 486 DX-2 so that it scores 10 in each of the tests.

Now, I'll be the first to admit that my benchmark is pretty simplistic and thus shouldn't be be the end all be all testing to compare machines or platforms. The results can also be significantly affected by the quality of the C compiler or JVM being used. However, the results can provide a rough comparison and are at least fun to look at.

For example a SPARC-20 has terrible performance with deep recursion. And as noted above the JVM on the iPhone is about 5 times slower than a native app whereas on an x86 box the JVM is about half as fast as native.

While I've run the benchmark on quite a few machines, I'd love to add more to the list.  If you'd like to run it, here is the binaries in a variety of formats:

If you do run the benchmark, please post a comment on this blog entry with the chipset, clock-speed, operating system, and results from each of the tests that the program displays. As soon as someone jailbreaks an iPhone 3G S, it would be great to add that result to the list.

Enjoy!

 

Posted at 08:51PM Jun 29, 2009 by Kevin Schmidt in Technology  |  Comments[4]

links for 2009-6-29: NetBeans 6.7, Making SOA services more reusable
Posted at 10:31AM Jun 29, 2009 by Kevin Schmidt in Links  |  Comments[0]

Saturday Jun 27, 2009
US Track and Field Nationals Mid-Point Update

As I wrote about earlier, the US Nationals and qualifiers for this years World Championships in Berlin started Thursday and we are halfway through, so an update seemed appropriate.

First, touching on the items I said to watch for:

Now, some things I didn't say to look for but were notable.

  • Kara Goucher did run the 5000m and won easily looking good.  She says she will only contest the Marathon at Worlds though.
  • Carmelita Jeter continued her outstanding 2009 winning the 100m but was pressed by Muna Lee having to go to the photo to pick the winner by 0.001.  If Muna is running this well in the 100m, look for her to press and likely beat the current form Felix in the 200m.
  • Kerron Clement, choosing to bypass the 400m hurdles as he has a bye, ran the 400m and led all qualifiers including Olympic Champ LaShawn Merritt going into today's final.  Clement, while a hurdler usually, is the world record holder in the indoor 400m.
With the 200m heats today along with 400m finals and womens 1500m final, should be another entertaining day.

 

 

Posted at 01:07PM Jun 27, 2009 by Kevin Schmidt in Sports  |  Comments[0]

Friday Jun 26, 2009
iPhone Jailbreak App Update

I blogged about upgrading and jailbreaking my iPhone several days ago and noted that several apps I had grown attached to weren't working under OS 3.0.  I'm pleased to say that 2 of the 4 that weren't working now are.

Using Cydia, the latest versions of Insomnia and Backgrounder can be installed and seem to work fine.  Of course, some of the optional features of Backgrounder aren't working yet, but the basic function to put an app in the background is.  Of course, Cydia is confused and keeps telling me there is an available upgrade of Backgrounder,

Unfortunately, Mobile Finder doesn't appear to be updated nor does LogoMe.  But Mobile Finder was more of something just to show folks for the Gee Whiz factor and I've got the boot logo I want so not having LogoMe isn't an issue.

I'll update as I uncover more. 

Posted at 09:13PM Jun 26, 2009 by Kevin Schmidt in Technology  |  Comments[0]

Sun Middleware Success Stories

As we near the end of our Q4 our sales force in going full bore on closing deals to help continue the great momentum we've built up around our middleware this year (see the FY09 growth numbers in the "MySQL / Infrastructure" row of slide 5 of the Q3 financial slides).  But selling software to customers is not where it ends as each customer is buying the software to help solve a business problem and deliver an ROI and business value for their organization.  That is why it is rewarding to see the success stories our terrific reference team publishes on sun.com.

A sampling of some of the recent published stories includes:

This is just a few of the success stories that we have.  Browse the site to see more.

 

Posted at 01:37PM Jun 26, 2009 by Kevin Schmidt in Sun  |  Comments[0]

Thursday Jun 25, 2009
US Track and Field Nationals Start Today

The US Track and Field Nationals start today in Eugene Oregon.  Besides crowning national champions it will also serve as the qualification for the US team for the World Championships in Berlin in August.

There is a full slate of events on tap, check out the full schedule to see what you might be interested in, but the highlights for me will be:

There is much more and the above is just a sampling, so do tune in.  Where you ask?  There will be the normal television coverage on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, but in a new partnership between USATF and Flotrack there will be live and archived streaming video.  So you can tune in this afternoon to begin catching preliminaries in many events and the finals of the 10000m tonight.

Enjoy! 

 

Posted at 08:17AM Jun 25, 2009 by Kevin Schmidt in Sports  |  Comments[0]

Wednesday Jun 24, 2009
links for 2009-6-24: Hidden iPhone Features, AT&T Improving Network, Analysts on Twitter, Zappos goes social
Posted at 07:43PM Jun 24, 2009 by Kevin Schmidt in Links  |  Comments[0]

Sunday Jun 21, 2009
iPhone Upgraded and Jailbroken

With the release and all the hubbub about OS 3.0 for the iPhone, it was only a matter of time before I upgraded.  However, I was interested in seeing others experience with it and also having the jailbreak for it out before I did the upgrade.  Well, I went ahead and did it this weekend and here are the highlights.

First, since I had previously jailbroke and had read about potentially losing storage if one just upgraded over a jailbroke phone, I first restored to a vanilla 2.2.1.  And I did this with iTunes 8.1 as I didn't want to upgrade iTunes and cause any problems.  This went fine and as expected, I lost all my jailbroken functionality.  I also learned that doing a full restore can be very slow with the restoring apps via iTunes seemingly going slower than installing them from scratch via the AppStore.

Since upgrading to OS 3.0 requires iTunes 8.2, I went ahead and let iTunes upgrade itself and then went ahead and let it detect my phone and the OS upgrade and perform it.  This all went fine, but oddly after it was done, my battery meter had both the icon and a percentage!  On my jailbroken 2.2.1 using SBSettings I was able to have the meter toggle between the icon and a percentage but this was new.  In reading some blogs I learned that this is a feature of OS 3.0 but is only supposed to work on the 3G S, but apparently phones that were previously jailbroken also get it.  I guess restoring to 2.2.1 doesn't fully "unjailbreak" it.  Anyway, I'm glad I have this feature as I like having the percentage.

Sparky

I restored from my backup to get all my apps and data back, again, very slow, and then went ahead and jailbroke.  This went smoothly other than I was unable to pick my boot logo of choice.  I wasn't worried though as I had used LogoMe in the past to change the boot logo after jailbreaking.  Using Cydia, I installed:

While Tricker ThreeG seemed to work fine, it seems to hardcode the apps that it fakes out so I switched to the app I had previously, VoIPover3G which allows one to specify what apps to fake out.

On the boot logo, I went ahead and went through the jailbreak again this time taking the extra steps to get my logo in the right format so that I could include it as part of the initial jailbreak.  That seemed to work fine.

So, I now have OS 3.0 and am jailbroken, although some of the apps I like to use aren't working yet.  I'm confident they will be updated soon.  As I use it more, I'll blog about some of the new features I come across. 

 

 

Posted at 01:05PM Jun 21, 2009 by Kevin Schmidt in Technology  |  Comments[0]

Tuesday Jun 16, 2009
GlassFish ESB Continues to Grow

GlassFish ESB was released earlier this year and included as part of GlassFish Portfolio, but that was just the start as a new minor release, v2.1, has just been made available that continues what was started and adds in some important new capabilities.  A sampling of those includes:

If you'd like to learn more, visit any of the links above or download the software.  And if you are interested in being on the bleeding edge and would like to see what is coming in the future, visit Project Fuji where a lighter weight, OSGi based platform is being worked on that blends in scripting and simpler ways to implement an ESB.

 

Posted at 09:25PM Jun 16, 2009 by Kevin Schmidt in Sun  |  Comments[0]

links for 2009-6-16: The Future of SOA, Why Solaris Matters, SMS/Text Messages
Posted at 07:50PM Jun 16, 2009 by Kevin Schmidt in Links  |  Comments[0]

Friday Jun 12, 2009
NCAA Track and Field In Progress

The NCAA Outdoor Track and Field Championships started Wednesday but things really got going as the first finals occurred and points started to be scored.  I encourage you to go to Track & Field News or Letsrun.com to see a host of stories, but a few highlights for you here.

First, in the Decathlon, Ashton Eaton from Oregon wrapped up the win as expected getting the Ducks 10 important points in the team title.  He was on pace for a huge score but a poor showing in the pole-vault put and end to those thoughts but he still won by about 200 points.

The field for the mens 1500m was loaded and the heats did not disappoint with good times and a huge surprise.  The first heat went out quick with 3 going under 3:40 led by Craig Miller from Wisconsin, the second heat a more traditional NCAA heat going out slow with a quick last lap won by Garrett Heath from Stanford in 3:44.22, and then the surprise was in the third heat with contenders Coe, Fernandez, and Centrowitz, the latter, the collegiate leader this year and a favorite to win, had a poor showing finishing last, apparently due to a foot injury.  That makes the team competition extremely close with Texas A&M now predicted to win by 1 point over Oregon.

The result from the 1500m put even greater importance on the mens 10000m final with favorite Galen Rupp now having to win to not "lose" more points in the race with Texas A&M.  He did not disappoint as after Chelanga and Forrest tried to run away at the beginning, Rupp reeled them in and the just followed until it was time to put the hammer down, closing in around 1:59 and 3:01 and he had plenty more.  He may need the more in the 5000m tonight where he is again expected to garner the 10 points for the win.

A great writeup on the whole day is here.  Coverage is on CBS College Sports tonight and CBS tomorrow.  Enjoy!

Posted at 07:15AM Jun 12, 2009 by Kevin Schmidt in Sports  |  Comments[0]

links for 2009-6-12: MS Money done, iPhone specs, Twitter good for burglars?, EC2, Windows 7
Posted at 06:44AM Jun 12, 2009 by Kevin Schmidt in Links  |  Comments[0]

Thursday Jun 11, 2009
links for 2009-6-11: Google goes after Microsoft, No deal for existing iPhone customers, Oracle and Java
Posted at 06:39AM Jun 11, 2009 by Kevin Schmidt in Links  |  Comments[0]