[HN Gopher] Popcorn Linux
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Popcorn Linux
Author : telotortium
Score : 148 points
Date : 2020-05-03 17:58 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (popcornlinux.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (popcornlinux.org)
| gumby wrote:
| I note some comments saying that this is more for HPC. I'll point
| out that most mobile ARMs have different kinds of cores on the
| same die (the so-called big.LITTLE approach), and of course often
| have utterly different functional units (GPU) as well.
| gberger wrote:
| Can someone ELI5 what this is?
| ealexhudson wrote:
| It looks like a multi-node version of Linux - a bit like a
| MOSIX or something - but without the limitation that the
| hardware needs to be the same on each node. E.g. you could have
| one X86, one ARM, one FPGA, and a single app could deploy
| threads across each of those "CPUs".
|
| Equally, I guess it looks a bit like a Java application server
| in terms of function - applications appear to be compiled to
| whichever hardware target the application needs to run on.
|
| Utility infrastructure like shared memory etc appears to be
| part of the design, so the underlying hardware systems are as
| transparent as possible.
| im_down_w_otp wrote:
| It's a single system image [1] platform built with Linux. The
| main idea being that the OS is running on multiple computers
| while presenting a single computer abstraction to the other
| software running on it. You write your program as though it's
| running on a monolithic machine, and the SSI platform manages
| it across multiple distributed machines.
|
| The concept is more popular in HPC & scientific computing than
| it is in mainstream IT.
|
| [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single_system_image
| eliaspro wrote:
| Sounds a bit like a Beowulf Linux cluster from about 20y ago.
| What's the major difference between the approach of those.
| detaro wrote:
| Beowulf was just the idea of making a cluster of cheap
| commodity hardware using open software, typically not
| Single System Image.
| nineteen999 wrote:
| Yeah I was thinking this sounds more like MOSIX, but with
| the added abstraction to handle executing the same code
| accross different architectures.
|
| http://www.mosix.cs.huji.ac.il/txt_about.html
| willtim wrote:
| Beowulf had no shared memory abstraction, programs had to
| be written using message passing, e.g. MPI.
|
| I'm not convinced a shared memory abstraction is a good
| thing for distribution across machines. Some Beowulf
| clusters actually had much lower latency interconnects than
| ethernet, e.g. Quadrics, but we still needed to carefully
| optimise the traffic. With a shared memory abstraction,
| such optimisation is out of our hands.
| rasengan0 wrote:
| Great explanation; I can't stop watching the teaser
| http://popcornlinux.org/sources/video/sosp-19-tutorial.mp4
| teddyh wrote:
| That video desperately needs subtitles. Or, preferably,
| people who can speak intelligible English.
| skellystudios wrote:
| You know, this is a great, clear description that they should
| definitely put on their homepage.
| Already__Taken wrote:
| I can't find it but that sounds like the model a platform
| company that works with CCP to host EVE online makes. They
| program one game but they shard different sectors of the
| universe out to hardware based on demand.
|
| They either host it or it was just a tech demo they did with
| eve online. Wish I could remember it was a super cool job
| advert, not my skill set though.
| amachefe wrote:
| aka Linux Cluster. This was very popular concept about 15yrs
| ago. I have seen telecom servers run in such kind of clusters
| SahAssar wrote:
| Are you referring to servers running OTP (erlang)?
| choward wrote:
| You mean the intro paragraph isn't simple enough?
|
| > The Popcorn Linux project is exploring how to improve the
| programmability of emerging heterogeneous hardware, in
| particular, those with Instruction Set Architecture
| (ISA)-diverse cores, from node-scale (e.g., Xeon/Xeon-Phi,
| ARM/x86, CPU/GPU/FPGAs) to rack-scale (e.g., Scale-out
| processors, Firebox, The Machine), in both native and
| virtualized settings. Additionally, the project is exploring
| how to automatically compile/synthesize/execute code on ISA-
| heterogeneous hardware.
|
| I know some of those words!
| kroltan wrote:
| Let's break it down! (I'm no expert so sorry for any
| mistakes, and this is simplifying a lot)
|
| > improve the programmability of emerging heterogeneous
| hardware
|
| reducing the fiddlyness of developing for mixed hardware
|
| > those with Instruction Set Architecture (ISA)-diverse cores
|
| those with multiple CPUs speaking different machine code
|
| > in both native and virtualized settings
|
| both bare-metal and VMs
|
| > automatically compile/synthesize/execute code on ISA-
| heterogeneous hardware
|
| automatically translate between the different machine codes.
|
| ---
|
| Now for what it actually means, is that Popcorn is a single
| Linux that can simultaneously run on a bunch of different
| processors (say, your mobile phone, a raspberry, and a
| desktop) all at once while being used just like a single
| Linux system to the end-user/programmer. I don't think it's
| meant to be used by consumers, but for servers or
| supercomputers, that kind of stuff.
| cbhl wrote:
| Pairing a big fast processor with a small energy-efficient
| processor is starting to get more common. You see it in a
| lot of higher end Android phones.
|
| I believe that the Touch Bar Macbooks also pair an x86_64
| processor with an ARM coprocessor that runs the touch bar.
| yjftsjthsd-h wrote:
| > I don't think it's meant to be used by consumers, but for
| servers or supercomputers, that kind of stuff.
|
| Why would servers/supercomputers care about heterogeneous
| hardware (including multiple ISAs, even!)? If I'm playing
| around at home, that's great; I'd love to make a cluster
| out of a couple of old laptops, an old phone, and a
| Raspberry Pi. But at work, I'd just... buy a dozen
| identical servers. Even across generations, x86 is _mostly_
| uniform enough to just ignore the changes (with some minor
| gotchas around extensions, but if you only migrate forward
| that should be fine too).
| derefr wrote:
| _A_ supercomputer cluster wouldn't care. A cluster _of_
| supercomputer clusters might.
|
| Know those moments in movies where they put "all the
| computers in the world" onto the task of cracking some
| encryption before it's too late? This could be used for
| the technical part of that (once you've got all the HPC
| labs' cooperation.)
| owl57 wrote:
| Could an abstraction of "single Linux computer" be
| actually useful with Earth-scale latencies?
| chongli wrote:
| Maybe if you had some kind of amazing cache system that
| organized everything into one big tree so that data
| needed for different computations is as local as
| possible. It would be very challenging though.
| emj wrote:
| Think of it in a "Compute at home", "folding at home",
| blockchain-sense then latency doesn't matter as much, I
| do not know if anyone has tried solving things with big
| clusters separated by 40ms-60ms latencies.
| marcosdumay wrote:
| Some ISAs can be way more effective at some parts of the
| problem than others, while still not being an optimum for
| the entire problem.
|
| That's why your computer has a GPU.
| convolvatron wrote:
| at Cray, at one point we had custom vector processors,
| custom SMT(for lack of a better term) processors, FPGAs
| on the roadmap, GPUs, and commodity AMD processors...and
| a strong desire to ship them in the same frame
|
| that may have been the only time in history though
| bdcravens wrote:
| I think I bingo'ed at least 3 times.
| p4bl0 wrote:
| Very interesting project, thanks for sharing!
|
| The "open positions" page might interest some people here. They
| have two 2+ years postdoc positions open with no teaching duties
| at Virginia Tech.
|
| http://popcornlinux.org/index.php/positions
| [deleted]
| qubex wrote:
| Very interesting... my first (and last) encounter with
| heterogeneous OSes was back in the mid nineties with TaOS (best
| reference found online is http://www.uruk.org/emu/Taos.html but
| the website is rather wonky).
|
| Honest question: I'm not the only one who confused this for the
| Popcorn Time torrent streaming player, am I?
| KenanSulayman wrote:
| My first thought was: wow, they took this idea so far now they
| made an OS out of it.. I imagined an OS preconfigured with
| torrent clients, easy-to-use VPN client, fancy Netflix-like
| media center...
| belzebalex wrote:
| You're not!
| cmeacham98 wrote:
| This seems to be old and possibly abandoned, given that:
|
| - The website is served using a self signed cert for a different
| domain created in 2011 (!)
|
| - The last download is from March 2013 for linux 3.x
|
| - The last commit to the git repo was in 2016
|
| - The last post on the mailing list is an unanswered question
| from 2015
|
| I would be interested to hear if anybody on HN knows of a similar
| project that is being maintained.
| OJFord wrote:
| The homepage (the submission URL as I write, but perhaps you
| saw something different?) leads with News: -
| March 2020 ... - [x3] - [big font] October 2019 ...
|
| I think it's kicking.
| christoph-heiss wrote:
| The project seems still alive and active, at least according to
| its recent RFC'ing from LKML [0].
|
| For some more information, Phoronix also recently wrote an
| article [1] about it, also the GitHub repo [2] seems to be
| somewhat active (last commit was 06-02-2020).
|
| [0]
| https://lore.kernel.org/lkml/cover.1588127445.git.javier.mal...
|
| [1]
| https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Popcorn-...
|
| [2] https://github.com/ssrg-vt/popcorn-kernel
| cmeacham98 wrote:
| Ah, you're right, it does appear to be still alive. If anyone
| from the popcorn linux team sees this, please consider
| updating the outdated portions of your website (and getting
| an HTTPS certificate). Had I never read this comment I would
| have gone on unaware that the project was not dead.
| warent wrote:
| The homepage has a "News" section front and center with
| articles created as recently as March of this year.
| t3po7re5 wrote:
| Whoa! I interviewed to work on this project back in my undergrad
| days. Was wondering what happened to this.
| nunoferreira wrote:
| So joomla + http is still a thing in 2020....
| elcomet wrote:
| Why would it not? It's still very convenient to use a CMS like
| Joomla for non tech people.
|
| Http is a shame of course, nowadays most web hosting providers
| do it automatically.
| nunoferreira wrote:
| Made my first money as web developer in ~2006 with joomla
| actually
| dang wrote:
| An announcement from a few days ago was posted here:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23060692 (no comments
| though)
|
| A thread from 2017: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14605882
| amachefe wrote:
| Linux Clustering OS
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(page generated 2020-05-03 23:00 UTC)