This can't come soon enough for Linux clients. SAMBA already has SMBv2+ server-side support, with SAMBA 4 apparently even supported SMB 3.0. This is especially true for a high-latency connection through the VPN where the reduced chattiness of newer SMB protocols gives a nice performance bump.

You can post all day & all night about how NFS/CODA/GlusterFS/etc./etc. is better, but at the end of the day the CIFS protocols are supported by every Windows machine out there and should be supported by Linux too. Plus, if you are a free-software purist, then you could setup a 100% GPL'd installation with SAMBA servers and Linux clients, so it would totally make sense for the Linux clients to actually support the modern protocols.

System76 gives good support. They aren't the cheapest option out there though.

If your goal is not to play 3D games, then Intel HD graphics have by far the best open-source support and HD 4000 graphics are actually pretty good overall. If your goal is to play games, then Nvidia or AMD with proprietary drivers will be your best bet, with the edge in driver quality going to Nvidia.

AMD does have some open source support *BUT* the 7000 series cards (meaning everything released in the last year) are extremely poorly supported with AMD only having released part of the necessary documentation so far (and it took them 10 months to release the part that is out there....).

One problem is that xorg is using 75%... but only of one core. Xorg is a notorious offender when it comes to a program that you'd think would be very well multi-threaded but is actually single-threaded (Firefox being another although that is gradually changing).

First of all: Lots of non-x86 high-performance computers have similar memory controller layouts. Look at high-end SPARC or Power architecture systems.

Second of all: Thanks for proving me right with your screed about how ARM chips don't have good memory controllers. Guess what: you're right! They don't! And guess what: The Cortex-A15 is the first ARM chip capable of beating a 4 year old Atom when clocked north of 1.5 Ghz! So that's the type of performance that even the supposedly miraculous ARM gets with its architecture and a similar memory controller! You are now claiming to be insanely smarter than everyone at ARM and Intel simultaneously.. if chips could be designed and built based solely on arrogance & ego, you'd put ARM & Intel out of business by next Tuesday.

So basically you have been trolling this thread calling everybody who has pointed out flaws in the grandiose promises that you have put forth "007" in a smarmy and condescending manner while presenting zero facts to backup your arguments and contradicting yourself at every turn.

From your annoying and repetitive use of "007", do you perchance speak with a British accent? Do you appear in informercials at 2AM pushing whatever fake product of the day some insomniac can buy for $19.95? Because that's exactly how you come across in these discussions, and if you actually are associated with this project and aren't just troll then I'd highly recommend that the FSF immediately disavow this project before they end up getting sued when you make off with somebody's money.

Uh... moron: " In fact, teh only performance difference between float and doubles comes from vectorial SIMD instructions."

Thanks for proving my point: the x86 chips run at 1/2 the effective throughput for double precision operations because the operands are twice as large. I never said a single word about instruction latency, you just invented that to make yourself sound smart while actually being stupid.

Tell me, do you go around to kindergarten classes and call the kids stupid when they say that 1 + 1 = 2 too?

Thanks for that post.. extremely informative and it's good to know that people who really have to deal with these issues on a daily basis are paying attention.

As I said above: I have no problem with a project to build an "open" chip for education & hobbyists, but scam artists that know how to fool their marks with the correct buzzwords and hype are not doing anyone any favors.

unless you consider 1333mhz 32-bit DDR3 not to be a real memory controller?

Thanks for filling in that detail since I didn't know the precise specs (and for proving me right). To reiterate: No, this thing does not have a real memory controller compared to the 128 bit (2 channel 64-bit) or 192 bit (3 channel 64-bit) memory controllers in the AMD and Intel chips, respectively, that are mentioned in TFS.

You can go on and on about some busy-loop that you were able to code that gets all those gigaflops. I can get a 386 to tell me the result of 100 quadrillion quad-precision add-muls where the only operands are zero in less than a second too.. but it isn't useful work.

Trust me, if a chip even remotely like the one you are describing could do all that useful computational work in less than 3 watts using a previous generation process, then it would already have been deployed in supercomputers years ago and this wouldn't be some pie in the sky FSF project.

  I have no problem with a hobby project to build a CPU with an open architecture, but frankly hyperbole and outright dishonesty about performance expectations are not doing you or anyone else in the project any favors. Being "open" should include being honest & realistic first and foremost.

Those performance numbers are pure fantasy. First off, the 38 GFlops is undoubtedly referring to single precision operations while the x86 processors mentioned in TFS are doing that much in *double* precision mode. Second off, the 38 GFlop number is a simple arithmetic estimate of what the magic chip could do IFF every functional unit on the chip operated at 100% perfect efficiency. Guess what: a real memory controller that could keep the chip fed with data at that rate will use > 3 watts all by itself. This chip won't have a real memory controller though, so you can bet the 38 GFlop performance will remain a nice fairytale instead of a real product.

Today's ARM architecture is just a dressed up CISC architecture, let's move away from ARM's lame attempts at copying AVX with neon and just use the real thing!

(You see how the door swings both ways there? Trust me, if any architecture designer from the early 1990's were frozen in a block of ice, thawed out today and then shown the ARMv8 ISA, he would never in a million years call it "RISC")

Wait a minute... I thought we were only supposed to like politicians that stood up to big evil corporations*. Here we have a politician who is standing up to big evil pharmaceutical corporations, shouldn't we be applauding him?

* Note that I never said it had to be *logical* to stand up to them, just that you bash them as "evil." The word "corporation" has replaced "jew" as an acceptable target of pogroms in the modern age.

OK, so the big evil corporations who make vaccines are intentionally buying off politicians to berate vaccines so that those big evil corporations lose money... or something...

Yeah, you got the standard "I hate corporations we need 100% government control of everybody's lives right now in the name of 'freedom'" positive mods. Interesting that your post had about as much logical content as the rantings of the aforementioned politicians....

They thought they had him, but turns out it was a false positive.

Unlike a copyright where copyright springs into existence at the moment the work is fixed in a tangible medium of expression, getting a patent is a long, drawn out, and formal process.

If you do something on the job and get a patent for your employer as part of the job, you'll know exactly who owns the patent before the patent application is even filed (your employer will be the owner 99.9% of the time barring weird exceptions). Your employment contract will spell this out in detail, and on top of that you'll also be signing an assingment agreement around the time the patent is filed, which is an agreement to assign all rights to future patents that arise from the application to your employer. This is all very formal, spelled out in black & white, and leaves little room for error assuming a minimal level of competency. In other words: In the real world, this isn't a problem and as usual there is an academic proposing solutions for a problem that doesn't actually exist because it's more fun than trying to tackle real problems, which are harder to deal with.

Ahem...you are comparing a state-of-the-art 28nm SoC on the ARM side with a several years old 45 nm Intel netbook that includes a separate chipset.

I find it hilarious that you only looked at that one part of the Anandtech review and declared victory for ARM when even you know that 32nm Medfield SoCs were on sale before the Exynos 5 even launched and have substantially better power/performance ratios than were exhibited in the Anandtech numbers.

I find it even more hilarious that you summarily ignored the Haswell demos I mentioned since you must think that denying the results will make ARM win...

You haven't bothered to look at Anandtech's review of this system then. Considering the Exynos SoC is sucking down 8 watts of power running a single-threaded non-GPU Mozilla Kraken benchmark, you better believe that Samsung is going to have to cut down this chip's performance to run in a smartphone power envelope.