Qemu accelerator kernel module

Last week I tested the new -controversial- Qemu accelerator kernel module.

These are the results of the nbench2 benchmark:

Using the accelerator kernel module:
integer: 4.940
floating point: 9.813
memory: 5.994

Running the test on my machine without any emulator involved:
integer: 5.693
floating point: 11.083
memory: 7.137

Quiet impressive imho... of course -just as with VMware- as these "emulators" actually just execute the assembly code, they should approach native performance. It's a whole different story when IO-bound applications are benchmarked.

allyesconfig

A nice 2.6.11-rc3-mm3 kernel configuration target in these cold winter days is 'allyesconfig'. As the name implies, it will answer yes to every kernelconfiguration question and therefore it will keep your CPU nice and hot.

For the less well-equipped people, there's the 'allnoconfig' which results in a nice and tidy 412K kernel image.

I've been playing with kexec lately and it seems to work really nice. Unfortunately, it hasn't been merged into Linus' kernel yet. I'm getting the necessary patches out of Andrew Morton's big kernel patch (2.6.10-mm3) and merging them with the ADEOS r9c3 patch for the 2.6.10 kernel. Having these patches combined would allow my LiveCD to switch various kernels without doing a full machine reboot.

Downset

Today, I accidently noticed that Downset -a band I used to listen to 10 years ago- still existed and actually released CD's after their selftitled album. I was looking through Humo's (a local magazine) concertguide, and noticed that they were giving a concert in the cultural center called "Poorthuis" in a city called "Peer" , which is about a half hour drive from my place. So, I went to see 'em, and they played about an hour and a quarter. As I only know their first record, I noticed how hard it is to understand what their saying if you've never seen the lyrics to their songs before. Luckily, they did play a lot of old songs from their first record. More specifically, they played "Breed the killer", "Downset", "Ritual" and ended the show with "Anger".

TOOL lyrics

As I keep relistening to old TOOL albums, and keep losing the links to the lyrics, I'll post 'em here, as a kind of bookmark :-)

http://toolshed.down.net/lyrics/

Elgoibar

Last week the OCEAN project meeting took place in Elgoibar near San Sebastian and Bilbao. I took the opportunity to visit the Guggenheim museum and experience the local habits such as the delicious pintxos and the marvelous ciderhouse-style diner.

Pintxos are similar to Spanish tapas; they are small portions of food, composed of various components, such as fish, meat and vegetables. You eat them with a glass of wine while you're standing in a pub. After finishing your glass in about 10 minutes, you continue to the next pub, where the ritual reoccurs. The friday I arrived at San Sebastian, I had so many pintxos and accompanying glasses of wine, that I can't even recall how many and what I ate :-)

On monday evening, the evening after the first meeting, we went to a ciderhouse which was a apparantly a fairly typical place to have dinner at. The owner of the place would announce at regular intervals that he would open a new cidercase which was the signal for all people to go up and refill their glasses. The food was brought to the tables, where people could take a bit of the dish and eat it with bread. They served various types of fish, prepared in various ways and a truly huge steak.

Jon, one of my collegues explained me how to let the cider drop into the glass from about a meter from the tap but still the local girls insisted on correcting my technique :-)

The local people were all very friendly and there was a very warm and safe atmosphere all over.

This is definitely a place I'd like to visit again.