Rilak

some where in the first/second generation of mircoprossors Mr William Gates III applied for a patent on a computer chip did he not?

PA-RISC pages vs. OpenPA

Hi Rilak.

I'm reading with growing fascination your articles on the PA-RISC processors, currently the new page on PA-8000. What bothers me, however, is -- I'm the author of OpenPA.net -- that the PA-8000 page and its content are, well, quite similar to the OpenPA CPU page. This includes even most of the same references for the single PA-8x00 processors that I used.

What's the point of this? Rephrasing the information I compiled on that page?

And OpenPA isn't even mentioned anywhere.

I find it very odd you have mostly the same information, according to almost the same references as the CPU sections on OpenPA.

What's that supposed to be?

And how am I supposed to feel, after compiling this information for years, and now seeing very similar information with very similar structure with almost identical references on Wikipedia?

This is not the right way to go. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 85.179.24.236 (talk) 07:57, 1 May 2009 (UTC)

Hello! Thank you for notifying me of your concerns. Firstly, I do not own the article, per Wikipedia policy (WP:OWN). In regards to your concerns, my contributions are independent works, and were not derived from OpenPA.net. You claim that the content is quite similar, yet you did not elaborate as to how. It would be very helpful if you did, as I can identify problems more quickly.

Lets do a quick test for similarity. Let us consider the descriptions of the PA-8700 at OpenPA, and at Wikipedia:

Your text:

"The PA-8700 is basically an enhanced and revamped PA-8500 core with some slight modifications. As all PA-8x00 CPUs before, it logically still is very close to the original PA-8000 core from 1997. All subsequent new CPUs from HP were based on this design and added several features and some slight modifications to it while retaining the basic PA-RISC version 2.0 core. The PA-8700 enhanced the on-chip L1 caches and the TLB significantly while switching to a new CMOS-process helped boosting the clock-frequency. The chip was at its time one of the largest available commercial CPUs and one of the first to be manufactured in a SOI (Silicon On Insulator) process. The PA-8700 was manufactured by IBM, in contrast to the PA-8500 and PA-8600, which were fabbed by Intel, after HP gave up its processor fabs long time ago."

My contributions:

"The PA-8700 (PCX-W2), code-named Piranha, is a further development of the PA-8600. Introduced in August 2001, it operated at 625 to 750 MHz. Improvements were the implementation of data prefetching, a quasi-LRU replacement policy for the data cache, and a larger 44-bit physical address space to address 16 TB of physical memory. The PA-8700 also has larger instruction and data caches, increased in capacity by 50% to 0.75 MB and 1.5 MB, respectively. The PA-8700 was fabricated by IBM Microelectronics in a 0.18 µm silicon on insulator (SOI) CMOS process with seven levels of copper interconnect and low-K dielectric."

I do not see any similarity. There are multiple significant differences, for example, the texts disagree as to which microprocessor the PA-8700 was derived from, yours claim it was the 8500, mine claims it was the 8600. You omit the introduction date and clock frequency, I omit the commentary about similarity to the 8000, etc. If I do happen do cover the same fact (the larger caches for example), may I point out that most works about the PA-8700 cover it too.

I am of course, not cherry picking examples, I will review the entire article in the near future. In the mean time, if you know of obvious similarities (word for word, obvious paraphrasing), please do not hesitate to leave a message on my talk page pointing it out. Copyright violation is a serious matter that I view seriously.

Once again, thank you for bringing this to my attention. I hope that we stay in contact until this is resolved and that it be as quickly as possible.

Yours sincerely, Rilak (talk) 08:52, 1 May 2009 (UTC)

Hi, thanks for your prompt reply. Much appreciated. To make this clear up front: I did not mean to imply that you violated my or other copyright while writing this article. I would have said so if I thought it would've been the case.

So, back to my point, or rather, what I was trying to get at. I watched the page work in progress over the weeks and was unsure what to make of it.

I do not really understand the point of making pages based on mostly the same references which contain very similar information to those on other, existing pages/sites. What this looked like to me was gleaning the references from the existing (my) pages, using these references and the pre-existing art as, well, "reference"/structure, and from there, making an own page.

Again, I did not mean to imply you copied anything over from me or somewhere else. I did not like the process (as I imagined/perceived it) and I certainly did not like the outcome -- there was a pre-existing resource on that information, that resource was free/open and I was certainly open to suggestions/additions/collaboration. Who gains from this diffusion of information and content?

To your arguments: I do not want to get into any cherrypicking either. First, you're quoting from the relevant page from the date of January, why is that? Then, the information which you say is missing is included in the lists before and after the relevant paragraph -- the section in question is actually longer than the paragraph in itself. But, as you said, this is cherrypicking and not what I was trying to get at.

To wrap this up, as I'm unsure a Wiki page is the proper place for direct communication: I do not see how/if this can be resolved. I do not like the outcome, a) because it affects me and the resources I put into this, but also b) because I do not like the concept generally to duplicate information which is in more specific locations to resources with a much broader (but shallower) scope. I'd certainly happy if you want to continue to do this by mail, if you want. A contact address is given on the aforementioned site.

br —Preceding unsigned comment added by 85.179.40.203 (talk) 18:28, 2 May 2009 (UTC)

Sorry: I said you used an old version of my page. I just realized all other versions but one (from May) of the page in question are also from January. However you cite a specially old one (from 5th or 6th Jan). Not too important though. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 85.179.40.203 (talk) 18:40, 2 May 2009 (UTC)

SpaceBalls

Your SpaceBalls reference is to a brand name. A generic name would be better.

Robert.Harker (talk) 18:30, 6 March 2009 (UTC)

- vs. –

Either's fine with me :-)... Apparently WP automatically maps – back to "-" in wikilinks anyway.--NapoliRoma (talk) 05:27, 10 March 2009 (UTC)

Intel Atom - why don't we understand each other ;)

"No it isn't right..." Could you elaborate on that please.

Regards HenkeB (talk) 08:02, 28 March 2009 (UTC)

Absolutely. I was half-way through writing a message at the Atom talk page. All the relevant literature that I have seen (papers, books, articles) all describe modern x86 as decoding or translating x86 instructions into micro-ops. The number of micro-ops produced by the decoder depends on the complexity of the instruction. This is described in many ways (such as "this instruction produces n micro-ops") except for the term "divide" because nothing is divided into smaller bits.

Perhaps a good analogy is that if you have a BASIC "instruction" and it is compiled into machine code, is the BASIC instruction divided into smaller bits, or does it get interpreted as a sequence of lower-level instructions?

By interpreted, I suppose you mean translated, represented by, or similar. To be very precise: the program text (or tokenized format) is interpreted as that particular BASIC statement (not as lower-level instructions). This triggers the generation of a sequence of simpler instructions with the semantics (or meaning) of that BASIC statement divided among them. (An interpreter would, of course, instead perform a direct execution of a similar sequence.) HenkeB (talk) 10:51, 3 April 2009 (UTC)

Yes, I suppose so. A bad choice of words! :) Rilak (talk) 09:30, 5 April 2009 (UTC)

I must admit that my edits did not stress this enough. Perhaps I wasn't reading the article correctly, and I only noticed it recently. I think it has been fixed in the latest round of edits.

I realize that my edits must seem like edit warring and I must apologise if so. Regards, Rilak (talk) 08:20, 28 March 2009 (UTC)

Sorry for my late reply, I wasn't expecting an answer (on that retorical question). Regarding litterature, I belive any encyclopedia should avoid simple copying of ready-made wordings; instead, every formulation should go through the minds of (ideally) the initiated experts writing it (which is not original research btw).

I see your point, nothing physical, like instruction encodings, is divided, that absolutely true. However, if you try a slighly more abstract view, having the word instruction denote the semantics (the actions), instead of the physical representation, you should see that divide becomes much more natural. Also, as you know, one of the main points here is that the Atom does not divide most instructions into simpler tasks but merely translates them 1:1 into easily handled fixed-length encodings (that are still much larger than the "cache-efficient" x86-format).

I should have tried to emphazise this view as soon as I saw your comment: How is "divide" more descriptive? The opcode is separated from the function field? The register fields are split into half? Anyway, thanks for your tone in this reply, I appreciate it. Regards, HenkeB (talk) 10:51, 3 April 2009 (UTC)

Well, from an abstract point of view, I suppose "divide" does work.

In regards to the formulation of prose, I think using established terms has its benefits. One of them is that they are well defined in many reputable publications, so there is little likelihood that the prose would stray from the intended meaning. Too many times have I read articles from other encyclopedias and publications (including ones considered to be reliable sources by Wikipedia editors and cited in articles) where the author has decided to simplify a concept only to end up failing spectacularly. Of course, I am not saying that this is the case with the article in question.

Using established terms also maintains consistency with the rest of the world, so that Wikipedia are interoperable with the rest of the world. Another benefit is that it avoids confusion. Sometimes when something is described with different terminology, it is because it didn't quite fit the definition of the established terms. If we were to use different terms, it may be interpreted as such.

Despite all of the above, I don't feel strongly about the exact wording either way. Regards, Rilak (talk) 09:30, 5 April 2009 (UTC)

Yes, if a particular term is indeed well established and stable over time, we should definitely use it, but supported by explanatory prose that appeals to a previously uninformed reader's intuitive understanding. Many terms has several more or less reasonable meanings that changes over time and fashion, single common words given an overly specific usage in some narrow context, which then starts to compete with the original meaning. Naively copying such "established" terms tends to become a simple listing of buzzwords, something that's already far to common on WP. Instead, we should emphasize genuine understanding of fundamental concepts.

I agree that "simplified descriptions" sometimes end up strange or plain wrong. However, most topics may be described from several different points of view, and at various levels of abstraction and detail, so, sometimes, when the author is "failing spectacularly", it may perhaps be the reader that is a little to rigid to grasp it that way (no offense intended!). People think differently, so, when dealing with complicated subjects, a couple of alternative formulations is often a good thing (provided the article remains neat and well structured); it helps us serve a diverse audience better.

Naturally, I'm not expecting you to agree on everything above, instead, we probably have to agree to disagree. Regards, HenkeB (talk) 14:13, 7 April 2009 (UTC)

PowerPC

Regarding a PowerPC 620 article. Yes, If one/we/you can gather enough for one stand-alone article I'm supporting that. The reason to merge all 6xx articles into one was that there was too little for stand-alone articles. I'm happy that you are engaging the POWER3 article too. POWER4 and POWER5 is in pretty bad shape too.. We could perhaps do something there too. -- Henriok (talk) 16:33, 13 April 2009 (UTC)

I still think the G3 and G4 articles should be renamed. You have my blessing. I think it would be hard for someone to disagree with such a move. May I suggest "PowerPC 750" and "PowerPC 7400"? -- Henriok (talk) 15:18, 14 September 2009 (UTC)

Be bold! Since Apple left the PPC building I don't think we have to worry about Apple fans nor their claim to common name. That claim is getting weaker day by day anyway. But after reading through the naming conventions I actually agree with them, but not for these particular articles. I must be extremely biased :) -- Henriok (talk) 17:33, 14 September 2009 (UTC)

Rock

Nothing is wrong with the IEEE link, it's just not integrated into Rock article. And I don't understand why you even need to ask what's wrong with the link. You edit showed that you also think it's a mess, and that's why you did some copy-edits before you merged it back.

So be careful with what you put in the comment. Raysonho (talk) 15:54, 30 May 2009 (UTC)

M32R invention date

You added the date 1997 to the article. However on a PDF it says the first edition of the document was released on Dec 26, 2005. http://documentation.renesas.com/eng/products/mpumcu/rej09b0235_32185_186hm.pdf -- Frap (talk) 16:59, 27 June 2009 (UTC)

Appendix C of Computer Architecture: A Quantitative Approach (3rd edition) says M32R was introduced in 1997. Searching for "M32R" in Google News shows that there were mentions in 1996. Jim Turley, "Embedded Vendors Seek Differentiation" in Microprocessor Report, Vol. 11, No. 1, 1997-01-27 says a M32R microprocessor was introduced in 1996 on page 26. I don't think the date of a document means very much because the date is about the history of that document, not the architecture. Perhaps it should be changed to 1996? Rilak (talk) 06:05, 28 June 2009 (UTC)

NonStop

The article has remained completely unsourced since its creation in May of 2008. --Orange Mike | Talk 18:18, 2 July 2009 (UTC)

Is the quality of an article indicative of the notability of its topic? I do not believe it is. That said, I will see what I can do to improve the article, specifically its lack of references. Rilak (talk) 06:42, 3 July 2009 (UTC)

Excellent question on my talk page. I'm a historian by training, and cliometrics is not my forte; I don't program at all, and prefer a GUI, like the classic MacOS. (But I've got friends who ran big iron, including the creator of The Adventures of FORTRAN Man.) I am just averse to non-referenced articles, especially ones that seem to verge on the promotional. You've added some excellent sources, I suspect, but they need proper citation format as footnotes; at present they lack any sign of page numbers, or any indication as to what any given source is a reference for. (See WP:CITE.) --Orange Mike | Talk 14:11, 9 July 2009 (UTC)

1. If there is not substantial discussion of the importance of the equipment, then maybe it's not a good reference. 2. Words that set off my triggers include "optimized" "an extreme level of availability and data integrity" and "very reliable"! In each case, "Sez who?" Are there articles in the business press saying this about the equipment? --Orange Mike | Talk 14:45, 9 July 2009 (UTC)

Quad Core

What Consensus? I don't see any. I'm going to start a request for comment tomarrow. --Rockstone (talk) 13:33, 4 September 2009 (UTC)

Computer sizes template

Hi there, this is regarding your edit on Template:Computer sizes. You undid a few of my edits with the reason

Not all workstations are PCs; home computers are not PCs; not all desktops are PCs, workstations or home computers

However, I consulted the individual articles for workstation, home computer and desktop computer and found that home and desktop computers are regarded as personal computers exclusively. Workstation is a bit different, with the original workstations being differentiated from PCs, but the newer workstations seem to be PCs, since they use PC components.

Can you please clarify regarding this matter? Thanks. --CoolingGibbon (talk) 21:18, 14 October 2009 (UTC)

Sorry, but that edit was made ages ago and I don't remember the reason(s). But feel free to revert my edits if you wish. Rilak (talk) 09:38, 15 October 2009 (UTC)

Invitation

WikiProject Article Rescue Squadron Hello, Rilak. You have been invited to join the Article Rescue Squadron, a collaborative effort to rescue articles from deletion if they can be improved through regular editing. For more information, please visit the project page, where you can >> join << and help rescue articles tagged for deletion and rescue. Ikip (talk) 03:14, 4 December 2009 (UTC)

Pspboot and Adam2

Last month you PRODded these, and they were deleted. Undeletion has now been requested at WP:REFUND, so per WP:DEL#Proposed deletion I have restored them, and now notify you in case you wish to consider taking them to AfD. Regards, JohnCD (talk) 14:11, 16 August 2010 (UTC)

victoria

In view of this contested prod. Please add reliable sources to the article. It has been a WIP, as you call it, for 3 years without anyone adding a single source. GDallimore (Talk) 15:02, 20 October 2010 (UTC)

Paragraph length

After having a look at the previous versions of these articles, I think that the paragraphs were too long and should have been reduced in length. However, your changes are excessive in my opinion.

Some of this breaking apart of the paragraphs was needed. Sometimes articles are so bad when it comes to paragraph bunching that there is some "flying by the seat of your pants" editing you have to do.

If you can clean the edits up into something better and more readable, do so as needed -- anything is mostly better than what was previously existent.

I have designed a CPU specification from scratch, so feel free to read

• http://cbc.am/climate-prediction-CPU.pdf

Eyreland (talk) 08:32, 4 March 2011 (UTC)

Notifying people of an AfD

Hi. When you raise an AfD, it's good practice to notify the article's creator, and perhaps other major contributors, with {{subst:AfD-notice|article name|AfD discussion title}}. I admit that the instruction at WP:AFD#Notifying interested people says it is not required, but it helps avoid complaints like this one about RouterTech. Regards, JohnCD (talk) 21:37, 28 March 2011 (UTC)

RouterTech

You will find that many editors are willing to give articles relating to Linux or open source software a free pass. Insisting that they meet sourcing guidelines might do harm to the Great Cause, and that's what you're dealing with. Fortunately, most of those articles are not written in solution-speak, which is what annoys me more than anything else. - Smerdis of Tlön - killing the human spirit since 2003! 14:49, 30 March 2011 (UTC)

Adam2

I felt it should be kept from the beginning - now it has been - as per Routertech I think it warrants a pass. Mark^Dask 15:27, 2 April 2011 (UTC)

Fully associative cache and WP:HYPHEN

In WP:HYPHEN, the third use (regarding compound modifiers) explains when to use a hyphen, and the fourth bullet point says: "A hyphen is not used after a standard -ly adverb (a newly available home, a wholly owned subsidiary)". This also is in agreement with with most other style guides; grammarbook.com says "When adverbs not ending in -ly are used as compound words in front of a noun, hyphenate." The USDA also says "Do not use a hyphen after a standard -ly adverb (e.g., newly germinated seed)." and cites the Wikipedia Manual of Style, saying it takes precedence over the Chicago Manual of Style (but the CMOS also handles these constructions the same way). Wikipedia's MoS has had this recommendation for years. Try this in your favorite search engine: «hyphen "adverbs not ending in -ly"» (but omit the guillemets and keep the double quotes). Happy editing! Chris the speller ^yack 14:35, 20 April 2011 (UTC)

Punctuation that is standard in the literature would certainly have considerable weight in WP. But how "standard"? I refrained from removing the hyphen from "Doubly-fed electric machine", because roughly 80% of web hits used the hyphen. I still think about going back and changing it, because "Doubly fed electric machine" would certainly be understandable by WP readers. After all, 20% of the web sites use it without the hyphen, probably without causing any confusion. Engineers may expect the hyphen, but no doubt would understand the article without the hyphenation. Non-engineers would not expect the hyphen, so why startle them? I would be glad hear what kind of domination the hyphenated form of "fully associative cache" has achieved. As skilled as many engineers are with technology, it is sometimes at the cost of good punctuation. Chris the speller ^yack 02:08, 21 April 2011 (UTC)

A related issue I ran across was front-side bus. It seems to have been created as front side bus but moved without comment two years ago? Intel seems to consistently not use hyphen, so perhaps worth a move request. I do agree than "frontside bus" is more German than English, which is the only comment in the talk page. W Nowicki (talk) 17:58, 27 May 2011 (UTC)

System bus

Hello, it looks like you are one of the few with the patience to help improve the sorry state of the computer-related articles. So what do you think of my idea of expanding this one into a historic narrative with links to more specific articles, etc.? Then we can either change system bus model to a redirect, or do yet another RfD or Prod. The von Neumann architecture article also needs more help, but that can be done over time since the sources are myriad. The diagrams might also need some work, but I am not an .svg expert (yet?). Is this reasonable? Thanks for any feedback. W Nowicki (talk) 17:58, 27 May 2011 (UTC)

Oh yes, agree that more could certainly be added. That is why I rated it "start" since it is far from complete. Mostly I first wanted to add enough that it would survive a request for deletion. Especially the end needs to add the issues of "divergence" with multi-processors, cache levels and bus hierarchies, vs. smaller cheaper processors. I just had the sources handy for the earlier period so started with that. If I can get Inkscape to work, perhaps other articles could use diagrams too to cut through some of the jargon. W Nowicki (talk) 19:51, 28 May 2011 (UTC)

MIPS microprocessors category

Hi, you are right, I restored the category Category:MIPS_microprocessors. Sorry for the inconvenience caused. Thanks and grettings, Arpabone (talk) 00:07, 31 May 2011 (UTC)

Concerning closure of the AfD

Hello. Concerning the closure and relisting of the Natami AfD: I was approached by two uninvolved administrators who felt that although my rationale may be true, that my subsequent discussion with User:Tothwolf on my talk page gives off the impression that my rationale was based on my personal opinion on whether the magazine is a reliable source to establish notability. It was not, but with the ANI notice already surrounding the topic I felt there was no reason to go through the drama of another ANI or DRV and a fresh AfD might (have) result(ed) in no SPAs.--v/r - TP 13:38, 20 June 2011 (UTC)

.NET Rocks! Question

Hello Rilak I thank you for your feedback on the afd for .NET Rocks! I was wondering why do you feel so strongly about the deletion? There are many other podcasts that have pages such as http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TWiT.tv and related podcasts. Thank you Softdevusa (talk) 18:08, 27 June 2011 (UTC)

Just to let you know

You have been mentioned at Wikipedia:Missing Wikipedians. xOttawahitech (talk) 21:41, 10 May 2013 (UTC)

ArbCom elections are now open!

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Nomination for merging of Template:Motorola microcontrollers

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Speedy deletion nomination of Category:PowerPC implementations

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