(public draft)
Samsung Electronics, Co., Ltd., one of the worlds greatest advanced
semiconductor producer, announced the latest of it's popular ARM11
based System on a Chip (SoC) solutions, the RORIS6440 "Rails in
Silicon" web-application processor. Based on the Samsung’s advanced
45nm low power CMOS process technology, the "Rails in Silicon" chip
offers a high performance, low power and cost effective solution for
next generation web applications.
The System on a Chip consists of 4 subsystems occupying each 1/4 of
the SoC :
a) The ruby language interpreter in silicon
b) The ruby gems subsystem (Xilinx FPGA)
c) The Rails Framework subsystem
d) The normalization FPGA (normalizing inconsistencies of the other 3
subsystems)
The RORIS6440 web-application processor is available in samples for
selected customers. It is scheduled for volume shipment in the fourth
quarter of this year. The chip is housed in a 13×13 FBGA package with
a ball pitch of 0.65mm.
···
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Yukuhiro Matsumoto, the ruby language designer commented:
"Samsung engineers gave me some requirements for the necessary code-
refactoring, in order to simplify the integration of the core
interpreter into silicon. I can say that they were really professional
till the latest cell of their body. And they listen, too! I said to
them "I'm passionate about ruby, and many people love it". They said:
"Don't worry, we will place some hearts at the side of each wafer with
an inscription "With love, Ruby". - Well, they did it. I'm sitting
here at my electron microscope (a present from Samsung's CTO), looking
at the wafer's inscription. Just Lovely!"
Asked what happened with the code-refactoring, Mr. Matsumoto replied:
"I don't know, I got problems with my stomach after one day doing the
refactoring. It was finally outsourced to undisclosed contractor, I
think somewhere in Europe, but am not sure."
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David Heinemeier Hansson, the designer of the initial Rails framework
commented:
This is the natural flow of things. Several people have contributed to
new versions of the Rails framework (which were build based on much
more specifications than the initial one. They increased the speed and
stability of the Ruby interpreter. Even a "Computer Science Company"
got involved, increasing the speed of web-server execution to 30%.
Twitter has twitted like crazy in order to make things work - but then
they moved to J...!
Still, we we're not able to catch up with J... implemented systems -
and in no way with systems implemented in the so called "King of
Languages" (C++). After one year of reworking ruby and Ruby on Rails,
we went nuts. Even a whole book "REWORK" didn't help - things become
even worser, and people started to want 3 working days in summer.
One step before we were forced to move to J [Mr. Hansson always got a
hick-up when trying to say "Java"], Samsung contacted us with the
offer to "go silicon".
The chip increases the execution speed of rails applications to a
factor of 5 to 10 (compared to mainstream intel/amd chips), and
reduces the daily restarts to just 1 to 3 (in a typical Rails
application).
And communication with demanding Rails developers and users has become
really easy:
"Get used to it, it's silicon.".
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Rails developer and ruby contributor Tenderlove commented:
"OMG! I feel so happy. I went to the FAB an hugged all the 40 workers
in the high-sterility environment, giving each and every of them a few
of my favorite flowers. Ok, I've ruined their clean-room, knocking-out
the production for 2 weeks. But who cares. OMG!!! A CHIP!!!"
http://www.sciencephoto.com/media/347991/view
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Ryan Davis (aka "The Release Berserker") said:
"I am very proud that a complete RubyGems subprocessor was integrated.
Eric Hodel and I insisted that the subsystem will be field-
programmable, thus we can still release code fast (and depracate
api's).
Samsung engineers understood perfectly. They integrated the rubygems
subsystem into the 6th generation Xilinx's Spartan-6 FPGA Family,
right into the the chip. I have no idea what this chip is about. All
that I know is, that I can require 'roris_fpga_upload' and then push a
new release by ... (forgot the new API call, I've refactored it
already 3 times).
Anyway, I like my title. I'm Davis, the Release Berserker - and this
will stay even with silicon, thank's to the excellent team at
Samsung."
http://www.xilinx.com/products/silicon-devices/fpga/spartan-6/
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James Edward Gray II commented:
"I've written books about ruby, and half of the stuff I've documented
and explained, was refactored and normalized away, in order to make
ruby integratable in silicon." he told to the reporter in a slight sad
tone. "How does it look now, people ask me now, why did I wrote books
about those 'features', instead of normalizing them away."?' he then
continues with tears dropping from his eyes "They even ask me, why I
didn't saw those inconsistencies all those years, why I documented
them like features. Didn't I know? Or did I just want to publish
books, thus I'm called an expert?".
After a few seconds of silence he stood up and shouted "the worst
thing is, that Samsung selected this Zombie named Lazaridis in order
to normalize and refactor the source-code base, thus it becomes able
to be integrated. This guy knows nothing about ruby, even not "puts",
how can he normalize the language?"
Gladly, Tenderlove was present, and gave him five rations of hugs, and
some flowers that Samsung engineers had trowed after him (those from
the clean room). So "little James" (as Tenderlove calls him tenderly)
calmed down soon and added with a great smile:
"Well, I guess I'll write a new book now: "Ruby on Rails in Silicon"
Reference for Beginners. Thank you, Samsung!"
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The Ruby Core Developers announced simply "We love our spaghetti-code.
It's a good code. And only we can grasp it. That's good, this should
stay this way. Chips are not necessary."
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Mr. Lazaridis, the first ever seen "troll" which solves C-core-level
language-design issues, commented:
"The truth is, that the hype around Rails had opened the doors to the
headquarter of the Korean Chip-Giant. A java hating CTO (his wife left
him for the highest-paid Korean Java-CTO) introduced Rails to some
departments. The departments started to implement their applications
themselves (as they hated their IT guys), and had a productivity boost
of a factor around 5 to 10. It spread quickly within the company, even
a dedicated (but unofficial) IT department was introduced, referred to
as "Section 31"."
Lazaridis continues in his typical criticizing tone "Then the problems
and the productivity loss started. The ROM methodology (Relational to
Object Mapping, the reverse of ORM - Object Relational Mapping)
negates most benefits of the Object Orientation, making the new
"Rails-
Nija's" collapse and then pay $400 and more for a simple advertisement
to find "Rails Experts". Rails Experts which know, that Rails has it's
natural limits, dictated by laws of physics and mathematics. But it's
a job, and they do it."
Lazaridis continued straight and openly, not afraid to loose even the
last tiny opportunity for a contract within the ruby domain. He stated
the most relevant fact, which everyone knows, but no one want's to
speak out:
"The technology-lock-in machinery of Rails worked nice. Everything is
reinvented, reimplemented, renamed, presented with fun, love and
things opposite to what people hate. But how deep got Samsung
trapped?. The answer is: VERY deep. The financial departments
estimated the "lock-out" costs, and finally found out that producing a
new chip would be much cheaper than getting Rails specialists from
overseas to solve the problems or to migrate away from Rails. This
solution had the additional benefit from preventing the CTO from
committing suicide. Who want's to admit publicly that he has been
trapped by a marketing machine? This simply does not happen after the
lessons that Windows 3.x teached."
With a smile in his face, Lazaridis told the reporter:
"Many people would get a stroke, if they'd know that I was the
undisclosed subcontractor, who normalized (with a self-selected
distributed team of 3 people) the ruby-core, and created the basic
SystemVerilog2009 simulations. Please don't write this, thus everyone
stay's happy!" [Editors note: Mr. Gray released this information
already.]
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Wake up.
Could it become really that worse?
Possibly not, but anyone who assesses the code-quality of the ruby-
source-codes know:
The Ruby Language System needs a rework, immediately.
- Stricter processing rules, especially for issue-tracking and coding
- Clean, decoupled, strict modular and self-documenting code
- Open project which invites for code-level contributions
It's up to the professional companies around ruby to do something, to
act. To assess the code-quality, to admit that there's a major
problem, and to ensure that someone dives into the sources and
refactors them, reworks them.
Who can do such a rework?
See a suggestion here, which contains a work-example based on the
vm_method.c unit:
http://dev.lazaridis.com/base/wiki/RubyRework
.
