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luajit buffer serialization is amazing fast and also surprisingly very space efficient. this should really be at the top of the thread.


long time, bravo Mike! is there a youtube of all the VU coding comps submissions while it was running. think it was 2 or 3 years the comp ran for?


we are actually doing that now at https://fmad.io for SDR instead of raw oscilloscope ADC. SDR is about an order of magnitude less data e.g. 6GS/sec instead of 60GS/sec and Matlab as the backend instead of Python.. as its a bit faster when mining terabytes of data for that ah-ha wtf bit.

Surprisingly cool going from raw IQ/analog data to ethernet frames much like the op has written.


Indeed awsome hardware to code for. It was amusing when the Sony guys joked people are writing their VU assembler in Excel. To make it easier to mentally keep track of the instructions in each pipe.


This is incredibly validating. I once wrote an Excel spreadsheet to keep track of register allocation in assembly and have felt ashamed ever since


The architecture and design of PS1/2/3 were driven from Tokyo, where as PS4/5/+ are driven from the US. It happened because the internal corporate structure changed significantly, leading the design to be heavily influenced by game dev community vs hardware engineers.

As such... its sad as we will never see any new crazy ass hardware architectures going forward.


Is there any throughput performance numbers published?


Pheon? Aaron? Old mate from radelaide? If so, see this.. https://youtu.be/247GkX94jPc

.... But anyway, I am not a believer in this because a lot of data that I'm aware of flies to the cloud already pre-compressed. Not because it saves hard space, but because it saves bandwidth and time during transfer from user land. I've never seen any algorithm take a compressed file and smash it down to anything less than 98%. Maybe I'm a loon living in a niche area though.


God dam wtf! Catch up with you offline :)


I'd be quite surprised if it bested zstd.


Not possible, write bandwidth of tape is not very high.

My guess is they have a cabinet / 42U worth of HDD arrays, by the numbers they need ~ 176Gbps write bandwidth which is totally possible even in half a cabinet.

400TB worth of SSDs @ 176Gbps write bandwidth is also very possible, would be ~ 4U expect but extremely expensive.


Peanuts. Japans labor market structure is based on the army/military mode of operation.

Imagine your skilled with a riffle because.. you like to shoot stuff out on the farm. Sign up for the army and you will be shipped to bootcamp where they teach you how to shoot "correctly", polish your shoes and make your bed and most importantly chain of command.

Note: commanding office says jump, you say how high.

You have your platoon where everyone entered at the same time, your all buddies, get shat on by the peps one year ahead of you and everyone progress at the same pace.

Note: skill as a good shot has no relevance to your rank and pay.

After you have put in time you can advanced in rank and thus pay. Get married / kids theres additional benefits.

Note: your rank and pay are directly related to years of service.

Unlike the army, you will not get any medals, heroics of jumping on a grenade to save the team are frowned upon. Its better to hold a meeting with the team, to clarify what the grenade is, check all possible outcomes, investigate every tiny detail by which time everyone is dead. Key point is everyone, the dead part is largely irrelevant.

After some time, your buddies seem to like you and your leading the platoon. Congratulations you have now advanced your career to the fast track lane. Moving slightly faster than your peers as they are "workers" and not management.

Note: fast track has nothing to do with your shooting skill.

.. and so on and so on.

source: lived and worked Tokyo for 10+ years.


Its better to hold a meeting with the team, to clarify what the grenade is, check all possible outcomes, investigate every tiny detail by which time everyone is dead. Key point is everyone

This was also my experience working for a US subsidiary of a Japanese multinational.

They do things very very deliberately. Which in some fields is a good thing. But that doesn't work all that well when competing against companies that "move fast and break things". Or even against companies that operate at a non-glacial pace.

Occasionally I would have loved to scream: "JUST MAKE A FUCKING DECISION!" But that's not generally part of their culture.

To be fair, there were also maverick groups within the company that did move fast and were able to compete quite successfully. But they were the exception.


Yup, there are exceptional engineering talent in these mega corps, rare but it does exist. Usually the talent gets filtered by Division X progression. Eventually the best end up in Division 1, which is good but it takes a long time for this process to do its magic... but thats ok you`ve signed up for 30 years of service.

Thats the theory, sometimes it works in practice, sometimes other shit screws it all up.


This is a really funny comment.

But it's entirely from an individualists perspective.

Maybe your 'shooting skill' at the end of the day is not as important as your life-long commitment to the cause?

You know the African proverb: "If you want to go fast, go alone, if you want to go far, go as a group"

Well, building a nation is 'going far' and can't be done on the basis of individuals all competing to out-do each other.

When it comes to 99% of things, surely some are a little better than others, some work harder than others, but really, 'we're all a commodity' in the long run. Even those who are spectacularly talented require legions of supporting people.

I'd also argue that they are not putting completely morons in charge, and that in the end, probably the better hands are getting promoted ultimately.

Also recognize that even the most nimble and entrepreneurial organizations are inherently pyramid-ish, and it gets really narrow at the top. There's not a lot of room for promotion - and that it might be considered selfish and bombastic to be demanding 'special recognition' for your efforts, if everyone is 'putting in effort'.

Consider that it (was) also a Japanese trait to not lay people off: this was shameful. Instead, your dignity was respected on some level, and you got to do a 'nothing job' all day at least to keep up appearances and keep your salary.

This is not so much an authoritarian structure as it is communitarian one.

Japan is a tiny island with few natural resources and yet somehow is one of the wealthiest and most advanced nations on earth, I suggest that these types of social structures are exactly why this is ... which comes at the cost of individual aspiration.


Wow!!! Can’t believe it’s so hierarchical.


In corporate Japan, its even numbered too. Software Division 1, 2, 3, 4, 5

Platoon, Company, Battalion 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 etc.

Of course the goal is to get into Division 1, as its the most prestigious.


Am seriously pissed at this. MS has been slowly acquiring all the tools used for my business, its like surround and siege warfare. Skype, Linkedin, now GitHub..

The time horizons on these kinds of acquisitions are 5 years out. In that time you`ll log into Windows 20, single sign in to Skype, Linkedin, Github all re-branded, all re-written code, with messed up ELUA and a shitty product.

Dont believe todays fluff and BS, the end game is many years out.


According to the recent update of the Japanese Telecommunications act, its illegal to record the packet payloads without a court order. However recording the headers, e.g. TCP headers if fair game.

So its perfectly legal for ISPs and agencies to record the metadata. Then again Japan dosent have freedom of the press and many other things you might expect.


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