Why 64 Bit SQL Server is faster

So this morning we had an interesting talk about whether or not Microsoft SQL Server x64 was any faster than x32. You better believe it is. Since 2005 Microsoft has been presenting videos like crazy on the speed advantages of x64. They are pretty dramatic. You can view a nice webcast on this very subject here.

Whilst certain lazy cretins on StackOverflow.com continue to question whether there is anything to be gained out an upgrade, let's understand why there is a tremendous speed boost in going to 64bit SQL Server.

1. You move 8 bytes of data around per operation or cycle, not 4. That is twice as much raw binary moving per cycle. A lot of SQL Server actions simply move bytes from point A to point B. A lot of things SQL does involves picking up an arbitrary bucket of bits and throwing it down somewhere. In the simplest scenario, given a fixed number of cycles, moving twice the number of bits per cycle automatically doubles the speed of movement, cutting movement time in half. Of course, other bottlenecks--such as IO bottlenecks--can express themselves, reducing this gain.
2. Your pathetic 32 bit chip and software still works like an x87. Consult any good CPU historians on the subject of the Intel 8087 math coprocessor. The bomb blast you will get from them will border on hysteria. The Intel 8087 is quite possibly the worst floating-point engine ever to make it to market. Most will tell you it is the slam-dunk worst, full-stop. Inside the body of your nice shiny 32bit CPU still v-fibs the heart of a wretched x87 coprocessor. In the 32 bit world, this is the only floating point unit guaranteed to be there for you, if you presume a i80486 processor or better. What does this mean? It means all your nice money, interest, passing percentages, quarterback efficiency indexes, Loan-to-Value calcs, etc. run slower than they might otherwise. I don't even want to talk about something real-number intensive like 3d.
   
3. AMD64 has a nice new shiny math coprocessor. When they created the x64 instruction set, AMD decided to dispense with the x87 architecture completely. They replaced it with a beautiful architecture entirely predicated on the SSE2 instruction set. Everybody likes SSE2/SSE3. It is pretty straight-forward, and you get kick-ass performance. I don't know of a better way to do Floating Point. This means all your loan-to-value, interest, index rate, real profit, liability calcs execute faster; a hell of a lot faster.
4. You can use a ton of RAM, and you better. This is the target Microsoft has pounded with countless artillery shots. Every last time you hit the RAM cache for data rather than the hard disk, you get a speed-up of 100:1. This is no joke. High-speed electronic RAM is several orders of magnitude faster than a mechanical disk drive. When you go over 8GB of RAM, which is cheap and easy to do, it is possible for many corporations to cache entire mission critical databases in RAM. It is the easiest way in the world to speed up your transactions 100 fold and save a ton of wear and tear on your disk array. Everything gets written through to your RAID array in a lazy fashion, after the sparks fly.
5. Your price per tpmC drops through the floor. If you consult the Transaction Processing Performance Counsil, you will discover the lowest cost solutions always involve x64 code. I don't give a damn whether it is Windows, Linux, Oracle, or Microsoft: The solution is always 64 bit, and not 32 bit. Have a look here and prove me wrong.

So there you have it friends. If you haven't gone 64 bit, you are just plain wrong. Don't give me any shit about Visual Fox Pro either.

Game 14 2009

All 32 teams in the NFL played their 14th game this week. It was a hard week for my anointed teams. As you recall I picked the following teams in the preseason:

1. Colts (won--barely)
2. Dolphins (lost to the Titans)
3. Saints (lost to the Cowboys)
4. Packers (lost to the Steelers)

This wasn't the end of the struggles. The Cardinals had to fight to beat the Lions. It looked like they were going to crush them early, but then the Lions came back. The Vikings, a team I have never bandwaggoned with in 2009, dropped an ugly stinker in Carolina. Of the solid playoff teams, only the Eagles made a solid effort and won well.

Worst of all, my Rams got up on their hind legs and fought the good fight against the Texans, but they failed to win. Maybe my Rams were offended by my suggestion that they have packed it in for the year. They decided to fight before finally packing it in. Once again, I am extremely pleased with our outstanding defense. Once again, I am utterly horrified by our pathetic offense, and our inability to score points. We need a serious offensive overhaul, just like the one we did between 1998 and 1999.

You could make an argument that this weekend was only kind to 3 playoff teams:

1. The Chargers (they won, and the Broncos lost)
2. The Cardinals (they won, and the 49ers lost)
3. The Colts (they won again, and they are the only undefeated team in the league)

I would tend to agree with Jamie Dukes, regarding the New Orleans Saints: This loss is a blessing in disguise. The Saints have been winning thrillers lately, instead of delivering all-out beat-downs, the way they once were. Now they took a beating at the hands of Dallas. I do agree with the notion that this will give them a renewed and refreshed focus in practice. They now know that they are not immortals. They know they can be beaten They know they need to improve during these two weeks before entering the playoffs.

A friend of mine, who is a 49er fan expressed a similar thought when he said: "I agree with Bill Walsh's philosophy: Let them loose 1 and only 1." This can have a focal effect on a championship caliber team.

Also, the loss really didn't hurt the Saints at all. The Vikings turned right around and dropped an ugly game to the Panthers. One more victory locks up home-field advantage through the NFC tournament.

Pedro Almodóvar

Straight up: I hate Pedro Almodóvar. I am not going to beat around the bush about it. I hate his Gay ass, and I hate him with a passion. I hate him because he is one string guitarist, strumming one note, all fucking day, every day of his life, ad nauseum. The guy has made something like 31 movies, and all of them are about exactly the same subject. They have just one theme, and one theme only. He is a one trick pony. He is a one card shark.

Just about any other film maker who was so repetitive, redundant, and uncreative would have certainly come under fire by now for being a cretin. Not Pedro. You see, he is a Gay Latin male, and he is artistic, and he understands women better than any other modern artist. We must bow down and worship his big Gay ass. It is a flaming Gay ass, and this fact shall enhance our worship of it.

Ordinarily, I would simply brush off a guy like this after first contact and never think about him again. This has become impossible for a good reason. I cannot believe that this guy has approximately 1 billion female fans in North America, South America, and Europe. Most of the women I have admired over the past 15 years think he is simply marvelous. It is obnoxious to hear this repeatedly when you know otherwise. Now, there is a new PA movie called Los abrazos rotos (broken embraces) which every Latin female must rush out to see immediately.

Let me give you the scoop on Pedro Almodóvar: The nominal plot of his movies (what ever movie it is) is always a formality and decoy. The movie is never really about what it pretends to be about. Every movie is always about the same thing. All of his movies are about middle-class, Latin women, approaching middle age, somewhere between 29-41, who do not have a stable or satisfactory man in their lives, they are struggling in life, and they are neurotic. As he has said several times in his movies, they are cows without bells. They don't belong to anybody. They don't have a firm rock to stand on. Ergo, they are neurotic as hell.

Test me and see if I am wrong about this. You go have a look for yourself. You find me just one case where there is an exception. I triple-dog-dare you. If you think you have found one negative test case, you better look under twice. I guarantee I can prove you wrong.

You would think that the Feminists would attack a guy like this. Wasn't Feminism supposed to be about female empowerment and independence? We don't need men around to make our lives complete? We seek more than marriage and children? Go and do everything men do? We don't build our lives around a man? I thought that was what they were preaching?

Nope, the Feminists never attack Pedro Almodóvar. This is strange given the implicit theme that Feminist ideology was a mistaken. Unspoken yet implicit inside all of Pedro Almodóvar's movies is the constant indication that Feminism allowed Heterosexual men to have the milk without buying the cow. That is why they are now cows without bells.

I am about to communicate a difficult thought to you. I happen to concur with Pedro Almodóvar's basic philosophy. I happen to know for a fact that the overwhelming majority of women in this world, sans a good man, and between the ages of 29-41, are neurotic as hell about it. I happen to know that they can't be happy like this, and that life is a struggle for them. I happen to know for a fact that Feminism busted a sacred deal that took thousands of years for generations of women to construct (to their own benefit). Still, I don't need to see that proof text 31 fucking times. Please, make your fucking point once or twice, and then move on to some other subject matter. You cannot be considered a creative genius if you keep hammering the same 1 note on a 1 string guitar.

I also happen to think that the amazing popularity of Pedro Almodóvar is an utterly pathetic commentary on the cultural state of affairs that the Sexual Revolution and Feminism have brought us to. Also it proves that women just love to have a big Gay man around who understands them. What a good BFF!

Quick comment on CBS's Draft Prospects

Just discovered a very interesting page here: http://www.cbssports.com/nfl/draft/prospectrankings

Of course, this is just the early opinion of one group. It has been done long before the final draft order has been established, and it has been done prior to the combine. Real millage will vary like crazy.

I'll tell you what I like about it:

1. Colt McCoy & Tim Tebow are the top ranked QBs, and they both get 1st round rankings. It is good to see these two young men get some respect.
   
2. Ndomukong Suh is the top prospect
3. Taylor Mays is way up the list

I'll tell you what I don't like about it:

1. The list does not seem to include any of the under-classmen who have declared already (e.g. Clausen)
2. Terrance (mount) Cody is ranked way too low at #24. I can almost assure you he will go a lot higher than that, fatass and all. The nose tackle is a crucial position for all 3-4 teams, and Cleveland happens to be in need.
3. I don't know about this Russell Okung guy at the #2 slot. Yes, he is a Offensive Tackle. Maybe he is the best one in the draft. No, that doesn't automatically mean he will be the #2 pick, even if the Rams or Bucs are drafting there.

Overall, I find this list intriguing. I am going to study it some more and keep up to date as they post changes. This is good.

Iron Man 2: First Preview

Over the past 5 years, just a few truly enjoyable and outstanding movies have come out during blockbuster season. One of those films was Iron Man (1). I loved the comic. I loved the movie. Now we are about to get the SQL. It is due out in just about 5 months: May 2, 2010 to be precise.

Paramount and Apple.com/trailers just tag-teamed to release the first movie preview from that upcoming release. It looks a tad silly, but very fun. However, this preview has done nothing to ease my anxiety that we are about to witness another example of Truly Rancid Sequel Syndrome.

As I have mention several times before, I actually took a film appreciation course at UCLA film school. It was my only 'fun' course while at the University. I took it when I was suffering a serious case of burnout senior-itice in my final quarter. It was very memorable. It was a lot of fun.

Probably my favorite chapter in the text book was titled Truly Rancid Sequel Syndrome. As text book explained, truly rancid sequels are those horrible follow-ups to very good movies. Movies like the last two Pirates of the Caribbean certainly qualify. The first was very good. The last two were unmitigated catastrophes. That might be too charitable a description for the final installment. The last was an unqualified motion picture disaster; a movie guaranteed to terminate careers and ruin lives. It's almost as bad as the Rams 2009 season.

Steve Sabol will make a worse film when he has to do the highlight real for the Rams 2009 season. That one will ruin careers and terminate lives.

So why am I sweating Iron Man 2? Why should a I fear a rancid sequel in this case? Let me just coach you up on TRSS and you can reach a conclusion on your own. The following sequence of events almost always gives rise to TRSS:

1. You have an unexpected hit, you make a ton of money, and the critics praise you.
2. The studio owns or has perpetual rights on all the intellectual property.
3. The studio has binding contracts on all the talent on the roster: Director, actors, etc.
4. The studio immediately orders up a sequel, and wants it delivered in 2 years or less.
5. A budget is cut and printed prior to the script being written.
6. A lot of re-writes occuring during the course of the production.
7. Because of weaknesses in the story and continuity breaks, a certain amount of re-shooting goes on after primary production wraps.
8. Because of weaknesses in the story and continuity breaks, sound room re-recording of dialog occurs, and their dubs on the sound track.
9. Because of continuity breaks in the story, editors continue to try to make story edits on the cutting room floor.

Let's examine Iron Man 2. Let's first declare what we know to be a fact:

1. Paramount had a somewhat surprising hit with Iron Man 1, slightly out of season.
2. The critics praised Iron Man with a 93% T-Meter on RottonTomatoes.com
3. The people loved it.
4. It made a ton of money.
5. People bought the Blu-Ray and loved it some more
6. Paramount held and still holds perpetual franchise rights on Iron Man movies.
7. Paramount had binding contracts with the director and almost all the members of the cast.
8. After just one big opening week, Paramount did an official press release indicating that they were going to do Iron Man 2. They were already doing the legal and budget paperwork to make it happen.
9. The delivery date was supposed to be late in 2009, or perhaps early in 2010.
10. The date has been pushed out to almost exactly 2 years from initial release.
11. The normal time-table for delivery of a movie is 5 years.

Now for the rumors and rumors of rumors:

1. There was no script for Iron Man 2 before the sequel was ordered.
2. The legal and budget paperwork was done before the first draft of the script was ever written. (AWE SHIT!)
3. There are rumors and rumors of rumors that they did some re-writes as they shot.
4. There are rumors and rumors of rumors that they did some studio dub work.
5. There are rumors and rumors of rumors that the editors are cleaning up the mess; kinda like my knee surgeon removing a bit of torn cartilage and trimming my meniscus.

Of these things, by far the most important risk factor in TRSS is the printing of the budget before the screen play is even written. How can you print a budget before you have written the screen play? This leads to all manner of problems. I am talking about big time problems.

Now the authorities at Paramount would certainly pooh-poo this whole analysis. They would tell me I don't understand the business. This is how the business works. You can leverage the work you did before to produce a movie faster in sequel. Iron Man has a thousand stories pre-rolled and visualized with story boards, etc., bullshit, etc.

None of these excuses explains why there are so many dreadful sequels when you print the budget before the screen play. You need to explain the deadly correlation between printing the budget before the screen play and TRSS. Then come talk to me about how I don't understand the business.

Jesus Christ! Now the Rams have Swine Flu!

http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2009/football/nfl/wires/12/17/2020.ap.fbn.rams.swine.flu.1st.ld.writethru.0230/

Damn... What else can go wrong this season??? I swear, in 30 years of watching the Rams, this is the worst season I have ever seen! Injuries galore, horrible QB play, just one WR who is a true #2, a psycho guard, and now the Swine Flu shuts down our practices for the Houston game! I am becoming certain that we will have the #1 pick this year. I have little reason to doubt that we will finish this year with just 1 victory. Tampa will probably win again before we do. This is truly dreadful.

If my Rams defeat Houston, Coach Kubiac will be fired that evening. He won't see the morning in as head coach of the Texans.

Have a look at our injured reserve list:

1. Free Safety #21 Oshiomogho Atogwe
2. Left Guard #63 Jacob Bell
3. Wide Receiver #14 Keenan Burton,
4. Defensive Tackle #90 Adam Carriker
5. Wide Receiver #19 Laurent Robinson (who used to wear #11)
6. Quarter Back #10 Marc Bulger (he is not actually on the IR but should be)

That is 6 key starters with a 7th (Incognito) just released this week. That is just about 32% of the starting lineup out with injuries as we face the Texans. Some of the best players on the team on that list; particularly Atogwe and Carriker.

And now the dreaded H1N1 Swine Flu! Horrible!

One thing we should be aware of and take into consideration is the conspiracy theory known as 'pack it in for the season'. There are people close to the NFL who will tell you that it is wise to pack it in for the season if you are suffering a massively botched loosing campaign as we are.

Under this policy, you place as many starters on the IR as you can. You release trouble makers. You bring in scrubs who won't be with the team next year. You start the worst and cheapest team you can. You salary cap is positively impacted by these moves. You don't waste good men wrecking your draft position in meaningless games. You effectively throw the rest of the season, guarantying your draft position, and enhancing your free-agency money pool.

If you need a franchise QB, you usually can't draft too high. Your season ticket holders may never forgive you for packing it in, and calling it quits, but if you are planning to move the team anyway...

As a quick aside, I personally don't believe we need a #1 pick to acquire a franchise QB in this 2010 draft, but it is nice to be certain you can get what you need. I think the best prospects are going to be found in the 2nd round or later. If Jevan Snead does not declare for the draft, I would not use my #1 for a QB if I am Devany. I might well take Ndamukong Suh.

There is another conspiracy theory out there which says the Rams are intentionally bad this season because:

1. The Rams want to fall out of the top 25% of NFL stadium revenues so they can break the lease on the Edward Jones Dome.
2. Georgia's kids have even less money that she did.
3. Georgia's kids have more financial problems than she did.
4. Devany knew he needed a total rebuild from scratch

The good Doctor on the NFL Network recently told us to blow up the ship. I think he didn't keep up with events during the off-season of 2009. We blew up the ship at that time. The explosion occurred sometime between March and April of 2009. What you are looking at is the aftermath of that explosion. This is the wreckage of the Titanic sitting on the bottom of the Atlantic.

We are going to try to raise the Titanic in 2010.

One final word: If the Rams really have confirmed cases of H1N1 on the team, why are we taking the field against the Texans? We could spread the virus to the entire NFL! We should just yield/concede the victory to Houston and not take the field. This is a situation where the health of the league is at stake as we move rapidly towards the playoffs. Certainly, we Rams have nothing to gain by taking the field against Houston, especially if we have already packed it in for the season.

O.S.I. Umenyiora

So, the rumors have it that O.S.I. Umenyiora is in trouble in New York. Umenyiora was benched before the Cowboy game for a lack of production. The move was attributed to he head coach Tom Coughlin, but it is rumored to have to come from new Defensive Coordinator Bill Sheridan. As you know, he was coach Spagnuolo's replacement in New York.

Osi bounced back well after the benching, but the Giants did not defeat the Eagles. The Eagle defense hung a 40-burger on the once-proud Giant defense. Every media outlet in New York is weeping and lamenting the loss of coach Spagnuolo and they are pointing the finger at Bill Sheridan. The funny thing is that Sheridan is pointing the finger at guys like Osi, whilst Osi is covering Sheridan's ass. Osi has tried to exonerate Sheridan in media stories like this one.

Rumor has it that the Giants may release a guy like Osi rather than fire a guy like Sheridan. That would be a mistake. Still, it could be an extremely profitable mistake for the Rams. Do you think Mr. Umenyiora would like to play for Coach Spags again? Do you think he is lamenting the loss of yesteryear? Do you think the Rams could use Umenyiora regardless of whether Leonard Little retires or not?

I am almost certain Coach Spagnuolo is watching this developing situation with great interest.