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Perfect Pair: PowerPC And Linux
grubby writes: "A member of my local LUG NCOLUG has written an article in LinuxJournal about what the PowerPC and Linux could do together. He brings up many good points about the history of the WinTel PC and what he hopes the future may bring. I have personally had numerous conversations with him about his ideas and would like to know what the slashdot population thinks about them. Check it out, it's a good read." This piece takes a somewhat broad view of things -- which makes sense, given that radical changes can take time to grow in the background before they actually make public waves. Also of interest on the PPC front: kilaasi writes "Looks like IBM is getting back to it's PowerPC which is/was/will be co-developed with Motorola. IBM has some tricks that will increase speed and at the same time decrease power consumption." Here's CNET's brief story on upcoming PPC developments."
Yes, actually, I do. ;-)
Many things have changed since the mid '90s. Computers have become ubiquitous. Back then, they were still a very expensive and somewhat uncommon item, even if they were gaining in popularity. You didn't find them in millions of homes across the US, as well as throughout the world.
The PowerPC processor never had a real opportunity to break into the general PC market, because of lack of support. When it was first introduced, Apple was the only major non-embedded user, and shortly after, IBM. Availability of PowerPC CPU's and motherboards was never at the same level as Intel compatible parts. Additionally, that was a different world of PCs. Five years ago, it was almost unheard of for someone without a technical degree to build their own computer, while it's become very common today.
Also, on the Operating System front, if you built a PowerPC system, what OS would you run? Until Windows NT was released, with PowerPC support, there was no Microsoft compatible operating system. There was MacOS, if your BIOS would support it, but then why not just buy a Macintosh? Also, shortly after NT 4 was released, Microsoft stopped suporting NT on PowerPC.
Today, there is a very viable Operating System in Linux that can be run on it, and two lesser known alternatives, BeOS and NetBSD (and OpenBSD) which can be used on PowerPC systems. None of these existed in a viable form five years ago.
Five years ago, if I were building a PowerPC system myself, I would be worried about what OS I would put on it, what applications I would run, and where I would find them. With Linux and the plethora of available, that question has an easy answer.
Five years ago, if there were PowerPC CPU's and motherboards available to build a PC with, I wouldn't have cared much. I didn't have any use for it. Today, if they were available, I'd be among the first in line to purchase one. So yeah, again, I do think things would be different today. ;-)
Topher
What I think we really need, before we'll see the PowerPC really take off, is the ability to build PowerPC Systems.
For example, if I want to build an Intel (or compatible) system, I buy a CPU, a motherboard, memory, any devices I need, I put it together, and boom. A system is born.
I can even do that with Alpha systems, though it's a little more work.
However, has anyone ever seen PowerPC CPU's and motherboards available anywhere?
I love PowerPC systems, I think they're absolutely amazing. However, I don't have the $10k to drop on an RS/6000, and I have no interest in purchasing an over-price Macintosh computer. They're too restrictive and limited.
As soon as I can buy a PowerPC CPU and motherboard somewhere, though, and build a system myself, I'll be the first in line to do it. Linux runs amazingly well on PowerPC processors.
Topher
Intel and Apple have both admitted it in their digital hub rhetoric. Desktop pc's are losing their sex appeal. Rich Gold from Xerox Parc's "Ubi-Comp" is the way things are going. For recent terms...that's ubiquitous computing. "puters are all around us. Cell Phones, Palms...Microwave Ovens.
Do they run on x86....hell no. the only ubiquitous computing machine that could benefit from that 20+ year old architecture is a toaster...'cause the heat could do some good there.
Own a tivo?....guess what...you have a Linux PowerPC box in your house that you rely on more than your x86 Linux box.
That's how this is going to go down. You're going to buy all these gadgets that have nifty comm features. the PowerPC takes a whole lot less energy and MHZ to be just as powerful as an x86. Guess what Linux will be in your embedded systens....the one who sucks less.....power that is.
The other end of this fork is the lifespan of hardware. x86 PC's usually are useful for 3 years before bloat renders them useless. Macs usually take 6 years to be annoyingly slow.
Seriously...I bought the Mac I'm typing this on in 1996. It was only a month ago that I had to switch to SuSE on it to keep it tolerable.
so yeah. If your goal is world domination of Open Source...then x86 Linux is a pitfall. The landscape is moving away from PC's and into nifty gadgets running PPC or ARM.
Stop wasting your time with that packard bell in the dumpster and focus on todays cool tech. embedded Linux on PPC...and some cool desktop hardware as well
"Let him go, Ralph. He knows what he's doing." --Otto Mann (simpsons)
...might actually materialize from the years of vapor.
bplan just a couple of weeks ago released images of their prototype PPC ATX motherboards. Part of the reason for this board is to appeal to us Amiga nuts so we can run AmigaOS clones like MorphOS on it, but Ralph has said that the board will be fairly generic and that Linux will also run on it. (Which is a good idea if bplan actually wants some serious sales volume.)
So maybe some day, a sensibly-priced PPC box will be available (well, actually iMacs aren't such a bad deal).
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If Apple can use its knowledge and influence to help convert annual production of about 25 million WinTel boxes into LinuxPCs, then, together with its own use of roughly 5 million PowerPCs, that 30 million piece annual volume would give the PowerPC a fair chance at gaining further market share against the roughly 95 million box market that WinTel boxes would then have.
Um, yeah, and why would Apple want to give away 25 million PowerPC chips to support an OS that it's trying to compete with? Shareholders and users alike would be infuriated.
Make no mistake, Apple supports (or at least doesn't discourage) Linux on PowerPCs, but they are a business with a goal of dominating the market with Mac OS X just as Microsoft is a business with the goal of dominating the market with Windows and Red Hat, Caldera, SuSE, etc. are businesses with a goal of dominating the market with $DISTRO. Apple would be highly unlikely to help take potential Mac OS X seats away from themselves in such a way.
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I use Macs for work, Linux for education, and Windows for cardplaying.
Sheesh, Henry. Lay off the 'shrooms and buy a laptop, already.
Not from the article:
Amen.
k.
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"In spite of everything, I still believe that people are really good at heart." - Anne Frank
A friend of mine was in Motorola when this went down. He wasn't working in the chip division, but he was at the company. He told me this at the time after taking a tour of some stuff that they were doing in the Boca Raton facility (I actually ended up working 2 blocks from the old IBM site a while later, but this was after IBM shut it down and it's a useless tangent so I'll shut up).
IBM had rooms filled with PPC Computers, but they all ran NT. IBM REFUSED to ship them (despite the NT port), for two reasons:
1) Embarassment: they couldn't get OS/2 shipping, and it was always REAL SOON
2) Dumb corporate policy: Until about 2 years ago, IBM refused to allow two divisions to compete with themselves, and NT-PPC Machines would compete with x86-OS/2 machines, so no NT-PPC machines.
Remember, there was little PPC/NT support, and it would be running DOS/Windows applications, which OS/2 did.
Apple didn't kill Open PowerPC, IBM's management did.
Ironically, about 3 months after NT-PPC was dropped (largely because IBM, the one pushing PPC, wouldn't sell NT Workstations with it), was when IBM decided that they needed to sell NT Workstations... and they did so with x86 chips.
This was a Management decision that I am certain they don't regret. Remember, Win95 didn't successfully kill the x86/DOS arena, and IBM wouldn't have gotten good application support for NT-PPC.
Alex
That's like saying the VMS operating system owns x86 server markets, because Windows NT is VMS at it's core.
Vintage computer games and RPG books available. Email me if you're interested.
NT was designed by the same person who designed VMS. That's the connection. Nothing more. NT is a comparatively modern PC operating system, with what was originally a microkernel at its core. VMS is a 70's minicomputer OS, monolythic in every respect. It was written, to begin with, in VAX assembler, and the high level languages it's been rewritten in since are DEC specific. NT was written in C, C++, and x86 assembler.
Darwin, the core of Mac OS X, is a combination of the CMU Mach kernel running BSD Lites, and a userland from all three "big" free BSDs (Free, Net, and Open.) All of this is open and easily checked - download the source code!
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1. 20-bit addressing.
Don't laugh, this was a big deal in 1981. At the time outfitting a box with the theoretical maximum of 640K would set you back several thousand bucks and an outboard power supply. At the time 64Kx1 RAM chips had just been introduced and ran IIRC somewhere around $200 per set of 9.
2. It was not a Zilog chip.
Zilog made the Z-80, used by then-big competitor Tandy in their machines. IBM did not want their product confused with that of a major competitor.
3. It was not a Motorola chip.
Motorola made the 6502, used by then-big competitor Apple in their machines. IBM did not want their product confused with that of a major competitor.
4. Rich instruction set
In those days before the religion of RISC had been formed, much important code was written directly in assembly language. The luxury of writing the operating system in C was not practical on a 4 MHz processor with an 8-bit bus to memory. The x86 set was designed to be used by humans, not compilers. In these days of fast CPUs and optimized computers this is considered a Bad Thing, but in those days with a rich lode of 8080 assembly source code waiting to be ported and legions of programmers familiar with the techniques it was considered a Good Thing.
In many ways the 8088 was ahead of its time. Early MS-DOS code was notably bloated compared to code written for 8-bit platforms like the Z-80, and the first wave of PC's were terribly underpowered to be doing anything useful. The PC succeeded in those early days only because of its IBM brand; it was at least 1984 before the XT with its hard drive and AT with some actual CPU performance became serious competitors to low-end machines like the C64, TRS-80, and Apple II. Businesses kept the standard going until it became commodified, the price of useful systems came down, and its ability to do personal type applications (read: games) began to actually approach that of its competitors.
Brackets contain world's first nanosig, highly magnified:[.]
The PowerPC chip is a niche player. That's not necessarily a bad thing, as long as the various ecologies in which it's dominant continue to be viable.
But - promoting diversity for diversity's sake is just plain silly. Diversity is a strategic choice, not a tactical choice, and it's very difficult to push strategic choices down the throats of users, especially when cost is involved. It's going to be practically impossible to get PPC stuff down to the commodity pricing level of the x86 world, and that's fine, because they're for different markets. Is there a value proposition for PowerPCs at the current price points? Yes! Does that value proposition make sense at the commodity level? Obviously the answer is no, because, well, x86 is good enough.
When it comes to non-standard computing environments, however, PowerPC chips are much better. Low power, low heat, good performance with few compromises, all combine into an attractive and compelling package. In restricted environments, the heat dissipation characteristics alone are compelling.
So remember, it's just a chip. There are more important things to get worked up about, like licensing schemes and such.