Slashdot Mirror
SGI 750 Itanium Server
foobar104 writes: "Today SGI announced their SGI 750 server, a dual-processor IA-64 system based on the W460GXBS2 motherboard from Intel. The 750 will ship with Linux (probably SGI's tweaked version of Red Hat; that's what they've used before), and they say it'll be available in July. (Usually that means first customer shipment in July, with volume shipments coming sometime after that.) The press release is here, and more technical info can be found here. In other news, HP also announced some IA-64 products today."
what kind of server is this http://cgi.ebay.com/aw-cgi/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem& item=1241761938
:(
some quad processor 486? anyone know anything abt it..i dont wanna shell out $50 on unknown stuff
speaking as a minor drone: this is intended to be a developer's box..with not too many machines to be sold, primarilly to give designers a head start on developing for intel-ia64 for the soon to arrive mckinley chips..which we shoul dbe making some stunning servers for..on the lines of the origin3000. the announcement wasn't honestly intended for widespread distribution.. the box will simply be an itanium step-stool for mckinley servers to come.
today sgi is at the same stage as dec was in early 90s. They had VMS and Ultrix and was joing band with MS on NT. Its strategy wasn't clear and I personally know many large customers who migrated to Sun (rather than adopting to Ultrix, since they didn't trust DEC). They believed that DEC would give up one or more platform in favor of the winning OS (whoever that would be). Now SGI is doing the same. Poor IRIX users aren't sure whether SGI would continue developing it, and hence many people are simply running away. They are not too sure whether SGI is serios enough for Intel-NT-Linux machines, so those buyers are not coming forward either.
As a *nix workstation company, they're not nearly as big as IBM, HP and Sun. As a result, the return on their (extremely expensive) MIPS R&D isn't that great - thus leading to overpriced workstations. In their current situation, the addition of a new commodity-cpu line is not a bad idea... the IA64/Linux line is more to attract new customers, rather than to induce their IRIX/Mips customers to switch over. Someone who is used to working with Origins isn't likely to want to switch over to a 750 if the price of a new Origin is within the budget. If it isn't, the customer could benefit from an SGI IA64/Linux simply because it's from a company they've done business with before and because it may be easier to integrate into an established SGI IRIX/Mips infrastructure.
The reason SGI isn't porting IRIX to IA64 or any other chip is because IRIX is bound to Mips... it would probably require more effort to port IRIX than it would to integrate IRIX technologies into Linux (XFS, etc).
Lastly, regarding the graphics side of things, it's only really the Onyx line that's still got a good lead in the industry, though there hasn't been a great deal of innovation in the graphics capabilities - they've just been throwing more GEs and texture ram at it.
The Octane2/VPro12 isn't that much ahead of the top-of-the-line graphics in the x86 world, and the system is quite a bit more expensive. Thus it's of use only for those that NEED the best all the time, such as the military, especially since there are ruggedized versions of it.
The O2 is a cool machine, but it's a few years old now. Even with cpu upgrades, the graphics are the same old CRM. Its only real use is MJPEG work and the occasional work with massive textures in real-time (thanks to UMA)... too bad other software never really took advantage of the graphics capabilities. Its current cost isn't justified.
So that leaves only the absolute high-end IRIX/Mips products as unapproachable by Intel/Linux... so why not go Intel/Linux at the low-end? (if a 9,000$ box, poopy graphics and all, can be considered low-end).
Considering the Power4 will be arriving anytime now, and the 21364 or 21464 may show up someday, Mips may not be able to compete what with the current available R&D at SGI... so why not plop IA64 into an Origin3000... after all, it's really just the I/O bandwidth that makes the Origin sexy (and the OS's capabilities, but these can be transfered to Linux). The SMP monster with obscene I/O thus becomes less unaffordable.
okay, that's enough... ta
I dunno about the SGI's pricing sceme but looking over at IBM I guess it will be somewhere about 16K to 20K.
btw IBM's itanium anouncement also states that they have sold to NCSA at Urbana Champaign a new clustor of 160 "new itanium based systems."
ibm's press release: http://www.ibm.com/news/2001/05/292.phtml
http://uptime.netcraft.com/up/graph?site=www.nasda q.com
I'm posting this anonymously since I've worked for ATI, and now work for SGI. (Although I'm not involved in the decision to ship this new workstation.) It's simple... the Rage128 was chosen by Intel to be the reference video subsystem for their IA64 systems. Remember that this happened two years ago... at the time the Rage128 was still one of top of the video boards available. Being chosen as the reference video board means that everybody who developped something for IA64 tested with and only with Rage128 (except perhaps nVidia, ATI and other video vendors). I think it made sense for SGI to ship something reliable and tested rather than compromise stability by shipping something faster but more risky. In any case, Wall street seems to agree with SGI, for once... look at the stock price.
While I agree with most of the stuff you write here, I've observed that you say relate the 750 to the "Desktop"..
For me - desktop machine is something that you put to the secretary at the office, to the sales, HR, PR and non developer people, or home users...
This machine is DEFINATELY not for them (ok, maybe to some slashdot readers who would really love to have a nice 4 way IA64 with 16GB RAM and 700GB RAID 10 array, and if you can - add dual 19" SGI's LCD screens, thank you).
There is a total differnece between desktop - and workstation. While Linux doesn't have much desktop share (according to IDC it's now 1% - yeah, right, Sure Barur) - the Linux Workstation area - is growing. Go call Dell or read the story on ZDNN how they specifically says that the demand and selling of Linux workstation is growing - specially as a workstations for movie studios (I.L.M, LucasFilm, and all the others), and the EDA area (board designing etc) - and THAT my friend, counts.
If those SGI sales people can sell their machines to those people mentioned above (and SGI, if you read this - PLEASE replace the crappy ATI with something better - Nvidia's Quarda could be nice) - then SGI's investors can start smiling..
Only time will tell if those SGI sales people will "get" those sales. They have points that no other company have - they have the Linux experience and they don't just install-from-CD-good-luck-amigos type - they have developed a lot for the Linux on IA-64 - and it's time to cash those investments..
Good Luck SGI.
Hetz (Heunique)
--
Forget Napster. Why not really break the law?
"Remember when the U.S. had a drug problem, and then we declared a War On Drugs, and now you can't buy drugs anymore?"
The conclusion I came to was that Linux beating Windows to the ia64 will doom Windows in the eyes of the jet-set, and this will, sooner or later, trickle down to the average home user.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Ok, then what -is- relevent?
What's relevent is that a big-name company is shipping Linux on an Itanium box, as a -STABLE- configuration, before Microsoft can get theirs out of beta.
What's revelent is that this is a publicity coup for both SGI (a company that -was- supposed to be dead, by now), and Linux (some "toy OS" from a country where they all speak funny).
What's relevent is that, when executives ask "But can we run Application XYZ, from our old 98 machine on it?", the answer is YES! (That question, and variants thereof, have made or destroyed more systems than every coder alive has had hot dinners.)
THESE are the "details" that are relevent, because THESE are the details that could see Linux fade from view, or double its userbase, overnight. These are the details that could spell the final chapter of SGI, or mark the start of a turn-around that could yet terrify the supercomputer industry, once more.
Yeah, sure, all of us on Slashdot (ignoring trolls) already know Linux can run WINE, is mostly (or totally) 64-bit compliant for the ia64, and we all know that the media LOVES stories of David vs Goliath. We alread know all that.
But we're not the ones that matter, in all of this. We're already using Linux, *BSD, QNX, Exopc, BeOS, etc, or some combination of the above. The people who matter are Joe and Jane Doe, who financially advise a bunch of largish firms and who know nothing about technology apart from what the front page says.
The people who matter are the executives, the managers, the key people who make key decisions. The moment they're Turned to the Linux Side of the Force, you're talking big numbers of desktops.
The people who matter are the people who, when they stand up to speak, the media is there, listening. Get one of those to believe that this could bring financial propsperity, and/or a local industrial boom, and you could yet see a penguin added to the stars and stripes.
SGI's decision is small, in and of itself. It won't make any major waves, alone. But all it takes is a tiny pebble, to create an avalance, given the right conditions. Some of those conditions exist, and the rest are not beyond the existing Linux community and some of the key Linux players (eg: SGI and IBM).
Between now and Microsoft's true 64-bit offering, Microsoft are vulnerable to a market coup. Pull that coup off, and it won't be Microsoft with a 98% presence on the desktop. This is a potentially critical moment. Strategy and timing will be everything.
But will it happen...?
Tune in to next month's exciting episode of...
Linux Trek III - In Search Of Sparc
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Is it just me or does the new SGI and the new HP i2000 look eerily similar? The only difference in appearance is that the HP has a little colored patch near the lights. Is SGI building HPs machines? Hmmmmmmm
You know what to remove for e-mail. Don't you?
There are some SPEC benchmarks and commentary up on aceshardware.com.
Interesting that Intel appears to have finally released a CPU with good (great, even) fp performance. Too bad it sucks for integer...
OpenVerse Visual Chat: http://openverse.org
-- OpenVerse Visual Chat: http://openverse.com
just so the news here
And this RedHat 7.1 with 2.4 kernel scales up to 8 itanium processor!
--
"Science will win because it works." - Stephen Hawking
Ahem, NASDAQ *website* runs on NT but not their back-end.
___
___
If you think big enough, you'll never have to do it.
I did check my facts. I can't currently find the article about the eventual phase-out of MIPS, but here's the ones dealing with putting Linux on an IA-64 Origin.
0 3/ 16/010316hnorigin.xml?p=br&s=7
/ UH -PR-08-00-3.html
http://iwsun4.infoworld.com/articles/hn/xml/01/
http://oss.sgi.com/projects/linux-scalability/
http://www.hoise.com/primeur/00/articles/weekly
Basically, they said they'd fill in the holes wherever Linux is lacking.
Engineering and the Ultimate
The fact is that SGI is the only ones really using the MIPS chips. So they decided to use standard parts, and do they intense customizations themselves like they've always done. The problem is that it was going to be insanely hard to port IRIX, so instead, they decided it would be easier to make Linux into IRIX than to port IRIX to a new chip. On top of that, you get the support of the free software community - and the people who will be buying SGI are those in-the-know.
As for the Origin, they are still planning on doing the major engineering work to make it completely robust, only using the more popular Itanium chips.
Also, IRIX is no longer needed. Why? Previously they needed an O.S. that was geared directly to their hardware. With Linux being free software, they can tailor it completely to their hardware without the problems of completely writing an operating system. They can use the standard Linux tools and configurations rather than having their own.
I think it's a great move.
SGI needs to get back to what it knows how to do - make kick-butt super-high-end hardware. When they went down to the midrange with their NT boxes, they found out they couldn't compete. It's still hurting them. If they can throw off all of the unnecessary junk - proprietary operating system, strange chipsets, etc., and just stick to making super-high-end graphics production boxes, they will do well.
Engineering and the Ultimate
What's painful is that the "twin" system from HP does have a Quadro2. SGI is probably cutting US$600 off the price that way, but... wasn't SGI about graphics in the first place? Looks like the guy that said this is a development tool just to let people play on a SGI Itanium box before the next generation comes out is right, but what will I do with the high-end SGI system once it comes out? File serving? Pleeease!
This is not a cheap toy, you have to wonder what SGI has in mind for its target audience... I mean, they are bundling "NAG Libraries, Vampir, CAPTools [and] SCSL", all either math or parallel computing oriented. It's got one full gigabyte of RAM and the monitor is optional. That makes you think SGI wants to sell this thing as a node in parallel computing cluster. But then you note it's got a big fat SCSI drive with a big fat SCSI controller, neither of which have much to do in a Beo-node type of machine. So, it's a workstation. But then again, the monitor is optional and the graphic card (ATI XPERT 2000, read: Rage 128 Pro) is lame, to say the lest. If this is a workstation, why didn't they include the SGI VPro (read: GeForce)? Are they having trouble getting NVIDIA to support the IA64 architecture?
Why have they got 'Silicon Graphics' all over the press release and on the machine's case? I thought they decided a couple of years ago that 'SGI' was kewler.
-- Ed Avis ed@membled.com
Whee. There are people doing 1080i HDTV on embedded PPC 7410s, without hardware colorspace conversion.
If the chipset was designed at the same time as the Itanium, PC100 was probably expected to be the state-of-the-art at the time systems were available. Or it may be that Intel only intended Itanium systems to use RDRAM, and just threw in token SDRAM support. Either way, I expect that when McKinley comes out, you'll see support for faster speeds.
Just junk food for thought...
The real issue is vendor support. IBM is also moving from AIX to Linux. SGI will never convince Oracle to do an IRIX 6.5 port of their server, but SGI & IBM together can convince Oracle to do so. Same goes for other software pacakges. Sure, Maya and Alias will write their products for SGI's, but they want real commercial support.
The other issue is that they are trying to get workstations, this is where they are really losing to Sun. A company will go to Sun and SGI and say "We want a server and a bunch of workstations" and Sun has these nice $1000 SunBlades and what does SGI have to offer? Octanes? Even if they do get the hardware, they will scare everyone off because nothing runs on IRIX.
-Alison
The reason SGI isn't porting IRIX to IA64 or any other chip is because IRIX is bound to Mips... it would probably require more effort to port IRIX than it would to integrate IRIX technologies into Linux (XFS, etc).
Ehm... The Origin 3000 series was originally designed for the IA64, but when that got delayed they had to fit it with R14K processors... You can verify, that the O3000 series have these tiny copper strips at the back for things that look like VGA-connectors...
BUT: porting to an IA64 in a special SGI mainboard (if you can call it that anyway...) is something different from porting to an IA64 in a standard Intel mainboard...
It just all depends ;)
--
--
Ehm... I'm not very creative
What a pity to lumber the machine with PC100 memory and not PC133 or PC150 .. Such a change can make quite a difference as most machines spend all their time shunting stuff back and forth from memory. Especially if this is meant to be a high-end workstation. My cheapo Dell desktop PC has faster memory than that.
.. I don't know what they're like but I was hoping for some beefed up SGI super-duper graphics card in there.
Plus I think PC133 is actually cheaper than PC100 these days. For 256MB DIMMS at least, $36 for PC100 and $32 for PC133. Not that it's much of a difference.. just a comment. Memory prices these days are amazing...
I agree about the graphics card too
--
Delphis
Delphis
It uses PC100 because its based on an old reference board design.
Ah.. thanks for that info. I just posted a similar question to an earlier post as to why it was using PC100 memory when faster basic SDRAM is available (PC133 etc..)
--
Delphis
Delphis
Wheee! .. break out yer raytracers!
Maybe the itanium (in its current incarnation) will only be useful for raytracing farms etc.
Everyone else of course can happily use their Athlons for a fraction of the price..
--
Delphis
Delphis
Yea, I know they're compatible :) .. I was just wondering about the memory bus speed really.
--
Delphis
Delphis
SGI see themselves primarily as a solutions/hardware company. IRIX, for all it's good points, is a cost to them in selling their hardware to high-end customers.
:-)
By high-end, I mean mainly the government, defence, and video/film markets. There may be others, but those are the ones I've worked in.
Linux, on the other hand, is mainly maintained for free - they get a "cool" OS (SGI's markets are very image-conscious) with minimal effort, and it works on commodity hardware to boot. (No pun intended
SGI's technical expertise lies mainly in h/w. Their graphics abilities have always been well ahead of the curve - Discreet Logic capitalised on the flexibility of the graphics array when Gary wrote 'flame'... It did all the matrix ops on the framebuffer itself, leading to realtime effects on almost every operation. Wowed everyone. With Linux, they get the flexibility to play with their hardware, and simply integrate the drivers for that hardware into the OS - no maintenance of all the surrounding tools, or management of requests for new technologies (PPP took ages to appear under IRIX) etc.
Seems like a good move to me. What's even nicer is their apparent willingness to donate some of their s/w intellectual property to the common cause (XFS, CC-NUMA etc.) All round, I don't see we (or they) come off any worse than before, In fact I'd rate it win-win.
Simon.
Physicists get Hadrons!
Got benchmarks? http://www.intel.com/eBusiness/products/ia64/overv iew/bm012101.htm
Back during the development trials of the Itanium, Intel distributed this machine as the "BigSur" and it was designed and manufactured by Intel. That doesn't mean that these companies aren't making their own systems with identical tooling, however. That's what Dell has been doing with it's quad and 8-way Xeons for some time. I just wonder if the system board in these beasts is still as rediculously huge as in the original BigSur. They're still using the same enormous case!
Yeah, I've got an Octane here that is bested in some tasks by a 1.4 Ghz P4, and the 733 Mhz G4 however if the code is optimized for the SGI's memory bus etc... the SGI is still one helluva fast box.
Visit Jonesblog and say hello.
Other than its ability to run on cheap (price and often quality) hardware, I still don't understand SGI's movement to Linux. I guess that I am showing my ignorance here, but it seems to me that Apple and SGI are in similar situations right now in some respects. Both companies historically have relied on income from the hardware side of things while making a closed OS/hardware system that for each of their respective markets is very effective. The difference between Apple and SGI however is that SGI already has a UNIX OS with a GUI (however difficult it is to manage compared to OSX), and Apple is developing UNIX with a GUI (easier to manage, more powerful in some respects etc etc etc...). Both companies need major transitions to survive, but why Linux/Intel?
IRIX is already mature, stable, fast, with great graphics capabilities and IO capabilities, so I ask again, why move to Linux and Intel? I'm not expecting anyone to defend SGI here, I just don't understand. Both SGI and Apple obviously want to benefit from the open source paradigm while still remaining in business with proprietary OS's. (I am guessing here for SGI as I assume that they will make their OS on a proprietary linux model like the Red Hat setup they have used before). The approach Apple is taking certainly makes sense to me by developing a UNIX OS that includes the opensource Darwin, but I am totally clueless as to what SGI is doing here. What makes Linux more attractive than simply continuing to develop IRIX and putting more effort into improving, simplifying some features, and pushing development for IRIX? (among other changes to their business model) Again it seems to me that SGI is making another crucial mistake here as the developers that have tapered off work for IRIX have not for the most part started developing for Linux (although I know of quite a few examples), primarily they have lost ground to Wintel. (thus SGI's misguided attempt at Wintel/SGI boxes I guess)
In short it appears that they are trying to make Linux/Intel into what they already have in IRIX/MIPS, only with cheaper hardware which seems awfully dangerous to me for both end users and the company.
Visit Jonesblog and say hello.
Details here.
--
"Oppression and harassment is a small price to pay to live in the land of the free." -- Montgomery Burns.
In the first 8 posts there were 2 sigs references to Fight Club.
I'm impressed.
--
Although that does beg the question - why the hell would you use CDE when you can use 4Dwm + the SGI tools instead? CDE sucks.
Do you even know anything about perl? -- AC Replying to Tom Christiansen post.
Yeah, on the workstation end of things maybe, becuase the combination of (Linux || NT) + (cheap 3D hardware) == death to MIPS/IRIX worstations, except for several specialized applications.
However, for servers (O2K, O3K, etc.) IRIX will still be around for a while. They are just getting XFS for Linux to a stable situation now. How long do you think it will be before they have a version of Linux that runs (and is stable) that can do their ccNUMA multiprocessing and all the other IRIX 6.5 goodness that is required for those servers to do what they do? It won't be in the next couple of years, unless someone else besides SGI steps up with the funding to get it done.
Do you even know anything about perl? -- AC Replying to Tom Christiansen post.
I'll give you that they have had more security problems then most vendors, and the default install is very insecure. However, 6.5 has been around for a while, so this has improved.
Ease of use - again laughable
Ummm, what is "going on underneath" is the same as any other UNIX. And if you wanted to admin it using the GUI tools, all you need is another box running X (athough that is not very secure). 4Dwm and the SGI tools are a *lot* better then most other commercial UNIX desktops in my opinion.
Ease of installation is hideous too
Again, I don't know where you are getting this from. Fresh installs are very easy, and can be done remotely or via CD. You have to be careful when upgrading the OS to make sure that you can resolve dependancies for installed apps, but what O/S doesn't have that problem?
Compatibility - ugly
I have used external SCSI cdrom, tape and disk drives from several manufacturers. Same with internal disk drives. No problems.
Maintainability - improving slowly
IRIX 6.3 and 6.4 were temproary architecture-dependant releases (for the O2 and Origin2000 respectively) before 6.5 was released. Any box you have in production should have been on 6.5 for a couple of years by now.
Support - patchy
I can't comment on the FORTRAN compiler, and I can say that I use gcc/g++ instead of the IRIX cc/CC compliers. In general, SGI supplys reccomended patch sets, like Sun, so you can patch your system to the correct level.
I have used and admined SGIs for years. IRIX might be more obscure then Solaris, but I wouldn't say it is much better or worse in any of your categories.
The only beef I might have is a couple of hardware failures on an early model O2K, but SGI was very quick to get those fixed (athough we were paying through the teeth for support).
Do you even know anything about perl? -- AC Replying to Tom Christiansen post.
the memory system is two-way interleaved so it shouldn't be that bad a bottleneck.
--
"Yeah well
The fact is that SGI is the only ones really using the MIPS chips.
.. but check your facts because 99% of what you said was wrong (other than SGI is 'using' ia64 in upcomming systems.
Uhh... MIPS is one of the more popular embedded systems chips on the market. They are fast and run cool. What do you think is in your Nintendo 64, Playstation2, etc? An intel processor? Motorolla? Nope
As for the Origin, they are still planning on doing the major engineering work to make it completely robust, only using the more popular Itaium chips.
Hmm... news to me. As far as I know they are going to continue using Mips and make the ia64 interchangable or different node bricks on the 3000 series machines that will support exclusively IA64. To get the real advantage of buying a Origin 3000 system , you would want to definately run it on the MIPS C bricks w/Irix. Also, IRIX is no longer needed. Why? Previously they needed an O.S. that was geared directly to their hardware. Have you ever used Irix? The day I see a version of linux that runs well on 128 CPU's is the day that the above statement becomes valid.
Look man, I know you mean well
--------------------
Would you like a Python based alternative to PHP/ASP/JSP?
..,..?..,,.,..?.,,
Just balancing out parent post.
CINT Dell PIII 1.0ghz-418base (not bad)
CINT Dell P4 1.7ghz-575base (oh, not looking so good)
CFP Dell PIII 1.0ghz-292base (really nice)
CFP Dell p4 1.7ghz-593base (nice)
Which is pretty decent. The integer performace is about what a decent RISC processor (not Sparc crap, the bottom of the performace heap) should get at the same clock rate, while the FP performance is quite stellar! Not bad, the stream looks pretty good too, I would expect more from a brand spanking new arch, but its not bad...
Where are the SPEC numbers? I still haven't seen any official numbers! IBM/Intel/etc don't have the Apple excuse that the benchmark doesn't support non UNIX like OS's! So, why haven't any number been published? Is the Fortran compiler that much of a piece of crap, or does the chip just do very poorly? Along these lines where are the OS-X based spec numbers or is this another case of Apple not wanting to publish bad numbers for a benchmark designed to create an even playing field for diffrent arch,OS combinations?
still.... the chick could have said something like, 'a 64 bit processor allows for more efficient program opperation' or something. *shrug*
-------
CAIMLAS
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
That's what Dell has been doing with it's quad and 8-way Xeons for some time.
8-way, yes.
Quad, no.
Their current CEO switches between both names. Their previous CEO is the one who started using `SGI' and never used `Silicon Graphics' to describe the company ever.
:)
While we're on the topic of changes at SGI, I'm reminded of the old cube logo (which Slashdot still use) which (along with Suns logo) has to be one of the nicest corporate logos ever (though I'm not sure if Silicon Graphics actually invented it.
Regardless...erm... I'd like a nice high res SGI cube to use as my wallpaper on my XFS/DevFS RH 7.1 machines. Anyone know where I can get one?
Is the L3 Cache onboard the die or off? What are L1 and L2 Cache sizes and what is the cache topogrpahy?
Someone you trust is one of us.
Ahh..my baby :) Should've gotten a better shot of the MacOS X kde theme though
Definitely not. The best corporate logo ever is the old |d|i|g|i|t|a|l| logo. The best was the very latest: white letters over deep burgundy blocks, with that gorgeous font. Unfortunately, it went on to be replaced by perhaps the ugliest - that supid red Compaq logo. Intel's royal blue logo gets my vote as second best. Sun and SGI's logo's are pretty bland IMHO.
-michel-
Michel
Fedora Project Contribut
SARCASM
/SARCASM
Ok, let's buy a few of them to play Quake on! After all, if it uses Linux, how expensive can it be?
Woefdram, l'apprenti sorcier
Is that economies of scale trump superior hardware all day. SGI sees the inexorable creep of NT boxes slowly coring their market and they had to make a decision: Either go head to head with microsoft or take a risk in another type of market.
The commodity software market is totally separate from the standard one. You cant really make money by selling copies, so you have to find another way. Value-added services and brand recognition are the biggest assets in this market, which is not nearly as lucrative as selling shrink-wrap.
It is a huge risk for SGI, trying to take a growing share of a smaller market, versus a shrinking share of a larger one. It is a calculated risk though. They are not going whole-hog however: they will still ship proprietary code.
Fear the .sig file on the parent post
---
This
The 750 has "entry" ATI graphics. Don't expect 98422 frames per second in quake.
It uses PC100 because its based on an old reference board design. This is essentially the same system that SGI and HP have been demoing for the past 8 months. The really hot IA64 stuff (Infiniband, multiple channels of DDRSDRAM/RDRAM) will be out by next year.
SGI has offered CDE for years. It doesn't come with the standard 6.2/6.3/6.5 CD set but it is available at no additional charge. Ask your sales rep for "SC4-CDE-5.0".
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=01/05/29/16321 4&cid=114
SGI finally managed to ship an Itanium-based workstation (at least to developers). Let's see what has happined to MIPS/IRIX since the first bits of Itanium info from Intel:
O2 - aside from CPU upgrades, has remained unchanged since the fall of 1996
Octane/Octane2 - aside from a very minor backplane and ram thruput tweak and a new series of (late and underpowered) gfx, has remained unchanged since the spring of 1997
Origin 200 - aside from CPU upgrades, has remained unchanged since the spring of 1997
All of the above machines, while featuring expansion, only have U/W 40MB/sec onboard SCSI... getting a bit old for modern 10K and 15K RPM drives.
Origin/Onyx 3000 has been really the only MIPS/IRIX innovation since early 1997, but note that Origin 3000 will eventually be able to take Itanium CPUs (by replacing the CPU bricks) as the system was designed to be CPU agnostic.
Regardless of what SGI has been saying on their roadmaps, I think it's clear that MIPS/IRIX is a thing of the past. (S)uddenly (G)one (I)ntel. Hello Linux and Intel.
What's up with the new "sgi" logo??
SGI keeps taking about a MIPS/IRIX rebirth, but I still haven't seen a single sign of that happening. And heck, they're not even marketing what they currently have. The current MIPS/IRIX lineup is getting old, but still somewhat capable. The Octane2 with the DM2 "Snowball" can handle realtime uncompressed 1080i HDTV (250+ MB/sec) without blinking. Yet they don't even talk about it.
I'm under the impression that SGI wants to be yet another OEM box builder.
Y'know... at first I didn't like the new "sgi" logo and wanted the cube back. But I'm starting to really like the new logo.
a ne.jpg
http://www.sgi.com/o2/images/hp_o2.jpg
http://www.arsc.edu/resources/hardware/images/Oct
VS.
http://www.reputable.com/sgipix/0.jpeg
Regardless of what other people think:
http://www.beyondboxes.net/sticker.jpg
http://www.arke.de/TC/sgi-homer.gif
"imagine a beowulf of these"
c kofcpu2.jpg
Well, SGI did.
http://ssadler.phy.bnl.gov/adler/sc2k/pictures/ra
Another shot of the Itanium cluster and a neat photo of the Origin 3000:
c kofcpu3.jpg
c kofcpu4.jpg
http://ssadler.phy.bnl.gov/adler/sc2k/pictures/ra
http://ssadler.phy.bnl.gov/adler/sc2k/pictures/ra
That's not a server, it's a workstation (though it ships with low-end ATI graphics). The 750 has been available to "qualified developers" since early March so I doubt it will take long for the machine to ship in volume. I have no idea how it performs, the two demos of the machine I've seen (SC2000 and earlier this year at an IA64 conference) were little more than "look, KDE!... look, GNOME!". Interesting none the less.
No kidding. And before MIPS R10K there was the beast that was the R8K *chipset*. To date I still don't think there is any CPU that was faster in fp per clock cycle than the R8K. SGI's been doing 64bit since the early 1990s.
64-bit alone is nothing new, but I guess SGI needs all the buzz they can get. They've all but left their own MIPS/IRIX market and have entered the competitive and very non-SGI-like OEM world.
It's sort of like a corporate version of Frogger.
I think Linux technology companies are finding that can't just say, "we support distro x, and maybe y and z." That policy locks you out of whole markets -- even whole countries. And it seems to me that the issue of distro fragmentation is turning out to be that big of an issue. Support issues boil down, not to what distro you're running, but what libraries and applications you have installed. Which is exactly the same as for NT/2000.
__
Note that a lot of SGI graphics systems, such as the Onyx, actually resemble servers as much as they do workstations. SGI has created a third category in which to market these system: Visualization Systems. This is how SGI copes with their loss of the workstation market to cheap generic boxes. And it makes sense, since SGI still has an edge with it comes to massively parallel technology.
__
--
Friends don't let friends use multiple inheritance.
You can use PC133 memory in a PC100 MB - same with PC133 or PC100 in a PC66 MB, AFAIK. It has to be at least fast enough. I assume the same with PC150.
Since PC133 is cheaper, no reason you couldn't just buy that.
Looking for freelance Actionscript (Flash/Flex) or ColdFusion work and/or freelance developers. Email me, put Slashdot
Used to be that the unix workstation market was far enough ahead and different enough that they could command large prices and have very slow product update cycles. They established a focus on graphics and everything related to it. But commodity hardware has since caught up to all but their fastest machines and their value added proposition is pretty weak. Now I can't think of a single reason to purchase a new SGI machine unless it is for a very particular piece of software or if you are already an all SGI shop.
I'm not asking this to bash SGI, I truly wish them well, but does anyone know where the heck this company is headed?
Besides, I wouldn't pick one up today when something like a PowerPC or an Alpha is available; not like I use something stupid like M$ products ;-)
Karma whorin' since 1999
...and it uses PC100 SDRAM! Maxing out the RAM shouldn't be too expensive.
But it comes with an "ATI Technologies® XPERT 2000 PROTM AGP adapter"! Arrgh.
Any idea on the pricing for the system?
kids love the great taste of 64bit processing.
Blarf.
"Oh yeah, HP has some Itanium servers, too. Win2K, yadda yadda, Bill Gates sucks."
"Ancillary does not mean you get to rule the world." --U.S. Circuit Judge Harry Edwards, speaking to the FCC's lawyer
doubt theyre two markets. its just one market with two bandwagons. and sgi just jumps from one (wintel) to the other (lintel)
and all the while, its sgi thats the problem. i think they and the market would be better served if they believed in their own bandwagon and refined their operations to deliver. kinda like apple is doing
the animal doesnt even have opposable thumbs, focker!
SGI has had R10000 processors for years running Irix. Is this Itanium only cool because it's Intel-Linux? I see no other great improvements... -m
http://www.invisik.com
Well, personally I'm glad that I could pick one up and cram a couple of g of ram in there without going to Bill Gates for a personal loan.
More specifically, why would you want to spend up to 10x the price for ram that sure as hell isn't running 10x faster?
Options are never a bad thing.
No Comment.
It is nice to see that the IA64 chips finally will be distributed, but why on earth are they using PC100 sdram? The first few versions of the IA64 chip is probably not going to be the fastest beasts alive, but why use that old ram?
;)
With Intels strong relations with rambus, you'd expect them to use Rambus memory, which has quite a bit better performance than older standards.
Seems like it will be able to run with quite a bit of ram, though. that is pretty cool.. I think I want one.
Not much disk space, though. Will need a bunch of external disks
Anybody heard the fps rate in Quake 3 for one of theese things?
i think they have made the benchmarks only on paper before actualy itanium was out so they have made those specs in Excel or something coze i don't belive titanicum is so good for one reason the risc machines(aka sun ultra or mips ) any of them have the prformance twice at the same clock of intel conterfait part (wich i we divide with 2 (if) when is to much heat when we play quake or compile the kernel or browse with moZZilla) or they have took a risc machine from HP (stolen the plans from the engineers there remember the M$$ practice) and they tell us that this is x86 if we run the emulgators and all the salt .So Linux so good made even realized that inside
is a risc lady (64 core ) so run without a glinch (linuzze is portable )
so maybe titanicum is good for browsing and for the console" The integrated ATI graphics adapter delivers affordable and convenient 2D visualization and console administration"
so is how SGI says it is :
Good for 2d activity .Poor guyz at intel maybe Sgi offered them a chance to
keep the jobs coze this is not an workstation ...
developer http://flamerobin.org
Ok so they're possibly biased, but comparing against all the other biased benchmarks (ie other vendor-generated SPEC marks at htpp://www.spec.org) this looks pretty fast!
Eg it considerably beats the similar clocked Alpha chip (21264B) on FP, but is a little slower for integer. The FP stuff is a huge leap forward though as this is usually an Intel weakness.
Let's hope the prices come down quick :-)
So,... anyone got any benchmarks?
If god had intended you to be naked, you would have been born that way.