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."
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)
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
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
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!
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.
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 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?
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
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.
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.
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.
They are the same box, built by HP. In fact, they've both been around since late 2000. If you look at photos of early Itanium clusters or even looked at the various Itanium demos at SC2000 you would notice that they all have the same case are were badged either HP or SGI. The only machines SGI builds itself are the O2/Octane/Origin/Onyx MIPS/IRIX machines. Mostly built in Chippewa Falls, WI (home of Cray) with some assembly done overseas. The MIPS R12K/R14K CPUs are fabbed by NEC and the PCBs are made by Celestica. That's just MIPS/IRIX. All of SGI's Intel-based machines (both IA-32 Pentium and IA-64 Itanium) are OEM'ed. VA Linux builds some of SGI's rackmount servers, and I'm not sure who builds their PC workstations. HP builds the 750 Itanium workstation.
If you haven't noticed, SGI's goal is to become the next VA Linux, Penguin Computing, or Dell. And they're not even doing a good job with that!
*sigh*
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?
...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?
So,... anyone got any benchmarks?