Slashdot Mirror
Red Hat, HP, Intel Join in Itanium Linux Alliance
joel_archer writes "According to this Yahoo! article, Red Hat will begin selling an Itanium version of its Advanced Server Linux in partnership with HP. This is one of partnerships currently underway between these two companies. HP is a key partner for anything Itanium-related, the company invented the design underlying Itanium before handing it off to Intel to develop and manufacture. Bolstering that effort, Red Hat and HP have signed a deal under which Advanced Server will be certified on and available with all of HP's Intel-based ProLiant servers--not just Itanium systems, but also lower-end Xeon and Pentium versions and superthin 'blade' systems."
I hope that since HP now owns Compaq, the Proliant will become a better machine than when it was strictly Compaq. (If fact I hope all Compaqs are better...)
</rant>
------
Random, useless fact: I type in startx entirely with my left hand.
I guess it's fine and good that Red Hat is getting in on this. But there's very little need for 64-bit desktop systems (as demonstrated by the Itanium and Alpha's consumer-market failure). 32 bits is plenty for virtually every application of a desktop computer, and will be for quite some time.
So, HP wants to officially offer Linux on all of it's Itanium, and lower servers? Itanium is going to replace much of HP's higher end server line as well if I remember my facts correctly.
This sounds very similar to IBM's linux on all IBM "backend server" offerings. You have to remember, these will be all of what used to be the offerings of both HP and Compaq when considering the market scope of this.
BTW - Oracle just matched BEA System's price/performance record for the java application server benchmark. Oracle ran with an all Linux solution on HP Proliant hardware.
HP is pulling an IBM...how interesting.
-Pete
Soccer Goal Plans
I wonder if this will affect any enthusiasm or special testing/optimisation that RedHat might have planned for the AMD side of the 64-bit fence. I can't imagine Intel not putting just a little bit of pressure on RedHat to be more forceful in their...patriotism.
I don't mean to troll, but advanced server is just now getting to 64 bit archatecture? Would someone please tell me how long *NIX has been doing this, and how far behind win-tel is?
Sigs are out of style, so I'm not going to use one...oh wait..
Pretty remarkable machine, although if you consider that software is usually almost as expensive as the hardware it's no surprise that it's a bargain. But I'll match the reliability with any of the other machines we've used in the past. Everybody agrees that it's faster than the last one (well, of course!) So yeah, I'd recommend one of these to anybody who wants to increase the overall speed and reliability of their platform without breaking the bank.
http://www.mandrakelinux.com/en/ftptmp/1024501320. d32fd091334bd166624816e3d84d319a.php#others
It looks like HP, Intel, and RedHat have been in the mix since 1999.
http://sverre.home.cern.ch/sverre/Linux_IA64_proje ct.html
Redhat is using this partnership to increase their revenues and clean up their profit margin according to this article on the Register, which coincides with this Yahoo News item.
Redhat may or may not be your favorite distro, but at least they're doing something to increase Linux marketshare, and apparently are doing it successfully.
Duris MUD - The best pkill MUD. Ever.
The article mentions that RHAT laid off eCos developers last Tuesday; does anyone have any links on that? What is RHAT's stance on embedded real time linux?
Microsoft are gonna be REALLY happy that Intel are having a relationship with other OS vendors.. ;)
"Hey! Unless this is a nude love-in, get the hell off my property!!"
or does it seem like Red Hat is kinda moving away from the little guy, getting Linux on the desktop effort, screw big corporate culture movement? I always thought Linux companies were supposed to be a little more rebellious and distrusting of big companies.
But then again, this deal is what a lot of Liunux companies want, is to make money on superior technical expertise, not on super expensive software that is not free(as in speech).
I will get way out on the proverbial limb and say that any Unified Theory of Linux will turn to vapor within a year.
:P
I'd like to hear some discussion about this point; it seems to me that while us nerds like the Many Flavors Of *NIX, the Suits want One Thing to manage, which from a business standpoint seems to make a lot of sense.
So, feel free to disagree, or mod me down, or whatever.
Itanium's the thing with the rediculously-constructed VLIW philosophy. Right? The one that runs like shit unless your compiler is close to being sentient.
./configure;make all; it on an Itanium Linux box, will it be in the end as optimized for that architecture as it can be?
I haven't really heard much about Itanium, and had assumed this meant it was dying, because unless people compiled to Itanium it wasn't using its full potential. However, this Itanium Linux thing is a very, very good sign for Intel; even if Windows NT may not be at fullspeed for Itanium, that's ok, because we can have Linux distributions where all new software is compiled targeted & optimised for the difficult Itanium instruction set. This was, i thought, always one of the great underused advantages of open source software-- it makes hardware platform irrelivant-- and why i'm glad to see things like Gentoo emerging. (Err.. the pun was not intentional. Sorry.)
However, though, i must ask: How well is GCC doing insofar as itanium specialization goes? Last i checked, there was a hyperoptimized intel compiler, but not a lot of people were using it because it wasn't integrated with anything else. Is this still the case? Is gcc up to speed with the intel benchmark compilers, as far as optimizations go? And if not, is it possible for a linux distro like this to use `intelpropeitarybs` in place of `gcc`? Is there work still to be done?
If i download something off freshmeat and
You 'desktop' system is probably doing quote a bit of >=80bit processing especially if you running games (the fpu),
what 64bit's gives you far more than bigger numbers, you should also get an architecture change, otherwise no-one would be bothering to develop 64bit systems, most markets that require that kind of pression are fairly well saturated.
In your example the only real problem with 16bit systems is memory addressing limit, so why didn't intel make a 16 bit processor with 32bit addressing registers? it's far easier than making a 32bit processor.
thank God the internet isn't a human right.
I just heard the news on BBC Radio 4. Iraqi dictator/terrorist Sadam Hussain was not found dead in his palace this morning by the US Special Forces. Even if you never experienced his work, you can appreciate what he did for biological warfare. Truly an Iraqi icon.
He will be missed. Again.
I have a friend at HP, I'm building two data centers in the next year, I usually use RedHat...
E| b3 D3 L337357 R007 of all baby! 8^)
My $0.02 will always be worth more than your â0.02, so
I thought HP had announced that they were focusing on Debian?
HP.com and Bruce Perens support this.
Does this signal a shift? Will HP now contribute to Red Hat at Debians' expense?
rho
Rather that slash and burn Alpha, HP would have made all of its customers far more happy by agreeing to take EV8 to silicon. I'm sure this was in the realm of the possible.
Yes, cross-license with Intel up the wazoo and sell your employees to Intel if you like, but deliver to your customers what they need to keep their datacenters for the next decade, and also bring a stunning and seminal SMT product to market.
While we're on the subject, unifying HP-UX and Tru64 into a "TruHP" might have scored a few notches on the cluestick. Let's face it: a lot of things about HP-UX just plain suck (especially the packaging system, as Tru64 announced it was moving to RPM). HP is just beginning to implement dynamic kernel tunables and even their whole enterprise file system is outsourced. I am totally underwhelmed. When they lose the performance edge, I will have no sentimental attachment to this kludge.
Just like IBM and Sequent, HP has knifed products that work for products that don't. May Opteron be the undoing of you all.
I have installed countless proliant servers and they are very high quality boxes.
HP has it's own custom compiler for Linux Itanium. In fact HP controls the design team for the official Itanium C compiler, of which the Linux version is a showcase example. That was HP's part of the deal with Intel, to supply the VLIW compiler technology. The point is, they don't need GCC. Although since Red Hat is the de facto owner of GCC, I wouldn't be at all surprised if some HP technology eventually shows up in GCC as a direct result of this partnership.
Damn, how many outstanding shares are there?
The trolls could all pitch in, and buy this ratbag hellhole outright!
(If you decide to implement my idea, could you please recognize my contribution by maxxing out my karma? thx)
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
Maybe now my shares of RHAT will actually gain some value! :-) Red Hat has been making a lot of critical partnerships like this recently.
Say what you will able Red Hat vs. other Linux distributions - it is the partnerships and support of other Enterprise-sized vendors that is going to make or break Linux. Being that Red Hat is smart enough to make these partnerships, my money is on them to be "the" premier Linux vendor for the corporate market.
Take care,
Brian
--
100% Linux Web Hosting Solutions
--
Intel better watch out our MSFT will start writing efficient code, and end the continuous cycle of getting a new CPU to run the new MSFT OS.
I want my rights back. I was actually using them when our government stole them after 9/11.
Funny to see how SuSE is not part of that alliance. They were the first to ship an Itanium distribution, back in June 2001!
Have a look here if you don't believe me - this means you have to fork out $495 (yes, you read that right) for Red Hat Linux on an HP Itanium box compared to nothing extra for XP, HP-UX or indeed other Linuxes (Mandrake, Debian and SuSE all seem to have ISOs for Itanium available).
Surely HP must now resume shipping Red Hat Linux with their Itanium boxes [they did used to ship RH with the boxes until quite recently] ? Or is $495 considered peanuts compared to the cost of the boxes ?
Same with that guy who said there was only a market for 10 computers in the entire world. At that point in time, it was fairly accurate.
-
Why HP chose the Redhat Distro fot Itanium bases PC ?
.
It is a shame !
Everybody knows that Mandrake is much better !
Why ?
Because Mandrake is French and French computer scientists are much better than American.
Redhat is useless, has poor tools, is not user Friendly and is very buggy.
Mandrake is like a hot butter on a warm biscuit : It is a very wonderfull distro designed by the smartest people of the World : The French !
I am fed up that HP stick with the Dummy Americans of Redhat, Fed Up that IBM stick with a distro designed by Nazis (SuSE)
Fuck! We created lot of wonder in the World and nobody want to use our products, that is a shame !
Please learn French American, even if you are narrow-minded and want to stick with a language spoke by gays like Shakespeare !
Sofware that currently uses 32 bit values to compute hard drive space is probably broken right now as the maximum value a unsigned 32 bit nubmer can represent is about aproximately 4 gigabytes. Have you ever written code to convert between an int64 and long? It's not complicated but boy can it ever be annoying.
time_t this happy 32 bit little time value is ubiquiteous accross all platforms and is also broken after 2038. Switching to a 64 bit version makes the problem go away.
32 bits starts to get a lot smaller when you're dealing with signed values. ~2billion isn't that big a number for a lot of computations.
In short, switching to 64bit will solve a lot of little niggly programming problems for free.
Operating systems with standardized ways of writing software will probably make the transition fairly seemlessly (UNIX: already available). Operating systems with rampant use of hard coded 32bit values (DWORD) for handling pointers and system resources will have a more painful transition (Windows: delayed).
Do not spread "09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0" over the internet, thank you.
RedHat is just a bit slow with the 64 bit stuff. SuSE Linux Enterprise 7.0 is already available for Itanium since december last year.
(As well as a Xeon optimized version since last may.)
hey how about United Linux running on multi-proc alpha servers and all of compaq's Himalaya servers oh yeah i forgot the whole we're merging thing. well in any case its still a very big step forward for linux. between this and IBM working on linux we should start seeing alot more people getting involved in the movement ... which is a good thing for the most part.
"Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I'm not sure about the the universe." --Albert Einstein
&# gmake clean all
||
HP bailed on IA-64 because HP couldn't run its development operation efficiently enough to meet the tight controls it now must use to survive.
HewPaq is no longer a frontline R&D organization, it's a computer kitbuilder.
--Blair
"Not that there's anything wrong with that."
Sacreligous I tell ya!!
UNIX: about a decade across their whole market.
Actually, it's a lot less than a decade for most UNIX vendors.
DEC had 64-bits first; 1992/1993 I believe, with SGI not too long afterwards. So the two guys with lowest marketshare were pretty fast out of the blocks. But where were things a few years ago? By late 1998, all the RISC vendors had at least one 64-bit piece of hardware, with half of Sun and HP's product lines moved over, IBM just starting, and SGI shipping all 64-bit hardware. But various players hadn't finished all the OS-level stuff to support that. (Source for all that here.) The transition to 64-bits wasn't done for UNIX players even 3.5 years ago, so "across their whole market" is really way too strong a statement. Wintel ran on 64-bit Alpha support long ago, but actual 64-bit APIs were still in development back in that timeframe; I haven't seen how far along they are now.
At one point in my career, I analyzed 64 bit marketing for several projects. Basically, saying "we're 64-bit, they aren't" was never a very compelling argument to begin with. Sure, in a few cases (very large databases, but not very very large databases) it made a difference, but at the end of the day, it didn't win any hardware players a lot of business.
Saying "64-bit is better" is easy, showing that 64-bit is worth paying more money is typically hard.
You're right that 64-bit Intel will likely win over 64-bit RISC long-term is right. But Intel is having huge problems executing on 64-bit Intel stuff. Itanium was a loser. We'll see how competitive McKinley is.
Right now, and I suspect for some time to come, Sun and SGI will continue to sell better hardware primarily based on "more reliable", "more scalable" kinds of features within the hardware (as usual, features requiring OS support), not leaning too heavily on the 64-bit argument.
--LP
XML (especially DOM) is another way to get all my resources utilized. Although it takes it for good reasons.
Photoshop was another big demander of 32-bit. With 3D animation studios 64-bit will be a much better choice.
Also I expect a new wave (generation) of AI applications: in games, in financial applications and in search engines. And probably in speech interface.
Finally, it's not far away I will have 32GB of RAM on my home server. 32-bit is not good to access it :)
Less is more !
redhat + hp, this is the end.
the beginning of the free distributed linux's end
lets take a closer look at redhat.
they make it more human, (this is the way they discribe latest gnome + latest X, in the magazines), more complex, more colorfull (the green [OK] i guess), with the idea to get money from it.
well now with the partnership with hp this is possible.
we have 10 more years with the BSD license for full free code.
long live bsd.
# system administrator, interbgc.com # mail to : borislav.nikolov@interbgc.com # icq uin : 8912353
I thought HP used debian on its servers? Didn't we see recently that they were going to use Debian as their main flavour of GNU/Linux?
Or was HP just playing with Redhat using Debian and SuSE (United Linux?) as bargining chips?
I heard he was up for election soon.
Pray tell, where are all the oposition parties in Iraq? Wait, you say there are none? Man, I wonder who the people will vote for? Lets take a look at a previous "election" result to see if we can decern a trend...hey, look at that! 97% of the people voted for Sadam last time he decided to hold an election. Fancy that!
If you read the article carefully, they also talk about laying off the eCos group, which is a pity, as it's a very fine OS for embedded work. Much smaller and tighter than Linux...
How about United Linux PPC? Apple blew it already up, but IBM and Motorolla still can play.
I thought Oracle's licensing doesn't allow you to publish the results of such tests... well, I'm sure they don't mind if Oracle comes out the winner...
HP/Redhat should first fix their drivers. The DL380 integrated array controller does not support tape drives on RedHat.
that RedHat is turning into a monopoly. There for the longest time I thought the 'm' in monopoly stood for 'M'icro$oft. But now I am starting to think that it just stands for 'm'oney.
I truly do hate saying this, since I am and have been for the past 3+ years been running soley RedHat (none of that dual boot crap like most of you out there). But Redhat, which has done great things in the advancement of both a workstation and server linux has outstreched its arms on this one. First with Oracle, now this...
I only hope that it enhances the product, not the price (like other companies, M$, have done).