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Will Darwin be Ported to the IBM Power 4?

Posted by Cliff on from the any-port-in-the-storm dept.

eadint asks: "I have heard rumors thorough the net that Apple plans to port Darwin to the Power 4, 64 bit chip. Currently I work for a university. We are using Apple computers and are considering the platform for our number crunching capabilities. According to this Motorola has no plans on producing a 64-bit chip. Does anyone know if Darwin can or will be ported to a true 64 bit platform."

24 of 45 comments (clear)

  1. Power4 by MonaLisa · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Have you considered Itanium-2 under Linux for
    your "number crunching" platform? The McKinley
    (Itanium-2) is faster than the Power4, and also
    cheaper (although you'll need to buy the Intel
    compilers for a few hundred if you want great
    performance).

    1. Re:Power4 by Guspaz · · Score: 2, Interesting

      What about waiting for the Hammer to come out? I thought the Hammer's compiler was free.

      Regards, Guspaz.

    2. Re:Power4 by Chanc_Gorkon · · Score: 4, Informative

      Itanium 2 faster then Power4? I doubt it. Again, this is apples to oranges comparisons. Also, has ANYONE ever seen a Itanium system? I thought not. I work on RS/6000 machines and I really doubt an Itantium 2 system could even compare to a IBM RS/6000 (Power4 Based). First off, most RS/6000 machines come equpied with SMP (sometime only having one chip installed, but most are complete). Also, the Regatta p690 machine is THE BEST in my opinion. Only thing that comes close might be the top level Sun machines. Also, this same technology was used in Deep Blue (the machine that beat Gary Kasparov many years ago). All that Deep Blue was was a specially programmed SP system (RS/6000 Super Parallel). Comparing Intel's yet to be produced Itanium 2 which is an evolutionary step of the Itanium which did not really sell all that well. Point is....POINT ME TO THE BENCHMARKS! Since you can't(no silicon kind of stops that), well we shall see. Personally, I would rather run AIX on it. It's proven at least.

      --

      Gorkman

    3. Re:Power4 by brejc8 · · Score: 3, Informative

      There are some benchmars out actually. Make of them what you like.
      This is the sheet for itanic2 1GHz.
      And you can compare it to the others

      Its still too early to see what effect the itanics will have but they look quite respectable, if they havent priced them selves out of the parket

      --
      Mouse powered Chips, Open source Processors and Lego
    4. Re:Power4 by MonaLisa · · Score: 2, Informative

      Here are the SPECfp benchmarks from:

      http://www.spec.org/osg/cpu2000/results/cfp2000. ht ml

      IBM Corporation IBM eServer pSeries 690 Turbo (1300 MHz) 1 1202

      Hewlett-Packard Comp hp workstation zx6000 (1000 MHz, Itanium 2) 1 1356

      Also, go to: http://www.emsl.pnl.gov:2080/capabs/mscf/?/capabs/ mscf/hardware/results_hpcs2.html
      for benchmarks results for some real codes and further synthetic benchmarks.

    5. Re:Power4 by CMiYC · · Score: 2

      Also, has ANYONE ever seen a Itanium system? I thought not.

      I have. Quite often. I have worked with both Merced and McKinley systems. The company I work for sells the logic analyzers and probes for them. I support those products.

    6. Re:Power4 by sharkey · · Score: 2

      Again, this is apples to oranges comparisons.

      No, it's Apples to Bunny People comparisons.

      --

      --
      "Outlook not so good." That magic 8-ball knows everything! I'll ask about Exchange Server next.
    7. Re:Power4 by Chanc_Gorkon · · Score: 2

      Exactly. Most places aren't going to run a Regatta in a single server situation. They are going to divide it out into LPARS. Most common place would probably buy a Sun if they wanted it to be alll CPU's on one server, although the Sun's have the same or similar thing also. I think they are real close, though I would take the IBM because there service has been very good at our site. I had a drive go bad and they were out the next day and the box never had to be downed either. Plug the new drive in, run cfgmgr and the drive is there and ready to be reallocated. Most times we do down the box though just in case...plus they also run cfgmgr on boot so when you reboot the drive will be there also.

      From and Admin standpoint, I like AIX. The Sun has nothing compared to smitty. Admintool doesn't even come close. One upside to sun is there's no ODM so you can admin everything by editing the text files. You can do the same on a AIX box if you don't want to have the settings there on a reboot (if it ain't in a rc script or the ODM, it's gone.). Smitty also makes things easier for a first time admin. You can learn the commandline way by using smitty. Don't get me wrong...sometimes the raw way is good, but if your not sure what your doing, you can always pic your way through smitty.

      Also if you want a complete IBM solution, you can get the Shark storage server which scales up to 27TB (TERABYTES!) of fiber channel connected storage! Granted, you could also use pretty much any UNIX®, Windows NT®, Windows® 2000, Novell NetWare®, Linux, IBM iSeries(TM) and AS/400®, IBM zSeries (TM) servers and S/390® too. It's just nice to have everything supported by IBM.

      I have never had to call IBM twice to get a tech there. IBM's support has been exemplary which is more then I can say for Xerox, Novell and our ISP. I have no idea what Sun's suport is like because i have never had the opportunity to run a bigger Sun machine. Just ran workstation class machines here.

      --

      Gorkman

    8. Re:Power4 by Chanc_Gorkon · · Score: 2

      I really can't trust these benchmarks. They are produced by someone that will be SELLING Itanium 2 servers. Also, notice it says at the top hardware available Sept. 2002. That's next month! A site like Anandtech or some other independent reviewer needs to run benchmarks on these before I could trust the results. This is like Microsoft saying NT 7 or whatever is faster then Linux and showing some pretty graph before anyone could go BUY it.

      --

      Gorkman

    9. Re:Power4 by Chanc_Gorkon · · Score: 2

      Good stuff! Glad to here service is good with BOTH companies! Something you hardly ever hear!

      Yeah that is exactly what I was saying in another post. Besides, anything that compiles on Darwin would compile on a AIX machine too unless it's OS X and they are Cocoaizing a app. I would never see the point in porting it. Also, a port would be difficult as I am sure that ROS Microcode is different then a Mac's BIOS. Processor wise, it would be easy but there's too much pSeries specific stuff that would need ported to run on the Darwin kernel. Plus the AIX Kernel is way more advanced then Darwin. Darwin would need an equal advance to even make it worth doing. So, why even hope for it? Just run AIX and be happy your running a nice robust system that can also run KDE or GNOME instead of CDE (if you need those GUI things).

      --

      Gorkman

    10. Re:Power4 by ivan256 · · Score: 2

      Also, has ANYONE ever seen a Itanium system? I thought not. I work on RS/6000 machines and I really doubt an Itantium 2 system could even compare to a IBM RS/6000 (Power4 Based). First off, most RS/6000 machines come equpied with SMP (sometime only having one chip installed, but most are complete).

      I've seen, used, and programmed for Itanium systems. There is definatly silicon available. You can even buy CPUs from some pricewatch vendors. There aren't any non-SMP capable Itanium systems available right now. They ALL support at least 2 CPUs. There are real benchmarks that have been run on Itanium 2, but there haven't been any independant benchmarks of Itanium 2 yet. The benchmarks show it slightly faster then Power 4, so expect them to be competitive with each other in real world applications. I've personally run benchmarks on the original Itanium, and they were nothing spectacular.

      If I were paying the electric bill, I'd buy the Power4. If I needed more then 4 CPUs, I also wouldn't trust Itanium 2 yet, but only because I don't trust the current chipsets that are available. If I wanted a 4-CPU system or less, I didn't care about power or heat, and was only interested in speed, I'd pick the one that cost less.

  2. AMD hammer for apple? by brejc8 · · Score: 3, Interesting

    These are just roumors but I heared this from several sources that apple are talking to AMD about a 64bit only OS.
    Apple might need to get faster chips to compete but making something so close to a PC will allow clones.
    Alternatively apple could just port their OS to the hammer PCs and keep making their own PPC machines.
    The OS is sexy enough to make a large wodge of money.
    Especially if it comes with M$ office which is the only reason a lot of people dont wish to use anything other than windows.

    --
    Mouse powered Chips, Open source Processors and Lego
    1. Re:AMD hammer for apple? by Sentry21 · · Score: 2

      Especially if it comes with M$ office which is the only reason a lot of people dont wish to use anything other than windows.

      You say that like there isn't an MS Office for OS X.

      --Dan

    2. Re:AMD hammer for apple? by brejc8 · · Score: 2

      nope im saying that like there is one for osx but not for linux/bsd

      --
      Mouse powered Chips, Open source Processors and Lego
  3. Chip news sites just make stuff up. by ivan256 · · Score: 3, Informative

    I was working on a project designing a board that used Motorola's 64bit PPC. They canned the chip in October 2001. They annonuced the cancelation in private meetings to their customers that even knew about it at the first Smart Networks forum in New Orleans. It was NEVER going to be the G5. It wasn't even going to be one of their desktop processors. It was going to be built using their "Book-E" embedded processor spec, and the MMU architecture for it was completely different from the one in the green book. I think that The "we make shit up" Register started the G5 64bit rumour.

    Even when the 64bit chip was still in the plans, the G5 was going to come way before it, and was always going to be an evolution of the G4 core. So, the rumors have taken us from the begining, back to the truth, with a whole lot of made up plot in between that never happened.

  4. If you want it, start writing it. by dbrutus · · Score: 3, Interesting

    The quickest way to determine if this is a live product would be to start the port using opendarwin.org and see what happens. If you start to get odd or wierd static from Apple, you probably tripped across a secret Apple project and you'll know. If not, then you might just turn it into a live product anyway.

    It would certainly be smart both for IBM and Apple to support this as a first step to Mac OS X on RS/6000. Apple could use the increase in its upper end and it would help IBM push some more boxes.

    1. Re:If you want it, start writing it. by dbrutus · · Score: 2

      Why funny? They basically use the same chip family. The PPC was always just a cut down Power.

      For IBM, they move boxes so it makes as much sense to sell RS/6000 with Mac OS X as it does to sell it with Linux.

      For Apple, they get to keep customers who need higher end computers and are willing to pay 20k for hardware. At least they'll make some money off software rather than losing them to AIX.

    2. Re:If you want it, start writing it. by norwoodites · · Score: 2

      Actually the original Power was a different kind of chip, PowerPC was based on it. The 601 had backwards support for the Power. The 603 and higher got rid of that support. Now the Power series are just PPC processors with Power support in software. The PPC abi and instructions is almost compatible with the original Power's. There are a few removals and few additions to the instruction set. When AIM came together, IBM had the instruction set, Mot had the (funny though) process to make the chips, Apple needed them for their machines.

  5. System Partitioning from IBM better? by spike666 · · Score: 2

    one of the benefits to an IBM RS6000 (not that AIX is a huge benefit IMHO) is that IBM is now sharing all of its low level subsystem code from the Mainframe (os/390 systems) with the other platforms. so things like the way the ibm mainframes allow for systems to be partitioned into multiple machines are now available to the pSeries group.
    where Sun partitions across physical CPUs, IBM can now partition w/o regard for the physical CPU. and you can adjust the CPU amount for various machines on the fly...

  6. Yay Rumor Mongering by Sentry21 · · Score: 2

    I like rumors just as much as the next guy, but this is getting a little silly.

    Quoting someone who claims someone he won't name told him Motorola's not making any 64-bit chips as proof ('According to this...') is just silly. I mean, MY source at Motorola says they already have 1024-bit optical chips running at a bajillion petahertz and that OS X 10.a million billion.1 is going to be ported to it Real Soon Now.

    If there's one thing Apple does well, it's get people speculating, but the rumors floating around now are pretty baseless. Moving to a system like x86 would be just horrible (x86 assembly is ass-ugly in the first place), not to mention having to support shitty hardware.

    Power4/5/whatever is more plausible, though those chips aren't really designed for desktop use, and I don't think IBM loves Apple enough to redesign them. Perhaps Apple would benefit from building a fab plant of their own and doing whatever they like. It would certainly be a perfect compliment to their all-from-us philosophy, and it would give them a lot more freedom. For that matter though, maybe the new IBM .1 micron plant is there to manufacture Power4/5 chips for Apple. Who knows?

    All I know is that x86 is a bad, ugly idea, 64-bit or not.

    --Dan

  7. Why bother with Darwin? by Valdrax · · Score: 2

    Seriously. What's wrong with AIX or Linux, the two UNIX operating systems that IBM will have running on them? If you're going to buy a Power4 system from IBM, get the operating systems that it comes with.

    In addition, Darwin isn't that great of a UNIX platform. Its thread support isn't all there, its scheduler is terrible, and its missing support for a lot of common advanced UNIX APIs like SysV shared memory and semaphores, and its RPC support isn't fully SunRPC compatible. Trust me. I had to write a multithreaded web server and proxy server that took advantage of all of these UNIX system features, and I kept running into the limitations of Darwin as bundled with Mac OS X 10.1.5.

    Stick with AIX or Linux if you want to be doing something serious.

    --
    If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
    1. Re:Why bother with Darwin? by Chanc_Gorkon · · Score: 2

      This would be a COMPLETE waste of computing power. Granted, a 630 is a deskside system (or can be rack mounted), but I would rather have it in a center as a print server or in some other small server capacity. Noone in my workplace would ever get a 12,000 dollar desktop! This guy could also be used in a HACMP configuration as well so I don't think it would be worth the waste of money it would be running a ported OS/X and a ported MSOffice. It would also be a TOTAL waste to run that on a Regatta (one frame replacing 3 frames). I have 10 servers I could replace very nicely with a Regatta. Only way I would like to see something like this is so that I could serve OS X desktops from a big honkin server for my entire organization. Even then, a Regatta would more then handle it

      --

      Gorkman

  8. GCC by johnjones · · Score: 2

    ok AMD helped SUSE create a GCC backend for x86-64 apple use GCC as the default compiler so thats easy

    AMD actually funded ST electronics to do the compiler which does alot better than GCC

    in terms of could they move across to a x86-64 technically yes*

    *actually they would not do it because backward compatability would be nill and anyone who has done any study of software a backwards compatabilty knows what you should do

    so will they move to x86-64 NO
    will they move to a 64bit PowerPC ? yes**

    ** it may not be a Moto part and apple might just buy out motos CPU design licence and use IBM's Fabs like that .10 micron in fishkill

    regards

    John Jones

  9. get a Linux system by g4dget · · Score: 2
    I use OSX on the desktop and Linux for a compute cluster, so here is my experience.

    OSX makes a good desktop system for people who want a no-hassles UNIX system that runs out of the box. It makes it easy for people with modest computer experience to install and maintain their machine. And it runs a bunch of commercial desktop apps.

    Once you are talking number crunching with a compute cluster, you are almost certainly better off with Linux-based systems. Linux has extensive cluster administration tools. Cluster installation and maintenance is much easier than OSX installation and maintenance. You can easily run any GUI-based Linux programs remotely using X11, which still beats Apple's remote desktop software in both functionality and performance. You get automatic process migration across a cluster with OpenMOSIX. There is much more numerical and scientific software available for Linux than for OSX, much of it open source; while porting to OSX usually isn't hard, it does require some effort.

    Also, you do much better in terms of hardware. While XServe pricing is OK, Pentium and AMD-based servers are still cheaper and offer better performance, and they are offered by many vendors in many different configurations. And, if you like, people already use 64bit Itanium-based machines, or you can still get Alpha-based 64bit compute servers.