Slashdot Mirror
Cheap PPC Linux Machines From IBM
ksheff writes "According to this story, IBM is planning on introducing low-end SMP servers and deskside machines based on the PPC970. The machines would be able to run Linux and AIX. A 4-way machine is expected to cost less than $3500! IBM expects a 20x increase in the number of PPC Linux servers by 2006."
Something interesting: gcc on PPC doesn't generate code as good as Visual Age for C++ on PPC. Hopefully, as these machines become more popular gcc will become better on the PPC.
I found this article that talks about this
If tits were wings it'd be flying around.
...is that you're comparing a build-it-yourself solution to an OEM solution. The OEM solution means you don't have to spend the time and effort to build the machine, that there is a (hopefully) semi-intelligent person on the other end of an 800 number to provide support, and that if the machine goes berserk, they will be there to fix it under warranty. Two very different situations, IMO.
...for a machine that will kick the crap out of this great machine IBM will release...
Based on everything I've read thus far, it seems to me the PPC970 cheaps are substantially more efficient than their P4 counterparts at the same clock speed. Because of that, I hardly doubt a quad Xeon 2.4 system would "kick the crap out" of a quad PPC970 2.0 system. It seems you're exaggerating a bit--or perhaps you have something to backup your claim?
And when Opteron comes out...
Opteron has been out for close to 3 months now. Machines are available from several vendors. Google is your friend.
Perl - $Just @when->$you ${thought} s/yn/tax/ &couldn\'t %get $worse;
No, you only need special firmware on the card if you want the computer's firmware to be able to talk to the card. Modern OSes use the firmware for very little, or they don't use it at all. For example, on a PC, you can disable a hard drive in the BIOS, but Linux will still be able to access it (assuming it's not your boot drive). Linux accesses the drive controller directly; it doesn't use the BIOS.
So, you'll only need a special NIC if you want to netboot with that NIC. And you'll only need a special graphics card if you want to see the boot process on that card (you can use a serial console if you don't... at least these machies had better support serial console).
5: What about power consumption issues? Last I've seen the G5's, they gobbled power faster than an overclocked Athlon.
When did you last see a G5? A 1.8GHz PPC970 uses about 42W, while an Athlon XP 2500+ (1.833GHz) draws around 54W. I don't know how fast an overclocked Athlon would gobble power, but I'll note that the max power consumption of a non-overclocked Athlon 3200+ (2.2GHz) is 77W.
gcc is a complete joke on PPC.
Apple uses gcc to compile Mac OS X, and pushes gcc for developers, so they've been doing their own work on gcc. The more compiler hackers that use PPC, the better gcc will become, no? Maybe this new machine will add some motivation.
$x='S24;r)>63/* h@<5+oZ)32"5cz';$me='phroggy'x$];
$x=~y+ -xz+\0-Tx+;print$_^chop$me for split'',$x;
But it doesn't actually say that the base configuration comes with 4 cpus at this price. It's very common for IBM and others to offer a lower price configuration with empty cpu sockets for later upgrades.