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Cheap PPC Linux Machines From IBM

Posted by timothy on from the alert-the-darl dept.

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."

1 of 531 comments (clear)

  1. Re:We already know..... by Dahan · · Score: 5, Informative
    1: In order for PCI stuff to work with this platform, you need firmware for PPC. Guess what? The multitude of X86 cheap stuff doesnt work on these platforms. You probably pay 3-6 times what you'd normally pay for NICS and GFX cards. Apple does this all the time.

    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.