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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."
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."
With those sorts of prices, they're going to get it, too! The cheapest Itanium 2 system money can buy (HP zx2000) costs $3500, more or less, and would run like a dog compared to e.g. a 4-way 1.6GHz PPC970 system.
Looks like Intel's competition is going to be coming more and more from IBM, not AMD...
It would be interesting to see how they compare with the PowerMac. With a 4 way system that costs only $500 more then apple's two ways this could provide some good competition for in the scientific/heavy compute PPC niche. Maybe this will show the way for 4 way xservs/highend workstations from apple.
OS X/Darwin is entirely optimized for ppc and is developed entirely towards that end. ppc Linux is a port from something else (albeit a good one)
NextStep was originally written for the 68k, thence ported to SPARC, x86, and PA-RISC. So PPC was the fifth architecture the basic underlying system has been ported to. So if you don't like ports, you had better throw away your Mac and switch to Windows now (oh wait sorry...the NT kernel was actually developed for the i860 first).
And remember, Linux will be a native, fully supported OS for these machines alongside AIX -- the firmware will be designed to boot Linux, and all the hardware will be fully supported.
"(Man) tries to live his own life as if he were telling a story. But you have to choose: live or tell." --Sartre
What's really important is if we see IBM release a real compiler for the 970. gcc is a complete joke on PPC.
- Adam L. Beberg - The Cosm Project - http://www.mithral.com/
Soong sez:Ummm....well then (from the article):Yah. RTFA.
IBM developed the chip, which means they developed a mobo along with it for testing. Apple had to make their own design, and they had to make it look good, and be quiet, home-friendly, and stylish. IBM gets to stamp out big ugly boxes, because really, unless you're talking about a secretary, no one in the office ever says "That is a nice lookin' rack!"
This leads me to believe the 2U model will be priced even lower. No mention is made, however, about clock speeds, although I'm, sure IBM will make nice fast ones avalible, a $3500 base configuration for the 4U probably means four-way 1GHz. Why would the fastest chips come in the base model?
All in all, however, these will be nice machines, and if you've ever wanted to escape the x86 world, PPC is a nice place to do it (speaking from experience). They are slightly ahead of Apple's current offerings, however IBM has the advantage there, the 970 being their own.
And if you want to run Mac OS X, you'll be disapointed.
CAn'T CompreHend SARcaSm?
Come on moderator. Explain why I'm wrong instead of slapping me with a mod point
:>
...
i would guess that you are punished for talking about things you really don't know.
You probably pay 3-6 times what you'd normally pay for NICS and GFX cards. Apple does this all the time.
But you only need one nic and one card, and they will propably come bundled with the machine
2: SMP's nice. So is PPC. But how much will you actually save if you went to this versus a new 1 or 2 Athlon setup?
If you count the administrative costs i could buy not one but two 4way 970's, costing more than 8k, versus 4 beowulf athlons costing below 2k and still break even in a month. And i would have an identical machine for backup.
3...I can go to WalMart, or ripoff computer store and buy parts I need now... Not a good idea.
Go to walmart to buy parts for your server? Now that's a good idea
4: In my statement about Beowulf beating this, What's the cost/performance of 4 Athlon 1.5GHz with 1 gig of ram each (on 100MBps) versus one of these? I bet the name of "server" raises that cost atleast 1000$.
A 4way intel machine will cost far more though. More than $10K. These machines *will* be a huge success whether intel or not. You cannot address everything with beowulf you know...
Come on, a 4u 64bit under $5k? This is the dream of every fortran programmer i know, it is the perfect terminal server, the perfect development machine etc. Oh, and no one can come to you with a "why don't we use win2k3 here?" line.
What about power consumption issues?
huh? what about them? 970's need less power than most mobile chips. Where did you see that g5 "goble power faster than athlons"??? this is most definetely wrong.
Washington bullets will simply be known as the "Bulle
I am a Linux user first and foremost... but the thing is, no matter HOW much time I put into customizing things, I can not make a Linux desktop as clean and easy to use as a Mac OS X desktop.
It's not just that having Only One Way To Do Things (tm) makes the easy desktop experience, but it's the fact that the One Way is thoroughly thought-out and streamlined. In Linux, we have tons of disparate pieces to put together in countless concatenations... but in the end, what we unavoidably get is an unstreamlined construct of disparate pieces.
I understand the appeal of customizing, and I do think Mac OS X could stand to allow a little more customizing without sacrificing the benefits of the OS. Linux will remain dominant on my PC desktop, and it will be dual-booted on my soon-to-be-purchased PowerBook, but the main reason I am getting the PowerBook is for Mac OS X and its ability to stay out of the way. The best OS is the one that interferes with my work the least. Mac OS X does that. Linux, when configured and tweaked to my liking and all that, does a good job by way of being stable and such, but some of those disparate pieces irritate. (Windows, of course, constantly interferes by being unstable and generally a source of irritation).
Ideally, I'd like to see Linux meet OS X halfway. Choice is good, but not when the choices are 15 different mediocre options. Can't we get 4 really good ones instead?
That's bull. Mac OS X only helps "just getting work done" if you're functionally computer illiterate.
Hmm. Consider this. What if each car was entirely different (like Linux boxen can be). Let's say there are NO standards. Gas pedal could be on the left or right. There could be a gas BUTTON on the steering wheel. Breaks could likewise be accessable via a lever. And that's assuming that you keep the same rough configuration (that is, driver sits on the left side [in the US]). Just imagine if every car you ever had to drive was radically different. THat's what Linux is like.
1) Focus-follows-mouse, always shunned by non-Unix systems and now even by Unix systems (OS X, GNOME) saves endless point-and-click strokes (find titlebar, click to focus)
Since when do you have to click the title bar of an app to focus to it? And since when has there not been a laucher/dock/etc (first one I used was in OS/2 however I'm sure they were around before that)
2) Fast cut/paste. Here again, the reviled behavior of X (highlight with left button, move to another window that focuses automatically, middle click where you want it to paste) saves incredible amounts of time versus the OS X or Windows behaviors (highlight with left button, hit CTRL-C, click on titlebar of destination window, click where you want to place cursor for paste, hit CTRL-V). The combination of focus-follows-mouse and keystroke-free copy/paste here again saves hours, not just minutes, when performing reptitious tasks.
It may save hours for you--but shouldn't the interface be irrelevant unless you're computer illiterature (your words, not mine). Personally, I get terribly frustrated when I'm trying to paste over something and end up accidentally clearing my clipboard buffer in oldschool X. I prefer windows/mac style (I have mice button bound to copy/paste actually--doesn't work NEARLY as well in X because of the issue I just cited).
6) Scriptability/rapid application development. Yes, the dreaded command line shell. Many of my most intense post-production tasks (i.e. laying out posters with their captions, borders, copyright notices, anti-aliasing, interpolating to proper sizes, etc.) are database driven and processed through command line tools like ImageMagick. etc etc
I'm not an AppleScript pro by anymeans, but from what I know, AppleScript is the exact functional equivalent of traditional unix style scripting tools. There's a macro recorder for one thing which is a GREAT feature that unixes have no equivalent too. In addition AppleScript can be used to control any applicationsm, to an incredible degree. I've worked in DTP, try searching for Quark AppleSCripts--the things some of them can do are AMAZING, IThink you'd be surprised. I hope that's not too techno-spiritual for you ;)
Just to be clear--don't get me wrong, I'm very glad you like Linux. But I don't think most people even WANT the kind of control and variability that you need. It's all great for people like you and I, who hang out and slashdot and do this stuff for fun, to talk about the user experience, but from my work experiences, most of the people who use computers don't care about how they work--they just want them to be easy to use and to not break :p I'm sure you've seen a user befuddled when something changes slightly. One graphic designer I was helping recover email for last week couldn't figure out how to get into her netscale email because some of her settings had gotten trashed and the "mail" button (along with Composer, NAvigator on that little floating bar) were at the bottom of the screen instead of floating to the side where they had been..I had to show exactly where to click. To most people, computers are a tool and nothing more. Like I said earlier, can you imagine if all cars interior controls etc were totally designed by the whim of the moment?
Although I happen to be using OSX as I write this, and I really do like the system (and I'm not computer illiterate by a long shot) I tend to agree with most of what you say. The same things you talk about in X I miss on my Mac. It is quite annoying in many ways.
But, in my current job, I simply must use SPSS which is only available for Windows or Mac. So that was my choice. Given that choice, Mac is the clear favourite.
As other posters have pointed out, it does have a quite functional command line, and it does have X available to run inside of Aqua. Sadly the latter is slow as a dog, and you can't just ditch the hideous Aqua WM and run everything inside something decent like WindowMaker yet, but hey, look at the alternative.
Write me a fully compatible SPSS clone for linux, and I'll wipe OSX and install Gentoo/PPC in a heartbeat. Until then, I'm just glad I don't have to run XP on my beautiful little laptop.
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Friends don't let friends enable ecmascript.