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."
- Identify a product which is not being provided, but which there is a demand for.
- Sell that product to consumers at a price which is reasonable, but higher than what it costs you to produce each unit.
- Profit!
Hmm, that sounds different from normal somehow. Maybe they're on to something here.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...
We just heard on Slashdot that the new 3 billion plant wasn't living up to expectations, so IBM has to capitalize on this oppurtunity.
This is also a good thing for the mac community because now the G5 will get a lot more "work" done on it, because IBM will have to compete with other 64-bit manufacturers on a broader stage than just the Mac arena.
Error 407 - No creative sig found
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.
Unless it's prices significantly lower than Apple's offerings, I wouldn't bet on it as a workstation. MacOSX already offers a great kernel with an even better GUI, and right now I wouldn't put money on Linux against that for a work desktop.
The server market, on the other hand will definitely get a great boost. Cheap PPC970 and 64-bit = heaven for databases, web, and app servers.
I think it's clear from this just how much IBM fears SCO!
:-P
Belief is the currency of delusion.
Does anybody else think that "quad PPC" sounds like some kind of super-weapon?
So either you don't own an iBook, haven't used OS X and are just lying about blue beachballs, or you do own an iBook and see the beachball so little you don't even know what it looks like.
Which is it?
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?
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.
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?