Slashdot Mirror
US Navy buys Apple as Linux Platform
Nine Mirrors Turning writes "According to the Register the US Navy has ordered 260 XServe servers running Yellow Dog Linux from Terra Soft Solutions. Terra Soft is the only reseller allowed to resell Apple hardware with a third-party operating system installed. The XServes will be modified by a unnamed third-party and will be running a custom kernel. The XServes are destined for US Navy submarines and will be used for real-time image processing. I do wonder how many will be installed on each sub, though. Are we talking clustering here? I didn't even know the USN was running Linux on front-line ships."
didn't even know the USN was running Linux on front-line ships.
Do you think that the rest of the world would fear the USA military so much if their front-line troops were running windows?
Now SCO's going to have to sue the Navy and Apple.
Cruising the internet on my TI-99/4A @ a whopping 300 baud!
From post: Are we talking clustering here?
From Article On board clusters of the Apple rack server will be used for real-time image processing.
Emphasis mine
yay! i did it agaon!
you all fail it suckers!
I'm a Mac developer, so I have a love of the platform. But using XServes just to run Linux seems kind of strange at this time. The only systems Apple currently sells with decent performance with full exploitation of DDR are the recently released G5 towers. I would think that Apple would need to update the XServer line before such Linux use would make sense, since that OS currently runs better on Intel/AMD iron.
Those who complain about affect & effect on
Just wondering.
Finally the Penguin will submerge at sea... :)
Those who can, do. Those who can't, consult.
"Are we talking clustering here?"
Hmm... lets do a little math... 260 X serves...
How many subs do you think we have????
Like anyone can even know that
This is not really an unusual task for PPC cpu. A The unusual thing about this news, is that Apple hardware, and not some embedded motherboard is used.
SCO: You owe us $699 per computer!
Navy: OK - how about we give you half a million and you keep the change?
SCO: GREAT!
Navy: OK, tell us the address to send it to.
SCO: <gives corporate address>
Navy: Tomahawk targeting confirmed - you have a go for launch.
www.eFax.com are spammers
Imagine the UT2003 framerate on that sucker!
"I didn't even know the USN was running Linux on front-line ships."
They probably looked at alternatives after Windows NT crashed from a division-by-zero error and left a navy ship dead on the water for several hours.
OK, two serious questions.
1) Why use apple hardware? I thought I've been hearing how intel platforms are cheaper and as godd as/better than apple/sun/hp/your-non-intel-hardware-vendor-here. If, say, Dell or HP can offer a rack with more bang for the buck than apple, why choose Apple?
2) Given that Apple has been chosen, what's wrong with OS X? Isn't OS X supposed to be optimised for graphics performance? My understanding is that even the desktop uses the 3D hardware to draw itself. Wouldn't the Navy benefit from the hardware/OS X integration?
The only reason I can think of why they may not want to use an Intel solution, is that there won't be space on the subs for the air-conditioning they'd need. Still, they could put the racks in a freezer...
Another major difference between the two is the size; you can stack a lot more XServes than you can Sun machines of similar power (420R, 220R, not to mention the Enterprise 450, which is HUGE) given a fixed amount of space.
It is reasonable to assume that, since these are being put into submarines, space is of a limited quantity, so the reduced physical profile of the XServes may also have played a part in the decision making process.
/*- Mohammed -*/
when you think about it - some of the key advantages that Apple technologies have slot in perfectly with what customers like the Navy would want. The G4 and the rest of the PPC line work very well in specialised applications where vectorisation can take place (and when they're being used for one specific application, this optimisation can be done), and what's more they'll perform very well while putting out less heat and using up less power.
When you're on a sub that requires every inch of space to be utilised, these are attributes that make a computing system very attractive.
Once Apple deploys the G5s into these puppies, I think there's going to be a lot of organisations looking at their present hardware rigs in a very critical light.
-- james
Please check with a network time server. Your troll is off by about 4 years. HTH. YHBT. YHL. KTHX. BBYE.
/*- Mohammed -*/
Dam, you suck. Dam.
-73, de n1ywb
www.n1ywb.com
I have to do this to eliminate any vent of frustration that the US-hatin' Europeans here could have had:
1) It looks like Linus and G. W. Bush share the same goals for world domination.
and...
2) The subs were going to be running Mandrake, but the Congress-approved renaming to "Freedrake" just didn't sound right.
X Servs are rackable
X Servs are servers and as such are designed for reliability, not bleeding edge speed .
Finally, YDL is a very good Linux distribution. It's like RedHat, but better, and has very good Mac hardware support. They're probably choosing Linux over OS-X because they don't want all the fluff that comes with OS-X, and Linux is free as in speach. These computers are destined to be tools, and good tools don't have unnecessary features.
-73, de n1ywb
www.n1ywb.com
Why not use cheap intel hardware seems like a really strange question in this context. If memory serves, subs run in the 100s of billions of dollars a unit. And the nuclear ones stay down six months at a stretch. No Fed-ex delivery of replacement parts. You can't buy Dells with 28% return rates. "Uhm, Captin, the computer is down again. Can you tell the Admiral that we're going to have to take it off-line again while I trouleshoot." Don't think so.
The more interesting question is why Apple instead of Sun hardware. Given the XServes were supposedly originally designed to the NIH's specs, it may be that they're the most cost-effective answer to the problem.
And... completely off topic... can someone please tell Mr. Bush that outside of Texas it's nuclear, not nuke-u-leer.
the clock on the wall says 4 til 7
Heh, that was an old '98 troll. That's why it was -1'ed.
;-) Methinks it doesnt apply to xserve
Even the original complaint was using a 68k mac
just released a Bin Laden tape claiming responsibility for the purchasing decision.
...US Navy submarines and will be used for real-time image processing...
Did this stand out to anyone else? Image processing on a sub? I wasn't aware that they could see underwater. But I'll bet that's what's being worked-on here... Hmmm.
blog |
(From the article)
The Navy wanted a custom Xserve chassis, and the work was organized by Terra Soft who employed a third-party to modify the hardware. Terra Soft provided a custom kernel and drivers for Fibre Channel storage.
So perhaps Apple weren't interested in making custom X-Serves, or hacking OS X to fit...
Whatever the custom hardware is (Fibre-Channel disk arrays by the sound of it) probably isn't supported by stock OS X.
Liked this comment? Why not buy me something nice
I'm just surprised with out noise concious submarine captains/designers are that they'd want Xserves. from everything i've heard, pretty much all 1U hardware is damn noisey. guess the space is worth more than the price.
I think the poster was going for the humor angle :) . Can't blame the mods for modding it down though - it's a reflex that kicks in when you see that holy war line.
But, the X-servers come with a free copy of OS X Server - Unlimited! Maybe the Navy can reallocate the licenses elsewhere.
The article says the deal includes 260 XServes and is "worth $1.9 million in hardware alone." Since these are being used for "High Performance Computing," presumably they are Cluster Node XServes, which are designed for exactly that. So why is the average price per system $1,900,000/260 = $7300, when the Cluster Node XServe goes for $2799 retail? Is the Navy getting a lot of extra hardware to go with this?
Yeah. We've got less than 100. 50-60 SSNs, 15 or so SSBNs and SSGNs. Plus various others.
So like 80 subs. Not all of them get the new tech, of course. So maybe clusters of 4 or 5 of these things?
no thanks
having worked on a few govt. programs using DSP and software radios - the G4 is the defacto standard used by folks.. but usually running VxWorks and using proprietary solutions like this one where the accepted use is to buy some dual or quad PPC single board computers.
.almost ALWYAS less than 500Mhz G4's. In fact, this 466 is a model i've never seen before. A project i worked on was using state of the art 300 Mhz G4's. Many of these solutions alos run near the $10k price range.
The problem is that in almost every case - like the one i referenced, these systems are still.. today..
In fairness, many of these SBCs are built to extreme timing tolerances, have insane backplane speed and often have RF gear built in... in the case of real-time processing. you _have_ to have this, and therefore, these costs are justified.
But a lot of the time, they simply wanted to use them for post-processing of data.. not real time.. so everything you made up in speed on these highly custom boards was useless...
i always wondered - silently - wtf is wrong with you people (engineers who come up with the "requirement" to run SBCs for post processing")? You can get 1U dual 1 GHz G4's to run the SAME SOFTWARE for 1/3 the price? Why won't you even concider it? ARRRGH!!!!
Well, it seems that there is some very very very very brave program manager in the Navy who stuck his/her neck out and proved what i always thought in silence... that this buying of slow G4-based SBC's to do DSP post processing was stupid and silly. The answer was to get some Xserves and do it two to 4 times as fast for 1/3 the money.
This is not so much a coup for TerraSoft - though, of course, they did the "hard work"... but let me tell you.. whoever the Navy PM was took a LOT of shit for their suggestion to use Macs. I guarantee you that.
I hope we'll be able to find out who that PM was.. i'd liek to talk to them and find out how they made the sell...
Apple computer is a BAD WORD in the Government.. and this was really a coup on the part of everyone involved... but don't think that its a novel idea or somehow "amazing". Using dozens of rack-mount G4 macs has been the elephant in the middle of the room solution to literally thousands of DoD problems for at least 5 years... its actually pretty pathetic and sad how long it took for it to make it to prime time.
guns kill people like spoons make Rosie O'Donnell fat.
Certainly it's cheaper to get the Xserve sans OS X. From the article -- "We're the only Apple reseller on the planet with a licence to install a non-Apple operating system," says Staats.
Regardless I always thought the whole Apple advantage was the way having hardware and OS under one roof allowed you to make great "gestaltic" solutions. Why pay the Xserve premium and get G4 powered rack hardware to install an OS that's available for cheaper, and argueably better supported, x86 hardware? (And I've been a Mac user for over a decade and even tried out YDL and LPPC a couple of times... this isn't flame bait.)
Still, either Yellow Dog must be doing *something* better than Red Hat is (maintenance price?) or they must be running something that was designed *explicitly for* AltiVec.
It's all 0s and 1s. Or it's not.
So... what you're saying is... in a year or so we'll see a bunch of used XServes available as military surplus? YEAAAH BABY! Daddy's gettin an XServe! WHOO HOO!
I can't say it. It won't come out; the keyboard simply will not type it. Maybe if I trick it:
B C
E L
O U
W S
U T
L E
F R
! !
Sorry - I had to. I couldn't believe no one else had beat me to it - did I miss it?
I don't think the navy gives a flying fish about "bang for the buck". Because their systems have to be so thorougly te$ted (we hope), $10,000 dollars in difference in cost of a single computer matters not a whit.
If, on the other hand, they'd already tested the software on that hardware, THEN you might see cost savings that make them sit up and take notice.
Because if you did, you failed to convey it. The XServe is very thin. It takes up less physical space than similarly powered Sun machines. Period.
Also, if you'd ever seen the inside of an E450, you'd realize that the drive bays don't take up more than 15% of the internal space. There's a lot of empty, unused space in there, which may serve the function of providing air for the CPU(s) to cool, or may be just the result of the industrial designers realizing they had a whole lot of case to fill.
Maybe next time you could make the effort to actually refute something I said, instead of just proving your mastery of Sun's Online Product catalog. Or you could just drop the pedantic argumentative tone, if you just want to change the subject to Sun pricing vs. Apple pricing, and your own personal opinions on SCSI vs. IDE.
/*- Mohammed -*/
They are probably using it because the Navy's software already works with it. The Navy may be porting their software in the interim to OS X, but initially will run it on Linux.
The xServe servers are an excellent value when compared with Intel 1U servers. They also include a much better vector processor, which the Navy needs for their image processing. Too, there is no mention whether or not the Navy is also buying xRaids which again are the best value out there. In the 1U world of servers xServe ranks very high notwithstanding which operating system it comes with.
Most slashdotters are too young to remember, but Former President Carter also uses that annoying pronunciation. And he has an advanced degree in nuclear physics (as well as having been a submarine guy)!
Only if you don't pursue any additional degrees.
Only if you don't flunk out.
Only if your adviser didn't screw up and you still need some credits.
(No, I am not A bastard. I am THE BASTARD, and that's MISTER BASTARD to you!)
www.eFax.com are spammers
gcc?
I'm afraid our front line troops mostly do run Windows. This is one of the few military applications where Microsoft wouldn't have an almost automatic lock: almost nobody uses NT as a high-performance computing platform.
Linux is free as in speach.
I suspect that in this case Linux is free as in "we already have people trained to use it".
Dave
I write a blog now, you should be afraid.
As you can imagine, there are a lot of details about this program that are not publicly releaseable, even if they aren't classified. You can find about more about ARCI via Google, but start with this PDF; it's mostly marketing pitch, but it does describe what we're doing.
I can offer some insights into the factors driving this particular decision:
You have to keep in mind the physical environment of a submarine: there isn't a lot of space on a boat for active equipment, much less spares. Redundancy is a must, as is reliability.
We call it art because we have names for the things we understand.
The prices for a YDL machine are the same as one with OSX. Yellow dog just has a license to install and sell linux on their computers. The Navy don't need supported, they need something they can process images (or whatever else they use it for) on. G4s are excellent for this task. Also, Yellow Dog is Red Hat, but for PPC. If you've ever compared them, you'd see that even the installer is the same. Last time I checked Red Hat didn't make a PPC version.
Just wondering...
Here's a picture of the crew in action.
WinNT did not fail. On a test platform, not an operational ship, running non-release versions of software: A client application accepted incorrect input. A server application accepted this bad data, performed a bad calculation, and corrupted it's database. Client apps that tried to use this database crashed. These events are OS independent, the same thing would have happened under MacOS X. The publisher of the article you cite later distanced themselves from the article calling it "early speculation".
h tml
The chief engineer on the ship at the time, and the developer of the application software, seem to say that the problem was not with WinNT:
http://www.sciam.com/1998/1198issue/1198techbus2.
"Others insist that NT was not the culprit. According to Lieutenant Commander Roderick Fraser, who was the chief engineer on board the ship at the time of the incident, the fault was with certain applications that were developed by CAE Electronics in Leesburg, Va. As Harvey McKelvey, former director of navy programs for CAE, admits, "If you want to put a stick in anybody's eye, it should be in ours." But McKelvey adds that the crash would not have happened if the navy had been using a production version of the CAE software, which he asserts has safeguards to prevent the type of failure that occurred."
The publisher of the article you cite later distanced themselves from the article, labeled it early speculation. According to people on the ship and the software developers NT was not at fault.
Web Myth: WinNT failure stopped ship
The article and, I'm sure, a lot of /.ers are making light of this as though it were a victory for Apple and Linux that they are being used by the Navy. In fact, this is a very important victory for the poor sailors on our nuclear submarines.
In the past year, no less than twelve nuclear submarines were destroyed and sunk by giant octopi. Giant octopi are deadly. Their tentacles rip poor submariners to shreds. Since they are soft and filled with water, they don't show up on sonar. Powerful image processing software is the only way to detect these destructive creatures through the murky waters. Most of the submarines lost last year were lost when their image processing software failed. This has been a problem since the days of Captain Nemo, whose submarine might been able to avoid the giant octopus encounter had it been equipped with better image processing software.
Eventually, our war against giant octopi will be complete. In the meantime, I encourage everyone to spend some time contributing to the anti-octopi image processing software for Linux on X-Serve (AOIPSfLoX-S) project. You could save a life!
Thanks.
Upstairs Dog, Downstairs People.
A few weeks ago I attended a luncheon where the state of computer systems on the ABRAHAM LINCOLN was discussed. While controlling the battle force during the Iraq war computer systems were rebooted on 45 minute intervals because they weren't stable: running Windows 3.1 and Windows 95. Hopefully this will be fixed when the LINCOLN goes through her overhaul.
Keep in mind that the VIRGINIA class is designed without traditional periscopes. Instead high-definition cameras will take the place of the traditional optical periscope. So you can imagine why you'd want to be able to do some serious image manipulation.
Of course sonar systems would benefit from compute servers as well.
Soldiers wanted, must be able to type 60+wpm
I remember, you don't, NT not at fault
/ 0027.html
. html (nope, doesn't work even without the spaces))
Your topic doesn't make sense, since I can't "not remember" an article that I might not have read.
Besides, maybe you didn't read this thread:
http://lists.insecure.org/lists/politech/2000/Aug
Which actually partially references the article you mentioned, even though you cited a link that doesn't even work. (http://www.sciam.com/1998/1198issue/1198techbus2
I find it cute that NT crashes to its knees because a userland app made a division-by-zero (or buffer overflow) error. Which makes it at fault.
...a Beowulf-class cluster of those!
Bad link, well it is five years old. Fortunately the contents were quoted. Basically an officer on the ship, a test platform at the time, and the software developer report that all the early speculation about WinNT was wrong:
"Others insist that NT was not the culprit. According to Lieutenant Commander Roderick Fraser, who was the chief engineer on board the ship at the time of the incident, the fault was with certain applications that were developed by CAE Electronics in Leesburg, Va. As Harvey McKelvey, former director of navy programs for CAE, admits, "If you want to put a stick in anybody's eye, it should be in ours." But McKelvey adds that the crash would not have happened if the navy had been using a production version of the CAE software, which he asserts has safeguards to prevent the type of failure that occurred."
I find it cute that NT crashes to its knees because a userland app made a division-by-zero (or buffer overflow) error. Which makes it at fault
You are misinformed. All versions of WinNT throw and exception and halt the app, just like Mac OS X. The app crashes not the OS. The original article that broke the story mentioned LAN terminals crashing. In typical web fashion this quickly morphed in the LAN crashing then WinNT crashing. The truth is that a client app accepted bad input, a server app then used this bad input and corrupted it database, and then client apps that controlled the ship tried to use this corrupted data and failed. These "naive" apps would have failed regardless of the OS, be in SunOS, Linux, BSD, Mac OS X, or WinNT.
Do not interpret this defense of WinNT as advocating its use in such environments. Personally I believe "desktop" type solutions, regardless of whether it is WinNT or Mac OS X, are being overused and that some of this equipment should be using embedded solutions. That said your ignorant comment about divide-by-zero is counter productive. It destroys your credibility and contributes to the myth that Mac advocates are religious fanatics living under a reality distortion field. This greatly hinders acceptance of the Mac platform.
Long winded, ok, the condensed version: WinNT has enough problems that you don't need to make shit up. Passing along shit that others made up just makes you look dumb. This merely confirms what Windows folk think about Mac folk and now Apple has to spend another million dollars on Super Bowl ads to counter this.
Googling the two names in the quote finds another dead SCIAM link, but from the quoted section:
:-)
"McKelvey writes that the failure, "was not the result of any system software or design deficiency but rather a decision to allow the ship to manipulate the software to stimulate [sic] machinery casualties for training purposes and the 'tuning' of propulsion machinery operating parameters. In the usual shipboard installation, this capability is not allowed.""
http://catless.ncl.ac.uk/Risks/20.37.html#subj1
So they found a bug during testing.
Whatever happened to the mil-specs for shock resistance and sturdiness? I'm used to seeing Navy computers that were designed to survive anything short of a direct hit.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
Geee - let's think about this a moment okay? US Navy submarines are nuclear powered - which means there's a big steam propulsion plant occupying the back half the submarine. It gets HOT. Air conditioning is required to keep the engineering spaces habitable. They also carry lots of electronic equipment, computers etc etc. These require cooling.
Also submarines operate these days in shallow, warm-water ocean conditions. Back in the bad-ol' days the boats operated in cold deep oceans but no longer. Look at the Persian Gulf and the Red Sea and the coastal conditions of the Indian Ocean where water temperatures are over 80 degrees.
Why do people post things when they have no immediate knowledge beyond maybe playing a video game??
At the Naval Submarine League symposium this past June Lockeed Martin displayed a fascinating bit of techology that took a video stream from a UAV along with an embedded GPS position stream and information regarding the orientation of the camera lens. This video was processed and the footprint of the image (corrected for slant angle etc etc) onto a map. Add a bit of target recognition software to help watch the image for interesting targets of opportunity.
If a target is located on a frame of the downloaded video imagery it can be precisely located, a human can agree it's a target worthy of shooting at, and the coordinates downloaded to a Tomahawk and launced - in minutes.
If the new Tactical Tomahawk's are used, which may be loitering in the area, the submarine can uplink via satellite to the weapon and send it on its way very quickly.
This technology was partially demonstrated in Operation Giant Shadow which proved in prinicipal how the upgraded Trident SSGN submarines will operate.
In the demo package there was an XServe, although I don't know if it were doing anything other than serving as a QuickTime video stream to simulate the UAV collecting the data.
There are a bunch of small research vessels which may not show in the official inventory. Atomic powered and everything for 'oceanography' (spying). It's possible that these machines will be going into some of our smaller, more stealthy machines (which also tend to be unarmed).
More stealthy? Nothing is more stealthy than the SSNs and SSBNs.
There's like a couple smaller research subs and such... but the subs we use for espionage and stuff are full-sized atomic subs that have been retrofitted. And there aren't more than a few of those. Look up the USS Parchee for a good example.
no thanks
A. The Us Navy want G4s, probably because of Altivec.
B. They're familiar with YDL, and perhaps not with OS X, and this might extend to developer expertise.
C. This has all been said adequately up and down this thread, so there's no need to ask the same questions again.
Why pay the Xserve premium...
Maybe the premium you refer to doesn't really exist, when comparing the specs the Navy is looking for.
$x='S24;r)>63/* h@<5+oZ)32"5cz';$me='phroggy'x$];
$x=~y+ -xz+\0-Tx+;print$_^chop$me for split'',$x;
G5 Xserves are going to be coming out soon!
If you are not a subscriber, you can only go back as far as 1999. Got a link for us proles?
You can't judge a book by the way it wears its hair.