Slashdot Mirror
Gentoo/PPC64 Beta Live CDs Released
pvdabeel writes "Gentoo/PPC developer, IBM employee and former PPC64 kernel maintainer Tom Gall has announced beta-level live CDs and stages for ppc64. The hardware supported by gentoo-ppc64 is PowerMacintosh G5, IBM pSeries, older IBM 64 bit RS/6000s
(such as the model 260, 270, F80, H80, see linuxppc64.org for a complete list) and soon IBM iSeries hardware.
Gentoo-ppc64 is the other side of the ppc equation, it is a 64-bit kernel as well as a 64 bit user space. We are the first linux distribution to offer a 64-bit top-to-bottom solution which is not a toy environment. This is a significant and exciting step as there is interest in cluster computing circles, users of java, and more generally those who have needs of large address spaces. It's fairly exciting to be on the forefront and continue to push the capabilities of linux on ppc64 forward."
Apple never advertised fastest computer, they clearly said the 'first 64-bit/fastest personal computer ever'
in that sense they are right, Sun, Alpha never made PC's.
And depending on who's benchmarks you look at, they are the fastest pc's.
Error 407 - No creative sig found
I don't quite understand why IBM doesn't want to create something like a G5, only "more serious". I'm sure the pSeries machines are excellent, but if they could just lower the price a bit by dropping some of the enterprise features that drive the price up, they could sell quite a lot of them. For people like myself, it's a chance to use a superior architecture in a not-quite-so-proprietary setting (Apple hardware is very proprietary in some areas). We could benefit from the commodity market for all the standardized components and interconnects (DDR RAM, SATA, PCI-X, PCI Express, AGP, USB, IEEE 1394, whatever) without being forced to buy Apple hardware or pay the MS tax. Commodized G5 system running an open source operating system like Linux or *BSD... that's where it's at.
I know I would like to buy such a machine for myself, and try to convince my employer to buy one for me...
Windows NT on Alpha ran in 32-bit mode. It didn't take advatnage of any of the 64-bitness of the Alphas.
The poster mentioned Java support. I didn't see anything that indicated if this was in reference to using gcj for Java support, or if IBM had contributed a full Java implementation. I would be curious to know which it might be. Since this effort seems more oriented towards a server system, it is likely not needed to support the Java GUI frameworks (AWT, Swing). This would seem to lean towards gcj (and Classpath) since it does not currently support most of the GUI functionality. But with IBM already having created a number of JVM's in the past, I wouldn't be surprised if they contributed something in this area to the Linux PPC64 effort.
As someone who uses AIX every day at a very large organization, I can say without hesitation that AIX sucks.
./configure, make, make install on competent operating systems are impossible on AIX.
badly.
Compiling software for AIX is hell. Things that are a simple
Now, Gentoo on PPC64 is great news just as soon as you can get major vendor support contracts for it and you can run Oracle on it.
If the G5s had support for ECC memory, then we could use them for modelling without taking a gamble that a flipped bit screws the results.
When days of computation go into making a calculation, the last thing you want to do is to run it again because there's a non-negligable chance that there was an uncaught bit error.
Luckily Apple have since seen the light and the new Xserve G5 at least supports ECC RAM. Before that, for affordable scientific computing, dual Opteron machines had no real competition.
The first iteration of my web/mail/whatever server was a DEC PC 150, 150mhz alpha.. 64bit, with lots of ram and disk space (for the time).
I got the thing back in 1998, some idiot brought it to a computer renaissance (used computer place) and the even dumber sales people bought it as a trade-in. I don't know where it came from, but the sales guys were very confused when the win95 disks wouldn't boot. ha!
After a lot of pain and trouble trying to get some of the system utility software from Compaq.. (god damn EISA utilties) I got the thing up and running with redhat 5.2.
I eventualy retired the box, it was starting to die. I "upgraded" to an AMD K6-300, which is still in use today (not in it's original task).
So in the 4th iteration of nerp.net, I've got a nice new dual Opteron.. and unfortunately, Debian for amd64 (pure64) is still not a production usable state quite yet.. so I'm going to continue to run i386 for atleast the short term on the box.
maybe when I get the extra cash to break the 4gig memory limit on the box, it will be ready.
Alpha would blow the doors off PPC64 if had been developed. It would easily be past 2 GHz today and would also have SMT and/or multiple cores on a single die. Fuck you Compaq. Fuck you Hewlett Packard. Fuck you Tipper Gore. Oh wait...
Umm, on UltraSPARC the only 64 bit binary are the kernels.
Wow, how interesting!
You know, the "in 64-bit mode" also applies to IA64, as while IA64 can hardly be described has having evolved from a 32-bit architecture (resemblence to PA-RISC notwithstanding), it supports a 32-bit userland (for example, running HP-UX with HP tools).
Amazing world we live in, isn't it?