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Next G5 Multitasks Operating Systems
squiggleslash writes "IBM has big plans for the 970, Apple's so-called "G5". The CPU will support partitioning, similar to IBM's mainframe systems, allowing multiple operating systems to run at the same time on a single CPU. A Mac built around this chip could theoretically run OS X, GNU/Linux, Mac OS 9, and the PowerPC version of Windows NT, all simultaneously and independently."
so now I can crash at least five systems at the same time?
OS X is already the best OS available anyway.
What is this, 1994?
But it sounded really interesting.
On a more serious note, I doubt it could run the PPC WindowsNT as it would be lacking a few important drivers, but running OS X and Linux side by side would make a very interesting system. It would be nice to see som Xserves in our datacenter here.
"I use a Mac because I'm just better than you are."
>A Mac built around this chip could theoretically run OS X, GNU/Linux, Mac OS 9, and the PowerPC version of Windows NT, all simultaneously and independently."
But in reality, i believe this is so apple can release "big iron" type systems (servers), the VM would allow Multiple versions of the server OS to run for maximum uptime, protection etc...
Most people are going to take it as "Cool i can run windows and OSX at the same time at full speed" But in reality its closer to what i described above.
But if others care to chime in i could be completely wrong...
I see it runs this "GNU/Linux", but the question is... does it run Linux?
But will it come in a stylish case with a 4-figure price tag?
if you had a dual, would it be more efficient to have each processor run 50% of two OS'es or each CPU running one OS?
I'm going to need more than one mouse button!
-ch
So what about the rest of the hardware ? Now you have two OS's accessing the same hard drive. There goes the IO ... unless you had two SCSI drives .. now it gets interesting.
Michael.
Linux: For those able to think out side of a window
NT for PowerPC. Be still, my heart!
A Mac built around this chip could theoretically run OS X, GNU/Linux, Mac OS 9, and ...
The G5 cannot natively boot Mac OS 9. However, you can run most OS 9 software through the Classic Environment in Mac OS X.
If we count the Classic Environment, though, why stop at that list? You could run virtually any OS, through various emulators. Windows 95, DOS, BeOS, etc...
2) IBM Sells off its intel based PC & Laptop line
3) IBM incorporates more features into the g5 to make it a bigger competitor to intel / amd
(begin conspiracy)
4) IBM pushes linux more heavily on the apple g5
5) IBM pushes the idea of apple desktops paired with IBM servers running linux or AIX
Could a stronger IBM / apple partnership be the culmination of technologies (power processors, apple desktops, IBM servers, the marketing engine of both companies) that finally steps up and pushes an all *nix platform to challenge Microsoft?
Yeah, I feel a burning need to run two Unices at the same time on the same machine. Maybe Ill have the GIMP running on X Windows in OS X and Ill have another GIMP under Red Hat. Just for the heck of it.
The next pasture is always greener
Partitioning is quite old indeed and has been running on some big iron for a while, but this particular details are somewhat different that VMWare/QEMU.
They plan to add partitioning support on the chip level, so there will be no performance penalty (like in VMWare) or need to recompile OS (like in QEMU IIRC).
Robert
Bastard Operator From 193.219.28.162
..the REALLY cool partitioning is the new POWER5 based iSeries and pSeries. Hell, we've been using a Linux LPAR on our iSeries for two years now.
Now it just works better with POWER5. The FSP (Flexible System Processor) that contains the Hypervisor code is just a card that runs an embedded Linux kernel. Plug that in to a IBM "HMC", or a xSeries Xeon box running SuSE Enterprise 8, which boots into Fluxbox. Open a Java-based config utility, and control all your partitions. Do you see a ongoing theme here? That's right folks, IBM trusts Linux enough to stake the reputation of their Big Iron on it.
With POWER5 all the partitioning is transparent to the OSes. WIth out i5/520 I can move RAM and CPU seamlessly without OS reboots. Hell, I can (and do) have my Linux partition specified with just 2/10ths of one of the POWER5's, with a "burst" limit of 8/10ths. You just setup the FSP/Hypervisor with permissions/profiles for the OSes. If it sees that OS/400 needs more CPU and has a higher priority than Linux, it gets it.
However, this is a very cool move for apple. If I could get a Mac that did all that?
Well, yeah. That would own.
Insert profit.
No, this is different than Vmware etc al
They require a host OS to run under. This means you can partition your CPUs so they can run multiple OSes at the same time, nativly. No need for a host OS, just some bitching BIOS.
There are multiple server vendors who already offer the same ability, mainframes have had this for years.
Of course, running 2 or more OSes requires 2 or more times the CPU power in order to get similar performance to a one OS machine.
If you mod me down, I *will* introduce you to my sister!
How does this tie in with Mach? I heard something about OSX running the Java Virtual Machine directly on top of Mach for better performance, but I don't really understand how any of this stuff works....
$x='S24;r)>63/* h@<5+oZ)32"5cz';$me='phroggy'x$];
$x=~y+ -xz+\0-Tx+;print$_^chop$me for split'',$x;
Given how this is the setup being used on the S/390 (with Linux and Z/OS being able to run concurrently, including multiple Linux partions), and possibly (though I'm not certain about this one) the AS400.
A multi-cored CPU, or a CPU which has a technology similar to Intel's Hyper Threading would be very well suited to this task.
Of course if tools such as VMWARE and Xen virtualization already offer such capabilities in software, I wonder if it's even needed or desireable to use CPU-specific features for this, couldn't this be simply done at the BIOS level (or by simply porting IBM's VM from the S/390 to the PPC?).
A Mac built around this chip could theoretically run OS X, GNU/Linux, Mac OS 9, and the PowerPC version of Windows NT, all simultaneously and independently.
That sounds cool and all, but I don't multitask nearly as well as even the current G5. One OS running a few applications is about all I need most of the time. Until Apple (or someone else) starts selling extra terminals that can connect to my machine, I can't really share the machine with other people (aside from providing various services, or letting them log into a command line environment). And no matter what, I don't want a copy of any version of Windows running on even a sliver of my machine, thanks very much.
What would be much more interesting, for developers at least, would be to run multiple copies of the same operating system. I could run my app in one copy of the OS and debug it "remotely" from a second copy... two machine debugging in one machine!
IBM sells a product simply called VM. Actually, I guess it's more of a lease option, as it's only available for mainframes (and I used it on an ES/9000...one of the biggest mainframe (read: MVS/CICS) machines around). It's cool in that you could assign separate processors separate copies of the OS, unlike VMware which has a "host" operating system and then various Guests. There's still a bit of low-level software, but for us it was seemless (which, given how much everything associated with this machine cost, had better have been).
... strange times. Full of promises yet to be fulfilled. But as someone else pointed out, now that OS X is essentialy Unix, there would be precious little reason to go back to the "personality" scheme. I rather think they'd bring out some kick-ass server type box running multiple copies of OS X server, if that is in fact what they're trying to do.
Interestingly, this brought to mind the Pink operating system that IBM and Apple were working on way-back-when(tm). The idea, if I remember correctly, was to have a low level OS kernel that could run multiple personalities...they talked about a MacOS personality (back when System 8 was still being developed), OS/2 and probably some flavor of Unix.
I remember being at what I believe was the last Unix Convention at the Javits Center in NYC around '92 or '93 and they (IBM) had a prototype Power box that purported to be running a super super early pre-alpha version of it. The guy standing by it wouldn't let me touch it, and all he said he could do was run a "DIR" on what was supposed to be the OS/2 personality (no Mac one in sight, for the obvious reason there never was one). He also mentioned that there was a second box, but they couldn't get it to boot.
*Sigh*
I was actually under the impression it was just going to be a dual core PPC, but I RTFA off os OSNews.com a couple of days ago and I don't really remember it.
This would be a JVM running on top of hardware instead of using an intermediate OS layer... Kinda like Sun NCs with Java procs.
Trolling using another account since 2005.
native mode is when a resident national of the country in which the machine is located types "java LocalMain" at the console to launch the program and is not to be confused with indigenous mode which is when a resident national of the country in which the machine is located launches it from an IDE GUI. Hope this clarifies things.
Do not try to read the dupe, thats impossible. Instead, only try to realize the truth
What truth?
There is no dupe
An interesting article and commentary about this Power 5 stuff related to Apple.
The G5 is a 970. The 970 is a G5.
The Power5 is not a 970. They scaled down the Power5 to make the 970.
There are no trails. There are no trees out here.
one word: CONSOLIDATION
If you have 5 servers in a rack that are doing whatever they and only pushing an average 15% utilisation each, you can consolidate into a single physical box, partition it into 5 machines.
This saves you on:
* rack space
* power (electricity)
* cost (only have to buy 1 server, not 5)
That's for a server envirnoment. As Apple is traditionally targeted as a desktop, then it would allow you to do the same thing. How may people do you know who have 2 or 3 computers at home, connected with a KVM switch ? You'd be able to have a single box running all your different OS.
Until, of course, a flaw is found in the virtualization layer itself, at which point it would be possible to hijack a computer at the CPU level and run a new, independent, trojan OS to do who-knows-what. Thankfully IBM has some experience with this, which means that such a vulnerability is less likely... right? ^^;
It's a bit sad that with all the comments posted so far, nobody has mentioned xen, and the fact that it is accomplishing the same kind of thing today on x86 machines with operating systems (including linux 2.4 and 2.6, a couple xbsds, and plan 9) that have been ported to it, and will be able to support un-ported operating systems (e.g. windows xxx) once Intel's silvervale or AMD's pacifica technologies (both are CPU extensions that assist virtualization in hardware) become available (probably in 2006).
I do count the Hurd as a kernel replacement because otherwise it is hard to explain what GNU/Hurd is and how it differs from the way in which most people use GNU (with the Linux kernel). Some people are running GNU/Hurd on their computers right now, so this isn't just an idea in someone's head. Granted, the complete GNU OS (which includes the Hurd) isn't ready for everyone's use yet and is nowhere nearly as popular as GNU/Linux, but in the past the Linux kernel was used by only a few technical people and in no way fit for everyday use. I don't think decisions of fairness and accuracy need to hinge on popularity.
/. thread), I wouldn't say that the Firefox program has undergone some transformation that makes it significantly different from what Firefox users on other OSes are using.
Who's doing the porting hardly qualifies as relevant criteria. When I see that the programmers who make Sky OS ported Firefox (a recent
I want to give credit to the projects that I'm discussing, I want to be more clear in what I'm describing, and I want to be accurate to what I'm describing. Therefore, I don't see a problem with giving GNU a share of the credit when I'm talking about the union of the GNU OS with the Linux kernel. These days, the Linux kernel shows up in so many places that I need to differentiate between where it is being used with GNU, where it is being used alone, and where Linux is being used with something else.
There are other instances where it is simply inaccurate to call something by another name--calling the "free software" movement "open source", for instance, is simply wrong, as is trying to link the open source movement (or Open Source Initiative) to the GNU GPL in a substantive way. I would be happy to explain more on this if you're curious, but generally I think this explains why I use language in a way you claim nobody does.
Digital Citizen
They scaled the Power4 down to create the 970, not the Power5.
They require a host OS to run under. This means you can partition your CPUs so they can run multiple OSes at the same time, nativly. No need for a host OS, just some bitching BIOS.
:). Hypervisor/the FSP on IBM boxes are really insanely cool. BIOS doesn't give it enough credit :)
:).
The CPU has to natively support this as well, at least POWER5 does.
And calling it a BIOS is... almost insulting
Of course, running 2 or more OSes requires 2 or more times the CPU power in order to get similar performance to a one OS machine.
This is depending on what machines you are talking about, all around
WIth IBM, the i5 now has "burstable" limits for CPU. Basically you can assign priority levels for your partitions. Say you have a OS/400 partition and a Linux LPAR. OS/400 gets 80% of CPU and has the highest priority level, and Linux gets 20% and has second priority. Then you throw a AIX partition in and give it some of OS/400's CPU, but assign it the lowest priority. You allow OS/400 and Linux to have burstable limits of CPU, and AIX to not.
So you are running a mailserver on the Linux LPAR. When everyone comes in at 8am, the mailserver gets hammered. Hypervisor sees this, and sees that OS/400 is pretty much unused, so Hypervisor gives Linux 60% of OS/400's CPU allocation.
This all happens without any intervention from you, and without any noticeable different to the OS, aside from the fact that it can suddenly magically kill bits faster.
Then at the same time, let's say everyone starts running DB queries. Hypervisor sees this, and sees that OS/400 has a higher priority than Linux, so it takes back some CPU.
Again, this is all without your input.
And with the higher end Capacity ON Demand systems, you can do really crazy shit. Like a box will ship with 4 active CPUs, but 8 actually installed. You can set that box up so that it will activate those extra CPUs if needed. Completely seemless, completely without your input.
Basically this technology is the future. Intel has nothing, and they know it.
And the really cool thing?
Hypervisor runs on the FSP, which runs linux.
imagine what quality decisions you can make if you simply look for "systems that don't suck."
Well, the decisions may not be of higher quality, but the decision tree is that much more robust.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens.
History repeats itself. VM/CMS is back, but
on smaller sexier boxes.
will apple every allow it? hahaah.. maybe you can run osx & os9.. but you can bet they'll restrict it from running anything else..
You mean just like they restrict you from running Linux, BSD, and BeOS right now? Oh wait...
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
I wouldn't place any bets on this being used in the G5.
There were MANY variations of the G4-series chips which were not specifically designed for workstation/mainframe use and were never picked up by Apple.
Offtopic, but interesting to note is that there were actually TWO G4s. I'm not 100% sure, but I think when apple transitioned to DDR RAM, they used a different series of processor -- they were quite different chips... apple never made a big deal out of it (and rightfully so, as it made little difference to the consumer). Still, compiling using optimizations only found on the newer G4s can yield impressive results as shown with the optimized firefox builds.
-- If you try to fail and succeed, which have you done? - Uli's moose
Actually, they scaled down the Power4 to make the 970.
I've never heard such shite in all my life.
I've used Linux for just as long and although not a current mac user I can not remember arseing around for hours with dependancies on OSX to get simple stuff like an MP3 player working.
I also can not think of one Linux app with anywhere near the thought apple put into GUI design. Most are frankly hideous and clunky as hell.
And WhoTF uses X11 on a mac? Its there as a "add-on" at best. When you can Quartz render stuff I don't see the point. X11 is crap on anyway.
And we all know OpenOffice only exists cos MS will never release a "proper" office (you know - the one OO keeps chasing and never catches up) on Linux os Solaris. Mac has an office from MS which is better than the Windows one!!
You've missed the point mate - your a budget shopper confused in Harrods....
I've been a linux user for 12 years now since slackware 0.91, and I've finally managed to get everything the way I like on a linux desktop.
...except that xmms and skins are ugly as hell compared to iTunes, and won't automatically sync with my iPod.
/chuckle/ ANYTHING looks ugly as hell in X11 dude!
That was the sound of you shooting yourself in the foot. Ouch. I feel for you.
unless you like the strange program they enclose (iLife) I hate iTunes (a properitary mp3 player tied to a online service for ripping money out of you.)
Personally, I like iLife, which is actually a combo of several programs like iPhoto, iMovie, iTunes, iDVD and Garage Band. They just work, out of the box. While they're not work-horse applications, they do enough for what I want for my hobbies. I have an iPod, and iTunes is like magic. I can't imagine things getting any easier. I didn't expect my MIDI equipment to "just work" with a toy like Garage Band. It did, and it blew me away. So really, it depends on what you want to do with your computer. (As a side note, I live in a country where iTMS is not available even if I wanted it. Which I don't, but that again is a choice that is allowed.)
Its better to just use xmms and add all the various decoder plugins.
The X11 term window is not scrollable with the mouse, how do you set the windowbuffer. it is way to small.
OK, you got me there, but I think you're something like the 3rd person that actually attempted to use X11 on MacOS. There's a need, I'm sure, but what it has right now is usually good enough to get around the temporary "need". If you need something more than a temporary fix, you shouldn't be using a Mac. Or Windows, for that matter. Sorta like walking into a shoe store and complaining that you can't find suitable pants!
Openoffice must be used through the X11 windowmanager.
This begs the question... why do you want to use OOo on a Mac? It's fun to tinker around with, as a hobby, but I'd use MS Office for MacOS X. And if you're complaining about the cost, well really, you should have thought about the cost of ownership before you bought that Hummer, son. A Mac is a fancy piece of equipment, and it costs. The cost does not end at hardware alone, although you can sorta get by if you really need to. Sorta like only taking out your H2 on Sundays because you realized you couldn't pay for gas.
Fonts look terrible (poor antialiasing) in the X11 windowmanager.
The enclosed PDF viewing-program called preview is fast, but I've never got search working. this work fine in ggv and xpdf in linux.
I have no idea what you're talking about, since it works fine for me. Dunno, can't help you.
I'm seriously considering wiping out the mac OsX and install latest Debian for PPC on it instead.
Sounds like a viable solution. Sort of wastes part of the idea of buying a PowerBook in the first place, but if that's your thing, why not? In the mean time, the majority of PB users will just merily chug along getting things done on MacOS X.
Hopefully, the following helps clear up some things:
A virtual machine (which for some reason Java-ites seem to believe is *ONLY* a concept which applies to java) "virtualizes" aspects of the host machine. In the case of VMware on intel a technique called a monitor is used to run code natively on the processor for maximum speed. The monitor is basically a pseudo-device which accesses memory directly (you'll see it in the dev dir as vmmon). Other aspects of the machine, such as video, audio, keyboard, network, etc must be "virtualized".
With CPU parititioning, running several operating systems becomes more or less trivial since much of the work of handling all of the ins and outs of virtualizing the hardware is handled for you at the lowest possible level.
So, yes, there may be some performance hit when running several OSes in this way, but not quite as much of one as when this is done totally in software.
GJC
Gregory Casamento
## Chief Maintainer for GNUstep
Booo on you. OS X rocks for many reasons. I'm not saying it is better than Linux, but definately competes with it quite well, IMHO. Your comment that even windows is better is completely Bogus. In Os X everything just works. You don't have to worry about having to install drivers for things that should work without one (Something I have trouble on windows with ALL of the time), and the interface is just worlds ahead of Windows, and even kde, IMHO.
I don't know what you mean by 'only the protege can access subwindows'. In OS X Command-Tab cycles applications and Command-Backquote cycles windows within the current application.
I find mail fast enough. I'm not sure what you want from 'postfiltering' but I find the rules which let me place email from particular people or mailing lists into particular folders, or forward to my gmail account flexible enough to do anything I need.
Search works in preview for me.
Tom
I have discovered a wonderful
Reading the replies I see mostly prejudiced personal opinions.
Apple has always made great OSes for their computers. They are more intuitive for beginners, the interface is clean and easy to read. On kde/gnome It can be quite difficult to find applications. With linux in general there's the massive and complex dependency tree to worry about. I wanna install xmms and i gotta install 5 other things as well (ok I'm exagerating for effect.)
People have to realize that Linux isn't quite ready for the average user desktop. It's great for our parents/releatives because when they have problems they'll ask us. But not everyone has that luxury. Mac and windows, for the most part, you install it and it just works. No worries. Also, lets see you do High quality graphics work on Linux. Mac gives you more true colors for the image and prints the way you see it.
And for those of you that are gonna say so-and-so copied so-and-so, lets just set the record straight. Apple BOUGHT their interface from Xerox PARC after Microsoft turned it away. Then when MS saw the success apple was having in the early 90's decided to copy and modify the interface and created the "Start" menu (Finder anyone.) Incidently kde/gnome also designed their launcher menus based on the apple one. Which apple had been prototyping for a while, and many Geeks/nerds knew about it before it was released.
So don't bad mouth a company you know nothing about, especially when most of the technology we have is owed to them.
BTW: i feel I should tell you this was written on a Windows/Xandros Dual boot system. I was beta testing Xandros 3.0 prior to release.
DarkMantle I been bored, so I started a blog.
Not just mainframe systems support LPARING. We have 3 LPARS running on our big Power 5 570 server. It's a beefy server. Plenty of ram (106 GB split between LPARS) and 16 processors to divide between LPARS. When AIX 5.3 comes out, you can order a new feature code that adds fractional LPARING....that is you can create a LPAR with as little as 1/10th of a processor. It's not surprising that the next 970 has this built in it. The real competition for UNIX servers in the near future will both be powered by IBM chips. That is, Apple, and IBM. IBM better be careful in how much power they give the 970's because IBM could get a real run for it's money if Apple exploits this ability.
Gorkman
The most annoying thing with running the 2.6 kernel on a production server is that you've to reboot it every time you wan't to have all the bugfixes and so on. :)
My question is: Is it possible to run a kernel and then compile the latest 2.6 kernel and then start it on another cpu "partition"?Then move over all the applications running under the old kernel to the new one without any significant downtime (under 1 second). And you just kill the old kernel and vola you're running the latest 2.6 kernel without any rebooting?
God,root what's the difference? I read slashdot, there for I errr... am stupid?
The 970 already supports that feature and always did. It's derived from a POWER4 core.
I don't think Apple enables it when they bootstrap the processor though, but it's just a matter for them of updating the service processor firmware.
However, good partitionning (read: safe) would also require some support at the chipset level, for example, the ability for the IOMMU to prevent a PCI card used by one partition from doing DMA to the memory of anohter partition etc...
IBM hardware has this support in the complete chipset, Apple hardware doesn't, at least not so far.
Also, I thought the programs associated with such application [as needed for error correction] are running multiple scenarios/multiple threads of the same calculation.
Take the human genome for instance. Most of it [the real research part] is being done on Xserves currently.
The sequencing program is actually running 1000's of times and taking the calculation that comes up 99.97% of the time to be the correct one. This is then rerun until the calculation reaches an impossibly close number to 100%.
No error correction needed.
Yell & scream & rant & rave... it's no use... you need a shaaaave ~ Bugs Bunny