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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
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?
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!
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.
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).
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.
Actually, they scaled down the Power4 to make the 970.
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
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