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Yellow Dog Linux Finds New PPC Hardware Vendor

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on from the less-corporate-means-better-performance? dept.

inditek writes "C|Net's News.com reports that Terrasoft Solutions, the vendor that sells and contributes to the development of Yellow Dog Linux has found, and continues to look for, some hardware alternatives based around the PowerPC now that Apple is moving to Intel chips. They say Apple's move makes for a good opportunity and more open space for a chip they think has a lot of life left in it." team99parody also writes "This is great news for customers like the US Navy who rely on Linux-on-PowerPC for important tasks like sonar imaging systems."

5 of 196 comments (clear)

  1. pegasos by larry+bagina · · Score: 4, Informative

    Pegasos sells non macintosh, linux-based PPC machines. At least, they would if they weren't currently out of stock.

    --
    Do you even lift?

    These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.

  2. Re:It's Surprising by pkb · · Score: 5, Informative

    AltiVec is big in military applications. Sonar, radar and such are imaging problems at heart.

  3. Re:The battle rages on. by Bastian · · Score: 4, Informative

    So was Apples move speculative or desperate?

    Probably more on the desperate side. Laptops are now slightly more than 50% of the market. I don't have any numbers, but I wouldn't be surprised if it's even more for Macs, where you don't get people buying big gaming desktops and the cheapest desktop isn't less than half the price of the cheapest laptop.

    The G5 is power-hungry, hot, and decidedly not suitable for mobile and low-power applications. It probably never will be, given how little pull Apple has with CPU manufacturers. And the G4 is more than ready for retirement.

    Academic arguments on the relative advantages of PPC and x86 just don't play into the issue. If Apple wants to continue to sell computers, they really have no choice but to jump ship on PPC.

  4. Plug plug plug by NekoXP · · Score: 5, Informative

    We finally get on Slashdot and nobody mentions the bloody company name!

    ARGH! :)

    http://www.genesi.lu/

    Neko

  5. Re:navy by kinema · · Score: 4, Informative
    It's working.

    I would say that it has more to do with the fact that the system designers looked at the availiable COTS CPUs and decided that the PowerPC was better suited to the task. Most likely the PowerPC's SIMD/vector unit (AltiVec) was superior to the offerings of other similar processors namely Intel's SSEn on the Pentium IV.

    After the choice was made to go with the PowerPC/AltiVec processor piles and piles of hand optimized ASM code was created by some very well funded geeks to perform what I'm sure is an ultra high bandwidth and sample rate siganl processing system.