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Yellow Dog Linux Finds New PPC Hardware Vendor
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."
It's surprising where "odd" hardware/software combo's show up. I would never have suspected Linux/PPC in the Navy. How did it get there? Who knew about Linux, and PPC and had the influence to get it used there? Was it a really good sales job (and the connections that make it possible)? Or was it an insider who went looking for a platform from a clean slate?
The answers to these questions are extremely important to the further expansion of the use of Linux (or any other product/platform/system).
Helping with organizational effectiveness is our job.
That their existing software is all written for it.
True, they could recompile for a different architecture, but that costs money, and test time.
So, they're better off continuing with PowerPC hardware.
So, pull your head out of your ass that everyone can just jump ship from a chip design when it isn't going well for them, and shut up.
Interestingly enough, the newest Apache modifications (that I had heard about, this was Spring 2001) put a Voodoo 4 in for the HUD displays. So, again, the question, "what shit can they accomplish with a Voodoo 4, that they can't with something else?"
Nothing, but their contract says they're doing the project at a certain price and they've already made their choice, and bought the chips.
I am unamerican, and proud of it!
This is such an interesting discussion. Which CPU is better? Better is obviously in the eye of the behold as price, power, Mhz, and apparently performance per watt matter. I was at WWDC and played with the new MacTel boxes. Interestingly the single 3.6 Ghz pentiums appear to run faster than the dual 2.7 Ghz G5's.
OK... so I'm not going to go there... but Intel is apparently coming out with some interesting new hardware. I don't know everything about it.. but it appears that they will be chainge the x86 architecture altogether. So was Apples move speculative or desperate?
Another interesting thing as brough up by the author of the post to which I am replying.. liies in the fact that certain companies are inexorably tied to their hardware. Some institutions, for example, running Pro Tools may not be able to upgrade to the new hardware as their software will not be availible. This is speculative... but it is possible.
So I'd be interested in an arcitcle that clearly lays out the differences between the PowerPC and Intel architectures and maybe even one that examines Inte's new architecture as well.
The PowerPC is undoubtably an excellent platform....but there are other factors to be considered.
The thing was actually, that Apple was even a niche market within that niche market.
This is why Apple couldn't pull any leverage against IBM or Motorola or FreeScale to actually make the chips that they wanted.
Even Apple wasn't that big a market share in the PowerPC world. In fact, there are more PowerPCs out there than there are x86 chips. "Where are they?" you ask? They're in things like your car, and other embedded devices.
It's like ARM. You just don't realize how pervasive they already are, because the only CPUs you usually ever hear about are desktops.
I am unamerican, and proud of it!
Out of stock is a pretty serious issue.
Besides, legend (okay, Theo De Radt) has it that the firmware is really awful
Terra Soft would probably be best to team up with another minority vendor, like those produce the Amiga One
Apple, when the iNTEL road map lead turns out to be mostly a paper lead yet again, would keep both iNTEL and PowerPC lines. And then start porting Darwin to ARM, CELL, and other available CPUs.
(Yeah, CELL would require a port. That's probably the point that Steve got sidetracked on. My guess is the discussions of re-writing for CELL produced a lot of complaints, and a lot of, "if we're going to have to do that, why not re-write for iNTEL?" Silly middle management.)
And in the best of all possible worlds, Linux on non-Apple PPC would push commodity mobo vendors to start focusing on alternative CPUs and alternative hardware. Then we could get out of the blasted rut we are in, where, in so many shops, you can't buy a project unless it includes a whole bunch of false standards.
Just like the z80 was all but dead when everyone quit making desktop computers that ran CP/M? I guess all those countless TI calculators, Game Boys, cell phones, and the like don't count. Come to think of it, I think I have 4 devices that use a z80 sitting on my desk right now. I bought two of them in the past year.
There are craploads of things out there that use PPC chips that are not Apple computers. It most certainly does have a lot of life left in it.
It's like the fact that more Ikea catalogs get printed every year than Bibles.
It's damned strange to hear, and you wouldn't believe it, but if you actually bother to do the math, and look at where the things are going, you find out that it's got some darn good proof.
As for real proof. No, I don't have any concrete proof, but I do know that IBM is the largest chip manufacturer in the world, and a large part of their production is PowerPC. Just like I said, they go into cars and other vehicles, not desktop computers.
Still, even were there less PowerPCs than x86 chips, the point still stands that Apple was not the major consumer of PowerPC chips... just the most notable to date.
I am unamerican, and proud of it!
The chip may perform well, but when the memory management requirements result in code that "can be used to scare small children" (L. Torvalds), I have to wonder: What good is an excellent chip if using it is so difficult?
The Pegasos G4 is not out of stock. Genesi sold out the G3
/ironfist
a while ago for the incredible price of 299 USD. With
their great partnership with Freescale and the advanced
AltiVec engine, they focus on the G4 with 7448 upgrades
as the next thing.
Hopefully before end of year they will release a very tiny
(less than Nano-ITX) 2 chip motherboard called EFIKA 5k2.
It is based on the Freescale 5200 CPU at 400 MHz. No heatsink
nor fan required. Very low power with ethernet, USB etc
builtin the CPU. The rest on the support chip. This will
carry 1 2.5" IDE port and 1 PCI. They are currently
looking for a good graphics chip to also put onboard.
Pictures
Besides, legend (okay, Theo De Radt)
Theo might be abrassive and exhibit some pretty anti-social behaviour at times, going overboard with exagerated responses. But he gets some very cool shit done. Love the guy or hate him, the good stuff he does is really good. They have just found a bug in X source which is 10 years old, because of their proactive stance and active mechanisms.
They are embarking on a new memory model change which will spotlight even more bugs in their own software and the software of other open source code. Stability and even security may be harmed in the short term, so that these can be dramatically improved for the long term. It is yet more exciting stuff from them, which ends up helping code quality even outside of their own.
For the trolls, please don't bother complaining about OpenBSD performance BTW. OpenBSD switches everything they can to "secure" even if it means switching away from performance.
This is great news for customers like the US Navy who rely on Linux-on-PowerPC for important tasks like sonar imaging systems.
IBM just teamed up with a company called Mercury to build Cell-based computers for (military) applications:
As a result, demanding applications such as radar, sonar, MRI, digital X-Ray, and many others can be taken to new levels of sophistication and performance.
And as we all know, the Cell is basically a Power processor.
And how many would be capable of running Yellow Dog Linux, what with it being a desktop OS and all? In the context of desktop computers, the future of the PPC is all but cast in stone.
And if as has been suggested most PPCs go into embedded systems, Yellow Dog is totally unsuitable. There are plenty of embedded solutions for Linux out there and I expect they all work quite well already.
YDL is a handy development platform for embedded PPC targets (at least for PPC 750s and 74xxs). I'm not sure about the other embedded PPC processors.
there are also some pretty serious questions around Genesi as a company. business practice sorts of questions. i know several people who've tried to order hardware from them and come away thinking the whole thing is basically a scam. at the very least, they bill themselves for much more than they are (although that's true of many companies).
i speak for myself and those who like what i say.
Genesi was supposed to ship me a demo box over a year ago... I have yet to recieve anything from them.
By the time Apple quits shipping PPC, the XBox360 and PS3 are likely going to be out. How big a deal do people anticipate it to be to run YDL on them?