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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.
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!
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!
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.
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?