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Non-Vapor Quad 400 PowerPC Boxes!
ninjaz writes "LWN is reporting an announcement by
LinuxPPC Inc. that it
will be showing off their quad-cpu 400mhz powerpc boxes at
LinuxWorld. "
Drool drool drool.
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Do you have any idea what the traditional margins are with Compact PCI single-board computers?
They make Apple look like they're living on the edge of a razor blade. You'll probably spend more on the chassis for this thing than you will on a new Powermac G3.
jhw
Be: We'd like to fully support BeOS on G3.
Apple: We don't want BeOS running on G3s. Apple hardware should run MacOS, and MacOS only.
Intel: We'd be happy to work with you to support all our processors. We'll even give you free engineers to help you out.
Be: Gee, we're a small startup company struggling to get some market share. What should we do?
Rocket Scientist: Duh.
--
Jason Eric Pierce
what about #mklinux? we should of heard about this first! ;) i think everyone on #mklinux should get one these. think how much faster R5 would get built! i could run- i mean, TEST pre-R5 so much faster!
heh2k, jo
Be claims (and has consistantly claimed) that they were not supporting the newer PPC boxes because Apple would not give them technical information. Since they haven't generally lied in the past, I find it difficult to believe they are lying about this.
Think about it--it would surely be to their advantage to develop for the G3 PMacs, what with PMacs being the platform of choice for many graphic artists.
Has anybody else looked at the (old) "Guide to Macintosh Family Hardware", which details (some of) the technical aspects of the earlier Macs? The hardware designs of those varied considerably, and were not generally as clean as the OS made them seem.
To my eye, Be's explanation seems to fit the evidence. If someone donated a few of these quad G3 boards to them, and could demonstrate a market for BeOS on them (such as might justify the cost of porting), I have little doubt that Be, Inc. would be quite happy to do so.
that's not the point. to get that G3 system would be much much more than the P-II system you show. you could almost buy two (if you built them yourself, which is another thing you can't do with PPC products anymore). hey, i like PPC too (got a BeBox here), but the price difference is too great now with the clones gone.
And once the "Good Programmer" writes it, who is going to support it? When the code breaks as a result of internal kernel changes for R7, where is GP? Who is going to track the different revisions of motherboards? Who is going to take the tech support phone calls when Rev 4 of the board (which GP tested with) works and R5 doesn't? Be has to support BeOS. Be can do that because they have control over the source code. Here is an experiment for you. Pick any commercial software package. Pick some platform that they don't support. Write them and ask for their source code so that you can port it to platform X. See how far you get. Of course Be isn't releasing their source. Especially not for something that A) the hardware manufacturers have stated is not welcome B) No one is willing to support within Be or Apple C) Is a microscopic portion of the market.
What are you talking about??? Just because intel gives Be money and helps them out making Be as fast as possible on intel processors including P3 optimizations means its a bad company?? Be also has optimizations for 3d now.. but you dont seem to classify that as a non intel processor i guess..
yes. Think different.
surely there is a market for G3 desktops that aren't macs?
...
Well moron, if having one of the best selling computers in recent years is an idication of "final throwes of death", then I guess Linux, Intel and Microsoft are on their own death beds!
Now, if only failed abortions like you could be on their own final throwes of death...that would be something to watch on "Must See TV!"
maybe. but if apple makes the vast majority of money on hardware, then wouldn't expanding hardware sales for BeOS *increase* revenue?
I like Apple, but I want my G3 to run LinuxPPC, Be and MacOS. If somebody makes a PPC that will run all three I'd dump my Apple hardware in a second.
but not the current release 8.5. They probably run MacOSX Server, as well. Neither of these is supported, though :-(
I have actual uses for something like that, too. Now I just need to find a few hundred $million and fill my basement with xylene... O:)
For the flamers: Yes, I know that at least half of the cards will be RAM cards instead of processor cards, and I know that communications bandwidth will limit the classes of problems that I can use this for. Let me dream
"Unfortunately Be has shown their true colors a lot recently. They say they are making a "media OS" and they aren't cutting any corners and then they move their product from the PowerPC (awesome media processing capabilities, even better with altivect ) to x86. I can only see that as a financial move. Blame it on apple to keep from losing face, even though a team of part-time hackers can do it for free".
Damn straight it's a financial move. How the hell do you think Be can survive by making a reverse-engineered OS for a hostile hardware manufacturer? As Be states, "Sure, we could figure it out", but Apple can then play the old "moving target" game by changing their specs, just like Microsoft does with the Windows API and Office file formats.
"They say they are shipping an OS that is still for geeks and enthusiasts and then they start using the MS trial to try and lobby to get preloaded.. Why preload a pre-release product?"
R4 is not a pre-release product. If "geeks and enthusiasts" means "customers who are fed up with the limitations of Windows", maybe BeOS IS for "geeks and enthusiasts". Count me as one of them.
"they are just another big company trying to get rich"
This is really hilarious. "Big company"??? Be has about as many employees (80-90) as a small grocery store. And as for getting rich, anyone associated with Be could have far greater financial security working for Microsoft or another established company.
On yeah, and what makes you think this, or a related design, wont be incorporated into at least a limited-production, retail box? The press release (did you read before responding?) states clearly that LinuxPPC will be demonstrating the quad-750 single-board computer from Synergy at the show, that to me would certainly hint that there will be a mainstream product alliance based on the board, with LinuxPPC possibly cobranding the box (Id buy one!)...
Btw, while I wish they had options for 604e too (I wasnt sure if they are still offering them) because 604e-based SMP screams, as I can only assume the G4 SMP will.. but 750 SMP support is all new to me, and I would think the tax of turning off level-2 cache (if im right) would be severe, as that is where much of the 750's speed gains come from.
Binary Boy
Because Linuxppc isn't a competitor to MacOS, and BeOS is. Apple has given the g3 specs to the LinuxPPC group already, and refuses to give them to be. Basically, your average mac user isn't likely to give up MacOS for linux, but they will take a serious look at BeOS, which is why they don't want it there.
-lx
I'm annoyed about R5, not because it has taken so long, but because it was promised a long time ago. And on top of that there have been very few status updates to let us know what year we can expect it. I'd be happy to beta test or help develop it, but the installer doesn't work.
yeah like Apple was begging for BeOS on G3
These guys are about as unfocused as could be.
I wish that they'd follow up on delivering
the things that they've promised (e.g., R5) before
they worry about things like Quad processor machines.
MEI is a real bugger to do SMP, you have to code around it... With the Shared state you dont have to munge your code. But the G4 has another nice feature, Snarfing... If you have data in your cache and you see another processor modify the memory, you can pick up that data as the other chip writes out to memory. It saves having to re-read the data, snooping only invalidates your local copy of memory.
I don't think Apple's refusal to cooperate with Be would affect this machine at all, since it isn't controlled by Apple (btw, will it even run MacOS, or is it Linux-only?).
A lot of people would have to start buying non-Apple PPCs for it to make financial sense for Be to support them.
Be doesn't have a lot of programmers, and they have more than enough work to do just to get better hardware coverage for x86. Irrespective of Intel's financial support, it is undeniable that there is a lot more "bang for the buck" in getting their product well-established on the X86 platform.
Suppose Linux still only had 50-60 contributors and was still lacking a lot of hardware support. Wouldn't it make sense to focus on x86?
A few things:
:) It's a VME board, designed for embedded applications. They go in a special chassis and sit on a rack. IOW, you won't see them on your desktop anytime soon. Maybe as a cool cube or rack device, though. (hint, hint.)
1. It's not a LinuxPPC product. It's Synergy Microsystems'.
2. It's not a box.
3. I wish Synergy would put up something about how much these things cost...
4. They're going to have a 433 MHz model available, too. (drool!)
-- haaz.
Actually it would be super cool if it was one of the non intel/non Apple chip platforms like the dragonball. Apple sucks, they made great hardware but until they fire everyone in management they will just be the joke of the computing world... the tiny wimps that are afraid. I admit, I own a mac, because it was given to me, I wouldnt buy one because of apple's tightass grip on everything. Think of how the Mac would be everywhere if they let everyone copy the hell out of the thing back in 1986. and everyone would be saying... intel-who? Apple is in it's final throwes of death, someone please shovel dirt on it and get it over with.
That would defintly be nice for the house!
Here's the deal. The G3 doesn't do well with symmetric miltuprocessing at all, not did its predecessor the 603e (Be will tell you about that one; they used those chips in their BeBoxen and were not pleased with the results).
A G3 can do asymmetric multiprocessing just fine, but this sounds like an SMP box. If it is, I'd love to hear how they did it.
Yes, Be was running on PowerPC hardware before, but how can you say it is NOT political when this decision to go Intel-only for future versions COINCIDES with Intel's purchase of a stake in Be??
Building on your arguement, if you accept that Be/PowerPC is a DEAD PRODUCT because it is unsupported, wouldn't it be in Be's best interest to patch for the new CPU's, like those super-smart "freeware" guys do in the Linux community?
Of course, one cannot assume the money Be would make from selling BeOS on PowerPC would be greater than the PAYOFFS Intel slips them.
What a disaster this is for Be public relations. Keeping an open mind, I suppose Be ARE less petty than Microsoft... but this also supports the arguement that they should open SOME of their code. You don't have to give away the jewels to do so either...
They quite frequently incorporate drivers and such from outside developers, as long as they can easily integrate it into the code base (in terms of licensing issues), and it passes Q&A.
If someone wrote the support code and such for the G3 chipsets, i'm sure Be would be happy to use it
Yes, you're right, it would make a great system. It seems that you don't get it though. Many of us would love to have more processing power and could make good use of it. Just because luddites such as yourself have nothing better to do than play Quake with your hardware, is no reason to assume others are the same.
Apple's management got Steved (fired) long ago. Now its pulling profit and has increased revenues. It's stock is also much higher than it's been in recent years. Yeah, Apple is dying so hard. Any day now...
Why does eveyone have a problem with Beowulf? I know all the weenies like to say "Gee willakers! That'd do well in my swell Beowulf cluster!"
-but Beowulf does do some things very well, where a single Linux box wouldn't. No reason to knock it.
Get them at Macresq
I don't know if it's affordable but here's a link to a company making 1-64 G3 MP systems (external chassis).
http://www.totalimpact.com/
I think they have some systems with 604's too. They only mention MacOS and NT however. The kicker is that code modifications need to be made, according to their page, and how do you get the source for Photoshop or Premier, etc. (commercial apps) It doesn't seem like they have an API that can use off the shelf apps.. But it is a nice idea. BeOS or LinuxPPC/MkLinux on a 96 G3 Machine?
RC5 Benchmarks Results
# of CPU's System Overall Kkeys/sec.
1 CPU(604E 233) 9600/233 647
1 CPU(G3 300) PM G3/300 980
4 CPUs Total PowerMP 3,093
64 CPUs Total PowerMP 49,169
96 CPUs Total PowerMP 73,660
sales:
power@totalimpact.com
tech info/sup:
mailto:tec@totalimpact.com
I thought the only way to get these things to run in an SMP configuration was to eliminate the L2 cache, the very thing that makes these things so fast.
More details about the board to be displayed can be found at Synergy's product page. Alas, no prices are posted. They already produce a number of PPC-based boards, though, and claim Linux support for many. I want a VGMD for my Miata.
oh come ON, you know thats not how it is...sheesh
I thought these were boards. Big difference. Probly expensive too
Now all i need is BeOS running on it :)
No problem. :) Re: 7200: check the linuxppc-user list.. there's been some talk about those boxes lately. Someone got it running with 2.2.1, I think. It's in the archives.
/. for a while now.. really.. i'm not addicted.. *facial tic*
jase, REALLY putting down
-- haaz.
What kind of b/w does the VME backplane have? Is it like Intel based single board computers that plug into a backplane?
If VME has enough bandwidth, this could lead to some really cool MPP or NUMA type fun.
Like I mentioned yesterday, I'll laugh when people realize that x86 is really going nowhere. Merced is not going anywhere. I bet HP wishes they could have pulled out of that really quickly. Oh, and it seems a small company called Transmetta has caught the interest of IBM. Hmmm, something may be in the works, but don't quote me on it.
/. crowd hates those. Fine, get the SPECint and SPECfp from the INTC, MOT, and IBM webistes. Ooops! MHz per MHz, the ppc wins.
But I digress, please show the performance numbers. The PPC BYTEmarks blow the x86 away, but we know how the
Anyway, I hope these boxes make it. I'd love to run MkLinux on it.
What is the big deal with beos? I bought 3.1 beos...it did not support my Intel Pro 100B network, although big surprise it does sort of support the matrox mII video I use.
The intel pro 100 is built on my Intel PR440FX (dual pent pro) motherboard. It is also built on about every multiprocessor pII from intel and asus.
Why does BE no support it? I dunno. So I took it off.
BE subsequently sent me BEOS 4.0...now I thought I will get my network working. Nope still no support for a darn popular chipset (not to mention the other 10 10/100 boards it dont support). Hey it does see my other processor and have a cute way to turn off one processor...that I liked.
While it may be great for graphics, its not worth anything for all around use IMHO. When this changes I will gladly give it a little partition space, for now I have an empty gig of space waiting on a decent version to emerge.
Actually, it would.
I used to work for one of their competitors...the entire reason for a VME PowerPC board is to shove a bunch of them in a VME rack to tackle obscenely high-performance computational applications...like radar or sonar imaging systems. Eight of these bad boys go in a VME chassis. Four VME chassis rackmount into a computer cabinet. For three square feet of floorspace, you have a Linux-based Beowulf cluster that will outrun the big boys...128 400mhz Cu G3s, with the system boards talking to each other at speeds better than 250MegaBYTES (not bits) per second. Forget bargain-basement alpha desktops and 100base-T hack jobs...this here's the real deal.
Ladies and gentlemen, Linux has just hit the big time...big time.
Now...what will these VME-based system boards do for the home hobbyist and workstation afficionado looking for a cheaper way to run quake faster? Nothing. This ain't a toy, junior...go buy a refurbished imac and get crakin' on the USB drivers. I figure each one of those boards will cost better than five grand. Worth it, if you need to model molecular decay in your new wonderdrug. Not worth it, if you need to ask mommy to buy your computer for you.
SoupIsGood Food
Bytemarks suck ass (And Apple was lame enough to quote only one part of the bymark test) and Intel PII450 vs G3 400 Spec numbers are pretty the same. Go check. And PII is even faster now.
joke
They should talk to my wife; she has ~63 warm fuzzies (cute little pink balls with eyes, antennae and feet, reminicent of Dust Puppy), available for a gold coin donation ($1 or $2 here in NZ)
%LT;/joke
NOTE: my wife does the the above mentionsed warm fuzzies, but I'm submitting this as a joke
Bill - aka taniwha
--
Leave others their otherness. -- Aratak
Knock off both Apple and Intel at the same time. Perfect! Since this won't be vapor, I'm going to really push Be Inc to support this box (and hopefully we'll see more of these too)
Just tell me why on earth you would WANT a PCI/PMC modem? Even when Ive had the option it always seemed like a waste, if not just plain stupid... call me crazy but for ten years at least, when I hear modem, I think serial.
Sorry, a little off-topic.
Binary Boy
I called them up, and a salesman said that the average cost of a one board for a single-board computer is $5000. And that these are definitely not consumer machines.
Supporting a totally new group of motherboards (at least a couple iMac, plus the whole new group of servers) is not "really trivial".
Be moved to Intel because it made sense. And still does. There is no ***BUSINESS*** case for supporting G3. Not with the high cost of engineering for reverse engineering and support. And then there is one other issue. What if Apple decided to sue? Sure, you and I, competent geeks know that there is no merit to the suit. How many months of lawyers fees do you want to bet it would cost Be for the judge to come to that conclusion? And we all know that Apple loves to sue.
I'll correct you.
you're wrong.
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
DUDE you suck and need to really get the info from the programers before you open your mouth
Supporting a totally new group of motherboards (at least a couple iMac, plus the whole new group of servers) is not "really trivial".
Be moved to Intel because it made sense. And still does. There is no ***BUSINESS*** case for supporting G3. Not with the high cost of engineering for reverse engineering and support. And then there is one other issue. What if Apple decided to sue? Sure, you and I, competent geeks know that there is no merit to the suit. How many months of lawyers fees do you want to bet it would cost Be for the judge to come to that conclusion? And we all know that Apple loves to sue.
"Be claims (and has consistantly claimed) that they were not supporting the newer PPC boxes because Apple would not give them technical information."
So how come this isn't stopping LinuxPPC?
Ooh, a sarcasm detector. Oh, that's a real useful invention.
It's not a money issue. Apple refused to give Be the specs on the G3 processor, and reverse engineering the linux code could result in some legal issues. It is not a money issue.
I had to say it before some dork does.
They just don't get it.
I am using the Macintosh for graphics works, and I am seriously considering to put LinuxPPC with GIMP on a separate partition, but not instead of the MacOS (at least not initially).
As for Be, there is no commercial release, no apps, and it is not as proven and time-tested as LinuxPPC or even MkLinux.
Many MacOS users are interested by Linux on the PowerPC RISC platform, and Apple should take notice.
I noticed that company happens to sell a lot of VME products...
Does anyone know if any of the ports of Linux support VME-based systems? If any of them do, does the SMP support work when multiple VME boards with processors are on the VME bus or do the boards themselves have to be SMP specifically? (ie, can I pop two dual-processor VME boards onto the bus and have Linux use all four processors?) I've worked with 88110 and 68040 VME boards but don't really know how they actually worked from that standpoint...
I've seen true-blue SysVR4 running on VME systems that way, it'd be cool if Linux did too.
It's not just money however.... I think there are some big ego's at Be aww ubset ad da big bad apple...
A good programmer could PROVE your statement by petioning Be for just enough source so they could write their own patch.
The Linux OS team is freaking amazing. We have Linux runnning on at least 6 processors, AND their INTEGRITY can survive an Intel investment!
The ONE QUESTION I have for Be is, would they allow the community to contribute the necessary code to get BeOS working on [horror!] non-Intel based processors. I would be the answer is NO, and this completely KILLS the Be apologist arguement that it's Apple's fault for not providing Be with developer support, because the PowerPC Linux group did it and they don't even get paid for their work.
It would be sweet if these Linux guys ran something like SPECweb96 on one of these babies and blew away most of the big boys' Unixes... (i.e. IBM and HP) Let's see some smoking web servers, eh?
has anyone even read the description of the card?!?! It seems pretty clear to me that the L2 cache is not disabled when they state that each processor has its own 1MB L2 cache running at 200-300mhz.
Cince this is not an Intel design, we'll all be
screwed trying to find compatable video capture cards, and other prephrials, or do these systems regress to the worthless pci bus. Lord knows that Crapple has made every single version of the smackintosh with different bus connectors to force the user to buy new every time. So if it's not a pci bus then the cards triple in price, have a snowballs chance in hell being linux compatable, and will be crappy.
This has been said here hundreds of times before:
Apple wont give Be the specs for the new G3 motherboards (chipsets and stuff). Therefore Be can't update their kernel and drivers for it. It can't be political, because BeOS was already running on Apple hardware, and the same reason for the financial.
And no, you can't base your only product on reverse engineering some other product, even though hackers can do it in their spare time.
Sheesh!
Jón
I'm gonna rackmount me a ton o' them bitches in my shower stall and make the vanity mirror a 3D LCD panel! Kewl dd0dz. :)
Sounds pretty rad. I need to get one of those thingies. I wish Be and Apple would pull their heads out of their asses and get BeOS working on the G3. Till then (and after then), its linuxppc all they way!
-------------------
HomerJ
How does the cost of this quad PPC box compare with that of, say, an Alpha box of comparable floating-point capability?
...since, as others have mentioned, this is a VME board; "cheap" and "VME" don't usually fall into the same sentence.
But maybe other things are brewing...
No, the caches do not need to be disabled.
The PowerPC 750 (aka "G3") *does* implement snooping on
both the L1 and L2 caches, and can be used in SMP systems.
It uses an MEI protocol, not MESI, so there is no "shared" state.
However, this is just an optimization for shared, read-only data;
MEI works correctly in an SMP environment.
-- Tim Olson
No, the reason Be isn't supporting G3 Macs is purely financial. . .
.that they don't want to lose customers who, buying a Mac and expecting it to work because it is the same model that a friend is using BeOS on, find out that because the most recent batch have changed in some non-documented way their machine won't run BeOS and blame the problem on Be.
. .
Geesh, is this so hard a concept to understand?
Amen
I'm sorry if the FREE software world doesn't move as fast as you'd like. If you'd get off your butt and contribute something, maybe it wouldn't have taken 4 weeks to find and kill two egcs/glibc bugs!
R5 is very close, about 4 things are left.
The real question is: Do you want a half assed release that might work, but will require many many updates? Or would you like us to (do our best) at getting it right the first time?
--One of the NON-PAID R5 developers.
Losers somehow thinking that less choice in the marketplace is good.
YEA but will it run linux?
:)
"In America, first you get the sugar, then you get the power, then you get the women..." -H. Simpson
Power PC...the core that spins furiously within the foggy depths of hype Machines(TM).
powerp**p
Actually, I do have a VME backplane, but no cards for it. :)
darn
I can't wait for 4 G4's with no smp tricks, better fp and altivec. That would be sweet
Will this finally give us reason to stop griping about Apple hardware prices?
Correct me if I'm wrong, but the G3 isn't intended to be used in a Multiprocessor system. For that you need a 604e or a G4.
This is not a desktop machine. This is the kind of thing that goes in space shuttles and PBX equipment.
Sir,
:)
We're still working on R5. This board isn't ours -- we're just showing it. Believe me, no one is more aware of R5's lateness than us.
Cheers,
-- haaz.
As usual a standard x86 PC gives us a superior performance when price is a matter. I assume that most readers of /. want to use their computer for standard Joe-user tasks such as compiling, Gimp:ing, lowend webservers, games, etc.
This machine is too expensive and that's it. But please you guys, buy a couple of thousands of them and maybe the prices will drop to at least near sensible levels. Then I will buy one too.
Now I think Rob should go ask IBM nicely for a PowerPC logo to use.. The articles about it are getting pretty frequent ;-)