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SGI Embraces Open Source
SGI has announced they are
"embracing the open source development model". They haven't said anything specific, but seem to imply they
will integrate features from IRIX and their other software into open
source products. Finally, they
imply they are helping get Linux going on the Origin 2000. That would be really cool - Linux
would gain ccNUMA and the likes. Makes me wonder what their rumored second announcement will be about...
A few of those would make a damn fine Beowulf cluster. Just think how fast Quake would run on it!
:^)
Have you seen an Origin2000? They have these cute little color LCD displays on the front that run some type of system monitor display. Basically, a 640x480 display with enough buttons to handle direction and fire. They usually just show you the CPU load on all the processors, and give you a menu so that you can send interupts to the system. What would be cool would be to get Doom or something running on those.
Oh, IIRC you would not want to run Quake on an Origin, since they don't have video subsystems (other than the simple monitor display mentioned above), so you would have to use a remote X display. Not good for the frame rate. If they did have video installed, they would be called an "Onyx" instead.
I think what's been happening with a couple of major UNIX vendors recently is quite telling of the direction that they are planning for.
1) SGI VisualPC's to run Linux. SGI frees GLX code. Now SGI to merge IRIX features into the Linux kernel.
2. HP to support Linux.
3. SCO to include Linux emulation layer.
here is another commonality between these companies:
their architecture roadmaps all point to IA-64
From a financial standpoint this makes sense: Why port your OS to a completely different platform ( SGI and HP-UX ) when you can port your features to a new kernel. And what popular OS (GNU/Linux) it is right now. Popularity means that customers want it. Combine those two very plausible considerations, and you might have a _very_ good thing coming this way!
from gnu manifesto:
"My company needs a proprietary operating system to get a competitive edge."
GNU will remove operating system software from the realm of competition. You will not be able to get an edge in this area, but neither will your
competitors be able to get an edge over you. You and they will compete in other areas, while benefiting mutually in this one. If your business is selling an
operating system, you will not like GNU, but that's tough on you. If your business is something else, GNU can save you from being pushed into the
expensive business of selling operating systems.
I would like to see GNU development supported by gifts from many manufacturers and users, reducing the cost to each.(5)
------
You can bet your sweet behind that IRIX costs tons to develop in an entirely propietary fashion. They could save themselves a lot of money.
(note: It is *better* for OSS if I am right because it means for certain that this announcement is far more than a publicity stunt. I fear I may not be right, though...)
I guess I'm going to have to apologize to Belluzo for what I said about him, his personal hygiene, his mother, Bill Gates, his mother *with* Bill Gates, his mother, Bill Gates and a shaved goat, and the whole Bill Gates, rubber hose, duct tape, low-grade crack and a stack of greased NT CDs...
:)
Not to say this isn't possible, just that it probably isn't worth the effort to SGI. They already went through the pain of getting Irix to run on these things. Plus, there's no guarantee that the OS on the Origin2000s would still be efficient on Linus's stated target of mid-range SMPs.
SGI's providing specs to let others do it would be pretty harmless, though. Not many folks would want the down time on their very expensive box to test and tune a different OS. SGI wouldn't lose anything, so maybe that's how people should push...
Jason
All Irix developers like myself already know that 4Dwm is just a modified version of the default Motif window manager. Personally, I think enough free utilities exist to create a 4Dwm-workalike freeware wm based on lesstif's mwm.
SGI, as far as I know own Alias, which about 3-5 years ago droped a product called SONATA, an execelent 3d architectural and building modeling package. - The source was bought off a UK company, and must be sitting in some deep dungeon at Alias. If they could release this GPL, It would in one swoop take Linux into the realms of major CAD workstation for the building industry. - And Since Alias/SGI wrote off this as a commercial loss years ago, It would not cost them anything....
If anyone at SGI is listening!!!
Please Please Please release this code......
How about making Alias release a Linux port of Maya? We're going with NT for Maya here mostly because of the cheaper hardware, not the OS, and it's disturbing.
Business world ideology:
I still need a proprietary system to create a competitive advantage over my competition. Solution: Five years from now I bring in a few Linux hackers at 50K a pop and tell them to give me more performance out of Linux. So instead of having to find people with varied backgrounds in IRIX, SCO, etc. I standardize my employment selection to only Linux greatly reducing my costs because there are more programmers out there with the same skills. BTW the code that they modify, I wont be sharing with the rest of the world and no one will say anything about it because number one I'm not helping my competition for something I paid for and to all my employees will have signed non-disclosure agreements with penalty of criminal charges and various lawsuits filed against them if they do. OSS, Linux, and GNOME etc may be very touchy and feelly on the surface but the only reason Linux has gotten to this point and not languished with every other Unix flavor is the fact that its free. The Mexican government is not using GNOME because its better then MS95, it's because its free. Am I learning Linux now, Yes I am, and market dictates that I do. If Linux wasn't close to where it is in terms of popularity would I be learning it now? Linux, I believe, will continue growth, but at some point that growth will reach an inflection point. This point is at the desktop level. I admit a Linux server runs a heckava lot better then an NT server but tell the average user you're going to be using Linux and also your going to have to spend about 30% of your time in a command prompt. I'm very sure that will go over well, Not. Put Linux in perspective. Its popularity and growth are due to 1st its performance and 2nd its free price. As far as OSS and the rest of the stuff regurgitated hippy stuff from Alderman and the rest of the OSS crowd don't buy into it because your employer sure won't. Wanna make the world a better place? Work for a company for 20 years, get stock options before it goes public, sell said stock options, retire and establish an endowment at your alma mater in your name.
Linux on an Orgin 2000, that would be baddass.
Now if I could just scrape together $40k and purchase a refurb.
Seriously, this is a big step in the right direction for Linux. We support roughly 20 Origin
refridgerators here at work(too big to be called boxes:). I love the hardware.
The system control board (the board that controls what is displayed on the front panel) for these systems are actually full 486 computers. I have heard that some enginers@sgi have ported doom to run on this thing. The mobo they use has built in ethernet so you can bet it supports death match play as well.
or so the rumor goes...
Yes, essentially I think that that's correct --they will have to be compatible. They will have to accomodate Linux to not be the worst "non-interoperable" offender. And you left out IBM -PPC.
This is very cool if it is true.
SGI's running Linux, schweet.
Finally SGI is realzing that it is a hardware vendor and not a software vendor.
The reason they want to put Linux on Origin, is they are afraid that the Origin hardward will become irrelevant because of such Linux projects as Beowulf, that give supercomputing power using off the shelf components. Running Linux on Origin, won't necessarily save Origin, you can't beat the price performance of off the shelf components networked into a Beowulf!
Open source is a generic term. It can mean anything. If they are talking about Open Source(TM), then their development model is seriously flawed. If they say "GNU development model" then it means exactly what the GPL states. Software freedom.
Oh, yeah.. fuck slashdot. Moderation is not freedom. If Rob can't take the heat of getting flamed he shouldn't run trashdot (speaking of the "Linux.com" news story and the disappearance of many posts).
Flame away, happy and loyal Rob/Trashdot fans..
(I know someone will anyways)
Doesn't anyone else notice that everytime a company announces open source initiatives it is because all else has failed? Furthermore it looks like everytime a company announces support for Linux, like Corel, it seems to be because they are losing terribly to their competitors. Sadly, support for Linux and open source are indicators that a company is in trouble and that they are choosing new directions out of desperation, not because they want to.
If you plan on taking your employees to court if they break it, they'd better have modified code *NOT* under the GPL...
I would be nice if SGI would release OpenInventor unter an open-source license. In practice, it is the only good, widely used 3D scene-graph API (save Java3D), yet SGI has ceased all development and maintenance of it. If were released OSS, we could build v3.0 without left-to-right accumulation and a make SoXt as extensible as the rest of the API. How 'bout it SGI?
Linux boots on VisPC but thats it. Take a look at VisPC howto. No X server, no keyboard, etc, nothing is supported. It will take a _while_ until you will be able to buy a RedHat CD and install that on SGI VisPC..
I own a nice little o2.. I like my o2.. It's great because it's a stupid mans unix :) click here and click there.. (I use it to teach people Unix now, because it still has the Unix background so I can increase difficulty)
.. well, maybe, if you really want to turn that 3d powerhouse into a great web server / mail / nfs / samba box ok.. But you lose so much functionality in comparison to it's Irix self...
Other than that, Irix is something that is great because it is PERFECT for the architecture it was built on.. Very stable, pretty fast, and with some work somewhat secure. (I turn off most of my services). Why would I want to run Linux (that I can run on my old pc or my sparc) when I could run a very professional established operating system like Irix. For the O2k
Am I insane? maybe, I'm the one that bought an o2 remember?
-Dextius Alphaeus
dextiusalphaeus@hotmail.com
OpenInventor rocks, I for one would be producing
3d applications using it if it was easily available. I think SGI licensed technology to TGS and get royalties plus run-time fees from them, they still own it (don't they ???).
Providing source code to OpenInventor would hugely stimulate demand for kick-ass 3D hardware. SGI could make some real money from selling hardware instead of making a couple of dollars kickback from TGS.
joss (without his cookies)
Huh? That's a feature of the rlogin command, not of the window manager, assuming you mean setting the DISPLAY environment variable automatically. And it's something that's supported on almost every Unix in existence.
I agree that Origin is SMP, but I'm not sure if that's true about coarse grain and fine grain. Beowulf seems remarkably versatile, but I'd like to see some numbers to back that up.
And I don't mean the X font server!
Silly people up above arguing about apples vs. oranges (beouwolf vs. O2000) and 4Dwm.
They don't even know what to ask for, stuck in their myopic P.C. worlds.
IRIX/O2000 is desinged for "Big Data"
Every time I take Linux for a spin, I get frustrated with the toy file system (and slow NFS (but that's sun's ballpark).
I don't know why you would put Linux on a system designed for "Big Data" (O2000 add) then strap yourself to a file system limited to 2 GB files.......
SGI does have some sweet technology that could help Linux swing with the big boys.
SGI Open Source Wish List:
XFS, inst, swmgr (gui for inst), OpenVault, DMF
Am I forgetting anything????
Apprentice is a free version of OpenInventor,
see http://users.deltanet.com/~powerg/Apprentice/
Performer on Linux could be very nice with 3Dfx
acceleration!
Whatever happened to that guy, anyway? Anyone remember Young Einstein Didn't think so.
--from the where-are-they-now dept.
An Origin 2000 would not necessarily be called an onyx just because you dropped in the graphics subsystems/pipes. They are two different kinds of deals, but the graphics pipes for the Onyx2 can be hooked into the Origin 2000 to act as the display.
:) It does work in dedicated mode though, thus we use it sometimes for a mega-quake server.
The biggest problem I have with playing quake on the Origin 2000/Onyx2 is that it is not compiled for it, so it won't work happily. (yes, I have tried.) I also tried it on the older Onyx, but with no success. (Although, that could be because it didn't like the 22ft. screen we were trying to play on.
I think most people could understand copyright infringement and breach of contract just fine. Of course people would sue - respecting contracts and the rule of law are the foundation of a civil society.
I've noticed that. But to some degree, you only expect companies which aren't winning under the current system to try to shift the debate. Why would Microsoft want to change their strategy - it's working.
A typical contentless SGI Press Release.
Make that a "Monster Reality News Flash" from
SGI.
talk about a death spiral
I'd like to see them GPL ViewKit. Although I'm not sure if it belongs to them, or they just license it from ICS. It's a nice GUI application framework that makes writing apps a lot easier. Although I'm not sure it would get a lot of support in the Free Software community due to its use of Motif.
booch
are you seriously trying to say a free OS like linux is in any way superior to solaris or irix?
cos it ain't - by a long shot.
The Origin is actually a NUMA, Non-Uniform Memory Access. This means that you do *not* do explicit message passing (like you would do in a Beowulf or on a machine like the T3E) but rather write into memory that is shared to different degrees among the portions of your computation.
The Non-Uniform means that if you access memory that happens to belong to the current node in the O2K cluster, the memory access happens very quickly. However, if you access memory that belongs to another node in the O2K cluster, that memory access is required to traverse a network to be accomplished. So, to your application (at least at some level), everything looks like access to one large memory. If the section of memory is local, access is very fast; if it is remote, access is slower. Non-uniform speeds.
The information about fine-grained vs. coarse-grained is essentially correct. In a coarse-grained application, the parts of the computation that are broken up do not need to communicate with each other very often. Most applications that you see running on Beowulf clusters are coarse-grained. For these types of applications, a Beowulf is a big win. For fine-grained applications, I can assure you that an O2K is much faster than a Beowulf because the O2K's interconnect is about three orders of magnitude faster than the interconnect (Ethernet) used in a Beowulf.
Keeping things secret is not against GPL. GPL only restricts distribution, not use. However, if one of your employees wants to distribute all your company's expensive work, legal avenues WILL NOT be available to stop him. You'll just have to have him shot in a back alley or something...
As one who hasn't had the privilege to ever really use or see an SGI desktop yet, could someone provide some good screenshots of the 4Dwm desktop or point me in the direction of some?
Assume by now the only one reading this aged thread is SGI employees.
If an of your SGI dweebs actually have a say in what does or does not get done consider this:
You have nothing to loose by open-sourcing XFS/OpenVault/inst.
All of the other big unix vendors have copied XFS functionality by now. OpenVault has no chance at becoming a standard while SGI sits on it and DMF will die if you continue your Cray-style pricing (HD prices are dropping sooo fast).
Think of it:
The "standard" file system for Linux: SGI-XFS
The "standard" tape library interface for Linux: DMF/OpenVault.
The "standard" install utility for Linux: SGI-Inst
At least do the install utility! While I can see how you might believe there are strategic benifits of keeping XFS to yourself, swmgr/inst blows away anything currently available in the Linux world.....
Or keep your proprietary software to yourself and we'll all reminise about it in 5 or 10 years.....
Hmmm... you sound like a real nice guy... having fun creeping in the shadows and hoarding gold... Mahatma Ghandi didn't need money to free his people make the world a better place. Take your cynical money grubbing attitude at stuff it.
"And Im so definitely sure that with the increased proliferation of Linux that militaries and intelligence agencies around the globe aren't running Linux and dissecting to make sure that Linux crackers dont get out of control with it. Oh isnt that against the Linux license well why arent people coming forward."
Uhhh... what are you talking about?
Waitaminute! Total cynicism... bullshit coming out the ears... I'm responding to a 13-yr-old troll!
Someone slap me.
Nevermind.
.
Would you care to contrast and point out the ways that Solaris and Irix are superior? Or are you just running your mouth because you feel stupid for spending so much money?
.
Don't get too happy for 4Dwm...
Don't get me wrong, I LOVE the "thumb-wheel" and zooming icon-views. The look/behavior of the boxes, sliders, etc. is also a dramatic improvement over the junk in, say, CDE.
The widgets are mods of Motif, and the usual license fee will apply to any of these libraries which include OSF/Motif source.
I suppose that they can purify these widgets of OSF source. This could then be coupled with LessTif, but I think it might be less work to backwards engineer a whole new LessTif derivative, if SGI provides a spec.
Oh, yeah! I also forgot: SGI added beautiful extensions providing multiple icon-states, and integration of audio-events.
You'd probably see all of this sooner as a GTK/qt theme, than as a free-software port.
--Jeremiah Cornelius
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
All I've got to say is: WOOOO!
Imagine Linux on a supercomputer like that... mmmmmmmmmmmmmm. Plus all the things they could integrate from Irix into Linux... like the `scheduling' system of cellular irix...
Now if only I had a few million to drop on one of these.
Don't think of it as a flame---it's more like an argument that does 3d6 fire damage
You forgot XLV and Fibrechannel support. :)
I read the internet for the articles.
No, that's the whole point of Beowulf clusters: to tie crappy hardware together to make good hardware.
Bill - aka taniwha
--
Leave others their otherness. -- Aratak
Posted by Buffy the Overflow Slayer:
Heck, I run FVWM2 on our SGIs. I see no real
advantage to 4Dwm.
-Buffy
Two completely, utterly, totally different markets. Anyone you know run Oracle Parallel Server on a Beowulf? Anybody see physics labs writing up grant applications to buy new O2Ks?
No and no. ccNUMA boxes perform an entirely different class of applications (well) from DSM clusters (which when built from Common Off-The-Shelf, or COTS, hardware qualify as a Beowulf). SMP boxes like Sun's (the UE10K for example) are the one extreme of parallel processing, all CPUs capable of acting from a single memory image. Distributed shared memory (DSM) clusters like Beowulves are the other extreme -- totally discrete information is acted on by each processor. ccNUMA boxes are somewhere in between, though from a programmer's perspective they are more like a big SMP box.
More succinctly:
A business that is doing online sales wants a resilient, fault-tolerant architecture for taking orders. So they build a Beowulf or an even-more-loosely-coupled cluster of webservers. That's where DSM clustering shines -- spill a 2L of Pepsi into one of them and nobody notices.
Then one day they decide they need to profile trends in the orders -- say, they want to figure out whether ads on Slashdot generate a response, and whether those people buy stuff. The company has a big-ass database now, way too big to fit in the main memory of a 32-bit machine like one of their Beowulf (or neo-wulf, heh) nodes. So they take some money from the petty cash drawer, buy a Starfire box and an Oracle license, import the data they have collected, and grind over it until they get some answers. That's where SMP shines.
Even if you were only trolling, the point stands.
Remember that what's inside of you doesn't matter because nobody can see it.
look here
perhaps it could be modified to work with
lesstiff or gtk?
Ah, yet another zero-content post by an anonymous coward.
But, honestly, I think that you're failing to grasp the bigger picture. What it means is yet to be revealed, and I doubt SGI is merely paying us lip service. Microsoft doens't have the stranglehold on SGI that, say, it has on Dell.
A few of those would make a damn fine Beowulf cluster.
Ever looked at the specs for ASCI Blue Mountain? It's a cluster of Origins (48 Origins with 128 CPUs each, to be exact). The network fabric is GSN a.k.a HiPPI-6400, a 800MB/s full duplex switched network. Pretty darned cool. Right now it's the fastest thing on the planet, at least on the Linpack parallel benchmark.
"My life's work has been to prompt others... and be forgotten." --Cyrano de Bergerac
Hmm... Not that they are the greatest there is, but I sure won't mind giving 4Dwm and some of thier desktop tools a spin on a Linux box. But, I am not going to hold my breath, I'll believe it when I see the source trees pop up on an ftp site.
See this report at Forbes. A couple of months ago, Sun's stock was $40-$50, now it's at $100. There's also expected to be an announcement from HP today that it'll be splitting it's business up, so that it can try and compete better - IBM and Sun were named as two companies giving them trouble... Looks like Sun's "unix-only" strategy is doing pretty well.
I do agree with the general point that some of these 'open source' innitiatives could be considered "desperate", or "last ditch".
/* MAGIC THEATRE
ENTRANCE NOT FOR EVERYBODY
MADMEN ONLY */
well i still think it's a good thing. a company like corel that got crushed by microsoft has good reason to launch a nuclear bomb that could potential kill itself but hurt its enemy also. that's actually good for the industry.
"The lie, Mr. Mulder, is most convincingly hidden between two truths."
--
And Justice for None
Man, and I only have a lowly Indy that isn't even running Linux. Interesting how the university the O2000 is going to is *really* close to Red Hat.
Village idiot in some extremely smart villages.
What I saw in their announcement was
which says nothing about migrating users from IRIX; it says they're migrating technology from IRIX to "the Open Source community".
Dunno. One thing they've already released is the GLX code; they may plan to release other things in the future.
I've got a few of them here at work. $50K for 8 CPUs.
--
Steven Webb
System Administrator II - Juneau and TECOM projects
NCAR - Research Applications Program
Haven't you noticed all the people losing weight were fat before they started, and all those folks recovering from drug addiction were addicts before they recovered, or whatever?
Yeah, all those companies - SGI, Corel, Sun, - were all starting to collapse. And the desperation surrounding those circumstances forced them to see the light.
It also seems like it's working. Free Software is generating huge amounts of hype these days, which is wonderful ... what I can't believe is that everything is going so well. It's incredible.
support gun control: take guns from cops
> Makes me wonder what their rumored
> second announcement will be about...
could that be the Linux Distribution they announced at the presentation I saw? Or ist that an oldie already?
kampi
-- a blessed +42 regexp of confusion (weapon in hand) You hit. The format string crumbles and turns to dust
oh. yeah...
First they manage to make their customers believe that they'll drop MIPS and that their new CPU (Intels Merced) is a flop. Doesn't matter if that really was their intention or not -- a lot of people ended up believing it.
And now they'll probably manage to make their customers believe that they'll drop IRIX next year or so...
No, I don't believe you'll do that -- but your customers might.. Sigh, talk about shooting oneself in the foot..
Has it ever occurred to you that God might be a committee?
Has it ever occurred to you that God might be a committee?
--- Jubal Harshaw
® U serious?
Newp.
Not a touch panel, has some keys and thingies to enter commands.. sorry to burst your bubble.
blackjack