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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...
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