Slashdot Mirror
'Black Lab' Linux For G3 Clusters
ChristianC writes "'Black Lab' Linux, a relative of Yellow Dog Linux, has been released for PowerPCs (including G3s and iMacs). The distribution offers Beowulf and Cluster computing - 20 G3s at once!
"
← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)
Imagine this: School buys 20 Imacs for a computer lab.
School installs Black Lab Linux.
School has a 20 node Beowulf machine when the lab is closed.
With a port of MOSIX (which is planned sometime in the future, don't ask me for a date yet), the 'Imac' cluster could be used for cluster computation during lab time, and the computation processes would migrate away from machines currently in use.
troy@blacklablinux.com
> My bet is that the G3's kick but!
my bet is: the G3s sux big time for this.
The idea of beowulf is to build a specialized high performance cluster (with high MFLOPs, but slow interconnectivity of the nodes) from cheap off the shelf components. but the trick with G3s is, you can't buy cheap hardware anywhere around (no naked MoBos available).
and the G3 isn't that great at FP-operations anyway (comparable to a celeron). it might be a little faster with integer (but no more than 20% over a P2), but that's of no use for beowulf apps most of the time....
if you want to build a cheap beowulf style cluster you better go with dual-boards and celerons with dual-adapters...
ok, i don't wanna knock your thinking cause mindless bickering never solved anything. however, i think that looks don't mean very much IMHO. my monitor sits on an old desk, my box (which is open all the time) sits on the floor somewhere, and my keyboard/mouse are kicked around the room until i actually need to use them. so maybe in your case, looks are worth something....realize though, that looks don't mean anything to those of us whose cases are being used as a light stand. :)
euphorik
What you say is interesting. My experience has been the PII's and G3's have produced similar speed results. This is for computing things like FFT's, eigen analysis, linear algebra, and wavelets. All the programs were compiled using egcs with the -O optimization flag. I also tried the old Linpack matrix benchmark test and saw no speed difference. (Note: I am not saying that the Linpack benchmark is the best way to measure system floating point performance).
I also wonder if there are differences in the level of optimization on the two different platforms.
Finally, if you don't need a high level of precision (for instance, running simulations with lots of iterations), there is suppose to be a libmoto floating point library from Motorola that improves on the computational speed.
The question is going to be, are they NUBUS or PCI based. NUBUS-based PowerPCs cannot run Linux/PPC or any of its derivatives (turbolinux, yellow dog linux). If your systems are NUBUS based, check out www.mklinux.apple.com. While it is true that Apple has stopped developing MkLinux, there are still people out there who put together code fixes and what not.
As to getting Beowulf to work on any hardware you already own, don't go thru Black Lab Linux, they're selling their own systems, hardware and software. See www.beowulf.org/software/ and, if you've got the guts and time, run compile it and run it yourself. After all, Beowulf is open source, and isn't really based on any hardware specs. The one issue you'll run into is Ethernet thru-put. Clusters with slow ethernet (either because the cards are slow, or the drivers aren't well written) tend to perform poorly. The Beowulf people have written many custom ethernet drivers to fix this, for PC and Alpha based linux. Finding comparable drivers might be tough on Apple/PPC based systems. However, even if you have slow ethernet, you can still run a cluster.
I must say, the list of people who use Linux on Macs has to be one of the most oddly conceived cross-sections of computer users there is.
What makes you say that? Your own biases of who uses a Mac? "conceived"? Sorry, it's a reality.
From my own experience at two different universities, Mac users have a higher general computer "proficiency" level over Win users. I'm not sure why that is. Maybe they are more focused on getting their work done.
In fact, they are, imo, second only to those computer users who use some form of Unix/Linux as their main or exclusive platform. I don't think that is hard to believe; 2 years ago, some numbers were put forth that there was a greater percentage of mac users on the internet than Win folks.
As well, a large number of Linux users use it because it's "trendy" or because they want to be "hackers." The rest of the Linux users fit into the incredibily smart and proficient category of choosing the tool for what they want to do. The flexibility of Linux plays a large role in making it their tool of choice.
Finding that mix is not that hard. I started on a Mac (040, 20 mhz, C610, no fpu). Loved the interface. Tried windows, hated it. Went to unix, which was such a different format (CLI initially) that I had to learn it separately and without biases toward a different windowing interface (as would be until Win3.1 at the time). Fell in love with the CLI, and wondered how I could get both. Now, I get that via PPC linux and MacOS X server.
So if you just hold your regular biases toward Mac users, with them being the "pretty little imac" or the "GUI only" or the "my Mom uses a mac, therefore it sucks" folks, you'd be excluding some pretty damn proficient computer users.
Hrm, funny, I thought iMacs were ugly as sin. Plus, remember dust puppy. With the ammount of dust and other crud that accumulates in your average PC case, exactly how pretty are those transparant iMac cases going to look in 3 years?.
If I buy a computer for its looks, it should remind me of a Corvette, not a kiddie car.
IMO, the biggest problem they have run into is glibc2.1. This has caused more headaches than anything else as it breaks many things. Give these guys a break please.
> support the 68020 (a touch better than i286 class performance)
Come on now, the 68020 is a true 32bit processor, somewhat not even all 386 where, don't compare it to a 286, even the original 68000 is a better processor than the 286.
Friendly,
Sven LUTHER
G3 has worse FP than a Celeron? Now I'm scared, because the Intel FP unit sucks badly compared to any of the RISC CPU's (alpha, MIPS, RS6000). Why do you think Avalon uses alphas?
G3 and Celeron are nearly the same for FP - they both are rather sucky compared to other CPUs with good FPUs. The point is: G3 mobos are not cheaply available...
And FPU performance really has nothing to do with RISC/CISC chip design. Only a dumbass would say: Hey it's RISC, so it kicks the CISC x86's butt in FP performance. The G3 is a good example, it's RISC, but it's FPU sucks just as hard as the x86's. And know what? The StrongARM is also RISC, but it doesn't even have an FPU!!!!!!
Why Avalon uses Alphas? Well, it might be because they have excellent FPU performance/CPU, and they are generally available for a reasonable price...
YellowDogLinux champion 1.0 relly needs a working compiler the one you got now (egcs1.1.2-pre2 !!!) breaks most things I want to compile, even your included kernel source...
Hmm. They might be terrible running just the MacOS, but play Q3T or throw Linux on there, and you will fear their performance.
Doing mathematical equations (generating SSH keys) my G3 is twice as fast as my PII, both at 400 MHz (granted, the G3 has more cache).
Oh, I agree completely -- it's a great architecture. But I'm a businessperson, not a research scientist, and Apple boxes don't give me enough real-world advantages to compensate for their disadvatages. I'm open to persuasion, but your arguments have to show me how I'll (a) save time, (b) save money, and/or (c) get a better product from an end-user standpoint.
Not everyone's a business person. Not everyone works from the premise of "getting" a new computer to run stuff on (see 68k NetBSD, OpenBSD, and Linux projects if you don't believe me). Computers are tools. Not everyone has the same criteria; it varies on their needs. This is obvious.
If you went with cost, you might have gone with an AMD or Celeron, not even a PII or PIII. But there are people who buy PIIs and PIIIs; they aren't stupid just because AMDs and Celerons are cheaper. They might have different criteria, e.g. they needed the little extra speed. There are some people that might want to build Linux servers cheaply.
But there are Linux ports beyond the x86. Why? People had the hardware. If I have an Alpha, need a web server, I might try running Linux on it. It would be stupid to purchase a new machine unless the Alpha was insufficient.
There are Mac users who desire or have reason using MacOS but also have use for running Linux. With PPC Linux, they can use both for the price of one box, not two. What, run MacOS? Plenty of people like it. Plenty of environments exist where it's simply easier to get a MacOS computer over intel.
Thus, likewise, there are people that already have two or three G3s and 604s. Why should they have to go out and buy equipment? Utilize what they have. To research scientists, who you admitted you are not, who might need a clustering option, Black Labs allows them to not spend $10,000-$20,000 on getting intel equipment. $10,000 not spent means more money for regeants or that back-burner experiment that they might not have had funds for. And since a lot of research money is NIH aka taxpayer's money, I am in general a more happy camper that funds are being used efficiently.
i quote from the beowulf mailing list faq v2 at: http://www-unix.mcs.anl.gov/~utha yopa/bwfaq2.html
2. Where can I get the Beowulf software? [1999-05-13]
There isn't a software package called "Beowulf". There are, however, several pieces of software many people have found useful for building Beowulfs. None of them are essential. They include MPICH, LAM, PVM, the Linux kernel, the channel-bonding patch to the Linux kernel (which lets you 'bond' multiple Ethernet interfaces into a faster 'virtual' Ethernet interface) and the global pid space patch for the Linux kernel (which, as I understand it, lets you see all the processes on your Beowulf with ps, and maybe kill etc. them), DIPC (which lets you use sysv shared memory and semaphores and message queues transparently across a cluster).
As for the licensing info, presumably the patches to the Kernel will be GPL'ed. Check out: http://www.beowulf.org/software/softw are.html. I couldn't find any specific information on liscensing, although they do refer to the software necessary to implement Beowulf as:
implemented as an add-on to commercially available, royalty-free base Linux distributions
hope this helps
alex
Well, I've installed and experimented with MkLinux, PHTs TurboLinux, and LinuxPPC (still waiting on R5). I've also installed and used BeOS. Eventually, I've always gone back to MacOS just because the apps I really need (or want) are there.
Why do Mac people also use Linux?
1) As stated before, if you held out against the Wintel duopoly during the recent dark years, you're not a "just go along" type of person. (Yeah, the whole "Think Different" thing is pretentious, but there's a grain of truth to it. It's a stubborn streak that suits both Mac and Linux users well).
2) It's easy. MacOS coexists peacefully with another OS on the same hard drive. Most of the alternate O/Ss provide easy-to-use dual booters, and choosing between different startup drives has always been trivial on the Mac. You can boot from just about anything on a Mac: external HD, floppy, Zip, Jaz, whatever. So it's easy to experiment with little obligation.
3) This one is subtle, but I think the most important. Both Macs and Linux reinforce the idea that computers are *logically designed and predictable systems that can be mastered*. With Linux there is predictability and mastery, but it requires much greater initial knowledge (i.e., a steep learning curve). You've got to want to do something, then learn how to do it.
With the Mac there is a shallow learning curve, but you can keep going as far as you like. If you're Grandma and you just want to e-mail and file recipes, you can stop there. But I've found the Mac actually encourages "serendipitous" learning -- sometimes I've ended up doing new things just because it was so damn easy and predictable on the Mac. I got a cable modem, then before I knew it I was using my machine as a Web server and router, with three or four other Macs on a LAN with it. And it was *easy*. I've seen novices (like I was) go from using software to installing it, from attaching peripherals to swapping components, from using higher end apps to coding. Even when Macs crash, it can be *logically* narrowed down to an extensions conflict or offending app.
Compare this to the Wintel side of the world, where even experienced technicians just reinstall Windows to solve a problem. Whenever I use Windows I feel like the system is fighting me every step of the way. Sometimes things just don't work. Sometimes it just crashes. No one is ever able to explain it. It's all just freakin' voodoo. Although its not as bad as it used to be, how would anyone ever learn cool stuff by chance when the computer is this inscrutable device that doesn't do simple stuff right? If the computer is not logical and predictable, why even expend effort trying to understand it?
Even if you do make the effort, it's just one kludge after another. Right down to the processor and its assembly language. No offense to the Intel users out there, but x86 assembly language is just a mess. Let's not even discuss PowerPC, because I don't want to make this a Mac-vs-PC thing. Look at MIPS assembly language. Instructions logically grouped, all the same length, with consistent syntax. It's understandable. It's *knowable*. When you look at it you see logic behind the design.
But I'm getting a bit off topic here. Basically, I think the shallow learning curve of the Mac and its consistent design encourages users to learn more. It tells them that computers (and technology in general) are rationally designed things you can understand and master. Do that for long enough and you will build up the necessary knowledge and confidence to tackle Linux.
my bet is: the G3s sux big time for this.
Whatever--to both of you.
G3s are comparable to a PII system in FPU and better in integer. I wouldn't call that "sux big time" and I sure wouldn't say that it kicks butt.
If you want FPU, you go Alpha. You want bang for buck and you're starting from scratch, Celerons or even AMDs might do you well. However, all of these assumptions go from a premise of the need solely for higher performance (using alphas) and/or starting from scratch with a budget (using Celerons).
The idea of beowulf is to build a specialized high performance cluster (with high MFLOPs, but slow interconnectivity of the nodes) from cheap off the shelf components
Eh? While true, that's only part of the picture. "Build" doesn't equate to " newpurchase."
There are, lo and behold, groups that have a bunch of G3s that were purchased for other reasons. Like who? University's who have public computing labs. Science/research labs, in general, like Macs. Some of these people might have an interest or developed a need for clustering and doing so on their current investment of computers is beats the pants off new purchases, aka makes it almost free.
Black Labs brings these people the simple option of using their current investment and/or money already pointed for Macs for other reasons (e.g. some chemistry software is preferentially run on macs). If you've looked at other clustering options for G3s (you did before you shot your mouths off, right??), you'd realize the AppleSeed project had some of these exact reasons in mind. And even here, there are pluses and minuses between using AppleSeed and Black Labs.
In any case, yes, it should be freely distributable, but Cheapbytes doesn't sell them because of the United States' inane export laws. Beowulf is considered a munition because it can make computers more powerful than a certain plateau, which in theory can be used to develop weapons, etc.
In any case, if someone has a Beowulf cd, you can legally copy it (I assume that it was exported legally if you're not in the States)
You set the Energy Saver to turn the monitor off after ten minutes...the computer keeps going. You need the screen back and you shake the mouse.
It's what I do on my G3 All-In-One running YD.
the PPCs only have 1 FPU, while the Power3s and the R10ks in Blue Mountain have 2 FPUs.
This is not true... the 604e has 2 fpu units and 2 integer units... the G3 only has 1 fpu unit which is why it doesnt kick the pentiums ass totaly in FP math (although benhmarks indicate that it is still faster)... the G3 was actualy designed as a low to mid range chip but it performed beyond expectations
the 604e is an excelent highend chip
"In America, first you get the sugar, then you get the power, then you get the women..." -H. Simpson
not too many people suggest "Kill Explorer" in windows to boost your processing speed.
thats becausse half the time explorere will die for you, you dont have to do anything!
"In America, first you get the sugar, then you get the power, then you get the women..." -H. Simpson
It should be noted that this is changing with MacOS 8.7
I am currently running an alpha of it. it is surprisingly stable and has excelent multiuser capabilities (compared to windows, not compared to a real multi-user OS)
restrictions can be placed on file acces, application access and even what CDs can be run in the machine (all, none, or only ones on a certain list) it includes a login screen and the ability to use your voice print for your login (very cool!)
it even has an option to make certain users access like at ease
all in all I am very impressed
"In America, first you get the sugar, then you get the power, then you get the women..." -H. Simpson
wow, im surprised
I thought you would have hated it
I personaly dont mind it much, but it is certainly not my first choice... just to small for my hand.
"In America, first you get the sugar, then you get the power, then you get the women..." -H. Simpson
Where can I download BlackDog linux? Is there an ISO I can download, or just directories? Linux distrobutions are required to be available for download free right? Thanks
Jeff Knox
Actually, the iMac is selling out like crazy in Japan from what I understand. 50% of all buyers are first-time buyers too.
Japan is a burgeoning personal computer market, and I think it's an intersting trend to see Apple capture so much share so quickly.
-Stu
BTW... RS/6000 is a product line, not a CPU. The RS/6000 line uses the PowerPC series (601,603,603e,604,604e) for interger math and Power, Power2, Power2sc, and Power3 processors for floating point math.
Huh? I hope you don't mean to imply that RS/6000 systems have both a PPC chip and a Power chip, because they don't. They ship with either a Power series chip or a PowerPC chip.
(As an aside, the ASCI Blue Pacific system at Livermore is all PowerPC 604e's rather than Power3s, according to this web page. Personally, I think this is why the machine is so much slower than ASCI Blue Mountain, even though Blue Pacific's theoretical peak is higher; the PPCs only have 1 FPU, while the Power3s and the R10ks in Blue Mountain have 2 FPUs.)
"My life's work has been to prompt others... and be forgotten." --Cyrano de Bergerac
This is not true... the 604e has 2 fpu units and 2 integer units...
That's not what Motorola's PowerPC 604e product summary says. It lists 3 integer units (2 single-cycle and 1 multi-cycle) and 1 floating point unit. If there's documentation to the contrary, I'd like to see it.
"My life's work has been to prompt others... and be forgotten." --Cyrano de Bergerac
Where can I find docs on BlockMoveDataUncached()? Is it a NeXT/Apple proprietary call? It's certainly not ANSI C or POSIX...
I've never had to tweak stream_d like this on anything that had a decent compiler. The code is so simple that it shouldn't be that hard to optimize. On x86, gcc 2.7.2.3, egcs/gcc 2.90.29, and pgcc 3.0.4 all give stream_d results within less than 1% of each other. On our Origin 2000, there's about a 10-15% penalty for using gcc 2.8.1 in place of the SGI C compiler 7.2.1. I've assembled a summary of stream_d results for various systems at http://www.osc.edu/~troy/stream_d.html (and yes, the Cray numbers there are real).
"My life's work has been to prompt others... and be forgotten." --Cyrano de Bergerac
a) Your Mac Technician needs to learn to configure the MacOS properly. We have no such speed problems.
b) Apple has adopted the open source theory, at least more than most. They started with MKLinux (Linux on the Mach microkernel), and went on to release Darwin (OSXs foundation, also Mach based) as open source.(yeah, I know it's Apple's open source license, but Rome wasn't built in a day, and they've already revised it in response to feedback) This is already starting to seed other projects (http://www.darwinlinux.com).
--always remember to pillage BEFORE you burn...
I do that all the time.
Quote: "If you didn't have it on the server where it could be BACKED UP, then you didn't really need it anyway--you just think you did..."
A fried OS isn't the only reason to format/replace a hard drive--backup important documents often.
--always remember to pillage BEFORE you burn...
You probably wouldn't need 20 monitors, no. But one can read this statement as "you can have an iMac running the same setup for use as the control console."
Or something like that. Sorry. Just spent half a day searching for an itty-bitty annoying bug. Gah.
--
The Future: Some assembly required; batteries not included.
I understand your point of view, but the macs at our school are secure as all heck. They have every single thing password protected and logged and monitored. The admin maintains them well, making sure nothing is wrong, and I can see that also. I have noticed this with every macintosh I come across, they don't perform to their maximum.
I didn't say linux would completly fix everything. :) What I did mean was that linux would make the macs run faster, provided that this new port and other linux mac ports are good, fast, and up to date. If they are, I will bet that it would run much faster than they currently do with MacOS. As stated above, they are very secure and the admins make sure no one does anything, and I can verify this. So this would be the case in most issues, but not here. G3s and iMacs run less than their full potential.
Yes, playing games on them might be faster, but not your every day applications. These macs are 350 Mhz at the very most, and feel like 300 or less. This is noted by several other students and faculty. Even the die hard mac fans at school have to disagree with the macs' performance and don't like it. But I'm sure games would run perfectly on it though, as it is loaded with good graphics cards and video applications.
We have around 300 G3s and 4 iMacs at our school(the government gave the school discounts). We've had macs since the opening of the school years ago. Anyway, the performance of G3s and iMacs is terrible. Now, I may not be a big mac fan to begin with, but the performance of those computers is lacking. I think linux would run well on them, but it's amazing how slow stuff will run, when they claim there's a 300+ Mhz processor in the boxes. It's good to see that different versions of linux are being ported for macs, maybe apple will open it's eyes and adopt the open source theory. Wait, no they wont. :)
droool...
-Isaac
I am not a lawyer, and this is not legal advice. For Entertainment Purposes Only.
Most Mac users I know know little about computing, and don't particularly care to know more. I dare say that most Mac users that most people know are this way. Quite a lot of people get Macs because they think that PC's are "too hard to use". They want the out of the box experience.
I believe that technically competent Mac people are more visible than technically competent Windows people just because Mac advocates tend to be loud. Very loud.
I know some solid coders who love Mac, but not many. The competent Mac people get really touchy about how non-technical the Mac user base is, but that doesn't change matters.
Apple tries very hard to look cute and sell to hipsters. Some proficient computer users use their products, but not all that many.
--Lenny
The iMac runs the G3, which is the decendent of the 603. If I remember correctly, the 603 chip was designed as a "consumer level" chip, and therefore isn't designed to do anything much beyond single-processor stuff.
:-)
I didn't bother reading the report (Postscript..no printer happy...too lazy to use a reader), but I would suspect that the 604 would yield much better results. The 604 was made to be a more versitile "industrial" strength processor and therefore includes many features that are absent on the 603. The G4, which is supposed to ship before too long, is a decendent of the 604, and likewise may yield better results than the G3.
Then again, I could be on crack and be completely wrong....since I didn't read the report. So if I am wrong, please correct me kindly
I totally respect what you just said cause I was actually wondering why you would want to do that. But as for that door stop I wouldn't want to put anything on it especially not windows : )
he's right. and mac linux is not as good as linux for an x86 or a computer with alpha archs. IMHO I don't think it is even worth making linux for a mac, (most) people who buy macs don't buy them because they want linux (or because the like the g3 better) but rather because they can't figure out how to use anything else (retards) or they need support for mac software, which under linux isn't supported (from what I understand I don't know if there are any projects like wine). He is a buisness man and he isn't looking to fuck around he is going to want to get down to business; like most everone else.
> > The Yellow Dog site also cites lower power consumption with 20 G3s than 20 Pentiums, due to the far more power-efficient PowerPC. How useful is this in reality? I don't know.
Not very. Performance matters, and that paper about clustering PPCs says it's not very high on PPC, unfortunately.
-- haaz.
An Australian research team clustered a bunch of iMacs, and the results were sad. Intel and Alpha boxes trounced the iMacs. The iMacs weren't designed for that sort of application, either, but it points out some major problems with using PPC (currently) for that sort of application -- at least on the iMac.
The article is at:
http://www.dhpc.adelaide.e du.au/reports/065/abs-065.html.
-- haaz.
Well, the carpal tunnel thing is really an individual thing, but in my case, the round mouse is the most comfortable mouse i've ever used.
Ever.
I love the lil' guy.
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
I hate the keyboard, but I love the mouse. I have big hands too (proving that the size of a man's hands do not determine the size of his mouse ;) but the round mouse fits very nicely when I make a sort of arch with my hand.
That is, the tips of my fingers are all on the mousepad, my thumb is on the mousepad, and the 'heel' of my hand is on the mousepad. I just slide the mouse on its edges to move it. Surprisingly comfortable. The old mice feel really big and awkward now.
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
Old, but interesting. Check it out.
> Ubiquity. Not as many macs in the world as PCs,
:-). Surveys showes the Mac below 1%, Linux at 4% in western-europa.
> but the lopsided numbers / market share I think
> are misleading, since it's hard to go ten
> minutes in any US city and avoid seeing either
> an ad or an actual iMac / G3, not to mention
> older and still humming Macs.
And thats the point: Outside the US Macs are completly unknown. Asking for a mac in munich is like asking for Prinz Andrew in a Bottle. And if you finally get one, it costs at least 30% more than in the US+import-toll. An imac for $2000?
Guess what...
thats quite sad because PCs are even cheaper than in the us (anyone needs a $500-PC?
And the further you went to the east (poland, ukrainia, russia) the more you see linux around. I was amazed to see a bunch of old 386/486-systems running at a remote friends home somewhere near St.Petersburg - all linux. In those regions you can find up to 25% of all systems running linux.
"Life is short and in most cases it ends with death." Sir Sinclair
I like the yellowdog people a lot, but yellowdog 1.0 was released so far before it was ready, and their support (on-line at least) is horrible. AFAICT, it's one brave guy (many, many kudos to you, Dan!) who has way too many hats to wear. Yellowdog 1.1 looks like it'll be a really good product, but if blacklab is anything like that, well... wait. Wait quite some time. I'm sure you'll see good product from them eventually.
~luge
IAAL,BIANLY
Besides, OSX * is not quite ready for prime time... More QA needs to be done...
yeah, but can you fix the source of those bugs in OSX server?
I mean, if you're not an Apple employee, that is...
(I particularly love Apple's workaround regarding the CGI problems with Apache: don't run CGIs. GREEEAAAAAT... Nobody uses _that_ old technology anyways...)
BTW: OSX Server is currently for sale for $499, and is _not_ a beta version..
(a) save time, (b) save money, and/or
(c) get a better product from an end-user standpoint.
One way IMHO is hardware maintainability. Power Macs (and most 68K Macs) are smart enough to select a bootable hard drive, boot directly from CD when requested, use default boot settings (just in case your newly-compiled Linux kernel isn't up to the task), etc. Compared to Intel machines, Macs are a breeze to maintain. So much so, in fact, that if it weren't for the lag in porting the latest versions of Linux S/W (apps as well as drivers, mind you), I'd say there's no reason to buy an Intel box.
Side note to haaz: Whither LinuxPPC 5.0?
I've doctored Intel machines running under WinXX, Win3.1, OS/2, WinNT, and dealing with the hardware was always a pain. Maybe that's changed somewhat, but the Mac was always easier to futz with.
-----
".sig,
Ok. So there's a Black Lab as the mascot.
SOOOOOO, isn't anyone besides be disturbed by the friendly words, "Enter the Lab" on their web site?
-- We live in a world where lemonade is artificial and soap has real lemon.
I totally agree. And the keyboard sucks like an industrial vacuum. If I want a keyboard that small I'd buy a notebook dammit.
You don't once mention MacOS X or NetBSD/macppc. MacOS X runs exceedingly well on G3 PowerMacs, from the original beige boxes forward to the rev D iMacs and G3 "pretty" towers. NetBSD is a proven operating system that has been ported to more archtectures than any other OS in existance and runs quite well, even on an iMac.
Linux, IMO, is not quite ready for prime time when a nasty TCP/IP stack bug is allowed to kill a running 2.2.x kernel remotely by anyone. Obviously more QA needs to be done *rolls eyes* Every OS has bugs, every OS has little conditions that cause it to burp or hiccup. They get fixed. It's no big deal.
I'll apologize out front, but I really take offense with some of your comments. To say that it is not worth making linux for a mac is entirely out of line. Your other comments displays a level of ignorance or bias that is absolutely pathetic. I'm almost speechless.
For one thing, there are some extremely talented ppl porting linux to the PPC. Consider this point. These ppl, who are a small minority of linux developers, have somehow managed to get linux working on the PPC architecture. Are their efforts are a waste of time? Why did they choose to develop for the PPC?
Perhaps you only want an Intel version of linux? Or maybe only an Intel, Sparc, or Alpha port of linux? The great thing about linux is that it is cross-platform! You are obviously too young to remember when Unix was a totally splintered OS. Linux represents a way to reunify Unix, which is a really important point. This requires cross-platform support otherwise you get HP-UX, Apollo-Unix, AIX, AUX, SCO, Ultrix, SunOS, ad nauseum.
As for a MacOS "emulator": Have you heard of SheepShaver or Mac-On-Linux? Not entirely there yet, but they are real close!
I have been a Mac user for over 10 yrs so I must be a retard. My first experience with Unix was with an IBM RT (try to figure out what was this POS). This at times was a tough machine to work with, but it did have a C compiler and introduced me to a better computing environment. I still like this computing environment and still use a Mac.
I have found that a bootable CD rom with a shrinkwrap image of a "fresh" machine is great for fixing a b0rkened mac. Or, even better, have them boot automaticly at 1:00am, and run Assimilator at 1:10am, and sched. a shutdown for 2:00am. All the machines will feel fresh, perky, and ready for a new day.
How can you say that a G3 with a Seagate Cheetah (ultra2 wide of course) is not fast enough for a disk system.
I didn't.
How can you say that a G3 with an 100Mbit card is any slower than what you can get with Linux for the x86?
I didn't.
What you forget is that we are not comparing the MacOS to windows here. We are comparing Linux on x86 to Linux on PPC. There is a big difference between these two comparisons.
Duh.
If you really say that bandwidth and harddrive speed are at the crux of the situation, then you are truly mistaken to claim that one should never use PPC hardware.
Never said that, don't believe that.
There simply is no difference!!! [between PPC Linux and 386 Linux]
Except for price, availability, diversity of vendors and configurations, and support. Those factors outweighed the superiority of the PPC architecture for me. I hope that won't always be the case.
-- Tom Geller
Tom Geller
What rason do Microway, DCG, VA, etc. have to move away from their i386 boxes? Would they sell more computers? Have a bigger profit margin? Could they make up the *huge* development costs that would be involved in gearing up a PPC production line?
Ultimately, they have to look at what people want: The market bats last. And I just don't see enough of a popular groundswell to justify such a switch. If somebody could come up with numbers that show otherwise, I'll happily work to bring the plan to fruition. (I did some OEM negotiations with UMAX back when they did PPC clones.)
-- Tom Geller
Tom Geller
"The platform has grown up, partly because Apple has close control over what goes on."
Oh, I agree completely -- it's a great architecture. But I'm a businessperson, not a research scientist, and Apple boxes don't give me enough real-world advantages to compensate for their disadvatages. I'm open to persuasion, but your arguments have to show me how I'll (a) save time, (b) save money, and/or (c) get a better product from an end-user standpoint.
--Tom
Tom Geller
I won't bore you with the details, 'cause I'm sure you know them. Price, component availability, a community of support, yadda yadda yadda. Although I really wanted to use a PPC-based machine, I had to ask myself: What advantages would I gain?
Speed? Processor speed is virtually irrelevant in Internet serving, as bandwidth and disk access are the gating factors. Striking a blow against an evil company? Apple's not so clean, and certainly can't claim better corporate morality than AMD or the screwdriver shop where I bought my Linux box. (Needless to say, there will be no Microsoft code on it. :) )
Having said that, I'm glad to see Yellow Dog continuing with its plans. Until now, there have been three PPC Linux vendors that I know of: TurboLinux, mkLinux, and LinuxPPC Inc. (not the same as LinuxPPC.org). Frankly, none of them have approached the market with the resources, experience or commitment needed to make an impact. mkLinux is the side project of a book publisher; TurboLinux does PPC support as an afterthought (and devotes $0 to PPC Linux promotion AFAIK); and LinuxPPC Inc. has problems best not discussed in public. Yellow Dog seems to be making the first real stab at the market: I hope they can eventually convince people like me that running Linux on PPC is the best deal.
-- Tom Geller
Tom Geller
Certain Macs, like my Performa 5200 and most NuBus-based boxes will probably never run Linux or anything other than the Mac OS. Now that MkLinux has officially been dropped by Apple, none of the other Linux distros have any real interest in developing for older machines, when there is plenty of demand to get these pretty new G3s going. If you really want to run *NIX on a cheap old Mac, buy an old 68k off eBay and squeeze NetBSD into it.
I prayed about it, and God said, "Don't do it!" But I thought, "I know better."
You say that you would love to run a PPC Linux distro on your powerbook, so why don't you? At this moment, I am writing this on a G3/266 Powerbook in LinuxPPC 4.1. The distibution is a bit weak with some stuff broken, but as a whole, it is great. You really come to love SRPMs after a while when doing this. I use my powerbook to write and run scientific simulation code and it fares quite well against a K6-2 300. I would seriously recomend that you try it. When release 5 of LinuxPPC comes out, it should be quite nice (looking at the pre5 stuff on line) I will leave speed judgements to a minimum because I'm biased (I work on a 1024 Processor Cray T3E)
Joshua Pearson
History has the relation to truth that theology has to religion-i.e. none to speak of. - Lazarus Long
Ah. "DO NOT TRUST THIS PERSON" in the subject of an Anonymous Poster. The everyday ironies.
LinuxPPC R5 is one of my main OSs (the other is MacOS X Server) on my G3. I use it every day and it schools my Intel box at work in terms of speed (PII, same clock speed).
LinuxPPC, Inc. are a bit shady of a company but I don't understand why the PPC is given such a hard time when it comes to Linux... No one says, Linux on Alpha? Stupid idea! - or - Linux on Sparc? Why waste our time!!
Is it because Apple is associated w/ the PowerPC that it is "uncool"?
RateVegas.com - Vegas Reviews
like I said, all it needs is some maintanance, clear the cache, defrag the HD, reinstall windows every 6mos. etc. The same with the macs at the orginal poster's school. get some maintanence, and it would run much better.
"A great deal of intelligence can be invested in ignorance when the need for illusion is deep." --Saul Belloe
The best way to keep a system running clean but allow the user full access to the system is to run a system like revdist or assimilator. They both have a HD image on a server that is restored to each workstation after a preset time period or number of restarts. Pretty cool. The HD restoration periods arent exactly lightning quick, but they still keep things running clean and fast when you are actually USING the system.
cheers,
The paper stresses over and over again that they think the iMacs could have done much better if the LinuxPPC software were a bit more mature. They used LinuxPPC v4.0; I'd be curious to see how they do using a v2.2 Linux kernel. Or, as they mention, OS X.
:-)
The graphs make it painfully clear that even 100Mbps Ethernet is too inefficient for serious parallel computation. A token-passing system like ATM is much better.
My third comment is a "me too": It would be interesting indeed to see the test repeated with 350MHz 604E processors, which should wipe the floor with those iMacs in FP - and maybe even the Pentiums! Somebody send me a crate full of PM 9600/350s, and I'll do the tests.
Why would anyone want to use Mac hardware for Linux?
1. Controlled configuration! Unlike the PC, there aren't that many oddball hardware configurations on the Mac. With my PC, I had to scrounge all over for Linux drivers for all the different things on it. With the Mac, my model either is supported or isn't.
2. Better CPU architecture. My 75MHz Mac is at least as fast as my P90.
3. Higher least common denominator. My Mac can do everything the PC can, and it has **ZERO** cards in it. Right out of the box, the Mac has SCSI, 16-bit sound, 24-bit video, 10baseT, high-speed (288-1000+ kbps) serial ports, USB-like hot-pluggable input bus (ADB)... and its PCI slots are still empty! All of these are (see point #1) standard. Support this one family of devices, and you've got a pretty deluxe Linux build that supports a broad cross section of Apple's product line.
When will it go into the main distribution anyway? I gather its gpl nowdays so it shouldnt be a license issue. After all, its a feature that no mainstream OS is providing currently. I belive QNX and hence AOS5 will though.
Is this discussion *really* about Linux on Macs? As per usual with a Mac-related story, there are several posts which seem to stray from the main topic.
...
Still looking for some kind of filter so I can read the interesting (well, at least relevant) posts rather than the 'Macs-suck' posts
YS
"Arrr! The laws of science be a harsh mistress." -- Bender
Back when it looked very bleak for Apple, the backup plan was to learn Linux. The feeling was, that it was better to go Linux than to surrender to Windoze. Many of the Mac users who are also Linux users are a resource, and a decided plus for the platform.
For myself, I will fight for Linux as hard as I fought for the Mac. Intel, AMD, or PPC, means nothing. It is Linux that matters. If I had to decide between Microsoft or nothing, I'd choose nothing.
photosMy Photostream
Can anybody clarify the licensing/price for Beowulf? Is it GPL? Can I legally copy somebody else's Beowulf CD?
I'm just a touch confused. Red Hat's site seems to imply it's all under GPL, but I've yet to see any Cheapbytes-esque $1.95 CD...
Cool, thanks for pointing this out for me. I'm volunteering at a local school and have been wondering what to do about this.
By the way, does anyone know of a web browser that would allow us to login or use a prefs file so anyone could use any computer and send mail as themselves via the browsers mail function? Right now we are using Eudora and storing the prefs on a file server. Thanks
"I have a cunning plan..."
Funny, it had always struck me as the obvious choice. A fairly high percentage of Mac users have chosen that platform because they believe it to be technically superior, as opposed to simply because it's what everyone else uses. Without even addressing the issue of whether the platform actually is superior, what's significant is the larger number of people willing to be nonconformist, and right, rather than compatible, and wrong.
Linux users seem to share this attribute, often having spent years fighting against Windows-compatibility issues, because they felt that having an internally superior system was worthwile.
While non-tech artists, or luddite grandmothers are one stereotype of the mac userbase, they aren't the whole thing. It's important to remember that a very high number of mac users are quite technically competent, and have chosen the platform because of this, not in spite of it.
I'd have to agree here, guys. So many GNU/Linux types seem to be of the perception that the desktop world goes little or no farther than x86. Now, it's not _that_ bad and, thanks to IBM's licensing of the technology, it's a commodity by now. But in some big ways, it's behind the times and it's going to stay that way until someone decides to break with compatibility - which, let's be honest, isn't going to happen.
I stuck with Amigas for years because I seriously disliked the Wintel platform from a technology POV. TBH, I still do and would move off it like a shot if I found another which had enough software to make life comfortable. I used Macs for years and loced them, in many ways. Sure, MacOS is behind the times and sure, they're only beginning to catch up on some architectural fronts, but this was in a school networking environment, with kids doing all sorts of silly things. Breaking them was near impossible, fixing them relatively simple. As I was leaving, WinNT PCs started appearing, and problems appeared - not just with the OS, either.
Fact is, x86 is only popular on the back of DOS, Windows and cloning. If another platform had had them for any length of time, I'd have to say that x86 simply wouldn't be here in any serious numbers. GNU/Linux always seems a trifle x86 centred to me - which makes sense, when you consider that it was written because Mr. Torvalds wanted an OS to fiddle with on the i386 he already had. Now, I know that GNU/Linux wouldn't have become as popular as it has without being x86 at the start, but it's worth remembering that there are often better platforms elsewhere. Most successful usually doesn't esual best.
Greg
Greg
(Inside a nuclear plant)
Aaaarrrggh! Run! The canary has mutated!
>I don't think that the same people who are interested in a beo. would really care how pretty the imac looks or how easy it is to use
Sure enough, but the man said the distribution _offers_ the clustering. I don't think it is the central feature of the distro.
The distro is released for PPC (G3 and iMac) - *that* is the central feature. The fact that it also offers beo clustering, which would obviously be relevant for G3, is a neat add-on. See the distinction?
Tom wrote:
(a) save time,
(b) save money,
(c) get a better product from an end-user standpoint.
I assume you mean saving time over a x86 version of linux...
A: Saving time...Essentially all mac hardware is supported afaik since it has to be all compatible just to run the MacOS
B: Saving money...If you do happen to prefer x86 for the many reasons you perhaps -SHOULD-, this at least gives you something to use your mac for. The ability to take an 'old' G3 and get a passable web server is a useful thing, regardless of its performance compared to another platform.
C: Better Product...I'm not sure i can answer this because i'm not sure what your product is -- i'll try. If it's hardware then in my experience Linux gives you better control which equals better testing if you're going for Mac compatibility. If you market software for linux then knowing how it will perform on various architectures is quite useful to a customer. If you make coffee holders, well i'm not sure a PPC linux will do you any good over another architecture's.
Apparently you've missed the relatively exciting things apple has done the the Mac architecture lately. The platform has grown up, partly because Apple has close control over what goes on.
Besides, what's the point of developing a unix for 286's etc. (minix)...for one because it can be done, but also because the more platforms an OS supports the more useful it can be -- even for that doorstop 8086 lying around (let's see you boot M$ Windows 98 on that.
I'll quickly admit,though, that i'm not a Mac advocate; i don't use one.
>I think that Linux and the Mac make a great combination
>I don't understand why Apple pulled the plug on clones -- how about because they were making Apple look slow by releasing faster, cheaper machines?
I think you answered your own ? - linuxppc + clonemakers == no revenues for apple!
-- your knees hurt, don't they?
yeah, but your 604e is going to have a serious motherboard, and much better components in general - SCSI, right? A graphics card you picked out yourself? I suspect that in a component free environment, you'd find that the iMac was faster (ie, you took the processor out, and hooked it up to a big box o' magic, then did the same with the 604e). The iMac is using laptop components. When have you ever seen a laptop outrun a desktop? Although I agree with you on the G4. Those things sound like they'll be seriously slick....
itachi
For an academic lab environment, look into the combination of SDI engine (to make RevRdist run at shutdown rather than startup) and RevRdist, a prog. which compares everything on the HD vs. an image on a server - anything that has changed since bootup gets replaced. The only thing left then is locking down the startup and shutdown item folders. Even if revRdist gets disabled, all you need to do to rebuild the computer and give it a whole spanking clean OS and set of apps is boot from a floppy, throw out everything, and manually run revRdist. Very pleasing and easy from a help desk point of view. Worth looking into if you have to manage a herd of networked macs....
itachi
My point is more that the iMac is going to be slower at anything than a well equiped 604e chipped machine. The 604e machines (like the 9500mp, 9600, etc) can be seriously built up - a gig and a half of ram in a desktop machine that is three years old? The iMac can't even approach that sort of hardware, and in fact, has lower end components new than most of the high end 604e machines - which makes it slower at everything.
Hi guys,
Maybe someone can explain this for me. I'm not sure if it is because of the differences between RISC vs. CISC processors, or if the PowerPC is better at floating point operations, or just what.
I'm running the SETI@home screensaver on two machines. The first is a Macintosh PowerBook (several years old) 3400c, using the PowerPC 603e at 180MHz and running Mac OS 8.6. The second is a new desktop AMD K6-2 350MHz machine running Win98.
After completing a few data units, I noticed that the PowerBook is completing data units about TWICE as fast as the AMD. I can't figure out why this is!
--globalnap.net, product of pure caffeine--
(Background: I've been through a number of Macintoshes and I'm on my fourth PC right now)
... the fact that they use not just a diff. manu but a different architecture is good for everyone. Here's a whopper of an analogy: what if paper was somehow constructed so it could only be written on with one sort of pen? That would seem silly, since there are lots of other choices. But software tend to be written to OSes themselves entirely dependent on their host hardware. Linux helps buck this trend (not as much as the BSDs, maybe, but still) by providing an OS which runs on multiple platforms.
...
Like the other respondents to this point of view, I don't have an irate reply, but would agree with those other respondents as well that the total universe of Mac users is pretty broad.
Why would anyone want to run Linux / other Free OS on a Mac? That's not exactly the question here, but it seems to be lurking beneath the surface, and that same question was asked in a thread one level up from here.
I can't answer this for everyone, but here are the reasons I think that Linux and the Mac make a great combination, practically and normatively.
- Macs tend to have nice human engineering. The gulf is not as wide as it was 10 years or 5 years or maybe 2 years ago compared to the PC world, but well-labled parts, legible icons, attempts at friendlization still IMHO work better on Macs, but this comparison of course ignores that PC vendors vary tremendously in this respect.
- Macs use non-Intel chips
- They look cool. That factor sells a lot of PCs, however unsatisfying that fact may be.
- Ubiquity. Not as many macs in the world as PCs, but the lopsided numbers / market share I think are misleading, since it's hard to go ten minutes in any US city and avoid seeing either an ad or an actual iMac / G3, not to mention older and still humming Macs.
- The Mac OS begs for a replacement, or at least whines a little. I use one at work (an iMac) and am actually fairly happy with it (Most of my complaints I list on my web page and will skip here) but it crashes all the time! I would love to be running an underlying *nix, whether it still looked like the basically-well-conceived Mac OS or like my home linux machine.
I don't understand why Apple pulled the plug on clones -- how about because they were making Apple look slow by releasing faster, cheaper machines? -- but I wish they hadn't. Then we could perhaps be running on a G3 PowerComputing box with SCSI, firewire and USB by now
anyhow. I don't have a home mac, but if I find a cheap one I'd like to run some free OS on it.
timothy
jrnl: http://tinyurl.com/c2l8yr / foes: http://tinyurl.com/ckjno5
will this work with the old powerpc 601's that i have ?? they're not G3's or imacs but the old PowerPC with the 12 inch apple pc compatible cards...pentium 100 + powerpc processor i think.
Well, I use Yellow Dog (kind of, still have a lot to learn) and I think that the combonation of *nix and the mac is a potentially powerfull concept. Indeed Mac OS X tries to pull this very trick. You can't tell me for a second that the vast majority of Linux users wouldn't slobber over an OS with the underpinnings of *nix and the ease of use of the Mac OS. In the meantime, while we're waiting for this messiah of operating systems, we have to choose between ease of use (mac os) or power (linux). Windows would fit somewhere in the middle, not as easy to use as the mac os, but argueably more powerfull (NT anyway) and linux is more powerfull but tougher to use. As a person who believes in the best tool for the job, I find that the mac os best meets my needs when trying to record my band (thanks Deck II) and I use linux for most of my network activity. It's not about uptime, it's about productivity. I feel like I have the best of both worlds. And let's not forget that, for what it is, the G3 kicks serious ass. I can't wait to see what G4 Alti-vec copper chips w/ SOI manufactured on a .18 micron process can do. Anyone know if there will be Alti-vec support in any of the PPC Linuxen?
--- Don't ever trust a woman until she's dead- B.B. King
I would love to run the PPC linux distributions on my PowerBook G3. As for the incredibly intellectual assertions that G3s are slow and "suck" well then I offer this:
My PowerBook G3/266 eats through SETI@Home work units at an average of 12.8 hrs each. Now I know that isn't exactly a fair benchmark (everyone seems to cry foul when Apple comes ahead) but it goes to show how good crunching is when an app is written almost correctly for the system. LinuxPPC (if there was a SETI client) would completely blow the doors off in speed.
Those who laugh at you for you having a Mac.. are the people who constantly call you to fix their PC.
I'm a Mac user, and I have a B&W G3 at home. I use it for font design, layout, prepress, and music. Okay-- why would I want to run Linux?
A little background. For a long time, I was a DOS-head. Macs were beige toasters--good concept, bad price. DOS 3.3 was a decently stable OS for the day. And it had a command line! Anything that wouldn't let me grab the OS by the balls and force it to do what I wanted was infuriating.
Then Windows came along. I resisted as long as I could, not the least because it was so *cheesy*. It didn't help that I took a detour into the Wild Land of Unix for a couple of years. Unix was bizarre--it had a command line, but it made no pretense of making concessions to the human operating it. It said, "I'm a computer. I'm a box of silicon. Don't pretend I'm your friend. Realize I'm an appliance." I saw the light.
However, apps were hard to come by. DOS faded, Windows emerged as the unfortunate platform of choice. I eventually made my piece with Win 3.11. It was usable, and didn't make grandiose promises about its usability.
I drifted into graphic design, and had a chance to get a Power PC when they first came out. Suddenly, the Mac was less of a toy, more of a powerhouse. Plus, the lack of command line wasn't a problem any more--the OS had been massaged so that I could get along without the infuriating sense of "something bad going on without my knowledge." Yes, some tweaking would have been nice, but there were OS extensions for many things.
Windows 95 came along. I was repulsed by the obvious crib from the Mac, and the new attitude of Microsoft. Win95 was *the* answer to all your problems! I tok a test drive and said, "*This* is the OS for Luddite grandmothers."
About this time, Apple started to lose big-time. I wondered if I was stuck on a dying platform. I started looking around for options.
NT came along. Could this be a quality MS product? I thought maybe, and with $$$$ in my eyes, took a couple of MCSE courses. Hah! What a crock! Three classes in, I quit with disgust. I would have to be happy with my niche-market machine. As a graphic designer, I *was* a niche market.
So, I was happy with MacOS up all the way through 8.1. It wasn't perfect, but it wasn't annoying. Yes, it did crash, but I usually knew *why*, since I was doing something really stupid at the time. Windows become more and more cloying and gooey. Everything I thought about Macs in 1987 was now true of Wintel boxes--toys for cretins.
Then Microsoft bailed out Apple. The new G3's (a bleeding-edge commercially-available desktop box if I've ever seen one) came with MacOS 8.5. And the horror! The aliases had little Windows arrows! There was native Wintel TrueType support! FILE EXTENSIONS WERE STARTING TO BECOME NECESSARY!
In vain I tried to go back to 8.1. It didn't have the architecture support, USB support, FireWire support, or DVD support. I was screwed! Then, some of my most cherished design tools started acting up, for no apparent reason! Suddenly, I WANTED A COMMAND LINE.
Enter Linux. It's stable and free. It doesn't lard the system with crap. It says, "Treat me as an appliance, not as a friend. If you want a friend, talk to my friend X, or KDE, or GNOME." The users of the system like to share ideas and workarounds. I could get back to hacking a box, if I felt the desire.
The only problem I have with Linux right now is the dearth of applications. To truly migrate from Microtosh OS 8.5, I need a layout program with CMYK prepress capabilities, and PostScript font controls. These may already exist--I haven't yet looked because I'm not running Linux yet.
Yellow Dog Linux has my wholehearted support. When more Mac-heads come into the fold, the more chance there will be a port of PageMaker or Quark or Adobe Type Manager or Freehand or Illustrator--or even a GPL version of these fine tools.
Wholeheartedly, WHOPPINGLY ironic that I get moderated for flamebait for a posting a comment that generated 10 sincere, intelligent replies to my query.
/. reader, I couldn't pass up a chance to soapbox about my Mac when x86 gets all the press around here. :)
I find this rather amusing myself, although the original comment didn't strike me as obvious flamebait. Regardless, as a regular
Actually, Clustering has been around for quite some time. The largest 'supercomputers' (Blue Mountain and Blue Pacific, specifically) are built on massive clusters of various nodes. Blue Pacific (an IBM RS/6000 SP/2) is built upon 1500 nodes (at a sum cost of ~$93 of taxpayer dollars *grin*) using a combination of PPC 604e and Power3 processors. Blue Mountain is a comparable SGI Origin system using MIPS processors. For more information on large systems, check out http://www.top500.org/ .
BTW... RS/6000 is a product line, not a CPU. The RS/6000 line uses the PowerPC series (601,603,603e,604,604e) for interger math and Power, Power2, Power2sc, and Power3 processors for floating point math.
Indeedy, you are correct. Either a PPC or a Power series chip. And Blue Pacific uses 4 way 604e silvers. I thought I'd read that they moved to 2 way power3's, but that was probably another of the larger SP/2s. In the site you mentioned, I find it odd that they only display 176 nodes, as opposed to all 1464, though. Do you know if they partitioned their SP?
if you are unhappy with the current state of usb support, plug an old mac keyboard and mouse into the ADB port; you should be able to use them fine w/linux.
> Linux is a very un-Green operating system.
NOT.
Someone here took temperature measurements on a dual boot Linux/Window95 PII. Windows 95 was found to run the CPU 18F to 20F hotter than linux.
Standard Windows95 does not seem to HALT the CPU during idle time.
--hopscotch
US energy has a relatively low cost of about $1/watt-year. Non-US energy costs are generally higher. For many energy efficiency is not a significant individual cost. Yet, consider the following...
CASE 1. Embedded High Performance Computing.
Sustainable PERFORMANCE/WATT can be a strong processor selection criteria for *embedded* processor selection including embedded high performance computing. Hence, vendors in the niche embedded high performance market tend to use PowerPC and DSP chips, not Alpha, Pentium or SPARC for dense compute solutions.
Vendor examples: CSPI, Mercury, Sky
Did folks notice that Black Lab Linux (see optional software) is working with MPI Software Technologies? Look close, MPI Software Technologies is actively supporting *embedded* MPI & MPI-RT.
CASE 2. Not Too Large Clusters (50 or so processors)
Also, notice the HPC Wire news article posted on the Top 500 site where...
"Several problems were caused by the power consumption and the heat in that small laboratory. The Paderborn people needed the fire brigade to pump cold air into the room. The power consumption was about 10 - 12 KWatt. Switching on only the power supplies of the nodes, the electric fuses switched off."
CASE 3. Blue Mountain...
6,144 processors -- 10,000 KW always online; 2,600 KW average usage.
SIXTEEN A/C Units plus FOUR 750-ton chillers plus TWO 10MW power stations (major UPS feature)
CASE 4. Aggregate World Energy Consumption (Green perspective)
Now consider 100,000,000 processors on desktops (far less than one per world capita)
100,000,000 * 30 watts-year * US$1/watt-year = US$3 Billion each year (without consideration for cooling costs, higher average world energy prices, CPU fan MTBF costs & such)
Hey, what's US$30 / year per CPU for a typical US home wallet??? Well maybe not much to many reading this... however, the energy costs can add up. Embedded system designers, large scale system installations, and environmentally sensitive people know what I'm talking about.
-- Think Global, Act Local --
--beachcomber
You can count me among those folks. Given that my current four-box basement *nix network only musters about 150 bogomips between them, adding my (most powerful) Mac to the mix would only help!
Carefree highway, let me slip away on you.
Wholeheartedly, WHOPPINGLY ironic that I get moderated for flamebait for a posting a comment that generated 10 sincere, intelligent replies to my query.
-
I just got done reading that paper. The 233 mhz Imacs did really bad in those tests. Not being able to compile half the benchmarks because of limitations of glibc-1.99 probably didn't help either.
I'm very interested to see the results from a 450 mhz blue & white G3 with glibc-2.1. (at least with glibc-2.1 one should be able to compile everything that builds on a Red Hat 6.0 system)
I have a 400 Mhz B&W G3 tower, it sure in hell boots without a monitor attached :)
I'm sure you do. You can't pay 1599$ for a decent 350 B&W G3 system? 4 times as much maybe on the third ring of Uranus, where do you get these numbers. On the Alpha, 1500 for the processor and power chord maybe. You say you work on them all day, you "can probably" know the price and not assume :) I vote PowerPC
I can almost guarantee you the new 450 PPC 750 (G3) tower will give that 533 Alpha a run for its money. I agree with you on the cluster issue though, as for Mr price compare, those prices are so damn close you would have to be full of heroin not to choose the PowerMac. 99$, is nothing.
Developement for MkLinux is has seen a dramatic increase in activity recently. Check out their Web site at http://www.mklinux.org.
Hi, payasos.
You know it's becoming more and more apparent that the folks who are writing in with their gripes about Macs, PC's and whatever else are generally full of it. You've got the same guys writing in every damned time there's a platform related topic (especially when it's a Macintosh topic and never when it's a Linux topic). And the line is always the same.
Example: Mr. Joe says the Cray T90 is good.
Response: You know, I went out and got 2 of those Cray T90's and put it up against my PentiumIII/K-6 and blah blah blah it's soooo slow blah blah Cray sucks.
Well good for you. You certainly convinced me. I will probably throw out all of my existing equipment and buy your exact rack, how's that? Ever heard of slowing the progress of computing? Well guess what, you're engaging in it daily and at an astounding rate. Hell, you've even got me doing it too! So I'll end this and beg. Please shut up. Please don't bitch about these things. Don't like it? Don't use it. Broken? Fine, you fix it, smart ass. Damn.
-Pharaoh
In what way do those components speed up FP performance? Even the main memory subsystem wouldn't be THAT important, and the disk subsystem doesn't tend to influence FFT's or the like too much :)
The original post is right. The G3 is built around the 603e model, fast integer, cheap, and low power. The 604e and G4 are aimed at different markets, those with serious FP needs.