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SGI Introduces New 1400L Linux Server
Durinia writes "Here is the official press release from SGI about their new Linux server. It also looks like they've struck a deal with Red Hat.
" SGI continues its support (and perhaps its last hope) with Linux-do you folks think this will be enough to restore them?
I work with SGIs too at my visual effects company, we have 10 SGIs and two Linux boxes, an Intel and an Alpha.
SGIs have been the best machines to get the job done for at least the last 12 years, they were fast, easy to program, reasonably well engineered boxes that came from a company committed to graphics.
Still, I expect to be running on Linux very soon on all of our machines. I'm sure that the previous author will acknowledge that machines don't live very long in the FX business, any more than they do anywhere else. The particular boxes that I have will become uncompetitive in a year or so, and we'll need to buy something else.
Those will certainly be Linux boxes. If they could be SGI Linux boxes, that'd be great. But to assume that you will be running IRIX in the future is optimistic, if not foolhardy. Diversifying into another (somewhat more common) operating system is prudent.
The biggest reason that people aren't going to want to move away from IRIX is, of course, the proprietary animation software that they have for those old boxes. One would hope that these tools will be ported to Linux in the not-to-distant future; I'm sure that we'll hear more about that at Siggraph next week. All of the big software companies that I've talked to at least claim to be porting.
I've found that porting an SGI OpenGL application to Linux to be almost trivial. Sadly, I've written a bunch of IRIS GL programs, too, and they are much more of a challenge. But, I should be done soon, and we'll be ready for whatever happens.
[I'm giving away Linux version of some of our most popular programs, at least for the next year. Check them out at http://www.hammerhead.com/linux/linux.html ]
I love Mondays. On a Monday, anything is possible.
SGI Continues Aggressive Nose-Dive Despite Linux Market
/PRNewswire/ -- In a desperate attemp to stop its aggressive drive into bankruptcy, SGI (NYSE: SGI) leapt upon the Linux bandwagon today with both feet. SGI announced the immediate availability of its new Intel® processor-based SGI 1400L server. The server is a standard SMP Intel box preloaded with the Red Hat® Linux® 6.0. SGI holds to the somewhat irrational hope that customers will see this as being somehow different from a Compaq Proliant, IBM NetFinity, HP NetServer or Dell PowerEdge server running Red Hat Linux.
MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif., Aug. 2
"The SGI 1400L server running SGI Linux Environment allows us to use the words 'paradigm', 'synergy', 'open source', 'high availability', 'data warehousing', 'win-win', 'proactive', 'scalable', 'total cost of ownership' and 'reliability' in the same sales brochure," said Jan Silverman, vice president of marketing, Computer Systems Business Unit, SGI. "Our marketing division is very happy about this and they hope to add the phrases 'price performance' and 'enterprise computing' before they're finished."
Like almost every other Intel based server in existence, the SGI 1400L ships with one to four 500 MHz Pentium® III Xeon(TM) processors with a selection of 512KB, 1MB or 2MB of secondary cache, up to 4GB of memory, seven PCI slots, six Ultra2 SCSI hot swap drive bays and redundant power supplies. The SGI 1400L is available in rack-mount or even a desktop configuration for those customers with specially reinforced desks.
"e-commerce, internet, web-centric, intranet!" blurted an SGI marketer unable to contain herself, "collaboration, messaging, network video streaming, proxy serving, security serving, scientific analysis, customization, reliability and did I mention e-commerce?"
"With the introduction of this Linux OS -- based server, SGI is also able to address more customer needs such as those of us who are too damn poor to afford proprietary Unixes and non-Intel chips," noted Shoeboy, a researcher investigating the impact of cannabis consumption on his code quality, "got any Fritos?"
SGI is committed to not going bankrupt and collapsing like a house of cards, and industry analysts have noted that this line of Linux servers appears to be their last hope.
NOTE: This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to companies living or in the case of SGI, nearly dead is purely coincidental.
--Shoeboy
I only took a peek, there may have been more, but I found two jobs at SGI with the following description:
Linux Kernel Dev Engineer
Sorry to repeat, forgot the description.
Anyone know any kernel hackers who need a job?
No, it's CMIX. Most of you probably haven't heard of CMIX. It's a simple language for the processing and production of sound. It was written by a guy named Paul Lansky way back in the day, and the place where CMIX got its first real break was under the NeXTSTEP OS.
And we all know what happened to NeXTSTEP. It died. It died hard, to the point that just about the only people still using NeXTs were CMIX hackers.
So what happened then? A guy named Brad Garton (a former student of Paul Lansky; now currently a professor at the Columbia Computer Music Center) decided to port the entire CMIX source to another technically promising fledgling OS called IRIX.
And we all know what's happening to IRIX. It's on the way out. No one can use it for anything (partially because IRIX and network security are mutually exclusive terms).
And what have the CMIX people done now? They've ported CMIX to Linux, and several other promising operating systems! Run! Hide your favorite OS!
For those of you who couldn't tell, this is a joke.
-k
This means SGI, et al, will put in hours to work on Linux' multi-processor capability. It needs to be much more scalable than it is, for the OS to get the most out of the SGI hardware. Doubly so, when SGI produces the 8 processor version.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
While I'm encouraged by the adoption of Linux, I'm a bit doubtful that this is a good business decision for SGI. Where is their added value? Anyone can do a Linux system on an Intel platform, so what are they bringing to the mix that will set them apart from the rest? I just don't see it.- ----------
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If you need to point-and-click to administer a machine,
Step 1. Full Linux Support.
Step 2. Bring the "Cube" Logo back! (Please, pleeeaaase, pretty please).
...and the time will have come. And the name shall be known... The Kylrathi Viper Clan.
To answer "how can this truly help SGI?"...
Linux is branching out to serious SMP boxes. SGI makes serious SMP boxes. If on top of that, SGI is actually contributing code to make Linux run better on SMP boxes, and use xfs filesystems (journaling filesystems are absolutely essential in a big data center setting), then SGI is going to have a very impressive calling card when it comes time to architect, build and document large Linux boxes. PHB: "do you guys know much about this stuff on multiprocessor servers?" SGI: "our engineers wrote a lot of the code for that, actually." PHB: "whoa. Can you guys start here tomorrow?"
From the SGI/RH article. Saying that Linux is inherantly stable and secure is as falacious as the utterance of a former colleague of mine who declared that Windows is inherantly easier to use than everything else. These aren't inherant, they are things that have to be worked for continuously. Every time a kernel patch introduces a bug, someone has to find it and kill it. Every security hole needs to be patched. This takes work, and is not 'inherant'.
Consider what the default no-brainer installs of Debian and Red Hat do, and security is clearly not inherant.
The enemies of Democracy are
For crap's sake, can you people do anything other than complain? You bitch because you want more companies to support Linux, and then when one does, you bitch at them. It doesn't make sense to me. They strongly support Linux and then get reamed out by Linux users.
IMHO, SGI deserves to be roundly applauded for this move, which is a win-win for them and for Linux in general. They also deserve some respect from us for contributing back some of their higher-end Irix technologies.
They are going to sell boatloads of Linux servers, technical and 3D/video workstations, and those dope flat monitors. Great for SGI.
As a means toward that end, they are going to be putting a lot of work into improving Linux, including lots of fs/networking/smp kernel enhancements, better OpenGL support, and I am willing to bet some UI improvements also. Great for us.
They are a strong company with very strong technology, and a lot of very pro-Linux people working there. Let's encourage them instead of discouraging them.
After I made a nice comment about how SGI does a good job supporting linux the other day on some random /. posting of whose subject I can no longer recall, this pops up.
I find myself wondering if I spoke too soon.
Has anyone seen anything on the Kernel development lists about these NFS patches or the new TCP/IP stack? Or are they keeping them closed-source?
God knows a TCP/IP stack that doesn't get bogged down on multiproc servers would be nice.
Anyone got any details?
Yes, Linux is a registered trademark.
Back in 1996, there was this big Linux trademark dispute, apparently someone who had nothing to do with Linux registered Linux as a trademark, and threatened to start charging people for using it.
The Linux community got together and were able to prove first use, and I think the trademark now belongs to Linus.
Of all the comments I've ever posted, this is definately one of them
The version of RH6.0 they are shipping includes their own updated version of the TCP/IP stack. Which I am sure will be incorporated into the next version.
I think you are falling victim to a common bug in the English Language 1.0: There are no clear definite associative operators other than long pauses in time. You can't use parentheses because they already are used in English 1.0 as comment delimiters (like this). I think the trademark is supposed to be this: (Redhat Linux) is a trademark, not Redhat (Linux) is a trademark.
Don't label something "offtopic" unless you know the topic well enough to tell what's on topic.