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Will PPC Become the Preferred Linux Platform?
grunkhead writes "Stephan Somogyi, aka the Darwinist, at MacWeek has an interesting take on Linux on the PowerPC in the wake of IBM's release of a free motherboard design for the G3/750, suggesting the PPC could be the preferred Linux platform of the future. "
The PPC may become more of a factor in the desktop Linux market, but Alpha and sun4u aren't going to disappear. No, not by a longshot. Compaq has ported it's Fortran90/95, C, C++ compilers and debugging environment to Linux. MetroLink and XiG have ported hardware-accelerated OpenGL servers to AlphaLinux. iD has hinted that AlphaLinux will be a supported platform for its 3D shooter games. Add to that the fact that the most powerful Beowulf clusters (c.f. the Top500 supercomputer list) are built on the Alpha platform, and you can see the Alpha is not going away any time soon. Rumor has it that Alpha Processor Inc. will be introducing a complete 533-600Mhz Alpha system for the sub-$1000 market. SUB-$1000. If you want to talk about affordable powerful Beowulf clusters, don't think PPC. Just think Alpha. See http://www.alphalinux.org/ for more information.
No x86 is RISC. It may have a RISC core, but that's irrelevant. You program for the x86 instruction set, not the processor's core. The x86 instruction set is decidedly CISC.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
You say you compile them "straight off of ftp.kernel.org," but then you say that you have to edit one of the source files. Which is it?
A program that won't compile without the end-user manually editing its source-code is a broken program.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
If we gain the victory I'm anticipating, competition is going to be fiercer among chip makers than ever before. I'm currently running Linux on x86 hardware, but that's solely because it currently gives me the best bangs per buck for what I'm doing and what I want to spend. If that changes, I'm entirely happy to shift with it. All my data, and all my skills will come with me. All my network protocols will stay the same, so I can still interoperate with everyone else. In the end, the instruction set of your processor may come to matter little more than your brand of hard drive.
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This begs the question: How much do you care what kind of processor you are running? The answer has to do with whether Linux does an adequate job of hiding platform differences so that porting a piece of software to a different machine is just a matter of a recompile. If it is easy to build an application on any machine, and most applications are distributed in source form, most people will probably not care what kind of machine they run on and PPC machines will be much more popular. On the other hand, if most applications are only available as binaries, and it takes a great deal of effort to port the code and QA it, then alterantive machines don't have much of a chance.
The difference between Canada and the USA is that in Canada healthcare is a right and gun ownership is a privilege.
Then, maybe AMD would really blow the doors off of Intel ;-) And for a cost much less than $200 million.
Intel's own compiler for the Pentiums is very good, but GCC is also great for x86, so it's popular. The commercial DEC (rr... Compaq) compiler really rocks on Alphas, but gcc isn't nearly as good for Alphas as the commercial compilers. So, Linux/Alpha isn't nearly as popular as you would expect it to be (give shear preformance factors of the CPU are masked by the results of the compilers).
I have no doubt in my mind Linux will run on almost any platform, the Linux community is very very active in getting the OS ported to new hardware.
I have doubts that PPC will become popular. If Motorola or IBM puts some money, work, and support into GCC, then the G3's will really rock in Linux. If they don't, it'll just be "another" platform that Linux runs on, but nobody really uses (much like Alpha is now). Before you consider this a flame, check benchmarks of Comercial C and Fortran compilers for Alphas and benchmarks for gcc on Alpha. And, then notice that there are a lot of people who would consider Linux, but end up buying a commercial OS and compiler for thier Alpha insted.
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A customer buys 100 PPC boxes to run 100 web servers. Now he needs a client desktop. He'll consider a Mac more than before because it's also PPC - "Just in case those Macs don't work out so well, I can turn them in Linux boxes like the ones I already have."
Timur Tabi
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Frankly I don't see why a cheap PPC motherboard is going to make a huge diffrence. PC motherboards are quite cheep, under $100 for a Super7 motherboard. So if the PPC is going to compete in price it has a long road to hoe. A free design doesn't mean free motherboards, in fact the free design might not be as cheep to make as some of the more mature PC motherboards!
The fact that Linux is more or less processer agnostic just makes it worse, after all why go for a PPC rather then an alpha just because there are vague roumors that the Alpha will gasp it's last any year now? I mean if switching to a new CPU is so easy, why not use the Alpha until it actually gasps it's last? (assuming of corse that the Alpha is faster -- with the SPECmarks seem to say, and cheap enough)
The only real argument I could see for using the PPC is if it (the PPC) actually made it into nice cheep machines, like maybe the portables (they seem relitavly inexpensave for what you get -- but I havn't looked at PC portable prices, so i may be in for a shock). Actually that isn't the only argument. It would be intresting to see Linux on one of the big PowerAS machines...nicer still to see it hosted under VM on a 390 (but that's not a PowerPC).
i dont see why macworld would want to talk about it.
ibm's move isnt going to help APPLE any is it?
i mean, seriously, aesthetic considerations aside, people tend to like apple hardware but hate the (technically speaking, now...) OS. if this does spawn a clone war apple could be skrewed.
what if individual companies try to sell g3 boxes with more features and better price points than apple? apple cant very well revoke licensing or buy out competition THIS time...
who here would buy a g3, considering the architecture and processor power, if you didnt have to subsidize apple's os which youre not going to use anyway?
i know i would.
unc_
Yes, the PowerPC 750 (which Apple calls the G3 since it 'sounds cool'), is designed to be the successor of the 603ev -- not really fast, but good enought for a desktop system. That's why most of IBM's lowend RS/6000 systems still use the 604e, it beats the hell out of the G3 at the same clock speeds, especially at FP.
Apple dumped the 604e from there line, because Apple wanted to make the PowerMacintosh line, cheap, simple and easy. So they all use the same processor (a consumer on), logic boards that are very much similar, and cheap PC RAM, that standard on all current machines they sell.
Apple won't go G4 (likely) untill they discontinue making all of there G3 systems -- and that may be a while.
This helped then reduce inventory, and become lean and mean -- no extra baggage.
Of course this pissed off high-end PowerMac customers -- they are either too slow or lack to many PCI slots to be usefully. But it made iMac possible, and cheap for Apple -- but it came at a cost.
PowerPC would be useful in the portible market -- except for one big problem -- there is no CHRP portables ever made -- they are all big desktop machines, and no portibles. Maybe somebody can design a portible machine....
Just a note for LinuxPPC users: the G3 Mac doesn't load properly unless you remove USB support from the machine before install. This caused us some problems before one of our managers figured this out :)
This having been said, my only problem with the PPC architechture is that so many darn PPC machines still use one-button mouses...
Finding God in a Dog
Well, it might mean that gcc has better optimization on x86/Merced than it does on PPC.
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Business. Numbers. Money. People. Computer World.
Well someone mentioned above that Apple has been folding PPC changes into gcc.
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Business. Numbers. Money. People. Computer World.
I just "aquired" a new Apple 333Mhz G3 512K l2 cache, with a 14" active matrix screen, 64MB RAM, and 4G HD. It comes with an IrDA port, 10/100 ethernet BUILT IN (not via a fragile card clip-thing or cable), 2 usb ports, a built in modem (which I believe is a REAL v.90 modem, and not a software modem, but I might be wrong.) a CDROM drive that can be replaced with a DVD drive without any other special upgrades, and ATI video chip with 8MB SDRAM, VGA-out, S-video output, sound in/out jacks, builtin mic and speakers,a cardbus slot, and a SCSI connector.
This cost 2300$ retail and for the hardware it appears to be an absolutely great deal. I have a few other new PC laptops here from compaq and toshiba. In the same price range they don't have built-in ethernet, they don't have SCSI, and they don't have as much video RAM. They are also Celeron or AMD K6-x chips, not P2-3's. In my subjective opinion the G3 laptop is cooler looking as well.
So.. before you go and bash apple powerbooks, check out the specs, pricing, and use one for a week. All my other computers here are PCs but you have to give credit where credit is due. Apple's G3 powerbooks are real contenders, even leaving out the OS.
PS: Compaq prices their consumer laptops very low, but who would want a "retail" button with a shopping cart icon right next to the trackpad, even if the rest of the specs rock? GRRR.
Outland Traveller - new and laptop enabled!
All the processor dependencies that have crept into Windows and its software architecture (ActiveX, drivers, etc.) are one of the biggest problems Windows is facing, and it is good if Linux can avoid falling into the same trap.
But Intel understands one thing that DEC doesn't seem to: providing a free, open source C/C++ compiler is essential for success with free software. In effect, that approach recoups the cost of compiler backend development from the people who buy the chip; charging for the compiler puts the burden on the software developers. But since developers of free software already donate their time, charging them for the compiler doesn't make a lot of sense.
In different words, at least in the open source world, the GNU C/C++ compiler is essentially part of the processor itself, and if GNU C/C++ doesn't perform well, then it doesn't matter much how fast the processor is with some proprietary compiler.
Unless DEC sponsors work for improving the gcc backend for Alpha to be competitive with their own proprietary compiler, my guess is that the 64-bit Intel chips are going to win.
And is Intel going to attach a string to this money, saying that Red Hat must withhold source code? Are they going to encourage people to code in assembly language? Not likely. All those Intel dollars being spent on Open Source will be very useful to the PPC users who don't mind typing "make".
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
"It looks like PowerPC could well become the preferred RISC architecture for Linux."
x86 is not RISC. The point that i get from this is not that PowerPC linux boxen will overtake x86, just that the Merced will be all too expensive. Opening the door for a more afordable alternative, which alpha has proven not to be. The point is that PowerPC with the help of IBM's proposal will make powerful RISC systems that run linux which are more affordable than the Merced alternative. If the archetecure bound to it is proven to be superior, its all up to the programmers after that.
Long Live PowerPC.
Lycestra
Not with Intel investing over $200 million in Red Hat. /grin/
See the Red Hat Wealth Monitor
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2B1ASK1
First of all, the Processors available today are not even getting any use. Build a better BUS, find an alternative to IRQ's thats modern. Give me a backplane system that handles gigabits of data so my processor actually has something to do. Give me a drive system that pumps our in gigs a second rather then 10-15 megs at a time. Give me something i can run visual interpretations on, exploration systems.
Well, the correct answer is the usual one: it depends. The location of the bottleneck is highly dependent of what exactly you are running. Some of the processes I run are I/O-limited and having faster hard drives would speed them up. Others are bandwidth-limited (yes, on a LAN) and a gigabit Ethernet would help. But most of my stuff (guaranteed to be untypical) is actually CPU-limited - and I am running on a dual Sun Ultra 60.
So, yes, I understand the importance of the bus, and DMA, and AGP and all the other TLAs. But for me, at least, processor speed is more important right now.
P.S. For example, in the FPS (Quake, etc.) gaming community there is a very well understood distinction between being CPU-limited and fillrate-limited. Depending upon your specific hardware, any of these can be your problem.
Kaa
Kaa
Kaa's Law: In any sufficiently large group of people most are idiots.
The G3 and G4 chips are best used in portables. The fact is that Apple makes the best portables. The reason is the fact that the G3 can run at fast speeds without overheating. If a Linux Laptop vendor would use the G3 or possibly G4 chip in a laptop it would beat any Intel based laptop on the market. Also without all the proprietary Apple stuff the laptop would be somewhat inexpensive.
A lot of arguments on here have all hinged on the assumption that we need real 64-bit processors. I don't think that it's as important as people are making it out to be.
The PPC design has 64-bit extensions that would be more than adequate for your 64-bit needs (file-systems or whatever). Lets face it, the majority of your integer work is perfectly happy in 32-bit, and when you do need real double-precision floating point values, the PPC is happy to oblige you in native 64-bit floating point arithmetic.
More importantly, the amount of power the average user needs is not increasing quite so rapidly anymore, especially for those not dependent on Micros~1 products (which have allegedly been deliberately bloated to force users to buy newer hardware). Does Uncle Joe need a GHz machine to browse the web? Hell, at the speed he moves the mouse we could have gotten him a 486 and he wouldn't have noticed the difference.
And while it may not be the most powerful architecture on the block, it certainly kicks some ass in the 32-bit world (and I've studied the architecture). Given the alternatives, I think that it definitely deserves a "best in its class" type award.
The more important question to ask is (and people have been asking this), will it be affordable? If it is, it will succeed and everybody will be happy (myself included). I think that it's a beautiful architecture, and would love to be able to buy an affordable computer based on it.
But the 64-bit Alpha processors are expensive, and Alpha's future in general is uncertain. Systems based on Intel's Merced are still a year or so away, and they're going to be quite expensive. PowerPC, on the other hand, has excellent floating-point performance, today, for cheap.
I think they missed an important point here. The PPC is wonderful arch., but it isn't going to be long before the industry starts the Big Move to 64-bit (Merced will probably be the catalyst, right before it bombs[0]). Unless IBM is planning a G5 based on the PPC620, this will leave them behind.[1]
Of course, if the price/performance favors the G4/5 enough (say, dual 800Mhz G4's for the price of a 1GHz Alpha) then it may get ahead, but otherwise any victory will be short-lived.
[0]: I still think that IA-64 is a plot by HP to kill Intel. Instead of trying to compete with them, HP offered to help design the new arch., then came up with something so horrible that there is no way it can succeed.
[1]: Before anyone flames me for implying that 64-bit is always superior, think about this: Once the industry begins the move to 64, the Alpha, Sparc, etc will all be there waiting. If Merced bombs, the chip most likely replace it is the Alpha, which blows away a PPC. Demand == lower prices.
No, pushing to "software" isn't slower! That's the whole point to RISC! Optimize the hell out of a few simple instructions to the point where the four instructions execute faster, cheaper and cooler than the 1 CISC instruction. The more granular the instructions the easier it is to schedule and pipepine.
My understanding of Merced is that much of its speed comes from the compiler building in hints for out of order execution. In which case 1) Assembler by hand will be harder anyway and 2)Old software will need to be recompiled to get the most out of the chip.
The first point doesn't bother me. I did a bunch of MIPS assembler in school. That was enough. Compilers these days do a pretty good job. Let them!
The second point doesn't really matter for linux because we've got the source for damn near everything. It's not so easy for Windows where there's tons of assembler everywhere and updates will cost the end user...
It's well known this isn't the G3's strength.
Not today, but soon. The G4 has great FP *and* altivec to boot.
Also, as a previous poster pointed out, Altivec is Motorola's baby, so I have to wonder if it'll be supported by IBM's spec.
IBM has agreed to support Altivec.
Hopefully the PPC will come of age in the portable market where power consumption matters...
just my blog and pix