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HP Still Porting Linux to 64 bit PA RISC
Fungai wrote with an update to the on-going HP/Puffin Group story. There'd been some confusion with the recent purchase of Puffin Group by Linuxcare, but HP has confirmed that they will port Linux to their 64 bit PA-RISC chips. HP will still be partnering with Puffin Group to do it, with results expected in the first half of 2000.
Has anyone here used a RISC processor? I haven't, and I'm curious as to the performance level of these things running Linux....
What does this mean for the 700/800 series machines and the porting effort there? I myself own 2 700 series machines that I would like to have Linux running on. Now true I wouldnt mind buying a J7000 but I think economically isn't there going to be more likeliness of people buying older Nova class and the K,R,D, and B series?
MaShaun Jones
The more the merrier. So now we have the Mer^H^H^HItanium, now the HP processor...
/. was down (or /.ed). Rob, could you please inform us of possible downtimes before hand. Not all of us have free local calls. :(
Well, best of luck geeks. Heres hoping that Linux will run on another platform soon.
On an offtopic note: I tried posting this story earlier, but
I can throw myself at the ground, and miss.
And the 2038 problem too?
Are there other interesting things that get cleaned up, or turn out to be gotchas?
Apple Macintosh
- Yellow Dog Linux
- MkLinux
- LinuxPPC
SGI--Ivan, weenie NT4 user: bite me!
--weenie NT4 user: bite me!
"Computers are nothing but a perfect illusion of order" -- Iggy Pop
As for class N machines a recent one will have at least 2 processor (what we have is 2 class N with 4 processors each and a shared Raid Array)... These machine are physically huge, they are extremely fast and extremely expensive. They have much better performance than you can have with any x86-based computer right now. They don't have a great price/performance ratio, but sometime you need the performance they deliver...
This is a good thing for Linux, but a better one for HP. Just when you thought they'd put all their eggs in the IA64 basket... Out pops Linux on 64-bit PA RISC and a nice new hardware revenue stream for HP.
The-cynical-but-fond-of-risk-Linux-userI think (the eternal IMHO) that the major advantage that a PA-RISC port presents is not blinding speed on the desktop or price-performance, but access to a family of mission-critical hardware. Linux, developed on PC's and ported to a wide range of workstation hardware, has historically been short on big iron. Access to PA-RISC hardware, whether legacy or new machines, will go a long way towards remedying that deficit.
If people (myself among them) spoke out against linux's reliability on commodity hardware, no one can question the reliability and stability of HP's unix hardware. It would be easy to sell me on a HP unix box running Linux - or at least, it would be, if I was still doing that kind of stuff.
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There is no premature anti-fascism. -Ernest Hemingway
Why can't linux people just accept that their OS' niche is a unix-like OS running on commodity hardware? We've seen another good example of an OS that tries to be all things, and look how it failed. Do we really want to take the industry down that path again? Linux works exceptionally well on the hardware it was designed for: namely, x86 hardware. It runs on macintoshes, HP machines, Alphas, and god only knows what else... but those are all inferior ports.
Code sharing is good. Code bloat is not. My vote is to fork the existing ports into seperate kernel dev teams and refocus linux. If we spread ourselves too thin, we'll release about as often as Microsoft. *stepping down off the soap box* Mark me down now.
Will the port run on HP3000/MPEiX boxes as well?
Your Working Boy,
I was not bashing PA-RISC, (well not very much) just stating the facts. maybe this will prod them to release their PA-8600 sometime. :) MIPS(high end) is already on life support. (the doctors are just talking about when to pull the plug) SPARC just fell down and is pulling its emergency response key. if USIII does not show up soon SPARC may be on its way to the emergency ward. PA-RISC is in a deep coma. Limbo land. The problem I see is that they have allready commited to IA64. most of HP's brain trust is working on Mickinley. and the left over is working on PA-8600. Do they have the resources to start a new design now? and if they did when will it be done? I think a lot of these companies and consumers too. need to wake up and realize that having one company make all the chips is a bad thing. So I still hope for a miracle to revive the alternative cpu market as well as the alternative OS market.
Isn't it interesting, then, that the way they generate buzz for their box is to port Linux to it?
I don't know how much HP has paid to Puffin-and-friends to port the kernel (though I bet equipment makes up a big chunk of the total). A few million dollars, at most.
Now consider all the customers who've spent billions over the years to run their businesses with HP equipment. With the great and growing value of open source, why on earth would you deny them access? How rude!
This is reason IBM whipped up a custom kernel for their mainframe customers. Negligible cost for ever increasing benefits.
disclaimer: I've only worked on IA-32, but I saw an HP server cube once (HP9000 IIRC).
I'm cool like a fool in a swimming p-p-pfft-pool
An off-the-64bit topic question: when astronomers and nuclear physicists decide that we need a leap second, what happens to UTC? does Unix-midnight and midnight in Greenwich England no longer coincide because the number of seconds since 1970 no longer evenly arrives at date boundaries?
BTW, thanks for all of the other answers, everybody.
Do they have the resources to start a new design now? and if they did when will it be done?
HP corporate press and some analysts (Gartner?) disagree with the death of PA-RISC. If this PR is correct, HP must already be working on at least PA-8700. The .hp.com in my e-mail address means I can't comment further. And even when PA-RISC dies, the ideas aren't completely dead. Does the IA64 instruction set look more like Pentium or PA-RISC?
Seems to me some people will feel comfortable going to IA-64 right away, and some will probably take a while. Just think how many folks are still running really old OSes. There'll also probably be a short period where the performance of PA-RISC and other current processors overlaps with IA-64 performance, just as there is probably some overlap between Pentium and PA-RISC today.
Linux on PA-RISC gives people the option to convert to Linux sooner and/or cheaper, either converting their existing HP boxes or purchasing new ones, and then switch to Linux on IA-64 later -- two small steps instead of one large one. (Some will continue using HP-UX of course)
This sounds like customer choice, which seems like a good idea.
But the best reason for Linux on PA-RISC is that I have fun helping make it happen!
1998-12-31 23:59:59
1998-12-31 23:59:60
1999-01-01 00:00:00
Note that there can be 61 seconds in a minute when a leap second is inserted.
Some Unix systems pretend that leap seconds do not exist, others attept to take them into account, using tables of leap seconds. It might be better to run the system clock on TAI and convert to UTC or local time with a leap second table.
All other RISC CPUs (MIPS, USPARC, and esp. Power(PC),...) have fallen behind the Alpha and PA-RISC, and if I had to chose one of the two for my desktop, I think I would chose the PA-RISC. Sure, the Alpha 21264 is a little faster, but the overall Quality of the HP hardware is hard to beat.
We have some really old PA-RISC Workstations (~1990) and they are still in best condition and fun to work with. These machines are astonishingly fast for their time. An ancient PA-RISC 7100 is as fast (INT) as a PPro at half the clock speed, and competes with a P2/400 at FP - running at a 5th of the clock speed!
P.S.: Don't be fooled by the PowerPC and Apples stupid "supercomputer" campaign. Even the G4 is horribly slooowwww for a RISC CPU, even in FP. A fast CISC Athlon still beats it any day of the week. And x86 have broken the GFLOP barrier almost a year before Apple with their G4. If you want a real computer, don't go for Apple toys.
That wouldn't seem logical if this earlier announcement is true.
but wait a couple of years and HP will be buying and reselling Intel IA64 server hardware building blocks like they do now with IA32.
It wouldn't surprise me if the part of HP currently selling high-end IA32 boxes goes this way.
There'll also probably be a short period where the performance of PA-RISC and other current processors overlaps with IA-64 performance
My personal opinion is the longer overlap with existing and new processors the better -- competition is good.
Yeah, good luck with linux. and PA-RISC. I bet more people will want your big-iron PA systems than dell's new IA64-systems.
Hope so.
Are you working with Merced (erhh iTanium), proto systems?
-- A bunch or questions you will not answer
Some of my friends are working on IA64 stuff. I've used the IA64 simluator but haven't seen the actual working hardware yet.
Intel's work (adding legacy 386 baggage) has made the Merced/Itanic slow and late.
If AMD's 64-bit 386 instruction set cpu is a winner, Intel will drop the Itanic like a hot potato and where would that leave HP?
"Only in their dreams can men truly be free 'twas always thus, and always thus will be."
--Tom Schulman
Beeoooch? What the hell is that?
Oh, I get it. Object-oriented methodology wrestling.
Let's get ready to RUMMMMMMM-BAUGH!
:-)
That might have been thinking about a year with two leap seconds, with both leap seconds inserted at the same time. The literature says that the rule is to keep UTC within 900 ms of UT1 (astronomical time). If multiple leap seconds are needed, they would be inserted on different dates, say the end of June and December.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat