I wasn't downplaying the need for redundancy. Load balance a stack of single-CPU oBSD boxes and you're good to go. Notice that the (webserver) UltraSPARCs on the Rackspace page are all single-processor machines, too. And as far as a database, I wouldn't even consider using *BSD or Linux for a critical database. I'd go Solaris + VxFS or IRIX + XFS. (Perhaps Linux + XFS or Reiser after they've proven themselves).
any normal (read not yours) company will have at least dual or quad CPU hardware running in a cluster for their webservers
Jippity! If "any normal company" has clusters of dual and quad CPU machines to run their websites, I hate to see the hardware that runs their databases! And on the same token, I guess I haven't experienced these websites from "any normal company".
I agree that it's a bit of a shame that oBSD isn't an SMP monster, but that fact alone really isn't much of a problem these days, especially with 1.0+ GHz processors being the norm. Of the websites I help maintain, one handles an average of 1.2 million requests per day (average of about 14 requests per second, and about 8 GB/day). Granted over 95% of that is static content, but it's all hosted through a Pentium 233 running a heavily-patched version of Red Hat 5.2 and the load average rarely goes above 0.15. Another website handles the registration and accounts of a regional academic competition program and gets an average of 5 CGI hits per second. Using MySQL and Apache+ModPerl on a PII-266 atop Red Hat, the whole works chugs along fine with a load average around 0.10.
oBSD on just one modern CPU may have its limitations, but it could easily saturate a pair of 45mbit DS3/T3 links with dynamic (PHP/perl/etc) content without much cpu load at all.
I always get a kick outta the "LINUX DID IT ALL" articles, when in fact Linux was only used for rendering. Titanic, for example, comes to mind... a Linux-based render farm was setup to render several chucks of the background and other big pieces. The modeling was done on SGI's IRIX, and the effects and mixing of the rendered material with the film was done with SGI IRIX as well (via an Inferno setup). However, the Linux crowd might be happy to know that Pixar is in the process of replacing their SGI Octane2 workstations with Linux-based PCs for pretty much everything. They're still going to be using Sun Ultra Enterprise servers for rendering, though (go figure).
IRIX for modeling, Linux for rendering
on
Reviews:Shrek
·
· Score: 2
Linux was only used for rendering. The initial modeling, effects, and final compositing of the rendered material was done on SGI Octane workstations running IRIX. Audio was done on a Windows NT Protools setup.
I remember www.ford.com being IRIX about two years ago. www.whitehouse.gov too... I can just see the auctions on eBay: "SGI Challenge L, former FORD webserver!!"
Is there any word yet on an MP3 player for XBox? It can play games, surf the web, and play DVDs... if it can play MP3s, then I'll buy on in an instant.
Re:Reminds me of those MAD thinnest books...
on
RFC for Spammers
·
· Score: 2
Persons within the state of North Dakota who would beat a spammer senseless with 10 Lbs of pickle loaf given the chance
Teehee... as I sit here reading this near Minot, ND.
Sputnik left orbit and reentered our atmosphere (only to burn up) years ago. Although, the first American satellite, because it was placed a a much higher orbit, is still up there.
My experience with this monitor
on
3D w/o Goggles
·
· Score: 2
I don't recall if it was from ActualDepth or one of the other "goggleless 3D" monitor makers. The display was a ~15" LCD covered with 1-inch deep slats. A very weird and expensive beast. My boss at the time (about 8 months ago) was extremely excited about the demo unit and called all of us over to look at some rotating cube demos.
"Does it look like real 3D?!?!"
My exact response was "ummm, uhhh, I guess so?"
The image was somewhat dim and only had the slightest bit of depth to it, not quite what I was expecting. Still, it was better than looking at a flat psuedo 3D image on a CRT or plain single-layer LCD display.
It'd say it's a good monitor if you have deep pockets and a good imagination. *shrug*
I just updated to 6.5.12 this weekend on my three machines. My new (well, new to me) O2 came with the IRIX 6.5.0 CDs... I reinstalled 6.5, downloaded the 6.5.12 overlay, installed and was good to go. SGI's hardware may be lagging a bit these days, but at least their OS is top notch.
(*especially* after installing some of the goodies from http://freeware.sgi.com/index-by-alpha.html)
It's the OS that I deal with most of the time (heh, especially when my load average this morning is 0.00 0.00 0.00), so I'm quite greatful of this... I'm the sorta person that would rather have a damn near perfect OS than wizbang hardware.
Mesquite is a suburb of Dallas...
on
Quakecon...
·
· Score: 2
...it's not some one-horse town like its name suggests. In fact, wasn't id software's address in Mesquite at one time?
I'm posting this from a dual Athlon, in fact. Dual Slot-A Athlons @ 650 MHz each on a dual EV6 motherboard from API. The only major downside is wonky AGP, but my PCI Matrox Millenium II is keeping up pretty well (I don't play games or do anything 3D anyway). True, it would be faster if I would use actual EV6 Alpha 21264s...
Aside from PC Power & Cooling, the PC power supply tends to be 'cheaper, cheaper, cheaper'. Adding anything more than what a basic ATX power supply needs to operate will just drive up costs and help only a small percentage of users whilst everyone else complains. That, and it won't exactly be cheap or easy to design... greater complexity, more regulatory aprovals needed, more parts to fail, etc.
I would imagine that if such a combo UPS/power supply were to be introduced, most folks and reviews would still prefer to purchase and use their own favorite standard models. Folks like a choice, even if it means taking more wattage from the wall. Just look at modern x86 CPUs. Someone could make a modern all-in-one workstation based around a newer rev of the Crusoe or StrongArm and some cots chips to accelerate video, etc. Have the chip makers and your own design teams understand the need for power conservation. Could easily end up with a highly efficent, cool-running, and still powerful workstation if it was a well-designed and well-managed joint effort. But... there is no way it would be cheaper than building your own PC piecemeal and just getting a beefy power supply. More (electrically) efficent hardware would be nice. Powerful hardware is always nice. All-in-one is neat. Choice is good too. A cheap price would be perfect.... but they just don't go together too well, plain and simple.
Solaris 9 will still have CDE and Motif, it just won't have Openwin. Solaris 8 was the phase-out of OpenWin... not installed by default but still available.
UNIX must include CDE and Motif. If it doesn't, it's not technically UNIX. Mac OS X doesn't have either. Therefore it's not UNIX.
I know you're trying to be funny... but y'know, SGI IRIX doesn't include CDE (though it does have both "pure" and SGI-modified varieties of Motif). Cray UNICOS doesn't have either.
About 15 years ago Apple made their own version of "real UNIX" called A/UX. It featured X as well as a Mac application layer. (Gee, sounds a lot like Mac OS X...). This had *nothing* to do with AIX and it only ran on a few 680x0-based Macs.
Fast forward to the PowerPC era. Apple made a series of nifty (for their time) Apple Network Servers running IBM's AIX (UNIX) OS.
Every year or so I burn a new CDR containing my System Folder, some app installers, and my favorite utilities. It's the ulitmate "rescue" disc as it's a fully functional Mac OS environment. I'd imagine the same is possible with other OSes.
Slashdot Mirror
I wasn't downplaying the need for redundancy. Load balance a stack of single-CPU oBSD boxes and you're good to go. Notice that the (webserver) UltraSPARCs on the Rackspace page are all single-processor machines, too. And as far as a database, I wouldn't even consider using *BSD or Linux for a critical database. I'd go Solaris + VxFS or IRIX + XFS. (Perhaps Linux + XFS or Reiser after they've proven themselves).
thousand [K] [L]ines [O]f [C]ode
any normal (read not yours) company will have at least dual or quad CPU hardware running in a cluster for their webservers
Jippity! If "any normal company" has clusters of dual and quad CPU machines to run their websites, I hate to see the hardware that runs their databases! And on the same token, I guess I haven't experienced these websites from "any normal company".
I agree that it's a bit of a shame that oBSD isn't an SMP monster, but that fact alone really isn't much of a problem these days, especially with 1.0+ GHz processors being the norm. Of the websites I help maintain, one handles an average of 1.2 million requests per day (average of about 14 requests per second, and about 8 GB/day). Granted over 95% of that is static content, but it's all hosted through a Pentium 233 running a heavily-patched version of Red Hat 5.2 and the load average rarely goes above 0.15. Another website handles the registration and accounts of a regional academic competition program and gets an average of 5 CGI hits per second. Using MySQL and Apache+ModPerl on a PII-266 atop Red Hat, the whole works chugs along fine with a load average around 0.10.
oBSD on just one modern CPU may have its limitations, but it could easily saturate a pair of 45mbit DS3/T3 links with dynamic (PHP/perl/etc) content without much cpu load at all.
I always get a kick outta the "LINUX DID IT ALL" articles, when in fact Linux was only used for rendering. Titanic, for example, comes to mind... a Linux-based render farm was setup to render several chucks of the background and other big pieces. The modeling was done on SGI's IRIX, and the effects and mixing of the rendered material with the film was done with SGI IRIX as well (via an Inferno setup). However, the Linux crowd might be happy to know that Pixar is in the process of replacing their SGI Octane2 workstations with Linux-based PCs for pretty much everything. They're still going to be using Sun Ultra Enterprise servers for rendering, though (go figure).
Linux was only used for rendering. The initial modeling, effects, and final compositing of the rendered material was done on SGI Octane workstations running IRIX. Audio was done on a Windows NT Protools setup.
I remember www.ford.com being IRIX about two years ago. www.whitehouse.gov too... I can just see the auctions on eBay: "SGI Challenge L, former FORD webserver!!"
Is there any word yet on an MP3 player for XBox? It can play games, surf the web, and play DVDs... if it can play MP3s, then I'll buy on in an instant.
Persons within the state of North Dakota who would beat a spammer senseless with 10 Lbs of pickle loaf given the chance
Teehee... as I sit here reading this near Minot, ND.
My deskside workstation has a NEMA 6-30 twist lock plug (30 amps @ 240v) but then, it is an old SGI Onyx.
Sputnik left orbit and reentered our atmosphere (only to burn up) years ago. Although, the first American satellite, because it was placed a a much higher orbit, is still up there.
I don't recall if it was from ActualDepth or one of the other "goggleless 3D" monitor makers. The display was a ~15" LCD covered with 1-inch deep slats. A very weird and expensive beast. My boss at the time (about 8 months ago) was extremely excited about the demo unit and called all of us over to look at some rotating cube demos.
"Does it look like real 3D?!?!"
My exact response was "ummm, uhhh, I guess so?"
The image was somewhat dim and only had the slightest bit of depth to it, not quite what I was expecting. Still, it was better than looking at a flat psuedo 3D image on a CRT or plain single-layer LCD display.
It'd say it's a good monitor if you have deep pockets and a good imagination. *shrug*
I just updated to 6.5.12 this weekend on my three machines. My new (well, new to me) O2 came with the IRIX 6.5.0 CDs... I reinstalled 6.5, downloaded the 6.5.12 overlay, installed and was good to go. SGI's hardware may be lagging a bit these days, but at least their OS is top notch.
(*especially* after installing some of the goodies from http://freeware.sgi.com/index-by-alpha.html)
It's the OS that I deal with most of the time (heh, especially when my load average this morning is 0.00 0.00 0.00), so I'm quite greatful of this... I'm the sorta person that would rather have a damn near perfect OS than wizbang hardware.
...it's not some one-horse town like its name suggests. In fact, wasn't id software's address in Mesquite at one time?
I'm posting this from a dual Athlon, in fact. Dual Slot-A Athlons @ 650 MHz each on a dual EV6 motherboard from API. The only major downside is wonky AGP, but my PCI Matrox Millenium II is keeping up pretty well (I don't play games or do anything 3D anyway). True, it would be faster if I would use actual EV6 Alpha 21264s...
Aside from PC Power & Cooling, the PC power supply tends to be 'cheaper, cheaper, cheaper'. Adding anything more than what a basic ATX power supply needs to operate will just drive up costs and help only a small percentage of users whilst everyone else complains. That, and it won't exactly be cheap or easy to design... greater complexity, more regulatory aprovals needed, more parts to fail, etc.
I would imagine that if such a combo UPS/power supply were to be introduced, most folks and reviews would still prefer to purchase and use their own favorite standard models. Folks like a choice, even if it means taking more wattage from the wall. Just look at modern x86 CPUs. Someone could make a modern all-in-one workstation based around a newer rev of the Crusoe or StrongArm and some cots chips to accelerate video, etc. Have the chip makers and your own design teams understand the need for power conservation. Could easily end up with a highly efficent, cool-running, and still powerful workstation if it was a well-designed and well-managed joint effort. But... there is no way it would be cheaper than building your own PC piecemeal and just getting a beefy power supply.
More (electrically) efficent hardware would be nice. Powerful hardware is always nice. All-in-one is neat. Choice is good too. A cheap price would be perfect.... but they just don't go together too well, plain and simple.
I guess I should clarify... Solaris 9 will still have CDE/Motif, but GNOME will be the default (and the marketed/maintained desktop environment).
Solaris 9 will still have CDE and Motif, it just won't have Openwin. Solaris 8 was the phase-out of OpenWin... not installed by default but still available.
Good point. I wish I could mod that up.
UNIX must include CDE and Motif. If it doesn't, it's not technically UNIX. Mac OS X doesn't have either. Therefore it's not UNIX.
I know you're trying to be funny... but y'know, SGI IRIX doesn't include CDE (though it does have both "pure" and SGI-modified varieties of Motif). Cray UNICOS doesn't have either.
If it work, great!
About 15 years ago Apple made their own version of "real UNIX" called A/UX. It featured X as well as a Mac application layer. (Gee, sounds a lot like Mac OS X...). This had *nothing* to do with AIX and it only ran on a few 680x0-based Macs.
Fast forward to the PowerPC era. Apple made a series of nifty (for their time) Apple Network Servers running IBM's AIX (UNIX) OS.
http://perso.wanadoo.fr/levenez/unix/
It's a *GREAT* resource for finding out what came from what and when.
Apple's A/UX OS used the licensed "Unix" name as did Apple's AIX-based Network Servers (Apple hardware running IBM's version of Unix).
Every year or so I burn a new CDR containing my System Folder, some app installers, and my favorite utilities. It's the ulitmate "rescue" disc as it's a fully functional Mac OS environment. I'd imagine the same is possible with other OSes.
teehee!!