Then why does almost every single linux company I know of (regardless of their field) have *at least* a 6-node beowulf cluster. It's not for SETI, my friend. Some folks need that power without having to get a crazy expensive Sun/HP/SGI/DEC/Aviion or with some performance-crippled 8-way xeon. If you BREAK UP the task, it works better. Gigabit is more than enough for databases, etc.
Dude, we are talking about a beowulf cluster here. A distributed scalable system for a server farm. Rather than this 8 or even 16 CPU on a single mobo crap that some companies have been playing with. Hell, in many cases, 8-way xeons are not much faster than 4-way xeons. The way to go is to cluster. And with gigabit ethernet, there is almost no limit (untill we get REALLY heavy server loads and lots of database hits). Read up on beowulf sometime, it's what makes linux worthwhile.
Better off with multiple slower CPUs, like 1.5 GHz and Beowulf them. More machines to take care of, but better than rushed/poor fabbing of CPUs. Plus you get redundancy and almost unlimited scalability. And ungodly bandwidth if you use gigabit cards instead of just 100bt. It's the way to go for pretty much everything unless you have something custom for one cpu (which is rare these days)
When compairing Athlon to Pentium, 10 watts doesn't mean anything at all... but I got to thinking, heck, 10 watts is more than enough to power the new PowerPC 7410 "enhanced G4" (but not quite enough for the new 7415 "V'Gr" "G4+", at 733 MHz it takes 14 - 18 watts. (A whole hellofa lot for a PowerPC... and that's just for the chip and it's on-die L2 cache, not including the external L3 cache).
10 watts is also way more than enough for embedded MIPS/ARM/Transmeta CPUs, too. Food for thought.
Very good points. Thanks for the info and help. Webmin has sure grown since the last time I looked at it (over a year ago), though it looks like there hasn't been much development in the past 3 months (already good enough?).
As for the bandwidth, these days I do video work as a side job (editing, lining up talent for voiceovers, doing special effects, and even some 3D representations of complex events that were not originally videotaped... such as automobile crashes). Awhile back a client wanted to know if I could dump low-res previews of key scenes onto a website for review at any hour. Sounded like a good idea. My first attempt with ISDN was a horrible, slow failure. Moved to a DS1, and now have a DS3 & DS1. My ISP at the moment is a local Tier-2 provider, though it wouldn't cost much to change to a Tier-1. My bandwidth utilizaion is almost null most of the time, until a client (usually with a cable modem or some other high-speed connection) downloads a clip. Quite bursty, but I'm sure I could work something out.
My post above shows my interest in Cobalt alternatives (mainly, web front-ends for clients to use), though I am also interested in finding a good source for used Cobalt Raqs. A quick search of eBay only found a few, and from varied sources. I'm able to find scads of used Sun and SGI dealers, I'm sure there's gotta be a few online websites/dealers that have a steady stock of used Raqs for sale.
The hardware is not such a big issue for me. (Unless it's some sorta pre-packaged Cobalt-like device that nobody's really heard of). Thanks for the two suggestions. I am interested in that sort of thing... software to make a homebrew linux box seem more like a Cobalt. No so much for me (I've been admining Solaris, IRIX, and Linux for years now), but for potential clients that want a Cobalt-like box to manage themselves.
Because I have the bandwidth and a server room already, I have tossed around the idea of doing some web hosting and colocating for the folks in my area. I've certainly noticed how hot the Cobalt products are... especially for folks that want Web/email/etc hosting on a fast connection, but want more control then what's available from most mega hosting providers... so for them, leasing a RaQ at a colo facility makes sense. But....the cost of a RaQ is a bit steep..........
Are there any great alternatives to the Cobalt line? Perhaps another similar piece of all-in-one hardware. Maybe one that is even better? Sure, setting up a Linux or BSD box could work, but there would be a steep learning curve for someone that wants a Cobalt. Maybe there's a Cobalt-like GPL (or even commercial) package for Linux? Any suggestions?
Could a Slashdot regular (or even a clued AC) plese explain to me why my posts today are +2 right off the bat? I recall hearing that it is possible to do so, though I never saw any setting to do that. What in the world is going on and how do I go back to the normal score:1 posting? Nothing looks worse that a post with a high score with no reason/comments.
You betcha. Running a rather quick port of Linux to very low end MIPS processor is not a Good Thing. I always wondered why they didn't just use a K6 to start with. The price to performance seems to be ok to me, they have to cover some development and support costs. Just look at the prices of those "network attached storage" hard drive and a NIC gizmos. You pay for the convienience.
Seeing how current Cobalts run Linux and Sun's more recently slightly GNU/Linux "friendly" stance, I would imagine they would stick with Linux... but anything can happen. Linux seems to be doing the job well, but I would almost like to see them try something with *BSD, just to see how well it works. Trying other things is a *good* thing.
Apple has crippled the free/consumer iDVD app to support just 1 hour of video per DVD-R disc. The full DVD Studio Pro package from Apple ($995, same cost as Final Cut Pro) does not have this limit.
How do you get past this sorta crippleware crap? Write letters. Boycott. Use linux DVD solutions. Whatever it takes. No one is forcing you to buy a G4 with a DVD-R drive and forcing you to use iDVD.
Looking thru the thread I see two camps... the Mac folks that are cheering and the anti-Mac folks that are saying Apple is way behind and time to get rid of any sort of benchmarks. I use practically every platform out there and really only use macs for video work (we have several sawtooth G4s at work for editing). To be totally honest, the only time I have ever seen a PC be faster for such work is with "slim" editing packages that look to be designed for performance only. Premiere (ugh, is it *still* around?), Avid, and many other full packages run equally fast or even a bit slower (especially for encoding) on ~1 GHz PCs than they do on a 500 MHz G4. Provided you have enough RAM and aren't crippled with a slow or small drive.
There are certain things I don't even consider when looking at a Mac.... games for example. I'm thrilled to see Apple using nVidia graphics, but I still wouldn't buy a Mac for games. It's fun to launch Quake3 and play a quick deathmatch on the G4s over lunch at work. The G4s and their Rage 128 play it pretty well at 640x480, but it's sure no Geforce2 on a PC. Ditto for these "MS Word Scrolling Tests" that a lot of the professional magazines do. I can't recall any time I've scrolled more than 2 or three pages at full standard scroll speed. I usually page down, drag the scroll thumb way down, jump to page x, or search.
Benchmarks these days are silly. Buy the best machine for the job. Dunno what machine that is? Ask around and read some professional level magazines. Have some machines demoed to you.
Personally, want a linux box? Get x86 or Alpha. Want a huge nutty server? Get a Sun or SGI. Want games? Get a console or a PC. Want Video? Get a G4 (or an SGI Octane2 or Onyx2/Onyx3000 if you want to do uncompressed 1080i HDTV). Get over the benchmarks.
The OS X Public Beta has been out for awhile now... and the updated PowerMac G4 and all-new PowerBook G4 are both based on some significantly updated hardware. Just wait for an update from Apple... or at the least, wait for OS X final to ship. I really doubt this is a sign that OS X won't ever run on these machines.
We use several "sawtooth" (AGP-based PowerMac G4 towers) at work for video editing. Couple DVCAM decks with IEEE1394 "firewire" cards for interface, using FinalCutPro and MediaCleanerPro. For editing work and encoding (to Soresonson 2.0 and MPEG-1) our G4s keep up with a 1.something GHz Dell that was recently purchased. Price to performance ratio looks fine to me. Especially since the G4s seem to be more stable than our Win2K boxes for video work. For $3000 a box can be configured at store.apple.comm that includes the combo CDRW/DVD-R drive. That's a real DVD-R! Price to performance blows away pretty much everything else.
What's your point? Want a cheap, but still fast, box to run Linux? Want to run linux or windows period? Use x86, that's what it's made for.
Is there such a thing as full-duplex gigabit ethernet? Since all tower G4s have GigE, it would be mighty cool to connect to together via a crossover cable at GigE Full Duplex. Can't afford an 8-port GigE switch quite yet.
Steve Jobs claims that the MPEG-2 (encoding) CODEC that iDVD and DVD Studio Pro use is "much faster than any other". He claims that most other software encoders for MPEG-2 run at about a 20:1 ratio, while the CODEC Apple has can encode at about a 2:1 ratio on a G4... that is, 30 minutes of video can be encoded into MPEG-2 format in about 60 minutes.
That's fine and dandy, but how fast are other software encoders out there? Are they really as slow as 20:1? Perhaps they're even faster than Apple's 2:1 claim? Curious.
PowerMac G4 also got an upgrade to AGP 4X and nVidia Geforce 2 MX is standard on the higher end configurations. ATi Rage 128 Pro is standard on the lowest, and Radeon is an option. Lots to choose from, but where is the nVidia Geforce 2 GTS, GTS Pro, GTS Ultra, and nVidia Quadro cards? Especially with Alias-Wavefront Maya 3.0 coming out for Mac soon.
Not to mention that one new option for the G4 Desktop (and standard on high-end prebuilts) is the "SuperDrive"... a single-tray, multiple-laser drive that basicly combines CDRW and DVD-R. Yes kids, real DVD-R, play it in your consumer $150 DVD deck. Apple sells DVD-R blanks for $10 at store.apple.com. Probably can find them cheaper elsewhere.
Distributed computing of this nature, like many clusters, is only as good as the jobs running on it. While it would be perfect for something that performs the same sequence on mulitple sets of data (ie, SETI or rendering), it is not what you would use for processing that relies on the previous calculation to continue (weather model simulation, optimizations, etc). These are just too bandwith intensive and would leave even the slowest processors mostly idle while saturating even the fastest links.
It is a far better idea to come up with some proposed jobs and determine the best hardware (be it a single large-scale system or a distrubuted cluster or small systems) before telling the world to leave their power-hungry personal computers running 24/7. 400 watt consumption isn't much until you multiply it by the number of PCs owned by the geek community.
Hit ebay and look for the Intel versions of Nextstep 3.3 or Openstep 4.2. Then go the the support area of Apple's website, find the Openstep section, and download the latest patches and updates (especially the Y2K updates). There are also hardware compatibility lists in that area of the site. Good luck! Remember, Nextstep SCREAMS on a P233... you don't super elite hardware to run it. My Intel NeXTSTEP box is a PPro 200, Matrox Millenium II, 3Com 3C905, Adaptec 2940UW, 9 GB Seagate Barracuda. Works like a charm.
Welcome to the crowd... but I just hope the next generation OS doesn't cripple all of that. (The core OS may be great, but that doesn't mean anything if the GUI atop it requires too many resources). OS 9.04 may be "bloated", but ANYTHING can happen with OS X.
In about the middle of Summer 2000, Silicon Graphics Inc. (SGI) came out with the Onyx 3000 and Origin 3000 machines. The "O3K" can take up to 1024 CPUs and 2 TERABYTES of RAM as a single system. For those that want some flexability, it can be "clustered" or segmented into smaller virtual machines in hardware, each running a different OS or different hardware/software configuration. The standard "node boards" that contain CPUs and RAM have 4x MIPS R12000A CPUs running at 400 MHz and with 8 MB L2 cache. A single R12KA/400 compares well in floating point to a 1.0 - 1.3 GHz Pentium III or Athlon. The R14K is due soon, with twice the L2 thruput and higher clockspeeds. The whole system is very modular, made up of various 19" rackmount "bricks" linked together by NUMA-3/Craylink cables. Total system bandwidth on a 512 CPU system is 714.00 GB/sec. From what I understand (I really only work with the much older Origin 2000 series), the standard max configuration is 512 CPUs / 1 TB RAM, but can support twice that with an additional megarouter brick. Expensive machines, but total monsters... and the price per CPU and price to raw power is much better than that of Sun Enterprise. Onyx systems are made by adding one or more InfiniteReality 3 graphics subsystems to an Origin. These SGI systems run IRIX 6.5.X, a real version of unix. Lots of freeware, gcc, etc, can be found for IRIX at http://freeware.sgi.com. Freeware is updated quarterly, the same timeframe as IRIX. Full commercial developer tools (LOADS!) plus an included year of support, software updates, etc, can be had by joining the SGI developer program at the 'Venture' level for $900.
Slashdot Mirror
Check out this truly scheweeeeeeet cluster!
http://tux.anu.edu.au/Projects/Bunyip/Beo-017.jpg
http://tux.anu.edu.au/Projects/Bunyip/Beo-015.jpg
Now *THAT* would be the ultimate quake server or GIMP beast! But... who can afford the electricity?!?!
Then why does almost every single linux company I know of (regardless of their field) have *at least* a 6-node beowulf cluster. It's not for SETI, my friend. Some folks need that power without having to get a crazy expensive Sun/HP/SGI/DEC/Aviion or with some performance-crippled 8-way xeon. If you BREAK UP the task, it works better. Gigabit is more than enough for databases, etc.
Dude, we are talking about a beowulf cluster here. A distributed scalable system for a server farm. Rather than this 8 or even 16 CPU on a single mobo crap that some companies have been playing with. Hell, in many cases, 8-way xeons are not much faster than 4-way xeons. The way to go is to cluster. And with gigabit ethernet, there is almost no limit (untill we get REALLY heavy server loads and lots of database hits). Read up on beowulf sometime, it's what makes linux worthwhile.
Better off with multiple slower CPUs, like 1.5 GHz and Beowulf them. More machines to take care of, but better than rushed/poor fabbing of CPUs. Plus you get redundancy and almost unlimited scalability. And ungodly bandwidth if you use gigabit cards instead of just 100bt. It's the way to go for pretty much everything unless you have something custom for one cpu (which is rare these days)
When compairing Athlon to Pentium, 10 watts doesn't mean anything at all... but I got to thinking, heck, 10 watts is more than enough to power the new PowerPC 7410 "enhanced G4" (but not quite enough for the new 7415 "V'Gr" "G4+", at 733 MHz it takes 14 - 18 watts. (A whole hellofa lot for a PowerPC... and that's just for the chip and it's on-die L2 cache, not including the external L3 cache).
10 watts is also way more than enough for embedded MIPS/ARM/Transmeta CPUs, too. Food for thought.
Very good points. Thanks for the info and help. Webmin has sure grown since the last time I looked at it (over a year ago), though it looks like there hasn't been much development in the past 3 months (already good enough?).
As for the bandwidth, these days I do video work as a side job (editing, lining up talent for voiceovers, doing special effects, and even some 3D representations of complex events that were not originally videotaped... such as automobile crashes). Awhile back a client wanted to know if I could dump low-res previews of key scenes onto a website for review at any hour. Sounded like a good idea. My first attempt with ISDN was a horrible, slow failure. Moved to a DS1, and now have a DS3 & DS1. My ISP at the moment is a local Tier-2 provider, though it wouldn't cost much to change to a Tier-1. My bandwidth utilizaion is almost null most of the time, until a client (usually with a cable modem or some other high-speed connection) downloads a clip. Quite bursty, but I'm sure I could work something out.
My post above shows my interest in Cobalt alternatives (mainly, web front-ends for clients to use), though I am also interested in finding a good source for used Cobalt Raqs. A quick search of eBay only found a few, and from varied sources. I'm able to find scads of used Sun and SGI dealers, I'm sure there's gotta be a few online websites/dealers that have a steady stock of used Raqs for sale.
The hardware is not such a big issue for me. (Unless it's some sorta pre-packaged Cobalt-like device that nobody's really heard of). Thanks for the two suggestions. I am interested in that sort of thing... software to make a homebrew linux box seem more like a Cobalt. No so much for me (I've been admining Solaris, IRIX, and Linux for years now), but for potential clients that want a Cobalt-like box to manage themselves.
Because I have the bandwidth and a server room already, I have tossed around the idea of doing some web hosting and colocating for the folks in my area. I've certainly noticed how hot the Cobalt products are... especially for folks that want Web/email/etc hosting on a fast connection, but want more control then what's available from most mega hosting providers... so for them, leasing a RaQ at a colo facility makes sense. But....the cost of a RaQ is a bit steep..........
Are there any great alternatives to the Cobalt line? Perhaps another similar piece of all-in-one hardware. Maybe one that is even better? Sure, setting up a Linux or BSD box could work, but there would be a steep learning curve for someone that wants a Cobalt. Maybe there's a Cobalt-like GPL (or even commercial) package for Linux? Any suggestions?
Could a Slashdot regular (or even a clued AC) plese explain to me why my posts today are +2 right off the bat? I recall hearing that it is possible to do so, though I never saw any setting to do that. What in the world is going on and how do I go back to the normal score:1 posting? Nothing looks worse that a post with a high score with no reason/comments.
You betcha. Running a rather quick port of Linux to very low end MIPS processor is not a Good Thing. I always wondered why they didn't just use a K6 to start with. The price to performance seems to be ok to me, they have to cover some development and support costs. Just look at the prices of those "network attached storage" hard drive and a NIC gizmos. You pay for the convienience.
Linux? *BSD? Solaris x86?
Seeing how current Cobalts run Linux and Sun's more recently slightly GNU/Linux "friendly" stance, I would imagine they would stick with Linux... but anything can happen. Linux seems to be doing the job well, but I would almost like to see them try something with *BSD, just to see how well it works. Trying other things is a *good* thing.
Apple has crippled the free/consumer iDVD app to support just 1 hour of video per DVD-R disc. The full DVD Studio Pro package from Apple ($995, same cost as Final Cut Pro) does not have this limit.
How do you get past this sorta crippleware crap? Write letters. Boycott. Use linux DVD solutions. Whatever it takes. No one is forcing you to buy a G4 with a DVD-R drive and forcing you to use iDVD.
Looking thru the thread I see two camps... the Mac folks that are cheering and the anti-Mac folks that are saying Apple is way behind and time to get rid of any sort of benchmarks. I use practically every platform out there and really only use macs for video work (we have several sawtooth G4s at work for editing). To be totally honest, the only time I have ever seen a PC be faster for such work is with "slim" editing packages that look to be designed for performance only. Premiere (ugh, is it *still* around?), Avid, and many other full packages run equally fast or even a bit slower (especially for encoding) on ~1 GHz PCs than they do on a 500 MHz G4. Provided you have enough RAM and aren't crippled with a slow or small drive.
There are certain things I don't even consider when looking at a Mac.... games for example. I'm thrilled to see Apple using nVidia graphics, but I still wouldn't buy a Mac for games. It's fun to launch Quake3 and play a quick deathmatch on the G4s over lunch at work. The G4s and their Rage 128 play it pretty well at 640x480, but it's sure no Geforce2 on a PC. Ditto for these "MS Word Scrolling Tests" that a lot of the professional magazines do. I can't recall any time I've scrolled more than 2 or three pages at full standard scroll speed. I usually page down, drag the scroll thumb way down, jump to page x, or search.
Benchmarks these days are silly. Buy the best machine for the job. Dunno what machine that is? Ask around and read some professional level magazines. Have some machines demoed to you.
Personally, want a linux box? Get x86 or Alpha. Want a huge nutty server? Get a Sun or SGI. Want games? Get a console or a PC. Want Video? Get a G4 (or an SGI Octane2 or Onyx2/Onyx3000 if you want to do uncompressed 1080i HDTV). Get over the benchmarks.
The OS X Public Beta has been out for awhile now... and the updated PowerMac G4 and all-new PowerBook G4 are both based on some significantly updated hardware. Just wait for an update from Apple... or at the least, wait for OS X final to ship. I really doubt this is a sign that OS X won't ever run on these machines.
We use several "sawtooth" (AGP-based PowerMac G4 towers) at work for video editing. Couple DVCAM decks with IEEE1394 "firewire" cards for interface, using FinalCutPro and MediaCleanerPro. For editing work and encoding (to Soresonson 2.0 and MPEG-1) our G4s keep up with a 1.something GHz Dell that was recently purchased. Price to performance ratio looks fine to me. Especially since the G4s seem to be more stable than our Win2K boxes for video work. For $3000 a box can be configured at store.apple.comm that includes the combo CDRW/DVD-R drive. That's a real DVD-R! Price to performance blows away pretty much everything else.
What's your point? Want a cheap, but still fast, box to run Linux? Want to run linux or windows period? Use x86, that's what it's made for.
Is there such a thing as full-duplex gigabit ethernet? Since all tower G4s have GigE, it would be mighty cool to connect to together via a crossover cable at GigE Full Duplex. Can't afford an 8-port GigE switch quite yet.
Steve Jobs claims that the MPEG-2 (encoding) CODEC that iDVD and DVD Studio Pro use is "much faster than any other". He claims that most other software encoders for MPEG-2 run at about a 20:1 ratio, while the CODEC Apple has can encode at about a 2:1 ratio on a G4... that is, 30 minutes of video can be encoded into MPEG-2 format in about 60 minutes.
That's fine and dandy, but how fast are other software encoders out there? Are they really as slow as 20:1? Perhaps they're even faster than Apple's 2:1 claim? Curious.
Apple
New PowerBook G4
Updated PowerMac G4
iDVD
DVD Studio Pro
iTunes
PowerMac G4 also got an upgrade to AGP 4X and nVidia Geforce 2 MX is standard on the higher end configurations. ATi Rage 128 Pro is standard on the lowest, and Radeon is an option. Lots to choose from, but where is the nVidia Geforce 2 GTS, GTS Pro, GTS Ultra, and nVidia Quadro cards? Especially with Alias-Wavefront Maya 3.0 coming out for Mac soon.
Not to mention that one new option for the G4 Desktop (and standard on high-end prebuilts) is the "SuperDrive"... a single-tray, multiple-laser drive that basicly combines CDRW and DVD-R. Yes kids, real DVD-R, play it in your consumer $150 DVD deck. Apple sells DVD-R blanks for $10 at store.apple.com. Probably can find them cheaper elsewhere.
Distributed computing of this nature, like many clusters, is only as good as the jobs running on it. While it would be perfect for something that performs the same sequence on mulitple sets of data (ie, SETI or rendering), it is not what you would use for processing that relies on the previous calculation to continue (weather model simulation, optimizations, etc). These are just too bandwith intensive and would leave even the slowest processors mostly idle while saturating even the fastest links.
It is a far better idea to come up with some proposed jobs and determine the best hardware (be it a single large-scale system or a distrubuted cluster or small systems) before telling the world to leave their power-hungry personal computers running 24/7. 400 watt consumption isn't much until you multiply it by the number of PCs owned by the geek community.
Hit ebay and look for the Intel versions of Nextstep 3.3 or Openstep 4.2. Then go the the support area of Apple's website, find the Openstep section, and download the latest patches and updates (especially the Y2K updates). There are also hardware compatibility lists in that area of the site. Good luck! Remember, Nextstep SCREAMS on a P233... you don't super elite hardware to run it. My Intel NeXTSTEP box is a PPro 200, Matrox Millenium II, 3Com 3C905, Adaptec 2940UW, 9 GB Seagate Barracuda. Works like a charm.
Welcome to the crowd... but I just hope the next generation OS doesn't cripple all of that. (The core OS may be great, but that doesn't mean anything if the GUI atop it requires too many resources). OS 9.04 may be "bloated", but ANYTHING can happen with OS X.
In about the middle of Summer 2000, Silicon Graphics Inc. (SGI) came out with the Onyx 3000 and Origin 3000 machines. The "O3K" can take up to 1024 CPUs and 2 TERABYTES of RAM as a single system. For those that want some flexability, it can be "clustered" or segmented into smaller virtual machines in hardware, each running a different OS or different hardware/software configuration. The standard "node boards" that contain CPUs and RAM have 4x MIPS R12000A CPUs running at 400 MHz and with 8 MB L2 cache. A single R12KA/400 compares well in floating point to a 1.0 - 1.3 GHz Pentium III or Athlon. The R14K is due soon, with twice the L2 thruput and higher clockspeeds. The whole system is very modular, made up of various 19" rackmount "bricks" linked together by NUMA-3/Craylink cables. Total system bandwidth on a 512 CPU system is 714.00 GB/sec. From what I understand (I really only work with the much older Origin 2000 series), the standard max configuration is 512 CPUs / 1 TB RAM, but can support twice that with an additional megarouter brick. Expensive machines, but total monsters... and the price per CPU and price to raw power is much better than that of Sun Enterprise. Onyx systems are made by adding one or more InfiniteReality 3 graphics subsystems to an Origin. These SGI systems run IRIX 6.5.X, a real version of unix. Lots of freeware, gcc, etc, can be found for IRIX at http://freeware.sgi.com. Freeware is updated quarterly, the same timeframe as IRIX. Full commercial developer tools (LOADS!) plus an included year of support, software updates, etc, can be had by joining the SGI developer program at the 'Venture' level for $900.