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Linux Software

Non-Vapor Quad 400 PowerPC Boxes! 83

Posted by CmdrTaco from the more-cpus-for-happier-geeks dept.
ninjaz writes "LWN is reporting an announcement by LinuxPPC Inc. that it will be showing off their quad-cpu 400mhz powerpc boxes at LinuxWorld. " Drool drool drool.
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Non-Vapor Quad 400 PowerPC Boxes! More

Non-Vapor Quad 400 PowerPC Boxes!

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  • Do you have any idea what the traditional margins are with Compact PCI single-board computers?

    They make Apple look like they're living on the edge of a razor blade. You'll probably spend more on the chassis for this thing than you will on a new Powermac G3.

  • what about #mklinux? we should of heard about this first! ;) i think everyone on #mklinux should get one these. think how much faster R5 would get built! i could run- i mean, TEST pre-R5 so much faster!

    heh2k, jo
  • Be claims (and has consistantly claimed) that they were not supporting the newer PPC boxes because Apple would not give them technical information. Since they haven't generally lied in the past, I find it difficult to believe they are lying about this.

    Think about it--it would surely be to their advantage to develop for the G3 PMacs, what with PMacs being the platform of choice for many graphic artists.

    Has anybody else looked at the (old) "Guide to Macintosh Family Hardware", which details (some of) the technical aspects of the earlier Macs? The hardware designs of those varied considerably, and were not generally as clean as the OS made them seem.

    To my eye, Be's explanation seems to fit the evidence. If someone donated a few of these quad G3 boards to them, and could demonstrate a market for BeOS on them (such as might justify the cost of porting), I have little doubt that Be, Inc. would be quite happy to do so.
  • but not the current release 8.5. They probably run MacOSX Server, as well. Neither of these is supported, though :-(
  • VME backplanes lining the basement of every home, and a card in every slot... O:)


    I have actual uses for something like that, too. Now I just need to find a few hundred $million and fill my basement with xylene... O:)


    For the flamers: Yes, I know that at least half of the cards will be RAM cards instead of processor cards, and I know that communications bandwidth will limit the classes of problems that I can use this for. Let me dream :).

  • On yeah, and what makes you think this, or a related design, wont be incorporated into at least a limited-production, retail box? The press release (did you read before responding?) states clearly that LinuxPPC will be demonstrating the quad-750 single-board computer from Synergy at the show, that to me would certainly hint that there will be a mainstream product alliance based on the board, with LinuxPPC possibly cobranding the box (Id buy one!)...

    Btw, while I wish they had options for 604e too (I wasnt sure if they are still offering them) because 604e-based SMP screams, as I can only assume the G4 SMP will.. but 750 SMP support is all new to me, and I would think the tax of turning off level-2 cache (if im right) would be severe, as that is where much of the 750's speed gains come from.
    Binary Boy
  • Because Linuxppc isn't a competitor to MacOS, and BeOS is. Apple has given the g3 specs to the LinuxPPC group already, and refuses to give them to be. Basically, your average mac user isn't likely to give up MacOS for linux, but they will take a serious look at BeOS, which is why they don't want it there.
    -lx
  • A few things:

    1. It's not a LinuxPPC product. It's Synergy Microsystems'.

    2. It's not a box. :) It's a VME board, designed for embedded applications. They go in a special chassis and sit on a rack. IOW, you won't see them on your desktop anytime soon. Maybe as a cool cube or rack device, though. (hint, hint.)

    3. I wish Synergy would put up something about how much these things cost...

    4. They're going to have a 433 MHz model available, too. (drool!)
  • That would defintly be nice for the house!
  • Here's the deal. The G3 doesn't do well with symmetric miltuprocessing at all, not did its predecessor the 603e (Be will tell you about that one; they used those chips in their BeBoxen and were not pleased with the results).

    A G3 can do asymmetric multiprocessing just fine, but this sounds like an SMP box. If it is, I'd love to hear how they did it.
  • Yes, Be was running on PowerPC hardware before, but how can you say it is NOT political when this decision to go Intel-only for future versions COINCIDES with Intel's purchase of a stake in Be??

    Building on your arguement, if you accept that Be/PowerPC is a DEAD PRODUCT because it is unsupported, wouldn't it be in Be's best interest to patch for the new CPU's, like those super-smart "freeware" guys do in the Linux community?

    Of course, one cannot assume the money Be would make from selling BeOS on PowerPC would be greater than the PAYOFFS Intel slips them.

    What a disaster this is for Be public relations. Keeping an open mind, I suppose Be ARE less petty than Microsoft... but this also supports the arguement that they should open SOME of their code. You don't have to give away the jewels to do so either...
  • Yes, you're right, it would make a great system. It seems that you don't get it though. Many of us would love to have more processing power and could make good use of it. Just because luddites such as yourself have nothing better to do than play Quake with your hardware, is no reason to assume others are the same.
  • Apple's management got Steved (fired) long ago. Now its pulling profit and has increased revenues. It's stock is also much higher than it's been in recent years. Yeah, Apple is dying so hard. Any day now...
  • Why does eveyone have a problem with Beowulf? I know all the weenies like to say "Gee willakers! That'd do well in my swell Beowulf cluster!"
    -but Beowulf does do some things very well, where a single Linux box wouldn't. No reason to knock it.
  • I thought the only way to get these things to run in an SMP configuration was to eliminate the L2 cache, the very thing that makes these things so fast.
  • More details about the board to be displayed can be found at Synergy's product page [synergymicro.com]. Alas, no prices are posted. They already produce a number of PPC-based boards, though, and claim Linux support for many. I want a VGMD for my Miata.

  • oh come ON, you know thats not how it is...sheesh
  • Now all i need is BeOS running on it :)
  • No problem. :) Re: 7200: check the linuxppc-user list.. there's been some talk about those boxes lately. Someone got it running with 2.2.1, I think. It's in the archives.

    jase, REALLY putting down /. for a while now.. really.. i'm not addicted.. *facial tic*

  • Actually, it would.

    I used to work for one of their competitors...the entire reason for a VME PowerPC board is to shove a bunch of them in a VME rack to tackle obscenely high-performance computational applications...like radar or sonar imaging systems. Eight of these bad boys go in a VME chassis. Four VME chassis rackmount into a computer cabinet. For three square feet of floorspace, you have a Linux-based Beowulf cluster that will outrun the big boys...128 400mhz Cu G3s, with the system boards talking to each other at speeds better than 250MegaBYTES (not bits) per second. Forget bargain-basement alpha desktops and 100base-T hack jobs...this here's the real deal.

    Ladies and gentlemen, Linux has just hit the big time...big time.

    Now...what will these VME-based system boards do for the home hobbyist and workstation afficionado looking for a cheaper way to run quake faster? Nothing. This ain't a toy, junior...go buy a refurbished imac and get crakin' on the USB drivers. I figure each one of those boards will cost better than five grand. Worth it, if you need to model molecular decay in your new wonderdrug. Not worth it, if you need to ask mommy to buy your computer for you.



    SoupIsGood Food
  • Once IBM and Moto have a warm fuzzy...


    joke
    They should talk to my wife; she has ~63 warm fuzzies (cute little pink balls with eyes, antennae and feet, reminicent of Dust Puppy), available for a gold coin donation ($1 or $2 here in NZ)
    %LT;/joke

    NOTE: my wife does the the above mentionsed warm fuzzies, but I'm submitting this as a joke
  • Just tell me why on earth you would WANT a PCI/PMC modem? Even when Ive had the option it always seemed like a waste, if not just plain stupid... call me crazy but for ten years at least, when I hear modem, I think serial.

    Sorry, a little off-topic.
    Binary Boy
  • I'll correct you.
    you're wrong.
  • "Be claims (and has consistantly claimed) that they were not supporting the newer PPC boxes because Apple would not give them technical information."

    So how come this isn't stopping LinuxPPC?
  • I am using the Macintosh for graphics works, and I am seriously considering to put LinuxPPC with GIMP on a separate partition, but not instead of the MacOS (at least not initially).
    As for Be, there is no commercial release, no apps, and it is not as proven and time-tested as LinuxPPC or even MkLinux.
    Many MacOS users are interested by Linux on the PowerPC RISC platform, and Apple should take notice.
  • I noticed that company happens to sell a lot of VME products...

    Does anyone know if any of the ports of Linux support VME-based systems? If any of them do, does the SMP support work when multiple VME boards with processors are on the VME bus or do the boards themselves have to be SMP specifically? (ie, can I pop two dual-processor VME boards onto the bus and have Linux use all four processors?) I've worked with 88110 and 68040 VME boards but don't really know how they actually worked from that standpoint...

    I've seen true-blue SysVR4 running on VME systems that way, it'd be cool if Linux did too.
  • It's not just money however.... I think there are some big ego's at Be aww ubset ad da big bad apple...

    A good programmer could PROVE your statement by petioning Be for just enough source so they could write their own patch.

    The Linux OS team is freaking amazing. We have Linux runnning on at least 6 processors, AND their INTEGRITY can survive an Intel investment!

    The ONE QUESTION I have for Be is, would they allow the community to contribute the necessary code to get BeOS working on [horror!] non-Intel based processors. I would be the answer is NO, and this completely KILLS the Be apologist arguement that it's Apple's fault for not providing Be with developer support, because the PowerPC Linux group did it and they don't even get paid for their work.
  • It would be sweet if these Linux guys ran something like SPECweb96 on one of these babies and blew away most of the big boys' Unixes... (i.e. IBM and HP) Let's see some smoking web servers, eh?
  • This has been said here hundreds of times before:
    Apple wont give Be the specs for the new G3 motherboards (chipsets and stuff). Therefore Be can't update their kernel and drivers for it. It can't be political, because BeOS was already running on Apple hardware, and the same reason for the financial.
    And no, you can't base your only product on reverse engineering some other product, even though hackers can do it in their spare time.
    Sheesh!

    Jón

  • Yeah! (Score:1)

    by mholve ( 1101 )
    I'm gonna rackmount me a ton o' them bitches in my shower stall and make the vanity mirror a 3D LCD panel! Kewl dd0dz. :)
  • Great. If these are available at a decent price, I might install BeOS on one and write that ray-tracer I've been thinking about.


    How does the cost of this quad PPC box compare with that of, say, an Alpha box of comparable floating-point capability?

  • Amen
  • YEA but will it run linux?

    :)
  • Actually, I do have a VME backplane, but no cards for it. :)

  • Cost? (Score:1)

    by phobia ( 970 )
    Will this finally give us reason to stop griping about Apple hardware prices?
  • This is not a desktop machine. This is the kind of thing that goes in space shuttles and PBX equipment.
  • Sir,

    We're still working on R5. This board isn't ours -- we're just showing it. Believe me, no one is more aware of R5's lateness than us. :)

    Cheers,
  • Now I think Rob should go ask IBM nicely for a PowerPC logo to use.. The articles about it are getting pretty frequent ;-)

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