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IBM Technology

IBM Promoting POWER Systems 135

Posted by Hemos from the looking-under-the-hood dept.
A reader writes:"IBM has launched a Open Power Project to increase awareness around its Open Power product line for Linux.. The site includes technical information, forums and provides the ability to tinker w/ Open Power platforms at the University of Augsburg and Peking University. Both Universities are hosting POWER5-based servers and are providing free SSH account access to the Open Source development community. There are rumors of additional Universities to come. They are also hosting special showings of the War of the Worlds in San Francisco and NYC. Looks like there are a couple of hundred pairs of free tickets to each showing on a first come first served basis to those that register."
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IBM Promoting POWER Systems More

IBM Promoting POWER Systems

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  • REALLY?!? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Gherald ( 682277 ) on Friday June 17, 2005 @06:53AM (#12840192) Journal
    Other suggested article titles:

    "Intel promoting Pentium Systems"
    "AMD Promoting Athlon Systems"
    "Microsoft promoting Windows"

    Now,

    "IBM Promoting POWER Systems" ... film at 11 !!
    • Conspiracy! They must have some hidden agenda to be promoting this product! IBM is taking over!

    • Re:REALLY?!? (Score:4, Informative)

      by henrywood ( 879946 ) on Friday June 17, 2005 @07:38AM (#12840439)
      Not quite that obvious. OpenPower refers to a line of servers specifically designed to run Linux (hence the "Open") part. This is a small, very small, part of the IBM lineup (which includes some serious heavy metal).

      A more accurate comparison would be:

      "AMD promoting Athlon64 Systems"

      Even that is not much of a comparison as the Athlon64 range is a much greater percentage of AMD's product than OpenPower servers are of IBM's.

      • Re:REALLY?!? (Score:4, Insightful)

        by njcoder ( 657816 ) on Friday June 17, 2005 @02:53PM (#12845641)
        "Not quite that obvious. OpenPower refers to a line of servers specifically designed to run Linux (hence the "Open") part. This is a small, very small, part of the IBM lineup (which includes some serious heavy metal)."

        Hate the name. Running linux doesn't make the architecture "Open". For an affordable power based workstation look here [pegasosppc.com]. It runs a few different distros of linux and other os's and more are in the works.

        I don't really agree with all the hype around IBM's open source moves. Seems like a lot of what they are doing is using open source as a way to get salespeople in the door to sell proprietary IBM solutions. That's not necessarily a bad thing depending on how it's done. Look at some of the Apache projects, things like Jetty where IBM was a big supporter until they decided it was good enough to fork it internally for WebSphere Portal. That's not so bad, the license allows it but it's still a bit messed up in my opinion.

        But other things like Derby and Geronimo are different all together. Take a look at the IBM Cloudscape pages. Cloudscape is not open source. It's "open source-based". They released the code as the Apache Derby project, but Cloudscape is not an open source project. The download link says "trials and betas". It may be free now but it has the potential of not being free when IBM senses it can charge for more than just support. Why would IBM release this? It's not because there weren't other open source java based RDBMS's out there. Hypersonic and Mckoi were already quite popular in that space and there are more. The difference is, Cloudscape has been designed to be a stepping stone to DB2. The java rdbms's have a niche market. One segment of which is users that want an easy portable system to develop on with little administrative requirements. These types generally outgrow the capabilities of such database systems and the user needs to migrate. If you're already using Cloudscape, the logical migration path is DB2. Which definately isn't free.

        Also look at their recent acquisition of Gluecode. This gives them the developers of the Geronimo project. It's going to turn into Websphere-Lite. Same type of deal with Cloudscape. Both of these will be at the expense of open source software that is trying to be real open source, not just a carrot on a stick. Hopefully people see this and projects like Jonas and JBoss continue to grow.

        I feel IBM is abusing the phrase "Open Source" in it's marketting where it's not appropriate. Like a couple of days ago when they announced they were moving to a more open source type of development for all their projects. They didn't say they were open sourcing all their projects, just that they will be using open source methodologies within IBM. I guess you could call it the Bazaar in the Cathedral. Yet so many mistakenly took the news to mean that ibm was doing more with open source and releasing more products via open source.

        To me it looks like IBM is turning Open Source into shareware. They have their free versions to tinker around with but when you're ready for the real thing, a non crippled version, you have to pay for it. From Jonathan Schwartz's Weblog [sun.com] we have this quote:

        "Jonas (Red Hat's app server) is just a toy, it's just for the low end" said IBM's exec at the Smith Barney Tech Conference I just attended in NYC.

        A similar message is presented (though a little less harshly) when IBM compares AIX to Linix [ibm.com]

        Also look at Eclipse. It's used as an IDE but in many respects it is crippled in that regard, it's real purpose is as a tools platform. To get real productivity out of it you need to purchase plug-ins or upgrade to professional tools based on Eclipse like WebSphere Studio. The Eclipse Foundation is working on a number of open sourc

  • How slow will this be? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Jason1729 ( 561790 ) on Friday June 17, 2005 @06:55AM (#12840196)
    Both Universities are hosting POWER5-based servers and are providing free SSH account access to the Open Source development community.

    The servers at my school ran painfully slow with a few dozen people connected through SSH and compiling assignments.

    Imagine the whole Open Source community logged in compiling code.
    • Imagine all open-source developers NOT logging in... :-)))
    • My uni had the same problem, but that's because a few of us went and compiled linux kernels after our assignments were done. The result: a higher point on the belle curve for moi!

    • Re:How slow will this be? (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Chanc_Gorkon ( 94133 ) <.moc.liamg. .ta. .nokrog.> on Friday June 17, 2005 @07:15AM (#12840298)
      Yes but were they Power 5's? I doubt it. The Power5 is VERY fast. We have 3 LPAR's on our system and many processors....one LPAR has 6 dedicated processors and one has 10 processors. Total ram for the system is 106 GB and we split that up between the LPARS.

    • Interesting, because the AIX-based RS/6000s my school used for remote access (they're still running, though less used than when I was there) were multi-processor 112MHz PowerPC machines (7013-J30, and 7013-J40).

      These handled the load VERY well, and even could handle MULTIPLE remote-X sessions of Pro/Engineer (serious CAD software) across the campus network to the dorms. Maybe hardware or maybe just AIX, but they could certanly handle a beating and keep on ticking responsively.
      • I have 2 AIX RS/6000's here at work. They are truely beasts, but not really that fast - be it multi user, single user or console - as other competing boxes. I dont run Pro/E on the AIX box, but I do run Dassault's CATIA v5 CAD System. I also run Pro/E on solaris and HPUX.

        In order of speed (for compiling and CAD work):
        1) HP Visualize Workstation C300. Runs 64-bit PA-RISC chip and costs about $500. By far the fastest machine to compile and design on. The HP compiler whines about everything though.
        2) Solari
        • Of course there are also two parts to "speed" for an interactive multi-user machine. There's response-time, where AIX really shined on those machines, and actual processing power. Even if it runs an intensive task slowly, the simple fact that it has snappy response to an interactive user's input (i.e. UI speed, even if command-line) tasks makes the machine feel a lot faster.

          I also do agree that Solaris is the friendliest, or at least the "cleanest feeling" commercial UNIX. Never messed much with HP-UX b
          • I agree that IBM designed AIX for optimal stability and load handling rather than speed. Each additional concurrent task seems to create less slowdown compared to the other platforms. Of course, this makes perfect sense, as RS/6000's were designed as heavy-load webservice & file servers, not desktop workstations.

            I would recommend the HP-UX platform for persons who wanted to get their feet wet in the world of UNIX. They are a fraction of the price of their more well known SUN and IBM counterparts, an
    • Was your school using 486 Minix servers or something?

      My school is running a fairly old quad-CPU Sun Sparc server with 4 GB of RAM. I don't know the exact clock frequency of it (how do you check that in Solaris?), but it is less than 1 GHz. Most of the time, more than 100 people are logged into it, and there are no speed problems whatsoever.

      I happen to have an account at the University of Augsburg as mentioned in this article, and that thing has 8 1.65 GHz POWER5 CPUs and 8 GBs of RAM. When I compile st

  • but... (Score:2, Funny)

    by goober1473 ( 714415 )
    Are IBM withdrawing the OpenPower Line?

  • PowerPC (Score:2, Funny)

    by Refrag ( 145266 )
    It's too bad they aren't promoting PowerPC.

    • Re:PowerPC (Score:1, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward
      I think IBM shot themselves in the foot by not working with Apple. One of the main reasons why the PowerPC architecture is so popular is because of Apple. Without Apple selling PowerPC machines in the future, it's going to be difficult for Linux users to get these systems, since not all of us have $5000 for a POWER workstation. nor have many heard of Genesi or Terrasoft.

      You kow what I would like to see? If Apple kept supporting PowerPC, but just in Powermacs, that would be great. An even better idea w

      • Re:PowerPC (Score:2, Informative)

        by Trigun ( 685027 )
        If you've ever worked on an IBM server, then you know why they are popular. The things are built rock solid, redundant everything, monitoring out the whazoo. In short, if it wasn't for the ever increasing processor speeds, then it would be a server that you plan to use for ten years.

        We have an IBM netfinity server, dual p3, and all we've ever had to do to it was replace one drive in our 1/2 TB array. It's an absolute beauty to use, and worth every penny we paid for it.
        • I got a 10 year old machine serving still =)
          nothing wrong with a P133 for a firewall/mail/dhcp server/content filter!

    • Re:PowerPC (Score:1, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      PowerPC is dead, in the end it turned out Altivec was the inferior technology holding the complete line back and couldn't scale at all in clock frequency. Power don't have Altivec and scale like there is no tomorrow. PowerPC was a bad and embarrasing move for IBM. Now they are back on track.

  • promotion (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Exter-C ( 310390 ) on Friday June 17, 2005 @06:58AM (#12840211) Homepage
    Realistically I feel that if IBM really want to premote the Power line or processors they will have to have a Apple style lower end system that can be purchased at a reasonable price. That will get people to buy.. Especially if for a time you could run MacOSX Linux, AIX , xBSD and whatever other Operating systems run on the PPC reliably.

    • They will have lower end systems that can be purchased at a reasonable price. They're called the PS3, XBox 360 and Nintendo Revolution. The future of the PC is in the living room. The desktop system as we know it is being squeezed out by gaming consoles and set-top boxes on the low-end and highly parallel servers on the high-end.
    • Realistically I feel that if IBM really want to premote the Power line or processors they will have to have a Apple style lower end system that can be purchased at a reasonable price.
      So what do you think they should do in order to promote it, then?
    • "Realistically I feel that if IBM really want to premote the Power line or processors they will have to have a Apple style lower end system that can be purchased at a reasonable price."

      You mean like a Playstation 3?
    • With this stuff, the sale of their PC manufacturing business, the Apple deal, and the PS3/Cell technical development, it looks like IBM is giving up on the desktop business. Perhaps they believe it will go away. Certainly the profit margins are not very attractive.
      Another article today lists iPods and Blackberries as some of the fastest growing businesses, and lately laptops have overtaken desktops in sales volume. I never really liked being tied to these desktop computers anyway, I want to do my computin
  • am i missing something, or is the jump in this article from IBM to war-t'-worlds a complete non-sequitur? WTF has IBM got to do with this movie or indeed any other?

  • Tinkering (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Donny Smith ( 567043 ) on Friday June 17, 2005 @07:03AM (#12840231)
    >provides the ability to tinker w/ Open Power platforms at the University of Augsburg and Peking University.

    I prefer to tinker with my x86 box at home.

    • I'm with you on this one. Wouldn't have anything else. Games don't run as well! lol! And when you can compile a linux kernel in under 15mins...

  • "Open" Power? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by chathamhouse ( 302679 ) on Friday June 17, 2005 @07:08AM (#12840252) Homepage
    You can buy power from... IBM. And it's not cheap. And it doesn't run AIX, only Linux. Sort of. Many applications require some porting love, as per the bounties on http://www.linuxonpower.com/ [linuxonpower.com]

    I generally like what IBM does, and use their x86 servers, storage, and software.

    But "Open" is pushing it here.

    I'd never be able to justify a recommendation to buy Open Power, that is, unless the sales guy left a flashy car in my parking spot...

    Jonathan Schwartz (Sun CTO) had it right when he noted that that was as silly as them shipping Open Sparc boxes. Mind you, there are Fujitsu SPARC64 chips, and OEM sparc-based system builders.

    Of course, IBM is just loving Solaris, particularly Solaris 10. Some assistance in your Solaris to Linux on Power migration? http://www-128.ibm.com/developerworks/linux/librar y/l-pow-portsolaris/ [ibm.com]
    (Though it is a well written piece - good quick guide to Linux and Solaris system calls, signals.)
    • One of the problems is IBM's use of product brands in relation to the POWER architecture.

      The real power of the open power concept is that IBM is opening the design of the entire architecture. [ibm.com] Has anyone else ever done that? Nothing on this scale that I know about.

      The article is about a particular part of this open process - allowing developers free access to an OpenPower 710 server. Have you looked at these things? The price [infoworld.com] is hard to beat for the performance.

      By the way - IBM does sell AIX 5.3 f [ibm.com]

    • Re:"Open" Power? (Score:3, Insightful)

      by delcielo ( 217760 )
      We have 4 of these boxes (2 running single RedHat images, and 2 running LPARS with SuSE, and quite frankly, they rock. So, if your software is supported why not put it on the platform that performs best? And by the way, the cost might seem high if you do the pricing on their website; but nobody buys direct from IBM at retail unless they're a fool. Get with a business partner who will use the discount list to get you a deal.

      You're right that it doesn't run AIX; but that's the whole point of the OpenPower
    • You can buy power from... IBM. And it's not cheap.


      Yeha it's not cheap in the same way that Adolph Hitler was not a nice guy. (Yeah I watched The Daily Show last night and I'm *still* going making a Hitler comparison).

      Their low end machine is on sale for a mere $8,881.55
    • You are mis-informed. You can run AIX, Linux and OS400 on POWER. p5 system or i5 system. The POWER processors have been powering the renamed RS/6000 (p5) and AS400 (i5) since the early to mid 90's. Linux has been available for years on these boxes.
      • The article was discussing the Open Power systems, i.e. OpenPower 710, 720. Quoth the IBM literature, they have been optimized for linux, and ship with Linux only. Running AIX and OS400 on them is not supported, and probably prohibited by some evil trinket :)

        The POWER chip is a different story, and yes, is availble in other lines of IBM servers that do run a wider range of OSes.

        Virtualization is your friend, but don't get the sales people started...
    • Jonathan Schwartz (Sun CTO) had it right when he noted that that was as silly as them shipping Open Sparc boxes.

      I assume you mean it's silly because IBM is the only source for POWER, so it's not very open. Schwartz wrote as much in his blog entry on OpenPower [sun.com]. His main gripe is that the box doesn't run AIX (that's a bad thing?!). So the real question is, does POWER's awesome integer (read database) performance justify double or treble the hardware cost of an x86 server?

  • Maybe they should give away a few hundred or so low-end servers. I wouldn't mind getting one. I'll even pay for the shipping.
    • Maybe they should give away a few hundred or so low-end servers. I wouldn't mind getting one. I'll even pay for the shipping.

      That sounds like an excellent way to sell POWER systems. So you would give them a credit card to put a hold on while you're evaluating the system and if you like it you keep it and they charge you... if not you send it back with a modest 10% restocking fee. I like it.

      • They could even hire a couple of cheezy actors and put together an infomercial.
        Normally you can expect to pay $10,995 for other high end unix servers, but act now and you can get this IBM POWER 5 server for only three equal payments of $1999.95, and we'll also throw in a copy of Red Hat Linux for Dummies, part of the popular 'For Dummies' series that you most certainly have on your shelves at home already! Use priority code 'POWER5' and get an additional 64 meg USB Dongle ABSOLUTELY FREE!
    • I'll be in the queue for a p550 entry level system please ;)

  • i dunno (Score:4, Insightful)

    by ed__ ( 23481 ) on Friday June 17, 2005 @07:19AM (#12840318) Journal
    I have doubts about any effort like this working if people can't get their hands on systems of their own. A login with strings attached just isn't all that compelling. With Apple switching to Intel, the prospect of the continued availibility of only-a-little-overpriced, mass-market PPC (ie POWER-ish) systems is fading. Mac systems will be available for some time now, but Apple's Switch casts a pall over the whole affair.

    If IBM wants to push their system they may do well to subsidize cheap PPC systems to this particular niche to gain mindshare, familiarity, and visibility with people who may be in a position to drive iseries server purchases later on.

    I know they have eval systems, does anyone know what the costs are?

    Or maybe it wouldn't help; it'd still be nice.

    • Re:i dunno (Score:1, Informative)

      by DJProtoss ( 589443 )
      Sorry to nitpick, but presumably you meant "people who are in a position to drive pseries server purchases - iseries are the intel based boxes...
      • actually iSeries is the box formerly known as AS/400 and it is Power. pSeries was RS6000 and I think is now pretty much identical to the microcode level to the iseries hardware but runs AIX. If you want an intel box you need an xSeries, these were netfinity. If you want a laptop then you will be getting a thinkpad from Lenovo. Funnily enough you can get a Thinkpad iseries or xseries but that has nothing to do with AS/400 or Netfinity, just a left hand vs right hand cockup. Someone said recently on the subje

      • iseries are the intel based boxes


        No, iSeries is the former AS/400 [ibm.com].

      • yay, i turned out to be right this time (see other replies). that said, you are correct in believing i have no idea what i'm talking about.

    • However, all you PPC fans should look to Amiga in the long run. Yes, they're back with a line of G3 and G4 based systems. They are very pricey, mind.
      • However, all you PPC fans should look to Amiga in the long run. Yes, they're back with a line of G3 and G4 based systems.

        No, they aren't.

        The dysfunctional hardware that's been sporadically hawked for several years now to a closed off "Amiga market" as so called "AmigaOnes" for $800-900 a piece are relabelled $500 Teron series motherboards from Mai Logic. Only some 700 suckers bit the bait. Also, they are only sold in G3 configs, not G4. It is unclear if Mai Logic are still alive, but what is clear is tha
  • Historically, putting "Open" in a product name or service has been a useful warning sign, similar to "Honest" on a used card dealer's lot.

    For example, "OpenVMS", "MVS Open Edition", "Open Desktop" or "Open Server", ...

    Unfortunately this is no longer a reliable guide, as some open systems and open source organizations have muddied the waters by using it in the previous (and, for a time, obsolete) sense.
  • But an attempt to get some applications ported to Linux for the power series.

    I've been evaluating Linux at my present employment, and what was lacking most in the IBM solution was available software for the POWER series Linux OS.

    At the moment, many large enterprise, infrastructer applications have been ported to linux for Intel (most even come with RedHat and SuSE packages), but of the 5 applications we require, only TSM backup was offered for Linux on power arch. This list includes BMC, EMC, and Bin

  • too little too late? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by CowbertPrime ( 206514 ) <sirmoo@cowb e r t .2y.net> on Friday June 17, 2005 @07:38AM (#12840438) Homepage
    Clock for clock, for pure computational demands, very little beats 64bit POWER architecture with real vector instructions. I'd definitely like to see IBM sell something like an apple xserve for us relatively poor scientists who want POWER for doing lots of raw number crunching: fft and molecular dynamics in particular.
    • An OpenPower 710 will cost you about $3500 (you might even be able to find it cheaper) as opposed to $3000 for a comparable X Server. It's not that big a difference! I'd pay an extra $500 for the openness and reliability of IBM kit. (No - I don't work for IBM! I'm just a satisfied customer.)
      • The power 5 kit is so much better then an xserve. The chips are faster, it supports more memory, the OS is fully 64 bit, etc...

        I'm not an IBM employee, I just use kick ass power 5 based systems at work.
    • That would be the OpenPOWER 710 or 720. They're more accessible for less-funded departments than a pSeries. They only run Linux though.
    • I agree w/ parent. I also think this is more of a reaction to apple dropping them than anything else...

  • PowerPC to the people (Score:5, Insightful)

    by rbanffy ( 584143 ) on Friday June 17, 2005 @07:57AM (#12840555) Homepage Journal
    Without entry-level, inexpensive and interesting (i.e. "Xenon-based" or dual-core FreeScale G4s), PPC Linux will starve to death.

    Nobody will pay more than what a entry-level x86 costs for an entry-level PPC system.

    IBM and FreeScale (the current most affected by Apple's switch) should think about getting simple Linux based PPC desktops at rock-bottom prices in the hands of developers, even if it means selling them at a loss.

    When developers lose interest in a platform, it is doomed.
    • But if IBM wasn't that interested Apple's business why would they be interested in this?
    • You mean something like this

      http://www.pegasosppc.com/products.php [pegasosppc.com]

      Theyve been around for some time it seems.
      • The ones I looked at are still quite a bit more expensive than a Mac Mini.

        • Slower than a Mac mini 1Ghz G4 and 800Mhz G3 options, at nearly twice the price. I am curious what markets need this sort of thing. For better or worse, x86 is dominating or heavily intruding on most markets. For most embedded use, x86 systems seem to generally have the least expensive total system cost. How the next game consoles beat this, I'm not sure, other than sheer volume.
          • Yes ill admit those boxes do suck lol.

            Realy i think its going to come down to a simple thing. $

            Designing hardware is expensive work.

            Fortunatly there are effrots to make this change.

            Some enterprising folks are designing Open Hardware along similar lines as the Sparc standard (though cheaper and more flexible)

            So perhaps if we start seeing some "BSD Hardware Licence" type thing. Where you can get a CPU made from whoever sells them. and theres a mounting board that connects to the memory board, southbridge
    • I think that you're falling into the trap of looking at the PowerPC chip as an alternative to x86- or 68000-class chips. But have a look at the diversity of systems that use these IBM chips. It's not just PCs or low-level servers but goes all the way through the IBM range. We're talking about really serious heavy metal here.

      Losing Apple's custom is just a fleabite and won't have any appreciable effect of the development of PPC applications, Linux or other. We're not talking Dell or Apple here, it's a whole

  • I've got one here (Score:5, Interesting)

    by IGnatius T Foobar ( 4328 ) on Friday June 17, 2005 @08:53AM (#12840954) Homepage Journal
    We've got an OpenPOWER 720 in our data center as part of IBM's push to get everyone to try it out, and let me tell you, this architecture is fast. Blazingly fast. From the zippy CPU's to the efficient bus design, it just crunches through the most demanding data tasks effortlessly.

    There are some caveats, though. One is that it does run hot. I wouldn't recommend keeping this type of machine running anywhere other than an air conditioned data center. You can feel the hot air blasting out the front of the chassis. The other thing is that because it's designed for virtualization, getting it booted up can be somewhat cumbersome. It actually requires a separate computer (an ordinary PC, as shipped) to run the software that configures partitions and manages the boot process.

    Other than that, though, this is a great way to get a smaller version of what "big iron" can deliver, at a decent price.
  • Given the wonderful job IBM has done promoting OS/2 and promoting Lotus SmartSuite and all of the other myriad products that have failed due to poor marketing and execution on their part I am not holding my breath that this boutique architecture will ever make it out of the outrageously expensive corportate data center. If you are going to be running Linux anyway I can't see that it is worth the price increase and the trouble to do it on Power. How many more Opteron boxes can you buy for the same money?

  • We evaluated linux on the p720 (Score:1, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward
    The 720 is tweaked so it will not run AS/400 or AIX, but only linux. We chose SUSE because RedHat wanted to charge per LPAR. We found that no matter what we tried, after running an online update, we had an unbootable system. We had the IBM techs in for a week and after loading the system several times and updating it they continued to get the same results.

    We cancelled our order and shipped back the eval units. We have no problems with Dell (after adding intel nics because the broadcom like to die).

  • IBM prices (Score:2, Insightful)

    by charlieo88 ( 658362 )
    If IBM was really serious about this, they'd make a system that you could buy for a couple hundred bucks.

    I'd buy a PowerPC motherboard that had standard ATX power connections, IDE/SATA, maybe some PCI slots, maybe SMP. But I'm not going to spend >$3k thank you very much. I, and I'm sure others, would love to tinker with PowerPC chips if it wasn't cheaper to buy a Mac instead.
    • I, and I'm sure others, would love to tinker with PowerPC chips if it wasn't cheaper to buy a Mac instead.

      Ah, but IBM has solved that problem, by forcing Apple to eliminate those pesky low-priced PowerPC systems...

    • I'd buy a PowerPC motherboard that had standard ATX power connections, IDE/SATA, maybe some PCI slots, maybe SMP.


      Here you go. [pegasosppc.com]

  • I can't wait... we are getting on for Development, and they are going to let me work with IBM PS's to install it. I really dig the technology, and I think the Virtual IO system that they have, along with some of the newer stuff, like the Virtual Storage Controller (which is fscking amazing!!!). We'll see how it goes.
    What *I* don't know yet, is if we are going to go Linux or AIX with that platform. We're just kicking the ideas around the next couple of weeks. :) Jho
  • Am I glad that all the subsidies I pay to support IBM in America are funding the tech advantages they're offering students in China. How about IBM sends free POWER devkits to every flagship state college in America?

    • You should be glad. This is a trojan horse. Open POWER is dead, it's all a clever trick to get the Chinese to waste time on an amazing yet dead-in-the-water technology.

      Chalk one up for India.

      Oh, I'm sorry, did you want something good to happen to the US?

  • Q: Why do you do it??

    A: The P-P-P-Power!

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