o-----------ooO--(- Important Message -)--Ooo------------o | | | SAVE BANDWITH, SPACE, TIME & MONEY, REPLY WITH PRUDENCE.| | | o----=[ Penguin @ My - Linux ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) ]=----o Monday, August 16, 1999 The Darwinist: PowerPC and the penguin By Stephan Somogyi All of a sudden, without much in the way of advance warning, PowerPC is experiencing an renaissance -- one that has absolutely nothing to do with the Mac. It looks like PowerPC could well become the preferred RISC architecture for Linux. Admittedly, PowerPC isn't even part of the main Linux kernel tree at the moment, but that will change sooner rather than later. Now that PowerPC is actually getting a little scrutiny from -- and mind share in -- the open-source community, its capabilities are comparing quite favorably with other hardware platforms. Hardware! Cheap! Back in the heady days of Power Mac clones, the Common Hardware Reference Platform (CHRP) was the great hope of cheap and powerful PowerPC systems. The plan was to take a page from the Wintel world and define a basic set of standard motherboard features for PowerPC-based systems. The idea was to combine the simplicity of CHRP with economies of scale to drive hardware prices down to where Wintel systems were. In those days, it looked like Windows NT and Solaris were also going to be available for PowerPC, not just the Mac OS. But, as we know, Microsoft pulled the plug on NT for PowerPC, and Sun is far too busy redefining cars as Java browsers with wheels to be bothered. This leaves Linux, which is booming. With better-late-than-never timing, IBM Microelectronics last week announced the license-free availability of a bare-bones, yet functional, motherboard design based on the PowerPC 750 (a k a the G3). Anyone can take the schematics and build boards without paying IBM a penny. They can also use the design as a foundation and add new features as desired. IBM's motives are obvious: Its Microelectronics division sells processors. Encouraging PowerPC-based Linux boxes has great potential for selling loads of chips and generating concomitant loads of revenue. Since the 750 has some spiffy specs, it represents a proven technology produced in high volume, and its price is dwindling, what better chip to power Linux boxes? Software! In the channel! But the good news isn't all hardware-related. Earlier this month, Yellow Dog Linux announced that it had made deals with two software distributors and a mail-order house to offer its PowerPC Linux distribution to a more commercially oriented audience. This is an important move when it comes to fostering the increasing acceptance of Linux's PowerPC flavor among the corporate IT types. It's been done on the x86 side, but this is the first such effort for PowerPC. Games! Drivers! But things aren't just corporate at Yellow Dog. In mid-July, it did a deal with Loki Games to make sure that all the games that Loki ports to Linux will also be available for Linux on PowerPC. That said, graphics performance is critical to games. Unfortunately, Linux support for contemporary Apple graphics hardware, which is based on ATI's Rage Pro and Rage 128 chips, is nonexistent. So I was hugely pleased to hear from ATI last week that it is working with select external developers to create accelerated drivers for PowerPC-based Linux. Being the paranoid sort, I asked whether ATI would permit the resulting drivers, whose development would be based on detailed -- and presumably NDA'd -- information, to be open source. The answer was a definite "yes." Alpha is ailing! Long live PowerPC! It's well-known now that Linux boxes based on the DEC Alpha processor were used to render some of the effects in "Titanic." For obvious reasons, x86 boxes with their quantitatively and qualitatively dismal floating-point performance weren't appropriate to this task. But the 64-bit Alpha processors are expensive, and Alpha's future in general is uncertain. Systems based on Intel's Merced are still a year or so away, and they're going to be quite expensive. PowerPC, on the other hand, has excellent floating-point performance, today, for cheap. With the forthcoming AltiVec-enhanced PowerPC chips, the potential for computationally impressive, yet comparatively inexpensive, PowerPC Linux boxes gets even better. Even better, if rumors are to be believed, the forthcoming PowerPC generation will once again have solid multiprocessor support, which was last seen in the 604. Since one of the most touted features of the Linux 2.2 kernel is its multiprocessor features, the G4 series of chips will be a big deal for Linux. Just imagine what a Beowulf cluster of multiprocessor G4 boxes could do. And for how little money. Assuming someone takes IBM up on its offer and builds inexpensive PowerPC boxes for Linux, Alpha won't be the RISC favorite for Linux much longer. And indications of this shift are already appearing. By sheerest coincidence, I discovered that Urchin, a Web server log-analysis tool, is available in only two Linux flavors: the ubiquitous x86 and -- you guessed it! -- PowerPC. - o----------------ooO--(- Disclaimer / Footer -)--Ooo-----------------o | | | [EMAIL PROTECTED] and other email IDs under my-linux.org are owned | | by My-Linux. If you see any suspicious looking email ids under | | my-linux.org, the matter should be referred to [EMAIL PROTECTED] for | | clarification. | | | | This document and any attachments are strictly confidential and | | intended for the use of addressee only unless otherwise indicated. | | This message must not be copied or disseminated to any other person | | without our prior written consent. | | | | news://my.enemy.org/my-linux.bincang http://ku.rindu.net/penguin/ | | unsubscribe echo "unsubscribe penguin"|mail [EMAIL PROTECTED] | | | o-----------=[ Penguin @ My - Linux ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) ]=-----------o
