On Mar 17, 2008, at 5:55 AM, Cyril Plisko wrote: > On Mon, Mar 17, 2008 at 2:23 PM, ken mays <maybird1776 at yahoo.com> > wrote: >>> Dennis clarke said: >>> "However, this project will only be able to succeed >>> with a business relationship that supports the >>> server centric focus of Solaris..." > [snip] > Are there any real (even more or less) PPC based desktop products > available today ? > I mean both PowerMac and ODW became history. With that in mind, what > "desktop" hardware are we talking about. > I know you one pick up an oldish machines on ebay or something like > that, but I do not think this will help us in a long-term. > If there is not viable PPC based desktop hardware today, why try to > target this segment at all ?
I'd suggest that by interpreting this choice as "targeting a segment", you're missing the point. It's a simple practical decision with the sole aim to lower the bar for accessibility to hardware for folks who would like to contribute their efforts to the PPC port. Yes, PPC macs are dead. They don't have the availability issue of the genesi, run OF out of the box (a known quantity for folks coming from/familiar with SPARC hardware), and SMP machines are also very inexpensive. They are a very practical springboard for PPC development. Furthermore, there are some very respectable (and affordable) CPU upgrades available for legacy PowerMac G4 hardware available today. They are based on Freescale 7448 and 7447A and compete computationally with the performance of modern hardware, although you do still have limitations with regards to system bus speeds, etc. The PowerMac is simply the most practical, available, and affordable hardware solution that's available today and doesn't cost an arm and a leg. It's an "easy win", and once it works reliabliy then the next step would probably be to look at migrating the code to POWER5 or POWER6, perhaps with IBMs sponsorship or a simple donation of hardware to pursue that goal. > > >> Going back to corporate sponsorship, does this lock us >> down to the main sponsor and their hardware? If so, > > I think it locks us down not more than our previous decision > standardize on ODW. > After all we enjoyed Genesi' sponsorship for quite some time. > >> then discussions about the 'other' hardware will >> become a moot point very soon?? ;o) > > And here we are - discussing our 'other' options B-) > > -- > Regards, > Cyril > _______________________________________________ > powerpc-discuss mailing list > powerpc-discuss at opensolaris.org
