[BlueOnyx:12401] Re: BlueOnyx on alternative platforms

[Rickard Osser]

Hi Chris!

DEC and Compaq merged in 1998, 
if (the cabinet says Compaq) {
	it's newer other
} else {
	it's older
}

I remember all the talk about SMP and Alpha in Linux during 1995-96...
Linus himself was had an Alpha at home which Maddog fixed for him.
Maddog was working at DEC at the time.

Just 2 bits of history:
During the mid 90's I was working as a consultant for Telia (Swedish
Telecom) and we had 2 or 3 Sparcstations lying around, collecting dust
as I built quite a few PC-workstations/PC-servers at the time for
running Linux. I found a lot of info about the Sparc port of Linux and
that was at the time maintained by a certain David S Miller...





Anybody know who he is?




David S Miller of Cobalt Micro Inc, our old MIPS maintainer for Q2700,
Qube2 and the original MIPS RaQs.


Best regards,

Rickard

On tis, 2013-03-05 at 09:45 -0600, Chris Gebhardt - VIRTBIZ Internet
wrote:
> On 3/5/2013 9:04 AM, Jeff Rhys-Jones wrote:
> > If you heard a distant 'boooo!' that was just me learning the very sad news that there will never be an ARM port of BX.
> >
> > If I ever win the lottery, I'm going to visit Michael with a suitcase of money specifically for BX on ARM.
> >
> > With my ear to his development studio door, listening for signs of progress - I suspect I would hear alternate screams, laughs, screams.
> >
> > Would be well worth it IMHO!
> 
> The really lovely thing about an OpenSource project is that if somebody 
> wants something badly enough, it's possible to get involved with the 
> project and make something happen rather than forever being stuck with 
> only what the vendor will release.
> 
> As for platforms other than i386 or x86_64, the fact of the matter is 
> there just isn't enough of it out there to really warrant the resources 
> necessary to make it happen.
> 
> ARM architecture rocks, and as a datacenter owner, I look forward to the 
> day when more stuff moves that direction.  Have you heard about  The 
> electric and cooling requirements for some of the gear that is rumoured 
> to be in the works is roughly half the equivalent x86 gear.  Electricity 
> is our number one cost, and it would be fantastic to be able to devote 
> those resources elsewhere.
> 
> The trouble, for now at least, is that the niche is so small.  Think 
> about the number of BlueOnyx users that are out there.  Sure there are a 
> lot of us but in the grand scheme, we're a drop in the bucket.  Now 
> consider how many of the BlueOnyx users would really and honestly get 
> excited enough about an ARM port to ditch their current gear and invest 
> in new stuff.  I mean, as cool as having 4 CPU cores, drive controller 
> and up to 10GigE Ethernet all on a single stamping sounds, how many 
> small operators (the core of BlueOnyx's base) will be in favor of 
> casting off their commodity hardware when the real-world benefits to 
> them will be minimal?
> 
> It's not that I don't support the concept, but in terms of 
> prioritization, there are other things that are well ahead in line when 
> considering how BlueOnyx can continue to evolve, improve and pick up 
> additional user-base.
> 
> But yeah, when we start spending our suitcases of money on alternate 
> platform development, I've got a couple I'll enjoy exploring.  One of 
> them is DEC Alpha.  We've got a massive Alpha running in a corner of the 
> DAL1 datacenter that will be finally coming out of production next year. 
>   It predates my involvement in the business and my understanding is it 
> first went online in 1992.  The thing has not been rebooted in 4 years. 
>   It sits there on its own dedicated 3-phase 208V power, along-side its 
> drive array cabinet.  There is an entire 42U cabinet loaded with drive 
> shelves and PDU that consumes about 60amps of 208 single-phase.  All 
> those drives come together to make a 1TB volume.  Yes, you read 
> correctly.   In terms of stability, reliability, and bullet-proof, I 
> haven't personally seen anything that comes close, although I've heard 
> many stories.  I've been on console with it a handful of times and AIX 
> looks neat, but it's kind of like an American trying to understand 
> Welsh.  It's kind of similar, just different enough to be confusing.   I 
> can't wait to play with it.  :)   BlueOnyx would be fun on it.
>