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From Slashdot:
"According to this story, IBM is planning on introducing low-end SMP servers and deskside machines based on the PPC970. The machines would be able to run Linux and AIX. A 4-way machine is expected to cost less than $3500! IBM expects a 20x increase in the number of PPC Linux servers by 2006."

http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,3959,1197450,00.asp

[bloodline]

mdma wrote:
From Slashdot:
"According to this story, IBM is planning on introducing low-end SMP servers and deskside machines based on the PPC970. The machines would be able to run Linux and AIX. A 4-way machine is expected to cost less than $3500! IBM expects a 20x increase in the number of PPC Linux servers by 2006."

http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,3959,1197450,00.asp

Yup, and since they use OF, expect to see AROS on them :-)

[Gaidheal]

Wooohooo! Been waiting for this....

No prizes for guessing my upgrade path :¬)

[KennyR]

$3500 is cheap??!?

(Okay, it is for this kind of hardware. It's still out of the price range of 98% of computer users though).

[Jose]

Hope they make OS4 drivers for it, even if it runs just on 32bit mode. Wasn't OSX goind to run on 32bit mode too, at least for now?
This is the big advantage of HAL, now they only (ok , maybe not so trivial ) have to do the drivers for it.

[KennyR]

Why would they make OS4 drivers for it?

[iamaboringperson]

wow! that is cheap and ibm make such good machines too!

i wonder if MorphOS will be ported to it?

[iamaboringperson]

Jose wrote:
Hope they make OS4 drivers for it, even if it runs just on 32bit mode. Wasn't OSX goind to run on 32bit mode too, at least for now?
This is the big advantage of HAL, now they only (ok , maybe not so trivial ) have to do the drivers for it.

:-? who's 'they'?

and there is not really any such '32-bit mode'
32bit software just runs on 64bit cpus

[Jose]

I hope someone makes AOS4 drivers for it that's all.
For the very same reason some people would like MOS drivers for it.
That's all folks.

[iamaboringperson]

What are you going to use the drivers with? linux?
Jose, there is no point in making 'OS4 drivers' if there is no AOS4 on it!

[MarkTime]

Yes 3500 is cheap, for a 4 way blade server.

Don't forget the low end is a 2 way configuration.
and that version will be less than 3500.

One could only hope it comes in at 1500 or so....its all good news anyway, cause it means the 970 has a long lifespan and should remain competitive for a while.

[CodeSmith]

@IAABP:

I think he means OS4 motherboard drivers (like Windows has Intel and VIA motherboard drivers that come on a CD with the motherboard). On an OS that has a HAL (like Windows NT and AmigaOS, dunno about MOS, probably does) the motherboard is just another "device" for which you write drivers.

[CodeSmith]

@bloodline:

Although OF is a pretty good idea, you're a bit limited in the gfx cards that you can use (ie "Mac" gfx cards), and they are usually more expensive. It might be a good idea to add a UBoot driver to AROS, so you can have both. With UBoot you can use cheap "PC" gfx cards (it's got a built-in x86 emulator so the card's BIOS can run on that). Since it's on SourceForge (or if not, should be by the time AOS4 is released), it should not be too difficult to find out what you need.

[Madgun68]

Although OF is a pretty good idea, you're a bit limited in the gfx cards that you can use (ie "Mac" gfx cards), and they are usually more expensive. It might be a good idea to add a UBoot driver to AROS, so you can have both. With UBoot you can use cheap "PC" gfx cards (it's got a built-in x86 emulator so the card's BIOS can run on that). Since it's on SourceForge (or if not, should be by the time AOS4 is released), it should not be too difficult to find out what you need.

Surely this isn't completely true. The Voodoo3 in my Pegasos machine is PC centric, not a Mac version. I've also had my pc's Radeon card running in the machine too.

[Floid]

CodeSmith wrote:
Although OF is a pretty good idea, you're a bit limited in the gfx cards that you can use (ie "Mac" gfx cards), and they are usually more expensive. It might be a good idea to add a UBoot driver to AROS, so you can have both. With UBoot you can use cheap "PC" gfx cards (it's got a built-in x86 emulator so the card's BIOS can run on that). Since it's on SourceForge (or if not, should be by the time AOS4 is released), it should not be too difficult to find out what you need.

It depends on the OF, obviously; whoever wrote Genesi's has included support, so far as I know. The question will be whether IBM follows suit, or decides these are destined for the datacenter anyway, and don't make such concessions.

The 'rack/deskside model' would have to have a graphics option of some form - either a generic onboard chipset, if it's a pricey pizza box, or a high-end solution if it's designed for visualization work. (I'd be most surprised to see a high-end 'consumer' chipset, but the PPC division *have* collaborated with a certain ATI in the recent past...)

Also, as far as I know, there's not much stopping the appropriate emulator (or just direct driver code) from running in software. Apple doesn't want to do it because it's a kludge, and would further discourage vendors from producing Mac versions of their product ('Works with Mac!' shelf presence is an important advertising tool, as always)... but if you don't mind keeping the original card in for the first display/boot-time diagnostics/OF-hacking-or-poking-with-sticks, I don't think there's any barrier to firing up a 'generic' Wintel card after/while the OS loads. (Seriously, anyone know if this works under, say, YellowDog or Debian kernels on a Mac? I could swear it does.)

If it ends up PCI-X and AGPless, as many 'server' boards are appearing these days, it's not like you'll lose much of anything picking one slot over another. (As an example, here's an Opteron board with a diagram of its slot layout.)

Now, the question is whether OS4, or MOS for that matter, will have SMP support worth the port...