very good report, tom
r-a-c.de
SGI: Discussion
Itaniums? sgi to use Dorado line to boost workstations? - Page 2
foetz wrote: very good report, tom
*bows*
Cheers,
TOM
--
"Tell them we are not Gods, but SysAdmins, which is the next best thing,"
"Tell them we are not Gods, but SysAdmins, which is the next best thing,"
Would NASA have even bothered to talk to SGI for Columbia if it was Origin 3000 based? No, of course not
In case you still don't know - "Columbia" was almost entirely "donated" to NASA by SGI. They rushed to set it up quickly right before November Top 500 HPC list, so they could be on or near the top of the list for Altix "promotion" purpose. "Columbia", various sources estimate, at that time represnted around 10% of ALL global Itanium2 processor sales. When somebody has to "donate" 10% of all global sales of a new processor just to convince customers about their new system then that is more a sign of weakness for that company than some big success.
No, of course not - they would have gone to IBM.
It's quite funny that you wrote this line because:
"..If Itanium2 failes, SGI will be bought by IBM and their engineers will be used to boost new IBM systems with their experince.."
..was (or similar) written just a few months ago at HPC forum by someone close to IBM or SGI. Then, about a week later, I checked again at that forum and saw a very wierd thing - the posted message, and even all messages posted under (actually almost all messages on forum) were deleted (it's quite empty now), by administrator(s). Lots of people from industry come to visit TOP 500 site, sometimes even SGI has ads there, and SGI probably demanded for those messages quoting that they'll be bought by IBM be deleted.
It probably is not a secret in industry and business world any more that SGI will be bought by IBM in the end. The primary force of any high-tech company is always (and ONLY) innovation, new technology, helping new scientific research and so on. Once you loose that - it's over. You can't reinvent another HP zx6000 or claim to be serious scientific supercomputing company while posting news on your website that should attract religion-decision based shareholders and customers!
Why exactly would IBM buy SGI, and where did you get the notion that Columbia was "donated" by SGI to AMES, if anything... Columbia is what has kept SGI alive, seriously.
Hmm... While SGI is certainly ahead of the game as far as the
technology
that goes into their systems... I think that it may be time to start beefing up on some of the
specifications
of said technology.
I don't actually know how terrible it'd be for SGI or MIPS Technologies to produce a GHz+ processor, especially considering that Sandcraft and other similar vendors have got them going at 900MHz and other near-GHz speeds...
I think that once SGI approaches that four digit number closer, people will be less uneasy about their systems...
In addition, I think that a new workstation would be a great thing to see... inexpensive lil' thing, but also rather kickass... dual processors, inbuilt optical drive(IDE), two SATA channels, and an external scsi port.
I would not be offended at all if SGI started using not-so-expensive-and-proprietary memory too... so this thing's got to have DDR
Put it in a slab style workstation case, like the Indy and NeXTSlab, add in USB2 and 1394, onboard, with proper support in the OS and drivers, price it at $8500 (or less), and they'd sell like hotcakes. (maybe?)
I'd certainly love to see what might happen if you took the awesome underpinnings from an OS like IRIX, and applied that to Mac OS... and then applied the hardware innovations (with appropriate system modifications) to PowerPC hardware that could run Mac OS...
Can you say v14 and v16 in the new line of SGI PowerMac G5's, with quad 3GHz processors?
(yeah, I'm a dreamer
)
I don't actually know how terrible it'd be for SGI or MIPS Technologies to produce a GHz+ processor, especially considering that Sandcraft and other similar vendors have got them going at 900MHz and other near-GHz speeds...
I think that once SGI approaches that four digit number closer, people will be less uneasy about their systems...
In addition, I think that a new workstation would be a great thing to see... inexpensive lil' thing, but also rather kickass... dual processors, inbuilt optical drive(IDE), two SATA channels, and an external scsi port.
I would not be offended at all if SGI started using not-so-expensive-and-proprietary memory too... so this thing's got to have DDR
Put it in a slab style workstation case, like the Indy and NeXTSlab, add in USB2 and 1394, onboard, with proper support in the OS and drivers, price it at $8500 (or less), and they'd sell like hotcakes. (maybe?)
I'd certainly love to see what might happen if you took the awesome underpinnings from an OS like IRIX, and applied that to Mac OS... and then applied the hardware innovations (with appropriate system modifications) to PowerPC hardware that could run Mac OS...
Can you say v14 and v16 in the new line of SGI PowerMac G5's, with quad 3GHz processors?
(yeah, I'm a dreamer
)
I [heart] the Performer Town Demo
SGI's 'swmanager' is the *only* package manager that I've found that can let you downgrade a whole OS a few notches, and not break very much, if anything at all. Apt-get, I've had dependency hell with in the past, and if you read the instructions, even *they* say that sometimes it's just easier to reformat and start again if you get into trouble.
Diego wrote: and good drivers for the ATI graphic boardset
Let me guess, that will happen right after hell has frozen over
Matthias
Life is what happens while we are making other plans
Dr. Dave wrote: SGI's 'swmanager' is the *only* package manager that I've found that can let you downgrade a whole OS a few notches, and not break very much, if anything at all. Apt-get, I've had dependency hell with in the past, and if you read the instructions, even *they* say that sometimes it's just easier to reformat and start again if you get into trouble.
Thanks, I'm more happy now.
Seems that I'm not the only one saying that.
Brombear wrote:Diego wrote: and good drivers for the ATI graphic boardset
Let me guess, that will happen right after hell has frozen over
Matthias
I do believe the correct phrase is "When Satan skates into work"
swmanager is IMHO one of the best assets of Irix, however my only pet peeve is that the installation process of the OS itself is a tad retarded, but once you get it going swmanager rules!
I do not think there is really any equivalent in the free software community. Although I am partial to the ports from the *BSDs and gentoo emerge when it comes to dealing with free OS. Apt-get is also rather powerful, but I do not think the dependency hell is a fault of the tool but rather the software being managed itself. You still have to deal with the dependency hell when installing gnu stuff under swmanager... so I think people are confusing the installation tool with the faults of the software being installed
On the other hand, apt-get and its ilk can do things that swmanage can't like installing packages on demand, try updating a gnu software toolchain with swmanager vs. apt-get. Swmanager is a wonderful tool, but seriously it shows its age, I really do not think it has been updated in like 10 yrs or so... IMHO.
I know that hindsight is 20/20 but my feeling is that SGI should have concentrated on just furthering their key technologies with NUMA-link and continue their gfx engines, and adopt a 3rd party CPU earlier in the game once they decided not to make MIPS a competitive platform like 5 yrs ago. At this point, even if SGI releases an $8K workstation it is almost impossible to justify purchasing one, unless you are on a very specific set of requirments which reduces significantly the target audience for these machines which puts SGI back to square one. Oh well....
I do not think there is really any equivalent in the free software community. Although I am partial to the ports from the *BSDs and gentoo emerge when it comes to dealing with free OS. Apt-get is also rather powerful, but I do not think the dependency hell is a fault of the tool but rather the software being managed itself. You still have to deal with the dependency hell when installing gnu stuff under swmanager... so I think people are confusing the installation tool with the faults of the software being installed
On the other hand, apt-get and its ilk can do things that swmanage can't like installing packages on demand, try updating a gnu software toolchain with swmanager vs. apt-get. Swmanager is a wonderful tool, but seriously it shows its age, I really do not think it has been updated in like 10 yrs or so... IMHO.
I know that hindsight is 20/20 but my feeling is that SGI should have concentrated on just furthering their key technologies with NUMA-link and continue their gfx engines, and adopt a 3rd party CPU earlier in the game once they decided not to make MIPS a competitive platform like 5 yrs ago. At this point, even if SGI releases an $8K workstation it is almost impossible to justify purchasing one, unless you are on a very specific set of requirments which reduces significantly the target audience for these machines which puts SGI back to square one. Oh well....
LaLora wrote:
Quote:
Would NASA have even bothered to talk to SGI for Columbia if it was Origin 3000 based? No, of course not
In case you still don't know - "Columbia" was almost entirely "donated" to NASA by SGI. They rushed to set it up quickly right before November Top 500 HPC list, so they could be on or near the top of the list for Altix "promotion" purpose.
I'm well aware of it - in what way does that change the fact that Columbia is still very technically advanced? Or that SGI would not have landed the deal if it was O3k instead of Altix?
I'd be very surprised if any of the bidders submitting quotes for Columbia asked for even 50% list price.
Once you leave the mass market toys and get to the big iron (16 way and upwards) no-one, ever, pays list price. At all.
'Headliner' systems like Blue Gene/L and Columbia are always *heavily* subsidised by the vendor. TOP500 is bragging rights, nothing else.
However, SGI could have given the kit away - for free - if it was MIPS based, and NASA still wouldn't have gone for it.
There's no loyalty in IT, and no-ones going to install a system that's significantly slower than the others on offer - especially not for a major installation like that.
LaLora wrote:
"Columbia", various sources estimate, at that time represnted around 10% of ALL global Itanium2 processor sales. When somebody has to "donate" 10% of all global sales of a new processor just to convince customers about their new system then that is more a sign of weakness for that company than some big success.
You appear to be confusing SGI with a mass market player like HP, Sun, or IBM.
They are not. They never have been, and they never will be. They are a niche player. They rule that niche, but it's still a niche.
Itanium is a niche CPU - anyone who believed it would be a mass-market solution can come to talk to me - I have a bridge to sell them. The market for Itanium is tiny - just as the market for MIPS or vector based systems is tiny.
The Earth Simulator was more than 10% of global vector-based systems sales when it was installed - doesn't mean it wasn't technically impressive, or that NEC were giving away kit out of desperation to stir the market.
High end system sales are very different from bulk desktop or 4 way server sales. Trying to quote numbers or systems shipped is just a nonsense in that space - that market doesn't work like that.
LaLora wrote:
Quote:
No, of course not - they would have gone to IBM.
It's quite funny that you wrote this line because:
"..If Itanium2 failes, SGI will be bought by IBM and their engineers will be used to boost new IBM systems with their experince.."
..was (or similar) written just a few months ago at HPC forum by someone close to IBM or SGI. Then, about a week later, I checked again at that forum and saw a very wierd thing - the posted message, and even all messages posted under (actually almost all messages on forum) were deleted (it's quite empty now), by administrator(s). Lots of people from industry come to visit TOP 500 site, sometimes even SGI has ads there, and SGI probably demanded for those messages quoting that they'll be bought by IBM be deleted.
It probably is not a secret in industry and business world any more that SGI will be bought by IBM in the end.
You don't honestly believe that? I mean, that's some serious tin-foil-hat paranoia going on there.
A post in a web forum does not a business decision make. Definitely not when it would involve hundreds of millions of dollars.
IBM will not buy SGI. At all. It's just not going to happen. Quite apart from the fact that SGI is dwarfed by IBM - an utterly insignificant player - IBM already have products in every area that SGI do.
Why on earth would IBM spend money to buy a non-competitive niche player when they already have higher volume sales from competing products?
Do you think IBM sales lose sleep at night when thinking of Altix vs. their POWER5/Linux business?
There's no business justification for it at all.
And that's not even touching on all the regulatory pain IBM would incur from the US goverment. Look at the hopes SGI had to jump through when buying Cray.
Governments don't like to see their technology suppliers being bought - it doesn't give them the warm fuzzies. They'd much rather bail them out with lucrative research grants and large scale projects. Look at how badly HP have screwed government departments over with their laughable Alpha 'road-map'.
The only people who might have had an interest in buying SGI would have been Sun - they need the high-end scalability. But not even Sun were willing to do a complete about face and swallow Itanium as their server CPU - so they jumped into bed with Fujitsu.
LaLora wrote:
The primary force of any high-tech company is always (and ONLY) innovation, new technology, helping new scientific research and so on. Once you loose that - it's over. You can't reinvent another HP zx6000 or claim to be serious scientific supercomputing company while posting news on your website that should attract religion-decision based shareholders and customers!
Which was what my post was all about.
SGI are still innovating, they're still ahead of the pack, and they therefore still have their little niche cornered. The day SGI stop innovating, you'll know about it, because they'll go under.
In the meantime, their stuff is technically excellent. The fact that it's no longer MIPS/IRIX should not blind any of you to their continuing innovation and - most importantly - their continued survival in a very harsh market.
Cheers,
TOM
_________________
--
"Tell them we are not Gods, but SysAdmins, which is the next best thing,"
schleusel wrote:
Dubhthach wrote:
As for the workstation, i find it interesting that they are going with twin AGP 8x, surely dual PCI-E 16x would have been better (well from a SLI point of view)
Prism still uses AGP 8x too. One can only guess why this is the case. Either it was already too long in development when the PCI Express hype started or they took the cheap route and simply built upon the AGP midplane of Onyx4 Ultimate Vision they already had.
Dorado is likely a repackaged Altix 350/Prism just like Tezro being a repackaged Origin 350/Onyx 350 IP.
Prism uses SGI's new Tio I/O chip which supports multiple AGP 8x interfaces.
Onyx4 UltimateVision used PCI to interface AGP cards at 1x.
It sounds like Dorado is just a workstation version of Prism.
Unless you need the NUMAlink kungfu, a dual Opteron + dual PCI-E 16x board will probably do just as well...
schleusel wrote:
Prism still uses AGP 8x too. One can only guess why this is the case.
Alexis Cousein did some posts in the filth that is comp.sys.sgi detailing why this was.
It basically boiled down to the long development lead time for stuff like this (ie. AGP 8x was there and usable, PCI-E was a glint in some working group's eye) as well as stable and well-tuned chipsets surrounding the AGP implementation of the ATI cores.
I believe there was also some development issues/costs associated with the XBOW->PCI->AGP bridges - as in AGP is just more crap on top of PCI, whereas PCI-E is fundamentally quite different.
Cheers,
TOM
_________________
--
"Tell them we are not Gods, but SysAdmins, which is the next best thing,"
Well, personally I'm looking forward to Dorado. Looks like it's gonna be the cheapest SGI yet, and they did a pretty good job with O2 as the cheapo, who knows what they can do with this! I may just have to buy one.
I notice a lot of people will scream for Tezro, but will slag off the IA64 machines. Hey, they're powerful as hell, and rumour has it that the caches on the new Itaniums will be HUUGE! OK, so Dorado is supposedly gonna have 3MB cache per chip, but that's cool for now. I'm just as pissed that we've lost MIPS and IRIX on the roadmap, but that doesn't mean I can't still use em. I still got 4 perfectly working IRIX/MIPS machines here, and just cos the new machine will be IA64/LINUX, doesn't mean they'll stop running.
I for one will look forward to having a play with Dorado, and if I like it, I'm having one ASAP!
Go ahead, flame away, I can take it!
I notice a lot of people will scream for Tezro, but will slag off the IA64 machines. Hey, they're powerful as hell, and rumour has it that the caches on the new Itaniums will be HUUGE! OK, so Dorado is supposedly gonna have 3MB cache per chip, but that's cool for now. I'm just as pissed that we've lost MIPS and IRIX on the roadmap, but that doesn't mean I can't still use em. I still got 4 perfectly working IRIX/MIPS machines here, and just cos the new machine will be IA64/LINUX, doesn't mean they'll stop running.
I for one will look forward to having a play with Dorado, and if I like it, I'm having one ASAP!
Go ahead, flame away, I can take it!
_________________
Antnee wrote:
Go ahead, flame away, I can take it!
Good attitude!
Cheers!
Dubhthach wrote:
As for the workstation, i find it interesting that they are going with twin AGP 8x, surely dual PCI-E 16x would have been better (well from a SLI point of view)
Actually for the time being AGP is still more optimized than PCI-E. This is especially true for Linux. AGP has a facility, the aperture that can be marked as "write-combined" with video memory and system memory that has been allocated to the aperture. PCI-E lacks the aperture function which makes it perform slower even at 16X in certain situations. PAT (Page Table Attribute) support is making it's way in to the 2.6 kernel but has not been released yet. PAT functionality can decrease the system bottleneck associated with heavy PCI-E/memory bus dependent traffic. Once it's fully supported PCI-E will be a lot faster than what it is now.
I've got to ask though... is anyone actually considering getting one of these things?
Should find out more about it when SGI show it on Tuesday as I understand it
Should find out more about it when SGI show it on Tuesday as I understand it
_________________
Antnee wrote:
I've got to ask though... is anyone actually considering getting one of these things?
Should find out more about it when SGI show it on Tuesday as I understand it
Should find out more about it when SGI show it on Tuesday as I understand it
I'm interested in seeing what kinds of software you can load on it, and how much it costs, before I say whether or not I'd want one...
As I understand it, SGI is pretty bad at listing specific applications that you can run on your hardware... It's almost as though people just get SGI hardware because it's awesome
At least Sun lists an included productivity suite
Do you think that the release of this new Dorado workstation might end up shaking out some of the newer Octane2's and older Fuels? Even shaking out a few O2+ units at the very end of what some people probably consider useable in a professional or university environment would be a good thing for the hobbyist community.
_________________
I [heart] the Performer Town Demo
didn't several early fuel configs showed up in the 2nd hand market recently? also i believe it's only a matter of (short) time until fully loaded octane2's show up more often. quite some of these should have been replaced by tezro's till now.
the question is, will there be enough quantities of these machines to allow prices to drop into the "affordable" range in general? i somehow have a hard time to believe they sold alot of their newer desktops. but then, it was/is surprising to see how many low-end octane2's were dropped when considering that a lot of the irix->pc transition already took place in the late nineties.
so i'll try to stay optimistic. i'd prefer a dual-600 octane2 all day over a fuel for several reasons though, hope that is the more cost-effective route as well
edit: as for ia64-based machines: to me these seem not very interesting as of now. only reason for me to use irix/sgi is software-availability anyway. makes a nice addition to the windows software world.
a lot of graphics related software has vanished already. i don't see them coming back onto a niche platform unless sgi manages to offer something truly unique (again). and computers without software, well... that's something for the collectors, if at all.
the question is, will there be enough quantities of these machines to allow prices to drop into the "affordable" range in general? i somehow have a hard time to believe they sold alot of their newer desktops. but then, it was/is surprising to see how many low-end octane2's were dropped when considering that a lot of the irix->pc transition already took place in the late nineties.
so i'll try to stay optimistic. i'd prefer a dual-600 octane2 all day over a fuel for several reasons though, hope that is the more cost-effective route as well
edit: as for ia64-based machines: to me these seem not very interesting as of now. only reason for me to use irix/sgi is software-availability anyway. makes a nice addition to the windows software world.
a lot of graphics related software has vanished already. i don't see them coming back onto a niche platform unless sgi manages to offer something truly unique (again). and computers without software, well... that's something for the collectors, if at all.
Unless SGI offers something super compelling, some awesome reasons to buy one, I wont. I just don't see the benefit (yet).