In a comment on the Power.org blog, Pieter Van den Abeele wrote that Genesi will be releasing the Open Server Workstation, which will be based on the PowerPC 970 (G5) chip. The system is scheduled for release this month give or take a few weeks, and will cost $1599. Developers can also register for a free workstation.
Although the price probably isn’t what people were hoping for.
I hope Genesi make an official statement soon. I’m definitely tempted to get one, if it can be made cool and quiet enough.
Is the named price for the board and processors only? It will be interesting to see how it compares to Apple’s Quad G5 (at $3299).
> I hope Genesi make an official statement soon. I’m definitely tempted
> to get one,
I think I will probably get one. I’m a pretty big PowerPC fan, and would like to do everything I can to keep PowerPC going.
As far as the price, I am pretty sure that will be for a complete system. Judging by its name, Open Server Workstation, I suspect it is a complete system intended to replace their current G4 based Open Desktop Workstation (or if not replace, be a companion product to).
Edited 2006-06-03 23:59
I think $1600 for a complete server system
with 4 CPU is a quite good price.
Don’t you agree?
Cheers
Gunnar
I think $1600 for a complete server system
with 4 CPU is a quite good price.
Oops, you’re right, I didn’t rtfa.
$2500 for a G4 1GHz based vdr player isn’t exactly what i would call cheap though:P
No, it is not and that is for a reason. We have set a high price intentionally to reduce the number of machines we are required to provide. We would rather people build their own, because that is what our customer base does. The software is here:
http://www.mypowerpc.org
HMC=Home Media Center
About the OSW…
What will be different about this system will be the availability of the design itself. The OSW is more about http://www.power.org than it is about a 2x970MP and CPC945 workstation. Genesi is not Dell. The OSW is not our attempt to enter into the broad market with an end user device that appeals to the masses. The objective is to set a foundation for the Power Architecture that is grounded in what is important to the development of that ecosystem. Here is what we said about that nearly six months ago:
http://www.genesippc.com/slideshow.php?name=power.org
To effectively spawn development and activity developers have to have machines. The situation looked/looks like this:
http://bbrv.blogspot.com/2006/03/problemsolution.html
http://bbrv.blogspot.com/2006/03/problemsolution-ii.html
Or, more specifically:
http://bbrv.blogspot.com/2005/12/every-developer-needs-desktop.html
This time we will take the design release farther than we did with the PegasosPPC, because we will have both IBM and Power.org supporting the process.
http://www.genesippc.com/slideshow.php?name=powerservices
Finally, the machines will be priced at lower levels if not free to selected developers. The response to a $799 ODW trade-in poll was pretty positive:
http://www.ppczone.org/forums/viewtopic.php?t=583
We kept the poll open for a week. Of course, this Program is open too:
http://projects.ppczone.org/projects.php?program=OSW
We have also had a good deal of interest in the EFIKA Projects too:
http://projects.ppczone.org/projects.php?program=EFIKA
That is understandable given this board will be sold by at least on OEM soon for $99.
R&B
It’s awesome!
Isnt this a little pricey for a G% system?
Neal Saferstein
> Isnt this a little pricey for a G% system?
For a quad core system? No. I don’t think it is pricey at all. I think it is quite reasonable. Especially when you consider that with x86 you don’t even have any option for a quad core 64 bit system, so you would have to buy a motherboard that supported dual processors, and then install two dual core CPUs. By the time you got done with that, I suspect the x86 system would cost signifantly more than this quad core G5.
You’re right that the price would be more, but you could get two Opteron 265s with an equivalent motherboard for about only ~100 more, if that, and those are 64-bit.
Is that just for the board and processors though? Keep in mind that $1599 is most likely for an entire system.
(Also, the PowerPC 970MP is arguably a more capable processor than the Opteron. It supports more RAM, gives you twice as many GPRs, consumes less power, etc.)
That was for a whole system, minus monitor.
Anyways, I wasn’t arguing with the value propisition – the dual G5 is the way to go for me, as I am currently a PPC developer. I just thought that is was factually incorrect to say that there are -no- quad-core x86 boxen.
>the PowerPC 970MP is arguably a more capable >processor than the Opteron
Depends on the application e.g. Cinebench X64 vs Cinebench MacOS X.
>gives you twice as many GPRs
Opteron delivers larger L1 cache.
>consumes less power,
One shouldn’t compare IBM’s “Typical” TDP to AMD’s max power TDP. Also factor in “Opteron HE”.
> Opteron delivers larger L1 cache.
Which is partly to compensate for the fact that the CPU itself doesn ‘t have enough GPRs.
>Which is partly to compensate for the fact that the >CPU itself doesn ‘t have enough GPRs.
Look up the purpose of “register renaming” hardware tricks in relation ISA limited GPRs.
>Which is partly to compensate for the fact that the >CPU itself doesn ‘t have enough GPRs.
Modern x86 CPUs use more than eight/sixteen GPR internally, that allows them to use several versions of the same GPR. This is called register renaming.
Specfic for K8…
Not visible for the software programmer are eight more 64 bit scratch registers used to store intermediate results for micro code routines.
According to chip-architect.com, Opteron may have upto 96 “renamed registers”.
Doesn’t the Opteron have to be in a special 64-bit native mode that isn’t supported by Linux or any other mainstream OS to use all of its registers as general purpose?
Edited 2006-06-07 03:55
>Doesn’t the Opteron have to be in a special 64-bit >native mode that isn’t supported by Linux or any >other mainstream OS to use all of its registers as >general purpose?
Just google Windows XP/2K3 X64 Edition and Linix with X64** builds(refer to http://www.x86-64.org).
**A.k.a. AMD64, X86-64, EMT64.
Oh yeah. PowerPC 64 bit also supports up to 16 Gb of memory. Opteron only supports 8.
A two-socket Opteron system should easily take 16 or even 32 GB of RAM.
The limitations you two are arguing are (if true) with current boards. Not with the chip architectures.
According to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AMD64
“the AMD64 architecture can address up to 256 tebibytes of virtual address space (2^48 bytes).”
“Current implementations of the AMD64 architecture can address up to 1 tebibyte of RAM (2^40 bytes)” Less than 2^48, obviously, and much less than 2^64.
IIRC, the PPC64 too does not provide a complete 2^64 memory space. It’s too early for most of us to begin worrying about the upper limits of current implementations of 64-bitness. Unless you’re into supercomputing amounts of data.
Edited 2006-06-05 17:11
There are no quad-core chips in PPC-land either. The Open Server Workstation is a dual-dual core setup.
It’s still a pretty good price, especially for a pre-built machine, but you could get a dual Opteron 250 setup that’s faster for less money.
> The Open Server Workstation is a dual-dual core setup.
Oops. You’re right. It’s two dual core CPUs.
> but you could get a dual Opteron 250 setup that’s faster for less money
I don’t think you can really say that for sure yet since afaik, Genesi has not said whatt speed those processors are yet.
But also, as I said before, the PowerPC processor has features that arguably make it a more capable CPU than the Opteron. For example it has 32 GPRs instead of the 16 that the Opteron has.
>the PowerPC processor has features that arguably >make it a more capable CPU than the Opteron
SPECInt and SPECFP indicates otherwise.
Factor in Opteron’s register renaming scheme.
Look up ISA VS actual K8 micro-architecture implementation.
@Simba
Refer AMD’s “4×4” sockets i.e. mass produced dual socket AM2 desktop motherboard.
I can think of a few: Linux PPC, NetBSD and perhaps Solaris (yes, I wrote Solaris, no typo), once the PPC port does more than just booting. The latter would be awesome. A truly open platform and a truly open operating enviroment, which is also a first-class server OS. To be quite honest, however, Sparc is now an even more open CPU design.
On a different note: it is interesting that everybody in this thread was comparing the dual core G5 with the dual core Opteron. Just goes to show that Intel is missing (but not missed) at the top-server-CPU party. And when it comes to many CPU systems (BIG boxen), intel isn’t tere, either: it’s IBM Power, Sparc and.. umm… anyone? But Intel isn’t invited there, either. How sad.
And when it comes to many CPU systems (BIG boxen), intel isn’t tere, either: it’s IBM Power, Sparc and.. umm… anyone?
… and Itanium.
@Simba: that entirely depends of what IBM gives us. The first CPUs were shipped to us this past Friday. 😉
BB&RV,
This is definately a good thing for several reasons:
1. The Intel Core-based Macs are on track for later this year. This means that Apple, as usual, won’t have as many as customers would like for either PPC or Intel-based Macs.
2. The price gap between your solution and the Mercury one is very large. $6000 (and I am quoting TerraSoft here) as opposed to something you can provide in the $2000-$3000 range fully loaded is pretty darn good.
3. Apple can’t provide a fully loaded G5 in that range
.
What about Apple’s Quad PowerPC that just came out?
Neal Saferstein
FTC