HP today announced the launch of the OpenSwitch community and a new open source network operating system (NOS). HP and key supporters, Accton Technology Corporation, Arista, Broadcom, Intel, and VMware, are delivering a community-based platform that provides developers and users the ability to accelerate innovation, avoid vendor lock-in, and realize investment protection as they rapidly build data center networks customized for unique business applications.
Here’s the official OpenSwitch site – and I’ll admit, this goes way over my head.
The gist of the difference between a desktop/workstation/server OS and a network OS is that the hardware architecture on a traditional motherboard is a massive bottleneck for network switching.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forwarding_plane
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_processor
A modern core network router will have the CPU manage the routing table and then every port will have its own forwarding processor and a direct physical connection to every other forwarding processor.
It’s sort of like the difference between programmed I/O and DMA or between PCI (bus) and PCI Express (crossbar switch).
Edited 2015-10-06 04:10 UTC
Of course, the desktop OS has the advantage of a CPU that is magnitudes more powerful than the ones Cisco et al are using in their equipment.
There are PowerPC (and MIPS and ARM) based switches but a lot of switches these days have x86-64 CPUs in them. Maybe not i7’s, but not exactly IDT Winchips either: the HP Altoline 5712 has a 2.4Ghz quad core Intel Atom.
The bigger problem is usually the lack of flash storage.
Well, an x86 desktop CPU is not always an “advantage”.
For example, Cisco uses old PowerPC chips in some of their switches, they bought a lot to IBM back in the day. If you buy a certain amount of chips IBM allows you to add customized instruction sets to the chips (I think they used PPC750 cores).
A Desktop CPU like an i7 is a total overkill, commuting IP packages requires only integer operations!! Putting an i7 (or any modern x86 cpu) could be a big waste of energy and resources cause they are heavy FPU and graphics oriented.
Maybe HP must use their “brains” to create cheaper unicorn blood, I mean, inkjet ink. This project doesn’t make sense to me.
… and they call it OS.
I was expecting something _NEW_.
So what …
Linux is a kernel not an Operating System.
Actually the OS should be called GNU Linux, right?
Ubuntu/RedHat/etc. Linux, if you’re going by distributor’s brand.
X11/Linux if you’re going for largest source of userspace code (even if you include gcc, which most desktop distros don’t include by default).
X11/glibc/Linux if you’re going for ABI compatibility.
Either way, anything with more than the two or three syllables in “Ubuntu”, “Linux”, “Windows”, “MacOS”, and “OSX” is doomed to failure due purely to human nature.
I’m just looking forward to the day when musl libc attains glibc ABI compatibility so I can build a Linux+musl+busybox+X11 (or Wayland) stack (compiled with LLVM) that still runs closed-source x86/amd64 “Linux” applications like GOG-distributed games and then thumb my nose at irritatingly obsessive Stallman fanboys.
(Android isn’t “Linux” because the vernacular use of “Linux” as referring to more than the kernel implies a specific ABI (glibc, possibly X11, etc.)… same way the Xbone doesn’t run “Windows” despite using the Windows kernel.)
Edited 2015-10-07 04:41 UTC
I think…
* I am very old school or…
* My neurons are dying at a faster pace or…
* That is one of the fuzziest PRs I have read or…
* I am plain stupid
BUT
I did not understand anything on this new project.
Telling OS in XXI century can mean a lot of things. Actually the “Operating System” term is very underrated nowadays. You could actually take any Linux distro, change its theme, renaming it and calling it WhatEverOS.
Edited 2015-10-06 22:58 UTC
Just my feelings!
Edited 2015-10-07 04:10 UTC
It’s an OS for big rackmount switches and routers. Basically instead of sealed-box OS+hardware combinations from Cisco or Juniper or HP or Dell, you have Openswitch on generic hardware, much like what the PC did to the microcomputer industry. It’s Linux based, but so is Cisco’s IOS, and Juniper’s JunOS is based on FreeBSD, so it’s in good company on that front.