There aren’t many “pure” flavors of Unix. For the first handful of years, OS X and Linux were among them, not pure – not certified, not in the class of AIX, HPUX, Solaris, etc.

But fully 2.5 years before this thread started, Mac OS X has been “pure” Unix. So one isn’t really comparing “Apples to Apples” (forgive the pun) in this instance.

And while there clearly is no necessity for an OS to BE “pure” – the set of standards by which one particular OS establishes for themselves, from a Developer perspective ( “developers Developers DEVELOPERS!” ) – that’s something that can’t be said of Linux, let alone any particular flavor of Linux.

That being said (and here’s the certification to prove the above — http://www.opengroup.org/openbrand/certificates/1190p.pdf ) – the FAA example is indeed a good one. So too, however, is the DOD use of 1760 Sony Playstations, using the IBM “Cell” CPU, to run Linux – as the single most powerful computer under the Dept of Defense umbrella!

That “half petaFlop” computer came in, (rough recollection) at 9% of cost for off-the-shelf purchases vs. a “Big” machine (be it IBM, Sun, HP, or for that matter, Dell’s server division or even, until they were cancelled by Steve, the 2U version of the Mac OS X Server – with twin Xeons (granted – not in the 10 core, 8 socket realm of the latest Xeons, but not meant to have been, but just as scalable) – as well as using 1/9th the ENERGY.

You can find the details of the system via Google – and start here. http://blog.cleveland.com/metro/2010/11/defense_department_discusses_n.html

The info is already 1 year old… but considering the ever expanding power of the CPUs (when Power8 hits the shelves soon, with 16 cores, 64 threads, and 600gFlops per CPU, it changes everything, despite Intel ~50 core announcement of recent) – the key will simply be matching the CPU capabilities with the OS and application to achieve things on a scale we really couldn’t have predicted accurately enough in 2001.

Power8 is just around the corner for 2012. Intel is making great strides as well, but not quite like the Power 8 for production.

And don’t forget — while Apple threw up its hands and moved to Intel not long ago, the “G6″ that Apple was waiting for Freescale (formerly Motorola) finally appeared this quarter. A 12 core CPU with 2 threads per core (not 1, but not 4, like the Power 7) complete with a new, advanced Altivec / SIMD code, that clocks in at just under 200gFlops, and you can scale them on the order of 600+.

In that sense, when you look at what is inside the F-22 and F-35 (apparently no better than a dual core “e600″ – aka the G4 processor) still at 90um, compared to the newer (and newer Power Architecture standard, rather than the original, which the F-22 called for, to take advantage of improvements downline) – the new Freescale CPU is 50x the power in the same space… and whatever it is that makes that plane so superior, clearly isn’t linked to just the DSP capabilities of a 15 year old CPU.

It’s sad, however, that we are stuck with, at $369,000,000 each, (after factoring in the costs of only 187 planes, vs. 800) that each is running on the same stockpile of avionics that run on Linux and proprietary aircraft systems, and a “G4″ – that has been sold to Russia since May of 2000 for their Tupelov business jets.

And it only gets worse…

The original PowerPC G3 — is still available at 1/3rd its Macintosh clock speed (from the original iMac) TODAY, radiation hardened, and screaming at 100MHz, for just $200,000 per CPU.

Makes you wonder if that old iMac you just threw away might be worth a bit more with some foil over the top of the G3 !!

You’ll find at least 15 of these CPUs (Google it) – in use, on deep space probes. And several that are still on the ground and may never be launched, given the demise of the Space Shuttle.

Which, by the way, was given an upgraded 80386 at one point, across the entire fleet, which is the primary reason that virtually all of the occupants of the shuttle had their own MUCH MORE POWERFUL HP calculators with them…

Clearly the combination of CPU, OS and application cannot be fully evaluated on the basis of just one leg of the triad.

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It is a great strategy in my opinion and from a few folks I have spoken to it works well…has anyone got an opinion? I am trying to get as much research on this as possible…

cmc@hiln-solutions is my email with any concerns or thoughts..Thanks all!

Thank you
Chris

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A) I don’t think I was ever insulting. Sorry If I came across that way. Sometimes I get passionate.
B) I think its pretty tacky/creepy that you release someones personal information on your site when they disagree with you and take the time to research them — Especially when the comment form I’m looking at right now says “Mail (will not be published”
C) If you want to use google on me you’ll see an extensive history of contribution to the Gentoo community, Dshield.org, and various open source projects. So you think I’m some kind of AIX partisan, you’d be wrong.

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We use both in our company – AIX on 200 LPAR’s and 6 Big machines – and Linux on 80 servers (SLES).
There is no problem in getting support 24×7 for Linux.

Out greatest problem ist on one hand the hardware support (especially HP), where administrators spend most of there time in analyzing and waiting for response from the back level.

On the other hand we got problems in analyzing crashes of applications on Linux. There is no such thing like an error-report (errpt) or a system dump that can be analyzed. IBM can do that. Novell and RedHat can not!
So we get a fast problem analysis from IBM (always in the past 15 years) and a slower analysis from Novell.

So everybody should consider what is more important. Saving money when buying hardware or saving money when having a crashdown.

These are just my thoughts.

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I too have worked with AIX since 1995, and I have NEVER had to have a kernel developer get involved.

This is purely grandstanding by a Linux fan, trying to dissuade AIX users.

We have Linux/Dell where I work and the pain can’t be anymore evident on the staff. Red Hat never has an answer why anything happens, hardware crashes regularly.

Linux doesn’t have an good LVM like AIX, disk management in Linux is shoddy for wanting to be a production environment OS, clustering in Linux is a joke at best (daily problems here, with no help from Red Hat), virtualization is clownish at best. Using the Satellite server one has to pay hundreds per server for provisioning licenses, hundreds more per server for management licenses, hundreds more per VM for management; so when you have 1000 servers, you have a serious annual outlay, just to use a Satellite server (that is free with AIX NIM).

With AIX you get Workload Manager, Kernel Recovery, Storage Protection Keys, Advanced First Failure Data Capture, ProbeVue, cluster systems management. HA built into the kernel now, DLPARs, workload partitions, live partition mobility.

All integrated nicely and works together with AIX. Plus with IBM support, you don’t get an answer that basically says “oh, well. Live with it.” And you don’t have a ticket open for 9 months that support at Red Hat hasn’t even done anything with.

AIX is the only way to go for mission critical workloads.

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Anuj

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I’ve worked with AIX systems for 20 years now. Fantastic platform. Expensive platform.

While IBM has reduced the hardware pricing with the new p7s to the point where it’s actually quite competitive, all things being equal, it’s the maintenance pricing that’s the killer; over a 3-year period, the software and hardware maintenance pricing will exceed the purchase price of the system.

Strangely, the majority of the maintenance price is the software maintenance on AIX, not the hardware. Annoying in the extreme; in my case, I’d prefer to run on AIX, but the maintenance costs make it impossible to argue with an ESX setup on commodity hardware.

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I’ve been working on AIX for about 9 years and at the last company, we had over 900 LPARS. On my personal machines, I run Linux and have been doing so for about 7 years. Unfortunately, as other mentioned, Linux never gained momentum as the powers that be had the ‘warm fuzzy feeling’ with Solaris and AIX (and even Windows).
Personally, from a hardware perspective, I love the virtualization options on the p-Series with its micropartitioning, shared processing & memory pools etc.
On Linux, I miss AIX’s LVM, NIM, hardware management, WPARS, Live app mobility etc.
Maybe I am fortunate, but we never had any major issues on AIX. Neither have I had major issues on Linux or FreeBSD.
The biggest claim is that the Power6/7 chips are the fastest cpus around, but I’ve heard otherwise from those with new Intel cpus. I’d like to see independant benchmarks besided TPC results etc.
If the performance of Intel comes close to, or betters the Power cpu, and one does need the ‘bells and whistles’ of the p-Series/AIX combo, then the Intel/Linux combo makes the most sense.
Question is, would you then run Linux or perhaps Solaris/OpenSolaris & benefit with zones, ZFS etc. ?

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Look at IBM’s new p7 750′s and the economics become much more blurred.

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