I concur with respect to pushing towards server grade tech. Depending what week it is you can get a POWER3-II machine for anywhere between $50 and $300 (I'm thinking the 44p-170 which I and at least one other member actually have in our possession ) with the only caveat that I haven't figured out how to get it to actually /boot/ the thing yet... I'm thinking GRUB2 might be the best choice, but currently the machine's running debian and I have no idea how to set that up... but I digress
Anyways, yes. POWER hardware. Primarily whatever setup you've got, and if anyone's interested in buying their own, you can still get it pretty cheap ( cheaper than a mac mini in most cases, actually ) On 16-Nov-07, at 8:19 AM, Dennis Clarke wrote: > >> You have a lot of Apple Mac Minis and Sony PS3 consoles available >> through >> the various channels. >> >> The new Efika, PS3 and Mac Mini as our first choices wouldn't be a >> bad idea. >> At least we know we have the resources out there at the moment for >> any >> developer/engineer interested. >> >> Community vote on the primary new PPC reference platform from those >> three >> choices?!? >> >> I'd prefer the PS3. I think the Cell processor is a consideration for >> research reasons and the streaming processors. The Mac Mini as the >> other >> choice due to its small size and cost. > > Somehow I think we should be looking at server grade technology in > order > to go forwards. This means technology with multiple processors also. > > I was thinking : > > BladeCenter S Express Model 8886E1U > $4,499.00 > > see http://www-03.ibm.com/systems/bladecenter/blades/index.html > > IBM BladeCenter JS22 Express > Model 7998 ? 61XA > POWER6 / 4.0GHz 4-cores 4MB L2 cache per processor core > 4GB System Memory > 1 x 73.4GB SAS 10K rpm > > $6,129.00 USD > > see http://www-03.ibm.com/systems/p/hardware/annc_1106/index.html > > So for about $10K or so I can put together a carcass which has a > POWER6 > processor in it and then hook that up via serial cable to a > community access > developer AMD64/Opteron box. Then I can add in blades one at a time > to fill > it as needed. So a two blade carcass would be about $17K - $18K which > carries on lease over three years at just under $700 a month with a $1 > buyout residual. > > Dennis Clarke > http://www.blastwave.org/ > _______________________________________________ > powerpc-discuss mailing list > powerpc-discuss at opensolaris.org
