I haven't done much with YDL in some time as I've changed jobs, but
I'd just like to chime in that several years ago that the PPC Linux's
( YDL for Mac, full RedHat/SuSE on some IBM OpenPower720 hardware)
was running rings around the equivalent x86 -or- Alpha based
platforms we were doing some work on. Tried to get my bosses &
customers more interested in it and hit the wall of 'but it isn't
x86'. <sigh>. At the time, a direct comparison of the *same* base
code on a Mac XServe G5 running on YDL4 vice OS X 10.3 had the YDL
code twice as fast as the OS X code. Lots of double precision
floating point math, and multiple processes (not threads)
communicating via shared memory. We would routinely max out any box
we were running on.
-Rob
On Dec 25, 2009, at 2:37 PM, Warren Nagourney wrote:
Thanks, Derick.
Although this is a YDL forum, I am afraid to say that there is no
comparison between any linux on PPC and OS X. The former simply
doesn't have the software base that I need. I used to think that it
would be faster than OS X, but after a few installations of linux
on Apple computers, I discovered that OS X wins hands down in the
speed area as well. I think that linux is optimized for x86 and of
course things like flash are only available on x86 linux (I hate
flash, but it unfortunately has become a standard for internet
video). There are still some PPC optimizations in OS X apps and
maybe even some Altivec usage (which allows Quicktime to smoothly
run at 1080p on my PPC machines). The tasks involved in writing my
book would have been enormously greater if I had used linux instead
of OS X.
I notice an increasing dominance of ARM in low power portable
devices. This is unfortunate, since ARM simply doesn't have the
computational power that PPC has - I am not sure it even has a
floating point data type. It is too bad that IBM did such a poor
job of promoting PPC; we will need to reinvent the wheel with ARM
when we could have had advanced multi-purpose chips with low power
consumption from the PPC manufacturers (such as PA semi, which
Apple bought and converted to ARM).
Anyway, the improvement in the performance of Apple products since
the switch has been less than stellar, much less than expected from
Moore's law. My 4 year old G5 has a 1.15 GHz memory bus and an 16x
dual layer superdrive, which is very competitive with the best that
Apple can come up with now (for reasonable prices). It cost much
less than a current machine and doesn't require a several thousand
dollar investment in software, which I would need to make if I use
one of Apple's intel superboxes.
Cheers,
Warren Nagourney
On Dec 24, 2009, at 2:28 PM, Derick Centeno wrote:
You may want to know that you may find decent parts for your system
from http://macsales.com/
I think we may have to really keep our PowerPC running for longer
than
that although I did hear of someone developing a multicore PowerPC
laptop a month or so ago. I've got to search for who this fellow is
again as I lost track, but I did hear of a fellow who created a
working
Cell based laptop which ran the GameOS and had the OtherOS option.
Pretty neat!
Caveat: If you replace the power supply or other support parts you
shouldn't have trouble running YDL from it. Be careful regarding
other
components however such as DVD drives: if those go it may be wiser to
consider an external DVD drive in that situation. I'm unsure if
anyone
we knew remains at Fixstars from TSS; it may not be so easy to get
the
kind of support we became accustomed to. In any case, I'd advise you
to consider reviewing what notations remain regarding their
advisories
regarding which hardware works with YDL and which do not. As best I
recall, the past emphasis (by TSS) was to support original Apple
parts.
So the problems to watch for may not be RAM as much as internal
associated devices, such as a newer hard drive or modem or something
similar. It may be better to just get an HD which resides on a PCI
card which your system should recognize with no problem as an
external
system; I don't think such a drive would be able to be booted from
within YDL. It would be interesting to try that out as a concept
though.
Anyway enjoy and all the best!!
On Thu, 24 Dec 2009 13:57:49 -0800
Warren Nagourney <war...@phys.washington.edu> wrote:
Thanks, Derick. I still love the PPC architecture and recently
bought an Apple dual core 2.3 GHz G5 for very little money and am
finding it to be absolutely as fast as I could ever hope for. I will
keep it for the next 3-5 years (assuming I can keep the power supply
running) and maybe then, the dominance of x86 may have lessened (it
can't last forever!).
Merry Christmas and Happy 2010,
Warren N
=========
Refranes/Popular sayings:
The Taino say:No hay mal que por bien no venga.
There is no evil out of which good cannot blossom.
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