Gentoo Archives: gentoo-dev

From: Joshua Kinard <kumba@g.o>
To: gentoo-dev@l.g.o
Subject: Re: [gentoo-dev] Re: About current ppc/ppc64 status
Date: Fri, 01 Aug 2014 09:35:44
Message-Id: 53DB5F59.7010301@gentoo.org
In Reply to: Re: [gentoo-dev] Re: About current ppc/ppc64 status by "Raúl Porcel"
1 On 08/01/2014 04:52, Raúl Porcel wrote:
2 > On 07/26/14 19:33, Michael Palimaka wrote:
3 >> On 07/27/2014 03:19 AM, William Hubbs wrote:
4 >>> If an arch team isn't going to honor a stable request, shouldn't they
5 >>> remove themselves from it and say so?
6 >>>
7 >>> Also, if an arch team does that, does that mean we don't have to file
8 >>> stable requests for that arch on future versions of the package?
9 >>
10 >> When armin did stabilisation for minor archs in the past, he took the
11 >> opportunity to evaluate whether it was still useful to have the package
12 >> stable. In many cases for small random packages, stable keywords were
13 >> dropped to reduce future workload. I always thought it was a pretty good
14 >> strategy.
15 >
16 > Indeed! The thing was that a lot of the packages were keyworded and
17 > marked stable back in the day where the arch was more popular.
18 >
19 > But almost all arches except amd64/x86/arm are getting less and less
20 > popular:
21 >
22 > alpha: no new hardware in more than 8+ years
23 > hppa: being phased out IIRC, and no new workstations(ie, graphics/sound)
24 > in 5+ years
25 > ia64: no new workstations in 10 years, new servers are expensive
26 > ppc*: new workstations are expensive
27 > sparc: no new workstations in 7+ years, new servers expensive
28
29 Who says they have to be new? Sometimes, the fun is in the old hardware of
30 yore. I found out last week that sparc32 is still quasi-alive, though it
31 doesn't appear to have any mainstream kernel maintainers.
32
33 ia64, go search on eBay for old SGI Altix/Prism gear. There's a metric ton
34 of Altix units being offloaded lately. There was one listing a few weeks
35 ago that had 10-20 Altix 350 servers, dual or quad CPU, for ~$90 per server.
36 Even saw an SGI Prism a few days ago (which is just an ia64 variant of the
37 Tezro).
38
39
40 > One of the reasons they are being killed, IMHO, its that the power
41 > consumption isn't worth, and an amd64 machine is pretty much more
42 > powerful, has more cores, and cheaper and has a lot less power consumption.
43
44 This is always a concern. I used to run equipment 24/7, but that took
45 chunks out of my electric bill each month. Now, I sleep both of my Intel
46 systems and power down the SGI machines when they're not in use. I
47 eventually need to test out hibernation on the SGIs and see if that can be
48 of any use. Ctrl+Z in the middle of a compile, then hibernate...in theory,
49 I should be able to resume and then 'fg' the compile back into action.
50
51
52 > My Sun Blade 1000 (workstation) uses 225W idling, my amd64 workstation
53 > uses 100W at full power or so. And the amd64 has way more cores and more
54 > performance. And let's not talk about the heat...
55
56 SGI O2, 1x CPU, 512MB RAM, 2x HDDs - ~80W
57 SGI Octane, 1x CPU, 2GB RAM, 3x HDDs - ~303-330W
58 SGI Onyx2, 4x CPUs, 8GB RAM, 5 HDDs - ~720W
59
60 I ran some very quick calculations on running those three systems full time,
61 24/7 for a month, along with my two Intel Linux systems (~160W and ~140W),
62 about ~$0.10/kWh (distribution charge only, did not factor in transmission
63 rates nor taxes), and it should only add an extra ~$120 to my bill per
64 month, which isn't that bad (but then again, I am serviced by a co-op that
65 has low rates). So running them less often should be easily manageable.
66 Probably moreso in winter, as rates are bit lower then (gas isn't, though,
67 but SGIs make great space heaters).
68
69
70 > Besides there's software like firefox and gnome3 that doesn't work in
71 > sparc due to unaligned accesses.
72
73 Pft, if people want those shinies, run them on a standard PC. If the only
74 point of having an alternate arch is so you can surf the web...then I don't
75 see much of a point. The direction that most of the large projects are
76 going in is not conducive to old equipment anyways. There is, however,
77 always going to be the smaller projects that might be tickled pink on having
78 their software run on old hardware. Like maybe someone taking fvwm and
79 tailoring it to look like IRIX's 4dwm. Something I've thought about if I
80 ever get bored enough, and can fix all the other bugs I keep running into on
81 these systems.
82
83
84 > Debian announced some months ago that they're dropping sparc support as
85 > well. Right now debian doesn't support, officially, alpha, hppa and sparc.
86
87 Their loss :)
88
89 --
90 Joshua Kinard
91 Gentoo/MIPS
92 kumba@g.o
93 4096R/D25D95E3 2011-03-28
94
95 "The past tempts us, the present confuses us, the future frightens us. And
96 our lives slip away, moment by moment, lost in that vast, terrible in-between."
97
98 --Emperor Turhan, Centauri Republic

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Re: [gentoo-dev] Re: About current ppc/ppc64 status Joshua Kinard <kumba@g.o>