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Next G5 Multitasks Operating Systems 449

Posted by CmdrTaco from the little-bit-of-this-a-little-bit-of-that dept.
A user writes "IBM has big plans for the 970, Apple's so-called "G5". The CPU will support partitioning, similar to IBM's mainframe systems, allowing multiple operating systems to run at the same time on a single CPU. A Mac built around this chip could theoretically run OS X, GNU/Linux, Mac OS 9, and the PowerPC version of Windows NT, all simultaneously and independently."
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Next G5 Multitasks Operating Systems More

Next G5 Multitasks Operating Systems

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  • great (Score:5, Funny)

    by jrl87 ( 669651 ) on Thursday December 23, 2004 @04:17PM (#11171631)
    so now I can crash at least five systems at the same time?

  • What's the point? (Score:3, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 23, 2004 @04:17PM (#11171632)
    OS X is already the best OS available anyway.

    • Re:What's the point? (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Total_Wimp ( 564548 ) on Thursday December 23, 2004 @04:43PM (#11171959)
      OS X is already the best OS available anyway.

      I know this is just a troll, but people need to rethink their notion of the term "best".

      In my IT department, we're abandoning the search for systems that are "the best." Now we look for "very high quality" systems instead. It may seem like mincing words to some of you, but it makes a real difference. Territorial bastards will always be teritorial bastards, but it's amazing how much better their decisions are when you say, "is the solution very high quality" instead of "is it the best." They're forced to make an actual evaluation instead of just going with their gut or their pet. They'll still try to spin their favorite solution, but they're at least forced to acknowledge the real strengths of the competition.

      TW

  • PowerPC version of Windows NT? (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 23, 2004 @04:17PM (#11171634)
    What is this, 1994?

  • Nothing for you to see here. Please move along (Score:5, Interesting)

    by 0racle ( 667029 ) on Thursday December 23, 2004 @04:18PM (#11171648)
    But it sounded really interesting.

    On a more serious note, I doubt it could run the PPC WindowsNT as it would be lacking a few important drivers, but running OS X and Linux side by side would make a very interesting system. It would be nice to see som Xserves in our datacenter here.

    • Re:Nothing for you to see here. Please move along (Score:5, Interesting)

      by CdBee ( 742846 ) on Thursday December 23, 2004 @04:23PM (#11171717)
      The developer prototype for the next-gen XboX is an Apple G5 running a heavily-updated Windows NT:PPC, they're already in the wild. This may be why MS bought Connectix, makers of VirtualPC
    • Yeah, I feel a burning need to run two Unices at the same time on the same machine. Maybe Ill have the GIMP running on X Windows in OS X and Ill have another GIMP under Red Hat. Just for the heck of it.
      • You've never run multiple machines have you.
        • As a general rule you don't mind 'em in software, but you'd rather keep the total number of hardware units low, allowing for performance and disaster recovery needs.

          You can already get all that today from big blue. Are you really going to buy it next year from Apple?
      • Dynamic partitioning is great. Lets say you want to try out a new os version. Install it under another partition and test as much as you want -- without ever shutting off the other os.

        You can also use this system anytime you'd dual boot. Just cut one partition down to 1/10 of a proc and increase the allocation for the other one. When you're done playing your game or using some obscure app, just reverse the values and go back to using your main system. You never have to shut it down again.

        Want to try a new
        • Do you need to test a multi-machine app? Don't feel like buying more hardware yet? Guess what technology solves that problem ...

          VM-Ware [vmware.com]?

          Really, how is this different? When the OS rides directly "on the metal", you're supposed to get the best performance. Abstract the hardware layer and yes, you can do tricks like this but you pay for it in ticks. Maybe individually affordable hardware now has the ticks to spare. That, and while I love VM-Ware, it's still subject to the goings-on of the underlying

  • In theory yes (Score:5, Interesting)

    by computerme ( 655703 ) on Thursday December 23, 2004 @04:19PM (#11171661)
    >A Mac built around this chip could theoretically run OS X, GNU/Linux, Mac OS 9, and the PowerPC version of Windows NT, all simultaneously and independently."

    But in reality, i believe this is so apple can release "big iron" type systems (servers), the VM would allow Multiple versions of the server OS to run for maximum uptime, protection etc...

    Most people are going to take it as "Cool i can run windows and OSX at the same time at full speed" But in reality its closer to what i described above.

    But if others care to chime in i could be completely wrong...

    • This is IBM. They'll be running OS/400, AIX and Linux on it.

      (Much as I would like OS/400 to die completely, it's still quite popular...)

    • Re:In theory yes (Score:3, Informative)

      by LEgregius ( 550408 )
      In order to run windows and OSX simulataneously, the CPU would have to be able to execute x86 instructions. PPC windows was no doubt mentioned to get another OS in the mix.

      Current macs won't even boot OS9, so there is no way they would start running that again.

      Partitioning the system is essentially the goal so that you could install and configure two separate logical servers with only one machine. It helps with configuration conflict issues. It's a very common practice on mainframes.

      • Hi. yes i do know that windows would not be run as a 2nd OS. I meant by using windows as an example is that most people would think this would become magically possible...

    • Re:In theory yes (Score:3, Insightful)

      by burns210 ( 572621 )
      "But in reality, i believe this is so apple can release "big iron" type systems (servers), the VM would allow Multiple versions of the server OS to run for maximum uptime, protection etc..."

      Personally, I don't think Apple has any importance to the decision. IBM is looking to beef up their powerPC chip. They want to migrate their mainframes and servers and even workstations to it. The more systems that use the processors, the more money they make that can be put into further developing the processor, etc.

      T

  • So... (Score:4, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 23, 2004 @04:19PM (#11171662)
    I see it runs this "GNU/Linux", but the question is... does it run Linux?

  • Sounds great... (Score:5, Funny)

    by iamzack ( 830561 ) on Thursday December 23, 2004 @04:19PM (#11171664)
    But will it come in a stylish case with a 4-figure price tag?

  • what about dual? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by jxyama ( 821091 ) on Thursday December 23, 2004 @04:20PM (#11171671)
    if you had a dual, would it be more efficient to have each processor run 50% of two OS'es or each CPU running one OS?

    • Re:what about dual? (Score:3, Informative)

      by cnettel ( 836611 )
      The real benefit of true multitasking is of course that you don't have to lock it down. The use of multitasking user mode processes would be quite limited if you only could use it to assign locked processor affinities. Likewise, the ideal situation here would be to let both OSes share both CPUs, with only maybe some additions in the idle loop and perharps an arbitrator driver in each OS. Strictly speaking, I guess an arbitrator would not be needed, but wouldn't it be nice if the OSes could auto-schedule pro

    • Re:what about dual? (Score:5, Interesting)

      by bentfork ( 92199 ) on Thursday December 23, 2004 @04:37PM (#11171893)
      Wow... My head just exploded. Thanks. I wonder if you could run a stable kernel and debug a new kernel at the same time. THAT would be great.

      • I wonder if you could run a stable kernel and debug a new kernel at the same time.

        Isn't that what the Hurd is all about [gnu.org]...

        The GNU system (also called GNU/Hurd) is completely self-contained (you can compile all parts of it using GNU itself). You can run several instances of the Hurd in parallel, and debug even critical servers in one Hurd instance with gdb running on another Hurd instance.

        The more I hear about all of these virtualization projects (xen, user mode linux, vserver, qemu), the more I think

    • Re:what about dual? (Score:4, Informative)

      by macemoneta ( 154740 ) on Thursday December 23, 2004 @05:56PM (#11172641) Homepage
      if you had a dual, would it be more efficient to have each processor run 50% of two OS'es or each CPU running one OS?

      It depends on your definition of efficiency.

      If each OS is running on a separate CPU, they can use a UP (uniprocessor) configuration eliminating the overhead in SMP. This buys back typically 5-10% CPU resource, depending on the OS's SMP implementation. However, if one of the OS's CPU demands exceed a single processor's capacity, it will max out extending the transactions (even if the other CPU is idle). However, if you have need for strict separation of resource (e.g., you sell a guarantee of a CPU's processing to a customer), this may be the only way to achieve it.

      If both OS share both CPUs, there is additional overhead from the SMP effects, so some CPU resource is "wasted" (not processing the transactions). However, both OS can utilize the resources of both CPUs completely. This would be great for a desktop environment; as you switch between one OS and another, the switched away OS likely goes mostly idle (aside from background processes). In a multiple virtual server environment, it would be useful too; a virtual server that gets "Slashdotted" would be able to obtain on-demand addition resources.

      In a CPU contention situation where both OS want to utilize all of both CPUs, the VM (virtual machine here) scheduler will allocate the resource evenly, unless it has a prioritization/capping capability. This is really an inefficient situation, since you have two (or more) OS with SMP overhead and no available CPU resource (maximum CPU going to non-productive use).

      You also need to remember when running in a shared CPU mode, there is no guaranteed response time. Applications that need near-realtime response will see an increase in latency variability.

  • OMG! (Score:5, Funny)

    by Chief Typist ( 110285 ) on Thursday December 23, 2004 @04:21PM (#11171683) Homepage
    I'm going to need more than one mouse button!

    -ch

  • From the article:

    The technology, called partitioning, relies on a concept called virtualization that breaks the hard link between an operating system and the underlying hardware.

    Well, that's what VMware and QEMU already do, isn't it?

    I'm assuming "partitioning" is some sort of architecture change to make schemes like these work better/more easily/more efficiently - but I don't think they should be pushing it as something new.

    Unless it *is* something new and I've missed the point, that is.

    • Re:Isn't this done already? (Score:5, Informative)

      by Gadzinka ( 256729 ) <rrw@hell.pl> on Thursday December 23, 2004 @04:27PM (#11171764) Journal
      Partitioning is quite old indeed and has been running on some big iron for a while, but this particular details are somewhat different that VMWare/QEMU.

      They plan to add partitioning support on the chip level, so there will be no performance penalty (like in VMWare) or need to recompile OS (like in QEMU IIRC).

      Robert

    • Re:Isn't this done already? (Score:5, Informative)

      by IdleTime ( 561841 ) on Thursday December 23, 2004 @04:28PM (#11171773) Journal
      No, this is different than Vmware etc al
      They require a host OS to run under. This means you can partition your CPUs so they can run multiple OSes at the same time, nativly. No need for a host OS, just some bitching BIOS.

      There are multiple server vendors who already offer the same ability, mainframes have had this for years.

      Of course, running 2 or more OSes requires 2 or more times the CPU power in order to get similar performance to a one OS machine.

      • Re:Isn't this done already? (Score:3, Informative)

        by Anonymous Coward
        They require a host OS to run under. This means you can partition your CPUs so they can run multiple OSes at the same time, nativly. No need for a host OS, just some bitching BIOS.

        The CPU has to natively support this as well, at least POWER5 does.

        And calling it a BIOS is... almost insulting :). Hypervisor/the FSP on IBM boxes are really insanely cool. BIOS doesn't give it enough credit :)

        Of course, running 2 or more OSes requires 2 or more times the CPU power in order to get similar performance to a
      • ...some bitching BIOS.
        It's called OpenFirmware. ; )
    • Under the hood, there are a LOT of different ways to run multiple OS's at the same time, and some of these differences can affect the user. There have been mentions of many different projects and products on Slashdot that do various kinds of emulation/virtualization, and the reason is becaues there's so many ways to do it.
      • Vanderpool, Pacifica, VMWare, Xen, WINE, UML, plex86, Bochs, VMWare, coLinux, UML

      On x86 computers, I know that VMWare has to re-write kernel executables to be able to get multiple OS'

  • What about the rest of the hardware ? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Bluesuperman ( 843038 ) <michael.gale@bluesuperman.com> on Thursday December 23, 2004 @04:22PM (#11171705)
    So what about the rest of the hardware ? Now you have two OS's accessing the same hard drive. There goes the IO ... unless you had two SCSI drives .. now it gets interesting. Michael.

  • Can't wait (Score:3, Funny)

    by gkuz ( 706134 ) on Thursday December 23, 2004 @04:23PM (#11171724)
    NT for PowerPC. Be still, my heart!

  • G5 can't boot OS 9 (Score:5, Interesting)

    by rgovostes ( 814720 ) <(moc.liamg) (ta) (todhsals+setsovogr)> on Thursday December 23, 2004 @04:24PM (#11171728) Homepage
    A Mac built around this chip could theoretically run OS X, GNU/Linux, Mac OS 9, and ... The G5 cannot natively boot Mac OS 9. However, you can run most OS 9 software through the Classic Environment in Mac OS X. If we count the Classic Environment, though, why stop at that list? You could run virtually any OS, through various emulators. Windows 95, DOS, BeOS, etc...

  • My Conspiracy Theorist view (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Kraegar ( 565221 ) on Thursday December 23, 2004 @04:25PM (#11171735)
    1) IBM Partners with apple to make the g5
    2) IBM Sells off its intel based PC & Laptop line
    3) IBM incorporates more features into the g5 to make it a bigger competitor to intel / amd
    (begin conspiracy)
    4) IBM pushes linux more heavily on the apple g5
    5) IBM pushes the idea of apple desktops paired with IBM servers running linux or AIX

    Could a stronger IBM / apple partnership be the culmination of technologies (power processors, apple desktops, IBM servers, the marketing engine of both companies) that finally steps up and pushes an all *nix platform to challenge Microsoft?

    • Re:My Conspiracy Theorist view (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Decent theory except that: a) IBM has been working with apple on chips for almost 10 years b) IBM is too much of a corporate bohemoth to do anything even slightly creative like that.

    • Re:My Conspiracy Theorist view (Score:4, Interesting)

      by 0racle ( 667029 ) on Thursday December 23, 2004 @04:49PM (#11172022)
      Apple once made a Network Server that ran AIX [everymac.com].
    • Conspiracy to you, business strategy to IBM.
    • Linux Insider is running a couple of editorials speculating [linuxinsider.com] about running Linux [linuxinsider.com] on the 'Cell' [theregister.co.uk] processor for the next Sony Playstation. The bold prediction? 'the Linux developer community will, virtually en masse, abandon the x86 in favor of the new machine.' And guess who has partnered with Sony to manufacture the 'Cell'? Why its none other than IBM.

  • That's old news.. (Score:5, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 23, 2004 @04:27PM (#11171767)
    ..the REALLY cool partitioning is the new POWER5 based iSeries and pSeries. Hell, we've been using a Linux LPAR on our iSeries for two years now.

    Now it just works better with POWER5. The FSP (Flexible System Processor) that contains the Hypervisor code is just a card that runs an embedded Linux kernel. Plug that in to a IBM "HMC", or a xSeries Xeon box running SuSE Enterprise 8, which boots into Fluxbox. Open a Java-based config utility, and control all your partitions. Do you see a ongoing theme here? That's right folks, IBM trusts Linux enough to stake the reputation of their Big Iron on it.

    With POWER5 all the partitioning is transparent to the OSes. WIth out i5/520 I can move RAM and CPU seamlessly without OS reboots. Hell, I can (and do) have my Linux partition specified with just 2/10ths of one of the POWER5's, with a "burst" limit of 8/10ths. You just setup the FSP/Hypervisor with permissions/profiles for the OSes. If it sees that OS/400 needs more CPU and has a higher priority than Linux, it gets it.

    However, this is a very cool move for apple. If I could get a Mac that did all that?

    Well, yeah. That would own.

    Insert profit.
  • you still need a stupervisor

    see http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/Research/SRG/netos/xen/in d ex.html

    they calll this a managment console but linux already has this kind of caperbility with the right software.... hence MOL and to a lesser degreee UML

    you could even go down the virtual ISA route hence IBM daisy and transmeta....

    really old thing but nice to have support in hardware to make easy for the software but I am at a loss to see where in PowerPC thay are going to do this what are they going to add ?

    anyone ?

  • Mach? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Phroggy ( 441 ) * <slashdot3@NOsPaM.phroggy.com> on Thursday December 23, 2004 @04:29PM (#11171791) Homepage
    How does this tie in with Mach? I heard something about OSX running the Java Virtual Machine directly on top of Mach for better performance, but I don't really understand how any of this stuff works....

    • How does this tie in with Mach?

      Probably not at all, given that most of those OSes would have to be modified to run atop Mach primitives.

      I heard something about OSX running the Java Virtual Machine directly on top of Mach for better performance

      "Running directly on top of Mach", in OS X, would require stuff to be added to Mach to make that useful. The UN*X part of OS X is integrated with Mach; it doesn't run as a Mach server. To do, for example, networking or file system operations, a JVM "running ... di

  • Given how this is the setup being used on the S/390 (with Linux and Z/OS being able to run concurrently, including multiple Linux partions), and possibly (though I'm not certain about this one) the AS400.

    A multi-cored CPU, or a CPU which has a technology similar to Intel's Hyper Threading would be very well suited to this task.

    Of course if tools such as VMWARE and Xen virtualization already offer such capabilities in software, I wonder if it's even needed or desireable to use CPU-specific features for thi
    • Doing things in hardware was, is, and will always be faster than doing things in software. Early CPUs had software division math, and it stunk. Having 2 processors running 1 thread each is faster than having 1 processor running 2 threads.
  • I hate the state the obvious, but, why not get two computers?

    • Re:Whats the point? (Score:2, Insightful)

      by bte ( 78478 )
      one word: CONSOLIDATION

      If you have 5 servers in a rack that are doing whatever they and only pushing an average 15% utilisation each, you can consolidate into a single physical box, partition it into 5 machines.

      This saves you on:
      * rack space
      * power (electricity)
      * cost (only have to buy 1 server, not 5)

      That's for a server envirnoment. As Apple is traditionally targeted as a desktop, then it would allow you to do the same thing. How may people do you know who have 2 or 3 computers at home, connected with a
    • I hate the state the obvious, but, why not get two computers?

      I think the idea is that normally you have a pile of servers each running at about 0-5% cpu utilization. If you can consolodate them all into few servers you'd be saving on hardware. You can give a partition as small as 1/10th of a CPU (on IBM P5) and adjust them by 1% increments. You can even have these multiple partitions share other resources like i/o cards. It's kind of the same idea as SAN. Instead of having a bunch of direct attached

  • Interesting, but questionable. (Score:4, Insightful)

    by YouHaveSnail ( 202852 ) on Thursday December 23, 2004 @04:33PM (#11171837)
    A Mac built around this chip could theoretically run OS X, GNU/Linux, Mac OS 9, and the PowerPC version of Windows NT, all simultaneously and independently.

    That sounds cool and all, but I don't multitask nearly as well as even the current G5. One OS running a few applications is about all I need most of the time. Until Apple (or someone else) starts selling extra terminals that can connect to my machine, I can't really share the machine with other people (aside from providing various services, or letting them log into a command line environment). And no matter what, I don't want a copy of any version of Windows running on even a sliver of my machine, thanks very much.

    What would be much more interesting, for developers at least, would be to run multiple copies of the same operating system. I could run my app in one copy of the OS and debug it "remotely" from a second copy... two machine debugging in one machine!

  • I've used this (Score:5, Informative)

    by wandazulu ( 265281 ) on Thursday December 23, 2004 @04:34PM (#11171862)
    IBM sells a product simply called VM. Actually, I guess it's more of a lease option, as it's only available for mainframes (and I used it on an ES/9000...one of the biggest mainframe (read: MVS/CICS) machines around). It's cool in that you could assign separate processors separate copies of the OS, unlike VMware which has a "host" operating system and then various Guests. There's still a bit of low-level software, but for us it was seemless (which, given how much everything associated with this machine cost, had better have been).

    Interestingly, this brought to mind the Pink operating system that IBM and Apple were working on way-back-when(tm). The idea, if I remember correctly, was to have a low level OS kernel that could run multiple personalities...they talked about a MacOS personality (back when System 8 was still being developed), OS/2 and probably some flavor of Unix.

    I remember being at what I believe was the last Unix Convention at the Javits Center in NYC around '92 or '93 and they (IBM) had a prototype Power box that purported to be running a super super early pre-alpha version of it. The guy standing by it wouldn't let me touch it, and all he said he could do was run a "DIR" on what was supposed to be the OS/2 personality (no Mac one in sight, for the obvious reason there never was one). He also mentioned that there was a second box, but they couldn't get it to boot.

    *Sigh* ... strange times. Full of promises yet to be fulfilled. But as someone else pointed out, now that OS X is essentialy Unix, there would be precious little reason to go back to the "personality" scheme. I rather think they'd bring out some kick-ass server type box running multiple copies of OS X server, if that is in fact what they're trying to do.

    I was actually under the impression it was just going to be a dual core PPC, but I RTFA off os OSNews.com a couple of days ago and I don't really remember it.

    • Re:I've used this (Score:3, Insightful)

      by jonbrewer ( 11894 ) *
      "unlike VMware which has a "host" operating system and then various Guests"

      IBM came to give a demo at my former place of employ about two years ago with an Intel-based XServer and VMWare ESX, which ran directly on the hardware without a host OS. Really slick stuff - one of these monsters could run 30+ instances of Linux, Win2k Server, BSD, etc., great for us as 80% of our boxes averaged 1% CPU load and all our storage was on a SAN. I remember writing a proposal based on this to replace five racks of old m

  • Related stories (Score:5, Informative)

    by TTop ( 160446 ) on Thursday December 23, 2004 @04:42PM (#11171954)
    An interesting article [macworld.com] and commentary [macworld.com] about this Power 5 stuff related to Apple.
  • But the only two OSes that I would ever want to run simultaneously on a PPC box would be Linux and OSX. Mac-on-Linux already allows this handily.
  • This is probably not going to be a big deal for Apple: Windows NT on PPC is non-existent, and people who want to run Linux alongside OS X on Macintosh hardware already have good solutions.

    The main utility of virtualization is for server farms and mainframes. IBM will probably be shipping some server solutions based on the 970, and the rest of the market will go to Intel and AMD-based solutions. Neither Apple nor OS X are big players in that market.

  • Sandboxes? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by jevvim ( 826181 ) on Thursday December 23, 2004 @04:51PM (#11172034) Journal
    Who says virtualization needs to be used to run different/independent operating systems? I think it'd be nice to be able to run multiple copies of the same OS, each in an independent virtual machine, so that programs - or, more importantly, virues/malware - cannot affect other software running on the same system, even if the OS itself is compromised.

    Until, of course, a flaw is found in the virtualization layer itself, at which point it would be possible to hijack a computer at the CPU level and run a new, independent, trojan OS to do who-knows-what. Thankfully IBM has some experience with this, which means that such a vulnerability is less likely... right? ^^;

  • xen/pacifica/silvervale (Score:4, Informative)

    by tupshin ( 5777 ) <tupshin@tupshin.com> on Thursday December 23, 2004 @04:55PM (#11172069) Homepage
    It's a bit sad that with all the comments posted so far, nobody has mentioned xen [cam.ac.uk], and the fact that it is accomplishing the same kind of thing today on x86 machines with operating systems (including linux 2.4 and 2.6, a couple xbsds, and plan 9) that have been ported to it, and will be able to support un-ported operating systems (e.g. windows xxx) once Intel's silvervale or AMD's pacifica technologies (both are CPU extensions that assist virtualization in hardware) become available (probably in 2006).
    • Because Xen (or UML or coLinux) is not the same thing. They all require a host operating system. This will do it *without* a host OS, just like IBM mainframes have for decades.

  • VMS (Score:3, Informative)

    by krokodil ( 110356 ) on Thursday December 23, 2004 @05:03PM (#11172141) Homepage
    History repeats itself. VM/CMS is back, but
    on smaller sexier boxes.

  • maybe no.... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by moosesocks ( 264553 ) on Thursday December 23, 2004 @05:46PM (#11172565) Homepage
    I wouldn't place any bets on this being used in the G5.

    There were MANY variations of the G4-series chips which were not specifically designed for workstation/mainframe use and were never picked up by Apple.

    Offtopic, but interesting to note is that there were actually TWO G4s. I'm not 100% sure, but I think when apple transitioned to DDR RAM, they used a different series of processor -- they were quite different chips... apple never made a big deal out of it (and rightfully so, as it made little difference to the consumer). Still, compiling using optimizations only found on the newer G4s can yield impressive results as shown with the optimized firefox builds.

  • CPU Partitioning != Virtual Machine(aka emulation) (Score:4, Informative)

    by borgheron ( 172546 ) on Thursday December 23, 2004 @10:18PM (#11173998) Homepage Journal
    Hopefully, the following helps clear up some things:

    A virtual machine (which for some reason Java-ites seem to believe is *ONLY* a concept which applies to java) "virtualizes" aspects of the host machine. In the case of VMware on intel a technique called a monitor is used to run code natively on the processor for maximum speed. The monitor is basically a pseudo-device which accesses memory directly (you'll see it in the dev dir as vmmon). Other aspects of the machine, such as video, audio, keyboard, network, etc must be "virtualized".

    With CPU parititioning, running several operating systems becomes more or less trivial since much of the work of handling all of the ins and outs of virtualizing the hardware is handled for you at the lowest possible level.

    So, yes, there may be some performance hit when running several OSes in this way, but not quite as much of one as when this is done totally in software.

    GJC

  • WOW (Score:3, Informative)

    by DarkMantle ( 784415 ) on Thursday December 23, 2004 @11:56PM (#11174532) Homepage
    Reading the replies I see mostly prejudiced personal opinions.

    Apple has always made great OSes for their computers. They are more intuitive for beginners, the interface is clean and easy to read. On kde/gnome It can be quite difficult to find applications. With linux in general there's the massive and complex dependency tree to worry about. I wanna install xmms and i gotta install 5 other things as well (ok I'm exagerating for effect.)

    People have to realize that Linux isn't quite ready for the average user desktop. It's great for our parents/releatives because when they have problems they'll ask us. But not everyone has that luxury. Mac and windows, for the most part, you install it and it just works. No worries. Also, lets see you do High quality graphics work on Linux. Mac gives you more true colors for the image and prints the way you see it.

    And for those of you that are gonna say so-and-so copied so-and-so, lets just set the record straight. Apple BOUGHT their interface from Xerox PARC [xerox.com] after Microsoft turned it away. Then when MS saw the success apple was having in the early 90's decided to copy and modify the interface and created the "Start" menu (Finder anyone.) Incidently kde/gnome also designed their launcher menus based on the apple one. Which apple had been prototyping for a while, and many Geeks/nerds knew about it before it was released.

    So don't bad mouth a company you know nothing about, especially when most of the technology we have is owed to them.

    BTW: i feel I should tell you this was written on a Windows/Xandros Dual boot system. I was beta testing Xandros 3.0 prior to release.

  • Nothing new and error in the parent (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Chanc_Gorkon ( 94133 ) <.moc.liamg. .ta. .nokrog.> on Friday December 24, 2004 @01:34AM (#11174944)
    Not just mainframe systems support LPARING. We have 3 LPARS running on our big Power 5 570 server. It's a beefy server. Plenty of ram (106 GB split between LPARS) and 16 processors to divide between LPARS. When AIX 5.3 comes out, you can order a new feature code that adds fractional LPARING....that is you can create a LPAR with as little as 1/10th of a processor. It's not surprising that the next 970 has this built in it. The real competition for UNIX servers in the near future will both be powered by IBM chips. That is, Apple, and IBM. IBM better be careful in how much power they give the 970's because IBM could get a real run for it's money if Apple exploits this ability.

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