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Amiga computer related discussion => Amiga Hardware Issues and discussion => Topic started by: asian1 on August 08, 2003, 11:37:47 PM
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Hello
From News.com.com, there is a headline several
days ago about US Navy new Sonar project that
use Linux PowerPC board from Apple.
The OS is created by Yellow Dog Linux.
Why they choose Apple board, not Pegasos or
AmigaOne?
Do they think that Apple have better quality or
the company is more stable than Eyetech or
Genesi? (ie: spare parts, support etc)
News (http://news.com.com)
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US Military can only buy from US companies.
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No, the US government are free to take quotes from anywhere in the world. They DO give preference to many large US firms, though.
The fact is, Apple has a good reputation in the US. Plus, the machine itself is much more available in the US, much more ruggedized (the iServe ships as a rackmount system -- no pain in the arse building), more powerful, and, most likely, one of the people making the decision holds some Apple stock.
Or, alternatively, the only proposal submitted was for the solution they chose. ;-)
But, honestly, it was the right choice for a PPC solution, anyhow. I DO trust the quality and supply of Macs over any Genesi/Eyetech boards, anyway.
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How about this one ..
The US millitary isn't aware of both the AmigaOne and the Pegasos ...
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Simple reason.. those were sold by company who don't want any Terons Anymore. It's the very same Terrasoft Solutions that was supposed to sell Teron motherboards (and considerable cheaper price than identical Aone) but they pulled out about a half year ago.
Officially there has been no explanation (nor do they need to give any) of real reasons behind this but after seeing all these delays, (and other claimed issues) on Mai Articia-S based systems it's no wonder they gave up on them,.
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The signal processing application gets a big boost from Altivec, and the XServe is 'naturally' G4 hardware (with many units in production/warehoused), whereas Eyetech and Genesi aren't cranking out *mass* quantities just yet. Plus, the XServes have the dual option available, which I assume they're going with here... Mai-based dual solutions are still in their infancy.
...on top of that, Terrasoft (Yellow Dog) have a decent history supporting gov't projects (NASA, etc), and seem to be the organizing factor here. (As in they, rather than Apple, probably put the bid in to create the 'solution.')
Maybe some G4-XEs could've fit the bill... 'Blades' or 'Micro Servers' (Mai's server-on-PCI-card offering?) would doubtless provide a better density, if they were available with G4s/Altivec'd chips... But it looks like they were looking for a level of implementation support here (server management), that Terrasoft felt they could claim and make good on as maintainers of YellowDog, while Eyetech or Genesi might be more hesitant, given that right now, we're still feeling sort of lucky to have Debian/etc. booting at all.
Now, if SuSE polishes up their PowerPC distribution and lands some defense contract, maybe they'd recommend some hardware from our camp. But by then, IBM should have their own line of 970 machines launched, so we'd be a bit niche-limited.
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Why Mac, PPC & Linux? Well .....
Several Years back a prototype cruiser set sail for testing. It was completely computerized to lower the number of personel that had to be on board to fight the ship in case of an emergency sortee. It was running Windows NT.
In the middle of battle drills the ship went dead in the water. Someone entered a wrong number and the system freaked. The ship was towed back to port.
Needless to say the Pentagon was not happy.
True Story! :-D