Like any other company, they probably weighed the cost of replacing their 5000 SGI boxes with something else. Found that this video card produced a very good benefit at low cost (especially compared to the SGI) but had poor support.
Think about them now buying 5000 cheap AMD rackmounts to put in cabletv headends around the country. Shareholders are saving a fortune - I bet they save a mint compared to the cost of taking the proprietary route.
The fact that they're willing to release the fruits of their labour is just an added plus. They 'get it'.
On a related microsoft-bashing note - imagine deploying 5000 lights-out, 'rock solid' NT boxes around the country in cable-tv headends all over the country. This is actually a great case study in the reliability and manageability requirements that these guys have and how linux beat out nt and other unix-like environments.
The Weather Channel's current headend rackmount machines are based on the Silicon Graphics O2. SGI has announced the End Of Production of the O2 and O2+, they will no longer be made as of November 2002. There is no similar replacement. The O2 was/is one hell of a video box... it's performance and capabilites were great for NTSC/PAL resolution video... that's what the box was designed for. But alas, there really is no replacement... The closest thing is the Octane2, but it's almost 3x the size... 2-4x the cost, uses about 3x the power.... and the only video option available for Octane is very expensive as it does mutliple channels of HD and SD video. There really is no O2 replacement.
I'm sure the Weather Channel has bought a few extras (they've already bought thousands) but is seeking some newer/better/cheaper alternative. Because the station, it's workstations, headends, and its network is mostly Unix based (mostly SGI IRIX, some HP-UX), Linux makes sense... especially with some of SGI's opensource offerings (XFS, Failsafe, and others).
What's interesting is that The Weather Channel continues to buy big SGI Origin servers and wiz-bang workstations (Octane2, Fuel) for internal use. It's also interesting to note that they are still in the process of upgrading many of the older headends to the latest (O2 based) hardware and newer software revisions.
I don't think they'll be switching really soon... but it is very cool to see that it's going to be a friendly community effort.
My question is...why go ATi? I would think using the perfectly functional (though, admittedly, closed) NVidia drivers should suffice, at a much lower cost. I didn't read the article (yeah, bad, sue me) so maybe they answer this question, but another nagging issue gets to me.
I would hope they are looking at the long-term position this will put them in. The 8500 is getting close to a year old now. It will be an out of production before the O2s are finally killed.
Why spend the resources to develop drivers for a card that will be gone in relatively short order? It will no doubt be a rather expensive venture no matter what.
So you're saying that they should go with a proprietary solution to be sure they're safe in the "long run"? That's back asswards.
If they have open drivers for their Radeons, they will be able to have them work.. well, forever. If they have some proprietary Nvidia drivers, who's to say they will work in the future? You have no guarantee that Nvidia will continue to 'support' their current cards under Linux 2.6, 2.8, or Xfree 4.4, 5.0(!), etc. From a business standpoint, that's a Bad Thing(TM).
They chose ATI because it has better 2d performance
What most people forget is that Nvidia doesn't make any cards themselves, but rather others do. And those 'others' have shown that they pretty much such at 2d.
Basically, by committing to makin drivers for the Radeon 8500, they are committing to a specific revision of ATi's hardware platform. By the time TWC is ready to put such systems into production, ATi won't even make that card any more. Are they supposed to buy all their equipment from closeout stores?
In other words, my point is that the're abandoning one dead platform and leaping towards a platform that will be dead by the time anything worthwhile comes out of this driver development. What issue is that solving for them? Nothing, as far as I can see.
They may already have the cards installed and running the ATI official drivers. What they're probably doing here is a future insurance thing: once the Radeon 8500 hits end-of-life, drivers for the latest Linux kernel/XFree combo won't come out. However, if they have an in-house driver, they can make it current again without too much work. This is more an internal program to ensure that they don't get stuck with a bunch of useless legacy hardware.
The bonus for the Open Source community is cool: open source Radeon drivers! Still, though, that isn't the only reason TWC is putting out Open Source drivers. In fact, it probably was a minor consideration: they may have just thought they could increase their reputation among computer geek-types at essentially no cost. From what I see, it seems to have worked!
I don't know the hardware well enough to say what's "comparable" to the O2, but there's a good reason it's the last of its type -- it's a money loser. Like all of SGIs desktop systems, the O2 just couldn't compete with comodity systems. It makes sense for SGI to concentrate on massively-parallel systems, where there's less competition.
Shareholders first question (Score:1)
How exactly is this little charity project going to benefit the Weather Channel?
Re:Shareholders first question (Score:3, Insightful)
I think this may be a rather inventive way of advertising. Sponsorship. It has "worked" for decades in sports, why not in open source?
What would be cute is if they had a "Brought to you by..." message during the splash screen for the driver.
Linux over cheap hardware SAVES THEM MONEY (Score:3, Insightful)
Think about them now buying 5000 cheap AMD rackmounts to put in cabletv headends around the country. Shareholders are saving a fortune - I bet they save a mint compared to the cost of taking the proprietary route.
The fact that they're willing to release the fruits of their labour is just an added plus. They 'get it'.
On a related microsoft-bashing note - imagine deploying 5000 lights-out, 'rock solid' NT boxes around the country in cable-tv headends all over the country. This is actually a great case study in the reliability and manageability requirements that these guys have and how linux beat out nt and other unix-like environments.
Oh, sorry, I mean GNU/Linux haha
Weather Channel headend rackmounts (Score:5, Informative)
The Weather Channel's current headend rackmount machines are based on the Silicon Graphics O2. SGI has announced the End Of Production of the O2 and O2+, they will no longer be made as of November 2002. There is no similar replacement. The O2 was/is one hell of a video box... it's performance and capabilites were great for NTSC/PAL resolution video... that's what the box was designed for. But alas, there really is no replacement... The closest thing is the Octane2, but it's almost 3x the size... 2-4x the cost, uses about 3x the power.... and the only video option available for Octane is very expensive as it does mutliple channels of HD and SD video. There really is no O2 replacement.
I'm sure the Weather Channel has bought a few extras (they've already bought thousands) but is seeking some newer/better/cheaper alternative. Because the station, it's workstations, headends, and its network is mostly Unix based (mostly SGI IRIX, some HP-UX), Linux makes sense... especially with some of SGI's opensource offerings (XFS, Failsafe, and others).
What's interesting is that The Weather Channel continues to buy big SGI Origin servers and wiz-bang workstations (Octane2, Fuel) for internal use. It's also interesting to note that they are still in the process of upgrading many of the older headends to the latest (O2 based) hardware and newer software revisions.
I don't think they'll be switching really soon... but it is very cool to see that it's going to be a friendly community effort.
Re:Weather Channel headend rackmounts (Score:1)
I would hope they are looking at the long-term position this will put them in. The 8500 is getting close to a year old now. It will be an out of production before the O2s are finally killed.
Why spend the resources to develop drivers for a card that will be gone in relatively short order? It will no doubt be a rather expensive venture no matter what.
Something just doesn't quite make sense here.
Re:Weather Channel headend rackmounts (Score:1)
If they have open drivers for their Radeons, they will be able to have them work.. well, forever. If they have some proprietary Nvidia drivers, who's to say they will work in the future? You have no guarantee that Nvidia will continue to 'support' their current cards under Linux 2.6, 2.8, or Xfree 4.4, 5.0(!), etc. From a business standpoint, that's a Bad Thing(TM).
Re:Weather Channel headend rackmounts (Score:1)
What most people forget is that Nvidia doesn't make any cards themselves, but rather others do. And those 'others' have shown that they pretty much such at 2d.
Sunny
Re:Weather Channel headend rackmounts (Score:2)
Basically, by committing to makin drivers for the Radeon 8500, they are committing to a specific revision of ATi's hardware platform. By the time TWC is ready to put such systems into production, ATi won't even make that card any more. Are they supposed to buy all their equipment from closeout stores?
In other words, my point is that the're abandoning one dead platform and leaping towards a platform that will be dead by the time anything worthwhile comes out of this driver development. What issue is that solving for them? Nothing, as far as I can see.
Re:Weather Channel headend rackmounts (Score:2)
The bonus for the Open Source community is cool: open source Radeon drivers! Still, though, that isn't the only reason TWC is putting out Open Source drivers. In fact, it probably was a minor consideration: they may have just thought they could increase their reputation among computer geek-types at essentially no cost. From what I see, it seems to have worked!
Alas O2.... (Score:2)