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IBM

Boot Log Messages On A Pre-Production Processor 68

Posted by HeUnique from the looks-interesting dept.
Check this Boot log. This is a log from the Power4 Processor which is in the pre-production stages, and since it's in the pre-production stages, they removed the BOGOMIPS value. Nevertheless - it looks very interesting. Keep up the good work, IBM!
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Boot log messages on a pre-production processor More

Boot log messages on a pre-production processor

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  • Answered in this comment [slashdot.org].
  • Two CPUs will outperform one single, large one when it comes to doing many tasks at once and the Power4 has the additional benefit that data can be exchanged between the two CPUs at a fairly high speed without leaving the processor core. The Power4s speciality is highly bandwith-intensive multithreaded applications, which will make it THE CPU for servers and the like.

    That's one thery.

    Another thery is making one CPU capable or running instrucitons from more then one stream in the same clock cycle and allowing it to choose which functional units get assigned to which thread on every clock will be faster. The Alpha 21364 designers obviously beleve in this thery, since that is how it works.

    A simple thought exparament will show the multiple threads CPU is faster if it has all the functional units the multiple CPU on a die version has. Of corse if it is far simpler to put a whole bunch of CPUs on one die then to make a whole bunch of FUs for one CPU, then it might not be such a win.

    Since both CPUs are due out next yearish I guess we can find out who is right then.

    Personally I think the Alpha approch will win for the more common workloads we see today. But that the multi-CPU method will be far simpler to ramp up, and will win on more losely cuppled problems.

  • Snippets from many comments and the articles itself:

    These porting people should know that bogomips does not relate to the processor's performance.

    The BogoMIPS value is a measure of how many million times per second a processor can perform "do nothing" executions. It's measured at startup and used to tweak some timing loops in the kernel. From a marketing standpoint, however, there is absolutely nothing sexxy about publishing how good your cpu is at doing nothing.

    But both Bogomips and a boot log can hardly show the real advantages

    since it's in the pre-production stages, they removed the BOGOMIPS value.

    Obviously plenty of people think the bogomips value is SO FSCKING IMPORTANT that they felt it necessary to hide it and then claim that it has no meaning? THis is like the gov't claming there's no base near groom lake, Nevada, and infact that there's nothing there at all, yet threatens to arrest/detain/kill (signs say "use of deadly force authorized") anyone who tries to go there.

    Get over yourselves. Bogomips matter. Your own paranoia over them just proves it all the more.

  • 2.95.2 19991024 (release/franzo)) #147 Tue May 30 15:54:28 CDT 2000

    Took 147 compiles to get it to work?
  • Yes, some interesting information about the CPU can be calculated from the BogoMIPS value. But there is one really important reason they matter: people think they do.
  • The rule of thumb that's always worked for me is that each CPU added increases performance by something around 60% of the last increase. So the first CPU adds a 100% overall boost (from nothing to doing something), the second 60% overall, the third 36% overall, and so on. Doesn't always work, but it helps you get a rough idea of what's going on.
  • Yeah, so it's not a consumer chip. But MacOS X isn't the old MacOS, either. It has all that BSD junk running under it. If I had to choose between MacOS X and Linux for this thing, I'd say MacOS X because I would get the MacOS and a BSD box in one.

    You are right, this isn't a PowerPC chip; MacOS might not run, and I agree there would probably be a Linux version first. But if for some reason I had to choose, I'd go with the MacOS X.


  • This is not a SOFTWARE development box. So, really, there is most likely no need for all those disks. Unless they are testing the IO or something.
    --
    "What beats rock?" "Nuthin' beats rock!"
  • Can I post my linux bootlog for my TI-86 caculator? Huh? huh?

  • odds are that most of that space that was not able to be mapped into a partition table (read: MOST of that dasd) is jfs file space dedicated to an AIX installation or two.
  • Yes, but this is not a production unit, it's a development machine used to get Linux running on the new CPU. It makes little sense to me to have that many disks. Even if you were testing RAID you'd only need about 5 or 6 to do some nice tests. I have a SUN E450 at work that has a bunch of disks in RAID5 also, but it's also a production box...
  • The real problem with on die SMP is that it wastes 'resources'. Most of the next generation of 'RISC' processors will be SMT (symmetric multithreaded) instead which allows them to better utilize of the available transistor count. Expect to see the competitors with 4x or 8x SMT CPU's.

    The other advantage of SMT is that it allows your cpu to tolerate higher memory latencies because it isn't such a big deal to stall a thread (waiting for memory) because the other threads will continue to utilize any functional units they need.

    What I would like to know is, where is the boot message bringing the second CPU online? It looks like they are probably just running one CPU in this log.

  • see, that was my thought, too... I checked the decimal places a few times.

    Maybe we should have a /. linux tuning forum. Post your bootlog, and see if everybody else can pull it apart... kinda like 100,000 mechanics all trying to work on the same car at the same time, but most of them have only worked on GM vehicles, and this is a foreign model...
  • Over the years, I've found it is either half, the same, or double the CPU speed. I don't know much more than that. :)
  • How about dmesg | less in an eterm running on my 1280x1024 desktop? Besides, I wouldn't be able to read it even at 1024x768 frame buffer mode, as it takes my system 30 seconds to boot. You blink and the screen is cleared and giving you a login prompt :)

  • What makes you think that this machine, with only two Linux-readable disks, only boots Linux? notice that the machine booted from sd*2*a.

    IBM doesn't control the development of Linux, and doesn't know where Linux is going to be in a year's time when the power4 finally gets released. (like anybody does!). Their primary interest is probably to make sure that the kernel doesn't hork on some unexpected change in the processor design.

    AIX, on the other hand, is IBM proprietary. If Big Blue doesn't have AIX running on that CPU by the time it comes out the door, their ass is gonna be grass. They don't have a legion of Open Source hackers to do their dirty work for them.

    Then there's the AS/400 which is also capable of running on the PowerPC CPU.

    Put a handfull of applications, multiple development sources and enough disks to test the I/O on each of those OS's and that stack of disks starts to look conservative.
    --

  • I can see it now, "Buy a new PV, see how fast your computer does nothing!"
  • That almost looks like it was booting on a test mule Powermac 9600 (with a P4 proc). Yellowdog linux offers the champion server for Macs, and there's that funny line about Macintosh NVram mapping or something. Also, the FD controller is the same one used on late model 9600s. Hmmm....

    -dave
  • Remeber, the POWER4 is "NOT" a PC processor. It's target platform is high-end RS/6000 machines. Think "big iron". I'll bet that's a mid-range configuration.
  • Remember, POWER != PowerPC

    IBM does make RS/6000 machines with PPC processors, but they are faster than Macs due to better chipsets. The PPC is actually a subset of the POWER arch, however all high-end rs6k's are POWER-based.
  • I take offense to this comment. MacOS is a fine operating system, as is Linux. If you are the type of person that likes to do things for themselves then that's ok, but some of us don't have time to learn the entire language to work under Linux. Now, don't get me wrong, Linux is a powerful operating system and I may be a little biased because I have been a mac user all my life but they are both operating systems with their own advantages and disadvanteges. Although I despise microsoft because of their tactics and not necesarily stealing of ideas from apple, but trying to pass them off on their own...Sorry, I went off on a tangent. MacOS and Linux, and Unix, and Unix, and whatnot are trailing behind Windoze and their assorted OS'es in software, but we all still in need of a common bond to bring us together to fight the evil of William Gates III!!! HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA.
  • Linux version 2.3.99-pre9 (root@enigma) (gcc version egcs-2.91.66 19990314/Linux (egcs-1.1.2 release)) #1 Sun Jun 4 01:17:19 PDT 2000
    BIOS-provided physical RAM map:
    e820: 000000000009fc00 @ 0000000000000000 (usable)
    e820: 0000000000000400 @ 000000000009fc00 (reserved)
    e820: 0000000000010000 @ 00000000000f0000 (reserved)
    e820: 000000000fef0000 @ 0000000000100000 (usable)
    e820: 0000000000008000 @ 000000000fff0000 (ACPI data)
    e820: 0000000000008000 @ 000000000fff8000 (ACPI NVS)
    e820: 0000000000010000 @ 00000000ffff0000 (reserved)
    user-defined physical RAM map:
    e820: 000000000009f000 @ 0000000000000000 (usable)
    e820: 000000000ff00000 @ 0000000000100000 (usable)
    On node 0 totalpages: 65536
    zone(0): 4096 pages.
    zone(1): 61440 pages.
    zone(2): 0 pages.
    Initializing CPU#0
    Detected 654593298 Hz processor.
    Console: colour VGA+ 80x25
    Calibrating delay loop... 1304.17 BogoMIPS
    Memory: 254828k/262144k available (1614k kernel code, 6928k reserved, 122k data, 204k init, 0k highmem)
    Dentry-cache hash table entries: 32768 (order: 6, 262144 bytes)
    Buffer-cache hash table entries: 16384 (order: 4, 65536 bytes)
    Page-cache hash table entries: 65536 (order: 6, 262144 bytes)
    kmem_create: Poisoning requested, but con given - bdev_cache
    Inode-cache hash table entries: 16384 (order: 5, 131072 bytes)
    kmem_create: Poisoning requested, but con given - inode_cache
    CPU: L1 I Cache: 64K L1 D Cache: 64K
    CPU: L2 Cache: 512K
    CPU: AMD AMD-K7(tm) Processor stepping 02
    Checking 386/387 coupling... OK, FPU using exception 16 error reporting.
    Checking 'hlt' instruction... OK.
    POSIX conformance testing by UNIFIX
    mtrr: v1.36 (20000221) Richard Gooch (rgooch@atnf.csiro.au)
    PCI: PCI BIOS revision 2.10 entry at 0xfda01, last bus=1
    PCI: Using configuration type 1
    PCI: Probing PCI hardware
    PCI: Using IRQ router VIA [1106/0586] at 00:04.0
    isapnp: Scanning for Pnp cards...
    isapnp: Calling quirk for 01:00
    ISAPnP: SB audio device quirk - increasing port range
    isapnp: Calling quirk for 01:02
    isapnp: AWE32 quirk - adding two ports
    isapnp: Card 'Creative SB AWE64 PnP'
    isapnp: 1 Plug & Play card detected total
    Linux NET4.0 for Linux 2.3
    Based upon Swansea University Computer Society NET3.039
    kmem_create: Poisoning requested, but con given - skbuff_head_cache
    NET4: Unix domain sockets 1.0/SMP for Linux NET4.0.
    NET4: Linux TCP/IP 1.0 for NET4.0
    IP Protocols: ICMP, UDP, TCP
    IP: routing cache hash table of 2048 buckets, 16Kbytes
    TCP: Hash tables configured (established 16384 bind 16384)
    ACPI: "AMI" found at 0x000fb080
    ACPI: found platform errata 0x00000030
    ACPI: unreserved table memory @ 0x0fff00b0!
    Starting kswapd v1.6
    fb: Voodoo3 memory = 16384K
    fb: MTRR's turned on
    tdfxfb: reserving 1024 bytes for the hwcursor at 0xd1803000
    Console: switching to colour frame buffer device 80x30
    fb0: 3Dfx Voodoo3 frame buffer device
    pty: 256 Unix98 ptys configured
    Uniform Multi-Platform E-IDE driver Revision: 6.30
    ide: Assuming 33MHz system bus speed for PIO modes; override with idebus=xx
    VP_IDE: IDE controller on PCI bus 00 dev 21
    VP_IDE: chipset revision 6
    VP_IDE: not 100% native mode: will probe irqs later
    hda: WDC AC418000D, ATA DISK drive
    hdc: CD-532E, ATAPI CDROM drive
    ide0 at 0x1f0-0x1f7,0x3f6 on irq 14
    ide1 at 0x170-0x177,0x376 on irq 15
    hda: 35239680 sectors (18043 MB) w/1966KiB Cache, CHS=2193/255/63
    hdc: ATAPI 32X CD-ROM drive, 128kB Cache
    Uniform CD-ROM driver Revision: 3.08
    Partition check:
    hda: hda1 hda2 hda3
    Floppy drive(s): fd0 is 1.44M
    FDC 0 is a post-1991 82077
    Serial driver version 4.93 (2000-03-20) with MANY_PORTS SHARE_IRQ SERIAL_PCI ISAPNP enabled
    eepro100.c:v1.09j-t 9/29/99 Donald Becker http://cesdis.gsfc.nasa.gov/linux/drivers/eepro100 .html
    eepro100.c: $Revision: 1.29 $ 2000/03/30 Modified by Andrey V. Savochkin and others
    eth0: OEM i82557/i82558 10/100 Ethernet, 00:80:5F:F7:E9:27, IRQ 9.
    Board assembly 692290-002, Physical connectors present: RJ45
    Primary interface chip i82555 PHY #1.
    General self-test: passed.
    Serial sub-system self-test: passed.
    Internal registers self-test: passed.
    ROM checksum self-test: passed (0x24c9f043).
    Receiver lock-up workaround activated.
    [drm] Initialized tdfx 0.0.1 19991009 on minor 63
    ISAPnP reports AWE64 WaveTable at i/o 0x620

    Soundblaster audio driver Copyright (C) by Hannu Savolainen 1993-1996
    sb: Creative SB AWE64 PnP detected
    sb: ISAPnP reports 'Creative SB AWE64 PnP' at i/o 0x220, irq 5, dma 1, 5
    sb: 1 Soundblaster PnP card(s) found.
    kmem_create: Forcing size word alignment - nfs_fh
    VFS: Mounted root (ext2 filesystem) readonly.
    Freeing unused kernel memory: 204k freed
    Adding Swap: 265064k swap-space (priority -1)
    [EXT II FS 0.5b, 95/08/09, bs=4096, fs=4096, gc=55, bpg=32768, ipg=32320, mo=ffffffea]

    Note the badass 2.3.99-pre9 isapnp :) ROAR! Also, my Mhz/BogoMIPS aren't top secret ;)


  • Marketing done by IBM is a weird thing. I have no clue what you do or where you do it...but IBM doesn't go much for bragging rights on this kind of stuff. Its more like...let's sell it to the people who use our products and optimize our products for it. I will say this for IBM...as a Big Blue employee but a much longer Linux lover...IBM is really going with this Linux thing. I almost feel as if it being pushed more than AIX. Course..being the Linux guy in my area...I see more of Linux than anything.

    So heck...if they are bringing this to their big buyers and saying..."Use AIX or Linux"..AWESOME! At least they give the option.

  • That was a dumb way to put it...but what I meant is the recent Linux movement in big corporations. Had to clarify..the way I said it sounded really bad.
  • Do you have any idea how many gigs a devel box can consume? Especially when you have more than a few developers on the same machine. There are over 15 developers here (I'm not sure of the exact count even though I'm the sysadmin: not 100% certain who does what, and I lost track several developers ago:), and when each one tries to us 2G each (largish C++ trees, and then the .o files...), 18G doesn't go far. We've now got around 50G on the devel box, but I don't really think that's going to last all that long.

    IMO, a devel box needs more space than a production box (especially in a team environment).


  • that's all? i've got 3001.55BogoMIPS on my DualPiii@750 system at home.
    Considering each CPU does 1500.77

    i *LOVE* compiling now...

    http://highos.dhs.org/server.txt for full specs.

    --
    Jesse Tie Ten Quee - tie@linux.ca - highos@highos.com
    http://highos.dhs.org
  • well, the trolls have come and gone and gave me flamebate for expressing my opinion.

    lessse.. post your opinions, your flamebate. Follow the masses your cool.

    lahooosers

  • Its IBM! Hard drives grow on trees at IBM.
  • Well, under AIX, under which the power4 chip will likely run, you can pull the plug, and it will replay its journal. Also, on this kinda iron (H&J 50s and above) you usually have your disks in a separate case running ssa. You can shut down the CPU without losing much data because (at least in my company's case) the machines are configged to flush ~1sec. Of course this is a 8-proc machine with power to spare for such things.

  • Wow (Score:1)

    by cybrthng ( 22291 )
    Who would have ever thought linux would boot on yet another CPU. I mean its only been ported to everything else under the sun.

    Without performance indicators, what the hell does this log show us?

    Sure it shows IBM supporting linux, but isn't that the fad for everything else? I mean i find it more intriguing to see linux running on webpads, palm pcs and miniature servers more so then another 'look what linux can run under'

    OTH, go blue go.. i want a Power4 running MacOS X at 2 ghz.

    hehe.. oops, i said i wanted MacOS X running under one of these.. oh well, linux would still be cool

    swwwwwweeet revalation

    sweeeeeeet surrenduring

    Thinking of you.. thinking of you

    oops.. didn't mean to trail off like that, guess there isn't much else to speak about on this subject :)

  • Yellow Dog Linux is a PPC distribution, theres not that much of a choice there...

  • Geek W4rZ (Score:5)

    by uncleFester ( 29998 ) on Sunday June 11, 2000 @05:37AM (#1010614) Homepage Journal
    Welcome to the new bragging domain of the geek! No more $GENETAL-size wars of the past. I can see it now...
    • Bootlog Battle ('d00d' my bootlog consumes its own 1Gb disk')
    • Uptime Follies ('What do you mean it's impossible? This machine HAS been up for 23.723243 years!!!')
    • Peripheral Cramming ('It was tough making PCI-slot splitter cables so I could cram those seven Geforce cards in there, but you should see the results!')
    • Megahertz Madness ('I can melt the case on my overclocked Celeron in 2.5 seconds.. and that's MOLTEN baby!')
    More to come, I'm sure...

  • Impressive... (Score:4)

    by headLITE ( 171240 ) on Sunday June 11, 2000 @05:32AM (#1010615)
    Well, unless for the SCSI stuff, the log sure looks impressive. But both Bogomips and a boot log can hardly show the real advantages. The Power4 is optimised for SMP and has a huge memory bandwidth (10 GB/s). Its also not one single monolithic CPU but consists of two, smaller CPUs. Two CPUs will outperform one single, large one when it comes to doing many tasks at once and the Power4 has the additional benefit that data can be exchanged between the two CPUs at a fairly high speed without leaving the processor core. The Power4s speciality is highly bandwith-intensive multithreaded applications, which will make it THE CPU for servers and the like.

  • Its no surprise that they got Linux to run on the Power4, its supposed to be PPC compatible after all. The Bogomips figure is prolly somewhat below what McKinley will show and above IA64 -- Below McKinley only because of the SMP-approach, bogomips are based on clock cycles of one single CPU so multiple CPUs wont do it any good.

  • raid5: measuring checksumming speed
    8regs : 48091.100 MB/sec
    32regs : 93871.305 MB/sec
    using fastest function: 8regs (48.387 MB/sec)

    Isn't 93871.305 > 48091.100?

  • My bootlong Starting Windows 98.... :)

  • I can't believe I bit... *groan*

  • This is EXACTLY what I was talking about [slashdot.org]....

    And so it begins...

  • Apparently some people missed line 20.
  • Ya think they really needed all those SCSI disks just for getting Linux to boot on a Power4 CPU? I mean cripes, they have like 15 17GB disks and 2 8.5GB disks in there! I can see a few for testing RAID, but 17 disks?!? Isn't that a little overkill?

    Well I can see this configuration happening. One of the sun servers used by a cs prof (david beazley of python fame) at my school has a similiar setup. Two drives in a RAID 0 configuration for the system disk and 10 drives in a RAID 5 for the rest of the space usuage. You get fast performance and good fault tolerance.

  • I didn't dis MacOS itself. I basically said "Why the hell would you want to run MacOS on an RS/6000?" Remember that this is "POWER, and not "PowerPC". It is not an end-user targeted CPU.
  • It wasn't an attack on MacOS. This is "Heavy Iron" running Power4, not some PowerPC chip. I bet AIX will be the only UNIX capable of using that hardware to its max. Plus, MacOS really doesn't take advantage of multiprocessing (up to OS X it was hardly multitasking, but rather multiprogramming).

    The technical capabilities and ease of use of an operating system are still two totally distinct things right now.

    I bet that MacOS couldn't run on something like this anyways unless they did a custom hack.
  • I bet that MacOS couldn't run on something like this anyways unless they did a custom hack

    Apparently linux couldn't run on this without a custom hack either. Actually if you think about it, linux is all about custom hacks.

  • I imagine when you are porting something to an entire new CPU you would probably have to compile it alot of times. Its not like you are just making a new kernel for that spiffy new SCSI card.

    Would be interesting to see what the compile rate for devel kernels.
  • First of all... Why the hell would you want to run Mac OS X on the thing? Actually, I have to say the same about Linux unless it's drastically improved in the next year.

    Hrmm... I don't know. Let me think. Could it be because we use those systems and the chip is FAST???? It's not about the marketing. It's about the raw power.

    Besides, the only thing AIX is good for is giving sysadmins nightmares and giving your development team ulcers when they try to compile their code on the newest version of the OS. I swear. IBM changes their damn networking code's interfaces and function parameter data types so often you'd think they're trying to drive their customer base to suicide. There's a reason I pronounce is "Aches" sometimes. Oh, and don't get me started about SMIT and the seemingly deliberate effort to break shell scripts that run just fine across other systems by using non-standard command arguments.

    Of course, IBM's attitude has always been that the standard is whatever IBM chooses it to be. Witness SNA, Microchannel, and their late forced entries into the microcomputer and personal computer markets.
  • And how do you expect to read that when its whizzing by your screen in 80x25 text mode? What about if you have some sort of crude accessibilty options turned on to 40x25 text mode?

    Or worse yet, what if the computer speaks it out to you?
  • *Sigh* The POWER3 and POWER4 chips are based on the PowerPC, not the older POWER, architectures. PowerPC is the successor to the POWER ISA. The POWER3 and POWER4 are 64-bit implementations of the PowerPC ISA. In fact, the POWER3 is sometimes referred to as the PowerPC 630. Look it up on the web sometime. As an aside, the 64-bit PowerPC architecture is supposedly compatible with the 32-bit implementation. I don't honestly know what that's supposed to mean exactly, but that's what all IBM's literature claims.

    Incidentally, the 601, which was used in early Macs and IBM workstations, was a transitional chip to help people move away from the POWER to the PowerPC architecture. It supported both ISAs, but later chips removed certain no longer used POWER instructions.
  • repeat this to yourself: BOGOMIPS ARE MEANINGLESS
    they are in NO way a measure of preformance. it is nothing more than an empty delay loop.
  • huh?
    How?
    My Athelon 700 does only 696.32 bogomips according to /proc/cpuinfo
  • they both shop with ReiserFS.I have been running
    ReiserFS on 3 boxes and no problem what so ever.

  • Is this similar to the DOS 'No keyboard present. Press F1 to continue'??

  • Re:Wow (Score:4)

    by Octorian ( 14086 ) on Sunday June 11, 2000 @06:04AM (#1010634) Homepage
    First of all... Why the hell would you want to run Mac OS X on the thing? Actually, I have to say the same about Linux unless it's drastically improved in the next year.

    This is a POWER processor, and it belongs in an IBM RS/6000 machine running AIX. If IBM markets like usual, there will be nothing flashy about it, and few will know of it, but it will kick the crap out of anything Sun can produce.

    Also, if the clock speed is released, you must remember that it is really irrelevant for comparing POWER to x86. Why? Well, I've got these two machines sitting next to my desktop. One is a Pentium 100MHz running FreeBSD, and the other is a POWERstation 350 (41MHz POWER CPU) running AIX. A week ago, I ran a floating point benchmark, and the PS350 was faster than the P-100 (and that was with gcc, which sucks on AIX more than any other platform).

    Also, AIX redefines the term "industrial strength". It's not really BSD-nix or SysV-nix, but kinda a random hack of the two, feeling more BSD, but it has really good system management tools, since it has plenty of non-standard commands for things like resizing filesystems and stuff (yes, on the fly, no rebooting).

    Anyways, here's something I'm working on:

    AIX Airlines
    You arrive at what the map said was the airport, however
    it looks a lot more like a massive industrial complex. You check
    in at a counter staffed with men all wearing a black tie and white shirt
    uniform. Then, you get on a tram that takes you to the terminal.
    You quickly notice that AIX Airlines is flying both brand new aircraft,
    and planes dating back to the 50's. When you arrive at your gate,
    you notice that the aircraft is huge and painted blue. It only has
    4 engines, however it is easily three times the size of a 747. You
    notice workers using massive cranes loading up the aircraft with everything
    from industrial equipment to parcel shipments.

    You eventually board the aircraft and settle into
    your seat. When looking up, you quickly notice that there is a 3-digit
    numerical display where you would expect the fasten-seatbelt and no-smoking
    lights. Special trucks push the aircraft away from the gate, and
    help it taxi onto the runway. Then, several more vehicles and mechanics
    arrive to strap on a pair of rocket boosters to the wings. You notice
    that they have not yet started the engine, as the captain announces that
    you have been cleared for takeoff. Then the rocket engines fire,
    causing the aircraft to throttle up and take off from the runway.
    At 1000 feet, the engines start up and the rockets drop away into the ocean.
    The 3-digit display begins displaying seemingly random numbers,
    however the stewardess is passing out the "AC/800 Aircraft Passenger
    Service Manual" which describes them. Four hours later, the
    captain announces that the aircraft has reached cruising altitude.
    You see a guy named Smitty carrying a pile of forms from the cockpit, and
    the plane suddenly throttles up to Mach 6.

    AIX airlines only flies intercontinental, however
    they have the lowest fares, since each flight carries 6,000 passengers,
    and thousands of tons of cargo.
  • Ya think they really needed all those SCSI disks just for getting Linux to boot on a Power4 CPU? I mean cripes, they have like 15 17GB disks and 2 8.5GB disks in there! I can see a few for testing RAID, but 17 disks?!? Isn't that a little overkill?

  • For those who are wondering (Score:4)

    by / ( 33804 ) on Sunday June 11, 2000 @06:06AM (#1010636)
    The BogoMIPS value is a measure of how many million times per second a processor can perform "do nothing" executions. It's measured at startup and used to tweak some timing loops in the kernel. From a marketing standpoint, however, there is absolutely nothing sexxy about publishing how good your cpu is at doing nothing.
  • or there's this bit of drivel I picked up a couple years ago....

    Hey, propeller heads! Have you got Unix DOWN COLD? Recompiled the kernel so many times you've got it menued and scripted? Setting speed records for setting up sendmail correctly in less than four months? Then, have we got a challenge for you! Yes, it's AIX, from those wonderful people who brought you OS/7 Ferrengi! Take the most obscure and difficult parts from both SVR4 and BSD, add in more bugs than an African termite mound, and you've got an opperating system that GUARANTEES your job. Yes, now you can have everyone in your organization frustrated and furious, and only YOU know how to make it work! More obscure commands than Novell Netware 8.8! More bloated C++ code than MSWindows 21st Century! So call the IBM division of Walt Disney Enterprises TODAY! And make sure that no one at your place of work can AFFORD to fire you! And remember, even though we work for him, WE'RE not Mickey Mouse! So look for the nerd in the blue suit and ask for AIX. You'll be glad you did!

    Oh, John, I just LOVE a man who knows AIX ...

    (Don't blame me, I didn't do it.)

  • The BogoMIPS value is a measure of how many million times per second a processor can perform "do nothing" executions. It's measured at startup and used to tweak some timing loops in the kernel. From a marketing standpoint, however, there is absolutely nothing sexxy about publishing how good your cpu is at doing nothing.

    You're forgetting that marketing and reality never mix. If I put my ancient P166 up for sale and advertise that it runs at a speed of 66360 milli-BogoMIPS, sombody will believe that it's some sort of breakthrough in high speed servers.

    On a more serious note, for many processors, BogoMIPS = k * clock_speed, more or less, where k differs depending on the processor.

  • It's ridiculous that Linux does not have a journaling filesystem, yet.

    Actually, it has 3. ReiserFS is the most stable at this time IMHO, but xfs and ext3 are shaping up nicely. They are not yet in the main tree, but are easy to add in. I'm pretty sure that Suse ships with Reiser.

  • I take it it hasn't been optimised yet then...

  • would a boot log be posted as a story :)
  • IIRC IBM donated their JFS as well.

  • The people who ported Linux to this box may fully realize that, but they also fully realize that many people outside their small circle will start making all sorts of wacky pronouncements based on this Meaningless Indicator of Processor Speed.

    --Joe
    --
  • ...and IBM probably doesn't want that.

    For example, if someone figured out that this pre-production chip was only running at a measly 1GHz, the next day there'd be a huge story on news.com about how the chip was "below expectations" or some other BS.
  • Starting console mouse services: (no mouse is configured) That's some seriously funny shit.
  • If you thought that boot log was rad, you should see the swap file!
  • Linux has supported RS/6000 hardware through kernel patches for a while. Only recently have we seen the merging of these patches into the main tree.

    I think it's funny to see Apple move to a modular kernel in their upcoming MacOS X release. The BSD core that they will be using will allow them to do some "emergency CPU switching" should their PowerPC-based offerings not bring in as much cash as they'd need them to. :-)

    Apple is the king (queen?) of proprietaryness and a radical move such as this is an attempt to re-invent themselves in a UNIX [nut,bash,csh,echo $SHELL]shell. Steve Jobs is finally steering the company in the direction it should have been in about 10 years ago, when Apple was, IMHO, at it's peak.

    Linux isn't all about custom hacks. By design, it's very concept is a hack. :-)
  • There's never enough harddisk space for those MP3's...

  • Sheesh (Score:1)

    by whoop ( 194 )
    How many more years of "Bogomips are not a benchmark" does it take to get to the center of one's brain? BTW, my Athlon 550 does 1104.28 bogomips. :)
  • And even if it weren't a joke, the original post was *about a bootlog*. I personally don't care about the bootlog; I think it was dumb to post the original story (but you know what opinions are like...everyone's got one. :^)

    So, moderators: how is posting a bootlog on a story about bootlogs off topic?

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