[Ilugc] Future of GNU/Hurd.
- From: siva@xxxxxxxxxxx (Sivasankar Chander)
- Date: Wed Feb 16 22:43:10 2005
I remember working on OSF/1 in 1994 (not as an admin, just a user). I
used to be amazed at its performance on DEC Alpha machines. Some of my
college work (IITB, Aero Engg.) was heavy CFD-based simulations -
stuff that Linux took about six-seven times more to complete than
OSF/1 (Code written in Fortran 77, Redhat Linux 4.x on 486s).
That's because the DEC Alpha was a far better CPU than the 486 at
the time. My guess is that if you'd been running native Linux on the
Alpha (which port wasn't available in 1994), it would have been even
better than OSF/1. There was also an Ultrix port for the Alpha, but
perhaps that too came later.
It wasn't until the Pentium III before Intel overtook DEC, despite
having liberally hired DEC engineers who had worked on the Alpha for
the Pentium Pro (P6).
If DEC had marketed the Alpha better, in particular dropping prices
rapidly for the consumer market, they could have given x86 a good
fight. For instance, they had a nice compact workstation called the
Multia, but it was never available in volume before it was killed.
However, the bus interface of the Alpha lives on today, in the
form of the Socket A (Socket 462) of the AMD Athlon. Not too bad for
a CPU architecture that's now over 13 years old.
Fully agree with that. Every single name in technology these days have
something or other on Linux (with the notable exceptions of Microsoft
and Cisco).
Cisco has several divisions working on Linux-related stuff, at least
for the last 4 or 5 years - Linksys, some VOD stuff, some security
projects (including some stuff at Bangalore), and some network management
stuff.
-Siva
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