12 Dec
2002
12 Dec
'02
4 p.m.
Zane H. Healy said:
Not production ready, but it was supposed to be close enough that I could test
some of our scientific software on it. It wasn't even close, given how often
it would fall off the network and do other weird things, like spontaneously
reboot...
Oh, not even!
HPPA (which is a great platform IMO) is being phased out in
favor of Itanium. They're keeping HPUX and porting it to Itanium, but so far
the results are less then spectacular...I had an Itanium2 demo machine with
HPUX 11i, and it couldn't configure its network right half the time (though
it would always think it did) and couldn't use the graphics console. Which
the sales guy didn't TELL me, so I was sitting here thinking, "why does this
thing start to load the kernel then hang EVERY TIME? this is supposed to be a
working release!" I finally talked to one of their engineers who said "oh
yeah, that doesn't work yet...use serial console...he didn't tell you
that?!"
and this is supposed to demonstrate their "commitment to HPUX on Itanium" and
all that horseshit...right...
- Dan Wright
Were you told it was production ready? Plus how long ago was this?
Itanium2 systems haven't been available that long, and it's understandable
for it to take a while to get everything working right. I'm guessing Linux
is a far easier port than HP-UX, as HP-UX has to deal with a bunch of new
hardware, while a lot of the hardware is familiar to Linux. What little I've seen of the HP Itanium2 machines
they look very nice, far
better than the Itanium boxes. Unfortunatly I've not gotten to play with
any of them.
Well...definitly better then the Itanium boxes. But it's pretty much a big PC,
with the build quality that would imply. kind of disappointing, compared to
their older workstations...
I'm really just disappointed overall with their decision to kill Alpha and
PA-RISC. Itanium really isn't that good, at least not yet, and they're going
to lose a LOT of customers by doing it.
- Dan Wright
(dtwright(a)uiuc.edu)
(http://www.uiuc.edu/~dtwright)
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``Weave a circle round him thrice, / And close your eyes with holy dread,
For he on honeydew hath fed, / and drunk the milk of Paradise.''
Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Kubla Khan