HP-UX on Intel PC.

[Daniel Navarro]

All,

I know that Sun has ported their Solaris OS to work on
Intel PC's and I was wondering if HP has anything similar to what Sun has done. I looked on the HP web site and found a web page (ia-64 linux developer tools0 that looks like it might be a solution to what I need to do.

My dilema is that my company is running Oracle 8.1.6. Release 2 Enterprise Edition on an HP box that is designated for Production. We also have another box (Solaris) that is being used for production. I normally do all development on an intel PC in my office that I have installed Solaris and Oracle for testing purposes. I would like to do the same with the HP box. Would downloading the hp ia-64 linux simulator be the solution since I have another PC in my office that is using SuSE Linux (7.0) Kernel 2.2.16 with 128 Mb RAM?

TIA,
Daniel

[Philip Chan_1]

I think the IA-64 linux simulator is for the Itanium processor only, it will not work for IA-32 kind of processors (P3, P4 etc).

BTW, until today I guess nobody can tell us by when the Itanium processor will hit the market.

[Daniel Navarro]

Yes, you're right Philip. It is a simulator for the IA-64 Titanium chip architecture. So, therefore it is not a solution to my dilema. It would be nice if HP would follow the same steps as Sun in porting their Unix flavor to run on Intel for development purposes. This would probably steer us more to an HP shop, but right now we usually do all of our development on Linux, and If it works on Linux and Solaris then we move it on to our HP servers.

I believe I read somewhere that the Titanium chip is due out sometime in May, but the release date seems to move around just about as much as the NASDAQ.

[Joe Fisher_1]

I've been hoping that HP would port 11.x to the Intel platform. I'm a Senior HP-UX Administrator / Engineer, and I'm running Linux, Windows 2000 Server and Solaris 8 at home. I can't afford to purchase an HP-UX box with a RISC-based processor. For those thousands of other UNIX "Wannabees", Sun offers an opportunity to learn and work with a major Unix version at home. When their respective companies want a recommendation on which UNIX flavor to purchase, they're going to recommend Solaris, because they've had a chance to gain some expertise with it... In the Bay area alone, there are between 10 and 20 Solaris job openings for every HP-UX opening... Porting Solaris to the Intel chipset was an incredibly successful marketing ploy on Sun's part... If HP does NOT make it's Operating System available and affordable to a wider user base (specifically "home" users), it stands to lose more and more of its customers to Sun and Linux... The IA64 chipset is NOT the answer... Porting to the Intel chipset IS...

[Philip Chan_1]

I think HP is counting on Itanium or its sucessor for porting their flag ship OS to PC. But the Itanium is so expensive now and I think it will take 2-3 years before its price tag become reasonable for home users.

~Philip

[Patrick Wallek]

I can see your point about wanting HP-UX on a PC platform. I agree that it would be a good idea.

You can get an HP Workstation that will run HP-UX, though the performance may not be what you are used to, it will run, for less than $2500. If you go out to e-bay or to some of the 3rd party remarketers you will see that there are plenty of workstation class machines to be had for a pretty good price.

[Philip Chan_1]

Joe made a good point, the Solaris x86 port was a very successful marketing campaign. For example because Solaris x86 can run at my own PC for no charge, so I will try it. On the other hand, I don't think people would try HP-UX if they had to pay $2500 for a re-marketed HP workstation.

~Philip

[Patrick Wallek]

That is a good point about the cost Philip, if you are talking about using HP-UX at home. Daniel was talking about doing his development at work though. That is why I was making reference to the workstations. The $2500 or so is a fairly small price to pay to get a machine that can be used for development, which in Daniel's case would allow him to do his work and NOT impact his production environment with his development work.

[Joe Fisher_1]

Unless you're doing development at the System or O/S level, it shouldn't matter... Most applications do NOT reference hardware related drivers... I would love to have HP-UX at home... An Intel-based version with the same look and feel as the RISC-based version... Except for the hardware differences, it should look and feel exactly the same...