Now that we have 64 bit processors on the i386 platform, will we get HP-UX there too?

[John Collier]

Now that it has been announced that HP is going to send the 64 bit wide systems to the desktop (for those of you who haven't heard about this yet, check this out - http://www.crn.com/sections/BreakingNews/dailyarchives.asp?ArticleID=46121 ) will we ever see a distro of HP-UX that will be able to run on this hardware?

Even if not, what OS do you think will be on such a system? The article above doesn't mention anything about that and I have been able to find nothing else on the matter elsewhere.

I would hate to think that they are going to throw any flavor of M$ Windoze on it (can you say faster crashes and/or bugs?? Sure you can, cuz you're special people!).

I would be very interested in everybody's thoughts on this as well as your thoughts on the technology it's self.

I will use a creative license on the issue of points for this thread.


Thanks for the inevitable input!
John

[Pete Randall]

Itanium, son - Itanium.

The OS itself is designed to work with the hardware and i386 ain't what it was designed for.


Pete

[Patrick Wallek]

John,

We already have a 64-bit version of HP-UX that will run on 64-bit "desktop workstations". They're called Itanium and they are the Itanium zx2000 and zx6000. :)

HP-UX on a non-Itanium, non-PARISC machine.... Well, I honestly don't see it happening. HP has got too much invested in those 2 technologies to have to worry about recompiling for the AMD chips.

It would nice, but I don't see it happening.

Linux, on the other hand, probably! Those would be smoking LINUX machines.

[Alzhy]

I actually posed a similar question a few weeks back.. about HPUX for non-HP Itanium boxen. It would be nice to have a port of HPUX that will work on non-HP Itanium boxen. But I guess it will be a self-defeating strategy if HP wants to push HP Itanium h/w - which it co-developed with Intel.

Better yet why not come up with HPUX that will work on IA32 CPU's and the AMD Opteron? Pretty much like what SUN is comitted with Solaris and Linux -- they practically now suypport all "Commodity CPU's" except the Itanium...

[John Collier]

Pete,

Well, you didnâ t disappoint me on one thing. I was sitting here telling a coworker that you would most likely be the first person to respond to this thread and here you are at the top (I should have bet money on it!)

I am a little bit disappointed in the fact that you donâ t think I would have thought about the Itanium already. I was one of the first to hit this forum up with questions about it.

The article clearly states "The 8000Z will have little impact on the Itanium as the Itanium is still commercially-focused and rather pricey," so it is pretty obvious to me that they fully intend to keep the Itanium and target the Corporate world with that.

Iâ m wondering if HP might try to take this chance to introduce some flavor of HP-UX to the rest of the world. After all, we need something that will take advantage of the 64 bit system. Why not something that is already tried, true, and rock-solid?


Patrick,

What flavor of Linux do you think would be able to fully take advantage of this new hardware without a whole new nest of bugs and driver

[John Collier]

issues?

[Harri Pasanen_1 · Accepted solution]

The article says "HP is attempting to position the 8000Z below its low-end Itanium-based machines", but I'm not sure how many people realize that CPU performance of 8000Z (AMD64) is probably more twice that of a 1GHz Itanium2.The Itanium boxes have nice server features, like rackability, hardware consoles and such, but in raw speed they are easily kicked around by the recent desktop processors.As to which linux, at least Mandrake has a rc1 of 9.2 for AMD64 out: http://www.mandrakelinux.com/en/92amd64beta.php3Harri

[Pete Randall]

John,

I was sure you thought of Itanium but I guess you didn't think it through. If HP ports HP-UX to run on cheap i386 chips (if they even could), what would that do to their hardware sales for the PA-RISC and Itanium boxes? I think you're going to be holding your breath for far longer than is healthy on this wish.


Pete