[geeks] IBM Regatta server thoughts

[Nicholas Dronen]

On Wed, Oct 03, 2001 at 03:20:15PM -0500, Bill Bradford wrote:

> Went to the customer presentation about it this morning at the IBM
> Customer Briefing Center here in Austin (where they develop the POWER-series
> CPUs).
> 
> Pretty spiffy, although IMHO too much time was spent "explaining" why 
> 32 of their CPUs (actually 64, if you consider there are two cores on
> each "chip") are better than 72 or 106 SPARCs... Touted the crossbar
> switch architecture, their implementation, etc...

[ snip ]

> Things I wondered about:
> 
> 	- Why a *RS232 SERIAL* connection to the system management 
> 	  console?  They said you could even cut the cord once the LPARs
> 	  were up and it would keep running - but I woudl think that a
> 	  dedicated Ethernet connection would be better between the system
> 	  and the console that was managing it... I guess by using serial,
> 	  you're not platform-dependent.  One of the slides mentioned that
> 	  the management applications were *java*.  ick.

If any of the following seems asinine, I might have misunderstood
what you said.  Or, it could just be asinine. :-)

I don't think it has anything to do with platform dependence.
The remote console is RS232 on the SP (Scalable Parallel) systems
as well.  They do have a dedicated 10Base-2 (iirc) Ethernet network
between the control workstation and the nodes, but you use the 
RS232 interface when

	* the network is hosed
	* the node is doing a network boot (e.g., during an install)

So the keyword is reliability and servicability.  Think of not being
able to access the OBP on a SPARC -- no fun.

> Pretty nice.  Now, I just need to find myself an older RS/6000 43P and 
> 24-bit graphics card, so I can play with AIX 5L...

I hear 43P's are pretty cheap these days.

Regards,

Nicholas