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kalisphoenix
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Joined: 28 Sep 2003
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Location: Ohio
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 Posted: Fri May 13, 2005 6:28 pm Post subject: Gentoo on the XBox 360 |
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I searched and didn't find anything, so I might just be the first person to bring this up.  Feel free to correct me by pointing me to the appropriate thread.
Is anyone else champing at the bit over this one? IIRC, it's a triple-core 3.2GHz PPC processor (G5, if I understand correctly) with an nVidia graphics chip that'll knock you on your ass, 512MB RAM built-in, a 20GB removable hard drive (probably just IDE, but I wouldn't be surprised if it's SATA or something)...
I'm buying one. Not because I'm a gamer, mind you, but because I expect that several thousand other people will be buying it because it's going to be one of the most powerful things on the market for very, very inexpensive ($299 or so base model). Seems like you'd be silly not to buy one.
I could be wrong, though... I might be the only person who wants to compile a base system in the blink of an eye.
What are your thoughts? |
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GNUtoo
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| Posted: Fri May 13, 2005 6:34 pm Post subject: |
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tripple core with 2 thread for one core =6 threads
wow 300$...
when will this comes out???
i'm not a pro in the graphics specs so i don't understand how fast is this chip
with this kind of power and price we could build...an xbox360 cluster
we could do heavy task such:
-video compression
-scientific aplications
-decrypting passwords(so we should rise all cripting levels)
-etc...
mabe there will be projects invoking xbox and grid lol |
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Mathiasdm
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Joined: 22 Jan 2005
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| Posted: Fri May 13, 2005 7:08 pm Post subject: |
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Yep, this sounds really interesting. I'm planning on buying one as well, but (as I'm not really a Linux guru) I'm going to wait until the pioneers have given it a try  |
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cewlout
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Joined: 18 Jul 2004
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| Posted: Sat May 14, 2005 1:28 am Post subject: Re: Gentoo on the XBox 360 |
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| kalisphoenix wrote: |
...with an nVidia graphics chip
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It's a chip made by ATI.
I also thought about this, such a machine for this price! whoooo!
Comes out end of this year. |
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GNUtoo
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| Posted: Sat May 14, 2005 9:43 am Post subject: |
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the end of the year wow
but i think porting linux to this machine will be as long as porting linux
to nitendo ds or such devices because of the anti-piracy protection built in the processor
well there is also the ps3 |
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kalisphoenix
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Location: Ohio
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| Posted: Mon May 16, 2005 1:25 pm Post subject: Re: Gentoo on the XBox 360 |
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| cewlout wrote: | | kalisphoenix wrote: |
...with an nVidia graphics chip
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It's a chip made by ATI. |
My mistake -- I dunno why I did that.
I'm glad to see that others are as excited about this as I am -- I know that MS is going to have some hellacious protection built into the system, but nothing that ingenuity can't get past. And ingenuity is one thing that the Linux community has in spades.
That's the reason I'm buying one of the first ones, though -- I figure it's going to be the buggiest, but also the one that's easiest to crack; witness the first XBox. With any luck, MS has discarded the idea of spending mondo $$$ on "copy protection" schemes, given the tiny fraction of XBox buyers that actually installed Linux on it. I know jack about XBox 1, though, so I'm probably full of shit. Also, since they're selling the machine at a loss, they might have invested considerable time and expense in insuring that people buy the games and make MS at least recoup the losses of the console price. Anyone who is more knowledgeable about this sort of thing is begged to inform me.
There are rumors (I might be misinformed) that the PS3 will use the Cell processor -- if that's true, then I'm getting one of those bastards too. I'm hoping that Apple will adopt the Cell very fast, but even if they do I won't be able to afford a Cell Power Mac... so the PS3 is the best option. All things considered, computers with these processors are a steal at $300 apiece.
If nothing else, I'll have two $300 DVD players  |
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GNUtoo
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| Posted: Mon May 16, 2005 1:37 pm Post subject: |
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i don't know if the cell or xbox cpu are beter than a g5
but i think that there are cheaper systems and a cluster for the same price would be more powerfull in a lot of situations
(there is to incrase the amount of ram and to put a 10/100/1000 nic) |
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kalisphoenix
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| Posted: Mon May 16, 2005 2:44 pm Post subject: |
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| new_to_non_X86 wrote: | i don't know if the cell or xbox cpu are beter than a g5
but i think that there are cheaper systems and a cluster for the same price would be more powerfull in a lot of situations
(there is to incrase the amount of ram and to put a 10/100/1000 nic) |
The Cell is (in my limited and admittedly techno-illiterate understanding) an IBM Power core surrounded by multiple 128-bit vector processors. One has been tested at I believe 5.2GHz. The power of the Cell is beyond anything else imaginable at this point in time.
The XBox CPU is a triple-core 3.2GHz G5 (I think it's a G5, might just be another Power derivative). I might be wrong, but I think this means that the CPU is ideally about three times the speed of a single-core 3.2GHz G5. Of course, the bus speed and the overhead and all that lowers the efficiency of the processor, but even if it's just twice the speed of a 3.2GHz G5, $300 is a goddamned steal.
The XBox comes with 512MB RAM. Again, I'm not really good with new technology so I might be completely wrong, but my understanding is that this RAM is extremely fast and is more like Video RAM (accessible by both CPU and the video card simultaneously). I'm not looking at the datasheet right now and the buzzwords fly right past me, so please, anyone who has a better understanding of this than me, please speak up and explain it 
My concern is that these machines aren't built for constant (24/7) use, in which case making a renderfarm or something of them would not be a good idea. The G5 is a very hot chip for a RISC processor, hence Apple's considerable trouble trying to put it in a Powerbook (and the iMac G5's occasional heating problems). The XBox 360 is a slim machine with 3 G5's in it, so you can see that this might be trouble. I've read that the cooling system is a complicated silent gig with air pumps and such (I'm thinking something like the internal freon-circulating part of an air conditioner, but contacting the CPU instead of having a fan blow over it), but that seems extremely complicated and expensive and large. So I don't know.
In other words, I'm waiting with baited breath for more information. I have hopes that one of the Dev teams developing games for the XBox has a Linux nut on there who is willing to appraise the machine critically and see what sort of specs the machine has as far as copy protection/DRM/boot-type hardware. Not that a Gentoo PPC CD will boot the XBox (a booting distro would be months away, I'm sure), but just to see if it's an accomplishable goal.
Probably I'll just have to buy an early one and hope it's a stable, dependable machine with a cheesecloth security system and guts that we have kernel drivers for. No doubt that the ATi chip will have closed-source drivers (dammit) and probably most peripheral connections et cetera will require reverse-engineering... but even if the graphics and wireless support are long in coming, the sheer processing speed should make up for it as long as the ATi chip is VESA-compatible. It'd be a killer server, if it's stable. |
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kalisphoenix
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| Posted: Mon May 16, 2005 2:52 pm Post subject: |
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FUCK.
Microsoft Chipset. I didn't see that before.
I think this might spell doom for the Linux-on-XBox 360 idea. There's no way Microsoft would ever opensource their drivers... and god knows how complicated they'll make these devices simply to exclude Linux from running on it...
Ack fuck. |
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Mathiasdm
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| Posted: Mon May 16, 2005 7:39 pm Post subject: |
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| In that case, I'll have to go with a PS3. However, that one looks nice as well:D |
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GNUtoo
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| Posted: Mon May 16, 2005 9:26 pm Post subject: |
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the architectures of xbox/ps3 and G5 is diferent
so i don't know who are the more powerfull chip
i've read that the G5 can handle 5 thread at one time(but it could be a wrong interpretation of the tecnical specs by the website ,mabe it's not exactly like this mabe they have mistaken with something else...I sould rereed the documentation of the G5)
so we must look at the architectures
of course Microsoft won't relase the drivers for linux but it would be very interesant for evryone to develop them so mabe there will be a huge comunity of developers
I've also heard that the ps3 will run liunx
I'm waiting fot the new versions of the GCC compiler to improve the vectorial performance of the processor |
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kalisphoenix
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Location: Ohio
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| Posted: Tue May 17, 2005 5:19 am Post subject: |
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| new_to_non_X86 wrote: | the architectures of xbox/ps3 and G5 is diferent
so i don't know who are the more powerfull chip
i've read that the G5 can handle 5 thread at one time(but it could be a wrong interpretation of the tecnical specs by the website ,mabe it's not exactly like this mabe they have mistaken with something else...I sould rereed the documentation of the G5)
so we must look at the architectures
of course Microsoft won't relase the drivers for linux but it would be very interesant for evryone to develop them so mabe there will be a huge comunity of developers
I've also heard that the ps3 will run liunx
I'm waiting fot the new versions of the GCC compiler to improve the vectorial performance of the processor |
They're not *all* that different. All three are IBM Power derivatives. The PS3 uses a Cell, which is a Power-based chip surrounded by vector processors. The XBox uses a triple core Power-based chip. And the G5 is a Power-based chip. |
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kalisphoenix
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| Posted: Tue May 17, 2005 8:21 pm Post subject: |
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| Most accounts seem to say that the PS3 is going to kick the shit out of the XBox 360. Has anybody out there looked at the specs and figured out which is more likely to get a quick Linux port? My bet would normally be on the XBox 360, since so far as I know no Linux runs on the Cell processor... but I'm notoriously stupid in these areas, so any information is welcome. |
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GNUtoo
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| Posted: Wed May 18, 2005 6:30 pm Post subject: |
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yes of course there are not so diferent
but i was talking about perforamnce issues and not about porting linux to ehis architectuer
the p4 and the pm/atlon64(32bit mode) are x86 compilant but their design are very diferent |
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kalisphoenix
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| Posted: Wed May 18, 2005 7:11 pm Post subject: |
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| new_to_non_X86 wrote: | yes of course there are not so diferent
but i was talking about perforamnce issues and not about porting linux to ehis architectuer
the p4 and the pm/atlon64(32bit mode) are x86 compilant but their design are very diferent |
My mistake, I misunderstood you. Yeah, I agree completely with what you say. I think it'd be silly for IBM to roll this out for Microsoft when Apple can't get a 3.0GHz G5 a year after it was promised... I expect that this is a rather stripped-down, relatively ineffective chip (compared to the G5 or Power, I mean). But that being said, even if each chip is basically like a 1.5GHz G3... that's still a great amount of power for such a small cost. If overhead costs for the triple-core are 50%, then it's still a good amount of power.
Basically, I don't doubt that it's not a supercomputer. It's probably quite limited with anything except for graphics. But I think it's still a pretty damn good deal, probably. I might be very wrong, though. |
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Need4Speed
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Posts: 497
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| Posted: Wed May 18, 2005 9:32 pm Post subject: |
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| Quote: | | So let's get the basics down. Xbox 360 uses 3 PowerPC cores on a single chip, each running at 3.2GHz. It sports the R500 graphics processor, which runs at 500MHz core, has a 10MB embedded DRAM architecture and a unified shader system. It sports 512MB of GDDR3 RAM, running at 700MHz, which is split between the main system and the graphics. 4 wireless controllers are supported, whilst the system sports a 20GB hard drive and a built-in Media Center Extender |
This would be soo sweet if we could get linux running, I doubt it will happen for awhile though.
And the R500 would be worthless to us, wouldn't it? We would have to write our own drivers. |
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Tarball
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Joined: 19 Jun 2002
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Location: Cheshire, UK
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| Posted: Wed May 18, 2005 11:24 pm Post subject: |
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| It would seem that PS3 will already be running Linux, this article by a guy from Epic seems to confirm the rumours.[/url] |
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zerojay
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| Posted: Thu May 19, 2005 12:08 pm Post subject: |
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| Tarball wrote: | | It would seem that PS3 will already be running Linux, this article by a guy from Epic seems to confirm the rumours.[/url] |
Nowhere in the article does it say anything about the PS3 running Linux whatsoever. The development environment will be Linux-based, just like the development environments for the PS and PS2 and the Net-Yaroze. That does not mean that the PS3 uses Linux for its OS. Using Linux drops the cost of the development system while giving the developers a stable platform and toolset to use, including GCC. |
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kalisphoenix
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| Posted: Thu May 19, 2005 10:45 pm Post subject: |
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All that link said to me is that the great game "demos" I've seen have been fake 
Sony might (small wet dream) release a Linux kit for the PS3 like they did for the PS2, in which case it might be possible to find it on BitTorrent. It might even be affordable, seeing as how much of the cost of the $200 PS2 Linux kit was due to proprietary cables that assumedly won't be necessary for the PS3 (with USB, et cetera).
Anyway, I expect that many of the drivers would be closed source (NVIDIA being notably hesitant to release open source drivers in the past), but if the manufacturers or Sony provided closed-source modules, well, I have to say I can't be too bitter about that. |
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Tarball
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Location: Cheshire, UK
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| Posted: Sat May 21, 2005 12:33 pm Post subject: |
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Ok, I accept your points.
Maybe I was reading too much into the statements. However when they state 'the development environment is made up of parts we're already intimately familiar with: OpenGL, NVIDIA graphics, Linux, and PowerPC' does this mean they are gonna be developing on a Mac? Or possibly on the PS3 itself??? |
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zerojay
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| Posted: Sat May 21, 2005 12:37 pm Post subject: |
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| They're developing on alpha versions of the PS3 hardware that is only about a quarter of the power of the final machine when it will be released. They might be developing with the help of Macs, but most likely not running game code on it. |
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Ex-Cyber
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| Posted: Mon May 23, 2005 12:03 pm Post subject: |
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| I've heard from several seemingly informed sources that the Xbox 360's PPC cores are basically heavily stripped G5s, and to cut down on silicon area and power/heat requirements are lacking Altivec (they've been described as having some simpler type of vector expansion), full MMU features (maybe), and out-of-order execution (almost certainly). So I don't think you can compare this directly to a high-end Power Mac or the like, although I'm sure it opens up some very interesting possibilities all the same. |
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kalisphoenix
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| Posted: Tue May 24, 2005 4:44 pm Post subject: |
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| Ex-Cyber wrote: | | I've heard from several seemingly informed sources that the Xbox 360's PPC cores are basically heavily stripped G5s, and to cut down on silicon area and power/heat requirements are lacking Altivec (they've been described as having some simpler type of vector expansion), full MMU features (maybe), and out-of-order execution (almost certainly). So I don't think you can compare this directly to a high-end Power Mac or the like, although I'm sure it opens up some very interesting possibilities all the same. |
Whoa: No MMU? Fuck.
.... well, most of that stuff seems like it'd be okay for Linux still. Not too sure about the MMU. Might be able to convince OS X (through Mac-on-Linux) that it's running on a G3. Even Tiger only requires a G3.
If what you're saying is true, though -- that these chips are going to be that stripped-down... well, fuck, I'll buy a PS3. I may be willing to drop some cash on something that turns out to be useless for my purposes, but this is beginning to seem like it's a dead certainty that it'll be useless.
Another item in the rumor mill is that Apple is discussing CPU production with Intel. With Intel's economy of scale, they might be able to get their CPUs for drastically smaller amounts of money. Or it could be a technique to try to get IBM to lower their asking price for the G5's and (possibly) Cell processors.
So on the one hand, the XBox might be completely worthless as a PC. But I still have the PS3 and the hope that Apple might produce more low-priced boxen that push down the resale value of G4/G5 PowerMacs  |
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GNUtoo
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| Posted: Tue May 24, 2005 7:31 pm Post subject: |
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| so the ps3 would be a lot better??? |
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Hara
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| Posted: Tue May 24, 2005 8:27 pm Post subject: |
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Running linux on the ps3 would be sweeT!
Right now the rumors for the pricing on the ps3 is still pretty steep though (495 bucks). If I could just get it to connect with my laptop, I'd use it like a super computer. Setup some code, then run the simulation/compile on the ps3, and bam it'd be done. Until they start selling Cell based comps, i'd say this is the best option for easy, cheap supercomputing. Being a CS major, I've looked at the Cell hardware from an architectual design standpoint, and its definetly got a lot of potential.
Of course, the main advancement with cell is not the fact that its really powerful, but the fact that it can be powerful, cheap (although not cheap yet), and flexible enough (design wise to accomodate a variety of computing solutions in both video, workstation, home media, and general PC computing) to provide for our needs.
Anyways, I'm just excited about the potential of cell, even more so than the just playing games on new hardware (although the games look like they'll be good graphics wise)
Also since XBOX has been known to have linux capabilities, microsoft would definelty try to make sure that DOESN"T happen again. Even though I'm an oldschool Nintendo gamer, PS3 all the way!! (Just cause of cell)
Edit: Btw, they have released the vids for xbox 360 and ps3 for a few days now. Check fileplanet (and google) for them if you haven't seen them already. Also incase you didn't know, PS3 will have cell, its been confirmed. Its funny how the final fantasy spokesperson is both in the XBOX 360 special and the ps3 video, and he wears like the same clothes. I wonder if he'll be there for nintendo too.
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Hara
(Mandrake->Slackware->LFS(Never Finished)->Gentoo) |
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Gentoo on Alternative Architectures
