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Managing L'unix

Paul Murphy
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Quietly rejoicing

By | January 27, 2010, 12:17pm PST

Summary: And, speaking of the insanely great: iPad’s A4 != x86 It’s a PA Semi designed PPC/SOC derivitive.

2000 more engineers for Sun! Mostly on SPARC and Solaris - I don’t know how they’re going to make that java marriage work, but if I were on the Sun side in those discussions, I’d feel pretty secure right now.

Build to order manufacturing! Finally! (Guess Oracle has the guts - Sun’s people have pointed at HP’s SAPping for years as THE reason not to go this way.)

And the sleeper slipped into the pack? the application appliance desktop computer (aka Sun Ray) driven off the local cloud (i.e. 2 CMT machines.)

And, speaking of the insanely great: iPad’s A4 != x86 It’s a PA Semi designed PPC/SOC derivitive. Know why it doesn’t cost a thousand bucks and still works fast on low power? Did I mention.. A4 != x86 ?

Seriously, does IT news get better than this?

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Topics

Sun Microsystems Inc., Intel X86, Sun Solaris, Processors, Operating Systems, Software, Semiconductors, Hardware, Components, Paul Murphy

Paul Murphy (a pseudonym) is an IT consultant specializing in Unix and related technologies.

Disclosure

Paul Murphy

I do not work for, or otherwise receive anything from, any of the companies I write about. I have some money in a number of funds that bet on the markets, including the technology market, but have no direct control over how these funds are administered or what investments are made. I use Sun and Apple technology both at home and at work.

Biography

Paul Murphy

Originally a Math/Physics graduate who couldn't cut it in his own field, Paul Murphy (a pseudonym) became an IT consultant specializing in Unix and related technologies after a stint working for a DARPA contractor programming in Fortran and APL. Since then he's worked in both systems management and consulting for a range of employers including KPMG, the government of Alberta, and his own firm. In those roles he's "been there and done that" for just about every aspect of systems management and operation.

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This is the chip behind it all
junknstuff@... Updated - 29th Jan 2010
http://www.arm.com/products/CPUs/ARMCortex-A9_MPCore.html

It's not ARM "compatible" it is ARM.

Does the Cortex range have anything to do with ppc?
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0 Votes
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Doesn't Apple owning PA Semi mean
Ron Bergundy 27th Jan 2010
they get them cheaper? My bet is that it's ARM based, great to load Linux onto it!
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My bet
Michael Kelly 27th Jan 2010
is that it will be different enough from ARM that an entirely new architecture port would be needed to install Linux.
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Yes - it's ARM compatible
murph_z 28th Jan 2010
but remember that arm is a ppc licensee.

As for getting them cheaper - yes, they're a lot cheaper, and a lot faster, but it's because of the design, not because Apple owns the designer.

Remember with x86 you're not paying for great design (on the contrary, x86 is a leaning jack's beanstalk of patches piled on fixes piled on kludges) you're paying for great manufacturing.

Here Apple reverses that: great design, job shop mfg.
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You did look at the iPad didn't you?
tonymcs@... 27th Jan 2010
No camera. no usb, no Flash, no multitasking, no widescreen (yeah I know 1024x768 tricked out to look like it's widescreen).

More expensive than a netbook running Win 7 with not even half the features, to say nothing about being able to run grown up applications (no matter how many useless iPhone apps you can get)

But hey since it does very little, I bet it is fast - there I said something positive wink

Apple once again proves you can fool some of the people all of the time.
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bet you hated the ipod and iphone too
murph_z 28th Jan 2010
There's a camera/headphones/skype kit on the way to turn this thing into a video conferenceing iphone.

It runs MacOS X - so full multi-tasking and no tech restriction on running most apps. The downside, of course, is that the current MacOS apps are written for Intel and so don't work. Still, 130K worth of iphone utilities is a start.
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Multi tasking? Not according to Jason
ITLeader 28th Jan 2010
Your fellow bloggers say no multitasking: http://blogs.zdnet.com/Apple/?p=5871&tag=col1;post-11947

The ipod is very good, although I prefer the zune. If the iphone was a better PHONE, I might like it. It's a great app platform, but it sucks as a phone.
0 Votes
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This is the chip behind it all
junknstuff@... Updated - 29th Jan 2010
http://www.arm.com/products/CPUs/ARMCortex-A9_MPCore.html

It's not ARM "compatible" it is ARM.

Does the Cortex range have anything to do with ppc?

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