US Navy buys 260 Apple Xserves with Linux PPC.

[Eug]

See here:

Terra Soft Provides HPC System to Lockheed, Navy

Loveland, Colorado -- 06 August 2003 -- Terra Soft Solutions, Inc., leading developer of integrated PowerPC Linux solutions, has been awarded the contract to fulfill a unique sonar imaging system for the United States Navy through defense contractor Lockheed Martin.

As an Apple Proprietary Solutions Provider and developer of the Yellow Dog Linux for PowerPC, Terra Soft Solutions provides a unique, integrated turn-key solution to Lockheed Martin which meets the Navy's requirements for form-factor, density, performance, and use of Linux.

Since March, Terra Soft has provided software engineering and support services which include device driver enhancements, kernel development, tuned firmware allowing serial (RS-232) port-based control; performance testing, and management of third party engineering and systems integration.

Terra Soft will provide support and development services to the Lockheed Martin engineering staff on the units provided under this contract.

Kai Staats, co-founder and CEO of Terra Soft states, "This brings to fruition two years of effort with an intense recent six months of research, coordination, prototype development and testing -- a great deal of hands-on collaboration with the Lockheed Martin engineering team. We are proud to implement Yellow Dog Linux in this capacity, to provide a solution trusted by both Lockheed Martin and United States Navy."

United States Navy submarines utilize on-board HPC clusters for the realtime image processing. These systems are revised and upgraded on a rotational basis. Lockheed Martin has chosen to move with the Apple Xserves and Yellow Dog Linux. This combination provides a solution twice as dense, less power consumptive, and higher performance than the previous solution at a similar cost.

"Terra Soft's Red Hat-based OS currently provides an optimal balance of open-source flexibility, AltiVec-enhanced performance, and community support," states Joe Fanto, lead project engineer for Lockheed Martin.

The full 260 units recently ordered by Lockheed Martin will be delivered by the close of October 2003. This marks the largest Apple VAR Xserve sale to date.


About Terra Soft Solutions, Inc.
Terra Soft is a leading developer of integrated solutions for PowerPC and the top-selling Apple Authorized Proprietary Solutions Provider. Yellow Dog Linux has boosted viability of PowerPC microprocessors with support for desktop, embedded, and HPC systems. Black Lab is an advanced, scalable, HPC cluster build and management suite.

For more information, visit www.terrasoftsolutions.com

 

[Eug]

By the way, for usual consumers Terra Soft sells pre-config'd dual boot Linux/OS X machines (for the same price as Apple's retail).

It sounds like the Navy might have wanted an Altivec-capable machine judging by the press release, and thus the PPC choice.

 

[FoBoT]

those crazy squids! buying Apples :Q

 

[mpitts]

They made a wise choice.

 

[ElFenix]

better than that windows XP ship

 

[Ameesh]

holy crap! 260 units?! OMG!!! OH NO! AIIIIIEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!! NOOOOOO!O!OO!O!!!!

 

[ROTC1983]

Originally posted by: Ameesh
holy crap! 260 units?! OMG!!! OH NO! AIIIIIEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!! NOOOOOO!O!OO!O!!!!

:Q

 

[FoBoT]

that isn't that many

there are around 50-60 submarines that have to be retrofitted with this new sonar system, so that is only 4-5 of these boxes per boat

 

[UltraQuiet]

Originally posted by: FoBoT
that isn't that many

there are around 50-60 submarines that have to be retrofitted with this new sonar system, so that is only 4-5 of these boxes per boat

They don't all have the same SONAR suite and not all of them will get it.

 

[UNCjigga]

That's a lot of old, outdated G4 junk...right? Aren't Xserve's dual-processor only...or have they done 4-chip servers too?

<-- refuses to look it up on Apple.com, expects notfred to correct him within 5 minutes...

 

[Eug]

So how many boats would use this?

Aren't Xserve's dual-processor only...or have they done 4-chip servers too?

Two-chip, but 1 U.

 

[ViRGE]

There's also a single processor Xserve, but it's unlikely they purchased that.

 

[Eug]

Here is a post from someone who writes software for these naval Xserves.

As someone who works in close proximity with those XServes, (I write some of the software which controls them as a whole, not the software running on each one, though I'm friends with the people who do) let me tell you that this is one time going Apple was cheaper than the alternative. (Which wasn't x86)

Oh, and they aren't image processing, they are Beamformers (a type of signal processing for sonar) just FYI.

Not only that, but we've moved most of the rest of the sonar system to Linux too (Redhat 7.2 in this case) Only a few specialized chassis are running anything else.

Don't worry, none of this information is classified, I'm not going to get in trouble.

-----

I can tell you that we use anywhere from 4-10 (currently) dual processor boxes to make one beamformer. (Depending on the array being processed) The only performance information I have is that they are fast enough to do what custom hardware used to do. Of course the custom hardware is several generations old, and our x86 linux boxes are also lightyears faster. The big deal was mostly the real time kernel on Yellow Dog I believe.