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Mono on AIX and IBM i

mono-project.com

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Re: Mono on AIX and IBM i

#21

Post by filereaper »

calvin_ wrote: post #9
lambda wrote: post #3

Seems like IBM is really increasing its investment in open source software and hardware for PowerPC recently. I've noticed them offering bounties for PowerPC related work on Rust, there's this recent work on Mono, and OpenPOWER has led to the development of truly open servers and workstations like the Talos II.

I was never paid by IBM to do anything; this is a hobbyist endeavour.

I'm more impressed that you were able to acquire the unobtanium that is AIX on POWER, let alone System i (the real iOS, not the one from the fruit company)

Re: Mono on AIX and IBM i

#22

Post by lambda »

apaprocki wrote: post #6
lambda wrote: post #3

Seems like IBM is really increasing its investment in open source software and hardware for PowerPC recently. I've noticed them offering bounties for PowerPC related work on Rust, there's this recent work on Mono, and OpenPOWER has led to the development of truly open servers and workstations like the Talos II.

Keep in mind that almost all that work will be Linux-based. This announcement was regarding AIX & i, which is off in la-la land compared to what you expect with a Linux-based system.

Oh, yes, I'm well aware of the difference.

It's all POWER though, and I seem to be seeing more of it around recently. I had thought that it was going to just keep on shrinking into a more niche market once Macs, Xboxes, and Playstations stopped using POWER/PowerPC processors, and Intel was dominating in the cloud, but it seems like they're actually investing again in trying to get out of the relatively small niche they're in now.

Maybe it's just my perception though; I happen to have noticed POWER related things happening in a couple of different areas recently. I haven't been following it very closely.

Re: Mono on AIX and IBM i

#23

Post by voidmain0001 »

filereaper wrote: post #21
calvin_ wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was never paid by IBM to do anything; this is a hobbyist endeavour.

I'm more impressed that you were able to acquire the unobtanium that is AIX on POWER, let alone System i (the real iOS, not the one from the fruit company)

I thought the real IOS was from company with the bridge logo that rhymes with Crisco lard, especially since IBM iSeries is just a renamed AS/400 - OS/400 from 2006.

Re: Mono on AIX and IBM i

#24

Post by cuckcuckspruce »

gaius wrote: post #19
lambda wrote: post #3

Seems like IBM is really increasing its investment in open source software and hardware for PowerPC recently. I've noticed them offering bounties for PowerPC related work on Rust, there's this recent work on Mono, and OpenPOWER has led to the development of truly open servers and workstations like the Talos II.

Well there’s free as in beer, free as in speech, and free as in working for IBM without getting paid. They just laid off thousands of people from their Healthcare group. On top of thousands and thousands more in other groups recently. Couldn’t some of them have been reassigned to work on this stuff if it’s of value to IBM?

Are or were any of them experts on the things that IBM wants done? Are the involved in the communities that IBM wants work done in? If not, then they're still a net drain while they come up to speed, and engaging these communities and spreading out some money in the form of bounties makes sense.

Re: Mono on AIX and IBM i

#25

Post by calvin_ »

lambda wrote: post #20
calvin_ wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was never paid by IBM to do anything; this is a hobbyist endeavour.

Really? Wow. I just assumed it was paid because I wouldn't have expected a hobbyist endeavor to port software to a proprietary Unix and mainframe OS running on expensive hardware. Do you develop for AIX and IBM i for work and have access to hardware and inspiration to do this for that reason? If not, how did you wind up picking this as a hobbyist endeavor?

I know a friend who's employer was throwing out an E4A. OS/400 is also pretty interesting from an architecture perspective too.

Re: Mono on AIX and IBM i

#26

Post by lambda »

dragontamer wrote: post #18
Narishma wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the main problem is that there are no low-cost POWER systems for people to tinker with like there are for x86 and ARM. You are limited to expensive high-end servers, and that leads to a lack of software support.

https://www.digikey.com/product-detail/en/nxp-usa-inc/TWR-P1... Power certainly exists, its just less popular. The above board is under $250 and seems to be good enough for tinkering usage. Software support is certainly weaker. I think Power9 primarily exists for people who are planning to write their own application servers, or otherwise are willing to spend time recompiling OSS over to the Power9 architecture (Gent…

Raptor does have a sub-$2000 machine on pre-order: https://www.raptorcs.com/content/TL1BC1/intro.html

That is starting to approach the price point where it's worth it if you want to tinker, but with something that is a lot closer to a real machine than a $250 embedded board.

I tried taking a look for cloud services that offer POWER machines, but couldn't find anything that I could just sign up for and try for relatively cheap. There are a couple of universities that have free POWER clusters that you can request access to, but for tinkering I'd actually rather be able to pay for what I'd need rather than having to manually request access.

Do you have references to cloud services that would allow you to easily get access to POWER9 systems by the hour? IBM's own cloud services only seem to offer bare-metal POWER8 servers by the month; as far as I can tell (from their fairly confusing pricing page and docs), all of their virtual servers or hourly servers are Intel.

Re: Mono on AIX and IBM i

#27

Post by lambda »

calvin_ wrote: post #25
lambda wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Really? Wow. I just assumed it was paid because I wouldn't have expected a hobbyist endeavor to port software to a proprietary Unix and mainframe OS running on expensive hardware. Do you develop for AIX and IBM i for work and have access to hardware and inspiration to do this for that reason? If not, how did you wind up picking this as a hobbyist endeavor?

I know a friend who's employer was throwing out an E4A. OS/400 is also pretty interesting from an architecture perspective too.

Yeah, it might be kind of interesting to play around with IBM i/OS/400.

Oh, and I guess I shouldn't have called it a mainframe operating system; that's z/OS. IBM i is their minicomputer operating system.

Re: Mono on AIX and IBM i

#28

Post by steveklabnik »

lambda wrote: post #16
steveklabnik wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So you have a link to those bounties? I haven’t seen them but would be very interested!

https://www.bountysource.com/issues/46345753-altivec-vsx-sup... I looked into doing this briefly, and a couple blockers were that I couldn't find any easy cloud services offering POWER that I could use for testing, the cheapest dev system I could find, the Talos II Development System, is itself $5000 once you add RAM and storage ( https://www.raptorcs.com/content/TL2DS1/intro.html , they do have a cheaper system avai…

Cool, thanks!

Re: Mono on AIX and IBM i

#29

Post by apaprocki »

filereaper wrote: post #21
calvin_ wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was never paid by IBM to do anything; this is a hobbyist endeavour.

I'm more impressed that you were able to acquire the unobtanium that is AIX on POWER, let alone System i (the real iOS, not the one from the fruit company)

IBM partners to offer AIX and System i VMs for open-source people to use to port their software. Links that were posted elsewhere:

http://osuosl.org/services/powerdev

http://openpower.ic.unicamp.br/minicloud/

https://fit-rhlab.rhcloud.com/powerlinux-openpower-developme...

https://ptopenlab.com/cloudlabconsole/

Re: Mono on AIX and IBM i

#30

Post by blattimwind »

steveklabnik wrote: post #15
lambda wrote: post #3

Seems like IBM is really increasing its investment in open source software and hardware for PowerPC recently. I've noticed them offering bounties for PowerPC related work on Rust, there's this recent work on Mono, and OpenPOWER has led to the development of truly open servers and workstations like the Talos II.

So you have a link to those bounties? I haven’t seen them but would be very interested!

https://www.bountysource.com/teams/ibm/bounties
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