Pwnos design Document Version 0a
Market Analysis and Prior Art High Performance Dedicated Servers Market
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Market Analysis and Prior ArtHigh Performance Dedicated Servers MarketThe server system market, although large and continually growing, is too broad a market to consider for PwnOS, since many uses for servers are not limited by CPU performance. Also, many server systems are not what would be considered “isolated” systems, and issues not addressed by PwnOS, such as security and capabilities, are important for those systems. As such, this section will only consider relevant submarkets of the server system market. The most distinctive market for high performance dedicated servers is the High-Performance Computing (HPC) market. HPC is best known for use of systems with many CPU cores (a cluster) for parallel computation and large amounts of RAM to facilitate computationally intense use of these cores. HPC servers are most commonly used for solving very difficult, but parallelisable, problems. This type of problem arises frequently in scientific computing and optimisation of complex systems. For example, simulation of the folding of proteins is a problem very important to biological and pharmaceutical research, but it is extremely difficult to do accurately, and yet is highly parallelisable. There is, however, a wide variety of these types of problems, including LSI verification, weather prediction, cinematic quality 3D rendering, network optimisation, schedule optimisation, and many others. The growth of HPC in recent years can be attributed to this myriad of fields in which HPC is useful, especially scientific and technical fields. The role of PwnOS is not to provide a full HPC system, but just to provide a simple, low overhead framework on top of which to run HPC applications using general-purpose hardware. Other uses for high performance dedicated servers include custom database systems. As an example of this, a telephone switching system can make use of such a database system. A large amount of information related to telephone switching remains relatively constant (e.g. phone number routing data) and is very frequently queried, often concurrently, but this amount of information is easily small enough to fit in memory given a mid-range dedicated server. Since the information is relatively constant, it can be perpetually cached, making a very low overhead operating system with support for large memory ideal for these operations. However, the ease of use and adequate performance of general-purpose database systems has made custom database systems less common, so this may not be a significant market for PwnOS. Commercial High Performance SystemsMajor companies specialising in development and/or retail of low- to mid-range HPC servers include IBM, Sun, HP, SGI, and Quadrics. Such servers (as limited by price) can generally be arranged into categories based on the amount of RAM per CPU. For instance, the HP Integrity rx6600 Server has 2-8 cores and 192GB of RAM (24-96GB/CPU), whereas the Sun Blade x8420 Server Module has 8 cores and 64GB of RAM (8GB/CPU). Clusters with more RAM/CPU are better for some tasks (i.e. more performance per dollar) and worse for others. Similar arguments can be made for I/O connections to these servers. However, the modularity of these systems is perhaps a more important factor. Most of the above companies offer both standalone server systems and server systems in which many server modules can be mounted together with special interconnects for inter-module communication. The former is referred to as a rack-mount server system, and the latter is referred to as a blade server system. Rack-mount systems are standard computer systems usually using high-quality conventional hardware, but each computer is inherently separate, albeit likely connected via a network interface. A blade system requires a special enclosure providing power, cooling, and networking in a way that is more efficient than rack-mount systems, but they can be more expensive due to their highly-specialized hardware. Blade server systems are expandable to high-end clusters, but may not be as cost-effective for low-end clusters. Software on these systems varies widely. IBM mostly sells systems running either a variant of Linux or Windows Compute Cluster Server on Windows Server 2003, and it also sells systems with a custom operating system, AIX. Sun’s systems mostly run its own operating system, Solaris, and the same is true for HP selling systems running HP-UX. Until recently, SGI sold systems running its operating system, IRIX, but they now primarily run Linux. Because these companies mostly make money from the hardware, not the software, and so for low- to mid-range servers, the overall trend has been moving away from custom operating systems for these servers. Comparison of Similar Operating Systems
HP-UX (2), Cellular IRIX (3), and Solaris (4) are operating systems that are or have been developed by HP, SGI, and Sun, respectively, for server systems, especially cluster or cluster-like systems. PwnOS is similar to these in that the primary focus is cluster systems and other high performance dedicated systems. However, PwnOS differs in that is inherently designed to remain simple while still providing the functionality needed to create and run software for these systems, whereas HP-UX, Cellular IRIX, and Solaris are colossal, complex masses of software. PwnOS also differs in that the other three operating systems are sold in conjunction with expensive server systems, whereas PwnOS is intended to enable companies and individuals to make inexpensive server systems from computers that they already have. ITRON (5) is an operating system specification used for more embedded systems than any other design on Earth. ITRON is, in fact, very dissimilar from PwnOS. ITRON operating systems are real-time operating systems for embedded systems on a wide variety of different custom and general-purpose hardware platforms. PwnOS is not intended to be a real-time operating system, it is not for embedded systems, and is designed to support only a limited range of modern, general-purpose hardware. The only similarity is the intent to be for industrial use. It is, however, a great success story of how in just 20 years, a project such as it can become so common. Minix (6), L4 (7), and Mach (8) are or were projects developed by independent operating system enthusiasts interested in trying theoretical designs for operating systems (specifically micro-kernel designs). The purpose of these operating systems is completely different than that of PwnOS. Because of that, the designs of them are very different than that of PwnOS. The common design element is simplicity, but beyond that, PwnOS is not a micro-kernel design and has performance, functionality, and specific usefulness in mind, whereas the others are micro-kernel designs with reliability, minimal functionality, and no particular usefulness in mind. The other significant element in common is that PwnOS is currently being developed by a tiny group of independent operating system enthusiasts. The key difference there is that this tiny group is interested in more than just operating systems. Directory: downloads downloads -> Northern England’s set-jetting locations downloads -> Dynatest 3031 lwd light Weight Deflectometer downloads -> Forth coming competitive exams downloads -> Brush High School Morning Announcements Friday, September 05, 2014 all school downloads -> Year 9 The Arts — Music downloads -> Years 7 and 8 standard elaborations — Australian Curriculum: Music draft downloads -> Chris Young sets 2016 “I’m Comin’ Over” Tour headlining dates downloads -> Slavery and Abolition: the Plymouth Connection Introduction downloads -> Summer Assignment Download 135.4 Kb. Share with your friends:
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