Linux Waddles from Obscurity to the Big Time

USA Today ^ | August 5, 2002 | Byron Acohido

[ShadowAce]

SEATTLE -- When investment bank Dresdner Kleinwort Wasserstein began making the switch to the Linux computer operating system in 1999, it did so to save money.

The Germany-based bank sought a less-costly way to calculate risks associated with its portfolio of investments. So it replaced 32 computer servers, based on the time-tested Unix operating systems, at an average cost of $50,000 each, with 40 Linux servers, at $3,000 a pop.

[ShadowAce]

Penguin Ping

[ShadowAce]

This may be of interest

[bvw]

"The Unix servers took 17 hours to calculate how much cash the bank needed in reserve to offset its investment risk. The Linux servers made the same calculation in 11 minutes."

Ummm ... pause for stretching the ol' credulity muscles. A decrease from 17 hours to 11 minutes implies somthing quite a bit more than a switch from some labeled Unix to Linux happend. <EOM>

[ShadowAce]

Most of that probably happened to the increase in the number of servers as well as the change of OS.

[Maelstrom]

Linux should go after the Game Market...then they'll be in firm competition with Micro$oft.

[ShadowAce]

They're working on it. I know Quake and several other FPS are out there for it. Railroad Tycoon is available. There are several unique (to Linux) games as well.

[eno_]

"Software developers who make their applications Linux-ready risk losing their proprietary products to the public domain, Microsoft warns."

Hahahahahaha hohohohohohoho, oh, I'm dying... I think I ruptured something... ya sure... read the Visual Studio license and tell me what the real source of trouble for developers could be? You gotta have titanium nuts to make a claim like that.

[bvw]

Well being as the new system is quoted as being 92 times faster, that would be a lot of new servers -- and might suggest they re-did their algorithm to be so scalable. In such case the speed-up wouldn't be accorded to the linux directly, but to the cheap cost of adding a new linux server.

[milestogo]

bump!!

[Crispy]

I use Linux and love it, but those numbers are junk. I think they bought new computers which would explain the speed up. A Linux server would not cost $3000 bucks unless the $3000 was for hardware. It is hard to tell from the way the article was written.

[stlrocket]

Don't you have to get your Linux Credentials first?

LINUX CREDENTIALS

THE REASON PROGRAMMERS LOVE LINUX

[eno_]

Well yeah, if these were five year old servers: CPUs 4x faster, 20-100X the memory (no paging, THAT will do wonders), 4X faster disks, etc. 50-100X faster But it also means that cheap fast hardware means all but the most demanding and exotic IT tasks can be done very very cheaply now. Even RDMSs are open software now. Who cares if Oracle is twice as fast. That Oracle license can buy more $3000 servers than you could shake a stick at. If you IT manager wants to spend millions to get something done, start asking tough questions.

[js1138]

Ummm ... pause for stretching the ol' credulity muscles. A decrease from 17 hours to 11 minutes implies somthing quite a bit more than a switch from some labeled Unix to Linux happend.

bump.

Perhaps those ols Sun minis aren't really as fast as claimed. DB performance is heavily influenced by how many indexes can be held in memory. You can get 3 gigs of DDR on a cheap motherboard in the PC world.

[TheEditor]

17 hours to 11 minutes? Fer crissakes, fire the original programmers!

[Lorenb420]

Ummm ... pause for stretching the ol' credulity muscles. A decrease from 17 hours to 11 minutes implies somthing quite a bit more than a switch from some labeled Unix to Linux happend.

They probably went from having (32) Sun SPARCStation 10's (SPARC CPU @ 20Mhz) running Solaris to (40) Intel boxes (2.4 Ghz Xeons) running Linux.

They probably couldn't justify the cost to replace all 32 Unix boxes with their modern equivilents.

[The Duke]

From the Sun and Microsoft view, Linux has not proved robust enough to handle computing chores much beyond the edges of corporate networks.

"Pot, meet kettle"

Seriously, I've never heard of robustness being a problem for Linux.

[Dominic Harr]

"The Unix servers took 17 hours to calculate how much cash the bank needed in reserve to offset its investment risk. The Linux servers made the same calculation in 11 minutes."

I don't mean to be a wet blanket, but no way was this due to the shift to Linux.

At least, there's no way I can imagine it could be. I've got tools that run on both Solaris and Linux, and there's not really that big a difference.

It's got to be the hardware.

The $50k servers were probably two years old or more, and were replaced with brand-new boxen.

I do think Linux is good, don't get me wrong. But this is a *highly* misleading intro.

[ShadowAce]

I agree. The OS doesn't have much to do with calculations, anyway. It's mostly hardware. I'll take 40 new boxes over 32 ancient ones any day of the week.

[dcwusmc]

Bravo for Linux and the Penguin!