[Asterisk-Users] Asterisk on PowerPC v. Intel/AMD

[Brian McSpadden]

I can't say that I have yet had extensive experience with it yet, but
what I have seen is promising. I, like you had read the posts
promising wonderful bliss, not dealing with echo issues and interrupts
 I was running Asterisk on PowerPC.

So, I bought an old Powermac 8500 on eBay, for $20, to try it for
myself. I'll have to say, I was pleasantly surprised with the result.
I got Yellow Dog Linux loaded on it, got Asterisk loaded up, the
zaptel hardware works great, and there was no echo, period. It really
was amazing. There are only a few combinations we've found that
produce no echo on Intel hardware. I don't know if these results say
that there won't be a problem with other PPC hardware, but it is very
promising. This was only a 180 mHz machine, and it performed
beatifully, transcoding GSM to ULAW and iLBC to ULAW, on two channels
concurrently. (I didn't have any more channels to test with at the
time, but I believe it would handle more).

I can see a few disadvantages, however. Apple hardware can be a little
more expensive. I realize it is more powerful than its Intel
counterparts, but in many situations, you don't need the extra power
that the money buys you. There also is no g729 binary for PowerPC, so
it won't do 729 either, which may or may not be a big deal.

Brian


On Tue, 19 Oct 2004 13:50:28 -0400, mattf <mattf at vicimarketing.com> wrote:
> With today's apple release of faster/cheaper hardware(PowerPC 1.8GHz for
> $1499) and the bragging I've heard by several Mac Hardware Asterisk users
> about how it's SO much better on PowerPC than on Intel/AMD.
> 
> I was wondering if anyone has any side-by-side comparisons of capacity on
> Mac hardware vs. Intel/AMD hardware, doesn't have to be anything official,
> just some people with real-world asterisk on PPC experience. I'm interested
> in number of Sip -> Zap concurrent conversations as well as just how many
> pure Zap channels you can have running concurrently on the Mac hardware
> platform(One user bragged of three quad T1 digium cards all being in use at
> once[over 200 Zap channels]).
> 
> Are these claims true?
> 
> Is Asterisk easier to install on YellowDog or is another distro better on
> PPC Hardware?
> 
> How much does clock speed of the PPC matter from 1.8GHz-single to
> 2.5GHz-dual in terms of capacity?
> 
> Any other catches when running Asterisk on PPC?
> 
> Yes, I have read the Wiki on this subject:
> http://www.voip-info.org/wiki-Asterisk+MacOSX+Support
> http://www.voip-info.org/wiki-Asterisk+Linux+Yellow+Dog
> 
> Thanks,
> 
> MATT---
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