IBM Archive

LinuxWorld preview: IBM on Wednesday will announce a new server; a DB2 Linux integrated clustering environment; extended Linux support for the Lotus client and server; as well as three key Tivoli offerings.

John "Hannibal" Stokes has interviewed Pete Sandon, the PowerPC 970's main designer, and David Edelsohn, a compiler writer from IBM, and clarified several points about the 970 regarding group formation, vector issue queues and performance, and more.

On its 10th anniversary, IBM Software Group, led by Steve Mills, is taking its winning middleware formula to small business. eWeek also features a long and interesting interview with the Mr Mills.

In this Microprocessor Report PDF excerpt, the PowerPC 970 is reviewed by outside industry experts who conclude that "IBM has created an impressive and affordable PowerPC chip for smaller servers, graphics workstations and desktop computers". Also, ArsTechnica posted the second part of their PPC 970 series of articles, "Inside the PowerPC 970, Part II: The Execution Core".

Following the merger, Rational Chief Scientist Grady Booch was assigned to serve as liaison between Rational and IBM Research. So far, he's identified nearly 300 projects that the company thinks will fit Rational tools.

In what one IBM-watcher calls a 'dramatic change' in IBM's thinking, Big Blue is now starting to push mainframes that run Linux -- and only Linux.

The new IBM PowerPC 970 is the heart of the PowerPC Blade. It is based on the 64-Bit Power 4 architecture which is also used in the processors of the IBM eServer pSeries. The 64-bit microprosessor offers full symmetrical multi-processing, has a high reliability (with parity L1, ECC L2 and parity checked system bus) and is manufactured in the latest 0,13 micrometer Copper/SOI CMOS technology. The CPU runs at frequences ranging from 1.8 GHz - 2.5 Ghz, therefore the IBMPowerPC 970 is the fastest PowerPC so far. It also features onchip 512 KB L2 Cache, Altivec Vector/SIMD unit, 6,4 GB/s I/O system bus throughput. Rumors want that chip to be the next CPU used by Apple when it's out.

Rational's open, industry-standard tools for developers can improve the speed, quality, and predictability of application development on J2EE, .NET, Linux, and other platforms. Rational Software is a founding member of Eclipse and has taken a leadership role in the growth of Eclipse as the Open Source standard. Take a look at the new resource center for Rational software, and what they are creating for the Open Source community.

"IBM has plans to make the midrange and low end of its Unix line stronger in a move that could liven up competition within the company between competing chip architectures. In 2004, IBM will roll out its Power5 processor, which will in some ways complete an overhaul of the company's entire Unix server line. With chips tuned for each class of Unix server it sells, IBM is looking to keep the heat on Sun Microsystems and stop users from defecting to Intel's Itanium processor." Read the article at InfoWorld.

The day is approaching when Linux will likely replace IBM's version of Unix, the company's top software executive said, an indication that the upstart operating system's stature is rising within Big Blue.

Frank wrote in to tell us "IBM has released IP Security Validator, which enables independent evaluation of VPN configurations and quick/autonomous reaction to problems. An offline mode even allows the offline evaluation of traffic that was captured into a file with other tools such as tcpdump or pcapture. This way, traffic collected from non-Linux network nodes can be evaluated on a Linux machine." The site goes on to say that among the features, it "reports the results on the standard output in words." Finally, not only can I compete with my friends who use all Windows 2000 networks, I can read the results without a man page!

"IBM has released the Web Services Tool Kit for Mobile Devices. Its a free set of tools that provide run-time environments that allow development of applications that use Web Services on small mobile devices. This tool kit's Java Web service run-time environment is supported on PoctketPC, Palm, and BlackBerry." More at the IBM Website

The Aberdeen Group has issued a report on Big Blue and its Linux products and strategy today for the enterprise today. The report -- An Assessment of IBM's Enterprise Linux Strategy -- says that the firm has so far spent billions in an attempt to lead the industry on Linux related technology. But it questions whether IBM will be able to sustain this strategy over a long period of time. Read the news report.

"IBM WebSphere 5.0 features SOAP parsing, UDDI repository, Java and a number of open source technologies that IBM claims speeds performance of Web services and lowers integration costs. The application server also simplifies management through features IBM claimed are part of its nascent autonomic computing strategy for self-healing of systems. These features include ability to detect and correct faults and automated server clustering." Read the report at TheRegister.