News

Due at LinuxWorld: IBM to boost Linux on Power platform

• By John K. Waters
• August 3, 2004

IBM has put a lot of effort into beefing up its Power brand over the past year. At the last LinuxWorld Expo, the company rolled out Linux on Power-based microprocessors as a major strategy for luring customers away from Intel systems. At this week's LinuxWorld in San Francisco, Big Blue is expected to reach out to developers and ISVs with new resources to help them tune their applications for Linux on Power environments.

IBM's Power Architecture is currently used in systems ranging from games and PCs to servers and supercomputers. ('Power,' which IBM literature likes to present as 'POWER,' may stand for 'Performance Optimization With Enhanced RISC,' depending on whom you ask.)

To reach developers, IBM will utilize its online developerWorks community, which will post a 'Linux on Power Developer Corner' Web site to provide resources for developing Linux on Power applications, the company revealed to Programmers Report last week. developerWorks also serves as IBM's central, online hub for open-source developers interested in other Power Architecture systems, such as Apple's Power Mac G5, game systems and embedded systems. It provides technical documentation, tutorials, a technical support Web forum, as well as links to developer software/tools, remote hardware access, open-source repositories and other Linux on Power community resources.

Other Power-oriented developer resources the company plans to make available on developerWorks include:

• The Linux on Power Toolkit Portal, which provides access to popular open-source and commercial developer tools designed to help accelerate development of applications for Linux-on-Power environments. 
• The Linux on Power technical forum, which allows developers to receive Web-based technical assistance from IBM experts and the community on building, porting and deploying Linux applications on the Power architecture. 
• New technical articles on installing, developing and porting Linux applications on Power.

For ISVs, Big Blue is offering some serious resources, most notably the IBM Virtual Loaner Program. This program for ISVs will be expanded to include Linux-on-Power, a company spokesperson said. The three-month old Virtual Loaner Program, Powered by IBM Tivoli Provisioning Manager, enables ISVs to remotely access IBM hardware and operating systems through a secure Web portal at any time. ISVs can now provision Linux on pSeries resources, enabling them to instantly expand their system capacity with the click of a mouse.

In the past six months, IBM has worked with ISVs to double the number of solutions that are tuned for the Linux on Power environment, the company said. More than 600 ISV applications are now certified for Linux on Power.