SGI Unveils Systems Running on Single Linux Kernel Up To 256 CPUs

In an industry first, Silicon Graphics today announced the worldwide availability of SGI Altix systems running up to 256 Intel Itanium 2 processors within a single instance of the Linux operating system. The record-breaking accomplishment is the end result of an international Altix beta program originally targeted to achieve just half the scalability of today's 256-processor milestone.

Design cross-platform Java UIs with native performance

Can you write Java code that compiles across several platforms but still performs as fast as native code? This is a problem that has vexed Java developers, particularly when it comes to applications with complex UIs. This article proposes an interesting solution to this problem. You'll learn how to use JNI to access SLIK, a cross-platform C API that offers native performance on both Windows and UNIX. The JNI APIs demonstrated in this article will help you write skinned GUIs that run under both Linux and Windows with no code changes.

Sun Ultra 5 Primer

Here are a few tips I've gathered for working with Sun's Ultra 5, and indeed other Sun hardware in general. While many are familiar with the intimate details of the x86 BIOS system, and how to go about configuring a BIOS, dealing with a Sun system is very different.

XFree86 Gets Underwhelmed by Linux Distro Support

David Dawes seems a little suspicious of the underwhelming support for XFree86 by Linux distributors: "I have heard privately that some vendors were planning to move to an X.Org release even before this licence issue came up. That probably makes business sense for the vendors given that X.Org is a vendor-oriented organization sponsored by hardware and software companies, while XFree86 is an independent group of volunteer developers. I suspect that the licence issue may have affected the timing, but not the end result", he concluded.

JCP 2.6 Looking for More Input

Sun Microsystems officials rolled out Java Community Process (JCP) 2.6 Tuesday, along with a goal of more community participation in order to improve Java specifications. Although JCP 2.6 enhancements have been in the works for the past year, the timing of the release comes amid IBM's recent push for an open source implementation of Java.

Opinion: Software Freedom Day 2004

You, the reader, are hereby invited to participate in a celebration of Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) on August 28th this year. On that day we will stage public events to inform the general public about the virtues of FOSS. We invite you to form local teams and set up tables in town centers, shopping malls, or wherever there are likely to be lots of people on a Saturday.