IBM Archive

In the last decade alone, IBM scientists have announced one semiconductor breakthrough after another:

PowerPC processors are found in everything from supercomputers to game consoles and from servers to cell phones -- and they all share a common architecture. This introduction to the PowerPC application-level programming model will give you an overview of the instruction set, important registers, and other details necessary for developing reliable, high performing PowerPC applications and maintaining code compatibility among processors.

With a strategy dubbed Linux-on-Power, Big Blue is pairing its Power platform and Linux as a way to expand its reach into 64-bit computing.

As part of its initiative to put Linux on the desktop, IBM Corp. wants to migrate Microsoft Corp.'s Office suite to Linux. Microsoft said it's not involved and suggests that IBM might do it by emulation.

Lately, a lot of activity is going on in Linux circles. Novell has become a leading Linux distro vendor, Redhat has raised $600 million in a bond offering, and SCO is making news every day. The article "IBM's Linux Consolidation Plan" is Latif's analysis of the consolidation going on behind the scenes.

In this month's "The Linux Line" issue: Bill Zeitler, Senior Vice President and Group Executive, IBM Systems Group, tells how Linux is changing the way that governments and companies operate; Red Hat CEO Matthew Szulik talks about the continued expansion of Red Hat into the global marketplace;

DesktopLinux.com, in coordination with the Desktop Linux Consortium, is making select presentations from Monday's conference at Boston University's Corporate Education Center available. The first presentation in the series is from IBM's Sam Docknevich, Linux and Grid Services Executive for IBM Global Services. His presentation discusses IBM's push into the Linux desktop market, an initiative from inside "Big Blue." Elsewhere, LinuxJournal has a review of some of the presentations in the conference.

"The UK government has a 'level playing field' policy for use of Open Source Software, but although it is supposed to be considering "OSS solutions alongside proprietary ones in IT procurements", this does not seem to have produced much in the way of significant deployments or contracts. And who is to blame for this apparent lack of movement? A smoking pistol placed before a Parliamentary Committee last week seemed to implicate that well-known partisan of Open Source Software IBM." TheRegister reports. And all this while the press is expecting IBM to give a talk at Desktop Linux Consortium's conference on Monday about Linux on the desktop.

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.