IBM Archive

IBM is expected to demonstrate a blade server next week based on the Cell processor the company is developing with Toshiba and Sony. The Cell processor, which also is the brains of Sony's upcoming PlayStation 3 videogame console, has a PowerPC processing core supplemented by eight special-purpose cores to boost the chip's calculation abilities.

IBM is outfitting its line of System i5 servers with the new Power5+ processor and is introducing the newest version of its i5/OS operating system. The enhancements are designed to improve the performance and reach of the systems - which are targeted at SMBs - while upgrading the flexibility, security and disaster recovery capabilities in the operating system, according to Ian Jarmen, product manager for IBM's iSeries platform.

"In the 1990s, world chess champion Gary Kasparov played two historic matches against IBM's Deep Blue supercomputer. He won the first match but lost the second by just a single point. As a graduate student at Stanford writing a thesis on artificial intelligence at that time, I was fascinated by the match. I'd been a computer hobbyist since the 1980s as well as a chess buff. Over the years I've tried practically every commercially available chess program on every platform, including Sargon, Socrates, Chessmaster, and others. I used TRS 80 and Apple II computers, and then IBM PCs running DOS, followed by Macintosh and Windows systems. Since that time I've wanted a chess computer as powerful as Deep Blue - my own world-champion-level sparring partner."

"While the press brouhaha happily follows Apple about and co-conspirator Intel looks on, smugly hoping its tie-up with the much-loved computer maker will bring it some added kudos in its assault on the consumer electronics market, IBM, the giant ousted from the party, is getting on with business. Big Blue may have been dumped by Apple but its compensation is plentiful. Its Power chips form the heart of upcoming console offerings from Sony and Nintendo as well as the XBox from Microsoft. And let's face it, the press might like Apple and the kids might dig iTunes but sales of a million or so computers annually is pretty small beer in the grand scheme of things."

Unix isn't a flashy market. But what distinction there is has been going to Sun Microsystems lately, by making its Unix-based Solaris operating system available as open-source software. Last week, IBM moved to put its AIX Unix operating system back on everybody's radar by revealing plans to create a development center on its Austin, Texas, campus to speed up AIX development.

David Kanter has just written an article on IBM's eCLipz project, the upcoming POWER6 MPU and its performance characteristics. The eCLipz project is aimed at sharing hardware between IBM's UNIX, OS/400 and mainframe servers; the POWER6 is just one element of this project. The article discusses the microarchitecture of IBM's POWER6 which is due out in 2007, and provides performance estimates for SPEC CPU 2000.

IBM is adopting OpenDocument Format for the first generally available release of its network-based collaboration and office productivity suite. IBM said Sunday its Workplace Managed Client 2.6, due in early 2006, would adopt ODF so users could easily share files and information. The Workplace Managed Client is currently available on a limited capacity, with more than one million deployed seats.

Teo Wan Ping, IBM Singapore's brand manager for information management, said that IBM could "potentially offer" a free starter edition of DB2, as part of the company's strategy to gain mindshare for its database product. IBM currently does not have a free version of its DB2 product, unlike free competing products like Microsoft's SQL Server 2005 Express Edition and Oracle's Database XE released recently.

The ClearQuest plug-in for Eclipse enables you to perform ClearQuest activities (tasks) in an Eclipse environment. While many of you are familiar with Rational ClearQuest and/or Eclipse, this article is aimed at bridging the gap to provide you with a good understanding of the ClearQuest Client for Eclipse. For ClearQuest fans, this is an offer that is hard to refuse - save a significant amount with this sepcial deal on Rational ClearQuest Licenses.

IBM officials said the company will donate a subset of the IBM Rational Unified Process to the open-source community. RUP is a development methodology that comes out of IBM Software Group's Rational business unit. Grady Booch, an IBM fellow and Rational's chief scientist, said RUP is a vast collection of methods and best practices for promoting quality and efficiency throughout software development projects.

IBM has revamped its entry-level Unix servers with new processors and an Integrated Virtualisation Manager aimed at the SME market, and launched a vitriolic attack on rival Sun Microsystems. Launching four new servers, three of them based on the new Power5+ processor, as well as a 16-way system for the high-end, IBM claimed leadership in power and performance in the low-end Unix systems market.

IBM has unveiled a major upgrade to its flagship platform with the launch of Lotus Notes and Domino 7. Lotus D7 includes new collaboration features and tools designed to improve productivity for IT administrators and corporate developers, as well as new productivity enhancements to help Lotus Notes users work more efficiently. They are available for multiple platforms including AIX, Solaris and Linux.

Optimized for IBM WebSphere software, and supporting multi-vendor runtime environments, IBM Rational Application Developer for WebSphere Software is powered by the Eclipse open source platform so developers can adapt and extend their development environment to match their needs and increase their productivity.

The release of the IBM PC proved revolutionary for the then tiny microcomputer industry, and for IBM itself. Read about the birth of the IBM PC 5150 at Braeburn.