Domain: ibm.com
Stories and comments across the archive that link to ibm.com.
Comments · 7,595
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Re:BlueGene/C will be finished soonThe "L" in BlueGene/L is for "Low" power. Given the amount of power it consumes that classification would appear to be bit of an oxymoron. The problem is that one is talking 100,000+ processors and the failure rate is not insignificant. It becomes a bit of a problem if the failures take out an important subset of the data of a simulation that takes weeks of time. This is one of the reasons that they run the processors at lower clock speeds than they are capable of (less heat) and focus a lot of attention on cooling.
The March/May 2005 issue of the IBM Journal of R&D has a complete set of articles on the architecture. Here is the URL for an overview by Gara et al.
Now what will be interesting is whether in order to solve the inter-CPU latency problems of these rather large machines they move from a 2-D computer room layout to a 3-D multi-floor layout. Though in most of the types of simulations that are run it isn't really necessary for the processors which are furthest apart to communicate with each other. Most of the simulations involved are recreations of real-world processes where one only needs to communicate with ones nearest neighbors. It is interesting to note however that brain architectures are arranged such that there is quite a bit of relatively long distance communication going on. That may offer an explanation as to why you aren't going to get "intelligence" out of these machines even with many more petaflops than a human brain. They need to solve a communications architecture/bandwidth problem -- not a raw CPU horsepower problem.
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Re:Joel on softwareThe word you're looking for is intuitive, not transparent.
Nope. Intuitive is just a stepping stone along the way toward transparent. It's today's immediate goal, not a forward-thinking future goal. I didn't say anyone had achieved tranparancy, or is even close, just that it was a long-standing CS goal.
Here is an article that talks about the quest for transparent computing. From the article:
"A good interface," says Shumin Zhai, a member of the user systems ergonomic research (USER) group at Almaden, "is one that's transparent. That means it is so good you don't notice it, allowing you to fully concentrate on the task at hand.
Here's another article that talks about it. From the article;
Transparent computing is a characteristic of pervasive computing, the possible future state in which we will be surrounded by computers everywhere in the environment that respond to our needs without our conscious use.
I didn't make this up. It's probably taught in every CS program in the world. Really, if you're in the CS field, you should have been aware of this already. Further, if you think it can't be done, then you won't be able to do it. -
Re:We need tablets!
Apple? Come on there is at least one other company which offers high quality and expensive notebooks, and now in tablet format!
http://www.pc.ibm.com/us/thinkpad/xseries/tablet/ -
Goes both ways
One could also argue that Linux is what FreeBSD should have been, and cite the huge number of supercomputers using Linux, or the success of Linux on the mainframe. However, it would be nice if the poster realized that it's a pissing contest and both operating systems are impressive and have their uses, benefits, and drawbacks. Neither is what one "should have been". They both have their own, very different methodologies, so let's leave it at that.
Not that it's news anyways... -
Re:Tonight at 11:
There are also PC's around (eg, some IBM/Lenovo ThinkCentre desktops, Thinkpad Laptops and also some HPaq Notebooks) where this will do no good. Where de-soldering the security chip is about all you can do.
Not impossible, but it'd be easier to take the HDD out (unless of course it is also encrypted with the TCPA chip) -
Rexx
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Re:IBM could create Harmony overnight
This is 50% correct.
IBM has two Java offerings. One is the IBM JDK you can freely download off their web page, http://www-128.ibm.com/developerworks/java/jdk/ as "Java Standard Edition" for Linux and other platforms.
Indeed, this version is an adaptation of the source code found in Sun's JDK. As it is easy to get, up to date (and the only really working JDK for ppc these days), this is the one (of the many Java VMs) provided in, say, Gentoo.
However, IBM is a big company, which sometimes buy other, smaller companies. Somewhere along the way, the acquired a clean room implementation mysteriously referred to as J9. This is what they use on AIX, for one. To the world, it is being marketed for embedded systems, as a Micro Edition Java.
When I checked a few months ago, you could only get it as part of other IBM offerings, such as their WebStudio suite.
The two can easily be distinguised by a java -version. The Standard JDK will identify itself as
Classic VM (build 1.4.2, J2RE 1.4.2 IBM build cxia321420-20040626 (JIT enabled: jitc))
whereas the J9 will look something like
J2RE 1.4.2 IBM J9 2.2 Windows XP x86-32 j9n142ifx-20041102 (JIT enabled) J9VM -
Re:so?
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Re:Where's the real news?
I steadfastly REFUSE to call it vista
Why? Sure, it's not the world's greatest name, but it's no worse (to me) than say Mandriva (why, Mandrake, why?)
if I'm going to pay $30 for a digital movie, I would much rather have it on a DVD where I can play it wherever I want than a digital media file with so much DRM that I have to give my first born to get it to play on ONE computer, much less my 4 computers
I adore the irony of a person decrying an OS for supposed integration of DRM favouring DVDs with their CSS encryption, region-locking and associated law suits...
And I can just forget linux, because obviously those FSF people are too inconsiderate to give us "features" like trusted computing.
Maybe the FSF won't, but IBM are working on it.
Hey, here's an idea - how about you wait until the OS has been released and reviewed (or at least previewed from a release candidate build) before ripping it to shreds for imagined undesirable features? -
IBM Has You Covered
IBM Tivoli Risk Manager provides intrusion detection and automated remediation based on correlated input gathered from numerous sensors in your network. These include network intrusion detection systems (NIDS), host IDS, webserver logs, Windows Event Logs, *nix syslogs, firewall events, SNMP traps, and just about any other device, appliance, or application that writes a log event or generates an SNMP message. The correlation engine at the center is smart enough to take hundreds of thousands of individual input events and display or respond to a handful of meaningful alarms. Read on... http://www-306.ibm.com/software/tivoli/products/r
i sk-mgr/ -
Where?
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Spam Filter
Gee, I wonder if it could beat Deep Thought
:) (http://www.research.ibm.com/deepblue/) -
Rational?
I use Rational's (IBM) stuff in my work. It's expensive for sites, but I think pretty reasonable if there is only going to be one tester.
Rational Robot does automated testing. I'm pretty sure they have load and performance tools too.
http://www-306.ibm.com/software/rational/ -
Been done before, 23 years agoIBM used a multi layer ceramic module with thermal conduction system on the water-cooled System 3090 mainframe, and still uses the technology today in their zSeries 990, known as the "T-Rex".
The center layers of the substrate include 16 wiring planes arranged in x-y pairs to maximize wiring efficiency. Metallized, 0.12-mm-diameter vias on 0.5-mm centers are used for x-plane-to-y-plane connections. Voltage reference planes are appropriately interspersed for signal wiring impedance control.
See: Thermal Conduction Module: A High-Performance Multilayer Ceramic Package
Chip H. -
IBM == Trusted COmputing !!!
http://www.research.ibm.com/gsal/tcpa/
Hello? Anyone home? IBM is a huge proponent of the TCPA initiative and arguably its best implementor. Intel doesn't have anything IBM doesn't already have in in spades. The article is uninformed garbage. -
Re:Won't somebody please think of the ATM machines
You're talking about the T-Rex. Its OS is z/OS (which is OS/390 to you folks who haven't kept up, or OS/360 for those folks who haven't bothered to look outside for the past 20 years).
A fair number of IBM's GUIs look like OS/2 because that was the basis of the internal UI guidelines for years. Certainly CMVC is still very OS/2-like in appearance (if not in stability), even though it's been available on other OSes for several years. But most applications from IBM that use those internal UI guidelines are not actually OS/2 under the hood, and don't have any shared code.
Regardless of the snideness regarding mainframes, IBM makes quite a fair chunk of change on them. Some number of ATMs might've used OS/2 as their frontend, but the'yre almost universally IMS on the backend (with possibly a DB2 UDB for z/OS involved somewhere, but IMS is faster than DB2z, so it's more popular for something like an ATM). It's fair to say that if you're using an ATM, you're using IMS somewhere. -
Re:Won't somebody please think of the ATM machines
You're talking about the T-Rex. Its OS is z/OS (which is OS/390 to you folks who haven't kept up, or OS/360 for those folks who haven't bothered to look outside for the past 20 years).
A fair number of IBM's GUIs look like OS/2 because that was the basis of the internal UI guidelines for years. Certainly CMVC is still very OS/2-like in appearance (if not in stability), even though it's been available on other OSes for several years. But most applications from IBM that use those internal UI guidelines are not actually OS/2 under the hood, and don't have any shared code.
Regardless of the snideness regarding mainframes, IBM makes quite a fair chunk of change on them. Some number of ATMs might've used OS/2 as their frontend, but the'yre almost universally IMS on the backend (with possibly a DB2 UDB for z/OS involved somewhere, but IMS is faster than DB2z, so it's more popular for something like an ATM). It's fair to say that if you're using an ATM, you're using IMS somewhere. -
Re:Won't somebody please think of the ATM machines
You're talking about the T-Rex. Its OS is z/OS (which is OS/390 to you folks who haven't kept up, or OS/360 for those folks who haven't bothered to look outside for the past 20 years).
A fair number of IBM's GUIs look like OS/2 because that was the basis of the internal UI guidelines for years. Certainly CMVC is still very OS/2-like in appearance (if not in stability), even though it's been available on other OSes for several years. But most applications from IBM that use those internal UI guidelines are not actually OS/2 under the hood, and don't have any shared code.
Regardless of the snideness regarding mainframes, IBM makes quite a fair chunk of change on them. Some number of ATMs might've used OS/2 as their frontend, but the'yre almost universally IMS on the backend (with possibly a DB2 UDB for z/OS involved somewhere, but IMS is faster than DB2z, so it's more popular for something like an ATM). It's fair to say that if you're using an ATM, you're using IMS somewhere. -
Re:Won't somebody please think of the ATM machines
You're talking about the T-Rex. Its OS is z/OS (which is OS/390 to you folks who haven't kept up, or OS/360 for those folks who haven't bothered to look outside for the past 20 years).
A fair number of IBM's GUIs look like OS/2 because that was the basis of the internal UI guidelines for years. Certainly CMVC is still very OS/2-like in appearance (if not in stability), even though it's been available on other OSes for several years. But most applications from IBM that use those internal UI guidelines are not actually OS/2 under the hood, and don't have any shared code.
Regardless of the snideness regarding mainframes, IBM makes quite a fair chunk of change on them. Some number of ATMs might've used OS/2 as their frontend, but the'yre almost universally IMS on the backend (with possibly a DB2 UDB for z/OS involved somewhere, but IMS is faster than DB2z, so it's more popular for something like an ATM). It's fair to say that if you're using an ATM, you're using IMS somewhere. -
Re:Why kill OS/2???They did, a few years ago. ecomstation has been the only upgrades of OS/2 to come out besides fixpaks from IBM in several years.
eComStation product plan calls for sales of eComStation through mid-2007. Even then, there are no plans to terminate the product. That is simply the time frame of the current product plan.
On July 12, IBM announced withdrawal of active marketing and end of support for OS/2, see http://www-306.ibm.com/software/os/warp/announceme nts.html IBM had previously endicated end of service for OS/2 Warp 4 is December 31, 2006, and the withdrawal from active marketing as of December 23, 2005, indicating IBM will not sell OS/2 Warp 4 after this year.
This announcement covers the IBM plans for the IBM distribution of the OS/2 products. The announcement does not impact OEMs who may use OS/2 and other IBM products as part of their product solution.
"eComStation will remain available as long as it is a good business. There is no end in sight". - Bob St.John, Director of Business Development,Serenity Systems International -
Input tooMicrosoft wants DRM'd keyboards and mice too... This sounds to some extent like VISA's ATM PIN-entry security measures, but no doubt its powers will be used against the computer owner in some cases (for instance... preventing software keyboard macros from running in multiplayer games, to prevent super-human speed or acuracy).
http://www.research.ibm.com/gsal/tcpa/tcpa_rebutt
a l.pdfPalladium is a Microsoft led project to add "trusted" computing to Windows, through a combination of hardware and software.
... processor modifications to ... provide trusted path from the keyboard and trusted display.http://www.microsoft.com/technet/archive/security
/ news/ngscb.mspxSecure path to and from the user. Secure channels allow data to move safely from the keyboard/mouse to nexus-aware applications, and for data to move from nexus-aware applications to a region of the screen.
To make NGSCB possible, both the software and the hardware will evolve. On the hardware side, the CPU, chipset, USB I/O and GPU hardware components will be redesigned, and a new component will be added, called the Security Support Component (SSC).
- Trusted USB-Input
- Old Version
- Trusted Channel from Keyboard/Mouse to Keyboard/Mouse Manager
- Need new Input-Devices which allow creation of Trusted Channels
- Update in Trusted USB-Input Specication
- Done by Intel and Mircosoft
- Protection Implementations in Chipset
- NO new Input-Devices needed
- Good news: Windows is designed to allow extensions and additions to this [the USB keyboard input] stack.
- Bad news: Things that extend or add to this stack are not always good news.
- Data manipulation
- Replay
- Substitution / Data Scaling
- Data leakgage
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Technically they aren't saying switch to Linux
From the page here it looks as if IBM is saying that OS/2 apps should be migrated to WebSphere.
I'm sure that they mean WebSphere on Linux, but it could as well run on Windows too, or Solaris or AIX.
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Re:Easily switch to linux my ass
well, they're providing documentation, among other things. and honestly... unless you're an IBM customer, you're really not in a position to say what they're offering and not offering.
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Re:Woah, hold on a sec
Why do people keep spreading this FUD? First, having a different instruction set doesn't make it harder to program. That's pure bologna. Any REAL programmer will tell you that. I can program in assembly on the 680x0, x86, PPC, Alpha, MIPS, and a number of other processors. Then remember that compilers make the ISA a moot issue in any case. C++ on Cell is no different than C++ on a DEC Alpha or on a Dell Centrino Laptop.
Second, IBM hasn't stopped promoting the cell. From the cell web page:
"CELL is not limited to game systems. IBM has announced a CELL-based "blade" leveraging the investment into the high-performance CELL architecture. Other future uses include HDTV sets, home servers, game servers, and supercomputers."
http://www.research.ibm.com/cell/
Please stop spouting MS XBox propaganda - you sound like a fanboy. I really hate how people with no knowledge or experience in real life programming somehow become knowledgeable experts after reading an article on ZDNet. -
Re:Sold! with a caveat./ public promise.
all except the Alpha were RISC chips
So what do you consider Alpha to have been? (I consider it to have been a RISC processor.)
The PowerPC will disappear from computing in 2007.
So much for the pSeries and iSeries servers, I guess....
(Presumably by "computing" you're referring to personal computers, although I'm not sure why you're including SPARC in that category; from your reference to Sun workstations, perhaps you mean "desktop computers", or perhaps, at least with low-end Sun workstations, "computers ordinary people might be able to buy".)
Of course, there are always IBM workstations if you want a POWER-family processor (a family that includes PowerPC). They're a lot more expensive than the cheapest Sun SPARC workstation, however.
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Re:Linking can be taken to several levelsNo, that number represented hyperlink jumps. That represents the average number of hyperlink jumps it takes to get from any one site to any other site. Not necessarily from google or yahoo, but between any two given pages.
Though, this is a bit dated. The "Bow-tie" theory holds that the Internet is significantly less connected than once thought. Only about 30% of the web is symmetrically linked.
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Re:The real question
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Re:mac's and pc's aren't ibm's only business
In point of fact, zSeries doesn't use POWER processors. It has it's own CISC MCM's. Rumour has it that the next generation of hardware (POWER6) might change that.
http://www-1.ibm.com/servers/eserver/zseries/z990/ -
Re:Why don't IBM make PPC linux home pcs?
If you really want a PowerPC box you can get a blade with Dual 2.2Ghz 970s from IBM for US$2259
Not going to do you much good without the BladeCenter chassis. The "low-cost" model will set you back another $2000. Don't forget the required integrated switch modules and such you'll be needing as well. And those 2000W power supplies are going to kill your electric bill. -
Re:Why don't IBM make PPC linux home pcs?
The worlds-geeks-home-computer market segment makes up about 0.000005% of the PC market. And the sub group of those geeks who would buy a PPC machine just to wank over an exotic ISA is a fraction of that.
They wouldn't make a cent on such a machine, they wouldn't cover development costs.
If you really want a PowerPC box you can get a blade with Dual 2.2Ghz 970s from IBM for US$2259
http://www-132.ibm.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/C ategoryDisplay?categoryId=2586156&storeId=1&catalo gId=-840&langId=-1 -
Re:1U cooling
If you look at a 1u IBM Server (click on visual tour, then inside view), they've got a lot of fans -- 7 in fact, with 2 blowing over each cpu. You might not have enough fans and maybe the link above will give you some ideas on fan positioning if you have any options in your case. I'm not sure of the rpm the fans they use run at, but they're monsters and they sound like jet engines when you turn the servers on.
Right now, I've got 6 rack mount ibm servers with p4s in them and haven't had any cooling problems (the server room is ACed). So I know it can be done, but it might take a bunch of expensive fans to do it. -
Re:this just in
Here is but one example of what Lucius was complaining about.
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Unfortunately not for various manufacturers...Here's one for the IBM ThinkPad.
http://www-307.ibm.com/pc/support/site.wss/docume
n t.do?lndocid=MIGR-44226/Unfortunately, these kinds of applications are really hard to come by for Win32 (the above is the only one that I know). You may find that some laptops have vendor-supplied programs like Maximiser, but I believe the problem you have is that such an application simply doesn't exist. Your best bet really is to use a 2.6 Linux kernel and the
/proc/acpi facilities. I'm not entirely sure about the cycle count, but I'm pretty sure it will give you the rest of the info you need. Just fire up a Knoppix CD and go to work... that is, unless you want to write a program that interfaces with Windows ACPI. :)P.S. If you're going to do any kind of power management after you get this data, I'd highly suggest a distro with kpowersave (like SuSE 9.1 or better), which has a libpowersave library for managing devices. But as a warning, the source code was somewhat difficult to locate online (don't ask me why).
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Re:The Unholy Trinity, er QuadrantIBM and Apple were working together, but apparently, couldn't get make it work.
In fact, I'm not sure IBM cares about beating Windows on the desktop since they sold their PC manufacturing business.
And SGI? Well, they've been on supercomputers, but really don't seem to have a story when it comes to selling high-end UNIX servers.
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Re:Well..IBM is no longer in the PC business and its mainframe business is all but dead. They are now a consulting company that makes a few unix boxes.
You're correct that IBM left the PC business (sold the Personal Systems Group to Lenovo last year) but IBM is still making -- and selling -- plenty of hardware. From page 22 of IBM's 2004 Annual Report,
ftp://ftp.software.ibm.com/annualreport/2004/2004_ ibm_financials.pdf($ in billions of US dollars)
Systems and Technology Group 2004: $17,916 2003: $16,469 Yr to yr change: 8.8% zSeries: 14.9% iSeries: (17.2)% pSeries: 7.3%
Almost $18 billion in hardware sales sounds pretty decent. A 14.9% increase in mainframe sales from the year before doesn't look "all but dead", and a 7.3% increase in pSeries (AIX/Linux) machines is more than "a few unix boxes." Especially since Gartner reports IBM leading the worldwide Unix server market last year,
http://www-1.ibm.com/servers/eserver/pseries/news/ pressreleases/2005/feb/gartner.htmlYou make some very good points in your post and I agree with most of them, but please understand that IBM hasn't completely left the hardware business. We (yes, I work there) are having too much fun kicking Sun and HP around. And by the way, we sold over $15b in software last year, so we're not just a consulting company.
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Re:Well..IBM is no longer in the PC business and its mainframe business is all but dead. They are now a consulting company that makes a few unix boxes.
You're correct that IBM left the PC business (sold the Personal Systems Group to Lenovo last year) but IBM is still making -- and selling -- plenty of hardware. From page 22 of IBM's 2004 Annual Report,
ftp://ftp.software.ibm.com/annualreport/2004/2004_ ibm_financials.pdf($ in billions of US dollars)
Systems and Technology Group 2004: $17,916 2003: $16,469 Yr to yr change: 8.8% zSeries: 14.9% iSeries: (17.2)% pSeries: 7.3%
Almost $18 billion in hardware sales sounds pretty decent. A 14.9% increase in mainframe sales from the year before doesn't look "all but dead", and a 7.3% increase in pSeries (AIX/Linux) machines is more than "a few unix boxes." Especially since Gartner reports IBM leading the worldwide Unix server market last year,
http://www-1.ibm.com/servers/eserver/pseries/news/ pressreleases/2005/feb/gartner.htmlYou make some very good points in your post and I agree with most of them, but please understand that IBM hasn't completely left the hardware business. We (yes, I work there) are having too much fun kicking Sun and HP around. And by the way, we sold over $15b in software last year, so we're not just a consulting company.
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InfoWorld covered this
here already. I subscribe to InfoWorld, and this article discusses available systems from IBM using the dual-core Power5.
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BSD PoVHere are my thoughts on the benefits of BSDl over the GPL from my february blog entry, see http://www.feyrer.de/NetBSD/blog.html#20050209_213 8: I was asked on how to convince some decision makers at a (mostly?) hardware company to 1) use BSD-code instead of GPL-code for the start (i.e. use NetBSD over Linux) and 2) make them release the code to the public after making changes. Here are my thoughts:
- A general consequence when putting code under the BSD license or releasing new code based on existing BSD-licensed code is that the code can be kept closed. E.g. when shipping hardware, there is no need to add the source.
- In contrast, when you put new code under the GPL, or write code based on a program released under the GPL, it is mandatory that you release the full source of all your changes. Many big companies have been bitten by this with Linux, see www.gpl-violations.org to find that prominent companies like Siemens, ASUS, Sitecom, Gigabyte and many others are affected and were sued over this (apparently?) difficult to follow requirement of the GPL.
- When using BSD-licensed code as a base, it's your own choice if you want to keep your changes private, of if you want to contribute them back to the community. Contributing the source has both benefits and drawbacks, which have to be considered.
- Drawbacks of opening the source are that competitors will have access to your intellectual property. When using BSD-licensed code as a base for your work, you can choose to keep your changes private. With GPL, you have to open them up, if you want to or not.
- Benefits of releasing source to the bright public may have various benefits usually found when arguing for Open Source: people can use the code and base their works on it, the code can be audited by 3rd parties for e.g. security reasons, etc.
- A particular benefit of releasing a work based on BSD-licensed code again not (only) to the bright public but especially to the original project is that the contributions can be incorporated into the project, and get maintained by the project people.
- One of the goals of the NetBSD project is to offer a complete operating system kernel available under the BSD license only. To integrate code into NetBSD, and the kernel in particular, it has to be BSD licensed. Integration into NetBSD (which of course requires releasing the source) will lead to benefits from the efforts of the NetBSD project, its community as well as the vendors supporting it.
If you want to point at various other vendors who have choosen BSD, and NetBSD in particular, to place their products on, see:
- Hardware designed for and with NetBSD
- Products based on NetBSD
- NetBSD-ready PowerPC toys: KuroBox and LinkStation
- SGI produces NetBSD-based WebCam
- Embedded NetBSD on Technologic Systems' ARM boards
- IBM built some NetBSD 1.3x based Network Computers (NSM V2R1): OS in some Java error code, pages 372, 594, 629,
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BSD PoVHere are my thoughts on the benefits of BSDl over the GPL from my february blog entry, see http://www.feyrer.de/NetBSD/blog.html#20050209_213 8: I was asked on how to convince some decision makers at a (mostly?) hardware company to 1) use BSD-code instead of GPL-code for the start (i.e. use NetBSD over Linux) and 2) make them release the code to the public after making changes. Here are my thoughts:
- A general consequence when putting code under the BSD license or releasing new code based on existing BSD-licensed code is that the code can be kept closed. E.g. when shipping hardware, there is no need to add the source.
- In contrast, when you put new code under the GPL, or write code based on a program released under the GPL, it is mandatory that you release the full source of all your changes. Many big companies have been bitten by this with Linux, see www.gpl-violations.org to find that prominent companies like Siemens, ASUS, Sitecom, Gigabyte and many others are affected and were sued over this (apparently?) difficult to follow requirement of the GPL.
- When using BSD-licensed code as a base, it's your own choice if you want to keep your changes private, of if you want to contribute them back to the community. Contributing the source has both benefits and drawbacks, which have to be considered.
- Drawbacks of opening the source are that competitors will have access to your intellectual property. When using BSD-licensed code as a base for your work, you can choose to keep your changes private. With GPL, you have to open them up, if you want to or not.
- Benefits of releasing source to the bright public may have various benefits usually found when arguing for Open Source: people can use the code and base their works on it, the code can be audited by 3rd parties for e.g. security reasons, etc.
- A particular benefit of releasing a work based on BSD-licensed code again not (only) to the bright public but especially to the original project is that the contributions can be incorporated into the project, and get maintained by the project people.
- One of the goals of the NetBSD project is to offer a complete operating system kernel available under the BSD license only. To integrate code into NetBSD, and the kernel in particular, it has to be BSD licensed. Integration into NetBSD (which of course requires releasing the source) will lead to benefits from the efforts of the NetBSD project, its community as well as the vendors supporting it.
If you want to point at various other vendors who have choosen BSD, and NetBSD in particular, to place their products on, see:
- Hardware designed for and with NetBSD
- Products based on NetBSD
- NetBSD-ready PowerPC toys: KuroBox and LinkStation
- SGI produces NetBSD-based WebCam
- Embedded NetBSD on Technologic Systems' ARM boards
- IBM built some NetBSD 1.3x based Network Computers (NSM V2R1): OS in some Java error code, pages 372, 594, 629,
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English Press Release
IBM has since released an English press release, available here.
This should be significantly more informative than the earlier available Japanese documents. -
Re:Apple?
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Re:Apple?I don't think I said PPC970 core. For blue gene they used PPC440 core. I meant that once the core is developed it can be used for many different applications (Blue Gene being one example where they used an already developed core rather than designing from scratch).
IBM Journal of R&D has a special on Blue gene. From the article which has details about the processing node in Blue Gene.
The BLC ASIC that forms the heart of a BG/L node is a SoC built with the IBM Cu-11 (130-nm CMOS) process. Integrating all of the functions of a computer into a single ASIC results in dramatic size and power reductions for the node. In a supercomputer, this can be further leveraged to increase node density, thereby improving the overall cost/performance for the machine. The BG/L node incorporates many functions into the BLC ASIC. These include two IBM PowerPC 440 (PPC440) embedded processing cores, a floating-point core for each processor, embedded DRAM, an integrated external DDR memory controller, a Gigabit Ethernet adapter, and all of the collective and torus network cut-through buffers and control. The same BLC ASIC is used for both compute nodes and I/O nodes, but only I/O nodes utilize the Gigabit Ethernet for host and file system connectivity. The two PPC440s are fully symmetric in terms of their design, performance, and access to all chip resources. There are no hardware impediments to fully utilizing both processors for applications that have simple message- passing requirements, such as those with a large compute- to-I/O ratio or those with predominantly nearest- neighbor communication.
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Nastalgia
The link to the announcement looks just like my EE final. Ah memories.
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They have a hardware version
It's installed at the HW level on all Thinkpads.
http://www-1.ibm.com/press/PressServletForm.wss?Me nuChoice=pressreleases&TemplateName=ShowPressRelea seTemplate&SelectString=t1.docunid=7525&TableName= DataheadApplicationClass&SESSIONKEY=any&WindowTitl e=Press+Release&STATUS=publish
I think this is the direction the company is going. -
This is available in BIOS
IBM thinkpads are shipping with this software in the BIOS. From http://www.pc.ibm.com/us/security/ "This PC tracking and loss control solution helps security departments monitor asset locations daily, protect valuable corporate data and attempt to recover PCs if they are stolen. The Computrace BIOS-based agent provides superior security over tracking software that is installed only on the hard drive. Once the ComputraceComplete or ComputracePersonal service is activated, it will reinitiate even if the hard drive is reformatted or replaced. The Computrace BIOS-based agent works with System Information Center to provide asset management."
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Peet Seebach...
looks like a really ugly chick
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Re:TCP/IP license fees?
What do you mean "recall" OS/2. Its an active, maintained operating system. WFW I vaguely recall, but I used Win3.1 with the TCP/IP stack from someone, FTP Software (?) I still have the 40 MB hard drive around someplace.
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Re:why pick on Amazon?IBM walks to the patent office with a stack of patents every single week. I'm sure you can find plenty to pick on in their applications.
Perhaps when Amazon name 500 of their patents that Open Source can use freely they too will be welcomed by OSS programmers.
Disclaimer: I work for Amazon, but of course do not speak for them.
Perhaps then you can speak to someone who does and suggest this as a strategy. After all if the patents are only intended as a defence against bottom feeding lawyers, they have nothing to lose and everything to gain from friends in the OSS community.
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Re:The main mistake is changing everything togethe
They could have their partitions running in modern mainframe environment first (the original stuff was from IBM so this is a no-brainer as IBM's mainframes are really well backward compatible, even on word length issues and such), then add Linux to the mix. After that, porting on Linux/x86(-64) would have been trivial.
This has been part of IBM's strategy for a while: run Linux from mainframe to the cheapest possible x86 hardware. The benefit? Single unified programming environment lets customers gradually migrate applications to hardware of choice. It's not that unusual to see Linux on zSeries as it makes perfect sense for consolidation in cases where VMWare ESX Server just does not cut it. The bottom line? Efficient IT operations management when system administration is focused on one operative environment (+ some mandatory Windows backoffice stuff). -
Re:What is with java people and groovy?
We considered Jython and Groovy when we were adding scripting to an app, since they were the only two scripting languages that came with licenses that were found to be acceptable by our legal department.
Why choose at all? Why not use the Bean Scripting Framework (originally from IBM's Alpha Works, IIRC) and let the customer choose whichever language they prefer? BSF lets you embed any scripting language that has a conforming wrapper. BSF wrappers are available for Groovy, Jython, BeanShell, Rhino, JRuby, Tcl, NetRexx, XSLT, and perl among others (although it's been my experience that some of these aren't all there yet).