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IBM Launches Power site For Developers

Posted by Hemos on from the powering-it-up dept.

LeninZhiv writes "Celebrating five years of DevelopperWorks goodness, IBM has just launched a new section dedicated to the Power architecture. Initial stories include such goodies as "the developerWorks' Power Architecture challenge" and the Linux on Power Architecture toolkit. May this usher in a new era of community support for Linux on POWER outside IBM?"

8 of 50 comments (clear)

  1. SF and iPod by bergeron76 · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I bet this was why I got solicited to build my SourceForge.net project for PowerPC in exchange for a free iPod.

    (I already have an iPod and I love it)

    IBM must be on a new marketing campaign. Good for them, I hope...

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  2. System on chip by Smallpond · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I started a project with the 405GP system on chip, but it was cancelled. The Walnut has ethernet, DRAM controller and PCI on-board so you can make a tiny, ultra low power, 32-bit embedded system. We were using PC104 form factor. I think there's a BSD port as well as Linux. Not super fast, but if you aren't running X, 300 MHz is plenty. It looks like AMCC has bought that business from IBM, so I guess not enough people noticed how much cooler (in both senses) these chips are than the AMD and Intel SOC chips.

  3. On a hard, level surface. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

    "IBM Launches Power site For Developers"

    OK so were's all the PowerPC hardware development kits? And no Apple doesn't count.

  4. IBM & Apple by The+Lost+Supertone · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I would not be surprised in the future if A) Apple and IBM enter a joint venture with IBM computers running OS X B) IBM outright buying Apple (less likely) for OS X and some of their brilliant minds. C) Apple, IBM and perhaps another PC manufacture building PCs with PPC procs in them and selling them along side their windows PCs, (Really would HP care if they get their Procs from IBM or Intel? I doubt they much like either.) D) IBM begins selling desktop PCs with PPC procs and linux as the OS. E) IBM creates their own distro, and ships on PPC machines, likely with libraries that would still make their computers very program compatible with Apple's

    1. Re:IBM & Apple by Megane · · Score: 2, Interesting
      You have forgotten about Steve and the RDF factor. Steve will love A, but probably hate B. After all, in the early days of Apple, IBM was The Enemy. Not the corporate enemy, but the cultural enemy. They represented everything Apple was fighting against.

      C is the old "clones" argument. That's been tried and killed off once. The problem is when the clone makers start to make high-end systems.

      D would be interesting, but right now the Windows/Office combo is so entrenched that they can't do that. Microsoft is too in bed with Intel (and AMD) to want to revive the "PPC Edition" of Windows.

      E is interesting, but a main problem is that Apple still hasn't done much to support the ELF object format, which is the standard in Linux. And then that would only be app-level compatibility. Drivers and other sorts of kernel extensions (like ClearCase as I mentioned above, which supports a "live" file system) would have to work to a different API.

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  5. Re:Lack of cheap deskop hardware by palfrey · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Samne problem is with both to a certain extent, I don't really care what the underlying processor is, or whether it's got whichever advanced wizzy feature. The only things I care about is: is there the hardware available for the things I want to do on a particular platform, and how much processor speed do I get for my money. Right now, x86 can beat the crap out of both Power and PPC on this, simply because there's more people using x86, and so economies of scale stuff kicks in. This means that I will still be buying x86, because I'd get a less powerful system for the same price on PPC.

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  6. Re:Quick Question by Paradise+Pete · · Score: 2, Interesting
    obvious to me that macs aren't sold on technological merits

    Technologically, there's no reason to not be running it. If you have issues with licensing or cost, that's perfectly reasonable, but technologically, how can you justify running Linux instead?

  7. Re:Developper ? by DrSkwid · · Score: 2, Interesting


    hehe you have to do that in mysql too because password is a reserved word

    I used passwurd and it has caught me out a few times going back to maintain it.

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