IBM Launches Power site For Developers

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?"

Comments

Linux is available in PPC

[Anonymous Coward]

www.yellowdoglinux.com

Re:Linux is available in PPC

[bursch-X]

...and SuSe and Turbolinux and Gentoo and ROCK Linux and Fedora and CRUX and... do you want me to continue?

Re:Linux is available in PPC

[jericho4.0]

POWER ain't PPC.

Re:Linux is available in PPC

[bigredradio]

To further elaborate, Linux on PPC IS similar, however, with Linux on Power you are more likely talking about 64-bit architecture (until the G5, there were no 64-bit Macs). Also the boot process for Macs and pSeries is very different. This is one of the reasons why distros that run on macs do not install on pSeries. (unless they specifically support pSeries).

For an out-of-the-box install, that leaves you with SLES and RHEL. You can hack Debian and Gentoo to work. Yellowdog (AFAIK) does not support pSeries at this time, but plans to in the future.

Storix Software PowerPC Development

SF and iPod

[bergeron76]

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...

Clearcase

[Megane]

Now if we could just get them to port ClearCase to OS X. It's already available for AIX, so the instruction set can't be a problem.

Re:Clearcase

[Guy Harris]

It's already available for AIX, so the instruction set can't be a problem.

When porting from one OS to another, the instruction set is probably rarely the main problem. (Not "never a problem", although I suspect the main instruction-set-related problems are

1. byte-order issues (software not taking byte order into account and working only on little-endian or only on big-endian platforms);
2. alignment requirement issues (software assuming that unaligned pointers can be dereferenced safely and not working on, for example, SPARC processors, where an unaligned dereference, unless the compiler is generating "safe" code, will get an alignment fault).)

If ClearCase still uses an installable file system in the OS kernel, that'd probably be the biggest issue for a port to a new OS - different UN*Xes have different VFS layers. Beyond that, there might be issues with deficiencies in the new target OS's implementation of particular APIs, or the lack of particular APIs in the new target OS, for example.

System on chip

[Smallpond]

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.

Developper ?

[DrSkwid]

sloppppy

Re:Developper ?

[AvantLegion]

Developperss developperrs devellopprss devvelopers deevelopperss developperss developperss developperss!!!

Re:Developper ?

[nettdata]

sloppppy

Reminds me of a software project I worked on where the main PL/SQL developer spelt password as "passsword" for all of the security stuff.

Man, that was a pain in the ass to work on later on! Not only to remember how it was spelt for that project, but I caught myself spelling it that way on other projects. I'm still scarred.

(Yes, Thor, I mean you!!!) :P

Re:Developper ?

[DrSkwid]

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.

Re:Quick Question

[tf23]

That feature's turned off (for the time being?)

There have been a number of bug reports about it.

Re:On a hard, level surface.

[bursch-X]

Froogle finds some motherboards:
http://tinyurl.com/6r5nv

The Blade Center JS20 from IBM also looks nice:
http://tinyurl.com/62z9p

And there's the Pegasos:
http://www.pegasosppc.com/

Well, not much but IBM has been doing a lot to promote the PPC platform, blame the vendors.

Re:Quick Question

[Johnny Mnemonic]

Apple and IBM have been growing closer together, as a result of a) Apple using IBM's processors in their workstations, and b) IBM and Apple both rediscovering UNIX, esp the OSS kind.

Although IBM and Apple are just dating, I think that there are plans to have each other meet their parents. Doesn't it strike you as curious that IBM branded workstations a) ship with Windows, when IBM is pushing Linux and b) ship with a competitors CPU? Is it so curious that IBM might blush a little that OS X is non-windows and uses their own CPU?

Read through the Developer Site for Linux on POWER processors, and you'll find more than a few references to Yellow Dog Linux, which is Linux for PPC (particularly Macs) and even includes as a prize in a developer competition a new Apple G5 (with YDL pre-installed). Interesting that IBM doesn't see fit to award their own brand of personal computer, which I think underscores my point. Do they think that a G5 is somehow more desireable than a ThinkCentre?

And it's working on me: as a long time Apple tech supporter, I'm now in the position to recommend Windows PCs; and when I do, I rec IBMs. And not Dells.

IBM & Apple

[The Lost Supertone]

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

Re:IBM & Apple

[Megane]

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.

Emulators

[Usquebaugh]

I rather think the gods are smiling on me. Earlier today I heard I am also to be the proud owner of an AS/400 for $0.

QEMU and Pear both have useable PowerPC emulators. Hercules is still going strong.

I think I'll mosey on over and pick up the chip specs. I'll see if I cannot con, I mean encourgae, a few AIX geeks to get that runnning under Qemu or Pear. Then a hop skip and a jump and I'll get the one emulator I want.

Re:Lack of cheap deskop hardware

[Zo0ok]

I dont really know what you are asking for...

www.pegasosppc.com has cheap PPC hardware.

A Power-processor/system can hardly be cheap, simply because it is a more powerful and advanced chip than cheap chips (like x86/PPC).

Re:Lack of cheap deskop hardware

[palfrey]

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.

Re:Quick Question

[Paradise Pete]

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?

Re:Quick Question

[npsimons]

Or, I could be a coward and reply anonymously . . .

Or, I could realize that I have just wasted many minutes of my life futiley responding to trolls who don't know better. Now I remember why I don't usually talk to mac users, never mind asking them a reasonable question for which they can give me no satisfactory answer. Instead, they like to use ad hominem to "win" their position.