IBM matches Power with Linux

IBM's Power architects and forward-thinking partners extol the future of Power Architecture in all its manifestations: licensing opportunities for manufacturers; a development focus based on the collaborative model; and all-round opportunities for innovation. What does all this ubiquitous Power mean, though, for Linux on Power?

Nick Donofrio, senior VP, Technology and Manufacturing, Irving Wladawsky-Berger, and Bill Zeitler, speaking at the event, all touched upon the significant impact that Linux brings- not only to POWER technology's present feats, but to the POWER design potential.

More than several years ago, when Linux detractors and naysers still preferred to declare Linux as 'going nowhere,' IBM visionaries like Irving Wladawsky Berger, Vice President of Technology and Strategy at IBM, saw the potential of Linux as a disruptive technology 'going everywhere.'

He and others at IBM could see its far-sweeping effect on IT users' economies of scale and partner progress strengthened by open architectures. In the business sector, from business users of PCs costing under $500 to those managing the world's most powerful servers costing millions, Linux became a name first to watch, and subsequently to trust.

IBM's bold move subsequently to adopt Linux across all its platforms and portfolios helped drive that trust, on Wall Street and for manufacturing titans, down to the smallest startups. That same instinctive, big-picture perspective is echoed in the IBM view of Power Architecture: significant in its far-reaching scope from embedded devices scaling up to the most powerful supercomputer that one can imagine.

Power Architecture is a phrase used in reference to micro-processing technology that delivers on 64-bit, powering everything from game consoles to small-business servers to high-performance computers.

In turn, Linux on POWER amounts to bigger, better, more affordable ways to do business for a growing Linux ecosystem of partners and business users of all sizes. Many leverage making Power Architecture in IBM's eServer line, in the form of pSeries, iSeries, and Blades, as part of their portfolios.

'The POWER5 chip has more integration than any other product we've ever delivered,' said Bill Zeitler, IBM Senior VP and Group Executive, IBM Systems and Technology Group, at the Power Everywhere conference. 'We are convinced that there's enormous opportunity as technology moves from a world driven by megahertz and gigahertz to a world driven by the level of integration.'

The lesson of Linux

IBM's lessons from Linux are manifest in plans to explore an open collaboration model for Power Architecture. IBM's leaders know that an open development environment ensures a pace and level of progress that are not otherwise possible.

Irving Wladawsky-Berger and team first declared that Linux represented fundamental discontinuity and that is the word picked up on by Zetler: 'We listened, adopted Linux, and put it on all out platforms, and that is why we went up in market share-because of the way in which we responded to this discontinuity.'

IBM's architects have once again responded to the pulse of discontinuity with Power Architecture. One of the significant announcements this year about IBM's POWER strategy is that IBM is to explore a community model to guide the future of Power Architecture.

High noon for collaboration

IBM's plans to explore an open collaboration model for Power Architecture is particularly significant to its future.

'Over the past decade,' says Donofrio, 'if we learned anything, from Java, Eclipse, and Linux and so on, it is that only through collaboration can technology become a platform for innovation-one that eliminates boundaries, and one that delivers genuine business value.'

But, he adds, 'We must be careful. The basic instruction set must remain tightly controlled to maintain software and application compatibility.'

Similarly, Dr. Bernard Meyerson, IBM Chief Technologist, believes that an open ecosystem is key to Power Architecture's future, but at the same time control of the processor architecture must be in place to ensure against corruption of the ecosystem.

'We have to lock down the architecture so that it cannot be randomly disrupted,' he told the Power Everywhere audience in March. 'The common standard determines how developers will talk to each other,' he adds, noting that random alternations to the core architecture along with the core instruction set can invalidate all prior intellectual property and destroy the ecosystem.

A Community Around Linux

More IBM business customers as well as partners have been turning to Power Architecture's features and functionalities via the eServer iSeries and pSeries family and eServer BladeCenter platforms.

They see real advantage in a union of power performance and strengths when combined with the flexibility of Linux. That ecosystem not only spans many types of organizations and industries but also geographies.

China, in its resolve to reduce IT dependency on foreign firms, has actively promoted the adoption of Linux as one sure path for home-grown innovations. One of its recent alliances with IBM has Power Architecture and Linux written all over it.

That alliance is with a company called Culturecom, Hong-Kong-based developers, who have made a name for themselves in the form of a CPU that is optimized for the Chinese language and intended for network PCs and handsets combined with Linux.

The significance of this innovation, says the company, is the ability to display Chinese-language text without slowing the performance of the device. Culturecom has customized Power microprocessor architecture to adapt to Chinese language characters and in turn specifically target Chinese applications.

Mr. Frank W. T. Cheung, Chairman of Culturecom, explains the importance of Culturecom's joint efforts with IBM. 'Culturecom's strategic direction with the V-Dragon PowerPC, the CCG engine, and Midori Linux as China's new embedded industry standard aligns perfectly with the vision of the Power Ecosystem.'

Cheung believes that, with IBM and its commitment to fostering a strong Power partner ecosystem, Culturecom is well positioned to play 'a dominant role' in China's market.