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Technology (Apple) Hardware Technology

IBM Launches Power site For Developers 50

Posted by Hemos 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?"
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IBM Launches Power site For Developers More

IBM Launches Power site For Developers

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  • Linux is available in PPC (Score:4, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 30, 2004 @03:09PM (#10398302)
    www.yellowdoglinux.com

  • SF and iPod (Score:4, Interesting)

    by bergeron76 ( 176351 ) * on Thursday September 30, 2004 @03:33PM (#10398555) Homepage
    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 (Score:4, Informative)

    by Megane ( 129182 ) on Thursday September 30, 2004 @03:43PM (#10398666)
    Now if we could just get them to port ClearCase [ibm.com] to OS X. It's already available for AIX, so the instruction set can't be a problem.

    • Re:Clearcase (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Guy Harris ( 3803 ) <guy@alum.mit.edu> on Friday October 01, 2004 @05:57PM (#10409712)
      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 (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Smallpond ( 221300 ) on Thursday September 30, 2004 @04:13PM (#10398969) Homepage Journal
    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.
  • How does this have anything *at all* to do with Apple? Also, why does story filtering for the front page no longer work? I turned off stories from the Apple section (twice) and I still see them!
    • How does this have anything *at all* to do with Apple? Also, why does story filtering for the front page no longer work? I turned off stories from the Apple section (twice) and I still see them!
      They are cross-posting stories, it's also in the Developers section.

    • Re:Quick Question (Score:3, Informative)

      by tf23 ( 27474 )
      That feature's turned off (for the time being?)

      There have been a number of bug reports [sourceforge.net] about it.

    • Re:Quick Question (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Johnny Mnemonic ( 176043 ) <mdinsmore.gmail@com> on Thursday September 30, 2004 @08:51PM (#10400791) Homepage Journal

      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 [yellowdoglinux.com], which is Linux for PPC (particularly Macs) and even includes as a prize [ibm.com] 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.
      • Yes, I know of Yellow Dog Linux. I have a t-shirt of theirs I received from their CEO. None of what you said answers my question: why does an article that discusses IBM and Linux, and has no mention of apple, end up in apple.slashdot.org?

        • Re:Quick Question (Score:1, Insightful)

          by Anonymous Coward
          why does an article that discusses IBM and Linux...
          Because the article is actually about Power processors, of which the latest processor Apple uses is based. Everything is related to everything else eventually. You can either ignore it if you can't see the connection or you can wet your pants about it like you have clearly demonstrated. Well done!
          • 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.

  • Developper ? (Score:3, Funny)

    by DrSkwid ( 118965 ) on Thursday September 30, 2004 @04:22PM (#10399046) Journal

    sloppppy

    • Developperss developperrs devellopprss devvelopers deevelopperss developperss developperss developperss!!!

    • 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 ? (Score:2, Interesting)

        by DrSkwid ( 118965 )

        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.

  • On a hard, level surface. (Score:1, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    "IBM Launches Power site For Developers"

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

    • Re:On a hard, level surface. (Score:4, Informative)

      by bursch-X ( 458146 ) on Thursday September 30, 2004 @08:49PM (#10400781)
      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.
  • Give me cheap desktop Power hardware (i.e. PC-like just-the-parts ideas) and I'll write Power apps. Not before.
    • 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).
      • 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
  • I would expect OpenDarwin [opendarwin.org] to be prominently linked from this site. That's what I found searching for jhead on MacOS X. Seems like a big project. Am I missing something?

  • IBM & Apple (Score:3, Interesting)

    by The Lost Supertone ( 754279 ) on Thursday September 30, 2004 @11:02PM (#10401536) Journal
    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 (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Megane ( 129182 )
      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. Micros

  • Emulators (Score:3, Informative)

    by Usquebaugh ( 230216 ) on Thursday September 30, 2004 @11:11PM (#10401598)
    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.

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