Few in the tech industry would disagree that the wealth of chip architecture support IBM offers its customers, whether for Intel’s Itanium or AMD’s
Opteron, is the broadest in the business.
Now, it appears the systems
vendor
is gearing up to make a stronger push for its own POWER architecture.
The Armonk, N.Y. company’s systems group, which makes servers, is
slated to
make a Linux on PowerPC announcement at a press briefing at LinuxWorld
in
New York City Wednesday.
IBM refused to comment but there are hints the company will extend the
tendrils of its PowerPC chip architecture further into its BladeCenter,
possibly spreading the architecture to the iSeries, pSeries and other
server
lines.
IBM is also expected to unveil a key win in the form of a new Common
Criteria Evaluation Assurance Level certification for Linux. The Common
Criteria is a standard for defining security technology, and Common
Criteria
EAL certification is vital to companies that want to sell to government
and
security conscious businesses.
Sources said IBM is likely moving up to EAL 3, which means its eServer
family, including iSeries, xSeries, pSeries and zSeries, has been
certified
as secure. This means government businesses can purchase IBM machines,
opening up a considerable world of opportunity for the company to
extend its
Linux tendrils for big contracts from the U.S. Department of Defense.
IBM already has one such credit to its name. In August, IBM Corp. and
SuSe
Linux AG certified SuSe Linux Enterprise Server 8 running on IBM’s
xSeries
servers under the EAL2.
The PowerPC and blade news comes on the heels of a strong fourth quarter for IBM’s Systems Group, which also reported $28.2 billion in revenue for 2003 and $4.9 billion for the fourth quarter.
IBM brought blade servers into the realm of 64-bit computing last year
with
its first blade server based on its PowerPC architecture. The eServer
BladeCenter JS20 system employs
PowerPC chips to offer customers an alternative to using Intel’s Xeon
processors.
At that time, Brian Connors, vice president of Linux on Power, said IBM
planned to create additional BladeCenter options that will lead to
further
consolidation in the big server industry as the company continues to
fill
out its product line to handle various workloads.
Earlier this week, IBM announced new features for its next-generation DB2 Universal Database,
code-named
Stinger.
According to an IBM document, this includes support for IBM’s 64-bit
POWER
architecture, which is geared for Linux clusters. Moreover, Stinger
will
also support version 2.6 of the Linux kernel, which will help IBM’s
database
clusters scale higher and perform faster.
PowerPC chips already have placement in famous consumer products. The
64-bit
IBM PowerPC 970 powers Apple’s so-called “world’s fastest personal
computer,” the G5 and the popular digital video recorder TiVO uses
PowerPC
403GCX.
But the new Xbox and Sony Playstation gaming boxes are also expected to
go
to PowerPC chips. Clearly, IBM is paving a path in the consumer device
space. The key question is: can IBM spread a similar gospel throughout
its
own product lines and into the enterprise where Itanium and Sun
Microsystems’ UltraSparc III are strong?
Adam Jollans, Linux Strategy Manager for IBM Software Group, refused to
discuss Wednesday’s announcements, but said in a recent interview that
IBM
is fully committed to expanding the breadth of Linux on POWER, both
from
low-end to high-end systems.
Jollans told internetnews.com one of the reasons 64-bit Linux on
Power is so attractive is its compatibility with 32-bit systems and
said IBM
feels comfortable about its position versus Intel or Sun.
The ability of Linux on PowerPC systems to scale up and scale out is a
key
market driver for IBM to expand its PowerPC architecture, according to
Redmonk Senior Analyst James Governor. Governor discussed how IBM is
optimizing its Linux systems by bundling its infrastructure software,
such
as DB2, on its platforms.
“The whole idea with 64-bit is — nothing without an application,”
Governor
told internetnews.com. “IBM is very keen to get DB2 supported on
Linux so IBM can help people tackle the problems of scaling up and
scaling
out because if you have a fat database that performs millions of
transactions you’ll want to scale out its performance.”
Governor said he sees IBM infusing PowerPC throughout its product lines
in
the next year, noting that IBM’s 64-bit PowerPC is mature and is primed
for
high-performance systems.
“Anybody who doesn’t think the PowerPC is a platform is an architecture
that
IBM is not fully committed to bring to the industry better think
again,”
Governor said. “IBM may support Itanium, but it is not going to cede
the
market to Intel.”
