by Jeff Scheel, IBM Linux on Power Chief Engineer With LinuxCon North America upon us, I have been thinking a lot lately about the Power proposition of “open”. So, what? How does that help the Enterprise? My thought process around these questions flowed like this: open provides choice, choice enables flexibility, flexibility ensures greater efficiency in solutions, better solutions reduce expense. My conclusion: the Power System strategy around “open” ultimate saves customers money. As an engineer, I like logical... [More]

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by Jeff Scheel, IBM Linux on Power Chief Engineer p { margin-bottom: 0.08in; }a:link { } p { margin-bottom: 0.08in; }a:link { } In June of last year, I started publicly discussing the role that little endian (LE) plays in our Linux on Power strategy with the blog, J ust the FAQs about Little Endian . Then, in August I attempted to eliminate uncertainty in my Removing the FUD and Demystifying LE (little endian) article. With the announcement of the Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7.1 beta delivering an LE version, it is time to revisit little... [More]

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by Jeff Scheel, IBM Linux on Power Chief Engineer A great blog entry floated through my email inbox this week that raised a broader discussion topic for me: folks may have heard about the OpenPOWER Foundation, but may not know where to read the latest information.  So, I thought I'd provide a few pointers. The OpenPOWER Foundation website is the starting point for all information about the foundation.  When all else fails, start there. Under the site " News/Events " link at the top of the page, you will... [More]

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by Jeff Scheel, IBM Linux on Power Chief Engineer p { margin-bottom: 0.08in; }a:link { } I couldn't resist the urge to use TLAs (three letter acronyms) to dispel the FUD (fear, uncertainty, and doubt) on my favorite topic, LE (little endian). p { margin-bottom: 0.08in; }a:link { } If you are like most customers (and my mother), the concept of data endianness rarely, if ever, enters your mind. You buy applications, operating systems, and computers. All you care is that the operating systems run your applications on the computer to... [More]

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by Jeff Scheel, IBM Linux on Power Chief Engineer P { margin-bottom: 0.08in; }A:link { } If you were like me and enjoyed the July 4th holiday week, you likely missed a very subtle – yet significant – event: the July 2nd release of firmware by IBM for use in the OpenPOWER Ecosystem under the Apache license, version 2.0 . This action further signifies IBM's commitment to opening up the Power architecture and fulfills an IBM's promise to the OpenPOWER Foundation . It also demonstrates cross-company innovation with the... [More]

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by Jeff Scheel, IBM Linux on Power Chief Engineer As promised, here is my first blog post on little endian or "LE" as we call it.  Where better place to start than with a list of frequently ask questions (FAQs)?  Hopefully, you'll find this helpful.  Let me know if you have any questions I missed. What is big endian and little endian, anyway? In order to perform operations on data, computers routinely load and store bytes of data from and to memory, the network, and disk.  This data management generally follows... [More]

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P { margin-bottom: 0.08in; } by Jeff Scheel, IBM Linux on Power Chief Engineer P { margin-bottom: 0.08in; } Never before in my almost 25 year history with IBM have I anticipated a launch like that of our latest POWER8 systems. This launch releases the next generation of POWER processors in 1- and 2-socket scale-out servers with a focus on delivering new Linux solutions, especially in the area of open source clouds built on KVM – a dream come true for this “Chief Engineer.” For me, the most important announcement is the... [More]

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By: Jeff Scheel, PowerLinux Chief Engineer A software provider recently said, point blank, at the beginning of our discussion, “Convince me that PowerLinux is not a new platform.” The core of my answer went like this: the value of Linux is the same for software providers as it is for customers – Linux provides a single operating system environment across different hardware platforms. Customers and partners who have both x86 Linux skills and Power System skills have all the knowledge they need to run Linux on IBM Power Systems... [More]

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By Jeff Scheel Everyone remembers Cheers , the 1980s television sitcom that included the well-dressed, but slightly funny looking Norm who always entered the bar as everyone called out "Norm!"  I suspect that most of us can remember several lines from the theme song, "...Where everybody knows your name, And they're always glad you came..." But, If you can't remember the them, I know that ALL of us who watched the show want to be Norm and have our name called out as we enter the room. Enterprise 2013 was my... [More]

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By Jeff Scheel   For the past several years, PowerLinux has been very active on building a "social" media program.  During this time, we have learned lots and have not always been successful.  However, one of the key questions I realize that we have not properly explained is our strategy.   So, I thought I would take the time to explain some key thoughts.   Point #1: The PowerLinux social media program (online presence) is anchored here in developerWorks (dW).   The PowerLinux Community contains the... [More]

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By Jeff Scheel As you likely have heard, Arvind Krishna, IBM General Manager for Development and Manufacturing in the IBM Systems & Technology Group, announced that Power Systems would be supporting KVM.  This is an exciting announcement for numerous reasons that I'll defer for another posting.  For this blog entry, I thought I'd do some question/answer session based on common questions I've been asked in the past couple weeks.  However, before I do so, I need to remind you that these are our current thoughts at... [More]

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By: Jeff Scheel. My customer presentation last week in Livermore, CA allowed me to take PowerLinux to "new depths" by presenting in a wine cellar! Check out the photo of the cellar entrance I posted out in Google+. While you're out there, feel free to follow Jeff Scheel on or PowerLinux on . Besides the unique location, this event really forced me to consolidate my thoughts into a concise message on PowerLinux.  Here were the 3 main points (all good things come in three's...it's the "magic number"): PowerLinux... [More]

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  By:  Jeff Scheel.  Today's common question comes to us from many different sources.  What prompts the write-up today is a nice description I recently saw in an email.    Question: How hard is it to migrate applications to PowerLinux? Answer: It depends on the characteristics of the application, but generally speaking migration is simple and straightforward.  Post migration, the real work can be in tuning performance sensitive applications which typically contain more assembler and non-portable, platform-unique code, two attributes which... [More]

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By: Jeff Scheel. As I've often mentioned in my blogs, I like to answer questions which I've been very asked frequently. Today's topic provides more details about our marketing slogan "Industry standard, Tuned to the task". We've worked so hard to eliminate the myth that PowerLinux is different (see my blog What does IBM mean when it says, "PowerLinux?" ) that we're now getting questions like: Will my (x86) Linux application just run on PowerLinux? Can I use the same DVDs to install my PowerLinux or Power System server as... [More]

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