Excitement continues to build around Linux on IBM Power Systems from the first Scale-out POWER8 processor-based systems shipped in mid-2014 to the Enterprise POWER8 processor-based systems which began shipping in 4Q2014 and includes the Integrated Facility for Linux support. A big part of that excitement is around the new little endian distributions (Ubuntu and SLES), and their ties to the OpenPOWER Foundation (and the requirements it generates). Now, Red Hat has joined the party with a Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7.1 Beta for Power Systems based... [More]

Tags:  endianess power8 rhel

A great technical educational video has been posted over on YouTube from the Linux.conf.au 2015 conference. KVM on IBM POWER8 servers , by Paul Mackerras Paul Mackerras walks the viewer through how Linux has been extended to open-source firmware, KVM enabling, and the latest Linux-only POWER8 systems. This is a 45-minute video - Paul's presentation in its entirety. Interesting discussions points are the KVM handling of the SMT 8 threads per core, and the POWER8 "micro-threading" - which splits the POWER8 core... [More]

by Rafael Folco <rfolco@br.ibm.com>, OpenStack CI Engineer I've just published an article discussing some basic ideas for building a 3rd party Continuous Integration system. It covers important aspects to plan, install and configure a 3rd party CI environment to test OpenStack upstream patches. The article also explains how the CI services interact each other and what kind of customization you need to test your platform or driver on OpenStack patches.   For more information about IBM PowerKVM refer to the Redbook .    

Tags:  zuul nodepool openstack 3rd-party-ci jenkins ci devstack-gate continuous-integration tempest powerkvm openstack-infra

Introduction System administrators are very used to handle several different complex services that run interconnected and in parallel on high availability servers. In this scenario, it is hard to understand all the architecture and application connections in a single server, so you do not break it when trying to fix or update something. It is also common to bump into servers that are not even updated accordingly, because the system administrators are so afraid of architecture the server was build, that they usually prefer not to touch these... [More]

Now there’s an even easier way to get you started with your evaluation of the latest XL C/C++ (V13.1.1) and XL Fortran (V15.1.1) for Linux compilers for the little endian Linux distributions on Power Systems (Ubuntu 14.04, Ubuntu 14.10, and SLES 12). We are now hosting the latest evaluation versions on public apt-get and zypper repositories. You can find everything that you need to get started at http ://p ubli c.dh e.ib m.co m/so ftwa re/s erve r/PO WER/ Linu x/xl -com pile r/ev al/p pc64 le /

Happy 2015 to everyone! A new update release for the 8.0 series of the IBM Advance Toolchain for Linux on Power is now available. This release provides: An up-to-date version of OpenSSL: 1.0.1j. An up-to-date version of GDB: 7.8.1 A new Valgrind version: 3.10.0 Binutils fixes for: LTO discards symbol definitions on ppc64 . Libgomp symbols require --plt-thread-safe on POWER7 . GDB fixes for: Fix internal-error when stack pointer is invalid . Fix the routines to collect and supply ptrace registers on ppc64le gdbserver. Fix read of vDSO... [More]

Tags:  linux advancetoolchain power

Over on the DeveloperWorks C/C++ Cafe, two recent blog posts were made available.   Good recommended reading. Mathematical Acceleration Subsystem (MASS) Libraries for POWER8 processors Vector libraries .  The vector MASS library libmassvp8.a contains vector functions that have been tuned for the POWER8 architecture. The functions can be used in either 32-bit mode or 64-bit mode. SIMD libraries.  The MASS SIMD library libmass_simdp8.a contains an accelerated set of frequently used math... [More]

As tremendous progress continues across the Linux on Power offerings, Red Hat has announced the availability of the beta for the next release of their Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7.1 product. Noteworthy in this release is the availability of Little Endian support coming with RHEL 7.1.   Big Endian support continues.   "Additionally, for customers who are using the IBM Power Systems platform as part of their datacenter infrastructure, Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7.1 beta now includes support for POWER8 on IBM Power Systems (based... [More]

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]

Tags:  power jscheel gpu linux powerlinux

On December 12, 2014, IBM will be releasing new XL C/C++ and Fortran compilers to support application development targeting the little endian Linux distributions running on IBM Power Systems with POWER8 processor and architecture.  A key strength of the IBM XL compilers on Linux is its ability to generate highly optimized code for execution on IBM Power Systems.  With these new compilers, you can create and port applications for execution on the next generation of IBM systems built on POWER8 technology, designed to handle big data and... [More]

P { margin-bottom: 0.1in; line-height: 120%; }A:link { } In a world where there are multiple package formats, managers and Linux distributions, it can be a pain for an open source project maintainer, application provider or ISV to package software for multiple architectures and multiple distributions. The following may make your life as a packager much more easier and provide access to more users! Usually building a package for community distributions like Ubuntu, Fedora or openSUSE requires having that distribution installed locally with... [More]

The IBM Software Development Kit for Linux on Power (SDK) is a free, Eclipse-based Integrated Development Environment (IDE). The SDK integrates C/C++ source development with the Advance Toolchain, Post-Link Optimization, and classic Linux performance analysis tools, including Oprofile, Perf and Valgrind. The latest version of SDK (1.6) integrates Qemu and IBM Advance Toolchain providing a environment for cross compiled development.  This tutorial explains how to leverage from the integrated environment provided by the IBM SDK for... [More]

By: Tulio Magno Quites Machado Filho. A new update release for the 7.1 series is now available. This release provides: An up-to-date version of OpenSSL: 1.0.1j. Support for plugins on Binutils. GCC fixes for: Avoid discarding the file name information when using -imacros . Miscompile with K&R-style function definition at -O0 . Fix for Valgrind itrace not tracing the first call to library functions. glibc fixes and optimizations: Fix gprof entry point . Optimize memcpy for POWER7. Optimize memmove for POWER7. Optimize strcat for... [More]

Tags:  power advancetoolchain linux

The MiniCloud provides free access to Power® virtual machines. It allows easy access to an environment that can be configured for development, testing or migration of applications to Power. The virtual machines of MiniCloud run on PowerKVM™, which supports running a large number of virtual machines on a single scale-out Linux server. MiniCloud is hosted at State University of Campinas - Unicamp, Brazil.   To request access to a VM your first need to access the MiniCloud website , read the terms and conditions of usage and fill... [More]

P { margin-bottom: 0.08in; } by Rafael Folco <rfolco@br.ibm.com> -- Openstack CI Engineer This article presents a custom script in Python to upload objects to a Swift service. This script has been used by the IBM PowerKVM CI in Openstack as an alternative to the Swift script provided in Zuul, and can also be used by 3 rd party CI systems to upload logs from test results. The article also covers how to configure the script to run on devstack-gate jobs.

Tags:  powerkvm swift openstack continuous-integration 3rd-party-ci softlayer

By: Jenifer Hopper   This article discusses some basic XML tuning tips for PowerKVM guests. It helps new users get started with editing guest XML definitions, and walks through some simple tuning examples.   The article covers various options to tune the guest disk, network, cpu, and memory. It also includes some example guest resource pinning configurations for different scenarios. Applying these tips may help improve application performance by ensuring your guest is configured properly and optimized for the KVM environment.

Tags:  powerkvm performance kvm powerlinux tuning power8

A new Service and Productivity tools repository update is available. This release adds support to SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 12, along with updates to other supported Linux distributions: Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 12 (new) SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 11 The Yum repository is easily configured by downloading and installing the Configuration RPM from IBM Service and Productivity Tools website . The website includes installation... [More]

By: Tulio Magno Quites Machado Filho. A new update release for the 8.0 series is now available. This is the first release to support Suse Linux Enterprise 12 . This release provides: A new version of the Valgrind itrace plugin. Valgrind fixes for: POWER AvSplat ought to load destination vector register with 16/16 bytes stored prior . Valgrind instrumented code crashes if compiled with -mcpu=power8. For download links, more information and documentation, please refer to our off i cia l  do c ume n tat i on  p a g e .... [More]

Tags:  power sles12 linux advancetoolchain

Release Notes IBM ® Software Development Toolkit for Linux on Power TM 1.6.0 The IBM SDK for Linux on Power is a free, Eclipse-based Integrated Development Environment (IDE). It integrates C/C++ source development with the IBM Advance Toolchain for Linux on Power and classic Linux debugging and performance analysis tools. This release includes materials licensed to IBM under ILAN (International License Agreement for Non-Warranted Programs). The full licensing text can be found in the licenses folder under the installation directory. Further... [More]

In light of our recent announcements regarding large enterprise-class systems, now seems like a good time to talk about the incredible value Power provides now in its scale-out portfolio. The unfortunate truth is that questions about price tend to get redirected. We’re urged instead to look at value, to focus on the long-term investment, and consider a range of new possibilities. But in a world where budgets are firm – and not flexible whenever something really good comes along – clarity about capital expenditures for Linux... [More]

This has been a great week for Power Systems, especially if you’re fan of the 1-2 socket (scale-out) side of the portfolio and innovative technology that leverages Linux. I just returned from our annual Enterprise conference, an event we do every fall to bring together clients and partners with our SMEs to explore the latest developments in infrastructure.  Major announcements were made by System z, Storage, and Power Systems.  I also had a couple of sessions at the conference, and was excited to talk about some of these new... [More]

P { margin-bottom: 0.08in; }A:link { } This article describes a method to optimize a PowerKVM guest to minimize NUMA effects when dedicating PCI adapters using PCI passthrough to optimize performance and reduce CPU overhead to achieve near baremetal performance on a POWER8 system. KVM guest domains configured with dedicated high speed I/O adapters through PCI passthrough can benefit from optimizing location of CPU and memory in the host. This tutorial shows how to add commands to the domain xml file to pin CPU and memory to a specific... [More]

Installing native RubyGems packages in the new Power8 Ubuntu Little Endian platform IBM Power8 Systems now run the popular Ubuntu distro. With Ubuntu it is now very easy to run ruby based applications on Power8 systems and get all the advantages of an enterprise class system (e.g. up to 2TB of RAM, 2 CPUs with up to 12 hardware threads each and so on). Ruby applications often make use of packaged ruby gems downloaded from rubygems.org. But some of these ruby gems include native extensions in the form of source code tar balls which need to be... [More]

Game theorists use the example of Prisoner’s Dilemma to show how two rational people might refuse to cooperate with each other, increasing the suffering on both sides. The same can be said for businesses.  It’s easy for a company to refuse to be the first to share for fear of being betrayed by competitors. Historically, the possible innovation and growth rewards from collaboration didn’t outweigh the costs of potential betrayal.  But times have changed.    Now the costs of not cooperating far outweigh the... [More]

A new Solution Guide to implement MongoDB in IBM Power Systems running Linux featuring the new IBM POWER8 technology is available. This white paper describes MongoDB (from humongous), which is an open source NoSQL style, document database with dynamic schema. The paper discusses the main features of the MongoDB solution, its architecture and implementation on IBM Power Systems running Linux. The target audience is users and system integrators who implement MongoDB on IBM Power Systems running Linux servers. No familiarity with MongoDB or... [More]

By: Tulio Magno Quites Machado Filho. The first release of series 8.0 is now available. This release provides many bugfixes and package updates, including: GCC 4.9.2 GDB 7.8 Python 3.4.1 GCC fixes for: Avoid discarding the file name information when using -imacros . Miscompile with K&R-style function definition at -O0 . Fix for Valgrind itrace not tracing the first call to library functions. Start distributing big endian and little endian packages in the same release. Due to the last item, you will notice 3 cross compiler packages:... [More]

Tags:  power linux advancetoolchain

By: Paul Clarke. The IBM Power processor family has a somewhat hidden little gem which, when exploited, could yield signficant performance improvements.  IBM Power processors have a vector processing facility (known as AltiVec, VMX, and VSX in different incantations) which can perform multiple computations with a single instruction, also known as SIMD (single instruction, multiple data).  POWER8 has 64 "vector-scalar registers' (VSRs), the first 32 of which are shared space with the 32 floating point registers.  Each VSR... [More]

Tags:  vmx vector vsx power8 power altivec

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]

Tags:  powerlinux jscheel linux le

By: Tulio Magno Quites Machado Filho. A new update release for the 7.0 series is now available. This release provides many bugfixes, including: Enable support for plugins on Binutils. GCC fix to avoid discarding the file name information when using -imacros . OProfile updated the supported events for IBM POWER8 processor. Fix for Valgrind itrace not tracing the first call to library functions. Fix the usage of xl_base when preparing IBM XL compilers' settings. For download links, more information and documentation, please refer to our offi... [More]

Tags:  linux power advancetoolchain powerlinux