IBM Will Support x86 Linux Operating Systems

International Business Machines Corporation, or IBM for short, is one of those companies that has made a name for itself by being here, since the dawn of ages, specializing on the server business, more than anything else. But they have also entered other domains, manufacturing processors for almost all of the game consoles existing today, from the Xenon tri-core chipset for the Xbox360, to the Cell microprocessor for Sony's PS3 and even the Broadway chip that powers the Wii console.

As I've said, their interest and attention got towards the server business, but their servers normally run UNIX-based operating systems, and that was a problem for companies that used their servers and wanted, for instance, virtualization capabilities. The resolution for this problem is to take out a version of the IBM servers that would support x86-based operating systems; which they have done, through their System p servers, which have the ability of running Linux, through modifications made to the servers. The modification was actually a technology that IBM implemented, called Application Virtual Environment (AVE) which allows x86 binaries to run.

Scott Handy, IBM's vice president of marketing and strategy for System p said: "We've always known our customers want this. When Transitive approached us and said, 'We can do this,' I looked at it and said, 'Now there's an interesting idea. The technology sounds a little like magic, but it's a lot like what Transitive developed for Apple. It's created down at a chip level, and applications don't know they're in a new environment. They think they're on x86, and as a result, the apps 'just run. We're finding that customers understand the mathematical benefits of doing this. One of the attractive things about x86 was the cost, so customers said it was all right if the quality of the technology was just 'good enough.' But if you're going to consolidate 300 servers, you want a higher level of quality, and suddenly 'good enough' isn't good enough. The p AVE technology shows we are very serious about quality."