Richard J Moore from the IBM Linux Technology Centre, talked about Linux@IBM:

Richard started off with a survey that asked “Based on what you have seen or heard so far with Linux, how would you rate Linux on the following aspects?”. The results (most important on top):

1. Reliability
2. Acquisition Costs
3. Performance
4. Value of Open Source
5. Security

He labeled Linux Kernel 2.6 “a major step in the maturity of Linux”.

Summarizing IBM’s strategy, these are the important points:
- enabling linux hardware, software and services
- partnering with established linux vendors
- participating in the Linux FOSS developers community
- promoting adoption of open standards

Conerning the workload consolidation, IBM sees the following value propositions concerning Linux:
- reduce cost
- use resources more efficiently
- improve performance
- speed deployment
- centralized administration
- daramatically improve TCO

Yes, Linux is also being used inside of IBM to “eliminate OS/2 and Windows servers” (!). Linux runs on about 1100+ xSeries servers and zSeries in the IBM intranet. They do email filtering, web server, etc.

The Linux Technology Center department, where Richard works as RAS architect, focuses on the following areas:
- kernel scalability
- posix threading
- pci hot plug
- etc.
Their work is not architecture-specific. The department employs about 250+ engineers. More information can be found on the LTC Website.

Richard stressed at the end of his talks: “IBM does the upmost to be a good community player”. The succeeding discussion with the panel largely covered patent issues. Giving up IBM software patents would involve a “painfully expensive process”, Richard said. Jon “Maddog” Hall asked him, why IBM does not simple issue a statement saying that they will not use their patents against any FOSS project? Of course, Richard answered that this is nothing he could decide and added that “IBM is a big company that takes long to change its culture”.

Another question from the audience addressed the point why IBM does not offer Linux support for PCs or notebooks? Jon helped Richard answering the question, saying that the IBM Q&A team would have lots of work to make sure that Linux runs on their hardware - even if they choose only some PCs or notebooks. Nevertheless, Jon predicted that “the more linux goes to the dekstop, the more it will be supported, it’s simply a business decision”. Richard followed Jon saying that more significant investment is needed to make Linux widely adoptable for the Desktop, but currently it is still too hard to get a proper return on investment.

Some notes on Jon “Maddog” Hall’s session Extreme Linux Programming - A Continuum.

It was new to me when Jon told us that the Titanic movie used 160 alpha processors with Linux to render the movie. The final rendering took about a year. The producers saved 500 000$ compared to proprietary solutions, a circumstance that Jon commented with: “So the world’s most xpensive movie was half a million dollar cheaper”.

Jon examplified how Linux is used for super computing when finding quarks (physics), doing adaptive control of earthquakes, simulating meteorits crashing New York, mammograms (breast cancer) analysis.

In these cases, Jon said, Linux helps with its cost efficiency, because often people say: “We know how to solve the problem, but we cannot afford to solve it.”, until they see the cost benefits of using Linux for super computing.

Jon drew the following future and past chronologic line, showing “Where does Linux belong?”:

- Beowulfs 1994/1995
- Small-Mid Range Servers 1998
- Embedded Systems 2000
- Commodity based NUMA machines 2003
- Desktop 2003/2004

And the nice thing is, he added, that all of it is based on one set of APIs.

Linux is just perfect for super computing, he said, because “the ntworking is built in” and “parallelism screems at you”. With Linux, you have parallelism even in single-cpu machines where it cuts down on I/O wait time and keeps memory and cache “warmer”.

The investment protection that Linux offers to super computing implementation, are based on the:
- standard operating system
- standard architectures
- standard programming techniques
inherent to Linux.

Oh, and I learned a new acronym: RAS = Reliability/Availability/Scalability.

Just arrived at UKUUG Linux 2003 conference in Edinburgh. I intend to blog some of the sessions I will attend. The first one will be Jon’s talk. So keep coming back to my blog because I will add some reports from time to time, until the conference closes on Sunday.

Upon registration, I of course received the famous conference bag with many sponsor ads. To my suprise, I also found a printed copy of a Samba 3.0 How-To. Good idea, thanks!

Fortunately, I had some time to do some sight-seeing in Edinburgh yesterday, which is - of course - a great city, as I have now been able to experience on my own.

As far as I have seen, the UKUUG conference Web site does not provide trackback links for each session - maybe next time for the winter conference? Then bloggers could reference single sessions. Apropos conferences and trackbacks: O’Reilly’s OSCON Web site provided trackback links, so maybe it will become a common place soon for any conference Web site - which would really make sense.

I will speak about CONESYS and Software 4 Open Communities at the UKUUG 2003 Conference, which takes place from August 1-3.