“Attacking the Intel-based server market from both above and
below, IBM on Wednesday unwrapped two servers — a 64-way NUMA-Q
server and an entry-level Netfinity system — aimed at smaller
companies looking to host budding e-businesses.”
“Company officials also announced their intent to deliver a
version of Linux optimized for NUMA servers. They hope to
deliver a beta version by the end of this year, with the
finished version sometime next year. “We are devoting
engineering resources now to exploring what types of technologies
we need and how quickly we can drive up the reliability and
scalability that corporate data centers would require of Linux,”
Frye said.”
“As part of that effort, company officials said they would try
to adapt many of the technologies that make up the X Architecture,
typically associated with high-end servers such as its mainframes
and RS/6000 servers, to Linux. “One way to look at it would be as
our attempt to do X Architecture for Linux,” said Jay Bretzman,
IBM’s manager for Netfinity strategy. “We want to take the
expertise from IBM servers and port Linux applications so they can
mature at a faster rate than they would otherwise.”