AIX, or "Advanced Interactive eXecutive," was introduced in 1986 by
IBM. While it's based on UNIX System V, it also has BSD roots. The roots
of UNIX go as far back as the 1960s. This is when AT&T's Bell Labs
partnered with MIT and GE to develop a multi-user OS called Multics.
Dennis Ritchie and Ken Thompson worked on this project until AT&T
withdrew from it. Eventually, they would create another OS in an effort
to port a computer game (Space Travel) and did so on a DEC PDP-7
computer. They named it Unics, which evolved into UNIX. IBM ported AIX
to its RS/6000 platform suite in 1989.
The release of AIX v3.0 coincided with the announcement of the first RS/6000 models. At the time, it was considered unique, in that it not only outperformed all other machines in integer compute performance, but also beat the competition by a factor of 10 (floating-point performance). It was the first OS to introduce the idea of a journaling file system (JFS), which allowed for fast boot times by avoiding the need to perform file system checking (fsck) for disks on reboot.
Another innovation was the introduction of shared libraries, which avoided the need for an application to statically link to the libraries it used. The resulting smaller binaries used less of the hardware RAM to run, and used less of the disk space to install. The latest update to AIX 5L (AIX 5.3) provides innovative new features for virtualization, security, reliability, systems management and administration. Most importantly, AIX 5.3 fully supports the Advanced POWER Virtualization (APV) capabilities of the POWER5 architecture. It's important to note that, while AIX 5.2 will run on POWER5 systems, it doesn't contain the enhancements necessary to run any of the virtualization features that AIX 5.3 allows. Refer to Table 1 for a further look at the AIX timeline.
To understand how Linux really came to be, we need to explore its roots in more detail. In the early 1980s, AT&T started to recognize the true value of UNIX (namely, that it could make money from it). They started selling license fees that were substantial, and allowed others to sell it. Many people felt that they contributed code to UNIX and that AT&T had stolen their contributions to make money. An MIT researcher named Richard Stallman launched the GNU is not UNIX (GNU) project, which was established to create a UNIX-like OS, which could be openly distributed, free of charge.
The Free Software Federation (FSF), created in 1984, supported GNU. The GNU project helped establish the GNU Public License (GPL), which is a form of copyright that allows the user rights to use, study, copy and otherwise distribute software freely. Before AT&T started selling licensing fees to UNIX, universities were able to use UNIX as a vehicle for teaching students computer science. Since universities could no longer freely use UNIX for this purpose, they needed something else. Andrew Tannenbaum created a UNIX-like system, called Minux, which became a teaching tool.
While it was a good teaching tool, Minux didn't perform particularly well. In 1990, Linus Torvalds, at the age of 20, started working on a memory manager for PCs. An astute follower of the open-source movement, he lost his patience waiting for the Minux kernel to arrive. So he started to build on his work, as he thought it could operate as a UNIX kernel. He called his code Linux, because it was his version of Minux and he asked the developer community for help in building on his kernel. Stallman's GNU project would ultimately use Torvalds' kernel and a marriage would be built. Four years later, Linux 1.0 was released, with a built-in user base of 100,000 people. Traditionally, OSs were developed in a very highly structured way, with carefully engineered sub-projects that involved much analysis, design, and many stages of testing and debugging, filled with highly complicated source-code control mechanisms. The Linux model followed a completely different path, which became known as the open-source model.
Linux has just started to reach its maturity stage in the product lifecycle, with the introduction of version 2.6 of its kernel. Containing major improvements in scalability, manageability and performance, some of the important innovations included a new scheduler, kernel premention, improved threading models and support for NPTL, VMM changes, memory management changes, a workqueue interface, interrupt routine changes and support for 16-way processors.
But how does Linux play into the System p5 architecture? Why install Linux, rather than AIX - a more mature, robust OS - on your POWER5 partition?
The release of AIX v3.0 coincided with the announcement of the first RS/6000 models. At the time, it was considered unique, in that it not only outperformed all other machines in integer compute performance, but also beat the competition by a factor of 10 (floating-point performance). It was the first OS to introduce the idea of a journaling file system (JFS), which allowed for fast boot times by avoiding the need to perform file system checking (fsck) for disks on reboot.
Another innovation was the introduction of shared libraries, which avoided the need for an application to statically link to the libraries it used. The resulting smaller binaries used less of the hardware RAM to run, and used less of the disk space to install. The latest update to AIX 5L (AIX 5.3) provides innovative new features for virtualization, security, reliability, systems management and administration. Most importantly, AIX 5.3 fully supports the Advanced POWER Virtualization (APV) capabilities of the POWER5 architecture. It's important to note that, while AIX 5.2 will run on POWER5 systems, it doesn't contain the enhancements necessary to run any of the virtualization features that AIX 5.3 allows. Refer to Table 1 for a further look at the AIX timeline.
Linux
The Linux OS is a multiuser, multitasking OS that runs on many platforms, including PCs and IBM mainframes. Linux has its roots in UNIX, and its inventor, Linus Torvalds, is very quick to give credit to the early inventors of UNIX and C, Brian Kernighan, Dennis Ritchie and Ken Thompson.To understand how Linux really came to be, we need to explore its roots in more detail. In the early 1980s, AT&T started to recognize the true value of UNIX (namely, that it could make money from it). They started selling license fees that were substantial, and allowed others to sell it. Many people felt that they contributed code to UNIX and that AT&T had stolen their contributions to make money. An MIT researcher named Richard Stallman launched the GNU is not UNIX (GNU) project, which was established to create a UNIX-like OS, which could be openly distributed, free of charge.
The Free Software Federation (FSF), created in 1984, supported GNU. The GNU project helped establish the GNU Public License (GPL), which is a form of copyright that allows the user rights to use, study, copy and otherwise distribute software freely. Before AT&T started selling licensing fees to UNIX, universities were able to use UNIX as a vehicle for teaching students computer science. Since universities could no longer freely use UNIX for this purpose, they needed something else. Andrew Tannenbaum created a UNIX-like system, called Minux, which became a teaching tool.
While it was a good teaching tool, Minux didn't perform particularly well. In 1990, Linus Torvalds, at the age of 20, started working on a memory manager for PCs. An astute follower of the open-source movement, he lost his patience waiting for the Minux kernel to arrive. So he started to build on his work, as he thought it could operate as a UNIX kernel. He called his code Linux, because it was his version of Minux and he asked the developer community for help in building on his kernel. Stallman's GNU project would ultimately use Torvalds' kernel and a marriage would be built. Four years later, Linux 1.0 was released, with a built-in user base of 100,000 people. Traditionally, OSs were developed in a very highly structured way, with carefully engineered sub-projects that involved much analysis, design, and many stages of testing and debugging, filled with highly complicated source-code control mechanisms. The Linux model followed a completely different path, which became known as the open-source model.
Linux has just started to reach its maturity stage in the product lifecycle, with the introduction of version 2.6 of its kernel. Containing major improvements in scalability, manageability and performance, some of the important innovations included a new scheduler, kernel premention, improved threading models and support for NPTL, VMM changes, memory management changes, a workqueue interface, interrupt routine changes and support for 16-way processors.
Linux on POWER
IBM has invested heavily in Linux through the years, and unlike the other UNIX hardware vendors, IBM has made its Linux strategy an important part of its offerings. Virtually all of the capabilities of the POWER5 architecture are extended to Linux. Even their hardware-management console (HMC) runs Linux. The HMC is a necessary part of the POWER5 system architecture, which is used as a local console to configure and administer the partitioned environment.But how does Linux play into the System p5 architecture? Why install Linux, rather than AIX - a more mature, robust OS - on your POWER5 partition?
- You may have existing IBM UNIX hardware and a large Linux PC-based infrastructure, and are looking at server consolidation. System p platforms allow users to create UNIX, Linux or even i5/OS* LPARs on the same box.
- You may need massive horsepower to run your Linux applications. With the 2.6 kernel, Linux can run on a 32-way system.
- You may want to run Linux with minimal resources and don't wish to purchase hardware that will rarely be utilized. With the Micro-partitioning capabilities of APV, you can assign as little as one-tenth of a CPU to an LPAR.
- You may want to stay with Linux but are moving away from horizontal scaling to a vertical-based philosophy. Going this route can decrease your total cost of ownership (TCO) in the datacenter (power, cooling, footprint) along with software licensing and hardware maintenance costs. It can also allow you to take advantage of CPU resource sharing and virtualization, while also increasing your ability to support and service your infrastructure.
- You can even share Linux and UNIX partitions on the same CPU with APV's Micro-partitioning features. Shared Ethernet - an APV feature that lets you use virtual adapters on your partitions using VIO servers - can further lower your TCO by removing the need for dedicated adapters in environments that may not require a lot of network bandwidth. Other then PLM and the ability to DLPAR memory, there's little else that POWER5 provides on AIX that it doesn't provide on Linux.
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