And for good reason. But that is not the only anniversary that Soltis is celebrating. Soltis said that since April, when IBM finally and completely converged the System i and System p server platforms into a single Power Systems line supporting i, AIX, and Linux operating systems, he and his fellow IBM colleagues have been traveling the globe, speaking to and listening to i customers and partners about the convergence.
And he said in the Webcast that the reaction that IBM is getting is very similar to the one that the company had two decades ago when the Silverlake platform was launched.
Only three times in the history of the IBM midrange line has the TIMI changed sufficiently to have customers recompile their underlying code for the new hardware, something that happens transparently and automatically, unlike every other platform ever created. Not only does this interface allow IBM to change the underlying hardware when it sees fit, but it also allows IBM to plug in other computing environments.
Even Soltis does not know. Soltis is not just speaking out of the side of his mouth when he says that supercomputing technologies eventually make their ways into data centers and, eventually, onto desktops. It is obvious that you could put a man on the moon with the computing power embodied in one Sony PlayStation 3 game console—you might even be able to upgrade the air traffic control system in the United States with a few dozen of these.
I jest—I hope. But Soltis is also an expert on supercomputing, as it turns out, and is a professor of electrical engineering and computer science at the University of Minnesota where he teaches graduate courses on high performance computer design. So even when he might be exaggerating for effect as he does from time to time , you have to give serious weight to what he says. The hybrid nature of supercomputers is the new thing that Soltis was referring to, not the massive scale, as a pointer to the future of the i platform.
But back in , IBM already created a parallel system and database architecture, called DB2 Multisystem, and as I have said many times before, IBM could create a massively parallel i super-database-engine if someone was willing to pay for it.
Actually, the Cell chip is itself a Power4-style bit core that has 8 auxiliary co-processors, so you have co-processors on the co-processors in the Roadrunner box. Other supercomputer makers use co-processors, sometimes special ones called field programmable gate arrays, or FPGAs, that are programmed to do specific functions. Looking ahead to the Power7 processor generation, which is expected in the timeframe according to Soltis and other IBMers I have spoken with, Big Blue will be adding processor cores to the Power chip four seems like a logical number, but IBM has not said as well as plenty of adjunct processing to boost all kinds of processing that is currently done by central CPUs or external peripherals.
Such a machine is called an asymmetric processor, and to a certain way of looking at it, so is the Roadrunner supercomputer created by IBM. It is more like, if I understood his hints correctly, that IBM is bringing IOP-like functionality back into the Power7 processor complex, but not putting it directly on the main core. What you really needed was a broader interface that could deal with languages, could deal with other utilities—what we call middleware today.
That was really the beginning of what we talk about today as MI, or what became known as the Technology Independent Machine Interface. The group seemed to wrangle for months, making little progress because of philosophical differences among members, and Soltis eventually was recalled to Rochester due to an imminent restructuring of the company.
One of the things that was blatantly stolen from Future Systems was the concept of objects. Soltis says his underlying concept, however, was that everything in the system could be virtualized, not just storage. Soltis explored and expanded upon the idea in his PhD thesis and then brought the concept back to IBM after earning his degree during an educational leave. Asked what he sees coming down the ever-changing road bringing new technology, Soltis reiterates his belief that it includes a new operating system or operating system extensions, or a new programming language or extensions to existing languages.
The reason? Soltis says the future can be found in the programming approaches taken with super computers and, ironically, computer game consoles that use dissimilar, multiple processors all working together. Good friends with many in the industry, Soltis intends to continue to keep his hand in the Power Systems world and already has agreed to work with several Business Partners and user groups on projects they have identified for and beyond.
While those familiar with his iconoclastic presentations at COMMON may be lucky enough to hear him at a future event, his larger audience will consist of students at the University of Minnesota, where he plans to intensify his teaching schedule following a period of classroom restrictions imposed by work and travel.
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