By Rich Ptak
The beta release of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7.1 is good
news for Enterprise Linux customers as well as data centers currently committed
to Linux on IBM’s Power Systems platform, Linux on Intel, or considering a commitment
to the Power platform. Red Hat’s latest version includes support for IBM Power
Systems running in little endian architecture mode. This accelerates business
application innovation by eliminating a significant and outdated barrier to
application portability. Customers with the latest IBM Power Systems can now
leverage the significant existing ecosystem of Linux applications previously developed
and restricted to x86 architectures. Red Hat joins Ubuntu and SUSE in
supporting little endian mode.
This is significant because it increases business’ choice,
flexibility and access to open standard solutions. It eases application
migration from one platform to the other to take advantage of innovation
anywhere, and any time. It enables simple data migration, simplifies data
sharing (interoperability) with Linux on x86, and improves I/O offerings with
modern I/O adapters and devices, e.g. GPUs.
The issue of big endian/little endian operating mode
initially allowed applications developers to maximize application performance by
exploiting differences in processor architectures. The difference also worked
to the advantage of proprietary-minded vendors by reducing application
portability as it tied applications more tightly to specific platform
architectures. Important in the last century, all this changed under the
pressures of open computing.
As the movement to embrace Open Standards/Open Software/Open
architectures grew, the demand for application portability in an increasingly
complex operating environment changed the dynamics of the market. It also
changed the style of computing with the proliferation of interacting,
interdependent transactions, Cloud, dynamic infrastructure and adaptive
applications.
Data center heterogeneity has become the norm. Thus, making
easy interaction and communication across/between multiple different
architectures critically important as new generations of machines, data centers
and enterprises merged, openness became the watchword dominating the market. It’s
our opinion that this combination of Red Hat Enterprise Linux and Power Systems
can accelerate business innovation, eliminate portability challenges, and solve
IT challenges for companies of all sizes.