Sparc servers to run Linux

Linux will edge a little further into the high-performance computing arena this week when Fujitsu Siemens announces plans to port the open-source operating system to its PrimePower family of servers.

The Japanese-German joint venture is to make Linux available in partitions on the servers that employ a variant of Sun Microsystems' Sparc processing architecture. A version of Linux for Sun Sparc servers has been available since 1995 through the UltraLinux open-source development project, but Fujitsu Siemens' backing could put Linux into many more large firms. PrimePower has about 25,000 installations, 6,000 of them in Europe, where customers include German software giant SAP.

"We will announce at the Octoberfestival conference week that we have the first Sparc Linux port available [for PrimePower], and we are negotiating with Suse and Red Hat [to develop an official distribution]," said Michael Peikert, director of Unix product marketing at Fujitsu Siemens. "Customers want partitions running Linux for Apache Web serving and other applications."

He added that the Linux PrimePower port is based on Suse Release 7.3.

Peikert said that Linux will be available on PrimePower within 12 to 15 months but indicated it would lack some high-end features, such as capabilities for dynamic reconfiguration of system resources.

Fujitsu Siemens will showcase its latest PrimePower at Octoberfestival, starting on Wednesday in Augsburg, Germany. PrimePower systems tap into robust features developed for Fujitsu mainframes, including a crossbar switching architecture and self-healing features. Also at Octoberfestival, the firm plans to show off its Pocket Loox PDA with GPRS communications; and Tablet PC products running an enhanced version of Windows XP.

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