IBM Corp is pushing Linux as the low cost server OS of the future, but still has issues with driver support and claims that Red Hat Linux only supports two-way processor systems. IBM has signed deals to support four major commercial flavors of Linux. That is, the versions from Red Hat Software Inc, Caldera Inc, Pacific HiTech and S.U.S.E. However, IBM points out that with some minor tweaking software that runs on one version of the language should run on any version.
Tikiri Wanduragala, IBM EMEA Netfinity server consultant, says that the major thrust of the work that IBM is doing is developing an optimized set of drivers for the Netfinity range of servers. Wanduragala says that work is ongoing on RAID and Comms adapters. IBM is also working on Linux drivers for the RS/6000 as part of its work on developing an iteration of Linux for that machine. More controversially, Wanduragala suggested that the version of Red Hat Linux that IBM was currently using on its 3000, 5000 and 5500 Netfinity servers only offered 2-way SMP support, saying that the company was working on 4-, 8- and 16-way support.
A Red Hat spokesperson denied problems with SMP support, saying, definitely more then two processors at a time are supported. Currently the Linux kernel has support for up to 16 Intel processors in a single machine. However, the existing Intel support chipsets only support up to 4 processors. The Linux kernel, therefore Red Hat Linux as well, runs very nicely on up to 4 processors. There have been issues with some of the 8-way non-Intel support chipsets that have recently arrived, but those are largely due to peculiarities with those chipsets that require some minor kernel tweaking to get running smoothly and for performance tuning.
