IBM Uncloaks Power6 Chip Details
by Timothy Prickett Morgan

It's the fall, so that means it is time for the major designers of processors and other related electronics to converge on Silicon Valley for the In-Stat Microprocessor Forum. IBM's Brad McCredie, who works for the Systems and Technology Group as the chief architect of the future Power6 processor, gave his presentation at the forum this week, and divulged a lot of the inner workings of the device. There's a lot of stuff in this chip, which is what you would expect from a device with around 750 million transistors. READ MORE >

Legacy Application Modernization Strategies Hinge on SOA
by Timothy Prickett Morgan

Aberdeen Group has just completed a detailed study of the legacy application modernization plans of small, medium, and large enterprises, and not surprisingly, companies are looking to the services oriented architecture (SOA) approach to creating distributed applications to help them both modernize their legacy applications and to make their composite applications more flexible and therefore giving their businesses more agility. Some companies, however, are looking to simply get rid of legacy applications on mainframes, i5/OS and OS/400, and Unix servers to get rid of the legacy problem. READ MORE >

IBM Tackles Data Center Cooling with Services Offering
by Alex Woodie

IBM this week introduced its second round of offerings in which it will try to sell people-based technical services as products. The five new service products come out of IBM Global Service's Site and Facilities Services unit, and are aimed at helping IT departments solve some of the critical heating, cooling, and power issues that threaten to knock "high density" data centers off line. READ MORE >

As I See It: History Makers
by Victor Rozek

In the early 1960s, when IBM abruptly bolted from New York City, Armonk was a remote and barely inhabited woodland. On my only visit to the IBM mothership nearly two decades ago, I remember wondering why a big-city company would select such an out-of-the-way site to house its world headquarters. Like guys with a Rolex, successful companies enjoy showing off their architectural bling-bling. Power and status find their expression in steel and glass and are typically flaunted, not hidden. READ MORE >