Sun wants Linux on T1

27.01.2006
It may take some six to nine months before Linux is ported to its new multicore T1 chip, but Sun Microsystems Inc. clearly wants that to happen.

Sun has made T1 servers available to Linux developers and is working with Linux distributors, which the company declined to name, to develop the port.

And while a port may be completed this year, it will be a while before Linux on T1 appears in production environments; application certification and support will be needed as well.

Mike Splain, chief technologist for Sun's Scalable Systems Group, believes Linux running on the company's eight-core chip will open up new options for users who want to run Linux applications in a scaled-up system. "Having multiple operating systems [for the T1] broadens its appeal,' he said.

Linux can already run on UltraSparc chips, but there has been little interest in doing so to date. Splain attributed that to technical limitations Linux developers face when building ports. By open-sourcing the engineering specifications, Sun is ensuring that Linux developers now have 'the exact same documents that we would use internally,' he said.

Moreover, working with the T1 will be easier because it includes a hypervisor, which is similar to a BIOS on an x86 chip, and developers will be able to write to the hypervisor's application programming interfaces. The hypervisor will also eventually include virtualization capabilities, he said. The specifications are available online at www.opensparc.net.