RE: i5OS running as a VM on PC

Aaron,

VM wouldn't make anything any easier.

AFAIK, all VMs/LPARs currently available provide a VM of the underlying hardware.

In other words, you'd need an i5/OS you could run on a PC before you could run it in a VM on the PC.

Given the nature of i5/OS, I think IBM could provide an x64 version of i5/OS (but what the heck would
they call it :-), but that you'd have to make a choice.
1) Throw away some of the "extra" hardware dependent parts
2) Emulate the "extra" parts.

While the i5/OS layer is hardware independent, the SLIC layer certainly isn't. A PC CPU just doesn't
have some of the "extra" stuff depended on.

Still, it'd be a huge job. According to the Fortress Rochester book, there was 5 million lines of
code under the MI in 2001. IBM could do it, they've done it before, CICS-to-RISC, but what's in it
for them? I really don't see it happening.

HTH,
Charles

-----Original Message-----
From: midrange-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:midrange-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of albartell
Sent: Monday, July 16, 2007 8:55 AM
To: 'Midrange Systems Technical Discussion'
Subject: i5OS running as a VM on PC

Hi All,

Just got done reading two stories on ITJungle.com:
http://www.itjungle.com/tfh/tfh071607-story03.html and
http://www.itjungle.com/tfh/tfh071607-story01.html. The two
things talked about were a shortage of new i5 talent coming
from educational institutions and market share that IBM is
losing to Oracle - nothing surprisingly new to any of us.

In the end I think we are seeing these stats simply because
it is fairly difficult to get your hands dirty with an i5 and
corresponding technologies vs. developing a business around
PC based technologies, or more directly
stated: I can't download RPG and i5OS to my PC and start
developing applications. Again, nothing really new here - we
have talked about availability before. This leads me to the
question/statement of this thread.

Based on my limited knowledge, I am wondering what the
complexities would be to "port" i5OS to something like a
VMWare instance running on my PC. I would only consider this
potentially possible based on hearing about the different
hardware changes where statements like "pSeries has the same
guts as iSeries" and "single level storage, hiding hardware
implementation" are made here an there. In my mind if IBM
could make i5OS more available to the general population, it
would start catching on more, or rather, much faster.

For the sake of argument let's leave timeshare OUT of the
mix. We all know they exist and are relatively inexpensive,
but they are very restrictive in letting you "mess around"
with a machine to learn how it works (and rightly so).

To reiterate my question: What are the complexities to "port"
i5OS to something like a VMWare instance running on my PC?

Thoughts?
Aaron Bartell
http://mowyourlawn.com




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