Intel Advances Linux Support

Intel Corp. (Nasdaq: INTC) has increased its investment in the Linux environment by enabling online professional users to bring Gigabit Ethernet performance to their Linux-based Internet operations and working with the open-source community to foster Internet-enabling product development.

The chip titan will add the Linux Gigabit driver and related support for the Intel PRO/1000 Gigabit Server Adapter to its industry offerings portfolio to boost Linux-based Web servers, e-mail servers and databases. According to Intel, this addition is the first time such an offering has been made available to companies who use Linux as their primary operating system (OS).

From Here To Netfinity

“The new Intel Linux Gigabit driver is great news for Linux customers who need high speed connectivity to drive theire-business,” commented Phil Hester, CTO for IBM’s personal systems group. “The new Intel driver will bring even more high-end solutions for Web serving and high performance computing on IBM Netfinity servers and will give our customers additional confidence in industry standard hardware support when they deploy mission critical applications on Linux.”

IBM’s administers ServerProven Solutions, a certification program designed to test software compatibility with the Netfinity server series, last summer expanded the scope to include vendors supporting Linux. Big Blue has tapped KeyLabs, an independent organization, to conduct the certifications.

According to Erik Troan, director of engineering for Red Hat, Inc., “the new driver will help bring high performance solutions to bandwidth-hungry Web servers.”

Tim Dunn, director of marketing for Intel’s network interface division, added, “With the new Linux Gigabit solution, customers attain the benefits of high-bandwidth connections and have the confidence of knowing the driver is designed by Intel to work on our adapter.”

Additionally, Intel has announced plans to work with the open-source development community “to foster innovation and satisfy strong customer demand for Linux” through its Internet Service Provider Program, which is designed to provide products, services and support through an Intel maintained Web site.

Next Generation E-Commerce Servers

At a LinuxWorld keynote address in San Jose, California this past summer, Intel senior vice president Sean Maloney demonstrated how Intel’s Merced processor — aka the IA-64 – would run on Linux in order to advance cost-effective and powerful solutions available to companies engaged in e-commerce.

“We are working hard with the IA-64 — we think of it as the future engine for e-commerce,” said Maloney. To help advance the development of Linux software environments for IA-64, Intel is providing servers based on Merced to select Linux solution providers for Internet-based software development. Developers can access the resources through Intel’s developer.intel.com Web site.

Linux is a freely distributed OS, based on UNIX, which was created in 1991 as an alternative to Windows. International Data Corp. (IDC) indicates that Linux grew more than 212 percent and captured more than 17 percent of all server OS shipments in 1998. More than 12 million end users and organizations now use Linux technologies worldwide.