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Linux, Outside the (x86) BoxBy Peter Seebach2005-06-29 
Hardware capabilities
Non-x86 hardware can offer capabilities that are rare or unheard of in x86 hardware. One of the more subtle capabilities is reliability. While individual x86 machines are often fairly stable when running for a year or more at a time, other systems may be somewhat better engineered to stand the test of constant operation. Much x86 hardware has poor, limited, or non-existent support for ECC memory. Support for redundant power supplies and other features can be hard to find. Interest in better hardware reliability has been a driving factor in running Linux on POWER™ or SPARC workstations and servers or on some older MIPS systems. A capability that's essentially absent in most x86 hardware is reasonable power consumption. Even the comparatively low-power chips used for embedded systems often use a great deal more power than the competition from ARM and PowerPC microprocessors. This is why a lot of handheld devices have been based on ARM processors such as the Compaq (now Hewlett-Packard) iPAQ line of handheld computers. Ports to systems like this made quite a buzz when Sharp introduced its Zaurus handheld based on ARM processors and Linux. Competing handheld development platforms have not offered developers or users the flexibility and control that Linux does. Sharp's work, although not a huge market success, got people interested in running Linux on handhelds and gave them access to the code they'd need to do the work themselves. The current Linux-on-PDA ports reflect this early work, and the Opie project (Open Palmtop Integrated Environment, originally designed for the Zaurus) is now available for other devices as well. From the perspective of hardware, x86 Linux falls in the middle of the range. For a smaller box, one with lower power consumption, or a larger, more reliable system, you have to go to a non-x86 Linux system. Tutorial Pages: » What is it about Linux that makes it so attractive for non-x86 platforms? » Early days » Big iron » Hardware capabilities » New life for old hardware » Just playing around » Resources First published by IBM DeveloperWorks
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