eWeek - December 7, 2009

similar to the one the energy-saving, virtual-machine-enhancing, front-side-bus-dumping, hyperthread-reintroducing Nehalem processors

support. Even so, the Intel micro-architecture and CPU hardware were at the heart of some of the most important announcements of 2009—including VMware’s vSphere 4 and Cisco’s Unified Computing System.

In my original analysis of the Nehalem release, I noted that the processor family’s integrated memory controller, additional memory channel and other performance-enhancing improvements would enable Xeon 5500-series-equipped systems to consolidate even more virtual machines onto fewer physical systems. I also noted that, as implementation of the Xeon 5500 series CPU family spreads, IT managers should take another look at applications that did not perform well when run on VMs hosted on previous-generation Intel-based servers.

In addition, Nehalem processors use a significant update dubbed VT-d (Virtualization Technology for Directed I/O) that connects dedicated DMA (direct memory access)-capable

I/O resources for virtual
machines. One of the big
challenges of virtualization
has been handling I/O, and VT-d
allows the direct assignment of
a VM to a physical device. VT-d
is designed to reduce the perfor-
mance overhead incurred as the
hypervisor moderates
state among the guest
VMs.
IT managers will
need to be mindful that
new hardware com-
ponents—including
NICs and memory con-
figurations—aimed at
improving VM perfor-
mance will also drive
up the initial hardware
price of Xeon 5500-based
systems. But the wide-scale
adoption of the Intel Xeon
5500 series (by server mak-
ers Dell, HP, Lenovo and
Apple, among others), com-
bined with the significant
capability changes made to
the processor, marked an IT
milestone in 2009.
—Cameron Sturdevant
☛ tinyurl.com/ykrgpzh

Palm WebOS

From the way it integrates all like communications into a single interface, to the way it seamlessly moves from local search to Web search, to its intuitive gesture-based user controls, Palm WebOS is a joy to use.

Although it’s currently available
only on the Palm Pre and Pixi—nei-
ther of which is the OS’ definitive
hardware platform—and although I
have my doubts as to whether third-
party developers will create enough
action on the platform to make it
successful long-term, Palm WebOS
is a thoughtful and well-designed
mobile platform.
—Andrew Garcia
☛ tinyurl.com/ygkqeql

SUSE Studio 1.0

One of the most compelling things about Linux as a platform is its elasticity. It’s possible to take a

general-purpose Linux-based operating system and strip it down to just enough components to carry out the task at hand, making the open-source amalgamation a popular choice for customization-heavy scenarios such as embedded devices and high-performance computing.

As virtualization and cloud computing have grown in popularity, the potential audience for stripped-down, reconfigurable systems has grown as well, leading general-purpose OS vendors to offer more modular versions of their wares.