Platform Solutions, Inc. had this technology and much more. Their technology is now IBM's.
Many people accuse IBM of acquiring PSI to stifle competition, but this is a great disservice to the engineers at PSI, particularly former Amdahl engineers, who are now bound to silence by NDAs. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/23/technology/companies/23mainframe.html?_r=3&pagewanted=2&ref=technology&adxnnlx=1237816804-Ls%2021S/ySzdFWiPCcF03qQ IBM may see the virtualization of Windows onto z architecture as strategic; both as servers and workstations and its acquisition of PSI reflects this. >From what little Mantissa has disclosed, their approach, IMHO, is inherently >flawed. Their SHARE presentation seemed to be little more than an obfuscated >discourse on virtualization in general. Even if their approach works, it would >have been better, architecturally, to emulate an Itanium for Windows hosting >because of the nature of the Itanium’s instruction parallelism. A more sensible approach would be to look at creating a Windows HAL (hardware abstraction layer), or something conceptually similar, that runs on z/Series. Historically, this is how Windows has been made to run on different machine architectures. Of course, cooperative development between IBM and Microsoft would be necessary. Another possibility is to exploit the Infiniband feature of the z/10. This feature is profound in terms of 360-z/series evolution, but has been largely ignored, so far. Infiniband attached external hardware products that expose x86 architecture processors, from Intel or IBM itself (or maybe even Intel Larrabee), is an ideal way to run Windows on IBM mainframes. In the interest of disclosure, I have worked for both IBM and PSI, but the opinions I express here are complete conjecture. Harry harry_w...@hotmail.com > Date: Mon, 23 Mar 2009 21:08:01 -0700 > From: ps2...@yahoo.com > Subject: Old discussion about Windows running on a mainframe ( I brought up) > To: IBM-MAIN@bama.ua.edu > > Will Big Blue mainframes run Windows? > Track this topic Print story Post comment > z/VMs get Microsoft rumor > By Timothy Prickett Morgan • Get more from this author > > Posted in Servers, 23rd March 2009 22:34 GMT > Whitepaper download - Eight CRM essentials > An obscure mainframe software company called Mantissa Corporation bragged > last summer on the IBM VM listserv - which is dedicated to virtual mainframe > environments - that it was creating a product called z/VOS that would allow > slices of a Windows operating system to run atop z/VM, the > hypervisor-as-operating system for IBM mainframes. The product was due in the > first quarter of this year, and the story of its impending release has been > making the rounds. > > According to a report in NetworkWorld, Mantissa's z/VOS, presumably short for > Virtual Operating System, is a layer of software for VM that allows desktop > and server Windows operating systems to run in emulated mode atop z/VM. > Mantissa - which is based in Birmingham, Alabama, and which is a supplier of > report distribution and other tools for mainframes - talked about the z/VOS > product at the SHARE mainframe user conference in early March in Austin, > Texas. But that was not the same thing as a product launch. > > > We've tried to reach the company for several days, but Mantissa has yet to > respond. > > While IBM and the Linux community for mainframes centered around Marist > College in New York have worked to get official mainframe ports done for > Linux - Red Hat and Novell officially support mainframes, if you can write a > big enough check to get support - there is no native Windows port to IBM > mainframes as far as I know. So, the real curiosity is how Mantissa is > supporting Windows XP or Vista atop z/VM partitions. > > According to the company's development blog, z/VOS includes a translation > engine that "converts native x86 code to its System z equivalent." See how > easy that was? As it translates equivalent results - not creating equivalent > machine code, mind you - the instruction that is created by z/VOS is stored > in memory so it can be accessed the next time the operating system function > inside Windows running on the mainframe is asked for again. > > Since Gary Dennis, Mantissa's chief executive officer and founder - and other > we've called - are not answering their phones, it is a little hard to take > the company seriously. But if it can indeed deliver a layer of abstraction > software atop z/VM that lets Windows desktops and servers run on mainframe > iron, the company should probably think about getting someone to answer the > phones and maybe a salesperson or two to try to take some orders. If the x86 > translation overhead is not too high, this could be a very interesting > development - and one that Big Blue would seem pretty keen on supporting, not > quashing. ® > http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/03/23/mantissa_windows_on_mainframes/ > > AT least these people aren't IBM types and IBM is not eager to dispel it (so > I have heard) > > Ed > > > > > > > ---------------------------------------------------------------------- > For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, > send email to lists...@bama.ua.edu with the message: GET IBM-MAIN INFO > Search the archives at http://bama.ua.edu/archives/ibm-main.html ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@bama.ua.edu with the message: GET IBM-MAIN INFO Search the archives at http://bama.ua.edu/archives/ibm-main.html
