Unknown to most, IBM has one of the world’s longest records of using virtual platforms for software and firmware development and verification. This project has been ongoing since at least the days of the zSeries 900 machines, through z990, z9, and now z10. An excellent article on this virtual platform and its uses is found in the IBM Journal of Research and Development, number 1, 2009, . It is called “IBM System z10 Firmware Simulation”, by Körner et al.
Category: review
Off-topic: Software tip: SnagIT.
Sometimes you find this rare gem of a piece of software that just works and that just solves a problem you have been having an itch with for a long time. SnagIT, from TechSmith, is just such a program. It makes doing screen captures and editing them incredibly easy and convenient. It also has some nice extras, like capturing a webpage in its entirety by scrolling the window in Internet Explorer or Firefox. Simple, but a great time saver for me. I feel like I literally saved hours of work time in just a few weeks of using this program. 30 bucks for a piece of software that does screen capture? In my job, a no-brainer. Highly recommended!
Book Review: Intel’s Multicore Programming Book
The book “Multicore Programming – Increasing Performance through Software Multithreading” by Shameem Akhter and Jason Roberts is part of a series of books put out by Intel in their multicore software push. In case you have not noticed, Intel has a huge market push currently where they give seminars, publish articles and books, and give curricula to universities in order to get more parallel software in place. I read this book recently, and here is a short review.
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