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IBM Power 595 Technical Overview and Introduction
3.8 PowerVM Lx86
The IBM PowerVM Lx86 feature creates a virtual x86 application environment within a Linux
operating system-based partition running on your 595 server. Most 32-bit x86 Linux
applications can run in the Lx86 environment without requiring clients or ISVs to recompile
the code. This brings new benefits to organizations who want the reliability and flexibility of
consolidating (through virtualization) on Power Systems and desire to use applications that
have not yet been ported to the POWER platform.
PowerVM Lx86 dynamically translates x86 instructions to Power Architecture instructions,
operating much like the just-in-time compiler (JIT) in a Java system. The technology creates
an environment on which the applications being translated run on the new target platform, in
this case Linux for Power. This environment encapsulates the application and runtime
libraries and runs them on the Linux for Power operating system kernel. These applications
can be run side by side with Linux for Power native applications on a single system image and
do not require a separate partition.
Figure 3-6 shows the diagram of the Linux x86 application environment.
Figure 3-6 Diagram of the Linux x86 application environment
Supported Linux for Power operating systems
PowerVM Lx86 version 1.1 supports the following Linux for Power operating systems:
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4 (RHEL 4) for POWER version 4.4 and 4.5. Also supported are
x86 Linux applications running on RHEL 4.3.
SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 9 (SLES 9) for POWER Service Pack 3
SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 10 (SLES 10) for POWER Service Pack 1
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