IBM has published the following new technical articles, tutorials, and downloads on its DeveloperWorks and AlphaWorks websites. They cover a range of interesting (though not necessarily embedded) technical topics, primarily related to Linux and open source system development. Some require free registration.

• Simulators for IP Multimedia Subsystem — Get rich multimedia services across next generation packet-switched and traditional circuit-switched networks with IP Multimedia SubSystem (IMS). These are component simulators that enable simple testing and message validation and that are not dependent on IMS servers or architecture.
• Anatomy of the Linux Slab Allocator — Minimize the time required to manage memory and maximize available memory for general usage with the slab allocator. This article explores the ideas behind the slab allocator and examines its interfaces and their use. It uses the Linux kernel method that originated in Solaris of allocating memory of objects based on their size.
• Explore Powerful UNIX Writer's Tools — Using new, open source equivalents of the classic UNIX Writer's Workbench.
• In pursuit of code quality: Beware the tight couple! — You know tight coupling is bad news and you really want to avoid it in your designs — but the question is how. Learn how to recognize a tightly coupled system and then disentangle it using the Dependency Inversion Principle.
• Performance Tuning Subversion — Subversion is one of the few version control systems that can store binary files using a delta algorithm. In this article, senior developer David Bell explains why Subversion's performance suffers when handling binaries and suggests several ways to work around the problem.
• Java: Database Refactoring with db4o — Refactoring Java code is far simpler than refactoring a relational database, but fortunately that isn't so much the case with object databases. Learn another advantage to this favorite object database.
• Real world Rails: Caching in Rails — For some, Rails is hyper productive and for others Ruby is a toy. One camp says its well marketed and the other camp tells us Ruby is over hyped. Like many newer technologies, Rails also has a reputation as unproven with limited scalability. Unlike the C and Java languages, Ruby is interpreted, with all of the inherent performance handicaps. This article explores the Ruby caching strategies that are available to you to increase performance.
• LAMP Bottleneck Solutions: Apache and PHP — Linux, Apache, MySQL, and PHP form the basis of the LAMP architecture for Web applications. This article focuses on steps you can take to optimize Apache and PHP, because as the load on an application increases, the bottlenecks in the underlying infrastructure become more apparent in the form of slow response to user requests.
• Translating Messages in Second Life — In the last part of our exploration of the Second Life software, learn how to plug a simple command-line program into Second Life that provides a language translation function. This article looks at the technical issues involved in translating chat messages in Second Life.
• Build High Performance Apps with RapidMind — Take a guided tour of the RapidMind Development Platform with Michael McCool. The platform provides a simple single-source mechanism to develop portable high-performance applications for multicore processors. In particular, you can use it to develop applications by writing a single-threaded C++ program using an existing C++ compiler.

 
This article was originally published on LinuxDevices.com and has been donated to the open source community by QuinStreet Inc. Please visit LinuxToday.com for up-to-date news and articles about Linux and open source.