IBM has published the following technical articles, tutorials, and downloads on its developerWorks Website. 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. Enjoy . . . !

• Anatomy of the Linux boot process — This article discusses detailed similarities and differences between booting Linux on an x86-based platform (typically a PC-compatible SBC) and a custom embedded platform based around PowerPC, ARM, and others. It discusses suggested hardware and software designs and highlights the tradeoffs of each. It also describes important design pitfalls and best practices.
• IBM PowerPC 970FX Kit — The IBM PowerPC 970FX Evaluation Kit software includes the PowerPC Initialization Boot Software (PIBS) resident in the flash memory on the board, PIBS source code, the Embedded PowerPC Operating System (EPOS), sample application programs, and application development libraries and tools. The board schematics provide an example of how to connect the processor to a system controller (bridge) chip and other components in the system.
• The PCI Bus Ride — The widely adopted PCI standard has defeated a large number of competing standards in the marketplace. This article takes a looks at how the PCI bus won, what the effects of its dominance have been, and what might happen next…
• C++ exception-handling tricks for Linux — Handling exceptions in C++ has a few implicit restrictions at the language level, but you can get around them in some instances. Learn ways to make exceptions work for you so you can produce more reliable applications.
• Create your own visualisations in Eclipse — The Visualiser plug-in from Eclipse.org is a universal tool for visualising any type of resource. This tutorial, written by the creators of the Visualiser, takes you step by step through the process of extending the tool to visualise a new type of resource — the results returned by the Google Internet search engine. It then shows you some of the other ways in which the Visualiser has already been put to good use.
• Plug memory leaks with Rational Purify for Linux — In the Linux environment, Rational Purify provides a comprehensive solution for finding errors and memory leaks. This article features a simple C program and a more complex C++ program that gives you a good idea of how you can successfully integrate Purify into your Linux development environment with very little effort.
• Cooling Down Hot Processors — Face it: the only scorching hot thing you want with a chip is salsa. Any other overheating is potentially counterproductive, and can be downright damaging to the microprocessor — or other components. This article uncovers potential ways to chill the chips.
• Easy persistence layers for J2EE apps with iBATIS — iBATIS is an open source object-to-relational mapping data layer that has gained popularity in the Java and J2EE worlds. It's an easy framework to provide a persistence layer to either Java or J2EE applications. This article covers the iBATIS syntax, accessing data sources, setting up WebSphere Studio Application Developer projects to support iBATIS, and querying DB2 database.
• Data alignment: Straighten up and fly right — Data alignment is an important issue for all programmers who directly use memory. Data alignment affects how well your software performs, and even if your software runs at all. As this article illustrates, understanding the nature of alignment can also explain some of the “weird” behaviors of some processors.
• AOP tools comparison — The challenge of choosing an AOP tool for your project is in comparing the trade-offs of each approach without getting lost in them. In todays world you can't consider adopting a new technology without a close look at how it integrates with existing development environments and other tools. This article compares the four leading AOP tools (AspectJ, AspectWerkz, JBoss AOP, and Spring AOP) to help you decide which one is best for you.
• Migrate Win32 C/C++ application to Linux on POWER — This series of articles helps you migrate your Win32 C/C++ applications to Linux on POWER. Win32 C/C++ Apps to Linux Part-1 of this series coveres the Win32 APIs mapping to Linux on POWER regarding the initialization and termination, process, thread, and shared memory services. Win32 C/C++ Apps to Linux Part-2 illustrates how to map Win32 to Linux with respect to mutex application program interfaces (APIs).
• Deploy an application with Cerise Web server — This article shows you how to create a guestbook Web application with the Cerise Web server and the Ruby programming language. You'll use RSS 1.0 as the file format for the guestbook entries and XSLT for transforming files to HTML.
• From Solaris to Linux on POWER — Accelerate your porting efforts by following this six-step guide. Learn the differences between Solaris and Linux on POWER, and see how SUN's compiler/linker switches compare with those of GNU GCC and the IBM native compiler.
• The Cranky User: Performance Anxiety — Computers are getting faster all the time, or so they tell us. But, in fact, the user experience of performance hasn't improved much over the past 15 years. This article takes a look at where all the precious processor time and memory are going.
• Defeat the no match found scenario — This article digs up a simple, pre-existing method designed to quickly and easily solve this common search problem of characters that cannot be easily identified. It is a quick, variant, alphanumeric search method to increase useful returns.

 
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