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. Some require free registration. Enjoy . . .

• Simulate devices using DSF — The Device Simulator Framework (DSF) provides an easy-to-use ioctl interface to all your devices, real or imagined. Intended for experienced kernel and device driver software developers, DSF makes it easier to debug and test device code that would otherwise be difficult to simulate or recreate.
• Open source development using C99 — What is C99? Who needs it? Is it available yet? The author discusses the 1999 revision of the ISO C standard, with a focus on the availability of new features on Linux and BSD systems.
• A developer's guide to the PowerPC architecture — PowerPC processors are found in everything from supercomputers to game consoles and from servers to cell phones — and they all share a common architecture. This introduction to the PowerPC application-level programming model will give you an overview of the instruction set, important registers, and other details necessary for developing reliable, high performing PowerPC applications and maintaining code compatibility among processors.
• EmPOWERing the Linux developer — Recognized as a high-performance, reliable, and serviceable enterprise platform, the 64-bit POWER architecture offers new choices to UNIX and Linux application developers. This article reviews the different POWER Linux distributions, the kernal optimization for POWER, GNU Compiler Collection and the tools needed to get started with enterprise Linux on POWER-based systems.
• Fixing the Java Memory Model, Part 2 — JSR 133, which has been active for nearly three years, has recently issued its public recommendation on what to do about the Java Memory Model (JMM). In part 1 of this series, the author focused on some of the serious flaws that were found in the original JMM, which resulted in some surprisingly difficult semantics for concepts that were supposed to be simple. This month, he reveals how the semantics of volatile and final will change under the new JMM, changes that will bring their semantics in line with most developers' intuition. Some of these changes are already present in JDK 1.4; others will have to wait until JDK 1.5.
• Tracing in a multithreaded, multiplatform environment — Most Java programmers use some kind of tracing system to keep track of potential errors and problems in code that is under development. However, multithreaded and multiplatform systems can generate a large and baffling amount of tracing data. This article offers some tips that will help you make sense of trace data from complex applications. You'll learn how to use log4j, an open source logging package, to generate information-rich log files. You'll also see how you can use standard UNIX shell commands to mine that data for the information you need.
• MegaJogos: The case of the fully utilized CPU — Do you like playing detective and solving mysteries? Performance problems come in many guises, giving you ample opportunity to indulge your clue-hunting proclivities to identify and resolve them. The main man behind the MegaJogos multi-player game site and a member of the Java Games community, recently altered the application behind the site to use the NIO package to enhance its scalability.
• Grid watch: What's new with the Global Grid Forum? — This article provides an In this article, we discuss how to keep up with the information that is available from the service domain. Why should you and why shouldn't you care about the information? We introduce several ways of using the information and discuss some approaches for optimizing its management.
• Grid watch: GGF and grid data — The Data area of the Global Grid Forum has its hands full with data requirements. Nearly all business processes depend on reliable, fast access to shared data. In a grid environment (as with most other computational environments), data must be discovered, stored, abstracted, transformed, managed, integrated, distributed, published, transported, secured, recovered, and queried.
• Grid watch: Open standards architecture at the GGF — This installment of “Grid watch” provides a quick overview of OGSA, OGSI, and other architecture-related initiatives at GGF.
• The future of grid services — Grid services are undergoing a veritable explosion of growth at the moment. But how do you choose a grid solution? Do you look for standards, Web services compatibility, development environment compatibility, or just marketing hype? With so much conflicting information out there on grid services and platforms, it can be difficult to identify whether a specific company is providing a service or a toolkit for building your own service. This article looks at the various grid development platforms available, and some grid initiatives and companies that provide ready-to-run grid services.

 
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