5486AdvTech.fm Draft Document for Review October 18, 2004
14 IBM Eserver i5 and iSeries System Handbook
The layers above the POWER Hypervisor are different for each supported
operating system.
For i5/OS, TIMI and
the layers above the
POWER Hypervisor
are still in place. SLIC,
however, is changed
and enabled for
interfacing with the
POWER Hypervisor.
The POWER
Hypervisor code is
based on the iSeries
Partition Licensed
Internal Code (PLIC)
code that is enhanced for use with the Eserver i5 hardware. The PLIC is now
part of the POWER Hypervisor.
For the AIX 5L and Linux operating systems, the layers above the POWER
Hypervisor are similar, but their content is characteristic for each operating
system. The layers of code supporting Linux and AIX 5L consist of System
Firmware and Run-Time Abstraction Services (RTAS).
System Firmware is composed of Low Level Firmware and Open Firmware.
Low
Level Firmware
is code that performs server unique input/output (I/O)
configurations such as high-speed link (HSL)-2/RIO-G loops and PCI-X bridges.
Open Firmware contains the boot time drivers (for example, SCSI, SSA, token
ring, and Ethernet), the boot manager, and the device drivers required to initialize
the PCI adapters and attached devices. The Run-Time Abstraction Services
consist of code that supplies platform dependent accesses and can be called
from the operating system. These calls are passed to the POWER Hypervisor
that handles all I/O interrupts.
The Eserver i5 layered code structure makes the Eserver i5 platform even
more flexible. It also enables easy accommodation of different operating
systems.
The POWER Hypervisor allows for multiple operating systems to run on the new
hardware. i5/OS, Linux, and AIX 5L V5.3 and v5.2 are supported in logical
partitions on the Eserver i5 server. No additional investment is required to bring
existing applications running on the iSeries today, with an earlier supported
OS/400 release, to i5/OS or to the new Eserver i5 hardware.
i5/OS AIX 5L Linux
TIMI
SLIC OF / RTAS OF / RTAS
POWER Hypervisor
64-bit RISC Hardware
Programs Programs Programs
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