C/C++ Café | The C/C++ Market Place: Product Management: Virtual Loaner Program may be answer to cost-effective compiler evaluation

Are you getting the most performance from your IBM hardware investment? Using an up-to-date compiler is key to hardware exploitation. A no-charge, 60-day evaluation copy of the latest IBM XL C/C++ compiler is downloadable from www.ibm.com, but how can you really test it in scenarios such as seeing how your application behaves on newer hardware, with a different operating system, or on a newer level of an operating system? If you are member of IBM PartnerWorld, the Virtual Loaner Program may be the answer.

The IBM Virtual Loaner Program provides no-charge, self-service Internet access to IBM hardware and middleware for IBM business partners and qualified members of IBM PartnerWorld. The Virtual Loan Program allows a user to select an environment from multiple hardware and operating system configurations. The dedicated, IBM IES/ITSC-certified environment of a VLP system provides the benefits of a secure loaner machine with greater flexibility in scheduling and less hassle than other loaner programs because IBM manages and hosts the hardware. Instead of month-long engagements, a VLP user makes multiple short reservations for a VLP system. The VLP system "remembers" the user's system image so that he or she can return repeatedly during a longer overall period of time to the same type of system and environment, including all files and work in progress.

On a VLP system, a user might evaluate IBM hardware, tools, and middleware, or develop, test, debug, and port applications and solutions. VLP systems might be used to develop product demonstrations or to allow users to see how their application performs with varying amounts of virtual CPU and RAM. Other features of the VLP usage model are full access to the user's own data and build environments and full root access (QSECOFR), which allows the user to install fixes and software.

The IBM Software Access catalog, accessible from an AIX or Linux partition on a VLP system, includes other IBM compilers, such as IBM XL Fortran.

Platforms and operating systems currently supported

POWER5, and POWER6 dedicated (root access) resources:

AIX 5.3, AIX 6.1 with WPAR
IBM i 5.4, IBM i 6.1
Linux:
- Red Hat: RHEL4, RHEL5
- SUSE: SLES9, SLES10

Watch for our development blogs about using the XL C/C++ compiler on VLP systems.

For more information, see:

Tags: virtual_loaner_program, evaluation, vlp

May 21, 2009 1:20 PM

Michael_Wong

This is fantastic news. I have a whole C++0x and Boost community that is looking for something like this to test their C++0x code and Boost library development with IBM hardware and the latest xlC compiler.

If this allows external user to try our compiler on small testcases, this will be great. If it allows them to try full test runs, it is more then I hope.

May 21, 2009 4:06 PM

AbC

I have been asked to try to install the evaluation copy of XL C/C++ V10.1 compiler on a Virtual Loaner Program system and write about my experience. So here goes.

It took a day to get an id from the PartnerWorld, but once I had it, I could make a reservation for a VLP system. The reservation procedure is relatively easy. You can choose what architecture you want and how long you need the system up to 14 days. Currently, POWER5 and POWER6 are available. A reservation has to be made at least two hours in advance, I got the machine right on time. In the second reservation, I needed to wait for a few days to get the machine due to system availability.

When the system is ready, I received a notification and the procedure to log on to the machine via a gateway. A user id was created for me even though the root password was provided. I found the document "Connecting to Your VLP System - A User Guide" very useful to help me getting on to the system.

I reserved a POWER6 with two processors running AIX 6.1 - latest architecture running latest OS! Although the system is not very large, it serves my purpose of trying out the latest XL C/C++ compiler.

Downloading the evaluation copy of XL C/C++ V10.1 compiler was not very straight forward due to the setup on the webpage that only uses http or Download Director. I installed the wget tool on the system, and used the tool to download the evaluation copy directly to the system.

With the evaluation copy on the VLP system, I followed the "Non-default installation procedure" from the XL C/C++ Installation Guide to install the compiler. I'm now ready to try out a Hello World program on VLP.

I saved my environment for my next VLP session. After all, it is a 60-day evaluation copy.

In general, the whole procedure was pretty smooth. After the installation, I can test and try out the latest XL compilers (C/C++ and Fortran) with the latest POWER architecture. It is a pretty good deal!