AMD has announced new interoperability testing tools, codenamed ‘Simfire,’ aimed to help accelerate the adoption of Desktop and mobile Architecture for System Hardware (DASH) specification, a web services-based management technology that enables IT professionals to remotely manage desktop and mobile PCs from anywhere in the world, regardless of the state of the remote PC.

“AMD recognizes that management interoperability is a core concern for end users, and we share our ecosystem partners’ belief that this is best addressed through open standards like DASH,” said Ben Williams, vice president, Commercial Strategy and Solutions. “Management interoperability directly addresses the costs and complexity of IT management by providing a common way for systems to access and exchange management information across the entire IT infrastructure. This increases flexibility and choice for our customers, while helping them lower overall total cost of ownership and more effectively respond to business needs.”

“For management, you need interoperability on all levels. How you run management on the system is not a simple process,” Margaret Lewis, director of commercial solutions at AMD told internetnews.com. “All hardware components in a computer must be able to interoperate and speak with each other, then speak with the OS, then the OS has to speak with management software.”

The Simfire tools allow vendors to test whether their products meet DASH standard and help facilitate the availability of interoperable desktop and notebook computers from multiple vendors as long as they are all using DASH.

The tools are based on an open test framework, called Open Test Manager, which is part of the Open Web Services for Management (“WS-Management”) project, to which AMD has already contributed numerous test cases, utilities and enhancements.

“With these tools being open sourced and freely available, we will work with hardware partners like HP, Dell and Broadcom,” said Lewis. “Everyone can use these tools to test interoperability; they are not AMD-specific in any way.”

Simfire tools are a joint development effort from AMD, Microsoft, Avocent, Tyan and Renesas. The tools are currently in beta stage.

Related:

Entry was posted on Tuesday, March 27th, 2007 at 5:23 am under Open source, Technology.

Read more entries by Ruben Francia.
Stumble It!