IBM's New Power 7 Server Lineup: More Speed

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nevertell

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Wow, imagine running pr0n off of an 8tb ramddisk.

But seriousley, If I had at least 10 gb of ram, I'd run a script that is executed as fast as possible in the boot sequence to copy my whole /boot, /etc, /usr, /tmp and /var on it. And a script for shutdown so it's all copied back to disk in the end.
 

hellwig

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The processor comes in four-, six- and eight-core configurations and is aimed squarely at Intel's Itanium and Sun's UltraSparc. IBM has been quite aggressive in pursuing those customers with offers of migration assistance in moving off the old hardware.
I really don't see how this is possible. Aren't the architectures completely different? Wouldn't you have to convince new customers to recompile their entire codebase (or, at the very least, obtain pre-compiled copies from the vendor under some sort of maintenance contract)? Seems to me, this is just an upgrade for existing IBM customers, and an option for brand new customers. I don't think you'd convince anyone to move from Itanium or UltraSpark.
 

bison88

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IBM Power CPU lineups are hardly interesting since their main client (Apple) dropped them 5 years ago. They do tend to find themselves in IBM's superscomputers which are always fun to watch in the race to an Exaflop.
 
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hellwig, much code today is not locked to a specific processor as it was in the old days of assembler coding. Ahh I remember it fondly. Code is written by compilers that don't care about the hardware and firmware underpinnings because such is isolated by additional layers of coding that has been standardized. For example Java is pretty portable, can run most anywhere on most anything without having to recompile. Now if you want to take advantage of a specific unique feature that the p box has or you move say from a Weblogic to a WebSphere server you might have to do some recompiling to take advantage of specific unique features.
 
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It's doubtful I could be convinced to upgrade from the AS/400 we still use for medical records to something they are offering.. if only because I know it'll cost a pretty penny to 'migrate'
 

mayne92

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^^^ Given what I've seen in the intellectual power of some Tom's readers, I feel many would actually click and do business with the spammer above...
 

xrodney

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[citation][nom]hellwig[/nom]I really don't see how this is possible. Aren't the architectures completely different? Wouldn't you have to convince new customers to recompile their entire codebase (or, at the very least, obtain pre-compiled copies from the vendor under some sort of maintenance contract)? Seems to me, this is just an upgrade for existing IBM customers, and an option for brand new customers. I don't think you'd convince anyone to move from Itanium or UltraSpark.[/citation]
Personally i am supporting both and find P5-7 systems more stable and reliable then itanium. Also "offers of migration assistance in moving off the old hardware" is about moving/migrate data and software to new system/platform.
 

powerbaselx

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[citation][nom]hellwig[/nom]I really don't see how this is possible. Aren't the architectures completely different? Wouldn't you have to convince new customers to recompile their entire codebase (or, at the very least, obtain pre-compiled copies from the vendor under some sort of maintenance contract)? Seems to me, this is just an upgrade for existing IBM customers, and an option for brand new customers. I don't think you'd convince anyone to move from Itanium or UltraSpark.[/citation]

You're completelly out of enterprise market! HW vendors do this all the time with SW and database migration programs that usually don't take too long. I think Itanium will dye soon without Microsoft support anymore. It's the more expensive Unix processor out there!
 

powerbaselx

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[citation][nom]bison88[/nom]IBM Power CPU lineups are hardly interesting since their main client (Apple) dropped them 5 years ago. They do tend to find themselves in IBM's superscomputers which are always fun to watch in the race to an Exaflop.[/citation]

Another person completly out of the enterprise market!
AFAIU there are several distincts aspects there.
First it was tough for IBM to loose Apple for Intel since IBM was closer to AMD at that point and already was pushing the POWER cpu's market. Anyway today no one related enterprise POWER cpu's with Apple since Apple don't belong to the server market and neither IBM belong to the desktop and consumer market.
POWER cpu's developed so much, using base technologies that Intel also uses (that High-K stuff in 32nm and 28nm chips...) that in Unix servers are just ahead of its main competitors in most important business applications.
Another thing are the mainframes which today IBM is one of the last companies to produce it depending on its own techology. CRAY and HP uses Intel cpu's. I think Fujitsu also... anyway, the banks depend on it's extreme reliability and very secure architecture based on HW encriptation., etc

Just my 2 cents on the subject!
 
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