IBM 'rereleases' Power6+
October's launch was so good they did it again
Wednesday, 29 April 2009, 12:17
BIGGISH BLUE launched some Power Systems hardware yesterday armed with something it called Power6+.
However those reporting the launch had a sudden feeling of deja vu as we had seen the Power 6+ released last October. Quite why IBM failed to mention this is anyone's guess.
This week's announcement sticks the Power6+ into the entry level Power 520 server running at 4.7 GHz and the midrange Power 550 server running at 5 GHz.
As IT Jungle points out, these are not exactly new servers either. They were launched in April of last year with Power6 chips. So it appears that IBM is putting old wine in old skins. µ
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IBM Power 6+ is ddr2 Server Blade. Its Faster, About 6 ghz/s max. Yet, It Takes SoftWare From IBM Called: AIX.
Do YOU UnderStand AIX? Of Course, Ultee', My Invisible RoomMate Might, Says: Artificial Intelligence X.
X is Word for Day. ST drashek
I would like to see how OS X would do on them. Too bad Apple dumped the Power PC line. Maybe they could have kept them for their high end desktop and server computers but I guess that would have made things much more difficult as far as writting and maintaining the OS.
Here is a quote I looked up up about the Power 6 chip,
"Power6 chip’s bandwidth of about 300 gigabytes per second could download the entire iTunes library in 60 seconds, which is 30 times faster than HP’s Itanium."
Then there is the question, "Will it play Doom?"
This Machine will run few server forms of Linux, too. Maybe X is LineX. Some Points: Its AMD Opteronee', Made Out of pure Spamonie'. I Love Christmas Flaours.
Some DrawBacks, IBM Charges $500 Core Yearly to USE its AIX & Addtional charge for extra hyp transport/threads+ Service Fees. It Can Take Whole Bunch of Processor Card in terratine Styling. Its Wee 12.5% Faster than Power6. Cost 6K+. Yet you can add minimum of 72 Gb Memory. More Processors, more Memory, 2-cpu=144 gb, etc. Guessing its limit is about 1.5 terrabytes if you added 8 feet of cpu cards, maybe More. Snake Those Cards in large S Pattern. STeWie drashek.
uh, PowerPC for high end parts? They switched to Intel because Intel were more powerful, iirc.
uh, Intel for high end parts? They (Microsoft and Sony) switched to PowerPC around the same time because: more powerful / power-efficient. See also: top500.org. Your post should read: Intel better at performance/defelopment costs/dollar at the time (pre-Nehalem). Cheers
@ ssj4Gogeta: It seems you have no fsck clue ...
They switched to Intel because they couldn't 'compete' against the PC market. In short moving to Intel opened the doors to new customers = more $$
Apple could have easily beaten the x86 market in the 90's by opening up their market to other system builders, and open sourcing Mac os.
The Risc based power5 was immensely powerful for it's time.
Imagine a quad core Risc based processor running at 6 ghz and having HT links. it would blow away anything out there today.
I'm not a Mac fanboy, I'm an AMD/ATI guy. but even I know that RISC based processors are absurdly fast. the only reason Apple switched was because they shot themselves in the foot by being so stingy with their technology.
If they had played their cards right in the 90's they would have had a much bigger market footprint to allow developers to make native risc software and make a profit. They switched because Intel bailed them out by buying nearly 1/2 the company.
OK, it seems I had no damn clue. :)
But if PPC was more powerful, why did MS not develop for PPC? Why does x86 have more market share.
Microsoft did port Windows NT for PowerPC in ancient times. It simply did not take off. x86 have more market share because of Intel fab tech and what they call economies of scale I think. Sure, sometimes good design, too. Therefore the move probably made sense for Apple, even though nowadays they seem to earn their money rather with iphones, ipods, itunes and such which me thinks are all ARM powered. I find it just a bit sad in retrospective that modern PowerPC impementations are such gflops monsters seemingly suited for typical Mac-apps like audio, photo and video editing, or say games on iphones. Ok, gflops does not make desktops fly, see 700 Mhz PentiumIII-like performance with Linux on PS3. But hey, high numbers look nice :-) Alpha was vastly superior in any field at the time but died for similar reasons PowerPC for Desktops did. Now even Intel faltered with Itanium because of x86 (some say because of the orginal Opteron). Wonder if the years-dalayed allegedly Alpha-tech powered Itanium ever shows up. Luckily, we now have Atom vs ARM architecture war (and soon Larrabee-empowered Charly vs. Nvidia :-) Cheers
Thank you, brainee. :)
It all makes sense now.