Slashdot Mirror
IBM Launches p690
edyavno writes: "IBM just announced the launch of their new high-end Unix server p690. It's based on its new Power 4 chip, and is in the same category as just announced Sun's SunFire 15K. It also includes some mainframe level features and can be used either as a single large server or divided into up to 16 "virtual" servers, running any combination of AIX 5L and Linux. Here's yahoo article, and here it is from IBM itself."
The article makes some rather misleading comments, such as the stock price. . .
You can't directly compare stock prices without taking into account things like the number of shares outstanding.
For example, Sun has almost twice as many shares of stock out there, so even though it's stock price is lower, it's not quite as far off as it appears. (Market capitalization for IBM is $168B, and for Sun is $29B).
As things stand right now, I'd be very surprised if IBM made a bit for Sun, (although, as you say, stranger things have happened). IBM's been gaining in the Unix market for the past year or so, I think they'd be better off to wait a good bit longer before doing anything so drastic.
Topher
There are two variants on the CPU architecture, which was co-developed by IBM and Motorola.
The PowerPC (with recent releases being known as G3/G4) variant is a 32 bit CPU, primarily found in Macintosh computers.
The Power4 (and Power3 before it) is a 64 bit CPU (such as an Alpha or UltraSPARC), intended for use in high end workstations/servers, and found in IBM's RS/6000 line, AS/400 line, etc.
So, they both stem from the same root, but they reflect different intended purposes.
Topher
The AIX 5L release is "Linux-capable" - it should be able to run most "vanilla" Linux apps with recompilation.
That said, IBM has been pushing several of their AIX selling points into Linux, like their Journalling File System logical volume manager. Their system management tools are pretty good (no SMIT cracks, please) and they have good network management tools. I got out of the crystal ball business a while ago, but I imagine IBM would like to be spending their money "productizing" Linux on their platforms rather than supporting their own OS.
I'd say they're trying to take a piece of Sun's pie, and maybe try to keep some folks from moving to Win2K. Looks like a good price/performance system if you need that much to start with.
I love vegetarians - some of my favorite foods are vegetarians.
Actually do you have any idea why the apple kids just dont get together and build a box w/ macos10.1 or whatever the flavor of the day is on it? Sure it would cost 25,000 but it make a great advertising campaign.. yes no matter how you cut it macintosh 50 times faster than intel/windows, or some such (I am making this number up). Incidentally back the intel chips were at ppro 200 macintosh briefly allowed clones. Well we snagged a slew of the compaq clones and installed AIX on it.. the xl* compilers all port code fine (pwr2/ppc etc options) and the generic compile was *binary compatible* across architectures.. that is fucking cool, you could take SP2 code and run it on a mac :). In any case the practical upshot was since ppc was a subset (at least back then) of the pwr* chips, it would be relatively easy to do a port to the pwr4. A few high end graphics people will buy it since they need their tools, and *much more importantly* it really would make for some kick ass advertising. IE the cost of that port
would easily pay for itself.. -avi
Hang on. LPAR is available straight away. It's only the dynamic aspect that will not be there - you will need to reboot to change partition sizes.
Whilst we're on the subject it's worth mentioning that Regatta allows partitions down to a granularity of 1 CPU (and I/O slot) - StarCat does not. This is aimed firmly at the consolidation market, and I suspect to keep people migrating away from SP environments happy.
I'd be very very nervous about resizing partitions/domains on the fly in the kind of environment this is aimed at - irrespective of whether the capability was there!
Zack
"... and more and more now there are all kinds of electronic goodies available" -- Pink Floyd 1972
You might also want to look at P/E ratios. IBM is 20.70 while Sun is still up at 31.03. Also while you are right that you can't directly compare stock prices, you might want to take a look at the charts for the last year for each company. Sun has been dropping, shedding over 80% of its value. IBM has remained relatively steady, bouncing around between $80-120.
Lasers Controlled Games!
If you want to talk scale let's talk SGI: 1028 processor system with SSI (Single System Image), and >700GBs (not Gbps mind you) interconnect speed. SGI really has their act together when it comes to scaling.
Now onto IBM's POWER4--
Since IBM bought Sequent they are in the process of migrating the NUMA technology into the pSeries servers. If you look a little closer at the specifications they mention that it will be possible to interconnect 16 p690s together. The overall question remains, will this be an instance of NUMA interconnect (like SGI et al) or will it use the SP Switch2. If this is NUMA and they can do SSI then they will be pretty close to SGI's sweet spot: 512 P SSI systems.
Now onto a comparison of the UltraSPARC 3--
The first problem is packaging size. Essentially Sun has a huge package for 1 USPARC III processor which is about the same size as 8 POWER4 processors packaged in an MCM. This means that for the same size your processor density is 8 fold greater. Additionally, in the labs at my work place we have a 280R with 2x USPARC IIIs in them, and the machine sucks at least 560 Watts of power--if you count the fact that it has 2x power supplies internally means that there is at least the potential to suck 1160 watts, ouch that really hurts in the Bay Area! Not only that what is Sun's story after USPARC III, and take into account the notion that it took them FOREVER to get the StarCat et al out the door.
For a comparison--
Now if you look at the numbers from the p680 (S85) it is obvious that it is possible to directly compare this machine with the E10k and perhaps the E15k (maybe not here though). IBM's notion is that even though you have a whole lot of things if you do not use them efficiently then why do you got'em? IBM was able to beat out the E10k on stadard performance benchmarks. Even if you take a more conservative stance and say that in reality you would see 50% of the performance of each of these machines, with almost 1/3 the number of processors the S85 (and even the S80) were able to hang with and beat the E10k. This is impressive, and states that Sun really does not have the engineering leadership they claim. In fact all Sun really has is mind share and market share. If they fail in maintaining market share, their number is up because they lose the mind share game after that!
Feel free to send any flames/observations to: Michael.Hay@hds.com!