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IBM Adds Videogame Console Chips to Mainframes
GoIBMPS3 writes "Soon the powerful 'Cell' microprocessor that fuels Sony's PlayStation 3 console will be available in IBM mainframe computers. The intent is to allow high-performance machines to run complex online games and virtual worlds. 'The integration initially will be accomplished by networking the mainframe with IBM's Cell blades, but eventually the Cells will be plugged more directly into the mainframes via PCI adapter cards, IBM said. It's the latest twist in IBM's years-long effort to keep mainframes not only relevant but also cutting-edge. IBM is touting the partnership as an example of hybrid computing--a trend sweeping the high-performance computing industry as companies augment general-purpose servers with special-purpose chips that to accelerate particular tasks.'"
PCI is doubtless the cheapest option available. Many systems have multiple PCI buses, for example I used to have a system with a SiS chipset whose slots were split between two PCI buses, and it had an AGP8x and at least one additional internal PCI bus; it had both 32 and 64 bit PCI devices onboard (a RAID controller was on a 64 bit, 33MHz bus internally.) If the IBM mainframes that use PCI buses have enough of them, then it might be worth it. They might be envisioning this on a "mainframe" cluster, where you could distribute them throughout the network. Or of course, the person who wrote the article could simply be ignorant enough to not differentiate between multiple flavors of PCI. If we look at some other Stephen Shankland articles on C|Net we find that they tend to be very simple and formulaic, without any technical detail whatsoever. Just putting those letters "PCI" into the article must have just about killed him. Normally if you see a "word" in an article by him that isn't plain English, it's the name of some company.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
The Cell has never been intended solely to be a "game chip." It was always intended to be useful in large supercomputer type environments.
The Folding At Home client is an example of a large clustered-based application that uses the Cell as a math processor, as is the recent "real-time raytracing" demo. Both are applications of the Cell in a "mainframe" type environment.
So it's not surprising that IBM would be releasing Cell-based machines - that's been the plan all along. It was never intended just to be used in the PS3.
You are in a maze of twisty little relative jumps, all alike.
the only reason people still use the AS/400 or any other IBM mainframe
An AS/400 is a midrange, not a mainframe. Despite having a large span of scalability, the AS/400 only overlaps the bottom end of the mainframe in performance.
Also, the reasons people buy AS/400's and mainframes are as follows:
Extremely high reliability and security
Performance and scalability
Protection of software investment
justify scrapping for something modern
Do you realize that the AS400 hardware and operating system is more "modern" than Unix? Did you realize that the as400 hardware and operating system have key features that other OS's lack today but most people are moving that direction? Do some research on security and the as400, for example.
the AS/400 or iSeries as it's been renamed, could be replaced in a heartbeat by a LAMP server with an AJAX frontend for 1% of the cost.
Have you ever seen an AS/400 that required even an operator? High end, sure, but small to medium business the controller puts in the backup tape and that's about it. Hardware/software, you're right, but unless you include support salaries then you are comparing apples to oranges, although you could make the exact same argument about Sun/Oracle being more expensive than LAMP.