Re:Power9 to the People
by orionblastar on Wednesday December 06, 2017 @04:25AM
(#15859758)
You do understand that this is server not PC tech? The mainframes and minicomputer that service hundreds of users at once? You remember the old client server model? IBM System/370 IBM AS/400 etc before they became System Z etc?
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But the machine shown here is not a mainframe nor a AS/400 or successor. It does not run AIX, OS/400 (pardon me: IBM i) or any of their mainframe OSes. It runs Linux.
And while I am sure it is a sweet machine that offers great performance and reliability, it is rather expensive. If you want to - especially if you mostly care about the GPU part anyway - you can get an Intel or AMD based machine for a fraction of the price.
IBM still stells the large POWER servers that run AIX or IBM i (in addition to Linux), and they still make their zSeries mainframes. But at least the latter are even more expensive.
All of these are really great machines; IBM has decades of experience building computers for some fairly demanding customers, and from what I know about these machines, it shows. But do not confuse the machine described in the article with IBM's top-shelf machines.