Looks like IBM is selling "low end" Linux-only versions of their Power5 servers and are aiming the pricing at Sun's AMD64 line.
You have a few choices from a box with 1 cpu that is a 1.5ghz Power5 proccessor with 512megs RAM ($5k) up to a 4-way Power5 box with 1.65ghz proccessors and 8gigs of ram (23k)
You can choose to buy them OS-less or get Redhat subscription help with it. So you could easily run any PPC-ported distro on it. ( I beleive. IBM calls their stuff the POWER archetecture and use the terms PowerPC and POWER interchangably in documentation. Anyways on my Debian Ibook I have choices of a power4 kernel from apt-get, which I don't use obviously.)
One of the interesting thing is that it uses IBM virtualization technology. This is from the same company that created virtual memory, these sound like they will be setup similar to the mainframes that people have been using for decades. You have the ability to setup proccessing partitions to run various programs and OSes in (should be able to run OS X in it, too, btw with maconlinux.. Mac's firmware is now software-based.. I think).
<sidetrack>
I also beleive that this is what you'll use with CELL-based workstations (if they ever get created). You will have a low-level VM-style OS that will take care of the odd archatecture and memory management stuff (sort of like a software based controller, instead of a hardware one) and any client OSes will see the machine as a managed PowerPC machine, thus making porting software relatively easy. This is almost the exact same way that IBM has always handled moving from archetecture to archatecture in it's mainframe systems since it's originally started making these things in the 60's.
</sidetrack>
Now with Sun you have Solaris 10 and all of it's happeness. You have a wide veriaty of machines to choose from from Sparc to Intel to AMD64. You also have the option of running Linux and Windows on them.
So if somebody handed you $10k and said: "we want a unix-variant-based server to handle a fairly heafty database load, and we need long term corporate support contracts"
Which would you pick?
IBM eSeries OpenPower server?
http://www-1.ibm.com/servers/eserver/openpower/hardware/720.html
or Sun's Entry Level servers?
http://store.sun.com/CMTemplat...roduct_CP&catid=111394
or maybe a Sparc?
Or something completely different?
You have 10k and they needed to yesterday.
You have a few choices from a box with 1 cpu that is a 1.5ghz Power5 proccessor with 512megs RAM ($5k) up to a 4-way Power5 box with 1.65ghz proccessors and 8gigs of ram (23k)
You can choose to buy them OS-less or get Redhat subscription help with it. So you could easily run any PPC-ported distro on it. ( I beleive. IBM calls their stuff the POWER archetecture and use the terms PowerPC and POWER interchangably in documentation. Anyways on my Debian Ibook I have choices of a power4 kernel from apt-get, which I don't use obviously.)
One of the interesting thing is that it uses IBM virtualization technology. This is from the same company that created virtual memory, these sound like they will be setup similar to the mainframes that people have been using for decades. You have the ability to setup proccessing partitions to run various programs and OSes in (should be able to run OS X in it, too, btw with maconlinux.. Mac's firmware is now software-based.. I think).
<sidetrack>
I also beleive that this is what you'll use with CELL-based workstations (if they ever get created). You will have a low-level VM-style OS that will take care of the odd archatecture and memory management stuff (sort of like a software based controller, instead of a hardware one) and any client OSes will see the machine as a managed PowerPC machine, thus making porting software relatively easy. This is almost the exact same way that IBM has always handled moving from archetecture to archatecture in it's mainframe systems since it's originally started making these things in the 60's.
</sidetrack>
Now with Sun you have Solaris 10 and all of it's happeness. You have a wide veriaty of machines to choose from from Sparc to Intel to AMD64. You also have the option of running Linux and Windows on them.
So if somebody handed you $10k and said: "we want a unix-variant-based server to handle a fairly heafty database load, and we need long term corporate support contracts"
Which would you pick?
IBM eSeries OpenPower server?
http://www-1.ibm.com/servers/eserver/openpower/hardware/720.html
or Sun's Entry Level servers?
http://store.sun.com/CMTemplat...roduct_CP&catid=111394
or maybe a Sparc?
Or something completely different?
You have 10k and they needed to yesterday.
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