
Cheaper software prices?
Perhaps, until <software vendor> realises what's going on and rejigs the pricing...
Yes, Nehalem is fast. If you want to see the dramatic effect that Intel's move to the QuickPath Interconnect and integrated memory controllers has had on performance with its "Nehalem EP" Xeon 5500 processors, take a gander at the first results on the TPC-C online transaction processing benchmark test. Hewlett-Packard's two- …
I don't know what will. I've been desperately trying to talk HP into porting HP-UX to the little endian Nehalem because otherwise as I see it HP-UX is dead. Even with Tukwila, assuming it ever gets released, the Nehalem EX will blow it away before it's even released, and at much lower cost. Unless Intel has a hidden endian switch in Nehalem EX I don't really see how HP-UX can survive unless they port it to little endian Xeons. Even Solaris would run faster on an eight core Nehalem EX than HP-UX will on Tukwila.