large POWER8 servers are out:
IBM has announced larger POWER8 servers. The largest, the P880 has 16-sockets and 16TB RAM. If you consider that Intels largest 8-sockets boxes has 12TB RAM, the POWER8 servers have little more to offer over x86. And Dell(?) will sell cheap POWER8 boxes with 2-sockets for somewhere like 2000 quid. That is not much. POWER8 is not high margin anymore, and that is the reason is killing it off.
Accidentally, have you heard that IBM is going to kill off AIX too?
http://news.cnet.com/IBM-Linux-is-the-logical-successor/2100-1016_3-982512.html
It all makes sense. POWER8 is the last POWER generation. IBM Cell is killed off because of disappointments. AIX is going to be killed off, IBM has declared. IBM sold x86 hardware, chips, storage, etc. IBM is exiting all hardware, and transforming into a consulting company competing with Accenture. Mainframes are stagnating, there are no new customers, only old customers are upgrading.
Bye, bye POWER and AIX. HP has also left the high end server segment. Left is Oracle who is betting more money than Sun ever did on large Unix servers. Everybody else are dead. And Fujitsu too, are selling large 64-socket Unix servers. Oracle and Fujitsu are the only one left in the high end Unix segment.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
