And people care less and less. Price/perf of POWER + AIX compared to EPYC and Linux is simply nowhere close. Only corruption (kickbacks) keeps it alive.
At least they are still innovating. With basically no competition in that space besides their own older products -- they still come out with new stuff that's fun to read about -- unlike Intel....
I disagree with this statement, in some ways IBM is like Intel, similar to Intel being stuck with old compatibly which make it struggle to advance the technology, but Intel does what it can by mobilizing the cpu and introducing new technology like AVX and AVX 512.
But going multiple cores, is just a band aid in my opinion. what needs to happen is advance the core from within. But likely similar to IBM, doing so introduces software compatibility issues and it hard to advance software from tons of software.
If you remember when 64 bit came out, Intel want to people to I64 even though extending x86 is a much simple technique and could have be done Intel wanted to break software compatible with x86 but people did not buy into it.
But IBM has been known to mess up the industry, I had a personal professional experience, back about 27 years ago, I work as lead developer on PC-MOS/386 and I was working Windows /386 compatibility and I wanted work on DPMI support but Windows would not allow it. I did a message on Microsoft Composerv forum and got the following response "Not because of your company but another company, only people that can respond to your question is Bill Gates or Steve Balmer" This of course is IBM with OS/2 - Windows did not allow it's self to be DPMI client.
This is not the first time IBM has messed up, they required second source CPU compatibility for Microsoft in original IBM PC - which started for good or bad Clones pcs and eventually IBM try to change with PS/2 line but eventually only thing came out is 3 1/2 in discs which are no longer needed
You're forgetting about the supercomputing world where IBM is still very much alive and kicking butt. Summit at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory is the fastest supercomputer in the world and uses POWER9 CPU's coupled with Nvidia Tesla GPU's.
Would love to know the price of a 16 socket server... yeah I know it's not for us mere mortals.
A 2S EPYC 7742 gets you 128 cores and 256 threads for $14,000. This thing would get you 3 times the number of cores and 6 times the number of thread for 50x the price probably? And that might be lowballing it.
On the other hand, lots of people in the HPC crowd, the DoD and a DoE and various other agencies who buy these don't care about hardware cost anyway.
These guys are treading down the same path towards technical irrelevance as SPARC. "Remember POWER?" That's going to be the new refrain, to replace "Remember Alpha?"
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peevee - Monday, August 19, 2019 - link
And people care less and less. Price/perf of POWER + AIX compared to EPYC and Linux is simply nowhere close. Only corruption (kickbacks) keeps it alive.extide - Monday, August 19, 2019 - link
At least they are still innovating. With basically no competition in that space besides their own older products -- they still come out with new stuff that's fun to read about -- unlike Intel....HStewart - Monday, August 19, 2019 - link
I disagree with this statement, in some ways IBM is like Intel, similar to Intel being stuck with old compatibly which make it struggle to advance the technology, but Intel does what it can by mobilizing the cpu and introducing new technology like AVX and AVX 512.But going multiple cores, is just a band aid in my opinion. what needs to happen is advance the core from within. But likely similar to IBM, doing so introduces software compatibility issues and it hard to advance software from tons of software.
If you remember when 64 bit came out, Intel want to people to I64 even though extending x86 is a much simple technique and could have be done Intel wanted to break software compatible with x86 but people did not buy into it.
But IBM has been known to mess up the industry, I had a personal professional experience, back about 27 years ago, I work as lead developer on PC-MOS/386 and I was working Windows /386 compatibility and I wanted work on DPMI support but Windows would not allow it. I did a message on Microsoft Composerv forum and got the following response "Not because of your company but another company, only people that can respond to your question is Bill Gates or Steve Balmer" This of course is IBM with OS/2 - Windows did not allow it's self to be DPMI client.
This is not the first time IBM has messed up, they required second source CPU compatibility for Microsoft in original IBM PC - which started for good or bad Clones pcs and eventually IBM try to change with PS/2 line but eventually only thing came out is 3 1/2 in discs which are no longer needed
levizx - Monday, August 19, 2019 - link
Or maybe you can offer free software update to lure them to x86?zdz - Monday, August 19, 2019 - link
AIX? Meh. Think POWER + Linux.Ninhalem - Monday, August 19, 2019 - link
You're forgetting about the supercomputing world where IBM is still very much alive and kicking butt. Summit at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory is the fastest supercomputer in the world and uses POWER9 CPU's coupled with Nvidia Tesla GPU's.HStewart - Monday, August 19, 2019 - link
It kind of funny how all the companies are saying they have the world fastest super computer,Intel and AMD and now IBM.
But things have change because of remember when x86 was just for home and IBM was mainframe
mode_13h - Monday, August 19, 2019 - link
They need a lot more volume than that, to stay viable.Threska - Monday, August 19, 2019 - link
Wonder if these non-caring "people" are already vested in x86?Phynaz - Monday, August 19, 2019 - link
These aren’t PCs. Lots of people care, including super computing centers.nyoungman - Monday, August 19, 2019 - link
The OpenPOWER Summit is happening at the same time, with a livestream.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bpAv91NszoQ
The roadmap has a PCIe Gen4 and a new memory subsystem for POWER9 in 2020, and POWER10 with PCIe Gen5 coming in 2021.
mode_13h - Monday, August 19, 2019 - link
They already had PCIe 4.0 for a couple years, now. POWER was the first kid on the block to have it.Threska - Monday, August 19, 2019 - link
Someone might want to run the images through a program for a little tweaking to improve clarity.Ian Cutress - Monday, August 19, 2019 - link
Click through, you get the full quality. (I mentioned during the talk)aryonoco - Monday, August 19, 2019 - link
728mm2... wow. Talk about a behemoth.Would love to know the price of a 16 socket server... yeah I know it's not for us mere mortals.
A 2S EPYC 7742 gets you 128 cores and 256 threads for $14,000. This thing would get you 3 times the number of cores and 6 times the number of thread for 50x the price probably? And that might be lowballing it.
On the other hand, lots of people in the HPC crowd, the DoD and a DoE and various other agencies who buy these don't care about hardware cost anyway.
mode_13h - Monday, August 19, 2019 - link
14 nm? *yawn*I guess that's due to some GloFo contract?
These guys are treading down the same path towards technical irrelevance as SPARC. "Remember POWER?" That's going to be the new refrain, to replace "Remember Alpha?"
aryonoco - Monday, August 19, 2019 - link
10nm is not suitable for a high powered chip, and 7nm is nowhere near mature enough to fab a 728mm2 chip.