Re: Power7

Yes of course the question was indeed rhetorical.

As to the performance you describe. You are very correct. Horrible, Terrible, Very Bad even. I have installed that box and watched PTFs apply for more than 4 hours. BUT the problem is not the system, it's the configuration. I don't know any designer who would configure such a box to run IBM i and then wonder why it doesn't perform. That same box with the same CPU and memory but with RAID cache and 8 drives will run freeking circles around the one you describe. It reminds me of one of Robin Williams lines in the movie Aladdin: "AWESOME COSMIC POWERS ittybittylivingspace."

Now as to 65nm vs 45nm or 32nm technology. PULEEZE! What customer is going to purchase one machine over another simply because the components of the CPU itself are a few nm larger or smaller. Sure we all like the bling bling but that just isn't why we purchase a system to run payroll!

- Larry

On 2/8/2010 3:26 PM, Lukas Beeler wrote:

On Mon, Feb 8, 2010 at 20:54, DrFranken<midrange@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Also I can drive 0.5 miles from where I sit to my favorite white box
computer store, GPC, and build a box with better performance than the
3650 for much less money. What is it about the x3650 that would make me
buy such a thing to run Windoze or Linux when the white box is so much
cheaper?

Reliability, testing, support, etc. I assume you know the reasons and
this was just a rhetorical question.

You may not care about pricing, but i do. We have several customers,
and it hurts me to have them basically buy a box which does not offer
even the slightest bit of performance (or even reliability, if we're
talking about the tapedrive) for it's money.

I'm talking about the entry Power 520, one of two cores, old 65nm tech
(32nm is state of the art), high energy usage (i measured about 300W
at idle, not that it matters much), two 150GB 15kRPM 3.5 disk drives,
software mirroring, no disk cache, no raid, 1GB of memory, DDS or DAT
tape drives. These machines are painfully slow - the tape drives need
to be repaired constantly. The LTO4 drives are of course very decent,
but add 6k to the price tag. Of course, the exactly same LTO4 drive
without a IBM Power sticker costs just 4k. But i'm sure you can
justify this.