On Fri, Nov 14, 2008 at 7:24 PM, Ingvaldson, Scott
<scott.ingvaldson@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Channeling Steve, does IBM really charge 20 times the price for System i
memory as for System p memory?
As far as my experience goes, memory prices are completely arbitrary.
You can buy noname memory (Kingston Value, Transcend, etc.) at rather
low prices, somewhat around the 200-400$ for 8GB, depending on what
type of module - the older the modules, the more they cost.
Then there are x86 memory prices - they usually cost 2x to 4x of what
noname memory modules cost, and they're pretty much the same for all
the big vendors (HP, Dell, IBM).
And then there are the prices for non-standardized platforms, like HPs
Itanium or IBMs POWER line. These memory prices were created with the
"think of a big number and double it" philosophy.
The M15 are an interesting offender, they only offer 4 memory slots
(an extremely low number, owed due to the NUMA architecture of
POWER6), and you must fill four slots at once. This means if you ever
want to upgrade such a machine, you'll need to buy all memory sticks
new. The POWER5/POWER5+ 520/515/525 only offered 8 memory slots (a
normal number though low for the price class, for example an x3650
offers 12 slots), but at least you only needed to install pairs and
could upgrade.
Problem is, if you install 3rd party memory, you'll void all your
warranty and support agreements, making the discussion essentially
worthless - it's a standard tactic of vendor-lock-in, and everybody
with non-standardized platforms does it.
midrange.com
