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I disagree, IBM is a multifaceted company. These kinds of projects fall under what used to be called IBM Global Services https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_Glob
by kev009 9y ago
I disagree, IBM is a multifaceted company.
These kinds of projects fall under what used to be called IBM Global Services https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_Global_Services https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_Global_Services. It could be compared somewhat to EDS (HP), Accenture, Perot Systems (Dell) etc. I've never heard of over-delivery from any of these kinds of outsourcing arrangements, they always seem so obviously destined for boondoggle.
IBM proper, the one that makes mainframes and POWER and DB2 and a ton of operating systems and storage etc is very much a technology company. Some of their best products have the worst sales and marketing efforts. I'm working directly with the senior leadership of the POWER group right now and there are no salesmen in sight.. the technology will either sell itself or not. When we met in person the first time the GM told me "we can build any kind of computer you want" - meaning microarchitecture changes, SERDES configuration, new board layout, sheet metal, OS, application tweaks. Not a lot of companies can do that. There is hubris, less technology, and lack of technical value at FANG or most startups or whatever your benchmark is in comparison.
IBM Research is one of the only remaining great industrial research organizations https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_Research https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_Research. Their results speak for themselves.
- eeks 9y agoI was looking for a proper answer to that parent comment. I could not have come with a better one.
- stochastic_monk 9y agoI’m surprised the Stratix FPGA platform isn’t getting more marketing. Half a TiB/s memory bandwidth [0] (white paper) when GPU’s memory transfer is the bulk of the overhead could help Intel make up for lost gains in SIMD application marketshare. [0]: https://www.altera.com/content/dam/altera-www/global/en_US/pdfs/literature/wp/wp-01264-stratix10mx-devices-solve-memory-bandwidth-challenge.pdf https://www.altera.com/content/dam/altera-www/global/en_US/p...
- kev009 9y agoMaybe misparented comment? HP has GenZ, IBM is going to move from DDR or DDR buffers to CAPI attached RAM -- expect to see HBM2 attached to CPUs in 2019. I'd be happy to discuss that kind of thing in email.
- stochastic_monk 9y agoCertainly misplaced! It was late, and somehow I scrambled IBM Research and Intel. I was thinking about how Intel's marketing is generally quite bad, whether it's unfair benchmarks or not knowing which products to actually push. Please disregard.
- someguy12 9y agoAlthough this is misplaced, I'll reply anyway. There isn't more buzz around the Stratix 10 MX because it's a phantom chip. Intel's December press release clearly states that the chips are available but you can not buy one of these chips today. A blogger did some research and came to the conclusion that the press release claims were simply not true: https://semiaccurate.com/2017/12/19/intels-claims-fpgas-hbm-dont-hold-water/ https://semiaccurate.com/2017/12/19/intels-claims-fpgas-hbm-... In contrast, Xilinx released a video of their competing chip working with all channels running at the full 460GB/s on day 1 of silicon bring up: https://www.xilinx.com/video/fpga/first-virtex-ultrascale-plus-hbm-enabled-fpga.html https://www.xilinx.com/video/fpga/first-virtex-ultrascale-pl...
- dpweb 9y agoYeah I was referring IBM Global Services. And my intention not to bash IBM or even IGS, but describe WHY some, not just IGS but many others - mega-projects blow up. My fault for not making that clear. I’d edit the post but I can’t now. Their technology LOBs I’m sure are a different story.