3 ms·

I don't follow the logic. Where are you getting your pricing information from? Why do you think power is more expensive?

walrus01 9y ago
the cheapest power8 server I have ever seen was probably 4x more expensive then the equivalent dual socket xeon. That info is a bit stale. But there is also a complete lack of good information online about actual dollar figures for power8 systems (a lot of "contact us for more info!"). The platform's pricing is aimed at the sort of CTO people who don't care about the cost of Oracle licensing. Not the sort of people who care about $/MIPS for HPC applications or cloud scale hypervisor platforms. I would very much like to be proven wrong so if you have access to some specific "this hardware spec costs this much money and you can buy it now" info, that i can compare to barebones supermicros, please do share it.
- kev009 9y ago
  Email supermicro and ask about pricing, they are trying to gauge interest currently.
- shaklee3 9y ago
  You're right in that the sticker price is much, much higher. I'm surprised you were even available to find one. IBM tends to like to keep things secret until you reach out to them, for better or for worse. I would like to see some public power 9 benchmarks to compare to xeons instead of just marketing speak as well. But I will say that your comment about $/MIPS isn't accurate. There are many people, including Oakridge national labs, who are using it because of the higher performance and v100 integration. Intel is obviously not too keen on letting Nvidia succeed.
  - walrus01 9y ago
    somehow, compared to the vast amounts of money they spend on other things, I think pricing is way down the list of things that are important to organizations like LLNL, Argonne, Sandia, Idaho National Labs, PNNL, etc. Basically everything that uses HPC for DoD top secret projects.

3 ms·

I don't follow the logic. Where are you getting your pricing information from? Why do you think power is more expensive?

by shaklee3 9y ago

walrus01 9y ago
the cheapest power8 server I have ever seen was probably 4x more expensive then the equivalent dual socket xeon. That info is a bit stale. But there is also a complete lack of good information online about actual dollar figures for power8 systems (a lot of "contact us for more info!"). The platform's pricing is aimed at the sort of CTO people who don't care about the cost of Oracle licensing. Not the sort of people who care about $/MIPS for HPC applications or cloud scale hypervisor platforms. I would very much like to be proven wrong so if you have access to some specific "this hardware spec costs this much money and you can buy it now" info, that i can compare to barebones supermicros, please do share it.
- kev009 9y ago
  Email supermicro and ask about pricing, they are trying to gauge interest currently.
- shaklee3 9y ago
  You're right in that the sticker price is much, much higher. I'm surprised you were even available to find one. IBM tends to like to keep things secret until you reach out to them, for better or for worse. I would like to see some public power 9 benchmarks to compare to xeons instead of just marketing speak as well. But I will say that your comment about $/MIPS isn't accurate. There are many people, including Oakridge national labs, who are using it because of the higher performance and v100 integration. Intel is obviously not too keen on letting Nvidia succeed.
  - walrus01 9y ago
    somehow, compared to the vast amounts of money they spend on other things, I think pricing is way down the list of things that are important to organizations like LLNL, Argonne, Sandia, Idaho National Labs, PNNL, etc. Basically everything that uses HPC for DoD top secret projects.