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> Recall the early 1990's when PowerPC dinged the Pentium for being a 16W TDP part PowerPC... Up until the series 9672 (1994) when IBM changed from bipolar t

by chx 6y ago

> Recall the early 1990's when PowerPC dinged the Pentium for being a 16W TDP part PowerPC... Up until the series 9672 (1994) when IBM changed from bipolar to CMOS mainframes had water cooled CPUs (although the ES/9000 had air cooled options). Water cooling returned as an option with the zEnterprise in 2010 and the zEC12 CPU made it mandatory a few years later. These were not 16W parts. Not even 160W.

staycoolboy 6y ago
Interesting, I didn't know that. I have very little historical knowledge pre-1990 about mainframes, and by the time I started working in the field the term "server" replaced "mainframe" exclusively. In fact, during my graduate years, the mainframe & TTY terminals were replaced with IBM AIX workstations, and a big honkin file server, so I never really got to dive into it before it was gone.
- chx 6y ago
  They were not called big iron for nothing. They are not measured in racks but metric tons and such :) In 1991, a Hungarian university installed its mainframe by partially removing the roof and craning the thing in place. I am not kidding. Hard to find photos. http://hampage.hu/nosztalgia/netto/ursus/ursus.jpg http://hampage.hu/nosztalgia/netto/ursus/ursus.jpg here's a small section of it. https://www.backblaze.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/history-of-hard-drive.jpg https://www.backblaze.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/hi... look at that dainty hard drive in the back :D