Concentrated Juice

Power Consumption of Selected Mainframe Series

The Low End and High End MIPS/KVA are simply the ratios of the smallest and largest figures, respectively, for the series.  It's possible to configure a skinny machine with high MIPS, getting more efficiency, or a fat machine with a slow engine, getting less, but these numbers seemed as good a way as any to sketch out the range.  For the record, the Multiprise 3000, when fully configured, includes disk storage and that accounts for its poor high end power efficiency based on our crude calculations; none of the other machines in this table accept internal disks.  The HP server at the bottom of the table is typical of today's four-way X86 midrange boxes and is configured with dual power supplies, 16 GB of main memory and 1.2 TB of internal disk.  The MIPS power ratings are based on 6 to 10 clock cycles per equivalent mainframe instruction.

MAINFRAME
MODEL
INTRO
YEAR
INTRO
QUARTER
LOW
MIPS
HIGH
MIPS
LOW
POWER
HIGH
POWER
LOW END
MIPS/KVA
HIGH END
MIPS/KVA
z9 2005 3Q 581 17802 6.8 18.3 85.4 972.8
z890 2004 2Q 26 1365 1.5 4.7 17.3 290.4
z990 2003 2Q 450 9060 4.5 15.8 100.0 573.4
z800 2002 1Q 80 636 3.2 3.2 25.0 198.8
z900 2000 1Q 239 3129 5.3 13.7 45.1 228.4
Multiprise 3000 1999 4Q 60 200 1.32 3.96 45.5 50.5
9672-G6 1999 2Q 178 1644 1 5.5 178.0 298.9
9672-G5 1998 3Q 88 1069 0.6 5.5 146.7 194.4
9672-G4 1997 2Q 49 447 0.6 6.4 81.7 69.8
Multiprise 2000 1996 3Q 3.6 142 0.54 5.8 6.7 24.5
9672-G3 1996 3Q 33 374 0.6 5 55.0 74.8
9672-G2 1995 3Q 15 171 0.6 4.2 25.0 40.7
9672-G1 1994 3Q 15 66 1.4 2.3 10.7 28.7
9121 1991 1Q 5 111 5.1 23.7 1.0 4.7
9021 1990 3Q 22 485 35.6 144 0.6 3.4
HP DL580-G3 2005 3Q 1400 2500 1 1 1400 2500