IBM Chops Prices on 256 GB Memory Chunks, CPU Upgrades for p5 590 and 595

Published: August 31, 2006

by Timothy Prickett Morgan

Big Unix shops must be giving Big Blue some grief concerning the cost of selected upgrades from the Power5-based p5 590 and 595 to the newer Power5+ kickers to these boxes. Why do I surmise this? Because IBM has cut the price of activating memory on these machines and on converting from Power5 to Power5+ processors on these machines.

Specifically, IBM has cut the price of feature 7280, which activates memory in 256 GB chunks on the DDR2 memory cards for the p5 590, a 32-core server, and the p5 595, a 64-core server. The price has dropped by 30 percent to $452,864. That works out to $1,769 per GB, which is still quite pricey for DDR2 main memory. And you have to buy blank memory cards on top of this cost, which are also quite expensive, so the cost per GB is actually higher. Other enterprise-class servers have similarly high memory prices, by the way, and unless something radical happens in the computer industry, memory for big iron will always cost more than it does on low-end boxes because vendors can charge a premium because of lock-in and they do some extra testing to make sure it is rock solid.

IBM also cut the price of upgrading the base 16-core books using 1.65 GHz Power5 processors to the 2.1 GHz Power5+ books. This upgrade does not include the cost of activating the cores on these books, but just the swapping of the electronics complex that includes the processors and their associated cache memory. IBM did not cut all such book upgrade prices, but just one, moving from feature 7981 to feature 8790. This upgrade used to cost $51,400, but IBM has cut the price by 24 percent to $39,100. Paradoxically, IBM raised the price of converting activated 1.65 GHz Power5 cores to activated 2.1 GHz Power5+ cores by 16 percent, from $12,850 to $14,925 per core. Basically, IBM has shifted the cost of an upgrade from the book to the cores. If you have more than six cores activated in one of these books, that means you are going to pay more for your upgrade. If you have fewer than that, the price will be the same of lower.