Power E850 Archives

IBM Gives Temporary Reprieve For Power8 Core And Memory Activations

November 14, 2022 Timothy Prickett Morgan

Big Blue is pretty generous when it comes to having features for past generations of machines available for purchase, even when they are two generations back from whatever it is currently selling. But sooner or later, IBM wants to sell the new machines and it stops selling the old stuff. Even if it is only processor and memory activations on machines that are already in the field, which is the easiest sale in the world because IBM doesn’t really have to do much.

This may be the most profitable kind of sale that Big Blue does, but sooner or later, …
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IBM’s Competitive Analysis For The Power10 Midrange Machine

August 29, 2022 Timothy Prickett Morgan

For as long as there has been a Power architecture, way back in 1995 with the advent of the custom “Cobra Muskie” PowerPC AS chips, the rule of thumb for performance is that the Power core did twice the work of an Intel core designed for server workloads. This was true in 1993, when Intel jumped in the server racket with gusto, and it is true 31 years later as the entry and midrange Power10 machines in the same performance class as the top-end X86 iron from Intel and AMD are starting to ramp.

This performance gap on cores is …
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We Still Want IBM i On The Impending Power E1050

June 27, 2022 Timothy Prickett Morgan

In March last year, as Big Blue was finishing up the development of the Power10 family of Power Systems machines, we wrote an essay explaining that we wanted IBM i to be a first-class operating system citizen on the four-socket Power E1050 machine, which we finally expect to see launch on July 12 if the rumors are correct.

We never did like that IBM i was not supported on the Power8-based Power E850 four-socket server, and then also not supported on the Power9-based Power E950 four-socket server. And we equally do not like the fact that, if the rumors we …
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The Big Iron Customers That The Power E1080 Is Aimed At

September 27, 2021 Timothy Prickett Morgan

One of the central tenets of our philosophy here at The Four Hundred is: Anything that makes Power Systems stronger helps IBM i last longer.

For as long as we have been watching the AS/400 and IBM i market, big iron has driven a lot of revenue for machines based on IBM’s proprietary CISC processors and then PowerPC and Power RISC processors. And the big iron machines drove even more of the profits from these products. Big iron is, therefore, important. But just how much money are we talking about?

A lot more than you probably think, as it …
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More Vintage Power Systems Feature Withdrawals

January 11, 2021 Timothy Prickett Morgan

In with the new and out with the old is a common theme around this time of the year. It may not be officially spring yet – in fact, we are 71 days away from the vernal equinox here in the northern hemisphere – but Spring Cleaning can and does happen at any time in the IBM product catalog.

And so it was as 2020 was coming to an end and after we had out the last issue of The Four Hundred for last year to bed.

In announcement letter 920-167, IBM is withdrawing a number of different features …
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Big Blue Revives IBM i 7.1 With Power9 Support

November 16, 2020 Timothy Prickett Morgan

We don’t get surprises very often in the Power Systems market, and even fewer in the IBM i sub-market. But last week, we did get a surprise – and it was a pleasant one – as Big Blue decided that it was going to allow for IBM i 7.1, which has long since been removed from marketing and which was just recently given extended extended support through April 2023, to run on selected models of the Power Systems line using Power9 processors.

That IBM would allow for this is remarkable, and it shows the economic and technical difficulties that many …
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IBM Gives Temporary Reprieve For Power8 Core And Memory Activations

IBM’s Competitive Analysis For The Power10 Midrange Machine

We Still Want IBM i On The Impending Power E1050

The Big Iron Customers That The Power E1080 Is Aimed At

More Vintage Power Systems Feature Withdrawals

Big Blue Revives IBM i 7.1 With Power9 Support

Content archive

Recent Posts

Subscribe

Pages

Search