Counting The Cost Of IBM i On Power9 Entry Systems

April 9, 2018 Timothy Prickett Morgan

Every time there is a Moore’s Law advance in processing, whether companies charge by the core or by the socket, there is price cut – in theory at least – for systems software. This is true if the chip maker decides to goose the performance of the cores or add more cores to a socket, or both at the same time.

In the past several generations of Power processors used in the Power Systems line, IBM has done both. Because the systems software is based on cores, however, the move from two to four to eight to 12 cores per …