IBM Power8

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/08/27/ibm_power8_server_chip/?page=1
http://www.alcoidstein.de/IBM%20Intro%20to%20POWER8%20Processor.pdf






Does POWER still matter when commodity servers are fast, reliable and cheap?
http://blog.zorangagic.com/2014/02/new-xeon-e7-v2-supports-up-to-32-socket.html
http://www.spec.org/cpu2006/results/res2014q2/cpu2006-20140407-29250.html
http://www.spec.org/cpu2006/results/res2014q2/cpu2006-20140424-29430.html


Update 21/10/14: POWER not competitive:
http://www.forbes.com/sites/robertcringely/2014/10/20/ibm-earnings-doom-the-server-business-and-maybe-the-company-but-wall-street-still-wont-call-for-selling-shares/
Power8 servers that the company sees as its weapon against the kind of Intel-based servers IBM used to make. Their grandly-stated goal was to take back that business from Intel, but the chip unit sale now makes that goal pretty much impossible because IBM’s $1.5 billion in cash going to GlobalFoundries will make the chips from that deal economically uncompetitive.

IBM had to sell its Microelectronics unit, rather than simply shut it down, because the Lenovo server sale has now left IBM’s remaining server businesses entirely dependent on Power8 processors and Power8 processors can only be made in the soon-to-be former IBM chip plants with their proprietary silicon-on-copper manufacturing process, which IBM still touts as an advantage but is really a liability.

Say IBM buys a million Power8 processors per year from GlobalFoundries. With the $500 million per year cash payment from IBM on top of already paying for the chips, that would add $500 to the real cost of every chip. But the more likely result isn’t IBM buying a million chips per year. Real consumption is more likely to be around 100,000 processors per year which means each one will cost whatever IBM pays GlobalFoundries plus another $5000.

This is not to say IBM will get out of the server business because they’ll have to pay that $500 million each year for the next three years no matter what. But what it does mean is there’s no way those servers can be price — or profit — competitive with Intel boxes including those from the very IBM division just sold to Lenovo.