IBM Gearing Up Mega Power 8 Servers For October Launch 113
darthcamaro (735685) writes "Now that IBM has sold off its x86 server business to Lenovo, it's full steam ahead for IBM's Power business. While Intel is ramping up its next generation of server silicon for a September launch, IBM has its next lineup of Power 8 servers set to be announced in October. "There is a larger than 4U, 2 socket system coming out," Doug Balog, General Manager of Power Systems within IBM's System and Technology Group said. Can IBM Power 8 actually take on x86? Or has that ship already sailed?" At last weekend's Linux Con in Chicago, IBM talked up the availability of the Power systems, and that they are working with several Linux vendors, including recently-added Ubuntu; watch for a video interview with Balog on how he's helping spend the billion dollars that IBM pledged last year on open source development.
Re:That ship has already sailed. (Score:1, Informative)
non-predatory licensing model?! hahahaha! you don't work with IBM much do you?
Re:Workstations ? (Score:2, Informative)
IBM has licensed the POWER 8 CPU under a program called OpenPOWER. It being touted as being similar to ARM licensing. The last I saw, Tyan was planning to release an single socket POWER 8 ATX motherboard. http://www.enterprisetech.com/2014/04/28/inside-google-tyan-power8-server-boards/
Re:Are they available in the cloud? (Score:5, Informative)
If you go to IBM conferences you will find a fair amount of talk on this very topic by 3rd party vendors. There are probably a dozen vendors that want to provide AS400/iSeries cloud instances, but IBM won't let them because it violates the terms of the IBM i license which is tied to a hardware instance.
Plus, the whole software ecosystem piggybacks on the same idea, (often based on machine capabilities). This means that even if you can rent an iSeries for an hour its likely your software vendor won't license you their application.
So, while it is entirely possible, IBM seems to be dragging their feet on the license issues, and the vendors seems to be in a chicken/egg situation.