[MLUG] Linux *really* hits the big-time

[Jonathan King <EMAIL:PROTECTED>]

So IBM released their p690 server today based on their Power4 chip. You
can run AIX or Linux on the thing, and it looks like a complete *beast* at
a price that's half of comparable Sun hardware.  The Power4 itself is
faster than anything out there (Intel, Alpha, SPARC, you name it), and the
configurations available are, shall we say, pretty heavy duty.

Top of the line would be:

32-way SMP with 1.3GHz Power4 processors,
256 GB RAM
96 internal drive bays
up to 160 PCI adapters
4.6 TB of disk (using currently available drives, I believe).

Note that the memory is in gigs and the disk storage is in terabytes.
For more info, see:

http://www-1.ibm.com/servers/eserver/pseries/hardware/datactr/p690_specs.html

But the thing that is most interesting is that you can get Linux to run on
it, which means that an OS started by a Finnish tinkerer working on a 386
now runs on essentially the most serious computers in the world that fit
in one cabinet.

Of course, the real question is whether or not this would have won the
darts contest. :-)

jking


--
To unsubscribe, go to http://mlug.missouri.edu/members/edit.php

Archives are available at http://mlug.missouri.edu/list-archives/