IBM Pushes System p, Sun Rolls Out Datacenter in a Box
Do you remember the PowerPC processor? This little beauty drove everything from
late-model Amigas to Macs. After Apple ditched Power for Intel, it looked like
Power lost all its muscle.
But IBM is keeping the processor family very much alive, and uses it to drive
the world's fastest PCs to what IBM last year claimed was the world's fastest
server.
While IBM pushes its x86 Blade and traditional server lines, the company's
most interesting family just might be the Power-powered System p. Mostly aimed
at the high-end, there are two new System p's: the 520 and 550 Express. Added
to that is a new virtualization technology, PowerVM, that lets the System p
run a wider variety of software, including Linux apps built for x86 systems.
Unfortunately, the System p still doesn't run Windows, even though years ago
NT ran just fine on the PowerPC.
Meanwhile, Sun is now shipping Sun MD. This data system is like a military
field hospital. You can drop Sun MD into a new location, and have processing,
storage, networking and pre-canned data processing all set to go. Not sure if
it comes in Army green.
Get all the details here.
Posted by Doug Barney on February 11, 2008