Plus, it’ll run Linux

So there’s a nice new IBM P-series midrange available, the p570 with the new POWER6 processor. Over at spec.org they have the lowdown; running the same operating system (SLES 10 SP1), the p570 blows away the fasted x86 machine available, a Dell R900 with a Xeon E7720 processor. Here are the specs:


int int_base fp fp_base $/int $/int_base $/fp $/fp_base
IBM p570 234 204 215 182 $1,991 $2,284 $2,167 $2,560
Dell R900 142 120 90 83 $59 $70 $93 $10

But, the P-series lists for $466,000 (that gets you 8 cores at 4.7GHz and 64GB of memory) and the Dell is only $8,400 (8 cores at 2.93GHz with 16GB memory). So you could buy 55 Dells for the price of one of those P-series boxes. Fifty five!

[updated w/table]