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:
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| 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 |
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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]