System iNetwork

Chris

the banana gag is simply great

claudio

In addition, IBM could not provide any benchmarks for the System i yet. The System i still requires several custom instructions that are not in the generic POWER chips. It takes IBM several additional months, usually much longer, to create a custom version of the new Power processors before they can put one into a System i.

This is the greatest downside of the System i platform — it means we cannot use the latest greatest processors. With this dependence on these additional instructions, System i will always lag behind the other platforms.

IMO, IBM could have easily taken this opportunity to mention the System i without cluttering the message and decreasing the impact.

And if IBM is trying to sell BOTH oranges AND bananas, why not mention bananas?

Maybe it's closer to those tasty, lovely, seasonal, tropical fruits, of which nobody remembers the names, are hard to find, when found can be very expensive, cookers don't know exactly how to prepare, and there's not enough books about it?

I hate bananas but I love the AS/400 (I'm old school).

Especially when that banana is more like the entire fruit basket, capable of holding oranges and bananas.

Or perhaps, IBM will have another announcement party when the chip is available on the iSeries and get double coverage for a single chip. Sounds like a good strategy to me.

First of all, the POWER6 processer has all the instructions for tags active mode needed for i5/OS already. Mr. Howard Tanner is mistaken in his belief that the POWER processors in the i5 are different than the ones in the System p line.

The fundamental reason that the i5 did not get the POWER6 is that no one running an i5 needs that kind of power. The System p runs a less efficent and older operating system called AIX based on Unix. Unix is a task switching, interupt processing and semaphore locking nightmare. When IBM competes in the Unix space with System p and AIX, IBM needs all the CPU cycles a machine can get.

When the yields on the POWER6 are high enough to make it cost effective, the System i will be refreshed to the POWER6. I know that none of the customers I serve is even close to maximum performance in a POWER4 let alone a POWER5.

Folke Nikolai Sonin

This has more to do with political reality and less to do with fruit. . . . When System i rolled out POWER5 first (that's BEFORE pSeries, not months behind), as an iSeries IBMer, I made a number of calls on pSeries customers. They want to talk about the speed of the electrons moving between the busses along the backplane. System i customers are still struggling to digest POWER5+ and mostly they care about the applications running dependably. The speed of the processor has never been a big deal in this space. And for the most part, the IOP architecture of the System i as made the issue less important until recently when customers have started complaining about the cost of the HW more (at $2100 per IOP, the cost adds up).

IBM and its partners always use processor speed as a sales lever, but typical SMB customers (85%+ of System i) could care less. pSeries market space demands technology much more so than System i. So pSeries gets to go first this time. . . . No big deal. . . .

It's called a grand entrance people. Let the System p sell a few units when SUN and HP fail to do anything with their chips and in a year in walks . . . dun dunna dun! System i!

All in good time, and when it does come out, what is Sun going to do with that sad little SPARC chip and HP with no chip at all?

Bravo IBM for going after SUN/ HP!

Now do the REAL work in SMB's and go after the vulnerable Windows market sector. The 5 MM "Volunteers" Bill Gates refers to are an unhappy captive audience that could appreciate IBM's integrity and outstanding service and software support.

Improve WDSc and .NET so Visual Studio programmers have a migration path — oh, and give it away! Go for the underbelly, IBM.

—John

I loved the fruit comparison, but to me it looks more like a car mechanic competition.

The Unix world is still trying to have the fastet engine although their gear box is locked in 2nd, where the iSeries has an 18-wheeler that has plenty of power under the hood.

Racing cars may be OK for the show room, but in the end, it's always a truck that delivers. . . .

This is another sign of how IBM is marketing the "i". IBM complains that the sales are down but still do nothing to push "i" ahead. The System i is a great system (and has a great following).

It is like the bunny (keeps going and going). If the price (both hardware and software) would be in line of other Systems (p, z, and x), they would find that other platforms would be moving to the "i" (along with other IBM Systems). IBM wants us to use the system but is afraid that they would lose sales because the system is just too good. When small businesses buy an "i" . . . other than an upgrade or two . . . the system just runs and runs.

I'm waiting for IBM to go for the jugular and slay goliath — or is that Microsoft? Is Google in this picture, too?

I'm still amazed that Big Blue hasn't given this world an alternative to Windows.

Without a doubt IBM has the biggest orange now.

I'm not too concerned about i and i5/OS not being mentioned. We all know it will work anyway.

Let the Unix boys have their day for 6 months, if that makes sense, and then we'll have ours touting world's best Domino, Java, PHP performance etc. It always works this way.

Let the p take a bow first. But, how about the fact that the POWER6 chip has the instructions for System i, p AND z inside? Does that light anybody's fuse? We could be looking at a single architecture for all IBM, and then, if only Microsoft could get Windows to run on POWER — imagine the use you could make out of 1024 LPARS then! Go Rochester! Go IBM.

Unfortunately IBM has made sure the i5 is no longer a player in the market. Hey, why not rename the platform again?

We run i5 V5R3 as a SQL machine (and other things).
After 3 years of PTF, there are still simple queries (only 2 tables joined) which give erroneous results.
We have never got that kind of problems with Oracle or DB2/Windows.

For us, it shows that i5 machines are mainly used to run old RPG programs. Stop dreaming about the superiority of i5. If for main people it does not need processor...

Another fact: simple SQL procedure which runs in 30 seconds on a Windows machine (a medium server from 1998) runs in 90 seconds on our i5 520.

So why do we use i5? You have correctly guessed: we also have old RPG programs.

Fred